Merry Christmas everybody! Excuse my absence, as I’ve been busy the past few days with… you know… family and work and the holiday and such. It was a splendid time, except for the part where I totally broke down over the Doctor Who Christmas episode. That aside, I hope everyone else had a WONDERFUL, MARVELOUS, STUPENDOUS holiday, and I’ll see you all again soon. 🙂
XXOO
Celeste
PHEW.
That’s what I’ve got to say.
Lol, jk. You know me better than that. I could never sum it all up in like two sentences. But let me start with: Thank God November is over!
Thanksgiving was a wonderful and happy affair for my family. It was the first year in four that I actually got to be HOME for the holiday, having been too far away in college to come home for something as short as a 4-day weekend, and yet it felt like I’d never left. (Except for a few things that everyone else took as tradition that I wasn’t familiar with, since right after I left they started having dinner at my Aunt and Uncle’s house.)
We stuffed ourselves silly, took a nap, ate some more, watched some of the dog show (I don’t like Football,) then played a game of Phase 10 until late in the evening. My sister won. There was a lot of grumbling, because we’re all terrible, cursing cutthroats when it comes to games. My aunt can’t even play with us–she’s such a pacifist, ha ha.
Then I had a crummy night where I absolutely NEEDED to sleep, because as I’m in retail I worked on Black Friday, but my body was having none of it. I actually was physically ill, which I rarely ever am. THANKSGIVING DINNER RETRIBUTION. TMI, sorry. Anyway, so I got about an hours worth of sleep before I had to go to work for 10 hours.
Luckily, Macy’s wasn’t all that busy, and even though I was training 2 new seasonals at once while also working, everything went off without a hitch. We got to wear tennis shoes, they put out food for us, and even let me wear my ugly Christmas sweater to work. It doesn’t get much better than that, really.
The next day, the Ultimate Day of November, brought the last day for Nanowrimo and saw me about 8k words behind. Yikes! And since I had a lunch engagement and plans for the evening, I was sweating it, let me tell you. The thought of being so close to finishing and just… not. That was horrible. So I wrote when I woke up, wrote a bit at my grandparent’s after lunch, and wrote more before I got picked up by my friends to go see Frozen. Returning home later that night, a little drunk, I proceeded to yank the last 1600 words out of myself and validate.
Seeing that “WINNER!” screen was never so sweet, I’m sure.
I mean, it was my first win. Unfortunately I was punchy from lack of sleep and alcohol, but I still took a long minute to appreciate it and print out my certificate before I passed out, hence finishing up my November with a creative BANG.
This month has been a roller-coaster for me, but I really think I got more in-touch with myself as a writer because of it. Thank you to everyone who has followed along–December will no doubt be a crazy one too (work, more work, my birthday, Christmas, my birthday PARTY, work some more…) but I’ll get through it, and hopefully bring over some of the habits I learned from Nano about writing every day. (Or at least trying to write most days.)
On the front of The Life of Gaia, there are a lot of upcoming exciting things! I’m going to do a more formal post on that later, but for now just know that I will soon be posting Chapter 2 on Jukepopserials.com. After that, I promise that the updates will be more regular without Nano breathing down my neck–pinkie-swear!
friend, writer and all-around cool person Michelle Proulx just made a website solely for her book Imminent Danger. It’s cool, it’s futuristic-y, and my art is all over the place–what more can you ask for?! So go check it out. 🙂 http://imminentdanger.weebly.com/
Also, Frozen and The Day of the Doctor, the two movies I’ve seen recently, WERE BOTH FLIPPING AMAZING. Watch them. Well, don’t watch TDOTD unless you already watch Doctor Who of course, or it will make very little sense. But no pre-req for Frozen–SEE IT!!
(Song I’ve been playing a lot since watching it…)
So, in summation, I hope all of your holidays’ were awesome, that you’re all doing well, and that we’ll get to see more of one another in the future.
Best wishes!
Celeste
Honestly, the title is pretty self-explanatory. x)
IT’S HALLOWEEN EVERYONE! Sadly I am something resembling an adult, which means society frowns upon me Trick-or-Treating, but all of my friends are out of town, which means I can’t even dress up in something low-cut and go to parties. (Well, that and the fact that I’m working like all day. Boo. D:) I AM STUCK IN A HALLOWEEN RUT. The tragedy. The horror.
But the one thing I DO plan on indulging in later tonight, besides candy my parents bought to give to the non-existent children in our neighborhood, will be my list of Halloween greats…. And by that, I mean movies. Three in particular. I will now share them with you, because perhaps they will bring you some of the same joy(?) they’ve brought me!
