So I walked to work today.

It's a little over a mile, and yeah, it was kind of hot, but judging by the reactions of my coworkers you'd think I had decided to cross the Sahara barefoot. I'm now under strict orders to call and have them bring me in the next time I don't have a ride. Even super-environmental-lady made me promise.

It wasn't even that bad. There was a nice breeze, and I put on plenty of sunscreen, and the Decemberists were on my iPod. The only thing that would have improved it would be rain. (Seriously. It's been forever since I took a walk in the rain.)

Oh yeah, and last night I bought two plane tickets, a convention ticket, and a pair of t-shirts. Oh, and I signed a lease for my apartment. WTFproductivity?

Because, you know, I haven't posted enough today. Fic time! I blame this on catystorm, even though I am not entirely sure why.

Title: Broken Boy Soldiers
Fandom: Supernatural/Fullmetal Alchemist crossover
Summary: Sam's quest to save Dean leads down some strange paths, to some even smaller stranger people. PG, 1000 words

( Broken Boy Soldiers )

GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS!

I think I can make it to Dragon*Con without missing my Thursday class. Which is YA Librarianship, and is 4 hours long. And the first class is probably kind of important. Orbitz shows a couple of flights leaving Cleveland around 6am Friday, which would put me at the con before, like, anyone is awake. And then I don't have any classes on Mondays, so I can be all "whatever" and take a nice afternoon trip home. Bonus--both are Delta, and Delta seems to have had only one or two major air disasters in the last 25 years! Woo!

Uh, yeah, I'm utterly terrified of flying. I've never been on a plane before. I haven't even been in an airport in probably ten years, since it was back when you could wander the concourses and watch planes taking off and landing. I freaking loved that. But I do not think that love will extend to the actual experience of flying. Because I do not like roller-coasters. I do not like exceeding all rational speed limits. And I certainly am not going to like sitting in a giant hunk of metal that only stays up in the sky through some kind of freak condition of physics. I wonder how many little duty-free bottles of alcohol it'll take to find the balance between "Wheeee!" and *is airsick*.

Now I just have to see if I can convince Jon to drive me up to the Cleveland airport on Thursday night (I'll sleep in the damn place, I do not care) and pick me up at some point on the following Monday. I plan on offering him compensation in the form of a Utilikilt.

So on a scale of Limbo to Cocytus, how badly am I going to hell if I skip church tomorrow to watch the Wimbledon final?

Because, um, I am. It's not my fault Britain is five hours ahead of us and the match starts at 9AM here. It's also not my fault that Federer and Nadal are so hot sexy awesome. Or that this might actually be Nadal's year to beat him on something other than clay.

Maybe if I get all the guilt out of the way tonight, it won't ruin the match when I watch it. I mean, I almost never go to church when I'm at school anyway, but somehow that feels less like I'm tempting the fiery wrath of an angry god. Possibly because when I'm at school my mom doesn't know whether I'm going to church or not, allowing her to exist in a quantum state of pride and disappointment.

Fuck Schrodinger's Cat--I'm Schrodinger's Catholic.

OMGWTF FUCK YOU, GEORGE R. R. MARTIN. SERIOUSLY. YOU ARE A BASTARD ON A TRULY WHEDONESQUE SCALE--AND I DIDN'T SPEND 2500 PAGES* READING ABOUT WASH AND BOOK. YOU ARE GIVING THAT TORCHWOOD GUY A RUN FOR HIS ASSHOLE-MONEY YOU MAGNIFICENT FUCKING BASTARD.

NOW IF YOU'LL EXCUSE ME I HAVE ANOTHER 400 PAGES LEFT TO GO AND ANOTHER BOOK TO BUY AND PLEASE SER** MAY I HAVE SOME MORE?

*THIS IS NEITHER TYPO NOR EXAGGERATION. AND THERE ARE STILL TWO MORE BOOKS TO GO AND MORE NOT EVEN WRITTEN YET. I WANT TO QUIT IN PROTEST BUT I WON'T BECAUSE AT LEAST ONE CHARACTER I LIKE IS LEFT ALIVE. YOU KNOW, SO FAR.

**ALSO NOT A TYPO.

Today, a thirty-eight-year-old patron brought me a daylily and asked me out.

As soon as he left, I checked his patron record, and he has an overdue book! And this book is about fixing one's marriage.

...I guess he gave up.

So I got my hair trimmed today. It smells lovely because I had a shampoo.

It looks fucking awful. She wanted to straighten it, and I said sure, what the hell, and...my hair looks like the mating of Amy Winehouse and Marcia Brady. It's all volumey on top and flipped out on the bottom and *RAAAAGE*.

I know that when I wash it tomorrow the curl will come back and it will be relatively similar to what it was before. Because dammit, I have never liked a hairstyle so much as the one I hopefully still have. I mean, I loved having long hair, but I never came out of the salon going LOOK OUT WORLD, I AM SEXY NOW!

Not that, um, I did that when I first got it cut back in January. And definitely not on the streets of Athens.

