Ab work

Been working seriously on my abs again. Trying to do it as by the book as I can this time around, so I actually see results. They're actually looking not half bad at the moment, but there's still a ways to go, and I don't want to make the same mistakes I did last time I seriously attempted to do this. Because I never really saw exactly the results I wanted, it was suggested that I probably wasn't eating enough to build the proper muscle. I'm going to have to watch out for that again; my first instinct in these matters is to eat less. On top of that I've had a bad couple of days with a stress stomach ache, which means I haven't been eating much. Honestly a couple of days of it aren't so bad; it sleeked up some of the puffiness that was pissing me off, maybe gave a bit of a head start getting rid of some stored calories, but it isn't good for it to go on long or my metabolism will just go into starvation mode and I won't burn off anything, much less develop muscle.

In the interest of tracking my progress, I am taking a picture of myself so I can compare where I started to how I go.

Suddenly down

I just got my Macbeth script. I have two lines and maybe three scenes. I don't know why it should, as I've played this role before and knew it was tiny, but I am suddenly kind of depressed. I guess I feel like this was the only confirmed thing I had going on, and it's like nothing. For everything else I'm stuck waiting for people to respond to my e-mails, and in the meantime I don't know what to do. There's this modeling thing, which was cool with the people saying they're interested and they'll give me the details when I sent in my information, but I sent in it and they haven't gotten back to me yet. It's only been a day, but the thing is for this coming weekend, so I can't help but feel down about it. Nothing else has even gotten to that point, leaving me pretty much adrift and useless.

Bah, gravy.

After numerous tries in recent meals I have prepared, I am forced to conclude that I cannot make gravy. I just... don't ever seem to really pull it together. The pan is too hot, the roux won't come together, I don't let it simmer the proper amount of time-- always something like that. I like to blame it on the fact that I usually have to use Smart Balance instead of real butter, but that's not the whole story. It must be genetic. My mother, who can make, like, lobster bisque and osso bucco and other crazy hard stuff like that, can't make gravy either. It's probably because being made of carbs and fat and sugar it's just something that we healthy-eating nuts have such a mental block against that we can't work with it. ;-)

Too sad for a goth club

*Sigh* There's XMortis tonight, and at least one fun person I know is going, but I'm missing Jared kind of keenly right now and the idea of going without hm just kind of kills the mood for me. Haven't spoken to him since Tuesday, and he won't be back until Sunday yet.

Heh. It occurs to me I'm too sad to go to a goth club. :-)

Been kind of stressed out lately, between missing Jared, looking for a job, and the various other unpleasantries in my life. I am resolved to try and be more mellow about it today; yesterday I was kind of a grouch about everything. It was relieved in large part by a very nice dinner with witticaster*, who ate pork chops with me-- I never had to really make an endeavor to hang out with her when she lived with me, but now that she's not just the next bedroom over, I am resolved to actually PLAN to see now and again. Then I went to the first full session with the new group on Kindness's game, and it was a lot of fun. I'm still trying to find Arien as a character, but I'm enjoying the process very much. Good group, good DM.

Need to be less of a grouch. Today I'll try to do that.

Quite possibly my all-time favorite OOTS quote:

"Hey, look, I just regenerated a finger. Guess which one."

I don't know what made me think of this just now, but it always makes me smile. :-)

Admissions office job

I recently applied to a position in the Brandeis admissions office, and I'm really crossing my fingers about it. I actually managed to steel myself to call about it today, though all they said was that they're recieved my application and that they're still in the review process. Wish I knew what, if anything, I could do beyond that to get some attention and improve my chances, but all I can think of is to call again in a week or so. My fairly pressing need for some kind of job at this point has led me to apply for lots of stuff that I could stand but don't care about all that much, but this is one I actually think I might like-- not least the fact that I'd be working on campus, near to home and near to important people.

New chain

Yesterday the chain on my anniversary necklace broke. I was upset, but I comforted myself by saying that maybe now was an opportunity to make it shorter, which I'd come to believe would make it appear to better advantage. So today I took it in to the jeweler who repaired the broken pin in Jared's watch. He took one look at the chain and told me it was completely shot, the links stressed and compromised to the point where it was no wonder that it broke. He said that the chain was probably about eighteen inches when I first got it, but a year and a half's worth of near-constant wear had stretched it to what was to me an astounding twenty-one inches. I was kind of horrified; I couldn't get over thinking, what if it hadn't broken at home in my room, but rather somewhere where I could have been in danger of losing the pendant? I'm not really the kind of person who gets attached to physical things, but this necklace was a gift from Jared and it's probably more precious to me than anything else I own. The jeweler said he could repair it pretty easily but that it was so stressed it would probably break again. So I ended up buying a new chain, a heavier-gauge one, very pretty and of fourteen carat instead of ten carat white gold, that I actually like better, not to mention the fact that it's not as long or as easily tangled. I probably shouldn't have spent the money, but I love this necklace so much and I wear it almost constantly that it really is worth it to me to have on a truly nice chain so I can continue to wear it. Jared is out of the country so I haven't told him yet, but we once talked about putting it on a different chain because of its length and its fragility, so he probably won't be surprised.

No Jared for a week

Got a slow start on the day today, which I'm never pleased about, but with some care I think I can make sure I get done all the things I wanted to anyway.

I have discovered a recipe Rachael Ray calls "Chicken and Biscuit" that has become my standby lunch lately. It's kind of like a chicken pot pie you make on the stovetop, with a biscuit on top of it instead of a crust. Tasty, satisfying, and easy to make. Also, it gives me an excuse to use my lovely little ramekins. :-)

I am expecting a call from Jared soon. Today his family is going on their yearly trip to a town in Canada called Stratford for the Shakespeare festival. I'm really excited for him to get to see Shakespeare plays, but unfortunately for the time he's gone we won't be able to call each other. *Sigh* I shall be quite lonely without him. Ah, well, it's only for a week, I guess.

