Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

( Chuck and Greater Stuff )

Now on to the meat of the post: I didn’t make resolutions for 2013. Resolutions, I feel, should be between you and your conscience, so I was disgusted to have mine from 2011 thrown in my face by a total stranger. I’d love to see some great things happen this year to people I love and people I know, I’d love to watch some awesome movies, read some wonderful stories, and make fantastic memories. But that’s as far as I’ll go with resolutions.

Now, a look at the year 2012 in writing and other stuff, as best my memory goes:

( January - March )

( April - August )

( September - December )

Looking back on 2012, I made so many good friendships, met so many awesome people, got the chance to write some fun stories, and experienced some wonderful things. It had its down moments, but it had its good times, too. And I think I’ll choose to remember more of the good than the bad this year.

( Some Statistics )

What a good year. Here’s to 2013! And another 1k a day year, I guess!

- Frea

( Once Upon a Time Feeeeeeeelings! )

In personal news, I work tomorrow, have Tuesday off, and then am back at work on Wednesday. Should be a fun few days. Lots of driving, some drinking, and a little chilling. I’m hoping to spend some time with my best friend and my nephew, and the puppies, of course. Best friend wants to go out tomorrow night, but bars aren’t really my scene, being noisy and full of people, and misanthropy is just so much more fun.

Hello to all of the new Chuck followers that wandered over here because of BillAtWork. Thanks for friending me. I’m not really that active in that fandom anymore, but I hope you like Livejournal.

( Christmas stuff )

( Downton Abbey )

But on to happier things! It’s Yuletide! I’ve been a little closer to it this year than before (though I decided not to participate) and it’s been wonderful so far. First, you know, there’s things like the Fix-It Fic for 50 Shades of Grey, and then there are these two Calvin and Hobbes/Hobbes and Bacon fics that are the most delightful things I’ve ever seen, and, you know, The Pirates! fanfic, which I didn’t ever think about before.

At the same time, there’s be-compromised’s Secret Santa Exchange going on. Two recs from that, too: In Other Words, Thursday which has fantastic Clint and Natasha on a mission exchange, and Wild Dedication, which is an outside observer fic and has fantastic Maria, Coulson, and Pepper interaction with the team. That said, all of the fic written so far has been wonderful, and you can read it on the Secret Santa tag.

Also, got a new layout. I just can’t help it. I like aqua blue.

Well, I see why its fans were pissed off about the final Twilight movie. I went to see it this weekend with a friend of mine who read all the books and is always curious about the movies, but can’t convince anybody else in her life to see it. Given that I’ll see any movie in the theater (provided it’s not a horror film), I gamely tagged along, even though I never read the fourth Twilight book out of sheer and total disgust for the (lack of) character that is Bella Swann. And while the movies are terrible and you get this sense that Robert Pattinson is being shackled to something when he’s not on camera to keep him from running away, they’re not poke-your-eyes-out-with-a-hot-poker bad. The scenery is gorgeous, for instance.

And the other movies had Anna Kendrick.

So in this movie, ( spoilers )

Other than that, the weekend was pretty low-key. Went shopping with the same friend over in that area, which has some of my favorite shops (Container Store, Pier One, REI). The World Bird Sanctuary had a tawny owl named Tigger there that we got to see. My friend and I proved even more alike than we thought by both going, “I love that place!” when they told us they were from the World Bird Sanctuary. Then we drooled over all of the things in REI that we couldn’t afford. I looked at shoes for my trip next year.

Yesterday I had a splitting headache that wouldn’t let me eat anything, which sucked because Dad made bagel-dogs and then lasagna. I got to gush about my intense love for all things Madeleine L’Engle in the podcast and I didn’t write a single word on my secret santa project. Whoops.

Good weekend, though. I just wish the headache would go away.

I love my parents. Mom sent an email this morning (called and woke me up to let me know she’d sent it) from her trip. The picture was titled “the avenger’s [sic] and us,” so I clicked, thinking she’d found some sort of massive advertisement for the Avengers and they’d posed like Iron Man and the Black Widow respectively because, guys, my parents are dorks.

Nope. It’s them in front of a random shawarma place in London. According to Mom, Dad “really likes shawarma” (she called the second picture “Iron Man,” which is of Dad eating shawarma). I’ll have to make sure we make it out to the Pita Pit more often.

Halfway through Cold Days. I suspect I would have quite a few more thoughts about it than I do right now if I weren’t in a fog of sleep deprivation. ( cut for minor spoilers about Cold Days )

I’m not to the part I’m really looking forward to yet (but I hope that part is coming) but I will have more coherent thoughts later on.

Edited to Add: Talk of shawarma has inspired me to go to the Greek cafe for lunch with my sister.

Less than 7k to go. Something like 6.8k or whatnot, which is about how many words it’ll take me to finish this story. I couldn’t have planned that better if I’d tried (and I do generally plan my stories. I don’t write to hit word counts, I write to hit scenes).

Went to a write-in last night, where there was merriment and only a slight trace of desperation. You can tell that the lack of sleep is getting to people, thanks to caffeine jitters in the hands and the dark circles under the eyes. I finished a chapter, and it occurred to me that this story is a bit like a video game where the objectives are for Natasha to befriend the other Avengers. Achievement level Tony unlocked!

(I figure by this point, it’s going to be super-obvious which Secret Santa gift is mine, so I’m not bothering to hide)

Mom called me and asked me to do research into procuring Tran-Siberian Orchestra tickets for Chelsea and Bro-IL-to-be, and I pouted at her that she’d stolen my Christmas gift idea for Van. Then she really did steal my gift idea by buying Van’s ticket herself. Oh, Mom.

That’s okay. I’ll buy him some nice comic book markers or something.

