it's a magical world

I am seriously ODed on cake. And there's still more in my fridge. Now I remember why birthdays only come once a year, because jesus christ I have had too much cake over the past two days.

I've been failing on RL friends left and right these past couple of weeks. Urg. Oh well. Tomorrow morning I'm getting on a bus and going up to NYC for the first time since Thanksgiving, and tomorrow night I intend to get smashingly drunk with my closes friends from high school, and it will be marvelous. One pitfall of being an introvert, I suppose, is that I have many friendly acquaintances and very, very few real friends -- but I was extraordinarily lucky in my high school friendships. I can count on one hand the people I can truly, completely Be Myself with, and I will be seeing two of them at the same time tomorrow night, which makes me deeply happy. And almost makes up for the fact that the real reason I'm going to NYC this weekend is to sort out the last of my stuff at my parents' place, because they're moving out of my childhood home this summer. WEIRD. But inevitable, I know.

Oh, right, TV meme.


Day 11 - A show that disappointed you

X-Files went tragically downhill, and Sports Night had the Dating Plan (ARGH), and West Wing lost Sorkin and RTD's Whoniverse went batshit and really, any show that lasts long enough is bound to disappoint somehow. But -- and I say this with love -- the big one for me is Merlin. Which, okay, I adore the characters. I adore the fandom. I adore the ridiculous crack. But while it has flashes of brilliance, the show's writing is never, ever at the level I want it to be, and it deeply frustrates me. Two full seasons, and they fucking refuse to alter the status quo -- how much longer do I need to suspend my disbelief that no one knows Merlin uses magic? How much longer will Morgana -- and, to a lesser extent, Gwen -- continue to be relegated to the background, apart from rare her-centric episodes that try to cram a season's worth of wasted character development into forty minutes? How can you give us these four brilliant, well-rounded, funny, clever, loving, courageous characters and write such banal and empty plots for them? (There are exceptions to all of these complaints, obviously.)

But seriously, I say this out of love. Because while the silly fun is lovely, really, I think this show has the potential to be so much more. We have moments -- the Mordred arc, the entirety of "Sins of the Father", everything Gwen ever says or does. And maybe I'm asking for too much, but it wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't think it could be so much better. For the most part, I'm just left with a sense of wasted potential.

So I stick with the fandom instead, where the writing, as a whole, sets the bar much higher.

1. I am making the most amazing Strawberry Cupcakes for my housemate's birthday, you have no idea. I love trying new recipes for baked goods, and I'm adding my own cream cheese icing (from scratch, natch), which I added some of the extra strawberry juice to, and OMG, guys. NOM.

2. I had a surprisingly good evening yesterday. Unexpected good things are awesome.

3. The weather is glorious, so I wandered down to explore the monuments for two hours. DC is a very pretty city. Over the past week or so, I've reached a sort of zen-ish settling-in place here, and I'm fairly certain that barring sudden job acquisition elsewhere, I'm going to stay in the DC area for another year or so. I have friends here independent of my work, I'm starting to build cred in the smaller theaters, and I don't want to move across country to start from scratch all over again. So: DC it is. Now I just need one of the jobs I've applied for to come through.

It's amazing how much more at peace with myself I've become since making that decision. Even job stress doesn't bother me anymore -- I know I can always work box office or something to make ends meet while waiting for a proper job to come through. I'm still on the fence about leaving my field of choice -- I've got a couple of admin assistant positions for non-performing arts organizations bookmarked, but I'm hesitant to give up this quickly. I still have five weeks to find something I want to do first. But gainful employment is kind of key here. Ah, well, we'll see.

4. I'm finally watching Merlin (and Life) now that I've allowed myself new fandoms again. Silly good fun.

5. A certain extraordinarily awesome intern at my theatre (HI!) knitted me a Ravenclaw scarf. Seriously, how awesome is that? TOTALLY AWESOME. I will wear it always -- um, once it's not summer, anyway. :D

6. Meme! I will do a commentary track on any of my stories, like the audio extra on a DVD, talking about what went into it and my general thoughts on it. I've posted this meme before (ages ago), and no one bit then, and probably no one will now. But it sounds like fun, so if anyone's interested, hit me up. Since I'm in a bit of a writing lull while my Big Bang is in beta...

Okay, grating carrots SUCKS. But if the batter is anything to judge by, I just made some DAMN TASTY carrot cake. With a side of KICKASS cream cheese icing. I know I baked this for my housemate's birthday and all, but she'd better play nice and share with the rest of the house, because awesomeness of this caliber is meant to be shared. It is far too much awesome for just one person.

This recipe is definitely a keeper. For the next time I feel like spending HALF AN HOUR GRATING CARROTS, so, not so much anytime in the near future. But still.

I just killed a mosquito, and got bright red blood smeared on my hands as a reward for my effort.

Okay, given the new itchy bite on my ankle, the blood is probably actually my own, but still: EWWWW.

Cell Block Tango...with Disney villainesses.

Also, it is a bitter, bitter irony that the one day of the week I can sleep in, I jolt awake at exactly 7:15am (when my alarm goes off the other six days of the week, except without alarm today) and CANNOT FALL BACK ASLEEP. Oh cruel world. Maybe I'll manage a nap later or something.

