Arizona

Yep. I'm in Arizona.

As such, I figured I should proceed to spam you all with pictures. Here I go:

See this? These are mountains as seen from the front windshield. I actually really like how this was kind of framed out by the car...

Also, mountains are BIG. 0.o

I also took a picture of the METROMINT bottle. This stuff is awesome, by the way. It tastes just like chocolate and mint :)

Now for the fun part: Playing 'How High Will the Temperature Climb?'

When we got into the real desert - what we consider the real desert - this was the reading:

Ick. But wait, it gets worse...

Closer, but no. Try again.

That's right! (Sorry for the blur.) Yep. It was an oven out there. And it didn't drop much by the time we actually got to the house. French the llama, that's hot!

The house is still really comforting though. My grandpa built a front porch on it an we all sat outside last night and talked and watched the jackrabbits. There were so many jackrabbits! :D

But it's nice to see my grandparents again. It's been about 2 months since I saw them last.

I've been locked in my room for a while today, trying to get some kind of caught up on Camp NaNoWriMo. Strangely, it seems to be working.

I'm also offering editing services... she says as a way of explaining the 'Hire Me' page. If anyone else has done NaNo - or any other WriMo - and has a project they'd like edited for a reasonable rate, send me a message. I always like helping artists  ^^

I can't even believe my life at this point. I'll probably update again here soon and explain everything but for right now just... wow.

Okay. I'm gonna go write a little more and try to figure out some kind of list or schedule or something to keep me busy.

Until later, then~

Last night in the hotel

Means that we get to move in tomorrow... and that means that we get to spend the day directing furniture movers, cable guys and possibly a mailman/yardboy around the place.

I have an old Polaroid 360 camera now. It is awesome. Now I just need to figure out how to work it.

But things are falling into place, I think. I'm kind of leaning toward just buying a desk, bookcase, file cabinet set at Wal-Mart and just putting it together myself. It's either that or finding something at an antique shop. I just don't know. I think the set might be the better option even with the inconvenience of having to put it together.

There's a small padlocked door near the back porch. My brain has a bad habit of looking at it and thinking: 'One, Two, Three, Four, Underneath the cellar floor, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Lover will suffocate'. Needless to say, slightly unsettling. (I know it's just the crawl space but still.)

I'm also wondering if going to self-published route might really be the best for me... I mean, it seems in line with how I'm feeling up here and that does seem to be the way the market is leaning. I don't know... Maybe. And if I do, would it be better to put only a few chapters of the stories up, put them all up or put a few of them up with the rest just being 'previews' (a few chapters and maybe extras)?

Of course, this is all just me rambling at this point. Still trying to figure things out. As usual, this results in my rambling and figuring out nothing. Awesome.

I just... feel better. Even though my weight is wrong on my ID card (which is insanely annoying, by the way). I'm 5'3" and 115, not 150.

But I like this place. They have a sweet, nerdy guy handling the renters insurance ^^

So, yeah, tomorrow's going to be hectic. And I'm kind of talking to avoid thinking about it right now. At least I don't feel as exhausted as I thought I might. We have 'scatter cats' on the back deck. There are around four or maybe five cats that like to congregate on our back deck and when we walk up, they all scatter. I know we scare them but it's kind of cute ^^

See ya tomorrow, dears~!

(Wow, I'm tired. This is probably going to make no sense at all when I read it back.)

Let me tell you about my day.

**Warning: long post ahead.**


My day started at 9 this morning. Okay. I can deal with that.

We then got in the car and drove to a property management place to look at houses we could rent. Fine. So we piled in the car with the broker (who was actually funny and pretty normal so that was a relief). There was commentary like 'I went to get a tattoo once. The artist said I was too fat so he'd have to give me a tat-3'. I think he'll show up in a character or two.

Now.

House one was bigger (with a second floor and very steep stairs) and the foundation was solid. It was also the highest rent. I loved the neighbourhood though and we kept it on the list since it seemed like a strong option even with the extra cost.

House two was a single story with some minor cosmetic issues in the same neighbourhood (different street). Another strong option.

House three... House three I wouldn't have rented on a bet. It reeked of mold, there were water stains and I didn't honestly feel like I could safely touch things in there.

So... Even with the higher rent, we figured the first house was the better option. Fine. Awesome. I love that place, steep stairs and my upstairs bedroom (with the only bathroom downstairs) and all.

So we get that figured out, there's no problem with getting the lease, the landlord seems nice. It's all good. So, while we waited on the lease to be typed up, we got to run to the power company and to get the cable appointment (TV and internet). Water, sewer and garbage are paid which is a fairly big deal up here. We also bought an older washer and dryer.

So we go out to Dairy Queen to eat because I'm getting a headache from lack of food (I think I might have to be one of those girls who has to eat every few hours or she starts feeling sick). Great. We get all that done and sign the lease, the place is ours (though they did tell me not to chew on the windowsills. Killjoys.) But then we start to wonder: Did that place have cable outlets?

So we go back. And no, no it didn't. There was not a single outlet in the entire house. The place had never even had cable hooked up. And we just signed a six-month lease.

