Quick catch-up: September

Currently playing: Your Ex Lover Is Dead from the album “Set Yourself on Fire” by Stars

Wow, so I haven’t updated this thing in a while. This school year has turned out to be majorly busy for me; I’m really looking forward to second semester when I’ll only be taking twelve credits and six of those will be thesis related.

Speaking of thesis, that’s really what’s keeping me trapped in the library and busy as all get out. I somehow was able to convince the Sociology Department that it would be a good idea for them to let me write a novel instead of doing the standard research-based thesis thing. Thing is, novels are a ridiculous amount of work, I’ve never written a novel before, and it has to tie into sociological stuff. Grah! So I’ve been working on it like a fiend. Luckily, I was able to convince my Creative Writing prof to let me turn in segments of novel instead of the short stories that are due for the rest of the class. Definitely caught a break there.

Sadly, I’ve had to step down as IMG’s editor-in-chief, though. There’s just far too much going on for me to be able to handle editing a bunch of articles as well.

I’m still working for Valley Residential Services, too, which is interesting. On the one hand, I have to stay up for eleven hours every weekend. On the other, it’s prime time to do homework or other work. So it really isn’t that bad. Plus I’m getting a modest paycheck, which is certainly nothing I’m going to argue with.

Other than the freaking novel (that I’m currently procrastinating on by writing this post, actually) I don’t have much else going down. Dance is back to the old choreographer, so it’s a lot slower and more weird. Percussion Ensemble is utterly rocking despite the fact that there’s very few percussionists in it.

And I really should be working on chapter one. It’s due tomorrow, and I think that I’m probably close to done with it, but I have no idea how long it’s actually going to end up being. Plus I’m getting the feeling that it sucks utterly, which is only heightened by the fact that I wasn’t expecting anyone except the professor to read it, but suddenly we’re doing workshops because the prof was so impressed by our journals that we turned in. Damn it. What I’ve got is total first draft nastiness, that I’ve been working on at the same time as I really started understanding what the world was all about, so it’s totally blech.

On the plus side, working on this thesis/novel/Frankenstein monster has given me the chance to find some more really kick-arse software. I just recently discovered a program called VoodooPad which is basically just a wiki for your computer (not as in a bunch of people edit it, but as in you create links out of words and so topics kind of flow together tangentially). It’s surprising how such a simple sounding thing can really help with brainstorming and just getting thoughts together. I also got a chance to download the beta version of the upcoming Avenir 2.3, which is sweet. I’ve had a chance to give the software designer a lot of feedback, thanks to the fact that I’m using the program just about daily. I dearly love Avenir.

And I think that’s probably all I should put down here, because this entry is hellishly long already, I’ve got a chapter needing finishing, and I’m running out of life to talk about (at least in general; there’s of course all sorts of specifics that I’ve had to avoid thanks to having forgotten to update this silly blog for a month).

Sadly, it’s not looking like I’m going to be able to keep on top of Beckism.com, which includes Dirt Man. I’m having a tough enough time with the Idol Bat. This officially sucks; I was hoping at the end of the summer that I’d be able to keep Dirt Man up to date, as well as get the Commentary turned into a regular thing. Ah well. Maybe these things will happen once I graduate. That would be nice.

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