So. I AM IN SPAIN. And in the bit of time I am snatching with the internet that is not research- or Facebook related, I give you:

Episode Six, aka That One I Really Meant to Post Before I Left.

And more importantly in terms of SPAIN, I give you Episode Seven, aka The First of Three Episodes with Copious Pictures of Spain.

I also give you my writing journal, tamakito, which I decided to create here, where I have no time to write really, because… Um.

Anyway! I will catch up with you all properly in under a month!

Later, mah people.

Oh, dear. It's almost time. I have two days left. TWO DAYS. I really need to get at least one more Travelogue up before I go, so that Will's reports from Spain will make sense. I also need to remember how to speak Spanish and German. JESUS CHRIST IN HEAVEN.

Also I've transferred everything to the New Laptop That Will Not Have Problems with an Intergalactic Flight, and I'm not used to this keyboard. My life is so hard.

Has it really been a week since I updated? Urgh. I shall catch up with y'all tomorrow one last time before venturing into the Great Unknown.

My baby brother is going to Real School, as of yesterday. I cannot but worry. Everything in my experience points to it being way more hassle than it's worth. Comfort me, LJ.

On the other, "life in plastic" hand: MUA-HAHAHAHAAAAAAAA, THE CIRCLE IS COMPLETE. Well, nearly. The circle is pre-ordered, rather.

Good times that, Nana and Auntie K & Co. being over.

Also, Travelogue Episode 5 is up and epic.

Rather than a picture from the episode, though, check this out. Is Blue amazing, or is she EXTRA amazing? You tell me, MINI KOENMA FIGURINE WHICH BLUE HAS SENT ME IN ALL OF HER AWESOMENESS.

Watching The Godfather, Parts I and II, with my father: MISTAKE. I'm starting to see certain similarities to The Limey, and the Family/Business stuff is starting to get under my skin. I could come out of this not actively loathing this story.

Sweet gods above, I only have like eighteen days until I leave for Spain. I am definitely in the nervous stage of things.

This, naturally, means that there are various things I need to catch up on, not least among them the Travelogue. And so, Episode 4, in which shit begins to get real.

Also I hate my icons again and need to master that Gimp thing.

We have PS over since last night, and have been having a TV/movieathon, thus my last-minuteness. Right now we're on Death Becomes Her, which promises to be even better than a Lifetime movie.

Last night we watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers on the projector at S&B's, since that's our play for next summer, and it... was an experience. I have been scarred for life, is all. I don't know what Director is thinking, but then I never do.

Ah, True Blood: Fun for the whole family to mock.

I could get off my arse and post the next episode of the Travelogue, but I could have done that for months and now I have to re-shoot part of it, so. Yay for finally having an excuse!

Someone is having a look at Ren-laptop, too, to see if he can't get it running a little better, maybe convince it to play discs again. Since it's at home and I'm here, I couldn't have used it anyway, but it's the idea of the thing. Someone else all up in my laptop. Doesn't bear thinking about. Although it's worth it in an attempt to be reasonably sure that it's not going to fizzle out on me while in Spain; it is a pretty old laptop.

Speaking of which, if it did fizzle out it might leave me utterly stranded in regards to home if we do this Skype thing. Does anyone here know about Skype? I was looking at it, and I thought we'd be able to do it for free, sans video, just computer to computer talking-times on a wifi connection... Does that sound about right?

Also: We watched Series of Unfortunate Events with Cousins J and L, and now Cousin J and I are locked in bloodthirsty battle over the books, which we are notionally reading together but actually trying to finish ahead of each other. Cousin J wanted to wait and read them first, but I was not going to wait on the movie's awesomeness that long, thus the "we'll read them together after we've been spoiled, which I already have anyway due to loving the movie and watched it many times" bargain. Which would have worked fine, except that she's a fiercely competative girl when it comes to reading, and I can but respond in kind.

So the Summerlist is pretty much defunct, because I can't stop reading the random things I find in the library.

( For example... )

The play's over! Which... was honestly exciting until I realized that we're done. But now I'll be better about LJ until I leave, at least.

Okay, dress rehearsal down. Three performances coming right up. And PS stayed over last night and will be tonight as well! I've missed her. Also, sleep. When this play is over, I am going to do that.

Two people in the play have items of clothing/accessories that say "I Can't, I Have Rehearsal", and I want one.

Dress rehearsal ran until eleven thirty last night, and probably will tonight as well. OH, WIZ.

Well, and I've no excuse for missing the fourteenth, but.

OH GOD YOU GUYS, NIGHT FROM HELL. It was hilarious.

We had rehearsal from eleven to four yesterday, and one of our nephews was up so we took him to a beach, which was awesome. Then Mimi and I watched some Doctor Who so we could return the disc, and then Cousin J decided to come home from her dad's and sleep here, so we got to messing around with her until one in the morning. It was a lovely day all around, but very tiring, is the point here. And today is Tech Sunday, so we'll be at the school and dancing and shizzle from twelve to eight or something, so not a great day to be tired.

And then last night happened.

We all bedded down in Cousin L's room, since she's gone for a few days. Mimi and I took the beds (Cousin L has these beds where one fits under the other, but both are set up seperately), and J took the floor. All fine.

At some point in the night, I think about two o'clock, the mirrored shelf-thing we gave Cousin L fell off the wall, complete with its lotion collection, onto my bed. That startled me, but was just a few minutes of sleepy groping to get all of the lotion out of the way before I flopped back down. (Although. Man. I've never had my heart beat that hard. I was very startled.)

