aww kitty

I'm up late, writing-- mostly procrastinating, but at least I'm sitting and doing it, and I've finally gone through all my notes so I'm not writing blind as I have been for so long.

But Chita decided to be helpful. She's been very clingy this week. She hadn't sat on my lap in weeks, months even. Tonight she was happily ensconced on Z's lap when he went to bed. I had been sitting in bed writing, but wasn't ready to sleep, so I relocated to the living room. Chita came to find me within the first fifteen minutes, and has been lying half-on me with her paws in the air for about an hour and a half now.
Aww kitty.

hmph

Z is sitting at the kitchen table at his computer, looking bored. I walk through the kitchen carrying water to the fish tank, enroute from starting another load of laundry. "'Sup," he says.
"Refilling the fish tank," I answer.
"I got nothin' to do this morning," he says. "Projects lined up, but waiting for client approvals."
"Hey," I say, brightening. "You could help me hang curtain rods!"
"What is it with you?" he asks. "You're just like my mom! 'Mom, I'm bored!' 'Oh? Clean your room then!'"
"Seems sensible to me," I said. "If you're bored, I always have plenty to do."

I like having things done around the house. I don't really like doing them, but somebody has to do them.

Of course, by 'having things done'... If he gets these curtain rods up, then I had probably better finish the curtains I started making, um, over a year ago. Yeah, that'd be nice.
I'm better at sewing now, though. Wasn't that the point of learning to sew?
OH yeah. I'd forgotten. I spent like $200 on fabric. I was making drapes.
... I should probably find out where I put all that fabric.

(no subject)

OK, so Z can't hang a curtain rod and I don't know how either. I'd hoped that since he has more aptitude than I do in these sorts of things, that perhaps he'd have a shot. But at this point, he mastered the use of the drill, only to discover that there was a stud there instead of the hollow wall, and so he refuses to work anymore.

How do you hang up a curtain rod in a plaster wall with a stud behind it?
I do not know and Z refuses to try anything else.


At this point, I do not know how anyone has curtains ever.

I just figured that since I'm spending hours making the curtains, and he's not doing any housework or gardening or maintenance work at all, and since he's got a lull in projects after having two weeks off already, maybe he could be given a small task. I have four thousand other things to do and know for a fact that I get along with power tools about as well as water catches fire, and have the scars to prove it.

aww man, kitty

Isn't she cute?
What you can only just barely see is that she is sleeping, of all the places on the wide open expanse of this couch that no one is sitting on, on my embroidery hoop with embroidery in progress.

Thank you, Chita. You're exceptionally adorable and have a talent for being in the wrong place.

Today she was mewing at Z, and rubbing against his legs. He bent down to pet her. She climbed up his leg to get into his lap, and then climbed up his torso to get to his chest, and then climbed across his back to lie there in great content, despite the fact that through this entire process he was exclaiming in pain and trying to detach her.

I'm not entirely sure either of us is precisely happy with how clingy she's getting now that the weather's turning cold. But I no longer think she's ill. She's just a pill.

flashback to 1999

Enroute to Hamilton for the roller derby game the night before I left for Pennsic, I rode with a teammate and her boyfriend from Rochester. This teammate often makes fun of herself because she loves goth and electronica and "oonce oonce" music.
When I got in the car some sort of trip-hoppy thing was playing, some chick wailing and some funky shuffle-beat electronic drum thing going on. To my astonishment, I knew the song.
Someone
Stop my hands from shaking
Iron in my spine's conducting lightning
Raging anger,
Yeah, you've never been truly mine,
But if you were, yes, if you were, I wouldn't want you anyway.

"Who is this?" I asked, completely disoriented by it.
"Splashdown," said the boyfriend.
Now, a tiny half-second of background: I am not a scenester. I've been to, like, four concerts, ever.
"Oh my God," I said, "I've seen them live."
I had a roommate who was really really into them. And they played some show, in some tiny venue, and I had totally forgotten that I ever went to it. I remember getting the stamp on my hand that meant I was... wait, was I under 21? I must've been. By the time I was 21 I wasn't speaking to that roommate anymore. She predates this Livejournal by like two years, or there would totally have been drama on here.
Holy crap.

Turns out the band broke up in 2001 after a fight with their record label. So the members put all the stuff they'd recorded up online, and fans have faithfully kept the archives online.
Splashdown got closest to national fame by having songs on the soundtracks of the movie Titan AE, Buffy, and Angel. (Remember Titan AE? Shh, I do too. It's OK.)

I just went and downloaded their whole catalog and have been listening to it most of the day.

Whoa. I don't really remember being 20. I must've blocked it out. But holy crap. Splashdown.

If you like Portishead or Rasputina or anything in between, you'll probably like them. Good atmospheric vaguely synthy stuff, a bit spacey and trippy and so on.

I dunno which of their songs is best, but I know it's overwhelming to be presented with a band's entire recorded catalogue. The ones I remember best are these ones. Right-click and download them to listen. If you like it, the site I found with the best-organized downloads is this one.


A Charming Spell (Blueshift version-- the Redshift album version is slower and heavier; other songs are available in multiple versions but there aren't many differences, but this one is quite different than the other version)
Ironspy
Waterbead (I especially remember my roommate explaining the lyrics of this one because it's about a dude thinking about a chick in the shower.)

If you were in college in Rochester between 1998 and 2001, you've totally heard these songs. Prepare for flashbacks.

Mostly I just remember that the lead singer was so tiny that even though she was standing on a stage with her leg up on an amp, the like fifteen-year-old kid in the front row was tall enough that his face was basically in her boobs. He spent the entire concert staring raptly into her shirt, as if he'd died and gone to heaven.


Other than that, today I got nothing done except some writing and a rather disturbing trip back through the bazillion drafts of Barbarians_Novel. I only realized today, I started working on that shit in like 2002. That's a damn long time to work on something that's still not done. But I've put an assload of work into it. And that work has paid off. Because those early drafts? Holy shit. And I thought I could write?
Ugh, someday perhaps once I feel better about it all, I'll post some of the earliest stuff for y'alls' amusement. Because damn.
It's turned out to be the novel that has taught me how to write.
I hope.