The Moonlit Graveyard

Happy New Year!

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 20:01:05 GMT

The start of a new decade - that just seems good, somehow.

I have one resolution for this year, and that's to draw more. I really hate the fact that I opened a deviantArt account over a year ago, and I only have five "deviations" to show for it. That's just not right. So my goal is to make sure that I spend time drawing at least once a week.

Hope everyone has a wonderful 2010!

The last New Year's Eve of this decade

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:51:25 GMT

Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I made a pretty ambiguous resolution for 2009, which I did manage to fulfill (at least partly). And yes, I have one to make for 2010. I'll post it tomorrow!

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Nay.

Did anyone close to you die?
Not people, but I went through the two most traumatic pet deaths of my entire life this year - that of my parents' dog Jack and our ferret Murray. Life was horribly cruel to both of them, and they will be forever missed.

What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
A finished novel.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Buying a house!

What was your biggest failure?
Not finishing my novel.

What were the best things you bought?

Our HOUSE!

The miniature Black Pearl

Rosemary, Tiger Lily, and Ethel May - our new rats

What were your best discoveries?

Watchmen

The Real Ghostbusters (rediscovered)

The Tower of Terror

RiffTrax

Charlie the Unicorn

What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Getting a house. ;)

What song will always remind you of 2009?
Long answer here:

The first three months of 2009 will always be fused together with both "Ain't This The Life" and "Helpless" by Oingo Boingo. I got obsessed with these two songs at that time, and I used to listen to them over and over again as I drove to UCLA on Wednesday nights for my mythology class.

The main theme for the John Adams miniseries. It's a really inspiring piece of music with a particularly haunting violin solo. I think it will always remind me of early summer nights spent in the backyard, sitting by our firepit and roasting marshmallows.

"The Trail We Blaze" from The Road to El Dorado...that one's attached to the dead of summer.

And "The Guitar" by They Might Be Giants will always bring to mind the week of Christmas.

What do you wish you'd done more of?
Drawing

What do you wish you'd done less of?
Mindless internet surfing

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 30 this year. Doug and I went to the La Brea Tar Pits (which used to be my home away from home when I was a kid), and later on we met my parents and Albert and Lynette for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Then we all saw Half-Blood Prince, which I must admit was disappointing, but we still had a great time.

Which celebrity did you fancy the most?
It's hard to imagine a time when the answer to this one WON'T be Danny Elfman. No matter how many times I listen to his work - both film scores and Oingo Boingo - the inspiration remains just as powerful as ever.

As for others? Gene Kelly. I've always liked him, but somehow I never recognized until this year just how amazingly good it makes me feel to watch him dance (really on a level I can't even describe)...it's like suddenly understanding the meaning of life.

What were some of your favorite moments of 2009?

Riding the Tower of Terror...3 times (in Orlando in May) and twice more (in Anaheim in October). :D

Laughing hysterically with Jessica and Doug while we played the racing game on PS2

Swimming with Doug, Lisa, Emmerson, and James on the 4th of July

Every moment spent with Nick and Jane

Roasting marshmallows in the backyard

Going back to the La Brea Tar Pits

Seeing Ryan Stiles at the market

Seeing Singin' In The Rain at the cemetery

Seeing Pee-Wee's Big Adventure at the cemetery

The mock witch trial, the pirate tour, and eating in taverns in Williamsburg

Walking around on ships in Jamestown

Dining at the Blue Bayou at Disneyland

Bringing our new rats home

Watching the MST3K-ified version of Twilight (bless those MST3K boys - only they could make Twilight bearable)

Each and every time I walked along the beach

What was the best book you read?
I read lotsa great books this year. My favorites were Watchmen (I know it's a graphic novel, but it was still one of the best-written stories I've ever read), The Thief of Always, The Illustrated Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (reread), and Great Expectations (which fulfilled #22 on my list of 101 things - reading another Dickens novel).

