Deep Orchid, you are the bloom of my life.

And now, after a rather unexpected return to infrequent blogging, I give you a post. To take up where we left off, my 19th was great, I had so much fun with friends and happiness was had. The mystery gift turned out to be a talking Dalek. When you squeeze him, he says "EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE!!!" and "YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD DALEK!"

Surprisingly the first shot has a way more awkward face than the theatrical grimace below. 

I also feel compelled to mention that I know, I know: power ranger Dalek, but the reality is that they were comical because they were so clearly meant for "collect them all" merchandising, and what better way to embrace that? If Doctor Who is anything, it's corny with a touch of lame, and that's why we love it!

Having a very good Thanksgiving weekend as well, and a lot of happy feelings can be attributed to the fact that I've finally had some real inspiration for writing my novel (trying so hard to say that without feeling like a twat). For a little over a year I've been trying to dig myself out of this plot-planning, world-building hole and get some actual work done. Without a doubt, all of the planning and research is important, but if you don't stop yourself it'll never end. There will always be something that you could probably flesh out a bit more before you put it into the story. No! Sometimes you just have to write the damn thing and see what wordlings come out. 

I like to say that I've been on the road to recovery for a while, but I can attribute a lot of my inspiration to the movie Looper, which I saw Saturday afternoon, and loved it despite the awkward eyebrows on Joseph Gordon Levitt. A lot of the ideas in the movie are present in my story, which I don't feel bad about, because first of all it means that they're probably pretty sweet ideas if they ended up in a cool movie, and second of all I started this story in 2010, so if I wanted to be the first to the idea (which, realistically, I wasn't in 2010) I should have maybe done a little more than I have in 24 months. (If you're interested, this picture is from what is probably the best scene in the movie. Love 'dat snappy dialogue.)

I'm at the stage where I need to turn my writing into a job, with schedules and deadlines and all that stuff, because I know that's the only way I'll ever finish anything at all. I've never been particularly skilled at schedules, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to give up. I can do it!

Also I've started watching Dexter and Andromeda, and I'm quite enjoying them both. Andromeda seems to be a proto-Firefly, so it's kind of an automatic win, and Dexter was a little surprising because ordinarily I'm not very attracted to "cop shows", but my brother insisted, and now I've found a new show!

In blog news, I think I might do a post recommending all of the webcomics I read, because that way I can justify the crazy amount of time I spend reading them.