Writing Chaos that is Me

Okay, due to my Internet being fixed for just one day, when the scheduled maintenance went through, and then reverted back to me being with lost connection every five seconds I felt the need to just calm down and watch “LA Ink”. Otherwise I might have taken a knife and ended it all; which was simply too much. I am going to have to call again and speak to a technician about what the problem is. I suspect that perhaps the fact my own computer recognizes my Windows is not installed by the rules might have a finger in the whole, but I will wait 10 days or so to reinstall it and then see what happens with the connection.

Work is tiring me and I am losing interest in reading again. Not good considering I have a review blog to run. I am also 5 K behind schedule with my novel “DC,DF”… When I sit down to write it feels like acid on my brain. I guess I am really rusty. Tonight I will try really hard to hack some words and finish the prologue.

It’s official. I need a healthier food regime. Just the thought makes me crave things that I have, forgotten sinful food cravings. With my jogging commitment, which is going slow, but steady, I also need some additional upper body and toning exercises. The whole shift situation and fucked up regimes make it hard to organize. Plus it’s summer and I want to laze around and go out and not having to get up early my free mornings… Me and my girls have been active and I think July will be highlight to my social year.

I have been thinking about tattoos for ever and now I am sure I will have two by the end of the summer. It’s a long time dream to get one. Ever since I was 13, but now being almost 20 and starting a new phase in my life, I want these to act as a milestone so to say. I found an amazing dagger design I want on my calf and I plan on the words ‘to write is to breathe’ on my right wrist as a weave around it in pretty shift and filigree. What you think?

God, how I hate it when technology fails me, when I really need it... The moment I decide that I shall use the Internet for something more constructive such as researching for my novel or blog and the such, my service decides to discard common sense and the laws of this reality. My computer and modem register that I should be connected and have top speed, when in fact Mozilla tells me that there is no connection. Restarting the modem fixes the problem for roughly 30 seconds before the same thing happens again, so I am rather pissed and helpless about it. Technician is due Friday and I dread his level of competence, since last time the Internet decided to stop cause problems 15 minutes before they arrived. I think its doing it on purpose. *sigh* This post is written at work during graveyard shift.

Oh and I have Gena Showalter as guest on Temple Library Reviews. Click the link on the left and just scroll down. :) Tomorrow the review on her latest "Seduce The Darkness" is due.

Yesterday, I did a good deed. I tried to help a lovely pair of British tourists try and find their hotel in the city. It seemed that they had the wrong part of the street and area, so they went on a hunt for a taxi. I so hope they made it safely. :)

Otherwise tomorrow I will be doing all sorts of things before being able to go to sleep after my night shift. Going to the tailor to fix my damn trousers, cause I look ridiculous and then pay my phone bill. Two places which are on opposite ends of my city and far away as possible from home and the hotel... I so dread it.

It's 4 a.m and I just finished Cherie Priest's "Four Twenty Blackbirds", which was extremely visionary. I can't say extremely phenomenal and a once in a life time must-read as some of the expectations delivered by the Internet promised, but Priest definitely has that quality that draws you in and makes time fast forward. This is rare nowadays, so I am looking forward to reading more from Miss Priest.

Anyways, nothing much interesting about me in any aspect. I saw my spunky friend A. who flew back from Holland for the holidays and doesn't want to reveal my presents from France, where she was for a week. She says to wait until my birthday. I have to wait 3 weeks to get trinkets from France. God, I hate these tests of patience. As it turns out my friend P. has arrived from the capitol to rest until next semester. Nobody expected her until the end of July, but dental training has its surprising turns.

PS: I am ultra behind on research for my novel... I hope that Monday I will sit on my ass and do it. :D

So, I have read some amazing posts on writing handed out by our very own queenoftheskies  and music_lover3 and m_stiefvater . Naturally I feel that I may have some thoughts to share on writing that don’t usually take up the spotlight like procrastination, self-doubt and dialogue do. And mainly staying true to yourself, while writing.