Here we have a CLASSIC Tim Burton film. Tim Burton, a man whose wardrobe and personal appearance seems to scream ‘Halloween’ all year round, really hit it out of the park with this crazy stop-motion claymation movie. (A personal favorite of mine as far as movie types are concerned.) However, it has also been CONFUSING the masses since it was released. Is this a Halloween movie, or a Christmas movie? Arguably both, I rather enjoy watching it at Halloween anyway, simply because there’s an overwhelming array of Christmas movies to choose from, and comparably fewer for this particular holiday. (At least fewer that I enjoy!)
For anyone who HASN’T seen it: FOR SHAME. But really. Jack Skellington is the, I don’t know, Scare King or something of Halloween Town, but he’s super-bored of celebrating one holiday all the time. So when he stumbles across Christmas Town, Jack has a new, terrible dream–to bring his own version of Christmas to the world! Predictably this goes terribly wrong, but it’s a fun ride nonetheless, and with wonderful catchy music.
Plus, CLAYMATION!!
Full of early-90s charm, Hocus Pocus is definitely a Halloween must-watch. Not only does it have a pretty solidly entertaining plot, it also has a decent amount of suspense for a children’s movie, since you know inevitably that everything will turn out all right in the end. There’s a zombie, and witches, and a talking cat. What more can you ask for?
A quick summary for those who might be on the fence about watching: (my advice: DO IT)
Some teenage boy and his sister move to a new town just in time for Halloween. This town was once harassed by three witches, the Sanderson Sisters, back in the day, who ate young children. (Ew.) CONVENIENTLY ENOUGH, this Halloween also happens to be the one where the Sisters come back to resume their disgusting diet of child-eating to, you know, preserve them and keep them young. With the help of a mysterious black talking cat, Teenage Boy and his sister, along with Teenage Boy’s Girl Crush, have to keep that from happening.
Because it’s bad, duh.
Oh, Hanna Barbera movies, how I love you. Anyway! This always seems to be the least-known of my personal Halloween medley. Strangely enough, it was ALSO released in 1993, when Hocus Pocus was! (Go figure–I guess that year was big for Halloween movies.) Here we have animated 90s kids, although the movie is based off of a 1970s book by the same name, which explored the history and origins of Samhain and Halloween as a holiday. Maybe that’s why I like it, and it’s not so well known–it was kind of a history lesson disguised as a children’s movie. HA HA, suckers.
Little known fact, probably, but I found out later in life that the crazy old man from this movie was voiced by none other than THE AMAZING AND TALENTED AND BEAUTIFUL LEONARD NIMOY. Yup. Bask in that brain-nugget a minute. Go ahead.
SO, here’s the idea: four friends are getting ready to enjoy a night of sugar-filled insanity and probably toilet-papering houses, but wait–one member of their little gang is missing! As they try to find him they wind up at the creepy mansion of a Weird Old Man, who punishes them for being on his lawn by making them come along as he explains the legends and history behind each of their classic Halloween costumes.
I’m kidding, it’s a lot more fun than that! It involves the ghost of their possibly-dying friend running around with a pumpkin through time and space. YUP. Makes the history stuff sound not so bad, right?
A runner-up, because the list of movies I watch for Halloween really IS incredibly short, would be Beetlejuice, ALSO by Tim Burton, go figure. It’s not really a Halloween movie, but it’s somewhere between funny-and-scary, so lumping it in with Halloween probably isn’t the WORST thing for it. Really there’s nothing like that dinner-party scene where everybody sings the coconut song and floats around above their chairs.
CLASSIC.
Have a great night everyone! 🙂 You’re not doing it right unless you’re in a sugar-coma.
Celeste
Merry Christmas, everyone! (Or whatever you happen to celebrate this time of year. :)) Sorry for the absence, but as you can imagine, and probably relate to, December is a little crazy. I had finals, my birthday, dealing with air travel, last-minute Christmas shopping, and the general laziness and sleep that comes from not having to worry about anything more pressing than sending out Christmas cards for the first time in months.
So sue me, I took full advantage!
But now that I’m all settled, caught up on sleep and re-hydrated, I thought I would just do a post. And it happened to be on the 21st, although from what I can tell nothing especially amazing is happening, which is just well enough for me. I have a lot of future plans, and they didn’t involve a giant meteor, or floods, or whatever it was that was supposed to happen. So, yay Friday!
