the grand abode of the grand Lady Arin

We had a ripping time. We always do, don't we, Milady? (Back me up, woman. Ack cough. Just kidding.) We watched Shakespeare in Love, which is rated R but very very good, and parts of A Room with a View, which is also good and has some scenes that are super awkward and laugh-aloud hilarious all at once. We read a lot of fanfiction. We talked boys. FOR HOURS. We took more than five hundred pictures over the course of three and a half days. And we dressed up and stuff. And there were GUNS involved. Observe. Sepia is fun. Ooh, look, windeeeeeee...

We took some in color too. Lady Arin had glitter all over her face and neck at this point, which, to my knowledge, still hasn't come out of her scalp. Oh, and I got her soaking wet too. We had the best hosefight in the history of the world. I lost, and she made me water my hair and then fling it around a lot. It was okay though, cuz it was about a bazillion degrees out thare.

I love that property. SO MUCH GREEEEEN. See the faerie path?

And lookit, I painted mah feetses. While the Lady was reading some Harry Potter fanfiction to me and I had nothing better to do. I did one of her legs too. Just cuz it was there, you know.

And I discovered this song, called The Labyrinth Waltz, by Kim Robertson, thanks to the Lady.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m17GXHGxd4Y

Doesn't it make you think of faeries dancing in a hidden hall, kind of slow and solemn? I think it's the most lovely, heart-wrenching, haunted melody THAT WILL BE PERFECT FOR THAELEN AND ANABETH, once she starts dying of the Blight and all. Gah.

And this one, called Ferry Me Across the Water, by the same artist, is also lovely. But I don't love it QUITE as much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msmnNPLlglA

Also, I discovered that home-grown garden tomatoes do not offend me as much as I though.

ALSO, there was this little yellow finch-bird thing that came 'round and tapped on all the windows every morning to wake us up while I was there. We ended up naming him Erazmus. I kinda wanted to take him home with me, but he seemed pretty happy where he was. XD

So there's that stuff out of the way. I'm terribly unmotivated to do the FATP post, cuz it will be long and strenuous and I'll have to go through and find the pictures with no one's faces in them. So. Somebody had better poke me with a stick and get me moving. Or it'll never be done.

Commander Kip who actually made some HEADWAY on Chapter Twelve last night. That fight scene is being a beast.

*outraged British accent* Ouch, you're treading on me!

Normal is overrated!

GIMME TWO SECONDS

KAY I'M DONE NOW.

Commander Kip

Normal is overrated!

things that ought to be mentioned - for realz this tiem

Observe: the condensed version of my summer so faaar.

OYAN Workshop of 2010 equals legendary win. The only thing wrong with it is that it should have been longer. Mr. and Mrs. S (see below) hosted the event, and did an awesome job of it. People were in costume, and I'd post a pic of the pirate gear I wore, but all the pics have my face in them. Perhaps I'll try to blur it out of one of them. Perhaps. Anyway, I was an elf pirate and was very sad to discover that you had to choose whether you were on the pirate team or the ninja team, and putting down 'I support the Alliance' didn't fly. Sniff. And since I was wearing pirate stuff, I had to put down pirate. There was a real-live ninja in attendance though:

So we listened to Mr. S talk for a while, then there was this awesome comedy improv team from Greenleaf who did about a bazillion hilarious theater games, and we all died laughing, and then afterward, some of us (Liese, Trucano, Brentalope and I) discovered this awesome little playground thing across the parking lot, so we hung out there for about an hour and were epic togethah. Then the next morning, we listened to Mr. S talk some more, and had to RUN through a torrential downpour over to the cafeteria for lunch, and got soaked to the marrow, and almost got washed away down the five-inch-deep river that used to be the sidewalk, and it was awesome. And we RAN the entire way, most of us in costume, with our shoes squelching wonderfully all the while. Then we ate food. Then we ran back, but it wasn't raining anymore so it wasn't near as much fun. Then we got into little groups (Extremely Wooly Mammoths ftw) and critiqued the first four pages of each other's adventure novels, which was awesome cuz I got to see what everyone else was writing about. Plus, Pippin and another girl from the Brighton class were in my group, which was even more awesome. Plus we had Mrs. S. Which out-awesome'd all other previous awesomenesses to boot. And then Sharpie's novel introduced me to steampunk, which over-out-awesome'd things all over again. Thank you, Sharps. So then we stuffed a bunch of people into my mom's minivan and caravan'd over to the nearest ice cream place, ordered in British accents, sat in a line on the sidewalk behind the building and took turns reading Snuffle's PUBLISHED! novel aloud. And got lotsa strange looks from the passers-by. It was hilarious. Then we went to the site of the first-ever OYAN class for the reunion, and there were so many potato chips I thought I was going to drown in them, and there were swordfights, and many pictures, and epic amounts of glompadge all around. And a juggling show. And the biggest, most complicated game of ninja you ever played. All in all, probably two of the most mythically awesome days of my entire life, or something like that. And then he took out his bazooka and - yeah, never mind. Next.

This picture is from the Taekwondo camp I worked earlier this summer, and those strange teenage boys are two of my co-workers, believe it or not, being extremely unproffessional and dancing/singing Party in the USA. Do you pity me? You should. I find this picture terribly amusing, by the way.

Before I had a chance to catch my breath after the OYAN awesomeness, I was shipped off to Hutchinson for Level Three of the Future Astronaut Training Program, also called FATP. And that was also epic, but since I don't have all the pics off my camera yet, there's just this shot of the actual for-real International Space Station Mission Control Center. We were there, baby. RIGHT THERE. It was flippin' awesome. More on this later, cuz there's a bunch of pics I wanna showya.