There is this ages old advice and practice preached by seasoned and published writers that while they are writing, they shouldn’t read at all. I didn’t get the logic behind it, until I started my review blog and pretty much had to handle reading and writing at the same time. Around the time I started writing my first ever novel, the urban fantasy “Forged in Blood” I was high on Gena Showalter, Rachel Vincent, Karen Chance and Jeaniene Frost and also under the impression that I was no control over purple prose. My decision to handle the purple prose bit was rather harsh and influenced by all these authors, who present a very strong female POV and a narrative that is not flowing like I write, but rather hard and staccato, I changed my own voice.

This wasn’t a very conscious decision. I acted on the problem that I was writing too much and not saying anything, while at the same monitored what the market held as profitable. It was around the end of March, when I started sensing problems sitting down and writing at all. I couldn’t express myself at all, because handling the purple prose caused an avalanche of headaches. In retrospect now I realize I had lost my own voice and wrote through the cacophonic echoes of other writers, who are quite different on their own. I couldn’t write for several months on things I really wanted to work on and around May I had the epiphany that my mind didn’t work that way, didn’t express itself that way and didn’t want all the images projected in my head to go on paper the way I stubbornly wanted.

It took me 60 days to find the problem to my blockage and it really was an epiphany. I remember I was thinking about “Seaborn” and “The Even”, both amazing books that really connected with me as a writer style-wise. For me they were unique, they showed a different edge to their respected genres and were so out of the box with unusual theme and also unusual wording, flow and magical spark that drew readers in. There was almost a synergy between me and the books. Thinking about this and engaging in yet another daydreaming session, while on the bus, my own mind pointed with a neon sign towards where the issue was.

Basically it's hard to explain what went through my head and my heart, when the revelation popped like a Jack in a Box in my stream of thoughts. Writing isn't exact science and I ain't the brightest at detecting faults, so it was bizarre and uncomfortable. One of my reactions was that I was selling myself for money, knew it, but lied to myself about the sudden changes in my writing that eventually made me dread the keyboard. Then came the unshakable fear that all these damages were in fact irreversible and I was permanently stuck in my stupidity sap for all next generations to observe and document. Naturally I took a very typical evasive type of action and disconnected myself. I am not sure this technique works for everybody, but if you receive your stories as movie projections then by all means forget that you need to work with the stories, sit down, stretch out and take in everything your mind offers. Percolate thoughts and imagine what words connect with the images.

This is a highly individualized approach that takes way to long to recharge your batteries, your attitude and your word bank and works for me only because I am first and fore most a daydreamer and a storyteller that likes oral story telling and writer as of recent. What I did next was to capitalize on the essence I wanted to convey and just practice my prose and manner of expression. What did great job was writing some vignettes, which are micro fiction to short fiction long pieces of narratives that focus on a scene that is unconnected with a bigger story, like the cut scenes from a fast paced novel, when the main protagonist is resting or contemplating on general things about life and mundane aspects that don't fill in the novel space. I recommend this to everybody stuck in a rut by the way, since it's like the breath of fresh air your imagination needs to catch up with the workload on longer projects you set as goals. As you can see the situation with losing your voice isn't exactly beyond salvation, but it should never occur to a writer. It brings the bad kind of self-doubt and need to procrastinate.

However here is the whole gist of it. As a writing post there should be some kind of advice or at least a morale. So here goes. In writing you should stay true to yourself and never betray the voice that comes naturally to you. If you are inexperienced and don't know how to separate your own writing from the one of others, then don't be too depressed, because there is a release for your problems. Also if you think that your novels will never sell, because they are not the hottest thing on the market then don't listen to that suggestion to echo what sells. It will never earn you points and doing something that is not your own will only create bigger problems as each mind is custom built and needs its own self expression.

Okay, so I am so not up to cramming two posts today, so I am keeping this one yet again personal and tomorrow I am going to talk about writing. Of course to keep stalling I will prepare my post as I finish this one. So Thursday, my free day after two long and draining graveyard shifts, in which I didn’t feel like a zombie. Here is the list of daily activities.

