The Days After a Long Trip

are always really weird.

Okay. So. Here we go with the wrap-up.

I left from my house to drive (well, ride, technically since Mom was driving) an hour to a bigger city where we could then catch the train for about an hour and a half to Seattle. They recently redid King Street Station with a lot of detail:

That's part of the ceiling.

I know, right?

I killed the time which was not spent gawking at the impressive detail work of the Mad Fretworker of Seattle by reading this charming little thing:

which ends on a very unexpected note, which I will not spoil here. I can only say this: Impulsive, dumb gay vampires. This series is full of them. And I love it.

Anywho, we sat there on these cool-looking but hella uncomfortable benches for a while until our train pulled in, at which point we were required to lift about 20 pounds of luggage (mine being split unevenly between a backpack and an overnight bag) and shag our asses up these twisty, narrow little stairs (up two and turn, up four and turn, up three and turn) into this passage that wants to be a hallway when it grows up.

Thankfully, this did not result in injury and hence did not result in a lawsuit, which meant that the trip could continue uninterrupted.

Our car attendant on the trip up was a distinctly average-looking man who made a career out of doing the bare minimum of work required to keep his job. In spite of this, the trip was fairly pleasant so long as one could ignore the frigid temperatures and the fact that the heat in our room was less of a 'heater' and more of a decorative plate which at times felt warmer than the air in the car only by virtue of the fact that it was sitting directly in the sun for most of the day.

This was taken from Minot, ND. As you can see, Minot is scenically located on the rim of the Ninth Circle.

Arctic conditions aside, all was pretty quiet on the ride up. Union Station at rush hour, on the other hand - not so calm as a private sleeper car on a three-day train trip.

Luckily, the people we stayed with (who we now all consider to be family - seriously, we all kind of fit together like puzzle pieces) are beyond awesome and they have a super-cute dog:

I dare you to look at that picture and not smile, even a little bit.

Now... a lot happened over this trip but I'll try to break it down a little more so I don't get all confused. One of the first things that happened was Shedd Aquarium:

And a whole bunch of other awesome stuff. Because that place is huge. Like 'five hours spent in there' huge.

Really, we went a lot of amazing places. The whole trip is kind of a blur but I distinctly remember an antique store (where I found the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles book Blood and Gold), two bookstores - Half Price Books and Unabridged Books - where I found more Anne Rice, a Stephen King book, a bunch of stuff I've been wanting to read and even a couple proper quitter strips, and then a place called The Alley (where I found this stuff):

all of which are awesome. The shirt says 'Keep Calm and Kill Zombies'. I mean, come on. A good binder, that shirt, some like cargo pants, maybe some boots, and basically this hair and makeup thing:

essentially equals 'my current aesthetic'.

And all of that is to say nothing of the food. The food was pretty much amazing across the board. Like, look at this thing:

Just look at that. Yep.

The whole trip was like... really surreal in a weird way. Like, one of the things you have to know about me is that I don't do a lot of things. I don't talk to checkers in stores or really even go through lines myself. I don't often order my own food. I don't stay off-line for days on end to go walking around a huge city in the gently falling snow and visit bookstores with Darling, her family, and my mom.

But I did all of that. Easily. It was even fun.

I don't even know.

But I'm trying to hold onto that feeling I had in that city. It was something like endless creativity marked by this odd sense of calm. I liked that feeling. That feeling was like being able to handle things. I like being able to handle things.

So, this post has taken me way too long to complete and it's going up before I go to bed regardless so... Tomorrow. Tomorrow will probably be spent reading and writing a bit, which is quite possibly the best way to spend a day.

For right now though, it's getting late and I have to be up at a reasonable time to go hang out with my grandparents so, I'm going to wrap this up and go try to sleep.

Good night, and I hope you all have a really great day~

A Random Assortment of Junk

Some of this is interesting and very, very important (and the reason that, if I had to be in the legal system, I would want to be a judge), like this:

[It's long but it's worth the watch, if you have the time.]

And some of it is just stuff about my life, sometimes with pretty pictures.

We went to a car show/art walk thing (more 'walk' than 'art' but whatever, it's a small town) a little while back and I made the mistake of bringing a camera.

Yep. This is your life now. Prepare for a bunch of pictures of cars.

Oh, and I just remembered: I watched a movie called 'Wolf Children' the other night. It's animated, and it's basically about this woman (19-year-old college student at the beginning, I think) who falls in love with this... well, he's basically a shape-shifter. He can be either wolf or human. So they're all in love and they have two kids but right after the second one's born, the father dies, which leaves the mom (her name is Hana) raising the two kids (Ame and Yuki) all alone. The kids are like their father - they can be either wolf or human - and that causes some problems in the small apartment in the city where they'd all been living. So Hana moves them out to country to give them some space and to give the kids the choice of what they want their lives to be.

