2003-10-08 - 3:40 p.m.
Three Months Later ...

October now. Interesting month.

The weathermen have predicted our that last day of serious 80-degree-plus weather is going to be this Friday, and after that? Grey, messy, pissing down rain every other day or so, with clouds and fog in between. Par for the course, most of the year. It's kind of pretty - the grey and the wet really brings out all the green of the foliage, and we have a lot of evergreen plant growth around here - but absolute misery to be out in without proper skin coverage. Which means I have to start buying panty hose again. Ech. I've been wearing sandals since May.

In a couple of weeks, I'll be driving out north-by-east to visit a few college friends - Hildegaard, then Madman and his Madwoman; I'm going to hope the weather's good for that, since half the drive will be along the Gorge where the wind and ice are famous, but I'm not going to put it off, no matter what.

I suppose I'll have to invent a name for Hildegaard's fiance now, since they seem to be on serious track toward their wedding. Verdant, maybe. Sort of a play on his name, and it pops into my head half the time when she talks about him, so it'll be easy enough to remember. I actually got to talk to him a few days ago, when I called in the evening and got hold of her at work; she was busy, and he was waiting to walk her home, so she tossed the phone to him and told him to keep me busy with small talk for awhile. Sudden. Awkward, since I don't know what he's heard about me and he doesn't know what I've heard about him. But he seemed pretty nice. We chatted family and work for a few minutes, then rounded up with a discussion of current sports before I gave up and told him "It was nice talking to you, but I've got to go; tell [Hildegaard] I'll catch her later."

I'll have to remember to chat with Hildegaard on his behalf when I see her, though, because if he was comfortable enough to drop hints to a total stranger slash fiancee's best friend in the first five minutes of our first conversation that he was irritated by the fact that he always visits her family with her but she won't visit his, then, damn, trouble needs to be headed off at the pass. After all we've been through, if she doesn't marry this one I'm going to kick her ass to the moon; no matter what reason it could possibly fall apart for, there would be *something* to lambaste her for.

I've had two weeks now of my basic archeology course. It looks to be on par toward another A; easy as pie, even after having been away from the grindstone for three and a half years. Probably because it's 100-level community college fare, geared toward eighteen and nineteen year olds trying to fill in a social science credit on their associate's degree, and here I am at twenty-five with two bachelors' degrees under my belt and a brain on overdrive, always looking for new knowledge to devour. Regardless, it's kind of fun. Except, of course, for the part where I tripped on the steps outside and tore my shin up badly enough that it's still healing ten days later, but that's also par - it wouldn't feel like school if I didn't indulge in klutzy behavior every so often.

The second episode of Season 5 of Angel is on tonight. Whee, we get to find out what brought Spike back from the dead, after his demise on the Season 7 finale of Buffy ... I just hope that whatever they do with him, they let him take back a little of his early attitude. Bad Boy Spike was much more appealing, if just for his self-confidence, than the one Joss' version of Buffy crunched up into little pieces over the last two years. As for the other characters ... well. Angel is startlingly grey, killing humans - evil, but still! - at the drop of the proverbial hat, Gunn's common sense seems to have left the building with the insertion of all that lawyer know-how, Fred is obviously uncomfortable with every aspect of her new life, and Wes ... well, Wes is back to being the capable manager and loyal friend from before the Darla troubles (take 2). I can't help but wonder if they're ever going to cover just what the Connor-wipe did to their memories, if they've retained any of their character growth from the last two years, and if Alexis Denisof is relieved not to have to put the ugly scar-makeup on his neck every week now. The reverse-Dawn effect makes about as much sense as the Dawn version, which was pretty much none at the time. Great potential for fanfic, I suppose.

Speaking of. My latest epic is fifteen chapters in, more than thirty-five thousand words, and has been dragging its ass since April. I want to finish the damned thing already, but I tied myself down to doing a different character every chapter, with no repeating except for the closing bits, and sixteen characters in my imaginatory capacity is getting a bit fried. It's making the storytelling rather interesting, too, since I don't tend to put similar characters back to back; it's hard to shift between narrative flavors and verbal patterns. The story has become more a string of mini-character studies linked by a few plot threads, and I'm getting worried that the overall effect will be uneven. I pretty much like the individual pieces, but I probably am not seeing the forest for the trees, if you know what I mean. I'll have to find me a really good beta-reader after the fact.

Which reminds me; I have a new URL. I finally broke down and got a paying web account, which means my D.Land will probably die soon, not that it hasn't almost already; I don't write here much anymore. My new URL is as follows:

http://www.jedibuttercup.com/

Neat, eh? Jedi Buttercup and Empress Shellpatine are the two webnames I've gone under for the last seven years, and I think they're "me" enough now that they'll probably stick with me for as long as I post, wherever I post. Explaining them to people has become a rather amusing and "you had to have been there" affair, but they're like Dad's blue-jean jacket, or the collection of sandcastles on my dresser, or the photo albums on my bookshelves; little bits of dream and comfort are caught up in them, so that I can't really ever let them go. A funny status to attach to a pair of throwaway Yahoo names I signed up for in my freshman year of college, perhaps, but there you have it.

I'd better go. I'm rambling, and every rambling character typed is a fraction of a second of company time I could be spending elsewhere. *waves* God Bless. I may be back, I may not, but I won't forget that this is the first place I ever opened up to the online community, and the response was heartening enough to keep me from giving up. Vitual hugs, all round.