Jogging: I didn’t want to mention this at all, because I did so many times and jinxed it so bad that the idea itself became as laughable as waking up next to Hugh Jackman. However this really did occur in real life [the running sadly] and I had my nicotine addicted artist friend S with me, also known as the main instigator behind this scheme. It was okay, because I tired my legs fast and due to the whole I-smoke-a-pack-in-two-days deal S had a minor argument with her lungs, who didn’t like the sudden work overload. We spent around half an hour sweating and panting, ten of which were resting, but damn it, it was a first step into getting in a better shape. We will run every second day, due to my work schedule. I also hope that I get it in my head to do push-ups and stuff to get the belly out of the picture, but Christmas is far away for these miracles.

Shopping: So I had my paycheck and immediately called my lady friends with taste to go on a hunt for shoes. This was around 11:30 a.m. after the jogging with feet still sore. After an hour of searching I bought myself a nice pair of white sport’s shoes that fit so well and aren’t the color I would lean on, but damn it this season fashion said “Fuck it, I am on vacation” and every store had the worst stock possible. A miracle is also finding a descent pair of summer slippers, when the 110 degrees convince you that closed shoes are not the most reasonable choice. They are not as good as the awesome pairs I saw last year, but I can look at them and they are comfortable enough. Around 16:00 o’clock I managed to shop for T-shirts, which was good, since god knows I am bored with what I have in the closet right now.

Eye Doctor: I had a routine check-up after the administration of the eye drops to see how my eyes healed after the whole muscle spasms episode. Seems I am fairing well. Yey! Now I just need to use the synthetic tears to keep my eyes relaxed in the summer, so that my eyes don’t go protesting again. I even got recipes for special optic sunglasses and regular ones, because the frame has been damaged from the constant abuse use. I am not sure when I will find the money to get me those and I don’t think I will get around to getting the sun glasses this summer. I tend to do these things rather slow.

Uniform Fitting: In the last minute yesterday my boss decided that I MUST as in have no choice and go to a fitting for my uniform. Seeing the uniform convinced me that colorblind people that basic scissor holding skills can work as seamstresses and tailors. It’s summer and instead of a lighter material for the suit, they used something that is heavy and makes you sweat in an instant and is horribly, horribly poop brown. The shirt is rough with the color of urine and although I look thinner I also look as a pimp, who likes the sewage system. Ugh.

Other things involved seeing my friend D. who is giving out flyers for a summer job and we kind of didn’t see each other since the beginning of spring, which is a shame. We chatted here and there to catch up, after which I went on a book hunt to spend some more money and get the books I have been eyeing for ages. Alas everything I wanted turned out to be sold out. So sad, but hey I have enough at home, so no worries.

Some crazy days have passed. I don't remember blogging soon, so I will just take a minor recap. Friday and Saturday were the busiest days I will ever see in my career, when virtually every room in the hotel was filled and we had full capacity. We had a 220 group from Romania on to celebrate their highschool prom in a hotel. The first day I spend my whole shift preparing for their arrival and after that registering all of them. The next night I had graveyard shift and had to watch them as they partied all in the lobby as their dancre floor.

Needless to say I was very tired and pretty much snoozed through Sunday, but before that I rode in a stranger's car because I didn't want to wait for the bus, which was stupid, but still I didn't get ripped with 2 bucks for a bus ticket. I never saw a more pedantic and law abiding driver in the universe. He was within speed limit all the time and always signaled, when was moving through lanes and I was stunned. Where does Mother Nature take out these good looking, mild tempered and patient men? I am still sad that nothing X-rated happened though to be honest due to fatigue and hormones I wasn't thinking straight, not that I am good at it by default but still.

Sunday I snoozed...

Monday I studied 6-7 hours for law test on Tuesday, which melted my brain matter as a whole and I almost fell asleep during macroeconomics. I also showered before going it was an extra sleep condition.

So. The Tuesday from Hell came and went and I actually had to laugh way hard, because nothing quite as stressful happened than I anticipated. I totally nailed my English presentation at the student conference and received quite the bit of enthusiastic applause opposed to the obligated applause other received before me. I also get 30 bucks and in my country you can buy quite a lot with those money, so it's a win win. :) The test in English didn't went so well, but the test in Law was a breeze and we all passed with maximum score. This means we will most certainly pass the exam with the 40 points from 100 gained with that test. Yey!

