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Today was pretty productive on the writing front, and... not at all on any other front.

-Did a final-final revision for the treat I wrote for trickortreatex. Completed it like a month ago and I figured I might as well do some last-minute tweaking.
-Slapped down maybe 400 words on that aRTD ghost story, which is now definitely not going to be finished in time for Halloween, alas. But that's okay. Ghost stories are good at any time of year.
-Wrote about 500 words on a Yuletide treat (... it's going to need a lot more).
-Typed up draft of an Emil/Lalli fic for the SSSS prompt meme on tumblr. Draft is finished, but it needs... something. Well, revisions in general, but it's lacking oomph. I'll need to sit on it a while and then look at it later.

And I did basically nothing else. Came home after hanging at the cafe for a bit, flopped into bed, and passed out for a couple of hours. Then wrote more in the evening. I don't know why I randomly fall asleep on weekend afternoons; maybe I just get so little sleep during the week that I need to catch up. Or something.

Started my secret indexing project yesterday. First part went easy enough, but after this point, it will be harder. This thing is going to be hell on my wrists, but it's a project with a defined end, so that's all right. It's probably a good thing that I'm not kink meme indexing any more; disappointing that I never did complete it, but I don't think I would be able to handle it nowadays, physically.

Feeling a little melancholy for no particular reason... It's probably just my brain doing its thing again. I'm sure tomorrow will be better.

[edit] Oh, and I made some quick autumn icons, if anyone's interested in that. Landscapes and assorted other autumny things. They're over here.

I feel like I accomplished nothing today. Damn. Did do a little writing, but it was very little, and I think I'm going to have to rewrite the whole thing.

It was super nice today, though. I didn't even have to wear my autumn coat. Headed out in the morning to the spa for a massage, which was also nice. Just wish that I hadn't wasted so much time today.

Watched Insidious 3 with the gang this evening. That was all right. There were some things in it that kind of upset me, but like - it's horror genre. And sometimes things that upset me appear in it. It's normal. Anyway, as for Insidious 3 - it's a prequel to the first Insidious film, so it doesn't matter that I haven't seen Insidious 2. I thought it was all right; not the best horror film I've seen, but not the worst either. It's possible that I liked it more than I otherwise would have because I really enjoy Lin Shaye as Elise Rainier, the Medium in the Insidious series. Honestly, she's like, the best part. Then again, I have a thing for tough old gals, I guess....

Terribly exhausted tonight because last night I stayed up until midnight, like a dumbass. Bad decision. Worst decision. Blech. But I was working on something and didn't want to stop.

What I was working on: Skalding the aRTD archive comment poetry. Nobody's ever done it. I figured, WHY NOT. ... Errrr explanation: in SSSS/aRTD fandom, "skalding/skaldwork" is nitpicky recordkeeping/archival stuff. Indexing, basically. So I was... indexing poetry from the aRTD comment archives... yes. (Christ on a cracker, I'm so tired.)

I've neglected the Nordic index for months, so I guess I felt compelled to do some indexing for some reason. I don't know. I... um. To be honest, I'll probably never go back to working on the Nordic index; Delicious is too frustrating to use, and my interest in the Hetalia kink meme has waned significantly. I never even check it any more.

... Anyway. I have another aRTD skalding project that I'm thinking of doing, but I'm not going to talk about it, because then I would need to commit to it. And this one was hell on my wrists, so, uh, not for a while. Yes.

Thanksgiving this weekend. Not looking forward to it. On the one hand: I don't have to go to work on Monday. On the other hand: because of the holiday, it won't be a restful weekend. Grumble, grumble.

✿ The Delicious export issue is fixed. But they've disabled import, probably permanently. Going to have to decide what to do as far as this goes... but in the meantime I'll be continuing to do dual Delicious/Pinboard indexing. At least until I figure something out.

✿ There is some re-arranging going on at work... We're switching over to a new program for our paperwork and whatnot. I expect it'll be fine, but there are some rumours going around that someone might be cut. Logically-speaking, I'm pretty sure that I'm secure, but that doesn't prevent me from worrying.

✿ I'm so looking forward to the weekend. So many things that I need to do... how the heck is January already half over?! It hasn't even started yet! Time, you get back here right this minute, thanks.

So, I managed to get my dear friend Tik to watch Anno 1790. :D This is great, because it's really one of my favourite series. Maybe now that she's familiar with it, we can bounce ideas off one another... I'd really love to write casefic for that series, but coming up with good plots is something that doesn't come easy for me, unfortunately.

Today was too hot. And tiring. And I did a lot of cleaning. Nothing special.

The saskatoon berries on our bush are ripe and delicious. I'm going to pick them some time in the next few days, I think. But first I need to buy bug spray, because the mosquitoes are ridiculously bothersome lately.

Been working on transferring prompts from the LJ version of the Nordic Index to the DW version. It's slow going, and it'll be forever before I finally finish, but at least I'm started. That's the important part. We'll see how it goes... I don't expect that I'll run into any snags, just that it'll take a long time because of course I have to do everything manually, since there's no easy way to take a LJ URL and directly map it over with its Dreamwidth import without fiddling.

