So you've found my LJ! What up.

first_seventhe is not a Friends-Only journal; however, it is a Somewhat-Friends-Locked journal. I don't have any kind of "friending policy" - if you're here, you're free to comment on anything. If you can see an entry, it's free game. Here's how it usually breaks down:

• Unlocked - Fandom stuff; open entries about writing, art, photography, etc; general bitching; healthblogging and workout stuff in general; memes and photomemes


• Locked - More personal entries; healthblogging / workout stuff with specifics about me; anything that mentions my significant other; entries about work or grad school; anything posted during the day (from work) with naughty language in it


• Filtered and locked - Personal entries with life details. I do have a set of filters based on how well I know someone. Don't be offended if you're not on one. Get to know me better.

Yes, I am in fandom. Yes, I write fanfiction. I'm old enough that I don't really feel like I have to hide that fact, or even justify it in any way. I'm not exactly trying to sit at the "cool table" any more (as a professional chemical engineer and a part-time graduate student in polymer science, I think they've already revoked my "cool table" license anyway). If the fandom parts (or the crack that comes with fandom) bother you in some way, feel free to ignore, or de-friend, or leave me a comment to take you off of X or Y filter. However, if you're here from fandom, feel free to comment on non-fandom-related stuff if you want! Like I said: if you can see it, it's fair game.

I do love random friendings and random stalkers. If you friend me, I'll probably friend you back. If we end up not interacting much, I always reserve the right to take you off certain lists -- my F-List is mainly for my own reading purposes and shouldn't be used to gauge how much I like someone. I like lots of people! Everywhere! Except when I don't, because people suck.

If you're here because you've Googled my real name and followed the internet trail through my website to this journal, leave me a goddamn comment (on this entry) and let me know. Stalkers freak me out.

In the past two weekends, I have:

+ sanded down the island in the kitchen
+ taped up, tarped down, and protective-plastic-sheeted the kitchen/living room
+ painted a base coat of grey primer
+ painted coat #1 of POSH RED (a bold, dark, red leaning towards wine/burgundy, fyi) on the island in the kitchen
+ driven to Buffalo to visit my parents
+ celebrated Father’s Day with a dinner out
+ driven back to SevLand
+ sanded all of the fuzz, specks, and roller lint out of coat #1
+ missed fireworks to do so
+ painted coat #2 of POSH RED
+ retouched trim (still needs sanding and retouching of the edges, but it is functional for now)
+ untaped, untarped, and cleaned up the painting mess
+ 2 hours at the gym
+ bottled two beers, one 5gal batch of Chocolate Milky Balls and one 3gal batch of Sam Adams Summer Ale clone (about 75 beers total)
+ practiced two new songs and old songs for recording with Snafubar
+ gathered a shit-ton of data and past work; officially handed off all FFF work to Dr. Asshat via a series of carefully-written emails
+ ended up landing self in 3-hour meeting because of this
+ 2 hours at the gym
+ last-minute errands for Otakon cosplays
+ work for Otakon cosplays
+ pulled together kick-ass last-minute presentation for another FFF-related meeting
+ arranged potential grad school schedule for Fall 2009 and Spring 2010
+ group meeting at UAkron
+ met with grad advisor to discuss classes for next semester
+ work on FFEX beta submissions
+ dinner and visit with Jeff’s sister and her SO
+ went to the dentist
+ 2 hours at the gym
+ cleaned the first floor of the house
+ had a small (taco-less) J-Squad gathering
+ last-minute errands and work for Otakon cosplays
+ work on FFEX beta-gifter matches and other assorted stuffs
+ recorded drum tracks for three songs
+ 2 hours at the gym
+ food shopping
+ cooked chili
+ finished recording frigging drum tracks, had celebratory beer and raspberries

So. My apologies for lack of emails, lack of LJ responses and comments, lack of life, etc. I am still here, and still kicking. <3 Just a little... tired. And a lot busy.

