So, I was in Italy, finale

I always start out these travelogues so enthusiastic and then peter out toward the end. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say I was at a club meeting a few weeks after school started, and when asked what I'd done over the summer, I completely forgot about going to Italy until someone else mentioned travelling.

Memory like a sieve, this one.

Sad, given that this last entry contains the highlights of the trip.

More text and many images after the cut.

So I was in Italy, part three

Fixit notes on last couple entries: It's 'Castel Maggiore', with a 't', and the cat's name is spelt Emilia, not Amelia. Also, the last few entries are being updated with pictures where appropriate. I'll apply cuts in places so as to avoid loading issues.

Anywhoodles. I need to hurry it up so I can get to posting Bunraku fics, so let's see if I can get the rest of this in one go, and how obnoxiously long this entry gets as a result.

Obnoxiously long entry and a few pictures after the cut.

So, I'm moving soon, but...

It's starting to get a little nerve-wracking, realizing how little time I have left to finish things up at home here. I've only got one more day of work left, then another week before I have to have my bus tickets bought, and then two weeks and it's off into the wild blue yonder.

What makes it worse is that the validation deadlines at my school are coming up hard, and I haven't heard anything about my housing in about a month. Last I heard it was 'under review'.

Augh.

Edit: And just a few hours after posting this I hear that it's finally gone through. Turns out I'll have somewhere to stay, after all!

Om Nom Turkey Heart

Happy Thanksgiving, American readers! And a merry Thursday the 22nd to the rest of yas.

I swear, I have been working on my third Italy entry, despite being now over a month behind on it. Unfortunately, I have a longstanding relationship with losing focus and wandering away from projects, particularly when I have easy internet access and oh-so-distracting review shows (that reminds me, I still haven't gotten to this week's At4W...)

Oh, and fanfiction, too. I inflicted Bunraku on the boy not too long ago and remembered how fun Yoshi/Drifter is, so expect some Bunraku slash soon involving various levels of fluff and porn.

But there will be a conclusion to the Italian portion of the Incredibly Mundane Adventures of Cryptix! Eventually!

Anyhow, I need to go fix some candied sweet potatoes, so it's a short entry for now, I'm afraid.

Edited: Also, I'm cleaning up my tags a bit. 'News' and 'OOC' are going away for all but the oldest entries, and instead becoming 'Journal', because otherwise is rather silly.

So I'm in Italy, part deux

Deux is french, not italian, but 'part due' (doo-ay) just reads funny.

I intended to add more to my last entry, since I posted on Tuesday and had written all but a few words on Sunday, but by the time we'd hit the internet café I was tired and not thinking too clearly. I chalked it up to jet lag and possibly having spent part of the morning driving up in the mountains, so when we got back to the apartment I took a nap before dinner.

I woke up feeling a little off, a bit dizzy, little nauseous, and the feeling slowly worsened, until I was quite sure that no, that wasn't hunger pangs (my stomach is very, very annoying in that it likes to flash the 'SICK' flag when actually I'm just hungry), I was actually feeling sick. Mom promptly put on water for tea and then went to get me soup, which she stayed and made for me while Alex went out for dinner.

I felt better after curling up on the couch while the soup cooked, ate a couple bowls, and then headed off to bed. By morning I felt quite fine.

Still, suppose I should take this opportunity to talk a bit more about Italy. Cutting this entry for length, but no pictures, as Lucio doesn't want pictures of the baby on Facebook and I assume that extends to blogs as well. I don't blame him.

So I'm in Italy

So much for finishing talking about Montana before my next trip. The highlights of the last portion can be summarized as follows: Had breakfast at Perkins. Hung out in hotel lobby between checkout and bus trip watching To Boldly Flee and other net shows -- brief interruption when a random friendly dog ran into the lobby and was ushered back out. Trouble with the bus, stopped at Miles City and we played Musical Buses for a bit so our bus could take the short route back and get fixed up. Discovered most comfortable sleeping position was laying with front to back of seats, leaving me vulnerable to sudden brakes and whatnot, but whatevs. Brief but rather intense and unpleasant dream involving discovering that I had some kind of neurological condition. Adorable young les couple across the aisle from me. Got home, mobbed by cats, crashed for several hours.

Okay, that's not much of a summary, few too many extraneous details. Oh well. I thought they were important.

Anyway, onto more immediate subjects. (After the cut, since there are pictures now.)

So I went to Montana: Part Hat

I had a dream yesterday that I ran into my friend Zach at something resembling a Con and was trying to convince him to watch some of the reviewers I follow. I chose what I think was an NC episode at random to convince him, only it turned out to be a boring episode (what is this blasphemy, subconscious?), so instead I looked for one that I knew was good: the Alone in the Dark triple-crossover review. Which then turned out to have been removed from all three sites for some unspecified copyright reasons.

That was a very distressing dream, and as soon as I woke up I tweeted Linkara about it. I then felt like a huge dork for doing so, but eh, I'm used to feeling like a dork in some measure.

