a miscellaney, and then I got wordy about writing

I have lost the ability to read dates, even when I myself write them down -- normally I write Month/Day, but I'm so used to reading them as Day/Month that I always just end up staring blankly at the numbers trying to figure out what order they're supposed to go in.

Put that on the list of things they don't warn you about living in a foreign country.

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Slipping into pre-paper panic mode. AWESOME. Also pre-dissertation panic mode -- my proposal's due next week and I really need to sit down and write the damn thing and e-mail it to my supervisor, because I keep forgetting to talk to him. I swear I have lost the ability to brain. Also I always miss his office/surgery hours.

Also my reading recently has involved a lot more cannibalism than I expected. There was not actually any cannibalism going on in ancient Rome, just accusations of cannibalism being flung around, but I hadn't actually expected any cannibalism, so it came as a surprise. My superpower is apparently being able to open any book to the one page where the author talks about cannibalism or incest. MAD SKILLS.

(I'm not watching Hannibal, but I am reading recaps of it, and this led to me getting distracted reading about cannibalism by reading about Hannibal, but not even the Hannibal I'm obsessed with or the relevant cannibalism. You can see that there may be some hilarious problems inherent in this system.)

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Without spoilers: I saw Iron Man 3 and I liked it more than I liked any of the previous Iron Man movies and possibly more than any of the previous Marvel movies.

Apparently, when I don't knit or wind yarn in the theatre, I'm the kind of person who makes a lot of gestures with their hands at the screen. Which means I kept making finger-guns at the screen when Miguel Ferrer showed up, trying to remember where I'd seen him before. (NCIS: LA. English Flatmate N. looked it up for me on her smartphone during the credits.) I did actually take my knitting, but I kept it in the ziploc baggy in my lap, so I could take it out if I felt like my wrists were up to it. (They weren't. They hurt the entire time. When I wasn't making finger-guns at the screen I was mostly sitting there with my hands clasped together.)

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I'm on Tumblr now. I'd say it's unfiltered me, but that's what I use Twitter for. And mostly unfiltered nonfannish visual me is Pinterest, so...yeah.

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I've been having thinky thoughts about writing, mostly as relates to Dust and Revelations. Like, how I think of the master plot for Revelations as more typically high fantasy and Dust's master plot as more typically sci-fi. Which got me thinking about phrasing (because 'master plot' seems like a weird way to put it) -- I always say plot lines, I very seldom say subplot. And I guess that has to do with how I think of Dust.

The closer I get to endgame, the more I'm concerned with how the different plot lines line up or interweave -- to confuse this metaphor even further, I think of the plot lines as a multi-strand braid, though it doesn't usually work out as equally as I'd like. ( this got kinda long because when I start talking about my writing process I go on and on and on; also I decided to try using footnotes instead of parentheses )

In conclusion: I still don't know where I picked the term "plot line" up from. I can't recall ever having seen it anywhere else. Also it's 2:30 in the morning and I don't know why I spent two hours writing about writing instead of actually writing, boo.

one of these days I'll find more Hobbit icons

The weather's been nice recently, so I've been leaving the windows in the kitchen and in my room open as much as I can just to get some fresh air in this apartment. Also because I've been feeling overheated lately, and actual air helps. It's right now that I really, really miss being at Tulane -- not just because I miss the weather, or the food, or my friends, or the environment, though that's all part of it. But I miss having a university campus that wasn't so alienating, where I was actually willing to go somewhere to work: inside, outside, library, PJ's, LBC, the quad, whatever. At Leicester, well, I basically walk up to the campus, flinch, go to the library, remember that I hate that library and take out five books instead of doing any work before fleeing back to my flat because the idea of being on that campus a second more than necessary is painful to me. (This backfires, I always miss my prof's office hours because I just don't want to be on campus, and also because I constantly forget things.)

I live right by the train tracks, next to a railway bridge. Every time I go into the kitchen, there's a train coming in or going out. There's something romantic about it, about looking down from so far up (I live on the ninth floor) and listening to the trains rolling along. (The trains themselves aren't romantic. I've been on those trains. Not romantic. Also, I always think of the massacre in Being Human, which is not what you want to think about when you're on a train.) It's nice. Peaceful. For thirty seconds or so until the kettle finishes boiling, anyway.

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Today we will actually get a Hobbit art rec set! Shocking, it's...been a while. This week's round-up will include last week's sets too.

Today's Hobbit art rec theme is young dwarves.

Shield-Brothers by qed221b
'Look, Mama!' by kaciart
Bofur, Bifur, and Bombur by vera-ist-44
Blunt those knives by erry
the brothers Ri by petitpotato