(no subject)

So yesterday someone in the cafe (I'm naming no names!) said that they had a friend, Sarah, who was going to be on Wheel of Fortune last night. So I told R, "Tonight someone named Sarah is going to be on Wheel of Fortune."

"How do you know?" he asked.

"I know. And we have to root for her," I replied mysteriously. And then explained how I knew, because he prodded me until I gave in.

So we were watching Wheel, which is Family Week From Orlando this week, and Pat introduced Sarah and her sister Amy, and R was immediately smitten with both of them and then chose Amy because Sarah was married. Then they won everything, it was awesome. So he spent the rest of the night trying to get me to hook him up with a random woman FROM FLORIDA whom he saw on Wheel of Fortune.

After Wheel, we made macaroni with meat sauce for dinner, because meatloaf would have taken longer and we had no spaghetti. Good stuff! R even managed to make the garlic bread all by himself, except for the part where I told him what to do and how to do it. He tries, god bless him.

Over dinner he told me about this disastrous date he'd had on Saturday night, where he was out with a girl and her friends celebrating someone's 21st birthday. Naturally the topic came around to ages.

R: We'd been getting along really well all night, you know, there was chemistry there. And then she said she was 23 and asked how old I was. So I said, I'm 28. And she turns to me and says, "You're 28 and you're not married? What's wrong with you?"
Sam: OH NOES SHE DIDN'T.
R: What do you say to that? And then I started to wonder, what is wrong with me?
Sam: One, nothing is wrong with being 28 and unmarried. Two, if there were, I suspect it would have to do with you judging your dates more on cup size than mental stability.
R: But how do I tell her that tactfully?
Sam: Well, either rethink your priorities or tell her "I pick crazies. What's your excuse?"
R: Oh man. I'm totally saving that to use next time someone insults my social skills.

Then the PeaPod guy showed up, so we ate the fig newtons he delivered and watched the Bulls-Heat game go into double overtime. As much as I wanted the game to end, I was kind of hoping it would go into triple overtime just so OT3 would appear next to the timer clock. Because I am fanshallow.

Also I got to try out my cast-iron skillet with actual food for the first time (up until now I've only used it to melt butter for some bread I was making) as I made the marinara meat sauce. There's no noticeable difference in the taste of the food cooked in it, but it's nice to have a skillet to cook in. I ran a little afoul of how to clean it out -- I know it needs to be cleaned when you cook acidic food in it, but the tomato sauce got all crusty, so I ended up wiping it out with a paper towel, then with a damp cloth, then drying it with another paper towel before oiling it. Seemed to work fairly well.

(no subject)

I must cite things in the Nameless afterword. It will be the first time I have cited with no guidelines.

ACADEMIC MINUTIAE GEEKOUT TIEMS!

[Poll #1363108]

I've always cited MLA, but now I wonder if I was just succumbing to peer pressure. Not that it's a huge deal because I'm using bibliographic entries in footnotes, which is all kinds of heresy. But srsly I'm not going to publish a work of fiction with a bibliography attached.

Also: is it gauche to cite oneself? I feel tacky doing it but it's kind of unavoidable, seeing as the essay is all about me. I mean, given that, should I maybe just embrace the awkward and own it?

I think I should. Usually that works.

(no subject)

GoogleDocs, you utter bastard.

I didn't want to post fourteen separate chapters of Nameless again, nor did I especially want to replace the first-draft-with-comments that's already up at theoriginalsam. So I thought I would be CLEVAR and upload the whole file at once to googledocs. Except that I had already been too clever for my own good, and started formatting the doc for publication. Which means indents instead of full paragraph breaks. Which googledocs doesn't recognise.

Fine, I thought, I'll save it as a PDF and host it on GoogleDocs. Except with PDFs you can't publicly host on GoogleDocs, only share via email.

SO. Here is what I have done. You can download the entire second-draft text from Sendspace:

Sendspace | Sendspace Mirror 1 | Sendspace Mirror 2

(I tried to mirror on Megaupload and Yousendit but they both require registration now.)

Or those of you who are interested mainly in the last chapter of the first draft can check out the revised "chapter" (now two chapters) here:

Chapter Thirteen Revised | Chapter Fourteen Revised

The "manifesto" I referenced earlier is available as a revised postscript here: Postscript Revised.

You can also read a summary of ( what I've changed. )

There is also a new Index Post for Nameless, which links to all this. Including some fanart done for Nameless, the newest addition to which is m_erechyn's Two Watercolours of Low Ferry and The Pines.

(no subject)

R just buzzed my flat. I would like to present this for your consideration:

Sam: If you're going for a record, this doesn't beat waking me up at 3:15 on my birthday.
R: Yo, I locked myself out, I need your keys to my place.
Sam: YOU HAVE MY KEYS TO YOUR PLACE. You needed them because Ratpacker still has yours.
R: ...oh. *pause* Can I use your phone?

Upshot is: Ratpacker is not answering his phone. R gets the futon in the living room tonight, and I am mostly unrepentant about what it will do to his back. I have also banned the playing of harmonica and the watching of television before six am, or the drinking of all my orange juice. I have plans for that OJ.

But I'm not a complete bastard, so I did make grilled cheese sandwiches.