Speaking of which, I may have figured out a new opening for the first chapter of MASQ, which also incorporates the dream imagery I wanted to use but couldn't work in before. This means nothing to anyone else, I realize, but it's a good thing for me and I felt like mentioning it, and it's my blog. So there.

Also, Gmail needs to get over its goddamn failed scripts, because it keeps dragging my browser to a standstill for ten minutes just to finally tell me that HEY A THING'S NOT WORKING. Well then STOP TRYING TO RUN IT. GODDAMNIT GMAIL YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS INCOMPETENT.

Grr. Anyway. More Montana stuff under the cut, though I doubt anyone cares anymore.

So I went to Montana: Part Three

I should probably finish talking about my last trip before I leave for my next one on Friday. Going to Italy to meet up with my mom and her husband and meet my new step-nephew. I'm sure I'll have plenty of long rambling stories from those two weeks.

Also I finally drew something new. I'll finish working the kinks out and then post it up here and maybe on dA, since I've a few things to say about it.

One last thing, because I found it funny: "This debate is mostly two men agreeing with each other angrily" -- Todd in the Shadows. This sort of thing makes me glad I joined Twitter.

Anyway, more mundane adventures in Montana after the cut.

So I went to Montana: Part Two

Got up in reasonable time today, so I spent the morning cleaning and unearthing stuff, although I never did get around to giving Molly a bath. Not that I'm looking forward to attempting to bathe a fully clawed adult cat.

Among other things I unearthed the cover for the litterbox and moved the litterbox to an area that was more convenient and less of a visual or olfactory offense. The kittens haven't taken to the move just yet. Relatedly, kitten poop is distressingly pungent and very annoying to get out of carpet, and even more annoying to get off power cords and ethernet cables. >[

Anyway. Continuing the incredibly mundane adventures of Cryptix after the cut.

So I went to Montana

Last Wednesday, shortly after my 'so I should post more' entry, I boarded a Greyhound to go to Billings, Montana. I returned last Sunday. S'about time I whip up a blog post on the subject.

Since, as noted in my last post, this was a new experience for me in several regards, I kept a running log of events and initial impressions, which I hoped should refresh my memory later when I got around to... well, this.

I had a much more eloquent opening planned out in my head earlier. Bah.

In any case, long-winded story time after the cut.

Posting to post

Brief update.

Yesterday I went to Amsterdam Bar to catch a Bad September show. The opening band, Clocks and Clouds, was awesome -- instrumental, just three members, with a cello, violin, and drum set. Kind of awesome watching the cellist and violinist rock out while they played.

The second band was My God, The River, and... I don't know why I expected a band whose premise was 'the river is coming for us all' to be more upbeat, but I did. They turned out pretty dreary, with some weird tonal whiplash in some of their songs, and some dissonance between the instruments. Some seemed to enjoy it, but not to my tastes.

Bad September was awesome as expected. I'll be working on Sunday, their next scheduled show, but I'm recommending my friends in that direction.

Also I made a Twitter account. Once Case starts up again I'll post about updates there, and I might post updates when I post stories and whatnot in here, and otherwise I'm mostly using it to more easily stalk certain internet celebrities.

Fandom Attack!

Remember how I said the contender for my Fandom Drift was Dark City? Yeah, it's already moved on. It was Deadwood, but we just finished the second season of that, so not anymore. Now? Now it's Big Wolf on Campus. This show is such adorable crack, I swear.

I really want to write a Cursed/BWOC crossover. We'll have to see how this goes.

Dammit, too many ideas, too little writing ability... I wish I had time to read something good right now. My writing always sucks when I can't read. D:

Checking In

So, it's not like anyone really reads this, but I feel like posting something. In essence, I feel like talking to myself. I should probably not be doing this in the middle of my newspaper meeting, but they're talking about budgets and I don't really have anything to weigh in with.

Random shit, ho!

I'm working on the third installment of Triangle, as well as a coda, but my connection to the characters started slipping and I haven't had time to properly re-watch the movie. I'll try to get it out as soon as I can, but I'd rather take more time than turn out a shoddy story. Then again, I have a tendency to turn out nothing at all for months (years?) at a time due to writer's block and/or fandom drift... I'll try to finish this one before I let the next fandom encroach on my time.

Unfortunately, there is already a contender for the next fandom, that being Dark City. Yet another obscure movie, but hey, at least this one has a discernible fanbase.

My Wednesday gaming group -- the folk that were doing the World of Darkness game where I was John -- has started playing an Inception game using the Mutants and Masterminds system. If I have the time and inclination, I might start work on scripting and/or drawing up a comic based loosely on our exploits. The first adventure, at least, had a bit more coherence and a more realistic timeline than the WoD stuff did, so it might not fry my brain quite as quickly.

I really wish I could find our copy of Jasc PSP so I could reinstall it. Then I could start posting art again. At the moment, the lack of decent graphic editing software is making me sad. D:

Also, if at some point in the future I come into some free time that I can spend at home, I may start running my text adventure in here. Or I may create another blog to run it. This assumes I'll have a readership by that point, but hey, if all else fails I can poke people I know.