Distracted By Something Shiny

So, here are my totals for last year. My goal was initially to do 500 words a day. Then I cut it down to 1,000 words a week. Most months I didn’t make that goal, especially in the last six months of the year when word count production was cut in thirds due to stress and like no free time for myself. Also, I am just ridiculously amused that my highest fandom total was for SPN. Like, I don’t even go there anymore! It’s Dean/Cas, they won’t let me go! And, yes, 8 ½ fics completed totally makes sense because I wrote a chapter of a book that I hope to continue on writing this year and actually finishing. It was an idea that my grandma put to me and I laughed it off and she called me out and demanded I write it. So I wrote her a chapter for her Christmas present. Which I count as the ½. I finished the chapter in time for Christmas, but I have not finished the book. Thus, the ½. Hopefully, I’ll keep at that one.

So, here are some numbers:

Words Written In 2015!

( By Month and Fandom under the cut. )

January had my highest monthly count at 6,650 words.
September had my lowest monthly count at 450 words.
Supernatural had my highest fandom count at 13,330 words.
Leverage had my lowest fandom count at 250 words.
11 Fandoms written in.
16 Fics worked on.
8 1/2 Fics completed.
13 Fics posted.
23,600 words written in the first six months of 2015.
8,450 words written in the last six months of 2015.

32,050 total words written in 2015!

So, how’d you all do this past year with writing and posting?

So, apparently this weekend was Gaming Weekend around my house. Yesterday, Sis and I played 3 rounds of Smashup and I won, best out of 3! I can count on my fingers the number of times I have beat my sister at any games in our lives, so that was awesome. I got to be Ghost Aliens and Steampunk Robots and Shapeshifting Minions of Cthulhu.

Also, on Saturday, we had Geek Cousin and his girlfriend over. We played this one roleplay tabletop game where we had to fight off the bad guys and my character was a cyber-punk Eddie Redmayne. (I swear, that’s who he looked like!) GC’s character died and he told us we had to flee and I was all, “Fuck that, let’s fight to the end!” and he was like, "No, really, it’s in the rules, if one person dies, you have to flee.” I was like, "What kind of fellowship is this? What if when Boromir died Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli had just been like, ‘Oh well,’ and run away?!” So we ran and then GF died and GC was like, “You don’t escape, game over,” and again I was like, “What? No! Sorry, but we just leave her body behind and keep running,” and he was like, “Again, it’s in the rules, if one of you dies while fleeing, the game is over.” What kind of game is this?!

We also played this game called Geek Out which is AWESOME and we plan on buying it for ourselves. In it you get cards like, ‘Name 3 Avengers,’ and then your team gets to say, “Yes, we can do that,” and then the other team gets to outbid you, “Well, we can name 4,” and then you can counter, “We can name 5,” etc, until someone calls the other team’s bluff and then you have to name whatever you bid. Name 3 movies where a child is sucked into an alternate reality. Name 6 movies about alien invasions. Name 3 books about horses. Name 5 songs with Hell in the title. Etc. One of the things we got was name 6 Walking Dead characters. My sister and I kept outbidding each other until finally she called me at 26 characters and I had to do it. It was easy. I was only halfway through the characters in my head when I hit 26!

So I’m wondering, for my Walking Dead peeps, how many characters can you name? No cheating! I trust you not to look it up on IMDB. The person who names the most characters gets a TWD fic from me, how’s that? Name as many TWD characters as you can - Go!

So, on Monday it was almost 70 degrees outside and sunny. It is slowly getting colder and according to the weather forecast, will be 40 degrees and snowing by Friday...Halloween. Dammit! I hope this is one of those times that the weather forecaster is completely totally off-base. I always hated it when it was that cold out on Halloween, because Mom would make us wear our winter coats over our costumes. That's no fun at all. For myself this year, I have PT on Friday afternoon - (which means I'll get to see the carnivale I helped them design as their contest theme this year!) - so I figured it would be easiest for me to get my costume on beforehand, so I am not rushed when I get home. Plus, then I get to show off - though the dress is kinda form-fitting, so I'm a little self-conscious, but I'm really excited that I am going to have like a bloody mouth, all gross, like I just ate someone. It's gonna be so freaky! But I want to wear my faux-leather jacket, because I'm a vampire and they wear cool leather jackets. I just hope it's not too cold out because it's a light weight coat. Oh, how we suffer for our art!