... a sentence I never thought I would ever type, say or better yet think of. Yes, after three fail starts in the world of employed people I find myself in the flirt stage with my work. It gives me time to study and time to relax. It let's me use my all time favorite foreign language and you guessed it: English. It gives me back the money I spend for traveling and the people I have to work with are amazing. Sure it's a 12 hour shift job, but good things come, when you work for them and when you actually work time flies. I also got Internet access and time to read and blog. Did I mention that practically I work for 15 days in the month. Oh yeah!

Anyways I am not sure how long my un-departure from the hiatus I am, but I will try to be regular as much as I can. Night shifts will be the perfect opportunities to get that load off my shoulders. Now ain't that sweet, uh?

So my question for you guys is: What is your day time money-making activity and does it make you smile or attempt suicide?

Right now I am on day shift at the hotel and am way more relaxed than expected, but this is perhaps because the hotel has college students, who have organized teaching hours and studying for exams. So the inflow from requests towards the reception have been a small amount, plus my immediate superior - teacher is one hall way away and I can whine for help in any second. Sweet. Another major concern with this job was the cashier machine and working with money as a whole, billing and remembering every single procedure. I am doing pretty damn well actually. I don't freak out, when a person talks to me, so there is a chance I won't be a complete babbling idiot by the end of October. YEY!

Nevertheless I have tons to do outside my mega time and energy consuming, but fair and well paying job. I have up to the 12th to learn around 300 pages in Basics of Law and this is the emergency at hand. Second at hand would be to manage my project in sociology. After that I have to get things going with macroeconomics and English. I sense headaches on the horizon, but I picked my lot, so let all come my way. I am through with worrying all the time. [*mean face*]

Tomorrow I will meet the friend, whom I forgot to send off a birthday wish, and if my mom has money left I will buy her something pretty and a flower. I am thinking of a small silver pendant or a crystal figure. I am not as well off as I wish I was, but such is life. :)
Hopefully I will be even writing... But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

PS: The door is still locked... No locksmith, since it was yesterday and we'll have to eat something bought again...

Why does mister Murphy takes such strong delight in torturing me? Am I that entertaining squirming from discomfort and panic? Yesterday was my first night shift and I had to stay there 16 hours, 4 additional, in order to learn to operate everything. The wireless for the whole lobby was down and since everybody here is a student in college they need the Internet for research, so it was major whine from everybody. After that a whole football team came and though they were all major eye candy they seemed technically advanced and demanded they have Internet as well for their laptops... Well they had none... I wasn't popular, but became so when I agreed to put though Serbian folk music as lobby music after 3 am or so. Yey for me. :)

Anyways I manage to get off the shift still functional, catch a 7 hour sleep and after that things went down hill for today/tonight/ already tomorrow [?] I had my mother make me breakfast/dinner [?] and then the door to where all the food and my grandparents living quarters [they are at the summer villa right now tending the vegetable garden] got busted. The door just didn't want to open even though it was unlocked. Turns out the small metal thingie that slides in broke off and just stayed there, which meant no food and no getting, unless the door meets its utter destruction. I had to leave for night shift again, so I don't know what my mom did to get things with the door get going.

Already here and from peace and tranquility the hotel [named Clover and having a four-leaved clover as symbol] turns into chaos. The already fixed wireless for the lobby fails. My programs fail. All because the server went down and the boss took the key with her... Guess who starts moaning? At the same time electricity fails on around 13% of the hotel, which means no cable TV for the north side and this night a big soccer game was on. Do you catch where this is going? Nevertheless everything gets fixed and now I can quietly exist knowing that 4 hours have passed in the night shift and I can relax... I also learned one thing. "Las Vegas" lies in how hotel life is fun for all working people involved. This is so much stress in one place and I also learned two major things about me: 1) I am scared of talking to people and 2) Being a figure of authority is something I am not good at. Hah! I just started the job I am most unqualified for, but I take it as a blessing, because life is a huge hotel. You are between the hammer and the anvil, you are always wrong and people expect you to handle 10000 things at once, grow a backbone and yet still be obidient. So I take this nerve wrecking voyage into summer knowing that I will grow in character via interaction with people, but I doubt I will ever ever ever do that again...