What was your favorite film of the year?
Out of everything I saw, I'd have to say that my two favorite films of the year were Star Trek and Up. I was hugely impressed by both of those. Oh, and I also liked Pirate Radio quite a bit.

What did you want and get?
Our house!

What did you want and not get?
A career as a novelist - though it's entirely my own fault. Must remedy this...

What places did you visit in 2009?

Orlando, Florida

Williamsburg and Jamestown, Virginia

How did you spend Christmas?
Doug and I spent Christmas morning with my parents, as usual, and then we headed over to his parents' at midday. We came back to my parents' in the evening and the four of us had dinner, played carols on the piano (my dad and I, at any rate), then played Yahtzee (and I got THREE YAHTZEES - woo!) It was a nice little Christmas, despite being fairly quiet this year.

How much did you change from this time last year until now?
I think about death far more often (and what's sad is that I've ALWAYS thought about death). Not just my own, but the eventual deaths of people that I love. I know, not very cheerful. But it's true. But I also think I'm a stronger person now than I was a year ago. Still got a long way to go, though...

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:
Value every moment you possibly can with the people you love. You never know how long it will last.

Visions of curly Qs

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:52:50 GMT

It was a quiet Christmas this year...no big party at my parents' due to the fact that practically everyone was out of town. But we all had a lovely time nevertheless, and I got some amazing presents...one in particular that, ah, managed to shine even above all the other wonderful things...

My parents got me the DELUXE version of "The Art of Tim Burton". The version that's actually signed by Tim, and which came with a lithograph ALSO signed by Tim.

Duuuuuuuude.

This was the present my mom kept going on about last week...the one she said I was going to be thrilled by. I have to say she wasn't lying. My constant stammering of "thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou" really didn't feel like enough.

They were smart to make sure it was the last present I opened, because I don't think I glanced up from that book for about an hour once it was out of the box. I think it had to be forcibly removed from my hands at one point.

The cover with the slipcase

The inside cover

The lithograph

:D

Dangerous Wands

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:47:12 GMT

This is brilliant:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Shucks

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:27:20 GMT

So my mom's on the phone with me, telling me that she got me a FABULOUS present for Christmas...something I'm completely not expecting, and apparently I'm going to be thrilled.

Then she said, "Don't get too excited, though - it's not Danny Elfman wrapped up in a bow."

Which is EXACTLY where my mind had gone.

XD

Brilliant!

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:55:03 GMT

Jane got her Visa! This means that she and Nick (who already has a Green Card) could actually be moving to LA in the near future!

Very good tidings for this Christmas season.

Oh, and Jane increased my love for her even more so by writing this in her most recent e-mail to me:

"I attempted to read Twilight, but lost the will to live a couple of chapters in."

This week, Doug and I actually rented the movie, but not to worry, we watched it with the RiffTrax commentary done by the MST3K boys. (You couldn't pay me enough to watch it straight.)

So. Damned. Funny.

Here's a delightful clip:

Rosemary and Tiger Lily

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 04:32:06 GMT

I managed to get this picture of our rats...well, two of them, at any rate. Ethel May is somehow very elusive when it comes to the camera.

I think they're slowly realizing they came to a good place. :)

New companions

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:51:24 GMT

I guess I haven't posted in awhile...this autumn has really been emotionally draining. But I think things are getting better. I actually woke up happy this morning. I was happier still when my Jeeves alarm clock went off, and Jeeves's speech was slurred as he talked about how the brandy bottle had mysteriously gone from full to empty over the course of the night. Jeeves, of course, had NO idea how this anomaly had occurred. (Tsk, tsk, Jeeves, and SO very unlike you!)

Last night, Doug and I bought three little rats (about 6-7 weeks old and all girls). We'd had pet rats years ago and we adored them - they were great pets. We won't be able to get a dog until next spring at the earliest (we have to get gates for either side of the house and do a ton of yard work first)...but we didn't want to wait that long before having pets in the house again. It makes such a difference.