Anyways, here's another Halloween post for you guys...this time our front yard, all decorated up like a graveyard meant to terrorize the neighborhood children! Our reaper and our bat have both broken, so this year we replaced them with a howling spooky light-up ghost.

Our yard this year, in the daylight.


( More under the cut! )

Our yard this year, at night.

I found this cool thing online that looks like a Welcome Mat, but when you step on it, it cackles and moans. I think I want to get that for next year, so that when the kids actually work up the courage to approach our house, there will be one last thing on the top step to freak them out. Man, I love Halloween!

Two birthdays, actually. Cuz it's my birthday! And it's also The BFF's birthday! We're birthday twins! Listen, if you get to be birthday twins with someone, I highly recommend that it be your bestest bestie. Then you get to celebrate together every year!

I have been saving all my energy for celebrations this weekend, since I'm still sick - (though definitely better than I was the last time I updated you all). So today I'm just staying in my pjs - (I will brush my hair!) - and then my sister is picking up special dinner for us. The BFF and I have decided to go Olive Garden this year. We may even sit at the kitchen table to eat it! And we'll exchange gifts as well. Then, as you know, The Nephew turned 8 a week and a half ago, and what he wanted to do for his birthday was to see Godzilla. His dad is coming to town for a wedding tomorrow and he is going to leave The Nephew with us during that time. We are going to see the movie and then we have to take him to Target to pick up a baseball bat. I already got him a pitchback for his birthday - I loved mine when I was a kid. A bat though is something you really need to pick out for yourself, hold it and see how it feels in your hands. After that we are going to my mom's for chocolate-chocolate cake and for him to open his presents. He is very excited that this year he gets to celebrate his birthday with me and The BFF - (we are his two favorite aunts, after all).

It's a holiday weekend here, so The BFF is staying until Monday. On Sunday we may cookout- (I can stay in my pjs for that too, since it's just the three of us in the backyard). And The BFF and I are going to watch the last four episodes of Arrow - (I've been too sick to concentrate on it until now, but we are dying to know what happens!) On Monday, The BFF and my sister are going to see the new X-Men movie. I may go with them, depending on how I am feeling at that point. Tuesday, I intend to lay on the couch and watch baseball all day! And next week hopefully I can finally catch up comments. We shall see.

And now, as is tradition, a picture of wee little me to celebrate my birthday.

Wearing my older brother's old teeball uniform, because I wanted a baseball picture like he had!

And a big Thank You to everyone who has already posted me birthday wishes or sent me a comment or ecard! The birthday love has been pouring in and it's been delightful! I hope you all have wonderful weekends!

So, the other night my dad called to ask me if I watch Castle. This is not a new thing for him. One time he spent five minutes telling me everything that happened in an episode of Castle he had just watched. He really likes that show. A friend of his from the hospital turned him onto it and he’s been catching the reruns on TNT. I told him what I always tell him about Castle, that I watched the first season and occasionally catch reruns but it’s not one of my regular shows. “Well”, he says, “do you know who the guy is who plays the writer dude?” See, my dad is a huge Firefly fan. When he first discovered it, it was all we talked about for weeks. It didn’t surprise me - growing up I remember my dad’s two favorite things as Star Trek and John Wayne westerns, so Firefly is right up his alley. Anyways, he’d suddenly realized Castle is Mal and was sure that my sister and I needed to know this information immediately. It was actually kind of adorable and sweet. And it’s always fun when he finds a new thing to fanboy over, even though he doesn’t know what a ‘fanboy’ is and would probably balk if he thought someone was putting the ‘geek’ label on him.

Normally, when I think about where I get my fannish tendencies, I always think of my mom. She legit serious fangirls over Gilmore Girls, The Unusuals, Northern Exposure, Magnum PI, Quantum Leap, etc. She also gets fixated on one particular actor in a heavy way - she revisited her Ricky Nelson love when I was about ten. I have seen Rio Bravo so many fucking times because of that - a John Wayne western costarring Ricky Nelson who sings a song with Dean Martin during the movie - my parents weren’t letting that one slip by. But anyways, then I think of my dad’s mom and remember that at least some of these tendencies I get from her - (you should hear the pervy things she used to say about George Clooney). In her younger days, she was all about Frank Sinatra. So my dad’s side of the family certainly has some of those things going on as well, it’s just not something that was ever encouraged growing up in the hicks on a farm.