Thursday was so hectic that I couldn’t find the energy to even sit down and reply to the comments I had in my mail, which just shows how tiring the whole day was. First stop was the hotel inspection, where I will start working officially from today and I thought that I would just look around and get instructed how work on the programs and such. Apparently the hotel had to be cleaned from first to last floor. Food was not delivered and most of the furniture was either in pieces or was stacked everywhere. Apparently I was expected to clean along with everyone else, so I carried heavy objects and assembled tables and what-not, all the while waiting for the boss to start my training. 10 o’clock passed and she didn’t come under the pretext that she had an emergency and would arrive at noon. Now when we spoke with her I explained that I had a test in sociology, which was at noon and I didn’t have a chance to study for properly. So I had to run from the hotel and in doing so I lost my bus pass for three months ahead, which is extremely expensive and I had the most horrific bus ride ever hoping they would find it back in the hotel, which they did.

All of this before noon. I rush back home. I eat. I go to do the test. By this time I am really sleepy, since I woke up at 6 am and spent 4 hours in the hotel, and have a headache. It’s a miracle I actually did my test, because apparently I read the wrong lectures, but still did a damn good job considering the circumstances. I go back home and plan to rest, when my grandmother moans how she won’t be able to take my sister to dress rehearsal for her concert. Okay, I did plan to go to the concert, but going an hour earlier was even more painful. We rushed there and I spent 3 horrid hours to see my sister for less than three minutes, which made me proud, but nonetheless. I didn’t even manage to watch her properly, because an ex-teacher of mine decided that I would be a bouncer for keeping the seats of the mayor…

As a bonus I got a call from my boss that I needed to be at the hotel 4 hours prior my shift to get the training done and also that I would be having two consecutive night shifts one after the other… But I would also get a free day, whenever I choose, so at least in a situation, where I can’t go to tests I can vouch this day. Just thinking about this makes me tired. God!

Strange. I won the contest in English, which was to be expected, but it feels weird to win. I rarely do and it’s always a humbling occasion. It was even stranger that I remembered the edited version of the presentation, when at home I stuttered at every word and it would seem that the alcoholic bliss was still not over from last night. Weird again, since I only drunk two extra sugary cocktails and shouldn’t be suffering as much from it. Last night we didn’t get the chance to see the beauty pageant, mainly because all the seats were taken by the VIP guests and there was a huge crowd. Me and my buddies didn’t want to wait so off to the nearest bar to talk and drink.

Now back to the contest. It seems that Murphy is showing particular interest in me, because the 12th May is reportedly the day I am supposed to have 3 tests. Now I am obligated to go and present my project once more and then wait for the dean to give me money, which overlaps completely with one of the said above tests. And the way I calculate it… I am also to have my day shift at the hotel. Interesting predicament and if I had the ability to clone I would have managed, but now I am speaking with my management teacher to move my date, so that I can take the test with another group and I will have to talk with my boss to give me a night shift. Brilliant…

I haven’t even started work and it’s already causing problems. I bet that writing time won’t come and tap me on the shoulder…

I didn’t forget to blog today, which means yey a quickie post before I go out. First and foremost the good news are that after all my level of English and research skills have been appreciated and I will be fighting for the first place among 5-6 other people and their presentations tomorrow for a mysterious prize, the nature of which remains largely unknown and won’t be revealed to me. I guess it involves money or something like that, but I know that it will be materialistic to feel that existential black hole for shiny things. I am quite fierce, when it comes to all things English related as a language and turn into a demonic entity focused on maiming and killing all those, who oppose me.

On an unrelated note I will prove once and for all that I will have a night life 2009 no matter what. The university is organizing a beauty pageant and this is the only occasion for me and my friends from the group we are in to ever meet, since we never agree on a date and hour and place, so this solves the problem. We will even take up my darling friend A. who has come all the way back from Holland to see us and I hope we do get a fun time. The only issue here is that I won’t be able to get drunk accordingly, since I will want to have a clear head for the presentation tomorrow. Kind of a bittersweet thing, but in general it was a good day. I hope you guys have one too. Especially my dear friend brian_ohio , who should punish me and doesn’t deserve my tasteless treatment.

