I just watched Galaxy Quest with Ben. No matter how many times I watch this movie, it doesn't stop being funny.
My favourite quote is when they're landing on the alien planet, looking for berillym crystals, and they open the shuttle hatch, and the crewman extra goes crazy and says, "What are you doing? Is there air out there? You don't know!" To which the chief engineer (who is stoned the entire time) sniffs the air and says, "Seems okay to me."
I've been polishing Two-Spirit, The Sapphire Amulet, and the best way to do that is to print it off. Now, the novella is about 25,000 words, which is a little over 100 pages, and honestly I don't have the paper or the ink to print it all off and then lose it in the tornado that regularly sweeps my room.
So, I went to Staples, and for $15, I got this nifty book printed off. They bound it in coils, so it's easy to open and close and edit on. It's easy to read from, and I caught mistakes that I didn't when reading it off the computer screen. And when I say reading, I really meaning reading aloud, because that's how you catch mistakes, says my journalism degree.
If you're editing, I definitely recommend you do this. It's so cheap, and so worth it.
It's a small price to ensure as few errors as possible before I sent it to a professional editor.
Do you ever have story dreams?
I do, sometimes. I'm a vivid dreamer, and sometimes the dreams follow a narrative. It's not always in order--usually the middle comes first, then the ending, and then it goes back to the beginning and I usually get the sense in the dream that I've been there before. I think that's why I don't write things in order. The middle comes first, then the end, and then the beginning. Though it does make the beginning very hard to write, and I remember my prof scolding me for writing the beginning of a journalism piece last. How she could tell, I don't know!
At some point in my life, I'd like to publish a collection of short stories inspired only from my dreams. I think I've got enough to write it, but with so many other projects on the go I'll probably hold off for a while.
I do, sometimes. I'm a vivid dreamer, and sometimes the dreams follow a narrative. It's not always in order--usually the middle comes first, then the ending, and then it goes back to the beginning and I usually get the sense in the dream that I've been there before. I think that's why I don't write things in order. The middle comes first, then the end, and then the beginning. Though it does make the beginning very hard to write, and I remember my prof scolding me for writing the beginning of a journalism piece last. How she could tell, I don't know!
At some point in my life, I'd like to publish a collection of short stories inspired only from my dreams. I think I've got enough to write it, but with so many other projects on the go I'll probably hold off for a while.
I'm up at like 6 am because I can't sleep at all. First, it's because I'm really thirsty, so I get out of bed and go to the fridge.
Milk. My liquid weakness. I have some of that, and immediately regret it. It's too cold, and leaves a bad taste in my sleepy mouth. Yum.
Back to bed. Still can't sleep. Milk is increasingly bad tasting in my mouth. So I get up again and go to my computer. No new messages on the email, but I find out that my virus scanner has decided to work again and has caught two new trojans. Finally, McAfee, thanks for waking up!
Outside, the sun is rising. There's a layer of red sky on the horizon with blue above it, reminding me of those Powerpoint backgrounds we all used to use back in junior high when that was cool.
In two hours, I'll be eating breakfast at Cora's with family. So hungry right now that I just want to eat everything in the fridge. Must contain hunger. So, maybe I'll just go and watch some DS9, or something related.
Milk. My liquid weakness. I have some of that, and immediately regret it. It's too cold, and leaves a bad taste in my sleepy mouth. Yum.
Back to bed. Still can't sleep. Milk is increasingly bad tasting in my mouth. So I get up again and go to my computer. No new messages on the email, but I find out that my virus scanner has decided to work again and has caught two new trojans. Finally, McAfee, thanks for waking up!
Outside, the sun is rising. There's a layer of red sky on the horizon with blue above it, reminding me of those Powerpoint backgrounds we all used to use back in junior high when that was cool.
In two hours, I'll be eating breakfast at Cora's with family. So hungry right now that I just want to eat everything in the fridge. Must contain hunger. So, maybe I'll just go and watch some DS9, or something related.
Our route. By bus. That's a LOT of land.
The green fields of France. Note, that this is Christmas Day. We spent the entire day on the bus.
The next morning for some early sightseeing. That is of course the Notre Dame. We didn't get to go inside, unfortunately. But still pretty on the outside.
Do I even have to tell you what this is?
Up close to the Eiffel Tower.
From on top of the Eiffel Tower. A view of Paris.
