More Life. And a Bit of Catch-up

For the record, a root canal is both awful and not bad.

The actual root canal isn't bad, or at least, in my case, it wasn't too awful.  My mouth wasn't too badly infected by it - I came across some root canal horror stories (and of course I went looking for them before my procedure.  Cause apparently I'm mental.) in which the teeth probably ought to have been extracted, and having a bad endodontist rates at the top of 'teeth horror' stories.

I had a great endodontist (if expensive, and the whole 'no dental insurance', I think, hurt more than the getting the root canal).  It takes forever.  I was in the chair for closing on two hours.  I wasn't more than mildly sore aftewards, i.e., I couldn't open my mouth very far afterwards, and had a sore jaw.  Then, the next day, I went to my regular dentist (also, great dentist), had the mold for the crown made (it's going to be ceramic) and got a temporary crown, because that one's not coming until the beginning of February.  As this meant more drilling, I was a bit more sore and exhausted.  And, naturally, the temp came off while I was eating cereal one and a half days later.  Well after the dentist office was closed.  Apparently that's not extremely uncommon, but I've got to get back to the other side of LA now to get it placed back on, and take even more time off work, and that's a bit of a pain.

In other, better, news, I forgot to mention in my last catch-up post what took my life over in November.  Ever heard of NaNoWriMo?  No?

The full name is National Novel Writing Month, and it's basically a challenge to write 50,000 words in one month.  That's 1,667 words per day, or approximate 10,000 bursts on the weekend write-ins to make up for writing only a few hundred words per day on weekdays.  Write-ins are just when a bunch of wrimo's get together and write, and the person in charge of organizing it offers challenges and prizes.  Some people do a whole bunch of planning in the months beforehand, and know every scene for their book.  Others... I know some people who didn't know what they were going to write at all until a few days beforehand.

I'd been working on the idea for my story for about a year or so, but my outline was very vague.  Still, I wrote 50,047 words as of November 29. :)  Printed off a winner's certificate and everything.

It's a Christian allegory (think of a combination of Narnia and Pilgrim's Progress).  It's about a young man, whose name is currently Lysander Kweston, who discovers that everything he knows about his world is a lie, and he goes in search of an amazing, legendary treasure, that he doesn't have solid proof - or proof at all - that it exists.

Although I finished Nanowrimo, there's a huge amount of work to be done on the book before it's actually finished.  There's a bunch of prizes that different companies offer to winners with upcoming expiration dates, so my plan right now is to finish up a ghost story that I've technically been working on for 10 years (it was the first story I started writing) and get it in e-book formatting, and possibly get a papercover of it.  The e-book formatting is a bit more important, because it's easier to self-publish electronically rather than paper.  I do want to try to publish it in the old-fashioned manner, but having the e-formatting will make it more accessible to me to work with, as far as marketing goes.  There's also a contest I can enter it in, which I haven't decided if I'm going to do it or not yet.

Catch-up Part Two

In my defense, I've been busy.  And at least I'm sticking with publishing once a year, right?

I was looking over my last catch-up post, and I think I'll just go over that first.  I've gone on hiatus with my writing/editing/summarizing/transcribing business and the acting (the auditions, while they went well (I got a callback!), didn't pan out into actual jobs), was in a play, ended my hiatus with my craft business, kept up with the ice skating and archery, got a job, and moved out of my parent's place.

Archery has gone really well - I went ahead and bought a glove, bow, arrows, and a bag, and made (with assistance from my dad) a hip quiver out of PVC pipe (and a shoelace).  For Christmas last year, I got a leather arm guard with a dragon on it.  I'm looking for a proper back quiver, but I'm currently lacking the funds for that.  It's a 25-pound bow, so I can't shoot more than about a dozen times in a row, but I'm getting better.  It helps that I don't have to go to a range to do it - whenever I go back up to the mountains (parent's place), I can shoot.

For my ice skating report, I've gone ahead and bought myself a pair of white skates, and got some orthotics for them as well.  Orthotics are a wonderful invention.  I still feel extremely awkward looking, but I don't fall down much.  Since my new job (started in March) I haven't had more than one or two chances to skate, but I'm working on my schedule.  It would help so much if there were more skating rinks in LA.  My knees won't be a problem, at least :).  In September, God healed them - completely.  I've been living for seven years with a lot of pain.