They have exactly two modes right now: spastic and conked out. Once they really get adjusted (they've already discovered that their new, deluxe cage is infinitely more kickass than that stuffy glass enclosure at Petco), I'll take pictures.

Oh, and yes, I've changed my LJ theme YET AGAIN. This time, though, I expect I'll stick with it for a good long while. It really seems to fit my whole theme better than anything I've had before. And it's morbidly cute. Or cutely morbid. Whichever you like. :)

What rhymes with purple?

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:08:04 GMT

My page-a-day "Useless Information" calendar informed me today that there are no words in the English language that rhyme with purple.

Stephen Fry respectfully disagrees.

Pseudo NaNoWriMo

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:52:04 GMT

A bit about Halloween first: our house was dressed for the occasion with tombstones, skeletons, bats, ravens, and six jack-o-lanterns. We got at least 25 groups of trick-or-treaters. I missed most of them, alas, as I was out trick-or-treating myself (or at least observing) with little Katie and Kenneth.

Oh, and the art print of the Haunted Mansion that I ordered at Disneyland just happened to be delivered on Halloween. How brilliant is that?

There's something so invigorating about Halloween. It was over much too fast. And may I just shout BLASPHEMY at the stores which tossed out their Halloween decorations a week before the 31st, only to replace them with CHRISTMAS decorations? WHAT. THE. HELL?

Okay. Onto the pseudo NaNoWriMo:

I'm not technically participating in NaNoWriMo, since to do so would mean starting a new novel from scratch (the shiver that just went through me is beyond description). But I decided to get into the spirit of the thing, and my goal is to have my 2nd draft completed by the end of November. This means fully fleshing out all those scenes that are lacking beginnings or endings (or middles). They don't have to be pretty...they just have to be completed.

I just finished two of them...and working on these two scenes in particular kind of made me want to claw my own eyes out. I can only hope that the rest will be slightly better...

Because I needs me some Danny right about now

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:56:24 GMT

Murray

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:23:19 GMT

Murray
9/7/03 - 10/22/09

Our little pirate

Forever missed

Devilishly good fun

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:20:41 GMT

Despite the mood icon, I'm going to completely deny that I'm getting sick. Or at least deny that it's anything more than a weird, 24-hour thing that will be completely gone tomorrow morning. Yes. Sounds good. Moving on.

Went to Disneyland on Friday! Lisa was brilliant enough to buy two park-hoppers for Doug and me as an early Christmas present. I seriously can't ever go without a park-hopper anymore, now that I know the awesomeness that is the Tower of Terror. (We rode it twice. XD) Both parks were decked out for Halloween - Jack Skellington has, of course, taken over the Haunted Mansion now that it's October, and a ghostly, ghoulish entity got into Space Mountain (currently called Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy). It was bloody fantastic.

For the first time EVER (because this time around I knew to make reservations weeks in advance), we dined at the Blue Bayou...the restaurant that's inside Pirates, right along the "bayou" where the ride begins. I've wanted to eat at that restaurant since I was 4 years old. I seriously don't know what's taken me so long. Nothing quite like having dinner while crickets chirp, fireflies dance, and people drift by in their boats (on their way towards a talking skull and a waterfall).

We left the restaurant just in time for the Halloween fireworks, and even though they were spectacular, I have to say it was seeing Zero fly over the castle that really made my entire night.

:)

Oh my...

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:13:12 GMT

Please...please...please let this be as good as it looks...

Williamsburg & Jamestown

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:14:39 GMT

Kinda wish I were still in Williamsburg right now...ghost and pirate tours and mock witch trials and eating in 18th century taverns are infinitely preferable to processing paperwork. Blah.

It really was an amazing trip - we couldn't have asked for better weather, and we were able to walk wherever we went, save for the one day we took a shuttle to Jamestown.