Off to Lady Arin's house in a few days, where the Internet is shaky at best, so I might not see you till Saturday. Dunno yet. SOEXCITED though... I don't get myself over there enough...

Commander Kip

Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.

Normal is overrated!

the blasted new story idea is taking over my brain

I just need to get this pile of names and facts out of my lap so I can do the real post I was trying to do.

Kay. Deep breath. The main character of my developing story idea: Lizbet 'Lizby' Fain, an almost-orphan who lives with her insane younger brother and a bunch of other mentally unstable kids in a warehouse in the industrial quadrant of the planet Rebellion. She has a grueling, low-pay job as a dockhand-slash-mechanic at one of the many freighting skyports, where she loads and unloads cargo from the steamships and generally picks up heavy stuff. Hence the funky metal performance-enhancement rigs on her arms. Removable, of course. Dude, imagine if she couldn't take them off... that would be just weird. AHAHAHAAA. I crack myself up. Can you tell I just discovered steampunk? Lawl yess. I mean, gunpowder... parasol... haberdashery... really? Do I sense a trend here? Why yes, I believe I do. Oh, Rebellion is a dying planet by the way, cuz the stupid humans are totally pumping all the life out of it and turning everything into coal to run all the steam engines with (yess, I went and looked up how steam engines work because I hate to get my facts wrong.) Stupid humans. *swats the lot of them* Oh, and the planet is actually a sentient being in disguise. So it can like, talk to certain people and stuff. Only a few certain people. And those people generally wind up insane cuz they hear these creepy voices in their heads all the time. Ahahaaaa. Insert evil cackle here. And did I mention the fact that some people are trying to save Rebellion by developing clean, highly efficient organic technology that also happens to be extremely illegal because the government doesn't want people to know about the deteriorating condition of the planet and just keep churning out coal at suicidal rates? Whoa yes.

Tears is in this story! His real name is Tarren Hawkes, and he's several years younger than I thought. But he's still crazy and still missing his thumbs and still has a wonky haircut, so it's still HIM. The insane brother's name is Hickory Fain, called Hex, and he looks nothing like his sister and is one of those certain people who's gone funny because of the voices of Rebellion in his head. Then there's some other crazy-orphan people: Meena and Mandis Redlock, who are sisters; Jaxter Torrington, who likes to steal stuff; Ben Lander, who is schizophrenic; Zaraia Greencastle, who comes from another planet, and Silence, who can't talk and therefore can't tell anyone her name. Then there's Jonathan Brackolt, an old gentleman who knew Lizby and Hickory's grandfather and is developing a cruiser that runs entirely on oxygen (or something); Ivy Dale, who is their mother and still alive but quite insane; Mahogany Gabbs, who is called Mag and runs freighters at the skyport where Lizby works; Symon Hopper, Lizby's overseer and something of a bad guy; Thomas Fain, the long-dead grandfather; and Rebellion itself, which is a planet and only sort of counts. Then the bad guys, who all work for the government and are too numerous to list off, and the head of the organization, whose identity is so secret that no one's ever heard his name and he is known only as Nocturn. (I wanted to name him Miasma, but I have the feeling one of Brentalope's villains already has that name. Now I can't remember, of course. Meh.) The government people know about Rebellion's sentience and their job is to hunt down anyone who can hear his voices, but they have to do it without alarming the masses, so they set up mental institutions and test all the insane people that come through, hunting for the Voices, as they call them. The Voices are 'liquidized' and all the others just kind of hang out. Therein lies the beauty of abandoned warehouses in the industrial district, see? No one ever looks there. Usually. *smirk smirk*

Kay. There, I think I'm done. I think.

Commander Kip
Then he took out his bazooka and killed King George.
Normal is overrated!

things that ought to be mentioned - the asylum edition

Which are: I am dead. Just for your information. Deader than dukes. Blargh. akf;edkjfhdfihiehjadh the inside of my brain looks like that right now. Which is why s;ojwnkcv nothing that comes out of it is making any s;lkjfiwhal sense and is therefore not worth posting. kehadsfkjh;hwahajfjjkd poke poke. SEMICOLONSEMICOLONSEMICOLON.

Yeah. I'm working on some stuff, but nothing's coming out how I want and it might be awhile before I find the time to dig my scanner out from under the towering pile of heavily modded Nerf guns, hammers, screwdrivers, giant plastic gears, old watches, even older newspapers and faux leather it is currently buried under, in order to post things, you know.

WATERMELON.

So no, I did not see Lara Croft: Tomb Raider the other night and no, I did not find it slightly cheesy and ridiculous and no, we are not speaking in opposites today, my preciouss. Not in the least. But I want my room to look like the Arctic temple thingy with the giant mechanical model of the solar system and the cute litte moats and stuff, cuz that would be beyawnd awesome. No one knows what I'm talking about? Psh, what else is new.

GUNPOWDER. PARASOLE. HABERDASHERY.

The random refuses to go away.

Hey, guess what? I haz new story idea and I'm afraid to write it for fear I'll go insane. Cuz it's full of insane people. They're allovertheplace. Oh, that reminds me - I haz piksher. Jussasecond. You know what? I'll put it in the sane post that's bound to follow this one, then delete this one so I don't ruin anyone's brain. Sound fair? Good. I shall return.

Commander Kip
Are you kidding? I kill you for a Klondike bar.
Normal is overrated! aodfiaehwehrifhaiufhbdfc