At some other point, Gracie, the dog, went apeshit, which... she does. Again, not a big deal.

AND THEN. AND THEN. I think around three, roughly, something woke me up. I opened my eyes. And screamed, waking Mimi up, because Cousin J was sitting on the edge of my bed, smiling at me. I sat up and grabbed her arms, and asked if she was okay. She sort of shook her head. I asked if she was awake (standard procedure from Fran's old night terrors) and she sort of nodded, but was plainly not. I asked if she wanted to sleep on the bed, as that had been a point of mild contention earlier. She sort of bobbed her head around and slithered off the bed. Then she put her hands on the edge and moved like she was going to get back up - and stopped - and... didn't. But she kept moving around. OH GOD. I CAN'T TELL YOU. Especially since I was half-asleep myself, the whole thing scared me so much I couldn't go back to sleep for forever.

(Early this morning, too, Mum had to get Papa his pills since he wouldn't do it himself, as per usual, and gave him a heavy-duty pain-killer by accident instead of his intended, so now he's pissed. Ay.)

So now off to Tech Sunday!

I have subsisted for the past two days on peaches and cookies. Does knowing something isn't healthy count towards anything?

ETA: OH GOD, isn't it beautiful when one's bank cooperates with one, and it only takes one visit, one phone call, and one fax to straighten something out?

Whee, Cousin L's graduation party yesterday! That was a good time, despite my getting my period a half-hour in, very convenient I don't think. (I am blaming everyone else for it coming a week early; they all had theirs a week back and plainly my body is trying to get back in synch with the crowd.) There was good fun, good food, some theater people, lovely all around. Our Wiz performed a "Y'all Got It"-inspired marriage ceremony for Cousin L and some random boy. Since Cousin L and Mimi had recently gotten married (Mimi lent her a ring for the day) and Cousins L and J are already married (they had a ceremony and everything, and a family friend "married" them and Mum and Auntie cried), and Mimi has her status on Facebook as "married to Em" (although Em rejected her there, they did exchange rings or something), I proposed to Cousin J so as not to be left out. Naturally she accepted, over Cousin L's really rather hypocritical protestations, and I'm going to put her on my Facebook.

As you can see, marriage is a casual family affair around here. At least until it's for real, at which point it apparently becomes deadly warfare.

Anyway, Papa and Em even showed up for the party; Boppie said he was going to call the local newspaper. Good times, good times.

Ooh boy. Week of DEATH coming up. Long and finicky rehearsals, lots of work on sets to help with, lots more Promotional Events, one and a half weeks to go and still a dance that's unchoreographed... But. We did a full run-through last night and it was fun and went pretty well. Our Wiz and Gatekeeper are hilarious.

Also. I am twenty, but a few months back my sister turned sixteen, so I finally got myself in gear and took the driving permit test with her. We both scored one hundred - the difference being that she can actually drive and I cannot; I much prefer paper. So then we moved out to Auntie's for the play, and chances to practice have been limited. AND THEN AUNTIE'S CAR BROKE DOWN, UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY. Poor Mimi.

I am not terribly into today. Yoga, Promotional Event, rehearsal with the Dance of Death until 10:15 p.m. It's all just not on. And this dance is indeed the Death one; the other two so far haven't been that bad, but now we're back to crazy jumping all over the place for the entire duration of the song, which is not short, and I can't keep the steps in order because they are many and insane. It took us two nights just to choreograph it. So maybe now that that's done we can tape someone and practice it at home again... And then we still have two more dances to go, and I know I'm in one of them. If I'm in both I just don't know.

Also, I don't know why my new fandom has to hurt me this way. All I ask from HP fanfiction is something sufficiently IC that I can suspend my disbelief long enough to read it. I am not terribly choosy, here. I'm not asking for more Shoebox, just passable things. And I know the fics have to be out there. I don't know why all I can find are ones that list every single petty, cruel thing Severus Snape has ever done and then expect me to believe that it was all for great justice (making fun of a student's teeth=PREPARING HER FOR THE HARSHNESS OF THE WORLD, trufax).

Randomly: I think my attitude towards children is evening out. I still don't ever want one, partially because I would still be a spectacularly bad mother, but. My aunt's friend has two adorable ones, and three times now we've hung out with them. I've spent the entire time playing (read: wrestling, read: allowing myself to be pummelled) with them all three, and it was fairly hardcore awesome. Yesterday we were at the Pond, and as they'd assured themselves that I would not break, there was a great deal of hair-pulling and kicking. These kids are vicious, man, I love it. So at least I'm not on default: ignore the little brats any longer.

This is good because it's cut back significantly on the times I see an infant and feel a strange but powerful urge to kidnap it. That has to be the single weirdest way ever for some malformed offspring of a maternal instinct to manifest.

Anyway, after the kids left, we went boating on the Pond at night, and that made me happy. The moon was out and all reflected on the water and everything.

Five-hour rehearsal. Five. Hours. And still, none of the dances for the second act are even started. On the bright side, the overture and "Emerald City" dances aren't too terrible.

On the even brighter side, we went to little fund-raising concert tonight, and it's fun to know the people up there, and even more fun when they rock out "Agony" and "Lily's Eyes" and "My New Philosophy". And for the record? Going to a fund-raising concert: a small donation of indeterminate amount. Gaining a gnawing fixation on somehow getting a girl you barely know to sing Lestat's part in "Embrace It": priceless.


I really need to do a book post next time I have the computer for any length of time.