My knees weren't aligned correctly with my hips - I came out of the factory, like that, and in college, somewhere between carrying a bunch of books and running all over campus, they gave out on me.  I've done exercises, adjusted my way of walking and taken Aleve to handle the pain, but without surgery to place the knees where they needed to go, I was going to be like that for the rest of my life.  Even surgery wasn't a guarantee (and the thought of it creeped me out, plus the dis-alignment wasn't so major that I was forced to choose between having surgery and not walking at all.)  I've been wearing orthotics, which makes for buying fairly expensive shoes, but I don't need them now.  I can't run a marathon or anything yet, because I have about seven years of not using my muscles to make up for, but not being in constant pain (anything from very mild to very severe) is a novel, and wonderful, experience.

Acting-wise, I was in a Christmas play last year, It's a Wonderful Life, at the Santa Clarita community theatre.  It was loads of fun, and I was Miss Andrews.  I've tried out for a few more since, but I'm a bit limited in that I can't sing, and community theatres love doing musicals.

Job - I've got a real job!  Like, 9-5 type job.  I'm an office administrator at a small law firm (boutique, I think, is the word for it), which is so funny considering my background.  I applied in a whim, because he said he wasn't looking for someone with experience.  I had a grand total of six months work experience of being in an office, and figured I could do everything on his 'must-list' (even though I had absolutely nothing on his 'wish-list'), so I applied.  And he hired me.  I've applied to UCLA for their paralegal program, and that starts in February, so I'll let you know how that goes.  (Work's paying.  Which is good, because I totally couldn't afford it otherwise.)  It's 11 months long, twice a week, and at the end of it I get to take a test and be certified as a paralegal.  I'm very excited for that, AND happy that I get to go back to school.  Cause I'm weird like that and like it.  I am expecting my sanity to take a bit of a dive sometime next year. :)

And no, before you ask, I am not planning on going to law school and becoming a lawyer.

I've moved out of the mountains down to the city :'( into a one-bedroom studio.  I love my place - it's very out of the way from everything, and only three miles from downtown Pasadena.  The apartments are renovated from music studios which were renovated from being a factory.  It's a brick one-story (once but no longer an extremely important factor) building that's covered with vines.  I think I've always wanted to live in a building covered with vines.  I'm not sure why.

Crafts - I've renewed some of my items on Etsy - you can see them on the sidebar.  I went to a craft fair, and saw that someone was taking plain bobby pins, alligator clips, and other types of hair pins, and gluing buttons, beads, and ribbons to them.  And then charging $3 for them.  My natural inclination is that sewing is better than gluing, when whatever you're working with allows for that, so I did some research, discovered that yes, $3 is the general charge for that sort of thing (more if whatever's attached to the hair clip takes more work to put together), so I'm going to go ahead and give this a go.  My ribbon-tying techniques need some serious work, so I'm pretty much sticking with buttons, which are a lot of fun to work with.

I also took a soap making class last week.  It wasn't so much the 'make the soap from scratch', but a 'add herbs and other things to the soap, using a melt and pour base'.  It was a lot of fun, and it's extremely easy.  And clean.  When I'm making the soap, I wash my hands a ton.  It also makes for easy clean-up.  The pot, spoon, and molds have the soap to clean them already on them.

So far, I've tried using clear glycerin soap (can't get much more generic than that) with vanilla, lemon, chocolate mint, and cherry extract.  Chocolate mint (it's handmade) smells wonderful in a bottle, and great in foods, but it's awful in soap.  I love lemon, but either lemon extract, lemon juice, and lemon peel don't mix well or it's another thing that's awful in soap.  Is there commercial lemon soap?  Cherry soap is my top favorite.  Then, I added ground coffee into the vanilla soap, and though I don't like coffee or coffee smell, it makes for a nice soap.  I mostly used some plastic molds, but after a handful of uses, they stop working so well - the heat from the soap, I think, causes them to melt.  I'm buying some silicon molds, so we'll see how those go.  These ones are going to be used as quick Christmas gifts, but after I've got some consistency in making them and some scents and colors, I'll start selling them.  Also, apparently, you can take the soap, let it cool a bit in the pan, and then roll it into a ball.  Five-minute soap ball.  I'm a bit limited in supplies, so I've mostly just rolled them in crushed oatmeal and lemon peel, but it gives them a nice look.