textualdeviance: (Default)
Hit the ground running as soon as we got back, and have barely had time to think, let alone properly sleep. It caught up with me Wednesday, and I ended up working from home--and doing rather awfully with it--due to sleep-deprived delirium. Conking out soon and plan to veg in the theater all day tomorrow with our massive DVR and Netflix backlog.

---

The vacay reports (and there will be one last one when I remember to pull the remaining pics) are up for your perusal (scroll back a few entries.) Long story short if you don't want the slog: It was great, I loved it, but I don't think I'll be moving there. Like home better. :)

---

Two more work weeks before I hit the end of my contract. There's a small chance of a few weeks' extension because one of my eds wants me around for Comic-Con coverage, but that probably won't happen. Technically, I have another four months before I have to take my mandatory break, and my agency might well find me something short for then, but honestly, I think I'd rather have the rest of the summer off. I need a chance to breathe and get my head back on correctly and do some of the big projects I've been putting off.

---

One of said big projects is the adoption thing, though that's... sort of up in the air right now. Details )

***

One thing we most likely will do in the meantime is get another kitten. It's been horribly empty being just a two-cat household since Fammy died, and poor, ancient Penny is getting pestered by Otter all the time because he's bored and lonely. But with me working, we didn't want to introduce a new furbaby without having someone around to mind it through the chaotic adjustment period. Free time for me, though, means kitten-sitting is possible, so we'll probably go shelter-crawling in the next few weeks. We considered a dog, but with the baby thing still a possibility, we didn't want to go that high-maintenance. So, kitten (or maybe even a 1-2 year old) it is.

***

Feeling slightly maudlin about the end of my show in a couple of weeks. Likely to be the last series of it, unless its primary backer gets good ratings when it airs this series in January. Seems unlikely at this point. And even if it did come back, most of the cast I love might not come with it. So just two more episodes, and then I get to cry a lot. I have a ton of other stuff I love, of course (have really gotten into Game of Thrones in particular), but this is the first thing since LOTR that I've loved enough to join a fandom for, and the fandom itself has been great, too. It'll still exist after the show's gone, of course, but it won't be quite the same, and that concept breaks my heart. :(

***

And on that depressing note, I'm done for the day. Hasta la pasta, and if you want more of me in the meantime, go stalk me on Twitter.
Jun. 5th, 2011 10:40 pm

UK: Week 2

textualdeviance: (UK Coming Soon)
A brief pause in the whirlwind that's been the last week!

North! )

Taking it easy tonight (though lamenting the fact that our hotel doesn't know how to make proper salsa), and tomorrow we plan to head south to a little estate/wilderness area, where we hope to get in some birding/caching. Tuesday we get the ferry back to Britain, and two days in Manchester, then it's back to London for one night before we fly out. Kind of crazy that we're creeping toward the end of this. Slightly homesick, but also seeing so many things I'd have loved to explore more. I know getting a chance to come back here anytime soon is next to impossible, but I hope we can do it someday, at least.

Pics for Leeds, Glasgow and Belfast are up on Flickr!
textualdeviance: (UK Coming Soon)
Hanging out in the hotel room this Saturday afternoon. Plan was to find a laundrette, since we're running short of clean stuff, but I'm actually quite exhausted today, so we're taking it easy for now. May go out later, though.

Kinda not surprised to be tired, since the week's been quite full of touristy goodness (check out pics here and here.)

The first two days we were mostly sleeping off jet lag (aside from the British Museum trip) and then Monday, we hopped the train over to Bristol and picked up our rental car. Automatics are fairly rare in the UK, and the rental place only had one: An enormous station wagon that was wholly incompatible with the tiny little streets there. The driving backwards thing didn't actually bug me too much. It was navigating extremely narrow roads with next to no proper signage that really did me in. Also: the center line? Is apparently a mere suggestion, and people park pretty much anywhere they want. Gah.

Still, I survived it--and gained a bit of confidence for the next rental in Leeds--and we managed to get in a pretty-if-scary drive around the Cotswolds and a bit of traipsing through Bath. Had kinda hoped to hit Cardiff, but didn't have time for that. Also met up with a lovely fandom friend and caught the first Primeval ep, which was bliss.

