Well, in addition to WotD round 3 being due the 20th, I've made it to round 2 in Bloodspring - which is due the next day. Arguably a simple enough task, except for my tendency to do everything last minute, and the fact that most of my work besides that is on weekends (being that I don't have much time the rest of the week). Still doable, there's 2 weekends, right? Well... we have an unexpected trip to take this weekend for some truth and philosophy thingy, and next weekend we go to Portland to scope out the apartments Umbra's got his eye on. I'd try working in the car, but even if Umbra doesn't make me drive, I tend to get a little sick if I keep my attention in the car too much, like reading a book or something. Well, I'll either figure something out or, well... have to forfeit I guess. Hopefully that won't happen. I needa quick being lazy.

And actually, I'm excited about my Bloodspring match. I'll be facing ~Huoryu, the other side of ~Umbrascitor's Baninja vs. Saltman stuff (I still think Huoryu should have won the second time <.< ). Guy's pretty awesome. I don't quite qualify as a fangirl for him, but it's closer than with most. I won't be facing Saltman though; instead, just as Saltman was fitting for Baninja (food vs. food), I get to face Noel, the cactus man! If you're wondering why that's fitting, clearly you haven't been paying attention. For the sake of reminder (gawd I'd typing oddly), my character, Nyx Chaser, is a botanist (plant scientist). Y'know, when she's not selling a one-of-a-kind homemade miracle drug on the black market. Blah. Anyway, this means I get to actually think how she'd respond to a person who's part plant (I don't count that Ship thing, that was for S&Gs, basically).

And totally unrelated, my arm hurts. Aside from my supervisor, I seem to be the only one in my team who's been trained to use the ribbon machines (really, it's easier to learn than the 4-way tie... just a little frustrating because the machines are kinda old and crappy and sometimes eat the ribbon). As such, I've been running it it lot lately. Problem came up Thursday, when we were doing a gift that I actually had to hold down for the ribbon to go on tight enough. By the time I got home, my right forearm was so sore I could barely do a thing with it. About 24 hours later, and quick motions, turning, or stretching that part still freaking hurts. I have to kinda loosen it up a bit before I can do much, hadda keep doing that at work to keep my arm functional enough. Fortunately, we managed to have a girl from another team run the ribbon machine. Hopefully my arm will have recovered by Monday - possibly just to end up like this again. DX

My life goes by in hours and weeks. Basically, weekdays I count the hours at work until breaks, lunch, and going home. On weekends, I get to relax a bit and actually do things. But, at least I have indeed been doing things; namely, continuing to work on the World on the Damned and Bloodspring OCTs. Thanks to Umbrascitor (who was my opponent) bowing out, I get to move on to Round 3 of WotD (yeah, not the best way to move on... at least the judges mentioned having trouble choosing one or the other anyway). Round 1 of BS ended yesterday, and I should know in about a week if I get to go to Round 2.

Umbra and I have decided on a time to move to Portland - about mid-December. Work will have given out here by then. He's looking for a place to move into, prolly just a studio. We hope to have something secured by mid-November, and will start applying for jobs around then (even though we won't be there yet, yeah). Hopefully we'll managed to find some sort of work quickly, we likely won't have saved up as much money as we'd have liked (if anyone wants to commission me for one of those thread pendants or something... please let me know! Every bit would help...). If things go well, I'll be starting back in at the Art Institute in the spring (possibly summer), and Umbra plans to start in fall. Heh, I'm younger, but I'll get to poke at him about being ahead. ^^ (Unless I continue to screw up and he passes me... Hopefully that won't be a problem though.) In any case, I'm looking forward to learning a bit more about this stuff.

And if anyone was curious, at last count I believe there were about 45 baby snails.