But my dad was big into Star Trek: TNG and no one was allowed to talk while he was watching an episode. Also, he was the one who got us into The A-Team and I think he came there through Battlestar Galactica. My dad certainly wasn’t crushing on Dirk Benedict, but I think when The A-Team premiered it was a, “Look it’s Starbuck, let’s watch this!” moment. Granted, he was never as big of an A-Team fan as me, but it was appointment TV for him. He was also into Buck Rogers, Star Wars and Quantum Leap…that was both my parents. We’d all sit down to watch Quantum Leap, along with any friends or family that wanted to join us. New QL episodes were a big deal around our house. He also fanboys over monster movies, Mel Brooks movies and he went through big Marx Brothers and Smother Brothers phase.

My parents don’t engage in what I typically think of as fan hobbies, but their fannish traits are hard to ignore, especially when my dad is reciting an entire Castle episode to me that veers off into random Firefly quotes, and my mom has to pause the DVD and call me every time Adam Goldberg does something hysterical in The Unusuals (which is all the time, cuz he’s really fucking funny). I was just thinking about it after that phone call with my dad and it’s nice once in awhile, to forget all the other bullshit with them and enjoy the things we have in common. I got some bad traits from them, I’m sure, but the fangirl thing I totally own and celebrate!

I spent five hours straight one-on-one with The Nephew on Saturday, which was exhausting…but you know what I love? I love that we have geeky things in common. Like I got online and showed him the new trailer to The Hobbit and he was so excited. He said, “Those barrels were just sitting there empty so the dwarves decided to go for a ride.” And a while back he told me that he didn’t know what Godzilla was, so we watched some video clips on youtube. Then the other day he was at the video rental store and they had an old VHS of the Godzilla remake and he spent one dollar of his own money to buy it for me. While I am a fan of the old giant monster movies, I’ve never had the desire to see the remake of Godzilla, but dammit, I’m watching this movie because my boy pulled money out of his own wallet to buy it for me! He also bought the original Star Trek movie (the original original) for himself because he knows all his aunts love Star Trek and he wants to know more about it.

So, we were making cover art for his second story in ‘The Experiment’ series and we got about halfway through and he lets out this great big sigh and says, “This takes a long time.” And I went, “I know! This is why I tell you to stop bugging me when I am working on a story for you! It’s hard work, man!” That time I prompted him to write me a fic, he told me that writing is too hard. And now he tells me that making art takes a long time. I resisted the urge to yell at him, “Our creative muses own us! We bleed for our art! Get use to it!” The cover art called for images of some X-Men and also images for his original characters, Roller Girl and Roller Boy. We were searching Google images and scrolling through so he could point out which ones he wanted to use. Pro Tip: Don’t search the term ‘Roller Girl’ with a 7yr old in the room. He thought it was hysterical that I yelled out, “Oh crap. Not appropriate!” and then clicked away as fast as I could and then did it again when I searched ‘Roller Skating Girl’. We finally got a good selection off just the term ‘roller skating’ but by then he had dissolved into a fit of giggles.

Also, he is such a good big brother. The Niece was in a pretty good mood until the last hour and then she got tired and realized this wasn’t her house and we weren’t her mommy and my sister didn’t know what to do to make her stop screaming. So The Nephew comes over and starts singing and doing these little dances for her and she immediately stops crying. Her face was like, ‘Hey! I know this person! That’s my brother!’ After that, anytime she would start fussing again, he’d get down in her face and do silly voices and jump around for her until she stopped. Eventually she passed out on my sister’s shoulder.

Anyways, I’ve got a fic ready to post tomorrow and then I’m off to Chicago on Friday for the weekend, so you guys have a great weekend too!

In the last week I have had some of the worst nightmares I ever remember having. The first one had such graphic visuals of what was basically The Pit of Hell that I can still see it in my mind. The next one ended with me screaming my sister's name over and over and when I jerked awake, I was surprised I wasn't screaming it for real. The one I had last night put such a terrifying image in my head that after I woke up, I was afraid to sleep with my back to the room like I usually do. Eventually I turned on the TV hoping the light and sound would make me feel better. I could graphically describe these dreams to you but you would be freaked out by my brain.

And anyways, I have also had some awesome dreams in between all the horror. So let's talk about those...