I am leaving for Cleveland Tuesday morning. Checking out single apartments in case this platonic cohabitation deal doesn't work. Then Jeopardy tryouts.

I can't even watch the show right now because it makes me want to pee my pants with fear. :D

So I'm at work. And the sirens are going off, because we've got a Severe Thunderstorm Warning plus a Tornado Watch. Which will probably become a warning at some point, as there's a tremendous line of thunderstorms heading this way.

I'm actually not terribly frightened. If I were alone, I definitely would be, but I'm in a position of authority--I'm responsible for helping keep these patrons safe, so I know I can't afford to freak out.

The school across the street is a designated tornado shelter, but I'm 75% sure it's locked because, you know, it's summer now. If we do get the warning, I guess the lovely cinderblock bathrooms are going to get really, really crowded.

"Another sleepy, dusty Delta day" it's not.

EDIT: This just in--we are apparently not all going to die. ;) The storm moved through with lots of lighting and a faint greenish cast to the sky, but we're all fine, here, now. Uh...how are you?

Work sucked hard today.

I mean, the day after a holiday weekend is always a bitch, because things pile up. And I understand that. But it would be a little bit better if my coworker would get off her ass and help a little.

When I got to work at 12:30, the shuttle had not been touched. It had been there for two hours, and nothing. It was pretty small, though, so I didn't complain much. Kim apologized, and said that they'd been very busy all morning and that she'd had 53 paging slips (books that need to be taken off the shelf and sent out to other branches) that morning. I said, "Wow, 53? No wonder it took you all morning."

No. She'd only done 25 of them. "Really busy," she said again.

Okay, I've been working at the branch for six months now, and I can with full confidence call fucking shenanigans on that. I've seen busy. I've seen really busy. I've seen post-holiday-weekend busy. And you know what? I still managed to get the paging slips done.

In fact, I got the rest of her paging slips and the shuttle done in an hour and a half. And I created four new patron records. While my coworker ate lunch and then went over to talk to the reference librarians. After which she went home.

Am I a superbitch? Probably. But I have never been this exhausted after a day at the library. And I can't help but feel like it wouldn't have been half so bad if I'd had the help I should have this afternoon.

So today I went to Wal-Mart. This is not unusual. And I parked next to this car that was blaring some random song with the bass turned up so high that the fenders rattle. This is also not unusual. The occupant of the car was a guy around my age, scruffy, pierced nose, bandana, etc. Still not terribly unusual.

The song he was listening to at jet-engine volume?

"Underground," from Labyrinth.

So last night, on a whim, my brother and I decided to go see Indy at midnight. Christie asked if she could go, and in a stunning reversal of the expected response, Mom let her. On a school night.

Granted, I got to go see AotC at midnight on a school night, but that was in town and not 45 minutes away. I did not, in fact, get to go see the second Matrix movie on release night 45 minutes away, even though it was a 10pm show.

But I wanted her to go, so I kept my mouth mostly shut. ;)

Right, so. Movie!!

( Dun da dun duuuun, dun da daaaaaa )

I will now proceed to daydream about "adventures" with Indy. Or with Mutt. Man, I really am going to hell now.

So tonight I got off work at 9, and I was hungry, so I picked up some Skyline on the way back. I got home and realized I had no book to read. Now, a meal without a book is...really really boring, so I ran upstairs and grabbed Good Omens off the shelf, because Cincinnati chili goes very well with a nice dry apocalypse.

That's right: Tonight I had a three-way with Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

So did I ever mention that my mom is kind of badass? 'Cause she totally is. XD

PS: HAY GUYZ, I'M FAMOUS ON TEH INTARWEBS!

Today I watched the digital sign on the gas station across the street flip from $3.79 to $3.95.

This is my coworkers' favorite thing to do, bitching about gas prices and how you can't afford to go anywhere anymore, even though they do go places, they just whine louder. And then you check the news and see China and Myanmar and how can we do that? How can we sit around and complain about a goddamn inconvenience when there are tens of thousands of people dying?

I hate how self-centered we are, but I guess I understand it. The scope of the tragedies overwhelm us--we can't even comprehend it. I don't even know where to start. I don't have a lot of money to contribute, and I can't exactly take a few weeks' vacation and fly over to help. It's frustrating and it's horrifying and I just don't know what to do, so I sit here and wait for the gas station sign to roll over to $4.

I almost want to expand on this and send it in to the local paper, but I sort of already submitted an anti-anti-feminist bit to counter the anti-feminist Mother's Day opinion piece, and it's going to be in there this week. In retrospect, I should probably have asked my mother before I sent it in, since the article is...kind of about her. I hope she won't mind. *frets*

Well, my Warcraft account is on the fritz, so here! Have a Supernatural ficlet, before bad things probably happen next Thursday.

Joy in Mudville
I was always the crazy one / who broke into the stadium

( Joy in Mudville )

For those interested: Wikipedia on the Curse of the Billy Goat.