I just fielded a phone call from someone who seemed perfectly content to just rant at me for five solid minutes, with no particular desire to be transfered over to anyone else. Not in an attacking sort of way, mind; just, he had a certain idea about where our business should be going, and wanted to share. With someone. And then eventually came to the conclusion on his own that he should be talking to marketing instead, thanked me and hung up.

That was kind of entertaining, in a bemusing sort of way. I wish I hadn't spent so much of his monologue trying desperately to think of someone, anyone, he should be transfered over to, and just let him wear himself out instead.

Chicago is celebrating St. Patrick's today, apparently. The pubs have been open since noon, the Irish pride is out in force, and green-clad bands of drunks are roaming the streets. And this was at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

There are many March birthdays involved in this show. Today is our box office's birthday -- she's also the wife of a cast member. She requested chocolate, so I am now baking chocolate cookies with chocolate chunks. The first batch just came out of the oven a few minutes ago. It is...hmm, slightly undercooked, but very gooey and chocolately. Mission accomplished.

Man, you know it's been a really bad winter when you look at the 10-day weather forecast and get ridiculously excited about the fact that the temperatures are all in the upper 30s or even 40s F. I've started taking WALKS again. I might be able to wear my lighter jacket once or twice in the weeks to come!

Christ, this winter has been obscenely long and miserably cold, even by Chicago standards. Remind me to never move any further north than this.

In other news, last night we had the first read-through for the new works festival I'm directing two plays for. Nifty. My plays, they have their flaws, but they sound a lot better when read aloud by actors, which makes me more optimistic about this than I have been. (They're new works. They aren't exactly polished yet.)

I've never been much of a fan of Valentine's Day. The four V-Days that fell during my relationship with Dave, we deliberately ignored. It just always seems like an excuse for people in love to gloat about it while those without partners are made to feel twice as lonely. But I am determined not to be depressed about it today, so I brought a bag of Hershey's dark chocolate kisses in to work and have given one to every single one of the people in this office (there are about 60 of 'em), and have discovered to my satisfaction that making people I barely know surprised and happy, just for a few seconds, really does wonders for brightening my own day. So it shall be a happy Thursday. I decree it so.

A few of them thought the Big Boss had set me up to it. Silly people. We all did find heart-shaped cookies on our desks when we came in this morning, and that does kinda trump a tiny piece of dark chocolate, but still. Also got a fair few jokes about kisses, but hey, I figure no one really objects to a kiss from a cute girl on Valentine's Day. ;)

Rehearsals moved into the actual performance space. So much love. Stage! Sets! Lights! Very exciting. Tomorrow's the understudy rehearsal, but since Ado Annie's understudy can't make it, I get to stand in for Ado Annie. That should be...interesting. But I do secretly really kind of miss acting, so it'll probably be good fun.

Holiday card from azewewish! Thank you! Cute card. ;) Speaking of which, if you want cards + drabbles from me, please do comment here. Definitely more likely to be New Year's cards instead of Christmas, because I won't have time to futz around until this show goes up, but still.

yuletide fic is about to hit 10,000 words, and still going strong. Holy shit, I've created a monster. At least the climax is actually in sight. And at around 3:30 am last night I had a sudden bolt of inspiration, and wrote a scene that creeps the fuck out of me, in a good way. I'm loving on this fic more than I have the words to express. Hopefully, it'll get people other than me off as well, which is always chancy when I go into this particular sparkly happy place in my writingness.

Oi, newredshoes, up for dinner/DVD-watching Friday or Saturday night? I can has free time, weirdly enough.

Things that are made of win tonight:

1. Snow. Unlike the snow on Saturday, which was sleety and haily and icy and gross, the snow tonight was picture-perfect, and the drive through Evanston after rehearsal was somewhere beyond beautiful. Also, excellent snowball-making snow. :D

2. Rehearsal. I love this show so very very much. And one of the girls in the cast invited us all out to dinner/drinks/ice skating for her birthday on Saturday. Which made our choreographer go OMFG NO DANCERS ICE SKATING NO NO NO, but we'll all probably ignore her anyway. And pay the price later when Dream Laurey breaks her ankle or something. Er.

3. PRINCE CASPIAN TRAILER ZOMG. It's funny, because I just had a long conversation about Narnia with a friend. I don't love the books anymore, because they really aren't all that well-written and the religiosity makes me feel a little ill, but these movies are totally reawakening my inner five-year old in a very good way. Well, I always liked the first couple of books best anyway. Also Caspian is ridiculously attractive.

Life would be halfway decent right now if I didn't have the sore throat from hell. Usually, these things creep up gradually on me, which at least gives me some warning. Today, I was on my way back from the gym, swallowed, and my throat randomly exploded. Metaphorically, of course. Chicken soup helped temporarily. DayQuil did next to nothing, although I got through rehearsal without too much misery, so maybe it worked more than I thought. Ever the optimist, I've just downed some NyQuil. And will now proceed to pray, or something. I do not have time to get sick right now. Really no. Hopefully, it'll dissipate eventually without getting worse first.

Also, shit, I really need to get cracking on my yuletide fic. It's somewhat disheartening to have 2000+ words written and yet know you've barely gotten started. Wah. And crack_van fandom overview to write up in a few days, although I've at least mostly finished collected my recs for the month. I suppose it's just as well my temp agency sucks and hasn't found me any new work for the past week and a half.

But the show's going well, so that's something.