For my final research paper of my undergraduate degree (latest due date), I will be writing on...

Slash Fanfiction written about the Bible.

Thus far, the most *ahem* interesting thing I've stumbled on is The Furry Bible - "It's the Holy Bible, but rewritten as self-insertion furry slash fiction!" (direct summary quote).

Special, Special Hell.

Having a broken thumb sucks.

The break is at the base of the left proximal phalange (i.e. the bottom of my thumb), and from most of the people I've talked to, I'm looking at a full 6 weeks before I'm back to regular activity. Given how much moving wood to the fireplace hurt tonight? I'm thinking that they're right. Which means I'm on the bench pretty much completely until sometime in December, and puts me somewhere around a month behind in my training schedule.

Lovely.

Papers start coming due in the next week, but at least they'll be done within the next 2 weeks. It'll be nice to have them over with. Looking forward to the end of this term much more than I have the last few - don't know what it is about this year, but gods, will I be glad to see 2008 finished. I have every intention of taking the break time as honest down-time this year, instead of scrambling around trying to get a bunch of extra RL things done. I'm hoping to work on my 14V, *actually* fix-up my site so that the fic listing is accurate and the newer stuff has been transferred over, and maybe get Bound actually finished (all that's missing is one segment, after all).

Oh, and sleep. Sleep would be good.

ETA: For a number of reasons, I essentially haven't been into my inbox since BASCon. As a result, when I logged in, the message number was at 995. I did a mercy kill, for the sake of my sanity. If you'd left me a comment which needed reply and I haven't yet, please either re-post it or ping me here. Many apologies for the entries on various people's journals which I have managed to completely miss - I haven't been around much, and probably will continue to be mostly AFK until after finals. It's just... Apparently, it's going to be a bad few weeks.

So, in tonight's CSI: NY, Mac Taylor is shown diving into a pool and starting to swim freestyle laps.

Problem: Gary Sinise is obviously not a swimmer. Not only is he not wearing goggles (which, OK, can understand from a face-exposure-for-the-camera POV), but he's breathing every second stroke, and he's got atrocious technique. Just, No. Bad. Painful to watch.

Second Problem: Mac proceeds to say that he swims for at least an hour every morning.

No. Frakking. Way.

Show, you fail me. My suspension of disbelief is gone.

*Weeps in a corner*

So the big plan for this evening was supposed to involve me going to the Volleyball Season Opener games (I have a friend on the men's team, and there was a free BBQ beforehand). Good times, right?

Except for the fact that I am apparently having a totally anti-social evening, and it's frakking cold out. See also: me staying home, doing some cleaning that's excessively overdue, decorating for the Holiday Season(TM), sorting out some of my current life-issues (i.e. how am I dealing with this, how am I dealing with that, when is X, Y, Z due), and doing homework in front of a surprisingly successful roaring fire.

If you'd asked me yesterday, this is not at all what I'd have expected to be doing. But it's really soothing, the whole sense of getting something accomplished that I can see, never mind organizing the space around me. I feel bad for bailing on Scott, but I'm sure they've had a good turnout, and I can periodically check the scores, so I will be well informed when I see him on Sunday for the movie.

Oh, also, as is required for an evening one-week-before-Halloween, I am reading bad Harry Potter fic. If anyone feels like reccing me any good Harry/Draco, Draco/Ginny, Severitus (yeah, I know), or WIKTT fic, I will change to reading good HP fic. For now, I'm just working with what's easily accessible. Because I'm only willing to dedicate so much energy to the lowest priority on my evening To Do list.

And oparu? You're more than welcome to come out next weekend, if you'd like. No pressure either way, though. Me coming over there probably isn't going to happen, just due to how my schedule is likely to fall out for the week after, but I should be entering into a lull in my crazy schedule (you don't know anything about those, do you?).

I'm pretty sure that, without my knowledge, my life has shifted to existing on a Sunday->Thursday schedule. As in, I get up at "weekday" times on those days, hit the pool on those days, and go into campus on those days. Friday & Saturday are my "down" days, where I don't set an alarm/pre-set the coffee maker/make it to the pool/eat as strictly (i.e. they end up being closer to 1800 calorie days instead of my standard 1200, which is kind of hilarious since they're also my non-guaranteed-exercise days).

I'm also pretty sure that this is a combined result of my athletic & academic schedule - my classes run M-Th, and I have volleyball on Sundays & Mondays, thus there are external motivators. Given the hours at the aquatics centre, my training schedule for swimming is flexible enough that I can go on Friday afternoons if I feel like sleeping in. The gym is open until 2230 on Friday nights, so I've also got the option of actually doing my dryland on Fridays (I've been bad about dryland the last week or so, which, yeah, that needs to stop. I'm never going to make B-Min times if I don't get my ass in gear sooner rather than later. At least my daily distances are starting to get up to where I need them to be).

In other news, it's been 3 weeks since I'd been able to get enough breathing room in my schedule to do my share of the co-writing on "All That Remains" (this being the reason I'm officially bowing off the fic as co-author after the current part goes up. I'd originally stepped in as a beta and morphed into a co-author, but given the levels of insane that have cropped up in my life lately (and show no signs of going away anytime soon), I'm returning everything back over to kijikun to do with it as she will).

Over the course of said 3-4 weeks, I'd forgotten quite how long it can take to edit a section of fic. I started working on it last night, and decided to go to bed and finish this morning. Woke up at 5, in an effort to stick to a consistent schedule, but didn't drag my ass out of bed until closer to 6:30 because it was in the 30's last night and I refuse to turn on my heat in October.

