Cleolinda everywhere

Still working on paper; looks like it's going to be a long night. But as I always like to point out, there is a point when it's just over. By tomorrow, for better or worse, it's either done or it's not, and either way, it's over. This too shall pass, etc.

Haven't read my friends list in about two months now due to crazy workload, so I don't know what the Michael Jackson reaction at large is, but mine's... complicated. ( Read more... )

Meanwhile, I don't know if y'all are reading about the Natalee Holloway case, but when I was at Yahoo, her name was right under Jackson's on the Full Coverage links, so I guess it's safe to say that she's hit the mainstream American media as well. For those of you not keeping up with American news, Natalee is a girl from the Ham (actually, she's from Mountain Brook, the suburb next door to mine. Vaguely pretentious, but has good shopping) who went missing in Aruba. ( Read more... )

In book related news--"OH SHIT!" made me think of the point I'm about to roll around to--all the edits and the acknowledgements and miscellaneous bits are in. I think page proofs are the next step. Things seem to be going well. My grandmother, by the way, approves of my pseudonym, which surprises me, but she thinks that "Cleolinda Jones" is "sassy." Of course, she's also my maternal grandmother, so it's not like she's particularly attached to my surname. However, my mother is starting to fret about the whole What Will Your Grandmother Say? issue that every single writer on God's green earth has to face at some point. ( Read more... )


ETA: As far as the book release itself goes, I can't get into many details, mostly because I don't want to jinx anything. Suffice it to say that it will be available outside the U.S.--Orion is a British publisher, after all--and that I will make it as easy as possible for anyone who wants it to find it, trust me. Can't say more than that until I know more, however.

Ideally, one should not be able to play three games of solitaire between each page load, but that was pretty much my night last night; I was all Sally Field with the "Not without my emaaaaaail!" Today it seems to be better.

Here's the best part: the fussy internet? Isn't even on my computer. This is the borrowed computer (my parents'. Yes, it was cheaper to get two different internet connections than route them together). My actual internet is fine--it's just that the monitor on the old computer blew out, and the computer is apparently so old (five, six years?) that it doesn't even have the correct outlet-pluggy thing for my new flat screen monitor, so I can't just switch them out. And I don't have the BellSouth installer CD anymore, so I'm waiting on that to come in so I can get the new computer online. Basically, it's the biggest clusterfuck ever, AND I still have to research the term paper. What I'm saying is, we're not out of the woods yet. If I disappear again... well, don't be surprised.

Just checking in. Still working on paper for school and copyediting for book. Did manage to go out last night and see Star Wars--The Lovely Emily has permanently moved back to the Ham (yay!) and Brett the Vet is in town for a few days, so we went to Salvatore's and got pizza. Sad to say, I think this is the first time I've actually been out to do anything fun since... the last time Em was back in town. And I'm not even sure when that was. I haven't been reading my friends list at all for about six weeks now (due to the crush of trying to finish the book), so I was completely unaware that Em got a job at Cooking Light and the Vet is moving to North Carolina after having now spent like three weeks in EUROPE (ACK JEALOUSY HATE). Brought back some gorgeous pictures, though. I fell in love with travel, or what little I had experienced of it, after I spent a week in Havana for my senior interim in undergrad. And since then I have gone... nowhere. Well, Dauphin Island shortly after that, but that was just an awesome hanging-out-at-the-beach thing, and then that weekend in New Orleans y'all may remember from late last summer. And now I'm over here in the present day being like, "Please let me go to the grocery store with you. I MUST SEE THE FACES OF OTHER PEOPLE." Yeah. Class has been over for a few weeks now, and... I'm in more social withdrawal than I expected. Really, I know I was always sort of 1) shy and 2) a homebody, but I did actually used to have friends in town. Since they all moved away for grad school, though, it's been easy for me to make tons of new acquaintance-friends... just really hard to turn them into going-out-friends. And thus, I molder away in the house. Well, fortunately Em's back home, so maybe that'll get a little better.

Hey, could we not have a giant thunderstorm with massive hail coming in while I'm trying to reach my deadline zombieline? Thanks.

Still working. Can't find my glasses. Can't work very long without them. Already got a headache from trying. May not be a Lost recap tomorrow. Don't know.



ETA: Glasses have been found after two hours of looking, sent to my face to bed without supper. BAD GLASSES, NO BISCUIT.

Just so you know, I didn't make my deadline. There will be no Lost recap tomorrow. I'll put up a discussion entry for y'all, but I can't in good conscience take three hours to do the recap when the work I'm getting paid to do isn't done.


ETA: Really, try to be supportive of this, y'all (and thank you to the people who are). I hate not doing the recap and this is a really stressful time for me right now.

I... well, let me preface this by saying that you need to read this entry, you need to hear it in your inner reader voice, in a very calm tone. As much as I like to rant and rave, it's usually to blow off steam or joke around. When I'm actually angry or upset, I tend to get very, very calm. As I once told someone, when I'm mad at you, you'll know it--but not because I'm yelling at you.

Wow, that's a dire buildup to a very ho-hum entry, isn't it? I'm just really stressed out, is all. We got an extension on the paper, but the difference is only from this Friday to next Monday. Which would be great, if I weren't also working on the book. And the book is seriously stressing me out. I don't have time to be burned out, y'all. I don't have time to be stressed.

The good news on the paper is that we workshopped my thesis/outline briefly today, and people thought it was a pretty interesting premise. I'm unusually ahead on this paper--I really am one of those people, as if you couldn't tell by now, who guns it out six hours before deadline, and by God, if I don't get A's doing it. But because this time I'm doing the paper on 1) the one book I really, really got into this semester and 2) a movie I watched approximately forty-seven times, I have a much better, more immediate idea of what I want to say and where I want to take it. Hell, let me just show you the thesis statement: ( Cut for antebellum S&M rambling )

So... I'll be over here writing that paper in the back of my mind while I whistle a happy tune in the comedy mines. No, seriously, I'm going to be okay. I'm just stressed out. A lot.


ETA: You know what I just remembered? We have cake downstairs. Mmmcake.

ETA2: Heh. I think just rambling about The Wide, Wide World made me feel better.