I thought that I hadn't done much this weekend, but looking back on it, I guess I did.

Managed to revive the Nordic Index (Contact post and links to the Delicious + Pinboard versions are here). I'm only going to be indexing stuff that was posted after the move to DW, since there's so much of it.

Mostly I've been working on FSTs. I finished a special one that I'd made for a friend, and put in some good progress on the Den/Nor playlist that I've been working on for over a year. It's allllmost done; I just need to put together a cover and draw up some .txts - Tracklist + explanation of narrative, and lyrics/translations list. Then I'll be done.

I know the Done Thing is to host this stuff on 8tracks these days, but I HATE 8TRACKS. It's so... clunky and convoluted and just ugh.

Anyway. Sigh, people have been talking about Yuletide for a couple of weeks now. I really wish that I could join in with it, but I really am not able to commit to exchanges at this time, especially when it comes to fandoms that I've never written before. Quite a bummer. But at least I can enjoy reading what people turn out this year.

On a completely unrelated note, I went for a driving lesson today, and did a lot better than I expected to. The instructor said that I need to practice highway driving and merging, but aside from that I'm pretty okay. It's kind of a relief. I haven't been driving much ever since mum started having all her health problems, so I was really out of practice. Now, hopefully I'll be able to do it a little more. I really, really hope I'll be able to get more highway practice... driving in this city is a complete mess because of all the construction, so I need more experience with that.

It's good to know I'm doing better than I thought, though. What I want to do is practice from now, through winter, until the snow is gone, and then get my driver's license in late spring. Ultimately, the goal is to have it before my birthday (July 10th). Seems pretty reasonable. One more step toward my ultimate goal of getting out of here! (... Plus, for a while I've had some wild and crazy desire to some day drive down to Waterton Lakes national park on my own - while taking a detour through Drumheller - and then spend a week on vacation in the mountains without family to bother me. It sounds so nice. So it's one step toward being able to do that, too.)

Anyway. I have a fic that I need to revise for a friend... let's see how far I can get into that before I have to go to bed. u3u

A lot of the time, I find myself thinking of things during the day that I want to write in here.

And then as soon as I get home I pretty much collapse into a blob and want to close my eyes. Ughhhh I hate being too tired to do anything.

I was thinking about these things today. I'm going to make a list of them so I don't forget. Maybe I'll write about some of it on the weekend:

-The new book I'm reading right now is made up of short stories that are based on some medieval Danish ballads or something, and it's really great.
-The previous book I read, Random Passage, is really awesome for a variety of reasons which I won't get into right now
-Logistics of kink meme indexing AKA oh fuck me I don't want to have to start all over again
-I received Siren's book of lolita designs inspired by The Hobbit when I checked the mail today, and it is AWESOME
-I want to make an index entry of all my doujinshi because I keep forgetting which ones I have and it'd be awesome to have a quickref rather than pulling them out of storage
-I have a zillion and one Hetalia fics that I want to write, including some Norway/Spain. Roleplay is the only thing that explains my sudden interest in this pairing, alas. (But it would be cute.) (At least, I think.)

.... ZzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So, so. Easter tomorrow. Having an extra day off was nice.

It's still incredibly difficult to get anything done these days. With good reason, mind you, but it's still frustrating. I think that I might have to further re-arrange my way of doing time management in order to compensate. I've already done that, mind you, but there need to be more adjustments. On the upside, the internet as a whole seems sluggish lately, so I doubt I'll be missing much if I spend more time doing housework and unwinding by watching movies instead of screwing around on twitter. Honestly.

Note to self: Do up the posting guidelines for Nordipalooza and post them on Monday or something. Give people time to read them, because there will inevitably be questions. Yes.

I definitely will not have time to do my fic the way that I want it to, and that's really disappointing. I know I can revise and expand it, and I will do that after the fest, but - still. Oh well, it's just bad luck. I definitely do not plan to let all that research go to waist, though. Not at all. And maybe I can use it at some later date somehow, too. I just - man, I really love the 1600s, and if I could write something cool set during that time, it'd make me really happy. That book I recently acquired about Sweden during the 17th century might be useful too, not as much for this fic but maybe a different one. We'll see.

I'm almost finished adjusting the date tags for the Nordic index. There are about two more parts that need to be done, and that's maybe 400 tags, but it isn't really that big a deal, it's actually maybe just 4 hours of straight work, I think. Then I'll have to go through everything in order to make sure I caught it all, which might take a while, but we'll see. I'm really excited that this is almost done, because I've been working on it long enough, for sure. After that, I'll make a guide on how to use it, because some people seem to not really know how. There are some tricks to it, definitely. Probably going to host that both on LJ and Tumblr... frustrating though Tumblr is. Argh, I hate using it. And formatting posts is a royal pain in the ass. But what can ya' do, really.

