no one gets to tell me if I've lost or if I've won

I'm really not good at the internet when I haven't been able to write. It's very annoying, because I miss talking to people, but apparently I'm not allowed to have people unless I have channelled Seanan McGuire and been inhumanly productive or something? I don't even know. My brain doesn't cope well with the fact that BEING SICK MAKES YOU LESS ABLE TO DO SHIT.

The woods around the house continue to be creepy as fuck at night. Last night, with absolutely nothing I could see or hear outside, Ace lunged at the window with one of those thunderous barks that should come from a dog twice her size. It was not an alert bark, which are higher pitched, it was "THERE ARE INTRUDERS AT THE DOOR", and there was nothing there. It kind of freaked me out.

On the bright side of living in woods that are possibly evil, the other day I took Ace out just after the sun started rising, and we ran into a bunny and two deer. Sadly, they would not be Ace's friends, which disappointed her a lot.

*

In fandom news, the Ashes to Ashes finale was... almost everything I wanted. ( Cut for OMGSPOILERS. )

And now, if you don't mind, I have to wander off and download and watch Doctor Who. (And one day, maybe, I won't totally fail at making reaction posts for that. I hope.)

While I have you here, though, I have a rec for something you absolutely must go look at right now. It is A Partial Map of Your TARDIS (Subject to Change), and it is somewhere between fic and fanart, and it is absolutely glorious. I think I may be adopting into my personal canon for the Doctor.

So I went to bed at about 4 AM last night.

The way I've rearranged the bedroom, one side of the bed is directly below one of the windows. And literally as soon as I settled down in bed, some animal just outside the window or possibly in the wall started scratching around.

Given that one of my favorite things to do when my mind wanders is make up horrible creatures that probably live in the woods and the shadows... Yeah, that kept me up for another hour or so. So much for my relatively normal sleep schedule lately.

Forestbeasts, could you at least keep your creepy nonsense to the hours when I do not feel like sleeping? Please?

EDIT: OH! I meant to mention this a couple days ago, but I betaed a Doctor Who fic for chicafrom3. It's The Nature of Belief, and I almost want it to be canon, except that if canon did this after the thing with Donna, I would not be able to handle it. In fic, though, it is wonderful and lovely and an awesome fairy tale, and you should read it.

Today, I:
- Woke up and realized the world was covered in snow. Usually when I say this, it's an exaggeration, but no. The snow comes up to our windows. Our Jeep is buried. It's deeper than the dog is tall. The world is covered in snow.
- Had to awkwardly excavate the door so that I could actually open it. I managed, which is good, because I would hate to call the landlord I can't stand to rescue us.
- Climbed up the eight-foot-tall hill made by the snow plow. And then promptly fell down it, thankfully without injuring myself in any way.
- Passed out for six-ish hours when I only meant to take an hour nap. I woke up achy all over, probably from climbing through thigh-deep snow earlier.

Today, I did not:
- Write anything at all. I plan to get to this soon. Hopefully.
- Tag, though I am remedying that now. Somewhat. It's slow, because I'm still having character voice issues.
- Build a snow fort. Though I really wanted to. It was just dark by the time I woke up from my nap of doom. :(

So. LJ is being an ass about gender. Again. I can't find a link for it, at the moment, but suffice to day that "it's personal" is not the same as "unspecified", and obviously LJ completely failed to grasp why people were upset in the first place. And on top of that, LJ's ads can now give you some nasty malware, and if you don't have AdBlock or something similar on your browser, you should definitely install it now.

And once again, I have a ton of Dreamwidth invites going spare, if anyone needs one and doesn't have one. If you needed any more reasons to head over there, here's an awesome list for you. I really just wish I could drag fandom over there, and while I understand all the reasons it's not that easy (I imagine being able to port whole comms over would help a lot), it's frustrating that all of my online social circle is on LJ when Dreamwidth is so much nicer and, you know, not an ass to its users. And it won't infect your computer with malware. Just saying.

*

I posted my 100th Whoniverse fic today. (I know this because I like numbers and keep obsessive track of certain things.) This makes me very happy. It also freaks me out, because I have double that many RENTfics, and how was I ever that productive?

I also signed up for the who_like_giants ficathon yesterday. I know I'm going to hate myself for this in a couple weeks, but it's 1000 words, and mine is due March 23. I can totally do that. I was going to write a fic about Ida Scott, but, uh... the disc with The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit on it HATES LIFE, so I decided not to commit to that in case I can't review those episodes. So instead... chances are I'm going to write something with Torchwood One or Torchwood Four.

This would be a lot easier if I'd ever made notes on my Torchwood Four when I actually remembered who they all were.

*

This is just to reaffirm my hatred of my landlord and desire to set him on fire. Our heater doesn't work and hasn't for weeks. He knows this, said last month he'd get us a replacement part and fix it, and the temporary heater he gave us doesn't blow air, so the heat just rises and hovers around the ceiling, where it does us no good. It's been below or around zero degrees for the past few days, and I can't feel my toes. I wish to do violence.

