Resolute.

Not to be confused with "Absolut". Although they do look a little similar from the back.

We as a species are very fond of beginnings. Something concrete to focus on as a time for change. "Tomorrow, I'll do this." "Next week, this will happen." "This year I will [blank]." I'm a victim of that as much as the next person. I'm not necessarily into the whole New Year's Resolution thing, because I know me better than that. I do, however, have some things I plan and hope for in the coming year. Because I hate you all, you must read of them.

• Get more writing done. Shouldn't be too hard, assuming I actually plan to follow through on The Chosen here.


• Do some of that "exercise" thing. Just because I'm sick of being worn out just by going upstairs. (Only a slight exaggeration.)


• Manage my time better. But I'll probably not start working on this one until about 12 December 2005.


• Consistently take Jett for walks. The guilt is overpowering.


• Stop being so lazy. I make Mike do a lot of stuff for me that I could do myself, because he doesn't mind. This one's really important. As soon as he gets out of the shower, I'll make him get me a pen and paper so I can write it down.


• Actually make an effort to keep in touch with some people. I'm so bad at this, it's not even funny.

2004 was an odd year for me. Simultaneously one of the best and one of the worst I've had in a long time. I feel somewhat odd about it's passage. I think the cure for this is hunting down and killing more Sith.

Empty House

For the first time in a little while, I'm home alone. (Well, apart from Jett.) Mum's getting on her plane right about now and Mike won't be off for several hours yet. I'd like to get started writing S9, but we haven't finished plotting it all out yet, so that's not really going to happen just yet. Instead, I think I may get into my comfy loungy clothes, curl up on the couch, and start KotOR2. I'm somewhat wary, since when I got the first one, that's all I did for like a month. I don't have that kind of time, but ... game. Game shiny. Game have light sabers. Liiiight saaaaberssss ...

I just made donation to the Red Cross for the earthquake/tsunami relief. Not a whole hell of a lot, but I figure that if we all give a little something, we can help out. 120,000 dead and rising - I think I can spare the $15. A little humanitarian aid is certainly worth the price of a CD.

I don't really have any New Year's plans. I don't feel like going out, and I'm not much in the mood for any boozing this year for whatever reason. Instead, I think we'll just stay home, maybe watch some movies, play a few games. Though Double Dash is a lot more entertaining when I've guzzled half a bottle of Bacardi (at least to watch, I sure as hell can't remember playing it), it'll just be a nice little night. I'm getting dull in my old age.

QUEEN OF EVERYTHING

Mum, Mike and I just finished Trivial Pursuit AND I WON. I AM SUPERIOR IN ALL THINGS.

Everyone, join me in gloating. I must continue with the taunting dance of victory and little song I made up to celebrate the awesome wonderfulness that is me.

TV for the Unemployed

We'll be heading out to one of the malls today, but I'm waiting for my hair to dry first. Mum flipped on the TV to one of those generic People's Court-esque shows. I never have the TV on to anything network these days (certainly not this stuff), but I had to laugh. Three commercials in a row were all about going to vocational schools ... business, bartending then legal. Of course, nobody knows a TV audience better the advertisers, so I'm guessing the message I'm receiving here is, "If you're watching legal fake-court TV at noon on a Tuesday, you're a bum and need a job."

Oo, another commercial break. Now we're on mortgage refinancing and debt consolidation. Oh yeah, this is "Loser TV".

Plans to Platitudes

Today Mum and I were going to hit some malls for some post-Christmas sales (and because I have about, oh, four days to get to Clackamas for my bi-yearly ring inspection for the diamond bond). The plan was to head out around 1pm, but I started feeling pretty crappy, so we're putting it off until tomorrow.

Instead, we watched Prisoner of Azkaban (we've watched the latest Potter movie every time she's come up), and then spent the rest of the time watching my French & Saunders DVDs. Which we're still doing, actually. Gods, they just never stop being funny.

I had hoped to hammer out more character arcs today, but they simply won't come. Extremely frustrating, but I'm hoping that tomorrow will go better. Guess it can't really go worse ...

Stupid self.