Recently started watching Sherlock. It's... all right. I'll watch the whole series, since it's so short, and I do want to know what everyone's been flapping their hands about. (And also because there's a Sherlock + Millennium trilogy crossover that I want to read, and I hate reading crossovers when I don't know both canons). But man, it was hard to get through the first episode, because I kept wanting to punch Sherlock Holmes. I usually don't mind Holmes as a character, but this one, oh gods, I can't stand him! I love Watson, though, so hopefully I'll be able to concentrate mostly on him and ignore Sherlock's... face-punchingly-irritating Sherlock-ness.

Started listening to Of Monsters and Men. It only clicked a few days ago that the songs I've heard going around were all by them. Well, I hear "Little Talks" at least once every day on the radio, and I'm still not sick of it, so that's a good sign, heh. Didn't know they were from Iceland, neither... Anyway, I really should seek out more music like this eventually; it's nicely in line with my tates.

( Update on that real life stuff )

In other news - finally figured out a way to work on the Delicious problem. Update using Delicious, then import everything to Pinboard. Pinboard is navigable, and everyone is happy. Now that I've fixed that up, fixing the date tags can continue as usual. I hope to have that done by the end of next month.

I kind of want to write something special for valentines day, but I doubt I'll have the time to actually write something and get it finished. But finishing something I already have on the go might be possible. Well, I'll try that.

I really look forward to decreasing the mountain of unread books in my bedroom. This is getting a little bit... ridiculous. They're everywhere. I think I'll get through the graphic novels quickly when I get to them, at least, which is good because there's several of them. Argh, if only I were faster at reading. Maybe I wouldn't have this problem. (Nonsense, I totally would.)

It's supposed to be -40C tomorrow morning, and I'm really not looking forward to it. :'|

( Boring real life stuff )

With the way LJ has been going up and down and up and down lately, people are scrambling to back things up. I'm no different. I've been going through Delicious and saving copies of all the stuff I have bookmarked. It's a pain in the ass, but what can ya' do, really.

I'm trying not to think too much about "What if" scenarios. That's just bothersome. But it doesn't hurt to be cautious, either.

People at the APH Anon Meme have been kind of flailing around because of all the outages. I'm not sure what we're going to do if LJ implodes completely. Some of them will move to the DW backup, I guess, but others - who knows?

The things I'm hearing about revised Delicious are not good, either. I'm going to have to be extra-vigilant about backing up indexes on there. I don't want to have to move everything to Pinboard permanently, but I need to be prepared to do that if it is necessary.

On the writing front, things are... uh. Going, I guess. Hard to find time for it, but I keep trying. I've been feeling a little bit frustrated with it lately; nothing seems to be turning out the way that I want it to. I have a new thing that I started recently, a kind of "fluff with plot" thing, and while it should be relatively straightforward, it isn't. I keep getting hung up on trying to decide what would be the right way for the characters to act toward one another, the right things that they need to say in order for the story to advance, and I just - I don't know, I'm having a ton of trouble with it. I guess if it doesn't turn out right when I scribble it down, I can fix it in the revising, but I'd rather do it properly the first time.

Last week was so busy, ahhh. And this week coming up will probably be so as well. With Christmas coming up, it's hard to get anything done, and things tend to be so busy that I find myself generally wanting to be by myself, which is why I haven't been talking to people much lately. Also, since it's been consistently very cold and snowy out, I don't want to leave the house, which is also an issue (I get so much done if I take what I'm working on to the cafe... but at home? Little progress.)

I spent most of Saturday afternoon watching Norwegian slasher films. One would say that I use it as a studying strategy - it's so much easier for me to understand Norwegian when it's spoken rather than written - but really what I needed was something not-very-intelligent and easy to understand that I could watch while knitting. I've been working on this scarf for months and I want to finish it, damn it. But I'm only halfway done. xD Turns out that Fritt Vilt is a pretty decent film, though! (The other two in the series, on the other hand, are not so good.)

Anyway. Fandom-related things... I was making some good progress with adding dates to the Nordex for a while, but then I fell behind on it. Need to get to work on that - as well as adding the most recent round of requests/fills. I still have to add dates to parts 2-9, but I don't expect that it will take that long; even though there are a lot of bookmarks, I've done some work on it already. It should be done by the end of the year. Then in the new year, I'll hold some kind of Nordic writing challenge for the kink meme, though I have not yet decided how I'm going to organize that.

Writing is kind of paused because I haven't really have much time for it. But I do want to make "Get things finished!" another project, and will probably start sometime in January. It'll be easier when things calm down. I have lots of ideas, but time... not so much.

I want to write some historical stories, but then I keep running into the problem of feeling unsure about myself whenever I do something like that. I always feel like the writing quality of anything historical that I write is just plain not as good as my work in a modern setting - with the possible exception of the story I wrote about the Baltic Way (it might be very old, but I'm still pleased with it). Anyway, I want to work on something with an actual plot, and I have a good idea, but I'll need to research a little about Dutch trade in the West Indies first.

Also-also, talking with Cof has kind of rekindled some vague ideas I had about writing things involving the death of Karl XII, but I'd need to read more things and actually decide what direction I'd want to take that, if I did do it.

( Current writing queue )