happy thanksgiving!

yes, i know i'm a little late getting this up.  but i just wanted to... um... demonstrate that we should keep the spirit of thanksgiving in our hearts even after thanksgiving day.  yeah.  yeah, that's why i'm late getting this up.  totally not because i fail at blogging.

things have not been going the best these days, and i've found myself in a little bit of a slump.  so to help myself get out of said slump, i am going to think happy thoughts and write some of the things i am grateful for.

i am grateful for...

having family who lives so close.
my warm little apartment when it's cold outside.
my fluffy duvet and my favorite pillow.
having been taught the importance of family.
my job.  it's busy.  it's stressful.  but i know i'm doing something good.
my education.
my mind.
the people who listen to me ramble.
the people who ramble at me.
being able to help people.
people who have helped me.
books.
my talents.
cinnamon, because seriously, it's the best.
people who have given me a chance.
the experiences in my life that have helped me grow.
the chance to make up for mistakes.
a mother and a father who love me, even when they don't understand me.
siblings who i can call friends.
my car.
my freedom of choice.
my freedom of belief.
lightbulbs.
inside jokes.
bad days, because it means i can tell the difference between good days and bad ones.

gratuitous capitalism tuesday!

hello, friends!  i think i've mentioned black phoenix alchemy labs before.  they are looovely lovely and full of epic awesomeness.

if you're looking into the bpalness, i'm selling a bunch of my imps and full-sized bottles to fund a trip to go visit my sister in north carolina.  so take a peek and let me know if you're interested!  shipping prices will be determined based on where you are. full bottles are 5 ml, and are glass apothecary bottles. imps are little glass vials, approximately 1/32 of an ounce. that doesn't sound like a lot, but they last quite a while!

to find out what a scent smells like, check the bpal search engine here.

great literature: the zombie collection

i promised to post this a while back, and i kept forgetting.  i should have done it during the halloween season, but i was busy with... yanno.  halloween-type stuff.

a few years ago, i took a creative writing class.  most of the creative writing was poetry, and my professor wouldn't let us write any free verse.  everything we wrote had to be in a form.  at first, i grumbled a lot about it.  then i started to love it.

for some reason, i got this idea in my head that it would be cool to write strict form poetry with zombies as the subject matter.  it was kind of a geeky joke, writing structured poetry about something that was falling apart.  hurr hurr.  (yeah, i'm a geek.)  i only wrote eight of them that i really liked, so i am presenting them here.  don't steal them, or i will turn you into a zombie, okay?  okay.

update: evil november, why are you so evil?

oh man.  i have had the most insane november so far.  i am calling it a triumph that i even got out of my bed this morning.  let me try to break this down in in bulleted list.

• work: i don't know why anything surprises me anymore.
• gym: i'm doing it.  i really am.  i mentioned before that the lovely ladies in my family have a goal to each walk 450+ miles in under a year.  i broke down recently and got another gym membership.  you have to be sneaky about gym memberships, i've decided, or they tend to hound you.  so what i do is i sign up for the gym at one location and then i never go back there. i go to a different location, because i hate people trying to get me to sign up for a session with the personal trainer or like... keeping tabs on me or something.  i hate it.  anyway, i have been going to the gym three times a week, and because i go to one of the smaller locations, i have to get there before the after-work rush or else i won't get a working elliptical.  i'll get the one that sounds like an elephant.  so i have to flee from work and don't have much flexibility for staying late to catch up on things.  this makes life difficult.
• voting: oh my gosh. i waited in line for an hour and a half last tuesday to vote.  there is never a line like that for voting, unless it's a presidential vote.  my goodness.  good for america for being invested, i guess, but i was slightly homicidal by the time i got to the front of the line.  and they have electronic voting, so i didn't even get to take my aggression out on some chads.
• nanowrimo: WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?  (LISA TINGEY, I'M LOOKING AT YOU.) for those of you who are not familiar with nanowrimo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month.  the goal is to write a 50,000-word first draft in one month.  thirty days.  my friends lisa and shar are doing it, and lisa convinced me to join the madness.  MADNESS.  i'm way behind on my word count right now, but i'm further on my novel than i've ever been, so i suppose that's kind of the point, right?  the whole idea of nano is to just get the first draft out without worrying about whether it's horrible or not.  i suppose if you do that, sure you could probably get 50,000 words out in a month.  but i cannot do that.  i cannot let go.  i have to edit and polish things as i go.  it is just the way i roll, yo. i'm still aiming for the end of the month, but i figure that if i have my novel done by the new year, that's good enough.  i will have a full first draft of a novel, which is something i've never had before. 
• THE WORST LUCK EVER: on second thought, this bullet needs its own post.  so.  get excited about that.

in the kitchen: best lasagna ever

guys, i have no idea where my camera is.  okay, that's probably a lie.  it's probably in my car, but it's raining outside.  and it's cold.

hey, you know what's not raining or cold? lasagna!

note: this is not my lasagna. this is lasagna clipart i found on google. but we can pretend.

i'm serious, this lasagna is amazing.  it takes some serious commitment, but everything good takes a little time, right?

THIS IS HALLOWEEN THIS IS HALLOWEEN...

happy halloween!  okay, so i know yesterday was technically halloween, but really we should keep the spirit of halloween in our hearts all year round.  so happy halloween anyway!

no, i haven't disappeared off the face of the earth.  nor have i been eaten by werewolves, vampires, zombies, or any other sort of spooks. october was just busy busy busy for me and i didn't get to write as much as i would have liked. i promise to make up for it soon, though, with tasty recipes and tales of wonder.

but first... let's discuss something very important.

halloween costumes. click below for pictures and videos and other goodness!