Precious Little Gifties

Amy just made this for me. I declare it the best e-mail gift I got all year:
I swoon.

About two-hours into the day after Christmas was apparently as long as I was willing to wait on plotting out S9. Today we hammered out some major things that will arc out through to S10, and are going through the character arcs now. I already had some stuff planned, but scrapped it all to start over again with a fresh viewpoint. I'm hoping we can maybe iron out the rest tomorrow, and from there just get to the individual episode plotting (basic mode). With luck, I'll have the whole thing outlined out within a week, two max, and can then get ready to write. With many months before the first episode airs, that feels good. What felt less-good was my confidence bottoming out on me earlier today, but I'm feeling better again. Such a fragile thing, is confidence.

Jet Wolf's Loot List

SCORE.

• Nummy Godivas - a nut/caramel selection (from Mike's folks), a box of holiday truffles, and a general selection
  
  
• Books: The Buffy "Unseen" trilogy, Fire Watch and Remake by Connie Willis, War for the Oaks by Emma Bull, the first volume in the "Complete Peanuts" collection, volume 1 & 2 of the Season 3 Script Books, Fray trade, the "Strangers in Paradise" treasury (which I didn't even know was out)
  
  
• CDs: Tony Head's "Music for Elevators", Tori Amos' "Scarlet's Walk" (only two years after I went to the concert), Four Star Mary's self-titled
  
  
• DVDs: The two-disc set of fanvids from Vividcon (which I'm on, yay me), MST3K collection volumes 5 & 6, Absolutely Fabulous collection (S1-S3)
  
  
• Knights of the Old Republic II for the Xbox.
  
  
• Pirates! Gold (w00t, big fan of the ooooold version)
  
  
• The pre-production Tara figure from the "Women of Sunnydale" set.
  
  
• A year of broadcasting on Live365.

Mm. Pressies.

Merry Christmas, or some junk.

Got presents to open, Mum's cooking the dinner so I don't have to ... Yeah, could be worse.

Merry Christmas.

Me, I want a hula hoop.

Christmas time again. It's the weirdest freaking Christmas for me ever. I don't want gifts, I don't have any decorations up. And I just this second remembered with a bolt of "oh crap"ness that I haven't wrapped anything either, and I'm running out of time. Though I now have a bit more than I did, since the South is busy holding auditions for the second great flood, and there are flights delayed all over the place. She was originally supposed to land at PDX around 11pm - now she won't get in until 1 or 2 in the morning. Not a biggie, and on the bright side, I have a bit more time to ... well, procrastinate, probably. But hey, more time to do that.

I went out and picked up a few more things yesterday, and that was a joy and a pleasure. Thank the gods for my iPod, to drown out now only the neverending Christmas musak, but also to help keep my temper in check. Terrible traffic, terrible crowds. From the way Target was packed, you'd think people were stocking up for the End Time. As I waded through the crowds, I came very close to shrieking, "I JUST WANT WRAPPING PAPER!!!" but then the iPod cued mellow music, and we were all saved.

After that was Bed, Bath and Beyond for a new comforter, since the one that was supposed to go on the guest bed sort of decided to hemorrhage feathers everywhere and I wasn't in the mood to stitch it up again. Of course, I forget to buy a table for the damned tree, thus proving I can't ever go out and get everything I need ... oh, but I can remember to spontaneously buy myself a new pair of cargo pants. Good show, me. I was so irritated that I said "Screw it" to the whole tree situation, but Mike convinced me to just stop tonight after I pick him up, we'll get the table and assemble the tree then. Yes, it's a fake tree: a) I don't kill trees for sport, and b) it's been my tree since my first Christmas, so it's the lone bit of semi-sentimentality I have left for the holiday at this point. Just as well he's making me, else I really don't think I'd bother, and I'd probably regret that later. I'm big on tradition sometimes.

From there it was to Best Buy, where I searched for a few remaining stocking stuffers. I settled on some stuff, then went to find the end of the line ... which wrapped all the way back to freaking appliances. "Screw that," says I, and walked out. I'll hit it during the day tomorrow with Mum or something, when people will, I hope, still be at work or something. I do have to wonder at Best Buy's mentality, however. I mean, did someone honestly think it was in their best interests to stock 300 copies of Anaconda? Was the demand really that great?

