General-type announcements

Contrary to some beliefs, I'm actually not dead. [grins] Just been here and there, staying up late and sleeping in, writing and trying to teach myself rudimentary cooking on the side. [grins] The concept of getting a place up in Seattle for next summer and my senior year (at the least) is an awfully tempting one, and if THAT happens, I would really rather not live on TV dinners and fried eggs for the rest of my life. XD Hopefully I can room with one or more of the gang, but I'd still like to pull my weight in the kitchen. XD

On the plus side, I've written fifty-plus pages of original fiction, several fanfic drabbles, helped make a cheesecake and stew and experimented with different sorts of omelettes. On the more negative, I only helped with some of the cooking instead of doing it by myself--but the test will come when I try to make cake for Z (and Youko, if she likes oranges and angelfood, which I'm not sure if she does), and hopefully don't blow my kitchen up in the process. XD

Secondly, hanashika.com will sooner or later be moving--I'm trying to switch registries, so there will probably be a day or two (or, at worst, three) of downtime within the next week, but hopefully I can get it fixed as soon as possible. [grins] The domain name SHOULD remain the same, just with a different DNS server, which means OH GOD I'm so freaking glad I've got this new larger harddrive which'll make transferring my files all the easier. XD

On top of that, Puppy-san has offered me'n'Sharky, poor college students we are, space and co-ownership of his server space, so HOPEFULLY we can get everything worked out. So, if within the next few weeks, you try to go and find more broken links than usual, or stuff missing, or whatnot, I'm, uh, actually aware of it and working on it. XD;; But for the time being and until further notice--if people need to reach me, hit me up at my (really really old, holy hell I still HAVE this?!) e-mail, whitecat@austin.rr.com. Please stand by, as we will be experiencing technical difficulties soon. XD;

Thirdly, which is more of just me howling and going GODDAMNIT it HAS to be the day after chirachira leaves for Japan that I find this, but HOLY HELL NAKAJIMA ATSUKO ARTBOOK COMPLETE WITH SKANKTASTIC GETBACKERS ART. Please excuse the sound of hysterical laughter--I know I used to grumble that I wished magazines would just come out with collective books of their special spreads--looks like it happened. >DDDDD Once I recover from the spending shitton of money on stuff bartered to me by my Sakkimephi, I'm going to go after this, I think. XD IT'S TOO SPESHUL NOT TO. [hoots]

Fourthly, and less cheerfully--yeah, I'm aware I've appeared on fanfic_hate. On the one hand, sure, I'm stung; I fully admit I'm an emotional wuss who is more likely than not to take things too seriously. Conversely, I can understand the need for venting and snarling and getting things out in the open--and while I wish they'd spoken to me earlier, well. [wry] Obviously didn't happen.

And they've certainly got a point--there's a certain point in my fic-writing career where I just absolutely don't want to acknowledge I've WRITTEN those things, oh holy hell. [laughs] On the general whole, please don't make me consider ANYTHING I wrote in high school (i.e., NOT within the past two years)--and hell, watch me tread warily over anything from a year ago. I think I've improved, but I also don't believe there's some mythical peak where I'll just STOP having room for improvement--satisfied as I am with some of the stuff I write now, I believe there's going to be a point in the future where I feel just as ambivalent over this current stuff as I do about my older stuff now.

My own reaction? I spent one night being depressed, sure--and the next night being a bit mopey. And then I spent all today working on my novel. Having been in the "OMG NEED TO VENT AND GRIPE" position before, far be it from me to gripe. Their style isn't to my taste--but hell, according to some of 'em, my writing isn't to theirs. So I'll keep that in mind, and I'll work on improving. I mean, in the end, that's the best defense to have against this sort of situation, right? [wry]

Right, probably blabbed everyone to tears again, sorry. :D; And WinAmp pulls some sort of bizarre sentient thing yet again, which makes me snrk and blink, heh. Awfully catchy tune, though, so it's all good. X3