Trained back to London on Weds., and have spent the last couple of days being very touristy (and getting soaked to the bone in a thunderstorm!) Met another fandom friend for dinner Thursday and then spent about 4 1/2 hours on a tour bus yesterday, going around virtually the entire city core, seeing all the key sights. It all seems somewhat familiar, of course, from having seen so much vid/pics of the city through the years, but seeing it in person is still a whole 'nother thing. You just don't get a sense of the sheer scope and detail of some of it without really being there. Have very much enjoyed it so far, even if it is a little overwhelming.

Aside from the endless architecture porn, my favorite bits so far have been the cabbies, who are awesome and insane, Hamley's toy store and Regent St. in general. Also had a very yummy meal at Garfunkel's last night. May hunt down another one of those before we go.

One more full day in the city tomorrow, then we hop a train for Leeds on Monday. Can't believe we're only 1/3 of the way into this. Crazy! But loving it. :)
textualdeviance: (UK Coming Soon)
Flight was a bit of a nightmare. Couldn't sleep on either leg of it, so ended up going 24 hours+ without. Combined with beating up my bod from the travel itself, that meant sleeping a great deal of the next day and a half to try to recover. Kinda expected to lose at least the first day, though, so no worries. Part of why we scheduled three weeks is so we wouldn't feel pressured to do too much all at once.

Did get in a little bit of tourism today, though: Spent a few hours roaming around the British Museum. Which is amazing. Seeing the Rosetta Stone and chunks of the Parthenon in person? 100% win. (Seeing a Primeval filming location? Bonus. ;) )

My very brief impression of London so far: It's a city. A big city. With gorgeous architecture, tiny little streets and insane cabbies. And it kind of smells like pee in some places. And there's something pollinating right now that puts my respiratory system in a major state of Do Not Want. And there's an actual Salvation Army band. Huh. But that's all from a very limited view. Will have a much better chance to see it on the return next week.

There's been a bit of surreal stuff so far. Like not having a jetway when we landed in Iceland and thus discovering the country is accurately named (also: there's such a thing as Icelandic reggae. Who knew?) Kind of freaked out that the place blew one of its volcanoes just a few hours after we were there. Hoping it doesn't mess up our return plans (since we're bouncing back through there again), but that's still three weeks away, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Also surreal: The TV Baftas were held at our hotel tonight. I was just two floors away from Stephen Fry, Matt Smith, Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Gillian Anderson, Russell Tovey, Lenora Critchlow and Sinead Keenan. Never had the guts to go downstairs and try to see any of them, though. If I ever did meet any of them, I'd want it to be in a less-chaotic situation in which we could actually chat for a bit.

Will be leaving in the morning for a couple of days in Bristol (and a Primeval viewing--god, fandom friends are awesome!) but we'll be back here Weds aftn to do more of the cheesy tourist stuff. Then it's off to Leeds next Monday.

It all still seems kind of not-quite-real--jet lag will do that, I spose--but we're here, we have passport stamps from two new countries, and that's damned awesome.

More (and some pics) later!
textualdeviance: (UK Coming Soon)
Touching down in London in 15 hours.

<3 <3 <3
textualdeviance: (XKCD Complicated)
The biggest thing on my horizon at the moment, of course, is the fact that in 72 hours, I'll be on a plane on the way to London. Yay!

But I'm also looking ahead of that, since I've been tying up loose ends at work, and figuring out what I'll need to do there when I get back. And I'm realizing that I'm probably in for one hell of a bout of post-travel depression, because the adoption is the only big thing I can see in my near future, and hanging my hat solely on that isn't exactly a recipe for mental health.

Don't mind me. Just feeling icky at the mo and need to write to get it out of my system )

In truth, I envy people who can content themselves with friends, family and a non-soul-sucking job that pays the bills. I've always--always--felt my life had to have something more. I've cut my expectations down from the worldwide fame and political power I imagined at age 10, yeah, but I still need something else--something uniquely mine--to point to. I have just this one life, and I have above-average skills in certain things, and I can't stand the idea of wasting that just... existing. I want to leave more of myself when I die than a kid, a paid-off mortgage and a crapload of vacation photos.

