it's a magical world

Completely random: I am trying to find a Jolly Roger T-shirt by Friday morning. Your standard skull&crossbones, yarrr me mateys sort of design, no text, just the damn pirate flag on a stupid T-shirt. I found one I really liked online and ordered it two weeks ago...and near as I can tell, it hasn't even shipped yet. So now I'm almost out of time. I live in New York City, you'd think I could find a fucking T-shirt, but no luck yet. Does anyone know where I might look in NYC to find this? Like tomorrow morning? I'm gonna hit up the T-shirt shops around St Marks Place and pray.

Seriously, I bought the damn thing online two weeks in advance, I thought I was good. I mean, maybe it'll turn up tomorrow, but though I received order confirmation promptly, I haven't even gotten anything like "it shipped and here's your tracking number". Fucking hell.

(It's...totally not for anything important, really, except I've got a show opening on Friday night that involves a pirate and I'm making a tradition out of wearing something to our opening night parties that pays homage to the show, and I really really really want to show up in a Jolly Roger T-shirt, okay? I work at a kids' theater, they'll get a kick out of it, I'm trying to be the cool stage manager here.)

Today is my full day off this week, thank god. I opened a show over the weekend, which is great because it means TECH IS OVER, THANK CHRIST. I celebrated after the shows yesterday by taking myself out to the movies. Saw Zero Dark Thirty, which was quite good and very tense. Although I become completely distracted by the unexpected Captain Jack Harkness cameo, which made me giggle inappropriately. Seriously, that first scene with the CIA director, I kept thinking, man, that extra looks an awful lot like John Barrowman, but he was one of a group of faceless Suits around a conference table, and the camera never actually panned in on him, so I thought I must've been imagining it. Then, like half an hour later, there's another scene with the CIA director, and this time he actually had a couple of lines, and I nearly jumped up in my seat shouting I knew I recognized that jawline! GOOD TIMES. I was not expecting Barrowman in that movie!

I do have a lot of fandom stuff I need to be doing this week. Which is good! I like fandom stuff. Though I'm working on a vid that's giving me a huge headache right now for reasons completely unrelated to the vid itself -- the only source I could find for it is in a format that takes my laptop freaking forever to convert into something usable, so not only do I need to clip it all, every individual clip takes a good 2-10min to convert before I can load it into my vidding program. Which, ugh, I have really outgrown iMovie at this point. But while I HAVE Final Cut Express, I got a new laptop last summer and then, y'know, moved four times in five months, and I cannot fucking find the original CD-ROM with the necessary registration info, so I have this great vidding program installed that I can't fucking access. I'm like 95% sure the stuff I need is in one of the six boxes of books-and-assorted-miscellany that I didn't have room for in my current apartment, so are in storage upstage at my parents' house, but as they go upstate only on weekends and I WORK on weekends, I haven't been able to get up there to sort through the six boxes of books-and-assorted-miscellany to find the damn CD-ROM. And I'm still only beginning to learn how to USE Final Cut, so it's not like that will solve all my problems, but it is frustrating to have a program that I can't even open to play with.

Which is unrelated to the fact that every fucking clip I make takes, on average, five minutes to convert. Do you know how many clips I assemble in the process of making a vid? If I'm clipping a 2-hour movie, and I know specifically what I'm looking for, that's maybe 100 clips. If it's a TV show, and I know the general outline of the vid I'm making but don't know the show well enough to storyboard it blind...christ. For, say, One Mississippi, I had the benefit of knowing Doctor Who pretty much backwards and forwards (partly from having vidded it so many times already), so I could seek out the sort of clips I needed with a high degree of precision, and know that, oh, for this lyric I need this particular moment from episode X, so I'd take a few different clips from that scene and edit it out in iMovie. The folder I created for that vid holds 121 .mov files, for roughly a four-minute vid. Let's say that the vid I'm currently making only winds up needing 200 clips itself -- which is probably about right, since I'm much less familiar with the source (I've only watched it through once before) and don't have quite a strong concept in mind for the vid as a whole. Setting aside the time it takes me to rewatch everything and find the clips themselves, this added conversion time -- let's call it an even five minutes per clip, though it varies depending on the lengths of the clips themselves -- means that that's close to seventeen hours of time wasted JUST CONVERTING .MOV FILES. This is incredibly frustrating to me, because I can't actually do the vidding itself until the clips are converted and then uploaded into iMovie. And I can't continue clipping while one file is still converted, so I'm basically caught in the holding pattern from hell.

At least I can work on a fic beta while videos convert in the background. That's something.

So my parents were in town last night, and they stayed at my place. This morning, after I'd left for work, my mother used my laptop to google my office location so that they could meet me for lunch. I had 20+ different tabs open, mostly fics I'd seen linked someplace and wanted to read but hadn't had time for yet, accumulated over several weeks(/months?). My mother knows about my fanfic habits, I really don't care what she sees open. She did the google search, then wanted to get back to whatever I'd had open to start with so as not to have interrupted anything. To find the tab I'd had open? She systematically went through and closed every. single. tab. Then couldn't figure out which page I'd been looking at anyway, so she closed Firefox entirely. And Safari, which had a set of work-related tabs open. And Word, with my performance report.