This entry was originally posted at http://seventhe.dreamwidth.org/4021.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

So in January I was talking about a Seifer/Irvine fic. You might remember this. A year ago I was talking about an AU country-star!fic. Some of you might remember that.

They happen to be the same fic.

I have finally gotten far enough to post it.

Chapter One

There's a story about this fic, and it is this: a long time ago, Nay did an AU meme in which she asked for a series of AU prompts from friends to write fic about! I thought it sounded awesome and shamelessly stole it. She return-prompted me with this AU: Irvine is a country music star and Seifer is his bodyguard. I died of absolute pleasure.

Then I wrote a beginning and sat on it for like 1,000 days because I suck.

This January I started it again for JanNoWriMo, and actually really liked what I was writing; but it got pushed to the back burner again, because like always, I continue to suck.

I've finally written about half of it and I feel confident enough in it that I've posted Chapter One (above). Not only is this Nay's birthday gift for something like two (possibly three!!!) years running, but it's part of a huge thank-you for all the time and effort she's put into ff_exchange when I've been too busy to equal her mad efforts.

I would love to know why I take my AU fic so seriously!

safety_caesars and drakonlily are on their way here for the massive Otakon-preparing shenanigans of BWE. Becky is already surrounded by weirdos on the Greyhound! Kas is already in need of a trip to the bar!

At least they will not mind if I have a bit of stuff to do for FFEX. I can bribe Becky with a peek at CD prompts or something. *shoots self for poor planning*

omg. XD!

oh, MINI, you are adorable. I love you already. Which is lame, because so far I am only loving you for your looks. ;) ;)

Dearest drakonlily,

Best wishes on your birthday the anniversary of your 21st birthday. Have a great time being old like me 21.

All my love,
Sev

ff_exchange, ROUND 2, OPEN FOR SIGNUPS.

Yes, that's right. I'm insane! But I love fandom.

Come on over, sign up, and pimp the hell out of it. People who advertise for it or bring friends in might get extra Chocobo Down for me, I am just saying. I will remember at the end of the round. Really.

♥ ♥

our 401ks are climbing in the positive, lol

Last night I ran 4.5 miles. Without stopping. That's 45 min of straight running. At ~6.0mph. That's a personal record for distance.

And I did it instead of going out to the bar.

Days like this I confuse myself.

Anyway, \o/ ! Go me.

The rest of this post is attn: jennyclarinet, hilldo, and I guess any other runners:

1) I saw a bunch of shirtless Cavs players on the news this morning and thought of you. (For others: Jenny and I spent a good amount of time once at a J-Squad party googling "Wally Szczerbiak shirtless" and "LeBron James penis".)

2) The Akron Marathon. Saturday, September 26th. There are a few options we could do: marathon (hell no), half marathon (also probably a hell no), or a Team Relay, which sounds the most interesting to me.

The Team Relay needs 5 runners. Each runner runs a small section of the marathon, and then passes off a snap bracelet to the next runner. Each section is a different length, so you can have people of all different levels running together:

First	3.5 mi
Second	5.7 mi
Third	6.3 mi
Fourth	3.1 mi
Fifth	7.6 mi

We'd have until September, so whoever decided to pick up the longer legs of the run would have plenty of time to train. Plus, with me, Jeff, James, and Jenny running, we will need one more person... September is plenty of time to train for the shortest leg, that being 3.1mi. The Couch-To-5K program would do that in plenty of time. (That is, unless we get Melissa to run that long leg for us; then we're golden. Haha.)

Now for the bad news. First of all, we'd have to be there at 7am on a Saturday. Blech. Second, registration is $36 per person. Now, most 5Ks cost money to register; it looks like $20-$40 online depending on the race. But still, that's money we'd have to pay for the race. Akron Marathon is a non-profit organization, and their charity benefits "local fitness" from what I can tell; not a bad thing, but I'd hoped to pick a race that targeted a more specific charity. (Of course, Jeff's response is "Look up the course and we can run it together for free on our own day." Umm...kind of defeats the point.)