One of my wonderful readers rec’d The Abbey on het_reccersyesterday. It led to me getting a few AO3 comments, a bunch of hits, and more people wanting a sequel. What a heartwarming thing for a Tuesday.

Less than 7k and then I can read Cold Days. Time to buckle down and write a few battles!

Word Count: 43,120 words
Current Project: Secret Santa Chapter 10
Project on Deck: Secret Santa Chapter 11

Cold Days comes out tomorrow and it’s safe to say that I did not reach 50,000 words in time to get it. That’s okay. Now the trick will just be putting my nose to the grindstone for the next few days, as pretty much everybody I talk to will be reading it and will want to talk to me about it.

A little behind on Nanowrimo, but I got past a couple of blocks. I need to rig up some sort of way to write things down in the shower, as that’s when I get my best ideas, but by the time I get to a computer, the ideas are completely gone.

Also, was Castle new tonight? I’m like three episodes behind and don’t really care about catching up, which is telling me all I need to know about my interest in the show.

Have put this song on repeat tonight, for some reason. I don’t know why, but I like it, and it’s interesting enough that I’m leaving it here.

Tomorrow’s a write-in, my last one of Nanowrimo. I’ll miss them.

Word Count: 42,461 words
Current Project: Secret Santa 10
Project on Deck: Secret Santa 11

If you’re playing the Frea drinking game, chug. I’ve added another chapter to my Secret Santa project. I skipped half a chapter because it’s an epic team-fight that I need some choreographers for (somebody please remind me to go back and suck it up and write that thing, will you?). This new chapter involves an unconventional friendship I haven’t seen much, so that’s a positive. I get negative in my whining, so I’m choosing to focus on the positive right now.

On a less positive front, I’m like 3k behind today’s (Saturday) word count. I’m hoping for five more chapters of this fic, which means it’ll get done right around the same time as Nanowrimo!

Hit up Black Friday with the best friend and the nephew, who gets better and better by the day. It got a little hectic in the main part of the mall, but I got a blender for my sis and bro-in-law-to-be that I think they’ll really like for their place. And I found a really great book for my brother when we were at Barnes and Noble, all because nephew pulled it off the shelf.

I need a cute blog name for him. I think maybe Dragonlet.

Anyway, Dragonlet has a funny habit where he drops things and goes, “Uh-oh!” He hasn’t put it together that saying, “Uh-oh!” is about accidents, so it just comes down to him being a little stinker. He has the smirk to go with it, too. Also, right now everything is “Puppy!”

When I got home, I did a Google hangout with my friend for a few hours while we both tried to catch up on word count. It was really fun because we were asking each other random questions throughout the night (“Is it Romanov family? Empire? Dynasty?”). But tomorrow I really need to buckle down and get this done.

Word Count: 36,818 words
Current Project: Secret Santa Chapter 8
Project on Deck: Secret Santa Chapter 10

Last week I attempted a pecan pie, the favored pie of one Pa O'Scanlin who is hopefully having the time of his life chasing after his wife, dear old Ma, as she lives her dreams of seeing London.

Tomorrow, we're having what we call "The Left Behind" Dinner, which is to say my best friend (whose husband is in Afghanistan) has invited her mother-in-law (whose husband is in Florida), her sister-in-law (who is in med school), my sister, and me over to her house for the big feast. I'll be going over earlier in the day to play kitchen assistant/toddler wrangler, which basically means a day of hanging out with best friend and nephew.

I offered to bring the most heavenly dish of them all: mashed potatoes. I have the recipe all ready to go for the morning before I head over there, but since the pie I made last week was only a little mutated, I also volunteered to make a pumpkin pie.

( More about the pie! )

You know, as writers we say some very strange things. Last night at a write-in, somebody pointed out that I’d just said, “That’s okay, I’ll just kill him.” When I tried to defend that it was a drunk clergyman I was talking about, it only got worse.

But yeah, we’re twenty-one days into Nanowrimo and two thirds of the way through November. Things are bound to come flying out of my mouth that I’ll no doubt either laugh or regret. Sometimes both.

I’m ahead of yesterday’s word count and am ambivalent once more. It’s not sleep deprivation, I don’t think, but simply that I’ve accepted this is my life for the month. I’m about to jump into yet another action scene, but I’m contemplating skipping it. That’s one of the benefits of writing it in Scrivener, I think. I can come back to it later when I have time to choreograph the team fighting together.

Even so, I took some time off to play in Photoshop because once I hit December, I’ll need to switch gears to real life stuff/a project with quistie. If anybody on my f-list knows where there are some quality graphics of Scarlett Johansson wearing wintery clothing (from movies, photoshoots, anything), please, could you let me know? It’s incredibly easy to find Renner in heavy coats and scarves, but I’m finding it a bit more difficult for Johansson.

I’m really excited about what I have already, for what it’s worth. I did something unholy to something on be-compromised. It was incredibly fun.

It occurs to me that this story I’m writing will be the first time I’ve ever completed an entirely (chaptered) story before posting. It’s a couple thousand words longer than The Woman in the Crosshairs already, which I think is my longest one-shot. That’s kind of neat. People will get to read the entire story at the same time.

In personal stuff, I had a dream this morning that Mom and Dad missed their flight from Brussels to London (which is silly, brain, they’re taking a train) and I woke up to find Mom cooking me breakfast, not at all affected by the fact that she was missing out on London. What a weird dream. Dad’s the one that cooks breakfast, not Mom.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American buddies, and I wish you the best of food comas. To my international buddies, I hope your day tomorrow is wonderful, too. And if you fall into a food coma, I hope it’s the best food coma ever.

- Frea

Word Count: 34,043 words
Current Project: Secret Santa Chapter 6
Project on Deck: Secret Santa Chapter 7