I'd love to go back.

The main street in Williamsburg

A guard walking past the Magazine

The Governor's Palace

Benedict Arnold (boo)

A ship recreation in Jamestown

Three little boys on that same ship (they were so cute, I had to take their picture)

Brief but amusing

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:54:24 GMT

Early this morning (I'm guessing), I dreamt that I heard my Jeeves alarm clock go off. When I opened my eyes (still within the dream), I saw that it was not the alarm clock, but rather Jeeves himself who had come into the bedroom to wake me. This part I didn't question...it was too awesome to question. But oddly, he was wearing a white powdered wig and he had lipstick smeared across his lips. All I could think was, "Wait, just whom was Jeeves kissing this morning? And why wasn't it me?"

By the way, yes, I am back from Virginia. It was a lovely trip. I'll post about it later!

Off to Williamsburg

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 04:13:26 GMT

Last night, Doug and I went to see "An Evening Without Monty Python"...a play Eric Idle put together featuring bits of Python sketches strung together and starring 5 non-Pythons (who were all excellent, might I add). Hank Azaria was supposed to be in the cast but apparently he backed out at the last minute due to some annoying film obligation (dammit). But the cast (who included Jane Leeves and James Piddock) really were great. AND, right before the show started, Eric Idle walked through the small and very crowded lobby. I swear I was the only one who noticed...no one else even glanced in his direction. (I have to admit, I was responsible for a very small *squee!* as he walked past us.) :D

Tomorrow I'm flying to Williamsburg with Doug and my mom. I've been there once, back when I was in the 6th grade (our whole class was taken on a week-long trip). I loved it, and I've always wanted to go back. I'll be interested to see if it's as I remembered it, 19 years ago...

Be back in a week!

Avast there!

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:03:40 GMT

Why, on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, does the Writer's Block question have nothin' ta do with pirates, hmmmm? Lily-livered lubbers...

Ah well. It's off I be ta do a bit o' plunderin'. Enjoy the day, mateys, for it only comes but once a year!

Shiny silver dollar on either eye

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:18:13 GMT

There's something immensely gratifying and even life-affirming (yes, I'm aware of the irony) about going into Pier 1 to check out their new Halloween stuff, and hearing Dead Man's Party playing on the overhead speakers the moment you walk through the door.

Ahhhhh.

I wonder why little things like this often make me realize how good it feels to be alive.

Busy weekend

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:03:26 GMT

I'll run through it backwards...

Today is Murray's birthday - he's 6. And yes, he's still with us. We're not sure how he's managed to hold on for this long, but we're happy for it. :)

There was also a birthday party for James today - he turned 7 on Saturday. I spent the latter half of the party sitting on the floor with him and Emmerson, putting together his brand new Lego set of the base on Hoth. (I got to put a tauntaun together.)

Most of Sunday was spent visiting Doug's aunt and uncle down in Huntington Beach. We also got to meet my parents' new puppy yesterday, who is like the sweetest ball of fluff you've ever seen...

On Saturday we went to the Hollywood Bowl to see John Williams...always awesome. The whole first set was all Harry Potter tunes, and Lynn Redgrave was there to present each one. Williams mixed it up for the second half, playing pieces of his own scores as well as pieces of other scores (the lead violinist played "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca, which was stunningly beautiful)...and he wrapped it up with 4 encores. I swear the audience would cheer for encores all night if Williams didn't finally do what Doug and I call the "sleepy time" pantomime, where he rests his head sideways on his hands. (He does this at the end of each performance, and it makes us laugh every time.)

I think, though, that what happened on Friday afternoon won for the most interesting experience of the weekend. I went back to the beach, and the tide was out very far, so the water barely came up to my waist even after I'd walked out quite a ways. I noticed a shadow at one point, and I looked down to see a very small shark (probably only about 2 feet long) curving right around my legs before swimming out to sea. I don't know what kind it was, but it looked very much like this, except it had a sort of speckled blue and grey hue.