The other bad thing is that we'd all be running separately, instead of being able to run together and pace each other. However, the plus side of that is that we could say the J-Squad ran a marathon. XD

We have until August to register, so there's plenty of time to think about it... what do you guys think?

So I've been thinking about something I read about on delylah's LJ a bit ago, and how I can turn this really awesome idea to something for FF fandom. Basically, the idea was a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure ficathon, where people write fic in response to other people's choices.

I've thought on it a bit on and off this week, and here's what I'm thinking: I'd post a situation to start everything off, describing a character and a particular setting and a situation in which the character has to make choices. Then people reply to that entry, 'choosing' what to make the character in question do. Other people could then reply to that (like a roleplay, almost), presenting their own scenes or choices, or I could reply and set up another 'choice' for the writer(s). Obviously more than one person could reply to the same situation completely differently -- different choices would lead to different scenes. Eventually we'd have multiple stories being told in comment threads, and we could wrap them up at the end of the [week?] and move on to a new 'scene'.

Responses would be brief -- maybe only about 500 words each, plus or minus a bit. You wouldn't have to write a novel -- just the next step. The only thing I'd ask was for people to try and avoid responding immediately to someone who responded to them: I'd rather see A - B - C - A - D than A - B - A - B - A - B just because I think it would be way more fun to mix it up a little.

( For example! )

Anyway. What do you guys think? Would you be interested? I'm more than willing to start a trial run if you are.

EDIT: NOW WITH A POLL If you're interested, please check the poll.

Poll ain't working. Just leave your fandoms in a comment if you want to play. I'll try to start with something everyone can do.

...hmm. apparently if I highlight the 'Post' page in Dreamwidth, new things show up. New and mysterious things. WTG, browser.

Seriously. I should screencap this shit. It's hilarious.

From today's Dove Dark Chocolate*:

"Failure is merely the opportunity to start over, more intelligently."


*yes, I do have a daily dark chocolate. shaddup.

Thanks to everybody for all the awesome birthday wishes! My phone kept ringing and beeping yesterday from all the messages; I felt so popular. Hee! ♥

I have successfully turned 27 without any major crisis or fallout. I am currently knocking on wood to make sure things stay this way. This counts as a good birthday in my book (see for reference: the past three years). I'll be celebrating this weekend (you are all welcome to come).

So now, happy birthday to venefica_aura! Less than two weeks until party time!

Side note: I am on Dreamwidth! (Thanks, Meglet.) You can find me as seventhe, so please let me know your username if you're already there! <3 <3

Happy birthday, Sir hilldo. Love you. Have fun being OLD.

So guess who actually got sunburnt this weekend?! If you guess me, you are correct.

( Grad school, bike rides, beer making and scientific nerditude thereof, birthday parties, and more sunshine than you can shake a stick at )

Things I did not do this weekend:

• Write any words at all.


• lunaticdiscord. I didn't even check my email (thx for 250+ unreads this morning guyz)


• FFEX documents WHICH I AM GOING TO DO TODAY, I SWEAR

Anyway. It's beautiful here, again. I love this.

Hail?

Really? You're gonna start hailing now?

...but I woke up yesterday with a knot of muscle in my neck so bad I couldn't even sit up, let alone turn my head. Needless to say I spent yesterday NOT at work. I did make it to the doctor's office, where he gave me scripts for an anti-inflammatory (basically super-Aleve) and a muscle relaxer.

Drugs make everything better?

Anyway. I see I am terribly behind on lunaticdiscord. Maybe Quistis can get more involved next week. Must go poke at it.

My presentation? It is a whore. I am so totally going to bed.

It ate one of my slides.

omfg.

Stupid life.

The fact that I actually originally wrote a typo in that two-word sentence should tell you how my brains feel right now.