I think I'm going to give in and take a break to make blueberry pancakes. I've been craving them with a passion ever since I picked up blueberries at the market yesterday (I'm a sucker for good fresh fruit, and the extras will freeze well). I think there's a fic to blame, but for the life of me all I can remember about it was that it involved Ian Crocker. There's also the possibility that the craving is just a result of a sudden and inexplicable bout of nostalgia for New England (Maine, specifically). Who knows.

Having woken up at 6 for swim practice, angsted and then turned *off* my alarm and gone back to bed, woken up again at 11 and spent the last two hours cursing various elements of the world, I've concluded that I'm having a depression day. Or possibly a PMS day. I'm really craving fat (chocolate, pizza, a pop tart - I'm not feeling picky). The closest thing I have in the house is chocolate milk, and pretty much all of me associates that with working out at this point.

It's 13:15, and my biggest accomplishment of the day thusfar is not killing the cat for trying to be friendly. I desperately need to get my ass out of the house and to the pool. They're showing Iron Man on campus at 15:00, might try to catch that before going to the gym for a light workout. Don't know, yet.

Seriously, I wish my brain would cut out the "you fail" shit; it's depressing on a good day, and worse on a not-so-good, cold, grey, and rainy day. Been a while since I had one of these days, so I was probably due/overdue, but that doesn't make it easier to deal with.

Anyone have any good fic recs, so I can waste my evening like I'm pretty certain I've wasted most of my week? I'm pretty flexible, although I seem to be in the mood for crime drama - NCIS (Gibbs/DiNozzo), Criminal Minds (Reid/Morgan, Hotch/Rossi), CSI:NY; heck, I'll take Heroes (Matt/Mohinder).

Urk, 13:28. Must. Leave. House.

I had not realized quite how much squatting is involved in volleyball.

At 16:00, I gave in and took 800mg Ibuprofen so that the pain in my quads would be better by the time I went to the gym.

Didn't work. After the SHAG meeting, did the pub thing w/ a number of my club mates. Legs still hurt enough that I ended up making an executive decision and heading home instead of hitting the gym. Have a paper to work on tonight, so I can definitely use the time, but still.

I really hope I stop hurting, at least this badly, by the morning. I feel bad enough taking a day out to recoup (I can make it up on Saturday). *Crawls into bed*

Quote of the Night:( From tonight's Criminal Minds, so mild spoiler potential )

This? This makes some valid points. Both about the way that the current situation is being handled (re: campaigning & the current "crisis" (never mind that previously candidates (including incumbant presidents) have managed to engage in campaign and debate while the Civil War, the Depression, and WWII were all going on full blast).



It's a set of clips from Letterman's show last night, which McCain blew off w/ an apparently bogus excuse (and got caught for doing!) - i.e. "Economy in meltdown, must go serve my country" (except that he proceeded to, instead of jumping on the supposed plane out of town, do an interview with Katie Couric). Dude, you don't piss off a someone with a dedicated audience and a suddenly free half hour of air time with with to mock you.

Also, is it just me, or is the Sarah Palin thing getting freaking ridiculous? B/C if we're only a little over a month from the election, and they're not letting her speak in public, when the heck are people going to get any kind of idea whether or not she's a viable candidate (aside from, you know, the documented record of lying through her teeth)??

Clip located courtesy of ionaonie

Last weekend, I got the joy of splitting my time between a nasty reaction to a new type of salsa (spice-allergy FTW, not) and a really nasty onset of my pseudo-monthly visitor. Suffice it to say, I got nothing done. kijikun has been a frakking saint*, because I'm still sitting on part 8 of All That Remains, which was supposed to go up last Sunday. Why is it not done, you might ask?

Because, apparently, I have something like 1.5 seconds to rub together between about 12PM Monday and 19:00(7PM) Friday night. My life was not like this last year. The earliest I've gotten home this week was, um, Tuesday - 8:30, I think (that particular evening, I sat down to do editing work, had to reboot my computer, and actually fell asleep while it was in-process. I woke up about 4 hours later, which was good, since my alarm was set to vibrate, and it could have been a messy morning). Tonight? I walked in the door about 5 minutes ago. Yesterday wasn't much better. I would just stay up tonight, since I have no class tomorrow, but my boss has decided that I need to be in at 9AM tomorrow, which means I have to be at the pool at 630 (I'd say 7, but long course ends at 8, meaning if I run a little late that I'd have to get out while they restructure the pool at 8 anyway, so I'm better off making sure I'm done ahead of schedule. Especially since I'm considering adding on an extra 500M to start easing the transition to the next kilometer).

The one good thing? I biked 19.25 miles today, in addition to my double-rep-set circuit. I'd blame the working out for the no-time thing, except I've been increasing my difficulties instead of my actual gym time since the school year started (I do 40 minutes of biking on pool days, and 60 minutes on non-pool days). The swimming time is also reasonably consistent (although it'll get longer once October comes around and I have to add another KM, but that's still something like a week and a half away out).

*Whimpers* Seriously. If I even hint that I might be coming down with something and it's Thursday or later, KICK MY ASS!! If I consider eating something not in my normal diet, KICK MY ASS!!

I am not allowed to be ill on the weekends, because I simply have no room to play catch-up during the week.

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*I will be buying her drinks at BASCon.