A Variety of Updates

If you have not yet seen it, I can give no better description of Casanova than to say that it is a Shakespearean comedy. It has disguises, mistaken identities, cross-dressing, lower-class clowns, and it ends with a wedding (in the sense of characters achieving romantic resolution; that matters more than ending with an actual wedding ceremony). The plot reaches ludicrous proportions of convolutedness at various points, but that happened in Shakespeare too. Very fun, very silly, very much worth watching if that’s a genre you like.

As far as the rest of my weekend is concerned, I should probably (from a practical standpoint) not have spent nearly the entirety of it gaming. But the gaming was fun, and isn’t that what counts? (Okay, look. Once the semester sinks its teeth properly into me, I won’t have much time for gaming at all. I decided to enjoy it while I could.)

In other gaming news, the Parliament is 99% cast, and the boy and I thought up a plot the other day that had me racing to the bookcase to pull out a variety of references and then giggling madly at how wonderfully perfect the idea is. If the rest of the planning for this game goes half so well, then I daresay it might turn out a success.

In other other gaming news, my Concordia costuming proceeds apace. Today I spent a disgusting amount of time working on something that in the end doesn’t look like much at all (finishing touches on the bodice), but I’m glad to have that out of the way. Now I just need to completely redesign the skirt, and I’ll be nearly done. (We’ll pretend that redesigning isn’t such a giant hurdle to leap as it truly is.)

Writing news: the current project is revising Warrior and Witch. Once that’s bounced off to Devi, then I can turn my attention to the pile of unrevised short stories, and also to playing around with the Novel That May Finally Have A Better Title. Which I’m looking forward to. It’s hard to overcome the tendency to be more excited about whatever’s next than whatever’s now; it happens to me in academia, too. I always get excited about next semester’s classes about halfway through the current term, when my enthusiasm for the classes at hand has run out. (And I haven’t even gotten to the endless copy-edit/page proofs stage yet.)

I’ve been going through a drought on the short-story front, not of sales — well, okay, that too; any stretch of time longer than a few weeks has a tendency to start masquerading as a drought, regardless of how silly that is — but rather a drought of responses. I’m waiting to hear back from so many places. At least when I’m getting rejections, I can sling the stories back out into the ether and feel like I’m getting somthing done.

Well, the sooner I get Warrior and Witch done, the sooner I can get fresh stories into the system, which will help. So I guess I should get back to work on, well, everything.

I want a good icon for academia-related posts, since it appears I can have six icons now, instead of three. (Before, gaming and writing won out for Activities Deserving of Icons.)

Any suggestions? I generally prefer the “interesting image” route instead of the “cute text” one.

Parliament Costuming

Need clothes? Shoes? Makeup? Accessories? If you’re in search of items to help you create your costume for the Parliament of the Apocalypse, leave a comment here. If you can fill such a request, or just want to broadcast that you have neat items somebody might find useful, also leave a comment. This seems the best way I can figure out for people to network about sharing costume items, without spamming the list.

(If the above paragraph confused you completely, then you’re not in the Parliament game, and need not worry.)

Non-LJ users can comment as well; just hit “reply to this post” or “post a new comment,” type in what you need, and it will post anonymously. Just be sure to put your name in the comment, too, so we know who you are.

The New Term Begins

First day of classes today; the semester has officially begun. My schedule looks sane on paper — I’m not in class that much — but we’ll see how the workload turns out.

At least I spent the weekend properly enjoying myself. I missed the first half or so of the Week of Parties, but was there for the end. Thursday was eleven hours at the Foxpad, watching two renditions of Pride and Prejudice while working on my Concordia costume; the sad thing is, for eleven hours of work, I have very little to show for it. Mostly I just cut: first the pattern itself, then a layer of satin, then a layer of lace, then a layer of lining, then a layer of underlining . . . I was heartily sick of the bodice pattern by the fifth time I cut it out. Then martini night, as per the usual, and then a quiet Friday before the dance party that night.

I told him this before, but I’ll reiterate it: Drydem can DJ every dance party I go to from now until the end of time, so far as I’m concerned. Because the theme of the party was international, we got all manner of things your average person might not consider dance music, but it sounded a lot like my CD collection (I recognized quite a few of the tunes), and I loved it. I’m finally comfortable enough around this social circle to dance without feeling too self-conscious, which is great. Got some impromptu bellydancing lessons from DCM and Prosewitch, which excercised not only physical muscles that aren’t so much there anymore, but mental ones too; it’s been a long time since I had to try and follow another dancer’s lead like that. Expected to be grotesquely sore the next day, but it actually wasn’t that bad, probably because I had the good sense to stretch after I got started.

That was the official end of Party Week 2006, but for an encore I went to Feyangel’s BHSS game on Saturday, which went grotesquely long, but oh, the wonderful high school angst. It’s interesting, how much fun it can be to play teenaged stupidity when you have the perspective to know just how stupid it is. My character will no doubt be a vampire snack before too much longer, but that’s okay; I expect her to fill the role of “damsel in distress” on a semi-regular basis.

So that’s what I’ve been up to during the days of radio silence when I was preparing to switch my journal setup. Settling into this new home will take a little while, I think, but I’m already pretty fond of it. Bit by bit, my website is turning into what I want it to be.