So we go back to the property management place to have them call the landlord and see if we can't fix this. Thankfully, we can. The landlord was fine with them running cable to the place as long as we paid for it.

All right. But wait. We have no furniture. Now we have to go into town, to every place we can find that might work, and look around for a couch, loveseat, TVs and something to put said TVs on. The first place had a set we liked but the price was painful. We then looked around at several others, both local and chain, for something better and cheaper. Failing that, we returned to find the set sold to the couple who originally asked about it before we got there.

Annoying but understandable. So then it was off to yet another store. We finally managed to find a couch we liked along with a set of tables (coffee and end). The saleswoman was really sweet too. She gave me a pillow to hug carry over to their larger store (up the street) so we could find something that went with it. Problem was, the only chairs we could find that went with it colour-wise were more than the matching loveseat was. So we got the loveseat.

We also figured out that we have to go unload the truck tomorrow so we can load up the TVs and the stands.

Let me put something back in your head: We're in a 104-year-old house in Aberdeen, WA. It's a town that is big enough to have cross-walks but small enough that you can actually use them and where plastic drink cup lids refuse to stop rolling down the street despite considerable odds. We walked to most of the places we went today. My legs are going to hate me tomorrow... when we're unloading the truck.

W00T for exercise, though?

So I'm thinking now (because I'm just so glad to not be walking) about my little website project. I mean, there's a lot I want to do and a lot I want to share and I think up here would be a good place to actually get writerly things done. I hope.

So... back to Script Frenzy and trying to figure out where to go with some of my other projects.

We move in on Wednesday and I want a desk by the window so I can contemplate life and then write about it.

See ya~

The Update Hub

Yes, it's that time of day again.

A lot has happened in the last couple of days.

First and foremost, I have cute shoes. Two pairs, actually. The first are black, they come to about my ankles and they have a wedge heel with silver writing across the back. The other ones come up to about my knee and they look kind of like black tennis shoes with white laces. Both of these make me happy.

Here are the first ones:

(The back says 'bebe')

And the higher ones:

I think these might be my favourite ^^ (Yes, these are my legs.)

There's a small asphalt path that leads from the hotel we're staying at up to Wal-Mart. We walked it twice. The first time we walked there, walked around Wal-Mart and looked at stuff, then walked back through the car park and along the riverside walkway for a little while before we went back to the hotel. Even then we didn't really go back. We got to the car park there and then figured 'Why not go shoe shopping?' So we did.

We went to Payless (the boots), walked to a local drug store then walked to Ross (the smaller boots). Then got in the car and drove back to collapse because we were very tired by then.

We then walked back to Wal-Mart later that day for peanut butter, jelly, bread and frozen fruit bars.

So that explains the leg pain.

Mum and I got veggie fried rice for dinner and I had to stop eating because I was getting sad. ... Only a Tiger and Bunny geek like me would get sad about fried rice but I don't care. It was a sweet, unguarded moment from Barnaby (admitting he had been learning to make fried rice for Wild Tiger (the other half of the first Hero team)) and it got me emotionally. I will freely admit this. (It doesn't help that I saw a commercial for Pepsi Next yesterday.)

And I really need to go and work now. I think I'll have to throw in an awkward conversation during a long car ride... and then figure out what I'm going to do with my website because my brain is kind of running a mile a minute with it right now.

(And I have some trip pictures up on dA, if you're curious. Lots of clouds.)

See ya~!

I've failed you...

Not with SeptNo. I totally 'ownificated' SetpNo (by typing out around 14 thousand words in a single day, but let's not get into that).

I said I'd be back before the end of the month. And I totally failed at that. BUT. I have something funny for you all this time. (And actually funny not just 'Jezzy's stressed and sleep-deprived' funny.)

"Mom? CAPTCHA's being gross."

I had to screencap it because seriously? XD

So that made me feel better. That and the fact that I was called 'prolific' to-day. That also made me realise that I could split my work up into the following genres: LGBT, Romance, Gothic, Horror, Sci-Fi, Parody and Children, Nonfiction and Historical. I would have a mini-library. That's a pretty good range, I'd think.

Oh, and I get to do the GothNo pep talk emails as a guest this year. Is it weird that I feel like I've 'made it', in some small sense of the phrase?

I'm killing time on YouTube, yes, but I'm crocheting while I'm watching pointless things and listening while I'm watching pointful things. And no 'pointful' is totally not a word, in case you were wondering.

I figured out I can get up, write for a while, read for a while, take a break to eat, read for a while, work on an outline (this time for NaNoWriMo), then crochet for a while before bed. Probably would have worked better if I'd actually stuck to it but the basics were there to-day, so that's something.

I've also taken to hyphenating 'today'. Not sure why. Might have something to do with GothNo.

So, I need to get back to work on... something. Anything, really. Now... I must eat all these explosives. Wait, what? No. I must organise things and go back to work. See? This is what happens when I just ramble on, yammering about pointless things in a way-too-long blog post. Yamble? I 'yamble' about things a lot.

But I'm going to stop for now and let you get back to your life, which I'm sure is much more interesting than mine. Bye~ *flails back to Word document*