Empty Spaces

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:54:53 GMT

So...I think he may simply never have believed me before. Which is understandable really. I'm not like other girls or possibly even other people, and who would ever believe that?

I hate him

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:50:28 GMT

so much.

I hate that I keep looking for emails from him. I hate that when my phone makes a sound I want it to be him trying to reach me. I hate that I want him so much. I hate that I don't believe he cares at all or that even if he did, he would ever have it in him to do anything about it.

Okay, I think I give up

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:54:24 GMT

Much as I hate the concept of unexplained behavior, it's possible that I was dealing with someone who doesn't ever think about anything he says or does. It probably serves me right for dating a younger man with very little experience with girls and none with women. I'm going to try to stop ascribing motivation to the actions of a man-sized teenager.

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:35:17 GMT

I just keep feeling like an idiot over this thing. I didn't believe he liked me in the first place, but I let him convince me otherwise. He wasn't into me, but for a while he really wanted me to think he was. Pathetic stupid male ego bullshit maybe, needing to think of himself as this great guy or something, who wouldn't just fuck me without getting involved. I don't know. But he treated me like crap, so I figure now he was trying to make me dump him almost the whole time. I mean he's also a coward to the extent that every time I confronted him about his bad behavior he made sure to tell me how he was just stupid and clueless and didn't know what he was doing but really loved me et cetera. But it's so improbable to me that he would have treated a girl he was remotely attracted to or interested in so poorly, so that just leaves that he was trying to make me do him the favor of ending it. I'm sure when he actually likes someone he makes, you know, some sort of effort in some way or another. It may just be my own failure of imagination that I can't picture a man being that lame by accident. Maybe he really is just a jerk and a loser. But I sort of figure if he ever liked me for real, he would have been nicer to me. I am such a fool.

He emailed me that he hopes I'll be able to hold onto the happy memories or some such trite crap, and tonight I actually did think of one that does still make me happy, though on an entirely different level. There was one night we were walking together, and numerous strangers felt compelled to approach him and tell him how lucky he was to have such a hot girlfriend and that he'd better treat me right.

That may have been the only time he ever actually felt proud or lucky to be with me, for all I know, and it certainly didn't translate to his treating me right, but it felt good at the time.

I knew I was with someone dangerously emotionally immature the night he looked deep into my eyes and said my first name and his last name. I should never have let myself believe he liked me in the first place. It was too good to be true, and I should have known better.

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:36:50 GMT

I just hope he knows what he gave up and feels as stupid as he should feel. He had a pretty girl who adored him and would do anything for him and wanted only to make him happy and to see him happy. And he blew me off because he "just didn't want to be in a relationship anymore?" What does that even mean? Were there like a dozen girls he perceived he might have had a half a chance at trying to fuck were he not tragically tied down to one? Is he just a stupid godsdamned asshole? I hope he at least knows that he will never again in life meet a girl who will be as over the moon thrilled to be with him as I was. I think he believes in some adolescent fantasy of the perfect shining love or some horseshit that will bite him in the ass someday when he realizes what he once blew off as not quite good enough.

just need to rant somewhere

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:40:59 GMT

It's not as if he was actually a good boyfriend in any way, so it should not be at all surprising that he's the world's biggest asshole when it comes to breaking up. If he weren't so good in bed, he would have literally nothing to offer. I kind of hope he falls down some stairs.

I'll probably keep doing this in little bursts here or there for a while until all the anger boils off. If someone out there slaps him, film it for me, would you?

Decisions you make by accident

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:02:21 GMT

As I was moving, I only found a couple of my old VHS tapes, and neither of them was the video of my wedding ceremony. When I couldn't find that one, I thought that I must at some point have made the decision to toss it and then forgotten that I had done so. I was pretty pleased to think that I had made that wise decision along the way.

Last night, Ace told me he'd found it; it seems I had simply hidden it away to keep it out of my sight. I barely gave it a moment's thought before saying, "You know what? I was pleased when I thought I'd gotten rid of the damned thing; throw it away for me, okay?"

So I feel pretty good about that. Sometimes you lose things in stages, but every once in a while you get to make that final choice about it too.

Chess!!!

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:09:29 GMT

My very favorite musical will be on PBS next week:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/chess-in-concert/preview-of-chess-in-concert/783/

One of my favorite compliments ever

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:15:22 GMT

From Victor on Friday night:

Any man who ever had a chance to sleep with you and didn't do it is just the biggest fool.

Just wanted to make a note of that one while it was fresh in my head, because that was cool.

First full day in the new place

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:14:43 GMT

Started out so well it seemed like it would almost be inevitable that it would go downhill as it went on...but it didn't. It was a really good day.

I went to Mud Bay for cat food, and on the way back wandered into the Spine & Crown used bookstore to scan their comic section (picked up some Ultimate X-Men hardcovers to pad my collection & replace a few singles) and wound up in a long and in-depth conversation with the proprietor about various series and writer/artist teams. Man I love comics. I love the world that opens to you when you are really into comics. There are more people than you'd think who are into it, and you're surprised over and over by how different they are. Couple of weeks back, this totally well-dressed and respectable-looking 40-something woman sat down next to me on a bus to say, "Excuse me. I stopped reading the Green Lantern books a few months back, but I hear they've gotten really great again. What do you think?"

On the way home, for whatever reason my brain flashed on the "2001" episode of SG-1, so I watched that before bed, then just hit the off buttons on the remote, took off my glasses, and fell asleep with Lethe at my feet and Chaos in the windowsill, protecting us from dragons presumably. I'm glad he came out of the closet where he spent the previous day and night hiding out. Living alone is full of very simple pleasures for me. My whole life has always kind of revolved around simple pleasures and solitude. I think I missed it more than I realized.