EDIT: I've counted 18 36 baby snails so far (might have counted one twice). We're gonna see if we can get a pet store to pay anything for 'em (not sure when). We'll see how that goes before we really make offers to anyone else.

~~~

Several weeks ago, ~Umbrascitor (yes, he's my roommate I talk about all the time, for anyone who hadn't figured it out yet) brought home a snail that a coworker from his tree job had found (and had attempted to use to scare him, only to seem amused/impressed when Umbra thought it was adorable and, well, brought it home). We named it Humphrey, put it in a tank we got from my family from back when they first had fish, and proceeded to keep our eyes open for others to keep "him" (like worms, snails are hermaphrodites) company.

Up until this week, we'd only come across a crushed snail. Earlier this week, I spotted a small slug, which we named Otis. We're pretty sure it escaped. I also spotted (and nearly stepped on) a tiny snail that looks like it's pretty much a baby yet. We named it Cloe.

Several minutes ago, I noticed that Cloe was burrowing, and rather quick and deep. We'd been putting off wiping the tank and stirring the dirt (Humphrey spends much time eating and, consequently, pooping), so I convinced Umbra to hold the snails while I did the rest, so that we wouldn't have to worry about hurting Cloe later on.

What neither of us had expected was the discovery that Humphrey was going to be a mommy. While stirring the dirt, I turned up a mass of what I first thought had to be eggs, though on closer look they all appear to be tiny snail shells. I turned them back over and loosely buried them again with the hope that they'll be able to sort themselves out, but unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I crushed a few when I first turned them up... Then again, there were quite a few, and they'd be a lot of snails to keep track of...

In any case, in preparation, Umbra and I will be getting a finer screen tomorrow. The one we have it barely enough to keep Cloe from escaping (and apparently not enough to keep Otis in), and we don't want a bunch of tiny snails drying up all over the house.

On a side note, if a sufficient number of babies do come out alive, would anyone be interested in having a pet snail or three?

I shouldn't drive. I really shouldn't. Not only have I managed to mostly forget how to drive in-town already, but today (yesterday, technically), I managed to leave the keys in the ignition while at Subway and make a turn into the wrong lane. I also drove a little down a center turn lane thing while trying to get onto the correct side of the highway from an odd place to turn out of, but it was because I had a car behind me wanting to turn into a place I was kinda right next to, so I wanted to get out of the way... I did the center-lane driving no-no thing once before, too, but that was just a big mess of confusion about hat I could, should, and couldn't do. But I have to drive. I have to drive the car when we move, since my roommate will be driving a moving truck. D:

In work-related news, today I heard of the second case of a fellow employee getting in trouble for posting something negative about the company on Twitter (in the first case I heard about, the person was actually fired). While this isn't likely to be seen, I'll be making a point to avoid mentioning the company name in the same post as complaints about it, just in case. At least until the season ends, since I don't really plan to work for them again. Working there quickly becomes somewhat physically painful, and having to throw so much perfectly good stuff out is morally painful. How much stuff? One night, I had to throw out about 70 truffles; another, it was 22.5 pounds of fudge. (To be fair, I think that is the worst I've had to do so far.) No, we aren't allowed to take any of it home. We can take the bags, we can take scrap ribbon (I often do), but we can't take product. But, at least they recycle/reused about half... I dunno if it's stuff overall, or just the cardboard. They also chop old office papers up and stick 'em in compost, apparently.

Gkasgh;kdjfh;askd!

Alright, so, I'm not the brightest. My Round 2 entry fro WotD is due before the week's out, and it's not coming along too well. My opponent is actually hoping more that he'll lose to me so he can free up some time, but I'm not sure I'll have much of anything to enter. XP

Also, I got into Bloodspring by the skin of my teeth, finished and posted my entry the day it was due... But before I can do my round 1 entry (due the 25, I think it was), I have to hurry up and post a second reference for my character because I was dumb and forgot to post a reference before of her in actual winter type clothing, when she's in a rather cold, icy place. My BS opponent is comic'ing, and so will rather need that.

In other news, I need to watch a sad movie or something. I need to get upset over something, so that the bit of emotional buildup I occasionally get will go away in a manner that doesn't have the potential to make me lose my job. Arg, I was pissed at my boss today, kept telling me to work when I was already working, on and on... And any response I made, y'know, mentioning that I WAS working or something, she'd get pissed and tell me not to backtalk. D: I wasn't freaking backtalking, and I'm getting sick of her telling my to work when I am and to not backtalk when I'm not! *shakes fist* So basically, the only thing I can do when she starts up is keep quiet and attempt to look like I'm somehow working harder than my hardest. Thankfully, partway through tonight, she moved me to another, somewhat easier-to-keep-up table and finally left me alone.

In other, happier type news, I like the movie Six-String Samurai. It's a bit odd and a little all over, but it's cool.