Where have I been? You may perhaps ask me, if you have been curious about my strange disappearance. Oh, well dealing with drama pretty much. I never knew competitions could blow to the proportions of a Columbian soap opera of the utmost difficulty of comprehension. I am not about to delve into it, but it would seem we got screwed with our macroeconomics project and got disqualified. The reason: we were writing about something microeconomic, which I beg to differ, but hey if the experts first guide us falsely and then cut us off for something they weren’t unified over, let them be.

Unrelated from everything so far I decided to update my social life and go out and interact with people the old fashioned way. Turns out I still got my social skills. Tad rusty though, but I am getting over the whole “You are a real life interactive person… What am I to do with you?’ And then again I have been battling with bureaucracy, which can pretty much suck the blood from your veins. I had to pay 7 in my currency to get told that I haven’t been judged or sued or done anything illegal and 15 to be told that I am perfectly healthy in less than a minute. I am so not loving these new regulations.

Anyways what have you been up to? Seriously, the world might have ended, preyforhuntress  might have done it and brian_ohio might have gotten published and I still would have missed it. [Brian, I am so sorry to make fun of your painful waiting, but I feel like the Sleeping Beuty - minus me being beautiful or sleepy, just out of sync]

There is a little birdbath in the park.
There is a little birdbath in my heart,
all marble with waters still untouched.

One, two, three belfries blossom in sound
and I still wait to smell your colors,
taste your thoughts, yet you unwind into yarn,
strings spilled in the air, while I sweat on
the weaver’s loom, getting your image wrong each time.

Your fag, ember long forgotten,
still carries your sucking kiss,
stolen by the smoke, curvy lust,
against the palomino sunset.

In the end I ask.
Was I your imagination to see,
what it would be to feel
unskilled, unfound, uncharted,
but completely someone else’s?

PS: Too tired to explain what went down today, which was almost nothing, but still mighty tiring. Here is a sweet poem just to make you feel longing too. :) 

Yesterday was a very long and interesting day. I never really got to start the day at the airport, which at the time being looked like a cemetery and then end it on isolated bench in the park with a deck of tarot cards, but I guess there is a first time for everything. But here is how it really went down.

My good friend Y. had to travel back to Germany, since her time off and training at the hospital had ended, plus she has an exam today. My other friend S. [Y. best friend before I became friends with S.] asked in a matter of fact when the flight was and upon hearing 10 o’clock in the morning, S. did the math and insisted me coming with her to the airport so that we can surprise Y. in the last minute before her flight. Punctuality and the buses were on our side, but universal timing wasn’t. Upon arrival we found the airport abandoned. No people what so ever, anywhere at all and the lights were off. Naturally we call Y. and ask “What gives?” As it turns out Y. was going to be on the airport at 10 and not that her flight was at 10 am in the morning… So me and S. sat down for one hour in the cold dark cemetery airport and used the one pen and paper the best way we could: aka we fucked around with the 80s. One hour and two cold hungry butts later we had the fateful surprise, surprise and we talked and saw Y. safely on her flight to Germany.

After that I tried to get as much work as possible done, which was quite disappointing, since all I managed to do was announce a book release, fix an announcement, since they messed up something and wanted a different cover and write only two poems. I had to since I was in those contests for quite a while on a reserve and needed to finally post something. Then I struggled with a sonnet I have been writing since January and still made it on one stanza. I hate rewriting poetry, but damn it if I am gonna let Shakespeare sneer in my face. The time wasting came from watching an anime and I forgot that I was to write a short piece of prose for the Deadline Dames contest hosted by the lovely relliott4.

The evening was strange, since I introduced my tarot reading couple [S. from the airport and her BF V.] to my friend D. [who lost her dad, her best friend and her grandparents in the manner of six months and needed a bit of hope] and had a two hour tarot reading session to see what the future is going to be for D. Right now things are not really looking up, but in the end there is salvation. S. and V. speculate that there might be some jinx or an ill intent at work and when they say that, then I totally believe them, since they are known as the power couple in my dictionary. I believe that there are people connected somehow to the world and have an understanding of the forces that surround the material world. I write fantasy fiction after all and I am open to these concepts.

