Strawberry season may be officially over, but U-Picks are still going moderately well (at least based on what I saw today).

For the first time in years (I'm not kidding, it has to have been over a decade) I went out to pick my own strawberries. Even though the sign said that strawberry season was over, the folks at the farm were sending people out to find what they could. No assigned rows, just find what you can.

The weather was hot! I'm fairly sure that by the time I quit that if I'd stayed out any longer (say, to finish the bucket), I'd have ended up with heatstroke/sunstroke despite the hat. I managed to avoid sunburn though. Personally, I think the dust from the field in combination with the sunscreen was impenetrable by the sun's rays. I certainly almost needed to scrape it off when I got home.

I'd gone with two friends. One got about ten pounds of berries, the other twenty. I was somewhere in the middle with thirteen or fourteen pounds. Either way, it was one and a half of the four liter ice-cream pails. I also bought rhubarb, blueberries, raspberries and a bag of green beans.

Of course, now I'm too tired to actually prep the stuff to freeze. I did get a strawberry-rhubarb pie made though, and it was delicious. I'll do the rest tomorrow: wash and freeze the strawberries and the blueberries, and blanch/freeze the green beans. While I made the pie my two friends cleaned and bagged their berries for the freezer.

All in all, it was a fun day.

And, yes the icon is appropriate. The ceremony was at 8:30 AM, and I had to be there at seven in the morning.

By yesterday evening I was wishing I'd checked the "mail me my diploma" option (I couldn't find the clothes I'd intended to wear today, and had to go hunting in my closet for something else suitable) rather than agreeing to attend the ceremony, but I'm glad now that I did go.

Once things got started, it all went smoothly enough, but things were rather chaotic at the beginning, getting everyone in the right place to process through the ceremony.

Some tips for anyone who has a graduation ceremony in their future:
1. Take some safety pins. If your graduation regalia has a hood worn down the back, the straight pins supplied will be enough to hold it in place properly. I spent half the time processing and waiting today fiddling with the thing when the pins came loose or the shoulder slipped.

2. Make sure whoever in your family has the camera recording the event has a working camera. (obvious, I know, but it bears repeating, as there has been a malfunctioning camera at every grad I've attended).

3. There will likely not be anywhere to put a jacket or purse once you've got your gown. Be prepared to wear everything under said gown. I ended up with a fleecy underneath, which was far too warm by the end of the ceremony.

Despite all that, it was an incredible experience, and I'm actually contemplating going back for a Masters degree in the future.

It's incredible how easy it is to fall into old habits again. At the end of the summer I lost the charging cord for my MP3 player. I knew it was in the house somewhere, I just couldn't find it, so I stopped using the player, and found I didn't really miss it after all.

I just found the cord again the day before yesterday (somehow I'd switched the cord for my phone and the player. All this time it was in the phone's box), and I've found that I've always got the headphones in again after only two days.

At least I didn't have to buy a new cord or player.

Snow, snow, and more snow. eleven and a half inches in about fourteen-sixteen hours! I've just been scraping off the deck, and the snow was eleven and half inches deep. And, I had to scrape it again after I'd shoveled all the snow off - it was already white again. No question about it, we're having a white Christmas this year.
Everyone has canceled and I've been baking up a storm for the season: butter tarts, jam tarts, lemon tarts, a square, peppermint chocolate candy and rum balls. Oh well, we'll have lots of goodies for New Years - provided the weather improves.

I'd promised a while back to post on my NaNoWriMo experience.
It was tons of fun, enough that I might do it again next year. I made the wordcount, which tells me that I can actually write stories longer than about five thousand words. However, every book I've read says to 'show not tell' what's going on. That I couldn't manage, and I'm sure the story is riddled with cliches, even though I'd been trying - I read a book on writing character emotions before starting.

It's fifty thousand words of nothing. No drama, no tension, nothing happens to the characters, it's all backstory. There are some passages I like, but most of it. Well, I'm not inflicting the story on anyone as it stands.

However, I did it. I made fifty thousand words in thirty days!

I very rarely write poetry of any sort. A while ago, however, I wrote a few different pieces. Then, about two months ago, I saw a poetry contest advertised on one of the forums I post to. I entered on a whim, figuring that it wouldn't get very far. Now, today, I got a letter in the mail saying that the poem made it to the semi-finals of the contest, and more, they want to publish it in their next anthology!!

If you're interested, the poem can be found at: http://www.poetry.com/Publications/display.asp?ID=P8554640&BN=999&PN=1.

Yesterday was one of those days. Both my classes were canceled. I found out about the first one in time before I had to leave, but I didn't find out about the second until I got to class. So, I figured I could get something done on my term papers. I think I'm going to have to change topics for one, as I can't find the information I need.

That's enough of the complaints for now, and here's hoping it doesn't happen again today.

Just some random rambling about what's going on.

