Maker, I've been busy! I apologize for not having posted more often and keeping up my journal. Life has just been nuts!

Mostly it's been full of NaNoWriMo and Dragon Age: Origins though!

As you can see by the layout made by my good friend <lj user="lady_boromir">, I've been playing enough of the game to be completely hooked!

I've got a few stories open right now, though my main two have been my Elf mage and my Dalish warrior. Love my Mage for the little confession of love from Cullen that you get. Seriously, totally made the game for me. Then my warrior is taking the Alistair route which I like more than the Zevran option. There's just not much you can do to a relationship with an elf who was raised by Antivan whores, you know? I still love Zevvy though, don't get me wrong. I just love the romantic aspect of Alistair better.

I'm working on some Cullen fanfiction that I'll be posting sooner or later, just for the fact that I love his adorable little stuttering and the character development he goes through between your leaving the Mage tower and your return. It's amazing, and for someone that has that much development, I think they need to do a little more with him than just making him stand in the library for the rest of eternity wishing he could have gone to fight. I think they need to give you an option to trade our Wynne for Cullen, depending on your choices in the Mage tower.

Anyways, NaNoWriMo went well. Finished really REALLY early, but I'm not sure if I'm ultimately happy with this novel or not. Still, I will revise and work on getting a proof copy of it, but in any event, I'm not feeling all that hip on how the story went.

I seriously keep getting nightmares about the military. I'll dream that Charles will tell me that he understands my concern, but he went ahead and went through with it, and I'll get mad and tell him that's fine but I'm not going. I'm staying with my family. And then he'll hand me divorce papers and tell me that he's taking our son.

I told him about them, because they scare the hell out of me. He reassures me constantly that it won't go down like that. So I just have to trust him for awhile, which I do. My subconscious is just a paranoid little twit.

I spend the night at the hospital the night before last down in Kansas City @Children's Mercy. We had to take Aidan to the ER up here in Saint Joe because he kept randomly gasping for air and his fingers and toes would randomly turn purple during feeding, or holding. It was freaking us out, not to mention he's been like projectile vomiting. What did Saint Joseph say? "There's nothing wrong with him" and "We don't know why he's doing that" completely prepared to send us home with no answers. So we made them call Children's Mercy to come get him.

Guess what.

The AMBULANCE TECHS heard his heart murmur when they got there. I mean, are you serious? Heartland couldn't find a thing with all the tests they ran, but the techs found his murmur within two seconds of listening to him through a normal ol' stethescope. WAY TO DROP THE BALL HEARTLAND! I won't be bringing my child back.

The care from the first moment Children's Mercy had him was 120% better than Heartland. And within 12 hours, they knew they he had a very very tiny hole in his heart and acid reflux. That's all. The hole will seal itself as he gets older and they gave us Zantac for the acid reflux.

Wow...that was hard -.-. Seriously, had something more been wrong, I'd be suing Heartland right now.

I found this entry somewhere online and seriously...this fits how I feel perfectly!

"Our greatest fear has come true: The squealing, overemotional hopeful that is Puerto Rico's Tatiana Nicole Del Toro landed one of the eight coveted spots in American Idol's Wild Card round tonight.

What is Idol thinking?! Sure, some people would argue that beneath the theatrics Tatiana has a somewhat decent voice, but we are just not those people. Simply put, it's an outrage. (Outrage, we say!)

Still, a reliable Idol insider who works on the show has this ultracomforting scoop to share this morning: "I really don't think there's any way Tatiana will make it through tonight. I know the judges and producers wanted her to come back for one more round of drama, but that's it." "

Um...yeah. Seriously, wtf judges? WTF!? Her whiney-ass incoherent sputtering after you picked her should have be evidence enough of what kind of crap you were in for! I would have rather had fucking Norman Gentle back.

Tatiana is the epitome of annoying...everything I hated about high school. The girl you'd ALWAYS find crying in class or after class about anything and everything that life decided to toss her way. -.-

In any event, my three picks from last night made it through! So that makes me happy. However... choreographing a dance number with a blind man is messed up. No matter how you do it.