The Statue of Liberty in Paris. Remember that the French gave it to the Americans! Though the French one is smaller.
And my favourite! The palace of Versailles! I couldn't capture it all with my camera, but I defintely took the most pictures here. There was so much to see.
Every ceiling had a picture like this. Every inch was decorated, or painted somehow. Everything to make the palace was made in France. Even the marble. They created whole companies just to manufacture the materials needed to build the place.
One of the King Louis (14th? Or 15th?) as Caeser.
The above is a portrait of Marie Antoinette, and her children. I don't know if you can see, but the empty cradle represents her stillbirth. The one revealing the cradle is her only son, who died at the age of seven during the revolution.
The Hall of Mirrors.
A view of the palace from one of the windows.
The table where the treaty of Versailles was signed.
Me in front of the palace! Yay!
The Eiffel Tower at night. It was glittering and changing colour. I took this from the river cruise we did at night.
And that's about it. Our flight back was long and terrible. We were supposed to go from Paris to Chicago, and then from there to Halifax, but, with the whole bomber scare, the flight was more than 2 hours delayed going out of Paris, and they personally searched EVERY PERSON going to the US. There was 200 people on each plane going out. And there were at least three leaving at the same time.
After that 9 hour flight, we were super jetlaged. We got to Chicago and discovered that our flight to Halifax had been cancelled, and it had been canceled for the past three days due to "weather", even though there was barely any snow in Halifax. We think it was to get more staff to search people at the airports. So we negotiated (since they wouldn't pay for our hotel) an overnight flight to Montreal, and then one to Halifax.
We had to sleep in the airport. It was not fun. I have pictures of that too.
I was happy to get home and sleep. It takes a long time to recover from things like that. I didn't leave the house for like a week!
More Europe Pictures! Yay!
The day after the Rhine cruise, as we were leaving Germany, we stopped at this random bridge to take a picture of this really random statue. It reminded me of Athena. There's just so many random statues everywhere.
In the Black Forest. We stopped at the place where they make the coocoo clocks and got a demonstration.
This is the guy giving the demonstration. The price tags on those clocks are hundreds to thousands of Euros. And they're all handmade.
Some steins that were sold at the coocoo clock store. These are the ones I *didn't* buy Ben.
Black Forest Cake in the Black Forest! It tasted like rum.
The Black Forest. The bus was going pretty fast so I couldn't get the true view, but still, pretty.
The Rhine Falls in Switzerland. We had just crossed the border and stopped for pictures.
There's me in front of the Rhine Falls! Unfortunately no one told me that my braid was tucked under itself. Still, a nice picture.
In Lucerne, this is the monument for the Swiss Guards that died. Poor Lion.
Lucerne! The storybook village. Usually you can see the Swiss Alps above the city, but it was foggy. You could walk around this village all day and not see everything. There are walkable streets, very narrow, and every building has some sort of decoration/painting on it. It is beautiful.
Wild Swans! They were swarming because this guy was feeding them up on one of the walkable bridges.
The day after the Rhine cruise, as we were leaving Germany, we stopped at this random bridge to take a picture of this really random statue. It reminded me of Athena. There's just so many random statues everywhere.
In the Black Forest. We stopped at the place where they make the coocoo clocks and got a demonstration.
This is the guy giving the demonstration. The price tags on those clocks are hundreds to thousands of Euros. And they're all handmade.
Some steins that were sold at the coocoo clock store. These are the ones I *didn't* buy Ben.
Black Forest Cake in the Black Forest! It tasted like rum.
The Black Forest. The bus was going pretty fast so I couldn't get the true view, but still, pretty.
The Rhine Falls in Switzerland. We had just crossed the border and stopped for pictures.
There's me in front of the Rhine Falls! Unfortunately no one told me that my braid was tucked under itself. Still, a nice picture.
In Lucerne, this is the monument for the Swiss Guards that died. Poor Lion.
Lucerne! The storybook village. Usually you can see the Swiss Alps above the city, but it was foggy. You could walk around this village all day and not see everything. There are walkable streets, very narrow, and every building has some sort of decoration/painting on it. It is beautiful.
Wild Swans! They were swarming because this guy was feeding them up on one of the walkable bridges.
Here, as promised, are a few of the pictures I took in Europe.
It was hard to sort through all 900 of them (yes, you read right) to pick out the highlights, but here they are.