( Website Stuff )

I've ordered Season Three of Forever Knight last week, and I'm expecting it to arrive next week. Maybe this will get my fic writing back on track. I've started a new story, which I'm thinking will be fairly long (at least by my writing standards), but it's set in season three, which I've never seen, and it's more complicated as the crime is to be an integral part of the story instead of just the background.

I know I should be working on my arda100 claim, but again, I've had no inspiration.

Classes are going well (so far, anyway) and I'm having fun with latin class, and things seem to be making sense. We'll see when quiz time comes.

I've been doing a bit of artwork lately, having bought the full version of ArtRage. Just another thing to take me away from writing or updating my site.

With exams coming up in a couple of weeks, I now feel like I haven't learned a thing all semester. Probably normal that :)

Christmas cards are starting to arrive, which means I've got to get writing on my outgoing ones.

The house still smells of woodsmoke from the other day. The best description of the weather lately is the first line of that song: The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful.

I'm employed again, and I'm going to enjoy it a lot if last year is any guide. I've been hired by the same bookstore for the Christmas holidays. Same manager even! I start today. Maybe I won't bring home as many books this year though (I've got at least 30 left from last year to read, plus the library book sales I've been to over the year)

What a surprise. I was watching the TV at midnight last night and discovered that the World Cup was being shown on TV. At that point it was showing Dressage. The last time I got to see good dressage was when I was in England in 1996 and the Olympics were on. They never show it around here, even during the Olympics unfortunately.

On Sunday I'm going to be participating in the Paws For A Cause walk, which raised funds for the SPCA. If you are interested in finding out more information or in supporting me, the link is https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/personalPage.aspx?EventID=6432&LangPref=en-CA&RegistrationID=198609.

Just finished scrubbing the back patio. It's slate tiles and about 14x14 feet. To do it right (change the colour from brown/grey to blue I had to scrub it on my hands and knees and each tile took between one and three minutes aprox. Took me a total of three days.

It's got to be the mosquito.

Just an update on life in general here.

First of all, I've got a job now. While it was supposed to be part time, it sure feels like full time :). This is having a negative impact on things like my website.

Website:
I downloaded Eversoft's Firstpage 2006, which has a feature which removes the excess spaces and other things from your html files. This is great, and it's taking off between one and three k per file. The negative side to this is it's not set up in a way that is easy to use on a large number of files, and I have to do each file individually. There are over three hundred files on my site that need this treatment (and that's only in the main layers directory). Until this is done, the next update to the site won't be posted.

Other things:
I'm writing the arda100 prompts I chose on my days off.

I've been fiddling around with art programs such as Terragen, which I'm finding to be quite the time-eater.

I'm now gainfully employed again.

It was a streak of luck that I took in my resume to a place where they were hiring. I got interviewed the same day and I wasn't expecting to hear back for a few days. Instead I got called last night and I start work today.

Well, that's one way of putting it. We were all woken up around four in the morning by the alarm on the family car going off. Meaning, the horn and the flashing headlights. Turned out that it was an attempted break-in. We found one of the doors partly opened. Nothing was taken though.

All I can say is thank goodness it's Saturday!

In other news, I had to reformat my computer and lost the font that I use for the graphics on my website. The font is still available on the other computer, but not on a drive that's hooked up. I'm going to have to wait for one of my friends who's more computer-savvy to retrieve it for me. Don't know if there'll be any updates until then, but I do have some things I want to add.

I'm writing a short Star Wars fanfic as well.

I GOT THE JOB!!

Wish me luck. I've got a job interview at the local bookstore tomorrow (along with a Latin quiz, but who's counting that LOL)

Midterms are over, thank goodness, however I have two papers due next month and lots of reading to do. Biggest item: Gawain and the Green Knight in Middle-English.

I am slowly working on a tiny update for the website, more as a token of good faith than anything else. It hasn't been abandoned, its just that when I have the energy, I don't have the time or inspiration and when I do have the time, I don't have the energy.

Not to mention that even though I have wireless access at the university and I know the site is up (daily stats numbers would let me know otherwise) I can't access the site from most of the buildings.

My stories.... well, same as the site. They usually sort themselves out in my head in the middle of the night but I'm not getting up then to write them down and they're gone again during the day.

1. How the heck to people managed to write ten thousand words plus on a story? I'm lucky to get two thousand, and less than one thousand is more common. One unusual story is over 3 thousand words.

2. Do people find themselves writing in a perspective they don't read? I generally don't read anything in a first-person/stream of conciousness format, and yet I've written five of them: Barrow-Wight challenge, Changes, Lest We Forget (Forever Knight), Mordor Contest (in Misc Scenes), and Tower Guard.

Snowed under in homework:
Two chapters of Latin exercises
Most of the Iliad to be read for tomorrow
Two thousand or so lines of the Alliterative Morte Arthur (in Middle-English) for Tues.

Likelyhood of me writing any stories for a while (even though I have at least three floating in my head) is low, as is me updating my site.

Anyone know the symbolism of white roses in the medieval floral codes? That's all thats holding me up on the sequel to Valentines Surprise (other than the time issue).