( One involves The Todd and one involves The Avengers! )

The Todd winked at me! Who cares if it was only a dream - I woke up happy.

Just popping in to say that I am still alive. I know I haven't replied to comments in like two weeks. I've been keeping up on my Flist though and that is pretty much all the energy I have. I get tired so easily. I was actually pretty sick for a few days last weekend (doctors say food poisoning, I say the flu - but seriously, on top of everything else that has been going on - suckfest). I have been feeling better, except I get so tired. Sitting up for more than an hour is exhausting. And since the doctors said not to push myself if I felt bad, it's been a lot of laying around watching TV and going out of my head (body is tired, mind is still going full tilt). I've written a lot of cracked-out stories in my head while I was laying around - now if only they would magically transfer to my computer.

Crack stories include; Castiel getting kittens and becoming obsessed with dressing them up, a fic where Dean tries to teach Cas about women but it ends up backfiring because Dean gets super jealous, a fic where Sam/Dean/Cas hunt together and um...use corporal punishment when one of them screws up on a job..and a crazy RPS fic in a Mpreg universe where people are allowed to have several spouses (really just an excuse to pair everyone with Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

Shut up, my brain just works like that pretty much all the time when I'm bored.

Other things to report....sometimes I tape very bad movies that have some of my favorite actors in them - often bad C horror flicks and SyFy shows. The biggest hits on this are Jason London and Nicholas Brendon. Today the Tivo picked up two movies and I watched one this evening - my choices were "Fire Serpent" with Nicky Brendon or "The Prophecy: Uprising" with Jason London. I picked Fire Serpent. Only it accidentally taped something else. I ended up with "Basilisk - The Serpent King" starring Jeremy London. My mind was blown by this twist. Also, last night I was looking over my one and only Jeremy London RPS fic I ever wrote in my life, which I hadn't looked at in months. It is clearly some sort of sign. I just don't know what it is a sign of. As predicted, it was a bad movie but Jeremy looked good, so whatever. The evil chick was clearly evil based on her accent, though halfway through the movie she lost the accent and was American all of a sudden.

In final news - the most exciting thing to happen to me even if my life weren't lameass right now - NCIS:LA IS CROSSING OVER WITH HAWAII FIVE O!!!!!!!!! If you said to me, "Hey, Dodger, who is the hottest chick on TV right now?" - I would say, "Kensi from NCIS:LA...no, wait, Kono from H5O...no wait, I can't decide!!! But you know what would be awesome? If they were on a show together. If they like stood next to each other and kicked ass together and chased bad guys together and wore awesome boots together and rode motorcycles together and made out with each other."

AND NOW....THOSE THINGS ARE COMING TO MY TV!! (hopefully they will actually ride motorcycles together - my little heart would be so happy!)

It's going to be utter stupid ridiculous crack.

I am so excited.

That is all.

So, here is the "art" I made for my fic, Thanksgiving At Bobby's. I drew the pictures by Dean, and The Nephew drew the picture by Sam, and then I made some icons.

The story is basically Sam at age 4 and Dean at age 8, and they are at Bobby's for Thanksgiving weekend.

( There are some play FBI badges and some turkey drawings. )

( Here is The Nephew's process... )

Then he runs off to see if he can get any money out of my Uncle Dave.

So, here - for my computer friends - The Nephew gives you a Thanksgiving Turkey and a Dinosaur in Lava.


( Here are the icons for the fic. )

Now off to post the story!!

It's pretty much been The Summer Of Fail when it comes to movies, so here - have some things that have peaked my interest as of late and that I'm looking forward to seeing.

127 Hours - stars James Franco and directed by Danny Boyle and based on a true story -

127 Hours

I'm Still Here - Joaquin Phoenix quits acting to go be a famous rap artist, directed by Casey Affleck - (seriously how does Summer put up with my husband and her husband acting like such morons?) -

I'm Still Here

Monsters - a giant monster apocalypse (what else do I need to say?) -

Monsters

The Walking Dead - it's actually a series, not a movie, but ZOMBIES and Lennie James, so you can't go wrong -

The Walking Dead

Oh crap. It's bad luck to end on an even number unless it's a dividend of ten. There must be something else I want to see.

OH HELL YES! THIS!!! SO FREAKING MUCH!!! -

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Oh crap. But wait. I am also very much looking forward to this. It can totally count as two, yeah? Cool. -

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

That is all.