The question is: What?

Maybe three weeks on another continent will give me some epiphanies this direction. I hope so. I'm never content unless I'm working toward a big goal, and too much time being less than useful will drive me batty.
textualdeviance: (Default)
I just now realized that Mother's Day is the day before my surgery. I.e., the day before I say goodbye to ever bearing children. Theoretically, since my ovaries won't be affected, I could use a gestational carrier and still have bio kids, but since my stoopid eggs wouldn't get fertilized in the first place, and the fertility clinic basically refused to do egg extraction on me anyway, that's not an option. So any future kids I obtain are going to be someone else's. I've known this for a while, now, of course, but it's still kind of hard to swallow. It would help if my stupid culture wasn't so bloody obsessed with bio mothers, as if they're the only people in the world capable of being proper parents.

---

Speaking of the surgery, I had my pre-op consult for it yesterday, and they confirmed that they're knocking me entirely out. I'm a little worried about this (anesthesia is the reason the clinic refused to work on me, after all) but mostly, I'm just not looking forward to waking up. The last time I did general, I was horribly miserable when I came to: Thirsty, headachy, confused, scared, etc. Nastiness.

Also not looking forward to the drug I need to take the night before, as it's supposed to cause horrible cramps. Yaye.

---

Fortunately, I shall have glorious fandom goodness to distract me from all this, as there's a premiere event going on Sunday at which a fandom friend will be. There will be pics, I hope! Also still hoping there will be some folks at the event I'm going to at the end of the month, too. They haven't announced many guests at all, yet, so I'm still hopeful. Would kinda suck to spend 3 weeks traipsing around the show's home countries and not see at least someone from it. I'll be seeing some filming locations, of course, but that's not quite the same as real live humans. :)

---

My fannish creative muses came back. In hordes. In the last 10 days, I've written 9 fics (about 20k words) and put together a new vid (which I'm also retooling a bit for submission to a Dragon*Con fanvid contest.) Amazing what happens when new promo material gets me salivating. ;)

---

Good thing I've kept myself creatively busy, though. Got turned down by the first agent. Sigh... I kinda wondered if that might happen, though, as she's mostly doing modern fantasy/paranormal right now, and my thing is definitely a traditional fantasy setting, even if its plot and themes are less so. Will go hunting for other agents when we get back from our trip.

---

Semi-related, I was realizing yesterday that each decade of my life has some fairly clear definitions, in terms of a snapshot of who I was/what was important to me. 0-10 was school/reading/being a tomboy, 10-20 was school/politics/socializing/radio, 20-30 was school/performing/socializing/sorting out my love life, 30-40 was fandom/journalism/establishing a home/getting money sorted. What's 40-50 going to be? Not entirely sure, yet, but I think it may be novel-writing/parenting. And then probably add travel into that for my 50s. Not a bad life, I guess. At least I didn't spend most of it (so far) intoxicated or in jail.

---

Some of the above epiphany comes courtesy of the electronic attic-cleaning I've been doing the last couple of days. I've had several layers of poorly-filed crap sitting around in my docs folder for years. Most of it's from multiple backups, so there's a lot of duplicate and frankly useless crap in there I've been sorting through. And because I'm an idiot, I can't easily tell what most of these are about just by their titles, so I'm having to open them up and scan. And some of my old writings and such? Good grief.

I think for most of my 20s, I was dead convinced that if I didn't have a ton of lovers, it meant I was pathetic and useless. Granted, I'm still a randy little perv even now (hi, fanfic?) but I'm also not falling in lust with my friends all the time. Still a bit here and there, but not to the ridiculous degree it used to be. I think the difference is that while the libido is still there, the desperate need for approval isn't anymore. At least not that way. These days I'm pining away more for the approval of agents: writers' and adoption. Whether people consider me fuckable is of far less importance to me now than whether they consider me creatively skilled and good parenting material.