As for today, it was supposed to be my "catch up on everything else I haven't done yet before Mum gets here" day. It's turned into "Oo, I had an idea for a Christmas ficlet" day, and thus I've spent it writing. Which is good, because I'm starting to get really ugly, nasty, confidence-bottoming voices talking very, very loudly now The Chosen's first season is done. My psychoses on this matter are numerous and deadly, but best to just try to ignore them and hope they'll go away. In the meantime, I'm really hoping to get this 'fic done today, since I doubt I'll have much time for writing until the New Year, and I'd like to get it up before Christmas.

Christmas. You have become an odd holiday to me.

.wehW

Season 8 is done. The term is done. I have no idea what to do with myself.

Whew.

Season 8 is done. The term is done. I pass out in peace.

The depths of our lameness.

We've been out of butter for four days and nobody can be bothered to go get any more.

Hooray for UPS!

The Willow/Tara two-pack was just delivered. Squee! Little plastic Miss Kitty Fantastico!

Because it's there.

For some strange reason, I got a jones to finally, after a year, install Trillian on Lil' Bit. It's been at least that long since I loaded the darned program, but I guess the nostalgia days of every evening spent chatting it up on ICQ hit me today, and I decided to take the plunge. I go through cycles like that. They usually last about three days. But try me anyway.

If you feel like chatting me up, you can find me at:

ICQ: 2707941
AIM: JetWolfToo (since JetWolf apparantly got Error 17'd when mum cancelled AOL)

Actually, now I've said that, I'll probably not be around until next week, since I'm pretty busy until then (though obviously not too busy to install freaking Trillian), but anyway.

And now that time has been wasted, I bed.

Spam: A bedtime story

I'm not sure what breed of spam this new stuff is, but it reads like some demented fairy tale. An incomplete fairy tale, no less, which is just irritating. Check out this new one I got:

I play flume of guzzle crinkly
The Wolf called out to him and said, "The Priest will slay you in
Californian Weirdo: Shell fish, guppy, salmon, shrimp and crab
chemicals poured down the sink (and forgotten in a frenzy of
hungry ate him up. Just as he was on the point of being eaten,
seemingly endless possibilities of computer technology. The

Darnit! Now I'll never know how it ends!

Family Values

Le sigh. I'd laugh if it didn't depress me that so many people who should see this as an eye-opener won't.

CD, Bay-bee.

I wanted to take a sec to promote this really cool web store that I found online, located - interestingly - in Portland. It's all indie, all the time, and it's called "CD Baby". Appropriately enough, its URL is cdbaby.com.

So why go there? Well, besides the plethora of independant musicians and their CDs, all for comparatively reasonable prices (I haven't seen anything over $14 yet) and the absolutely striking thoroughness of the site, I want everyone to go there because their "We're shipping your order now" e-mail kicks ass:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, December 3rd.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

If you're looking for some indie love to give this Christmas (or some self-love, which is perfectly okay too) then consider buying from them. Help my state's economy, and some kick-arse music people too.

Time Attack

I feel like crap. I think I'm getting a cold, and I'm NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT. But what makes it even worse is I started thinking earlier today about how little time I have left with the writing.

This end of the season thing is really starting to stress/freak me out. I've come this far, right? Very exciting. But the thing is, now I have to tie up all the ends I'm going to be tying, and I can't make a mistake. Usually if I mess something up in an episode, I've got the next or the one after where I can try to salvage it.

This is the end. If I mess up here, that's pretty much it. And if the ending isn't satisfying, then it's sort of like, what the hell was the point of writing 1000+ pages of 'fic before it if this is all you get at the end? It's like a Stephen King novel.

Plus there's the fact that once I've finished this season, I'll actually have accomplished and completed something huge, and I have this whole "fear of success" thing going which is terribly pleasant.

Above all that, though, I realized today that it's going up in less than two weeks and I'm not done scripting yet.

So I'm stressed and possibly getting sick. Yup, I'm real pleasant to be around right now.