Every single fic I'd had open waiting for me? Gone. No idea where I'd found them in the first place. The one I was reading this morning I'd opened recently enough to show up in my recent history, but none of the others. Or the rec lists I was slowly working through and therefore had open tabs for. I only bookmark things I know I'm going to go back to multiple times; for short-term "oh I'll get to this later" fics, I just, y'know. Save a tab.

GODDAMNIT MOTHER.

You know, as irritating as the ongoing LJ technical kablooie is, it would bother me a lot less if somewhere -- ANYWHERE -- the LJ team would post a quick explanation of what's going on and when we might expect it to be fixed. Like on the LJ news or announcements comm, for example. Or at status.livejournal.org, which is incredibly vague and hasn't been updated in nearly 24 hours. Look, I get that sometimes things just go kablooie, and they aren't quickly or easily repaired. I don't even need a definitive ETA. But some kind of regular update saying look, this is the situation, we're not sure how long it will take, we've restored features XYZ but ABCDEF are unavailable until further notice -- I'm just saying, it would be appreciated. A page that I can refresh that will actually tell me when things are functional again. Which, hey, the status page might, but with the whole hasn't-been-updated-in-nearly-24-hours thing, I really have no reason to trust it right now. UGH.

In other technical difficulties, yesterday was my one evening off. (I work two jobs. I don't get full days off. On Mondays I only work a 6-hour day -- that's my "day off".) So I decided to treat myself to a movie, since I still haven't seen the last Harry Potter, or Captain America. I got off work, I headed out to the mall a mile-ish away from my apartment, checked the showtimes, killed time for about an hour before the movie -- and then learned that the A/C in the movie theater was broken. My fondness for Harry Potter is not such that I'm willing to sit in a muggy 95F theater for 2+ hours, sorry, NO. And that was my last "day off" for two weeks. ARGH.

So I went home and wrote 3k more words of the kinkmeme fill that I can't post because LJ is kablooie. And of course, this was the scene I have been looking forward to the whole time -- like, this was the first image that came into my head, around which the entire 35k-words-and-still-going-strong fic is based. And I can't fucking post it. In the scheme of life, the universe, and everything, this is a terribly petty thing to get hung up on, I know, but still. FRUSTRATED.

Stupid power outages. This is the second one this evening - the first lasted from about 5:15 to 6:45, and was caused by NOTHING whatsoever and interrupted me in the middle of an episode of True Blood. And then the storm started, so here we are all of an hour after the power came back with... No power. And cut Sam Merlotte off midsentence, which is really just rude.

It's getting pretty dark. At least my roommate hoards candles. Bah.

Posted from my iPhone, since there's no power for my laptop's Internet. Hmph. It's a pretty damn impressive storm, I'll give it that. The thunder is making all the windows rattle and there's some fucking intense lightning going on. Times like this, I wish I had a balcony or porch or something to watch the storm. Especially since True Blood is apparently out of the question.

I really need to teach myself how to make fanvids. Because I have all these ideas in my head, and vidding's the sort of painstaking, neurotic project that suits my assorted neuroses nicely. I just...have no idea what sort of software I'd need, or how to get started. The matching clips to music I think I can do, the anal retentive futzing with timing so that every second matches up right, all that jazz, but...how do I pull those clips from DVD to...whatever program I need? And match it up with the song?

Of course, it doesn't help that I can't exactly make Doctor Who vids without any source for the video clips. But I could at least practice with the Firefly vid I have in my head, or the old Frodo/Sam vid I plotted out way back when. Except...how?

Maybe Google will help me. Or does anyone know of some brilliant fan-created guide to vidding somewhere? I'm sure at least a dozen must exist.

Also, did my final stint of canvassing for Obama today. THREE DAYS OMG.

All of Italy is on strike today, apparently. By which I mean all trains, buses, boats, ferries, and what have you are not functioning. Getting from Monterosso to Florence is looking to be...interesting. I feel very "20 Hours In America"-ish, except, you know, in a foreign country.

Anyway, hi! Am in Italy, clearly. Is actually a great experience, except for the strike today. Will have many pictures to post when I return in two and a half weeks. For now, on to Florence! Eventually!

Oh, West Wing DVD, you chose the EXACT WRONG place to decide you have a scratch and can no longer function, being at a very particular point in "He Shall, From Time To Time" where something very particular is revealed, and the second half of the episode is not available to me. And with the death of tv-links, I have nowhere to turn for the rest of this episode.

NOT HAPPY.

So, back in Chicago now. Was at parents' for almost exactly 24 hours -- I feel like I've spent more time in transit (train, airport, plane, airport, plane, car and then again in reverse) than at home. Which is probably an exaggeration, but whatever. Haven't gotten much sleep in the past two days. Thanksgiving was nice, only eleven of us this year (my dad's family is made of huge), although that still meant a full house, so I had to sleep on the couch. Just kind of reinforces how little either of my parents' places feel like "home" anymore. But it was good to hang out with my cousins and their girlfriends.