We went to London, England; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Manheim, Germany; Lucerne, Switzerland and Paris, France.
All in 8 days. Plus two-three days on an airplane. Talk about jetleg.
I don't have as many cool pictures of London as I do the rest, even though we did do some cool stuff there. We went to see Wicked! We saw Buckingham Palace and the National Portrait Gallery (where one of our ancestors has a painting). The thing that sucked about London was that our parents lost their baggage, so we spent a lot of time worrying about that. Fortunately, they did get it back, the night before we left London. Yay.
(Currently trying to fix the photo sizes....)
Big Ben and Parliment. We took this from the London Eye. Basically, it's a big ferris wheel that slowly spins around so you can see all of London from up high.
Inside the Thistle Marble Arch, where we stayed in London. Basically, five stars. *Squeal*!
Jessie and I outside the Thistle Arch, at 4:30 in the morning when we went to leave London. On the bus allllll day.
A toilet in Amsterdam. Guess where the flush is? I only took pictures of toilets because I had a hard time sometimes figuring out where the flush button is. There was one time in the airport where you had to wave your hand over this sensor thing to get it to flush, BUT, if you waved your hand over this other sensor, the toilet bowl swiveled around. As if that will truly clean it.
This was the best one I had of Amsterdam. We were stuck in traffic for 4 hours the night before, so we didn't really get to see Amsterdam. We got there, went to our hotel, and slept, and got up really early and drove again. This was at about 8 in the morning. It doesn't get light until about 9 over there.
This is the Rhine river cruise we went on in Germany later that day.
This is the German beer I had on said cruise. Quite hoppy, but not bad.
Oooh! This is cool. This is a building that is both a church, AND a bar. The left is the bar, the right circular part is the church. Apparently the minister also the bartender.
One of the many, many castles we saw during the trip. Can't remember what this one is called, but it looks cool.
This is what the bathroom signs look like over there.
These knobbly trees were everywhere in Germany and Switzerland. What are they? They almost look like desert trees or something from the Lion King.
A toilet in Germany. Guess where the flush button is? At least this one is obvious. Also, the water was actually that colour.
It was hard to sort through all 900 of them (yes, you read right) to pick out the highlights, but here they are.
We went to London, England; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Manheim, Germany; Lucerne, Switzerland and Paris, France.
All in 8 days. Plus two-three days on an airplane. Talk about jetleg.
I don't have as many cool pictures of London as I do the rest, even though we did do some cool stuff there. We went to see Wicked! We saw Buckingham Palace and the National Portrait Gallery (where one of our ancestors has a painting). The thing that sucked about London was that our parents lost their baggage, so we spent a lot of time worrying about that. Fortunately, they did get it back, the night before we left London. Yay.
(Currently trying to fix the photo sizes....)
Big Ben and Parliment. We took this from the London Eye. Basically, it's a big ferris wheel that slowly spins around so you can see all of London from up high.
Inside the Thistle Marble Arch, where we stayed in London. Basically, five stars. *Squeal*!
Jessie and I outside the Thistle Arch, at 4:30 in the morning when we went to leave London. On the bus allllll day.
A toilet in Amsterdam. Guess where the flush is? I only took pictures of toilets because I had a hard time sometimes figuring out where the flush button is. There was one time in the airport where you had to wave your hand over this sensor thing to get it to flush, BUT, if you waved your hand over this other sensor, the toilet bowl swiveled around. As if that will truly clean it.
This was the best one I had of Amsterdam. We were stuck in traffic for 4 hours the night before, so we didn't really get to see Amsterdam. We got there, went to our hotel, and slept, and got up really early and drove again. This was at about 8 in the morning. It doesn't get light until about 9 over there.
This is the Rhine river cruise we went on in Germany later that day.
This is the German beer I had on said cruise. Quite hoppy, but not bad.
Oooh! This is cool. This is a building that is both a church, AND a bar. The left is the bar, the right circular part is the church. Apparently the minister also the bartender.
One of the many, many castles we saw during the trip. Can't remember what this one is called, but it looks cool.
This is what the bathroom signs look like over there.
These knobbly trees were everywhere in Germany and Switzerland. What are they? They almost look like desert trees or something from the Lion King.
A toilet in Germany. Guess where the flush button is? At least this one is obvious. Also, the water was actually that colour.