Which, I suppose, is one of the benefits of being near 40. Frankly, I don't think I'd ever want to go back to that state of being again. Feeling like my entire identity and self-worth was dependent on whether I was attractive enough was horrid. Still feel like that a lot now, but it's not as big a deal as it was then, at least. That monkey is still clinging to my back, but it's at least losing its grip, which is a damned nice feeling. I just feel sorry for the millions of other young women still beating themselves up every day because shallow idiots don't think they're decorative enough.

---

At any rate, this all kind of feels like I'm going away to the UK for some sort of major personality overhaul or something. Like I'm going to undergo some sort of rite of passage and come back a totally different person, and be ready for the next phase of my life. Which may be true. Three weeks of being 5,000 miles from home might give me a good and necessary brain scrubbing. We'll see whether I'm a Whole New Me come mid-June.
textualdeviance: (Default)
In a bit of a holding pattern right now, as I wait for various things to happen...

17 days until my surgery

Feeling slightly weird about that, since it's a definitely-never-getting-preggers thing. Also feels weird for other reasons. TMI )

---

29 days until we leave for the UK invasion tour

Doing the final prep for it: buying new luggage, clothes and other sorts of supplies, and making sure we have maps and lists of stuff we wanna do. Downright giddy for it, though also nervous about various logistics issues (TSA, customs, schlepping luggage, driving, etc.) No word yet on whether any of my peeps are going to be at the con we're going to, but they haven't released guest lists at all, yet, so there's that. Also pinged one of the folks in question about it today. Not that he'll likely answer, the silly flake.


---

40 days until I turn 40

Debating whether to throw some sort of bon voyage/damn I'm getting old/hooray for surgery party before we leave.

---

5 months until M gets a big ol' raise.

The Company announced today that they're restructuring pay for most product-group folks, which includes the Mster. This is, of course, good news--never going to turn down additional money, especially with impending sprog expenses. But it's also kind of frustrating for me, because the amount of increase he's likely to get (raise + bonus) will probably be in the same vicinity as the amount I make each year (what with working 6-9 months/year.) Basically, his raise is going to make my working redundant. Yeah, I'll probably still work (after taking some time off for the new sprog) but it's still depressing to know that my 40-hour weeks are worth less than a quarter of M's. I work just as hard as he does and have far more education, but because my skillset isn't as rare as his, he gets the big bucks and I don't. Meh. Maybe someday I'll have a Real Career of some sort instead of just this boring button monkey shit. Disproportionate pay wouldn't matter so much if I was really doing something I love.

---

21 days since I sent a query to an agent

The agent in question is pretty much the best person to pitch my novel to (in the kinds of stuff she's looking for), so I'm crossing my fingers. She supposedly responds to every query, so no news is probably somewhat good news in that she either a) hasn't gotten to it yet or b) hasn't rejected it out of hand. Not entirely sure what to do next if she does reject it, but no sense in dwelling on that now.

Looking forward to getting some feedback from my beta readers on it, too (and if you're not one and would like to be one, holla.)

---

16 days since I posted any new fic (and more than a month since the one before that.)

After finishing the novel, my creative-writing jones has basically gone on holiday. I'm doodling a bit here and there--making tweaks to the novel as I think of them, and spitting out a few paragraphs on various fics--but otherwise, nada. The non-fiction muse seems to be in good order, as I finished off two big projects for work, and have written nine lengthy posts on the new semi-pro blog, but the completely-making-stuff up muse is AWOL. Hmph.

Part of this, I spose, is the post-partum novel thing. I'm holding my breath waiting to see what the world thinks of my new baby before I go breeding more. Also, the TMI stuff is making me somewhat disinclined to write naughty things, so there's that. I imagine I'll get back to it eventually--maybe when there's new series 5 stuff to perk me up again.

--

5 hours since I last ate anything

Which prolly means I should go do something about that. Ciao for now.
textualdeviance: (UK Coming Soon)
Just found out from my boss today that they're intending to keep me on for at least a couple more months, AND they'll work around my vacation schedule if I'm still on then.

Hot. Damn.

:D :D :D :D :D

It'll be a few more weeks before we have the cash reserves to buy the air tix/make the reservations, but...

Guh. I can't believe we're going to make this happen.

Will keep folks posted as to our plans. :)

*boogies*

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