Anyways I will try to write today. Wish me luck! :) 

The fact that I am not that bothered by the crappy things happening to me is because I have been laughing along all the people watching Demetri Martin, the new Comedy Central guy or so am I to believe and he can really make you smile and wear that smile, while crap is pouring even though right now the case with me is not so.

I completed my macroeconomics project for the competition on Monday, but I actually spent a whole weekend nurturing a very bad and naughty cold, which started with an itchy throat and sneezing to flame-y Throat from Hell, Sneeze Machine Gun, Really Leaky Nose and as an effect a headache. I am actually surprised that I got these since, when I get a cold it results in my inability to breathe since everything cements in my air tubes and nausea with fatigue and with these I actually feel like the people in Coldrex Commercials. Eventually I prepared a medical cocktail from harmless headache painkiller, cough tablets and some nerve relaxing drops, but my mom insisted that I should not go with the tequila for base. Anyways now I do feel better and will go out to see some friends.

And also yesterday I received a rejection for “Tinted Windows” from the Future Fire, which didn’t surprise me much though I had hopes it would have gotten published. 20$ are twenty bucks and as materialistic as I sound it’s crappy to have no money anywhere, so some income would sweeten my life immensely. It took the magazine around a month to respond, which also good, since they did say maximum up to two months, so I didn’t get to wait that long. I wish they had given me some details on what they didn’t like or some encouraging words, but I got to thinking that if their main activity is pick materials for the next issue and every day they have to sift through many queries after awhile it will get draining to make it personal. Anyways I am aiming for another magazine “Reflection’s Edge” and hopefully in another month I will get an answer. I think that I will keep a story on the roll for 12 tries and after that it hits the “You were good, but I still need to do better” category.

Happy Easter to all my peeps in America and all the peeps, who celebrate it this Sunday April 12th and have one heck of an Easter egg hunt, if you do that activity.

But don’t return the favor as of yet, since my Easter is one week later on April 19th. It’s always a drag that I can’t get the festive spirit, when you guys celebrate it, but at least we have Christmas and New Year’s Eve on the same date. I guess Christianity is not exactly consistent with itself in its different departments.

When you think about it there are actually so many divisions of Christians out there starting with Catholics, evangelists, orthodox Christians, protestants and then there is the Armenian Church and hopefully not that many more out there. And it seems that every ‘division’ has to jumble up the calendar with events.

This Sunday we have a different holiday to celebrate. It is called Flower’s Day and all the people, who are named after flowers or plants celebrate. In our culture this is very important and has stuck with Easter orthodox tradition and it is always one week before the Easter festivities. The Saturday before this holiday we celebrate Lazarus day. Now next week is the Easter and I cannot wait to eat the special sweet bread we prepare for it. It is like cotton candy and bread mixed in together.

So this has been your official lesson in Easter orthodox Christianity. Take a note

Of course I may not be digging too deeply, but I am also feeling ordinary today and not my funny pun alter ego. I solved the most pressing academic problem I have been facing and no, it’s not my future in this university… The major serious report for that competition, whose deadline is this Wednesday and we haven’t touched a thing with my partner. In the end I did a sneaky thing, which my partner M. loved. It was simply translating and prettying up with various terms the presentation I did in English. This means everything can be done tomorrow and I can be sure that the quality will win us a sizable amount of recognition. My pride demands it, what will happen is a different story.

On an off-key note the love interest partner M. has exhibited behavior that indicates that he is an intelligent, individualistic and as a whole a pleasurable person to be around with, in whom I discover a great deal of similarities with myself. However he is heterosexual down to the core of his spinal brain. Disappointing, but totally expected, so there was not much astonishment in that discovery.

And on a third and entirely unrelated note from the first, I think I have recharged my battery completely. I feel the need to create, to write, to review and to read. These activities had been a burden in the last month, coming to me and draining me, since I pursued them with a tempo, which in itself was impossible unless I were to be a super human and use at least 20% of my brain capacity. Trying to be everything at once is chaotically fun, but also a bio-hazard for my pretty mind. *giggle*