It was really cool. I'd love to say I was totally calm about it, but I've gotta admit I gasped like an idiot and jumped about a foot to the side. Still glad I got to see it though. :)

And here's a picture of a seagull who stood next to me for quite awhile on top of an abandoned sand castle...

Oh oh, one more thing. I completed #32 on the list of 101...creating a new Top 10 for my site. Okay, this is possibly the cheatiest (yes, I did just say "cheatiest") way I've ever completed a goal, because first of all, it's a Top 7, and second of all, it's just 7 Great QI Moments. So all I did was copy and paste YouTube code. But it's there, and it's new, so YAY!

Another quote from Stephen Fry...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:44:24 GMT

...and one that all writers (published or not) will appreciate:

"I began writing seriously when I was about thirteen. Out streamed poetry, stories and novels, the latter of which were always aborted early, usually half way through the second chapter. It took my friend Douglas Adams to encourage me to go further and he did this by pointing out that the reason I had never managed to finish a novel was that I had never properly understood how difficult, how ragingly and absurdly difficult, it is to do. “It is almost impossibly hard,” he told me. It is supposed to be. But once you truly understand how difficult it is,” he added, with signature paradoxicality, “it all becomes a lot easier.” It was many years later that Clive James quoted to me Thomas Mann’s superb crystallisation of this “A writer,” said Mann, “is a person for whom writing is more difficult than for other people.” How liberating that definition is. If any of you out there have ever been put off writing it might well be because you found it so insanely hard and therefore, like me, gave up and abandoned your masterworks early, regretfully assuming that you weren’t cut from the right cloth, that it must come more easily to true, natural-born writers. Perhaps you can start again now, in the knowledge that since the whole experience was so grindingly horrible you might be the real thing after all."

Deep in the Caribbean

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:10:08 GMT

Oh, how I wish sylvera were around right now...I think she's the only one who might appreciate this like I do. It's a flash movie (done by a budding German animator) that pretty much sums up the entire plot of the first Monkey Island.

I think I've watched it 20 times, and it never stops being funny. The guy did a brilliant job, especially considering that he doesn't speak English fluently.

And it amuses me no end to hear Guybrush talk in a campy German accent...

Riding the waves

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:26:12 GMT

I went swimming in the ocean yesterday...it was the first time in a long time that I'd gone in far enough to really ride the waves. It's such a unique, amazing feeling...it's like this sense that you've arrived home. I can't explain it. Even now, all I want to do is go back.

And then last night, I found this quote by Stephen Fry (actually, this is only a part of it - I listened to the whole thing on YouTube)...

"...we are captains of our soul and masters of our destiny, and we contain any divine fire that there is, divine fire that is fine and great. I mean it's perfectly obvious that if there were ever a God, he has lost all possible taste. You've only got to look - forget the aggression and unpleasantness of the radical right or the Islamic hordes to the East - the sheer lack of intelligence and insight and ability to express themselves and to enthuse others of the priesthood and the clerisy here, in this country, and indeed in Europe. God once had Bach and Michelangelo on his side, he had Mozart, and now who does he have? People with ginger whiskers and tinted spectacles who reduce the glories of theology to a kind of sharing, you know? That's what religion has become, a feeble and anemic nonsense, because we understood that the fire was within us, it was not in some idol on an altar, whether it was a gold cross or whether it was a Buddha or anything else - that we have it."

First of all, it's devastating that there aren't more people like him in the world.

Second, listening to this was really the perfect way to end my day...it just seemed to fuse everything together.

Writer's Block: It Is What It Is

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:19:10 GMT

What oft-repeated quote or common cliché do you find the most annoying when someone says it to you?

View 540 Answers

"I could care less."

Really? You "could" care less? How much less could you care?

Because I could use a laugh today...

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:40:37 GMT

...and maybe someone else needs a laugh too...