I swear I don't mind winter. I actually like winter a lot. But not when it comes into my house.

My emotions are doing stupid not-fun things to me today. I keep swinging back and forth between wanting to curl up and cry, and wanting to hit things, and desperately wanting physical contact, and then wanting nothing to do with people... and it's not even mood swings, because it's all definitely the same emotion, I just... don't know what to do with it.

I think I understand why Simba sometimes goes tearing around the house with the big wide eyes full of CRAZY. I feel about how he looks, times like that.

It probably does not help that I haven't been out of the house except a couple times for groceries in two months. And I still have the problem that was part of the reason we moved in the first place, which is that I can't ever get out of the house under my own power or be alone when I choose to...

I really just don't know what to do with myself today. It's not a bad day, I'm just utterly confused and frustrated by it. Mrrph.

(Also, mostly - probably? - unrelated to the rest of this post, I made the mistake of mainlining S5 Supernatural yesterday, with the exception of Abandon All Hope, which I had to stop watching partway through... though I do plan to finish it at some point. It... um... well, it reaffirmed my desire to one day punch Kripke in the face. And then just walk away with no explanation at all. I really hope he's trying to be this much of a dick when it comes to some things, because the thought that he's an utterly oblivious dick is even worse. Ugh.

...I did, however, adore Changing Channels. I may have watched it three times. It's not that I don't like the show, I just have to take a lot of things in isolation, because when you put it all together, there are aspects that make me physically nauseous and full of "burn down Vancouver" rage. Which is why I am done with this fucking show now. I wish I didn't have to be, because it hits so many of my kinks, but it's just mashing on my rage buttons a lot harder.)

I am still alive, in case anyone wondered, and now (as of yesterday) legally able to buy alcohol. Hooray!

We may have a place to live some time next week - it is not ideal, as it's kind of small, still has the problem where I can't go anywhere Beka doesn't drive me, and has no bathtub, just a shower, but it's only temporary. We're planning to find a better place in spring or summer, whenever some of the students clear out and give us a few more options. (Besides the lack of bathtub, which is disappointing because I tend to take baths when I am just too cold to warm up any other way, it isn't a half-bad place to stay for winter, because there's room for Ace to run around in the snow. Ace. Loves. Snow. It's adorable.)

All of this is assuming the landlord was not serious about the part of the lease where it says the cats need to be declawed. He probably isn't, as he didn't write it himself, and he didn't mention it when we talked to him, but if he actually was serious about it, the answer is FUCK NO and we're back to square one. Mrrph.

Something in my shoulder has knotted up horribly and will not let go. I still have some of the painkillers from my ear infection, so I've been using those when it gets horrible - it doesn't so much stop the pain as stop me caring quite so much about the pain, but it's the best I can do. When I run out of that... I dunno. I'll probably see how well vodka works as a muscle relaxant in this case.

I need to start putting together stuff for NaNo. I'm not doing a proper novel this year, just working on projects that need to be finished up, but I am still going to try to hit 50,000 words in the month. My username over there is the same as here, allfireburns, so if you'd like to add me as a writing buddy over there, go for it! (Of course, putting together stuff for NaNo will probably have to wait until I get the stuff off my hard drive back from Best Buy. ARGH. I am kicking myself for not backing up that plot outline elsewhere, but I was not planning on Gwen freaking out so badly less than a year after I got her.)

EDIT: Ohfuck. And then I go and glance at a former friend's journal, something I should never do, because she wished me happy birthday even though we haven't spoken in more than a year and now I am going to cry.

Today has been somewhat bizarre. Beka and I went to go see if there was anything Best Buy could do about my computer, and Jae came along so she could get some food with us. And... turned out we'd have to send the laptop out to get it fixed, and Jae, hearing that, decided to call and see if there was anything Tim could do to at least get some stuff off my hard drive before the laptop got sent away. Tim being... Tamora Pierce's spouse-creature.

So we abruptly decided to take a trip to Syracuse. There was a trip to the Best Buy up there, as Tim tried to see what he could work out, and there wasn't really anything to be done there either, but I at least got loaned a spare laptop to use until Gwen returns. And I got to meet Tammy's amazing herd of cats, and we watched Dr. Horrible with her and sang along and wow, today has been interesting.

The drive up to Syracuse was awesome, because there was the sunset and awesome storm clouds the color of a battleship and mountains and autumn and everything and it was just gorgeous. I kind of thought we might die on the way back, but (obviously) we did not.

I just may have to crash very soon, because I am exhausted. In a good way, though. Tomorrow, we acquire a storage unit so we can get rid of the trailer until we know where we're living - we may actually be looking for a place to stay in Syracuse temporarily until the college students in Ithaca move out for the semester and GIVE US SOMEWHERE TO LIVE.

...but there's ridiculous anime on and I don't want to go to sleep yet. Damn it.