So yeah.

'Wolf Children'

Almost two hours, worth every minute, go watch it.

Anyway, back to the cars:

One more non car-related thing: My writing. Wait, are there cars in this story? Actually, yeah, there is one. So not completely non car-related then. Yay, me.

Once school is out (Only one more week ever and right now, I am really glad) I'm going to jump back into writing. By that I mean, I'll actually be putting stuff out that you can read. I'm a little excited about this.

Meanwhile, I do have a fan-story tumblr blog thing that you could insert into your brain, if you were so inclined. If not, that's cool, too.

Just a heads-up that you might occasionally see 'I Wrote A Thing' blog posts popping up. Don't worry, though: they're way more scared of you than you are of them.

Back to the cars:

There.

I feel a little better now. Just slightly.

There's a lot of stuff I need to change about... well, a lot of things, and I'll probably bore you with all that in another post so, for right now, I hope you all have a great day. I'll be back soon, probably with a 'I'm so glad school is over with' post so look forward to that. Or don't. I don't really care because it's my blog.

Anyway...

Bye for now, everyone~ Bye for now.

A Lot of Things

I took a long trip on a big metal train. I met a lot of wonderful people - like an engineer and his wife, and a female trucker, the publisher of an arts magazine, and a very lovely French woman who we talked with about comic books with for a while. I went to a list of places. Many of these places were very, very good. Like King Street Station in Seattle.

King Street Station is a beautiful place.

It is a big building, refinished to look very amazing inside, much like you would had you actually taken the time to do that 'me' work you always talk about.

We were there for a while, eating chips and drinking water and waiting for a new train to show up. This new train had a dining car and you could even sleep on it~! How fun <3

There's also the hotel which was a beautiful place both inside and out - like the ex-girlfriend that you walked all over years ago in your self-centered haze. For shame, Reader. For shame.

Anyway...

I met the people from 'Welcome to Night Vale'.

They were, all three of them, very sweet and even signed a Khoshekh pencil case I acquired in the Artist's Alley. Jeffery Cranor filled in my 'Interests' for me.

Neat!

After this, there was a period of not much happening, aside from a ruined prom that turned out to be not so ruined after all.

The next day was taken up by talking, buying things, and then by a concert by the lovely Time Crash (who I suggest you listen to, on repeat and very loudly).

This is the guiTARDIS. It is a wonderful, whimsical invention.

During said concert, I met an actor.

His name is Doug Jones. He is a total sweetheart. He showed up and danced and let people take pictures with him, which was a little amazing considering he had his own panel/meet and greet earlier in the day, which I believe was a ticketed event.

This was all followed by room service.

It was very expensive and very good.

And I have spent the days since we got back starting at my collection of buttons and books (all of them signed) and catching up on 'Welcome to Night Vale', which is getting very amazing, too.

I also met my best friend/partner in crime of the past two years, which was just so... *HAPPY SCREAMS*, you know?

I'm going to make a proper post about the things that happened (and probably take a bunch of pictures of all the stuff I got) once I've gotten my life back into some degree of order. For now, be content with the knowledge that it was an amazing time in spite of the unadulterated fustercluckery that always accompanies a first convention.

//collapses

Very good day ^w^

First off, my friends are amazing. I knew Outlast was a good thing when I saw it and I was right and it's been awesome ^^ I'm in a Skype group chat thing and I have RP blogs (That people actually notice) and I get to talk to friends and watch livestreams of movies and people drawing fanart and just wow LOVE

Pretty much everyone wished me happy birthday too and I felt really loved.

I'm 21. And I'm going to have to get used to the fact that I am, legally, an adult - even though I don't feel like one and probably never really will.

Also, I have things:

This is probably going to be very heavy and very interesting and I'm half-looking forward to and half-dreading reading it. It came sealed up in plastic wrap (I haven't opened it yet) and that always makes me nervous. But yeah, that's pretty awesome.

Everyone in the WriMo community knows exactly what this thing is. This thing is the bane of my existence pretty much every year, throughout the month of August.

Yep. It's that time of year again.

This one is an anniversary edition so it's like hella big. So many good authors in this one though, I swear.

This is the Plague. The Plague is adorable. Love The Plague.

And the Bookworm <3 CUTE

Everything here is just awesome okay?

Oh, yeah... there was one more thing:

Yeah. This is gonna be bad for my sleep schedule, I'm pretty sure. I don't necessarily care though. It's a really fun game ^^

I'm about to fall on my face because it's just after 2 a.m. here so... please forgive any typos and bye for now, everyone <3 I'd say I'll try to update a little more consistently in the future but we all know that that's a lie so... I'll see you when I see you, basically. Have an awesome day~