I can’t say that I’ve done anything particularly useful lately, or anything that anyone else might be interested in, but hey, I don’t want anyone saying I never update the blog, so you get to listen to me talk about random junk. Like the fact that I turned 22 on my birthday! It wasn’t an impressive birthday or anything, as they go–I mean, just more of the same from 21–but hey, that’s one more year of being alive and kicking, right? That’s worth celebrating! I made my friend take me to go look around our local Pier 1, because that was honestly the most interesting thing I could think of, then we went and got fishbowl alcoholic beverages at Hudsons. (They’re delicious, if you’ve never had one. I totally recommend them.) I know, I know. I really live life on the edge.
My flight home was pretty… intense. I was sitting next to a girl I’d never met before, but she went to the same school as me, so we were talking a little bit. At first she seemed okay, but got progressively worse, and actually ended up throwing up on the plane. I was having a minor panic attack, trying not to watch and to scoot as far from her as possible, because puke and I don’t go well together at all. Luckily we were almost due to land, because I was having a tough time there for a few. (I felt bad for her, though–I mean, who likes throwing up in public?)
Being home has been pretty much the usual. We’re all so busy and our schedules clash so much that it’s hard to get anything done for Christmas until, like, the day before. We drove around for hours looking for a tree on Tuesday, but ended up having to go back to the first place we tried. It was my sister’s year to pick one (we switch on and off every year,) and predictably she picked like, the shortest tree on the lot. Rivaling Charlie Brown. I always go for tall, stately, oozing Christmas-card charm. It’s funny, because on years one of us picks the tree, the other gets to put the angel on the top. I’m much taller than my sister. The result is that she picks out trees that I don’t even have to strain to get the angel on, and I pick out trees that require a ladder for her. We’re an odd bunch. Anyway, it has lights on but no decorations thus far, although I will have to do some of that today because I’m leaving for a friend’s place later and won’t be home a couple of days.
Christmas and all of that splendor aside, (I really love Christmas, by the way–my favorite holiday by far,) I’ve been to at least one party so far, seen some of my friends, and finally gotten time to sit down an read. That’s probably my favorite part of break–all of the books that have been building up on my ‘to read’ list finally get a chance to be devoured. I’ve read three already since I got here, and I still have at least a couple more that I want to get to before I have to go back.
My read list consists of:
The Perfect Hope by Nora Roberts: The final book in her Inn Boonsboro trilogy. It was cute, contained an unexpected sort of twist, and of course a nice little love story. Nora Roberts books are sort of my pleasure-read–I don’t have to strain my brain reading them or anything, but they always make me feel good. And I have to say, I really want to go stay at Inn Boonsboro, which is a real place that Roberts owns. All of the rooms are named/designed after literary couples, like Westley and Buttercup from Princess Bride and Elizabeth and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.Well! I think that gets us all caught up again. As you can see, I’m spending a lot of time being a productive member of society (not really,) getting things done (definitely not,) and doing things besides sleeping, eating and shopping (not a chance.)
And here I am, reading all of these awesome posts from other people I watch about how they’re publishing their books and whatnot! (Yeah, I’m looking at you, Michelle.) I guess I’ll include a writing update… Although I mean, you can see the word count at the bottom of the pages of my site, so it shouldn’t be any real surprise to anyone. Either way, I did do a little bit of writing, and might actually do a little bit later today, but no major progress. Not because of lack of motivation, however–I’m still as interested in Life of Gaia as I was before, so that’s something. Maybe the next post I do will talk about that a little bit, because I kind of want to get people interested in it… Which will make more sense later. Mm. (Cliff-hanger!)
SO! I don’t know if I will get around to posting again before the 25th, but if I don’t, I just want everyone to know that things are rolling along in my part of the world, and that I hope everyone has a WONDERFUL holiday season. 🙂 Spread the love, spread some cheer, and try not to dwell to long or too hard on the bad things. Open a door for a stranger, leave a nice comment on a blog, read a random story, buy someone a cup of coffee. Look at the snow (if you have it) and the lights, take in the atmosphere, smell the spices and the cedar, watch a holiday movie, have a cup of eggnog, hug the people you love.
And thank you all, every one of you, so much, for being with me this Christmas on my journey to become a real boy. (I mean author.) It means so much to me, and you’re the reasons I keep coming back to it, even when it knocks me down, even when blogging seems annoying, or I have no interesting thoughts. You’re the ones I’m writing for–well, you and me. We’re what I’m writing for. 🙂
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