Imaginary Gardens

A person who feels lonely regardless of if she is at a family gathering, with friends, or alone is experiencing chronic loneliness. It does not matter what goes on in the surrounding environment, the experience of loneliness is always there.

Hannah: Sometimes you value least the people who love you most, until you remember that without them, your life is worth nothing.

Castle: He knows we're on a deadline, right?
Beckett: Yeah, he knows.
Castle: I mean a literal deadline. As in, you go over the line you're dead.
Beckett: Castle, can you just give him a chance?
Castle: I- I'm happy to give him anything he needs, it's the clock that's not cooperating.

• I'm currently reading House Rules by Jodi Piccoult (now with podcast!), and I've reached the point where I'm just devouring the thing. It's a really interesting story about a teenage with Asperger's syndrome who's accused of murder. Although I'm rarely into crime novels, this one has a large dash of forensic science as the main character is fascinated by the subject and that aspect of it is one I can really get into. Curiously, I'm also following the law aspect of it quite well and even enjoying it, even though I'm not usually into the intricacies of courts and lawyers and judges and prosecuters and so on. I keep trying to figure out the whodunnit of the novel, much like the other book of hers I've read, Plain Truth. I'm almost at the Big Reveal part of the novel \o/


• I've gotten all five of the fanmixes for Time We Saw a Miracle all set up except for the final file editing and posting. That was a lot of work, but I'm really happy with them.


• There's four people from whom I'm waiting to hear from, and have been waiting for going on a month now. ( Read more... )


• The week hasn't been fantastic. Nothing productive was actually achieved, drama was had, and German kicked my ass. However, on the plus side? There's people I can count on, and those people are my darlings. Except seschat. She's my squishy. ♥

• I've been reading The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Actually, I've only gotten two sittings in, and both times I've been fighting tears the whole while I was reading it. It's not even that particularly sad or dramatic, just inciteful and beautiful and ow my heart. I knew I was going to love this book from the quotes on literaryquotes. I've been wanting to read it for years and years now.


• I went to the Goethe Institute today to register for a course which starts Monday. (Eeeeeep!) I told them I'd gotten my Zertifikat Deutsch in 2005, and that my last German class (in 2007) had been a B2.2. level. I took their placement test just in case, because it'd been a few years since my German saw the light of day and all. So the test is 99% grammar and 1% Short Text Comprehension. My resulting level? B1.1. FAAAAAIIIIIIL. I AM A FAILURE. That's basically what my mind went to at light speed. And while I get it, intellectually, that of course I lost some German, and of course it's rusty, and that if you don't use it you lose it, but OMG FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE. Anyway, I also got to talk to one of the teachers (who spoke extra-fast on purpose) and she said that my comprehension and speaking was fantastic, it's just my grammar, so I can take the B1.2 course and do extra work on the side to spruce up my grammer. Stupid grammar.


• What this means is that between the book and the test, I'm all a-wibble. The win, it is not here.

• Espositoooooo! Rawr.


• No, really. Sweet mother of pearl, rawr. Seriously.


• And I still can't decide between him and Ryan.


• (Can I take them both home? They're so perfect!)

• On the mid-morning of December 31st, my mom was making her way back from the market with a few bags of vegetables walking down a main street near our house. ( Then Bad Things Happened )

• I can has job! Okay, so it's part-time and for a limited time at that (January to May) and at the Institute where I did my internship, but still. Job. ( Read more... )


• Any day now, the proof copy of Time We Saw a Miracle is going to make its way through the US mail system and there will be joy and rejoicing. Well, maybe not, because it's going to my brother's address (so much safer than asking an American company to send something super special across the pond to Italy). Still, book.


• I've been working on the four (oh gods, four) fanmixes for Time We Saw a Miracle. I've got three with their songs pretty much narrowed down and in a decent enough order, which still amazes me because I had so many songs to wade through.


• I read The Red Tree by greygirlbeast (Caitlin R. Kiernan) this past week although "read" isn't the word so much as "avidly devoured".
  
  I was a tiny bit disappointed for all of two seconds when I discovered that the novel wasn't written in the wonderful run-on sentences of Threshold (because gods do I love that writing) but as I said, that lasted two seconds and then I was hooked and loving it.
  
  Oh, and I totally called The Thing About Constance, but that's okay because while I suspected it, I never really believed that's where it was going, so was still pleasantly surprised and still thoroughly enjoyed the slight paranoia I was sharing with Sara.
  
  I was not expecting the sex scenes or maybe it was just two details that stuck in my head and won't go away, involving sex toys, but either way, it fit.
  
  I was struck by a few details like the insomnia and the seizures where I could point to and say, hey, greygirlbeast's Real Life is poking though, and that was actually nice because I could draw upon all her descriptions of what she's gone through and understand it all the more. I also liked that a few details and scenes I could pick out from Threshold's universe-vault, or maybe it's just greygirlbeast's general universe details and I just haven't read enough of her work to know.
  
  Still, there were ( spoilers )

• Grey's Anatomy is back, baby! There were happy couples and rapid-fire drama and sweet jambalaya Christina Yang I missed you. The characters made me happy, except Meredith who for the first time ever completely alienated me from her drama and made me say, "Good gods, woman, you're being petty and over-dramatic." But then Cally was all amazing, so it's all good.


• Castle was watched in the company of my mom, which meant a lot of pausing and recapping and explaining, but it's really nice to be able to watch a show with someone and squee.


• Supernatural is still absent from my life (especially considering I barely even have time to read fic or meta) but my wallpaper's a screencap of the Dean's promo bit, and when mom asked who it was, out came Google Images and parental approval. Seriously, that boy is too pretty.


• Human Target was Human Target again! \o/ Rejoice! ( Read more... )
  So yeah, Human Target was its usual crazy fun self with the blatant disregard for reality we all know and love and I clapped like a happy, happy seal.

To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.