zachariah

This is a test. This is only a test. If this were a real journal entry you'd be far more disinterested.

Taking a three hour nap and getting up alert, focused and refreshed at midnight is NOT the right way to do things. Ugh, 7am is going to come early.

http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2865179760 (final fantasy vii, red)
http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2864946121 (final fantasy x, jecht, braska, auron)
http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2864919990 (final fantasy viii, rinoa, squall, WEDDING CAKE, SO CUUTE)
http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2864801960 (final fantasy ix, dagger)
http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2864792566 (final fantasy iv, kain)
http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2864528286 (dissidia, final fantasy, bartz, squall, zidane)
http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2862816219 (final fantasy ix, kuja)
http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2862804860 (final fantasy xiii versus, noctis, stella)
http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2862793025 (final fantasy xiii, lightning)
http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2862773854 (final fantasy vii, aerith)
http://victoryfanfare.tumblr.com/post/2862423202 (final fantasy xiii, vanille)

I'm in the middle of Crossroads of Twilight but I'm reasonably sure I'm not going to finish it before the end of the year, so my official reading count is 36 books. I really want to say I read one or two books that I subsequently forgot to add to my Goodreads list, and eventually forgot the titles of, so my count could be a little higher...but I have a tricksy memory and overactive imagination, so I may just be blowing smoke up my own bottom. We'll call it 36 just to be safe. This is pretty bloody marvelous, as it is at least four times the number of books I read last year. Sure, it falls a little flat of the 100 books I wanted to read, but now that I'm on the far side of the effort I can admit my goals were a little...lofty. Were I to stack the books up, it would reach 45 inches tall, so...not too shabby!

Next year I will of course do better. :D My goal for 2010 was essentially a yearly count. For 2011, I'm changing it to a weekly count of 100 pages. I'm hoping this will help me to avoid the monthlong patches of non-reading followed by trying to cram three books per week. I'm not sure how many books this should amount to, but Renay has an absolute smorgasbord of YA lit hanging around here, so I'll bet I can hit 50 if I try.

So the year is coming to a close and all I have for it is this lousy t-shirt. Well, and some other things too I guess. I've been at $newjob for half a year now, and I've settled down into the particular flavor of business programming SAP brings to the table. I can't claim to love it, but I can do it.

I haven't done much else this year. Stopped drawing. Wimped out on my reading challenges. Gained thirty pounds. I've crawled into myself and stopped doing anything. Bad Zachariah! No cookie for me.

I am at least making an effort to not use smilies in every sentence I type. That's going pretty well. :)

Dentist appointment Friday, chess tournament Saturday. Mama Julia's apparently visiting, I'm sure I'll see her a bit. Next week...something.

I've said before I enjoy being sick, but thinking back I'm pretty sure I've only ever said that when I was not actually sick. So now that I am, let me amend the ridiculous story I've spread by saying I enjoy being sick when it means I can take powerful, addiction-worthy painkillers and feel like God for a while. If I'm not hurting enough to take a Percocet or better, it just means I'm chewing Ibuprofen and feeling more-or-less human-ish, which is - let's face it - not generally a warm, cozy, agreeable thing to feel like. Being sick reminds me I'm constrained by this degrading flesh, and I can't imagine a single reason I would want to spend time appreciating that.

But then, I'm grumps now, so when I get better I'll probably see something shiny and dedicate a poem here to the nobility of the human condition, or something.

Some kid dropped a little bag of marijuana yesterday while he was buying a couple of cigarillos. A woman saw it on the floor while I was buying a soda and some snacks and pointed it out to the cashier, and when I picked it up to put it behind the counter, she looked at me with a shocked look and said "You work here?!" I realized she thought I had dropped it. 15 minutes later the kid came back to buy something else, but he got a really good look at the floor while he was in the store. Poor dude; we'd already handed it to the police. Apparently it was only worth $10ish, so whatever.

Only a few days until the new year. Guess I'd better start inventing some resolutions.

I finished Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. My thoughts behind the cut.

"When you can't bear something but it goes on anyway, the person who survives isn't you anymore; you've changed and become someone else, a new person, the one who did bear it after all."

( Mildly spoilery. )

Overall, A-. Would read again.

Missing two days in a row means I am a terrible person. This is something we already knew. In my defense, I drew on paper and just never bothered scanning it on one of the days, so I did get a little practice. I also cleaned/refilled my fountain pen; I'd like to practice my penmanship a little. My scrawl now is nigh unrecognizable. Normal pens, you say? Blasphemy!

Dewey's Readathon was yesterday, and I didn't take part. The first week it was on my radar it was just another "thing Nay's gonna do", then I realized "hey, this is something I can do!". I hadn't asked off of work, and didn't really have a stack of books I was burning to read, so I decided not to officially sign up this time. I did decide to try to read the massive volume compilation pt.1 of Sandman, but I ended up just finishing Twilight instead. At work. Half the book in two hours, which is pretty good for me (I'm a slow reader). I've taken books to work before, and it always ends the same way - I eat the book and neglect my work. It's not a good habit to form, but it is oh-so-satisfying.

( Image is very small, but I'll cut for consistency. )

I'm slowly getting through Kingdom Hearts. I just beat the Agrabah world, which is probably not very far into the game, but it's farther than I've ever been in-game.

( Morning coffee 'n art. )