Time to plan and make lists and schedules. These things help me run my life.

Alice goes Midwest?

So I finally screwed up the courage to call the lady in Chicago who is evidently the person to talk to about running larps for that local gaming community. She heard from David Cave and Marc Blumberg, two great players from the second run of Alice at Intercon H, that it's a pretty half-decent game, and there might be a way for Jared and I to bring it out there to run. I'm expecting a call from her later this evening, and I'll hear about scheduling possibilities. I plan on just gathering data for now and then reporting it back to Jared.

It's really flattering to know that people enjoyed my game enough to want me to COME SOMEWHERE specifically to run it.

Alice image

Edited the Alice photo and made a kind of mockup of a title card or cover page:



I like the diffused, glowing effect. Not crazy about the picture, though. Like the hair, but there's something about the nose.

Alice picture

So I want to generate a really good photo of "Alice" to use as pretty much the only physical prop that's actually in the game. Alice, as many of you are aware, is intended to be NPCed by the lead female GM-- that is to say, until I allow anyone else to run it, me, making the corresponding photo of the same. Alice is intentionally a prop-light game, but this one was always supposed to be included. I never managed to get around to taking an Alice photo for the first or even the second run. By the third run Jared decided enough was enough and that we just needed to take a goddamn picture to give to the character who was supposed to have it. This fact inspired the following amusing conversation tonight, from two of the players that previous had the character who possessed it:

zapf: "What prop? I spent that game staring longingly at an index card."
lightgamer: "Same here."

At any rate, we snapped one in five minutes the afternoon before the game, printed it out on an index card, and handed it personally to Ryan, who was the player in question for that run. I was glad to finally have one in the game like there was supposed to be. Up until that point I had simply been relying on selectively giving out her character number to indicate whether people in the game knew her by sight. In larps, I use character numbers to indicate the recognizable "face" of the character-- that is, if you know a character's number, that means that you recognize what they look like. If you knew that Alice's character number was #XX, then you knew her face.

At any rate, however, I was not really satisfied with the picture taken. I have a tendency to never like photos taken of me-- while I like how I look in the mirror, I never feel like photos ever really represent me the way I see myself. There's always something wrong with them, like my hair looks flat or my skin looks terrible or there's something off about my mouth or nose or ears or SOMETHING. I keep telling myself it's okay if I don't look supermodel-gorgeous in the picture because Alice is not supposed to be all that pretty and it's okay if the pictures don't look exactly like me because they're not supposed to be of me but of Alice. Still, I wonder if I could do better. I would really love to just set aside time to get into costume and character and take a million pictures until I was finally satisfied. It may be that I have a very firm image in my head of what it's supposed to look like, and I really would like to achieve that. I'm just concerned that I'll be too self-conscious about not looking beautiful in the photograph that I'll portray Alice as this pretty little girl that I want to look like rather than the way the character actually looks.

Yuck

I have remarkable ability to disgust myself sometimes.

Cooking-for-myself report

I am a little over a week (in total, interrupted by the time I spent at home) into my plan to cook for myself on a regular basis. I am fairly pleased with myself so far. I have gotten into the routine of cooking something at midday, eating half of it then for lunch, and then saving the rest for dinner. I like that it's more economical than my usual habit of always going out for meals, plus I get to practice new dishes without worrying about screwing up things for a lot of hungry guests. Also, lately it seems like I haven't been really enjoying the things I've been eating, just buying whatever's convenient and feeling like I wasted the meal. Cooking for myself I am enjoying my food a lot more, which given my love and issues with food is really important to me.

Now if only I had a Snapple. :-) Snapple makes everything better.

As things go

Got a general rehearsal schedule for Macbeth. It's pretty much every eveing from Sunday to Thursday in July, plus show dates into August, but they said people won't necessarily be called for every rehearsal. My part is small enough that I'm sure my time commitment won't end up being too enormous. July 6th is the first day, and we all go to that to figure things out.

Though I don't like talking about it too much, the job search continues. Not particularly successfully yet; I've talked to a few headhunters, but nothing really has come up. I did apply to a job on the Brandeis campus at the admissions office a couple days ago. I hope thy get back to me; working at the school actually really appeals to me.

*Sigh*

Just once this week, I'd like to do something that actually comes to something.

*Sigh* So fifteen.

A note about today-- I got hit on by a high school kid on the train. I was just sitting there, listening quietly to my iPod, and one of a small pack of boys comes and sits down next to me and starts talking to me. I was polite and friendly, but I kind of wanted to be left alone, and I couldn't fathom what this kid wanted. Finally he asks for my number. I literally say to him, "How old are you, dear?" He's like, "Seventeen." There's a brief pause, then his eyes go wide. "Wait, how old are you?" "Too old for you. But thanks for the thought." That got rid of him.

Jesus Christ. Maybe I do look fifteen.

Good goth night

Had a really great evening last night. Had a goth night out with Bernie and Marissa, and not only did I enjoy going out and playing pool, the company was incredibly nice. Getting to wear a hot gothy costume and have good conversation is basically my ideal evening. I wonder if that's not something worth getting together more often. It also doesn't hurt when random strangers walk over to tell you you're gorgeous. I know, I'm pathetic. But I like it. :-)

Today, not quite so nice. Threw up twice today. Not sure why, but then, when am I ever? So I'm feeling kind of gross. If I seem unusually blase about this, it's because, having what seems to be the world's most delicate stomach, I throw up fairly easily and probably more often than most. Still, usually not more than once in a day. :-P