Also, first big family shindig since I started my diet-type thing, and it was interesting to realize how much my eating habits really are changing. I wasn't restraining myself at all, but I took way smaller portions than anyone else, and stopped eating when I wasn't hungry anymore, and didn't get seconds of anything. A year ago, I would've stuffed myself to bursting. It felt way more satisfying this way, oddly enough. Eh, whatever.

And one of my flights tonight had to make an emergency landing! Very exciting, in the I-wonder-if-I'm-going-to-die-today sort of way. It wasn't all that serious, really, but I've been flying since before I could walk and I'm fairly certain this is the first flight I've been on that had an actual honest-to-goodness emergency situation. The flaps malfunctioned, so there was no help reducing speed on landing, so the plane had to circle gradually lower and lower and eventually just hit the ground running, basically, and took a very, very long time to finally come to a stop. There were fire trucks waiting for us and everything, though fortunately they weren't needed. Not too scary, as emergencies go, but hey, still counts.

I've got work tomorrow, and I'm dead exhausted, so I'm probably gonna crash as soon as I finish catching up on the f-list. Happy belated turkey day!

I can has internet again! Oh frabjous day. The AT&T guy didn't show up until after 4pm, which put a bit of a crimp in my style since I'd actually wanted to get out of the apartment today, and then he fiddled around for a bit and was all "well, the phone line's fine, and it's not your modem's fault, so damned if I know what it is, technicians will fiddle with the line coming in here and if you have nothing by tomorrow call us back." Which was somewhat disheartening, as even my stolen internet had conked out. So I watched more BSG DVDs instead. And then happened to glance over at my modem about five minutes ago and was all O HAI THERE GREEN LIGHT NEVER LEAVE ME AGAIN.

And so ended my internet drama. For now. However, I also got my first AT&T DSL bill today, and it is CRAZY expensive. But that includes all the set-up costs and the price of the modem itself and suchlike, so hopefully this shall not be a trend.

In fandom news, my Two Lines fic is currently stalled. I've got 2500 words already, but the damn thing kept ballooning on me, so that puts me only about a third of the way through it. And now I'm really worried that the whole thing will go to crazy introspective places, which, as I now recall, is why I like writing fics set either before or after the canon in question rather than right smack in the middle of it where we all already KNOW what's HAPPENING so the only thing left is the annoying thinky bits. I need to find a way around this problem, stat. Because Helo is far more entertaining when he's doing stuff than when he's brooding. I keep hoping that the more BSG I rewatch, the easier it will get, but no, instead I find myself pining for Boomer/Chief of yore, which is not so much with the helping me.

And the YA fantasy is also stalled, in that fun I-am-going-somewhere-awesome-but-first-I-have-to-get-through-the-boring-bits sort of way, which is really not a good mindframe to be writing in. I need something exciting to happen this chapter. Like, now. I'm just not sure what.

So I wrote about 1000 words of Yuletide fic instead. Which is also looking to be unwieldy and obscenely plotty, but seriously, Two Lines is due a month earlier, I really do not want to be obsessing over Yuletide yet.

My muses, they are smoking the crack. Not the good kind, either.

So since I've only ever owned VHS copies of the original Star Wars trilogy, I figured it was time to remedy the situation and buy the dratted DVDs. They were kind of expensive, so I bought them used through amazon, for a very reasonable price. Trust me to be too stupid to read the fine print. The DVDs are lovely, in excellent condition -- and full screen.

*facepalm*

I'll just have to live with it, I guess. It's still the right movie, just really irritatingly cropped. Why does anyone even make DVDs full screen anymore? Jeez.

Oh, Ikea, stop being such a little bitch. So yes, furniture was delivered to me today, a desk and a chair, which I have assembled and are lovely, really. Only problem being, there were supposed to be two bookcases in this order as well. Which have been paid for. Um? I called Ikea, but apparently the department I need to talk to has all gone home already, so I'll be calling back in the morning. In all honesty, since this is still a week before the original estimated delivery date, I don't really care if the bookcases shipped separately and will get here later. The desk/chair were the really important things. But it would be nice to know that the stuff I ordered is still going to get to me.

Speaking of which, amazon.com seems to think I received my BSG DVDs, or at least their automated e-mail system does. Great. Now I've got to call them as well, because those dratted DVDs were returned straight back to amazon courtesy of the moronic US Postal Service before I even knew they were in my area. And I still kind of want them.

Moral: having things delivered SUCKS.

Hey, do any of you own an Emerson brand microwave? I recently bought one off craigslist for my apartment, and while it works fine, it didn't come with any sort of instruction manual. And certain features are not, apparently, even remotely self-evident. I can't for the life of me figure out how to adjust the power level, for example, and it's interfering with my microwave dinners.

Help?

Also, assembling these damn drawers I bought at Target is a bitch and a half, let me tell you. But my rug came today, so that's nice.