This sounds like fun!

Actually, my name is rather easy to figure out. My nickname is Rayne and for that I created an OC for my Final Fantasy VII/Kingdom Hearts crossover story with the same name. She, though in love with Axel, begins developing feelings for Reno after she returns to Midgar when Axel dies because he reminds her of him.

Thus, you have RenoxRayne... proclaiming my shipping of the pair.

Then, FTW... for the win! I was an avid World of Warcraft player up until lately and well, there's really no one that plays that game that doesn't use the term ftw. Granted a few of the older people might think this is F*ck the World, nope... we're geeks, nor rebellious bikers.

So putting it together, RenoxRayneFTW :P

Wow... so far in the competition, there's been so much suckery that I've been crazy surprised.

See, this is why we should have kept Jamar... Danny's lonely without him.

Rant below the cut.

( How can I get you alone? )

I got bitten by the NaNo bug early this year and I decided to make a few icons for people to nab if they want. Just make sure to credit and drop me a line to let me know what you take!

Preview

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( I compare you to a kiss by a rose on the grave... )

Someone confirm I exist before I just fade away...

( He made me feel...like I had a heart. )

Here's an essay I wrote for ES2!

My pick for a sequel would have to go to one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As one of the most influential composers of all time, and also having died at a young age much like Fryderyk Chopin had, there was so much that he managed to accomplish in life even in the short time that he lived it. Having first started playing minuets at age four and composing his first pieces at age five, he was literally a wonder to this world that he lived in.

Even as he got older, he retained his ear for music and was credited for writing out Gregorio Allegri's Miserere from memory, though it was illegal to create such a copy. His death was even more interesting, as he worked up to the very end of it, dying at one in the morning. There's also no defined cause of his death. This would leave him a need for a final journey, to finish the work he was doing in life.

In his time, he managed to crank out 600 compositions, and his abilities for mimicry and just natural gift of music made him probably one of the most famed musicians of all time. Though he died in poverty—which I'm beginning to think many of the earlier good ones did—he was esteemed in the community of music. His later years might not have given as many creations as his earlier years did do to his sickness, including Requiem which was unfinished, the very idea of his work on Requiem would be a fun thing to base a game around.

As far as characters, I have an ES character I created called Capriccio (A capriccio is a piece of music, usually fairly free in form and of a lively character. The typical capriccio is one that is fast, intense, and often virtuosic in nature.) who is a very cheerful character despite the fact that she's dying (she can wield magic). Her power lies in her mind, being able to create manifestations of her mind and with some concentration, solidify them. She wields a bo-staff that when she's dancing in towns across the world, she has a ribbon attached to the end and creates backup dancers and effects with her mind.

She has a companion, a kitten named Klang which is short for Klangfarbenmelodie (a musical technique that involves breaking up a musical line or melody out from one instrument to between several instruments. It adds greater color and texture to a melodic line, instead of just one timbre in playing the line.) Like the music, the kitten is never the same color when it appears, always changing breed and patterns, down to the fact that it could be black one day and orange the next. It's a manifestation of her mind and therefore is subject to her mood.

The last character would be one named Atonal (Music that is written and performed without regard to any specific key) who is a sweet and enthusiastic boy, but tone deaf or so it may appear. To play a song, he'll sing in the most grating key he can find to go along with it, but thing it sounds terrific. That goes with the way he likes to arrange his symphonies that he writes. He's an aspiring composer, much the same age as Mozart was when he first started creating symphonies. It's not that the stuff that he writes is bad... it's just arranged in a mixed up order. As if the key doesn't matter... almost like a musical dyslexic.

Sources used for this are wikipedia.com and classicalworks.com.

YES! I have been waiting for this for a year!!!!!!!!!!

24 Rant Ahead!

( My eyes have searched the stars, but all they've found is destruction. )

But seriously, I'm going out Tuesday and buying that DVD. If only for the awesome sweet sneak peek at Season 7.