Sun, 24 May 2009 20:19:10 GMT

Ace and I just actually updated my Facebook "relationship status" which makes the breakup suddenly feel more formal and official. So weird how that is. We've been pretty broken up for a bit already, which everyone in our lives already knows, and yet we click a "cancel relationship" link on some website and it's like the equivalent of making an announcement to the world.

In other news I had a very lovely last 24 hours or so. My new dress is very pretty and got possibly a record number of compliments from strangers. I read several graphic novels outside in the sunshine. I spent the night with a friend and had a wonderful time. And that's the news that's fit to print, on this, my first public post in some time.

Wildcats

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:10:21 GMT

I had a totally awesome dream--I was part of the superhero team the Wildcats, taking on the despotic superhuman Majestic. I stabbed him through the chest with one of the blades that are the only things that can hurt him, then smoked him with my sizzling eyebeams. Then we burned the planet to a cinder around his injured body, because of course he probably wouldn't die, and we colonized another planet. Naturally, if we'd left him a domain to reign over, he might have been content enough with it, but since we toasted the Earth, he's obviously going to hunt us down eventually. But, you know, you have to leave room for a sequel.

Oh, and Sayid Jarrah was one of us, and no matter what went down, his hair continued to look amazing.

The Dana Sweeney Trio

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:50:40 GMT

played last night at the Inaugural Spam-O-Rama at Theater Off Jackson.

It went really well, and we sounded great. Six songs in two sets, me and Dave's sax and Owen's guitar. Had a bunch of friends there, and Glenn got some pictures I will eventually have up somewhere, and Dave recorded the whole thing on his little mp3-making machine too.

Anyway, it was a fantastic night, and I just wanted to make a note of that.

My boyfriend is so cool, part XXVIII

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:15:21 GMT

Last night, watching the Angel episode She...extra-dimensional demon dude refers to his enemy as "the Bringer of Chaos."

Ace hits pause a moment later, gets up and leaves the room. He returns, cat in arms, and announces, "I am the Bringer of Chaos!"

And I am giggling over this still.

Dear Warren Ellis:

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:44:26 GMT

We did not, in fact, fuck this up. Hallelujah.

Leaving on a jet plane

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:07:50 GMT

in the morning.

So I was profoundly nervous about leaving home for so long and to such a distance, which is mostly about my devotion to my cats, which was therefore alleviated immensely by the Chaos Cam, a gift from Ace, who is really and truly the best of all possible boyfriends.

I had a terrific time here all around, and amazingly, while I am happy to be going home to my man, my cats, and my life in general, I am not desperate to go home, which, for me, possibly counts as growth. :)

All in all, I feel much better about a lot of things.

A lovely dinner

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:01:56 GMT

Just had dinner in the hotel restaurant with Ryan, and before shutting down the computer for the night (after of course looking again at the kitties), I wanted to note how thoroughly I enjoyed the evening--in fact, the entire day was very nice all around.

Thank you ever so much to my incredible boyfriend who when I'm with him makes me happier than I'd ever been...for managing to make me happy when I am far far away as well by enabling me to look in on my kitties. I now know how much Lethe sleeps and how alert and watchful Chaos always is (which I'd always believed to be the case, but now I have PROOF [all caps in honor of the awesome comic book--read the first issue online at imagecomics.com!]), and most importantly, I know they are safe and happy and well, and I know they will be there waiting when I return home.

Really thrilled Ryan has come to work with us, and especially that he got to join us here in Dublin. Since I've known him, he's always been one of the people I invariably enjoy talking to and look forward to seeing. He's smart as hell, fun, kind, decent (in the deepest meaning of the word), and he makes me laugh.

London

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 18:39:31 GMT

The London excursion was lovely and all too brief. We Will Rock You is a brilliant show, very inventive and cleverly constructed. The Queen songs obviously rock and are used quite well within the plot, and the cast was fantastic.

Walked around London for hours, saw some sights, fed some pigeons, bought a couple of gifts for a couple of folks. Had a very very English breakfast, which was deliciously simple but so fresh and filling--scrambled eggs on toast.

Glenn had a nifty surprise for me--there was a Doctor Who exhibit at a museum near our hotel. That was really cool to see, all kinds of set, FX, and costume pieces from the last four years of Doctor Who. Wound up really wanting to watch some more DW, which I've really been bummed never seems to be on when I turn on BBC in my hotel room. You know what's on the channels in my room? Mostly sitcoms from America I hated when they were still on the air, like Cybill, Everybody Loves Raymond, and something with Christopher Lloyd I swear I'd only ever seen one episode of and somehow that episode happened to be on when I flipped channels here. I mean, obviously I am not here to watch TV, but man, that exhibit made me crave a little David Tennant Doctor Who, and I can't find it! :)

Loved London. If I still believed in reincarnation, I'd hope to be born in London next time.

Of course Glenn deserves much of the credit for the great time, which is often the case, so I should probably just hope if I have to reincarnate, the bit about sticking with the best people you knew is true.

Right now, Lethe is in the blue chair.

Tomorrow We Will Rock You

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:36:26 GMT

Having a great time, which has a whole lot to do with Ace's present to me of the Chaos Cam. Any time I want I can see my boys sleeping or posing or looking out the window, and it makes me feel at peace. I don't merely worry about them, see, especially because there's no real cause at the moment; I just love them and miss them. I need my kitties every bit as much as they do me, and just being able to see them is so comforting.

I'm actually the cat lady, it's quite clear. I don't seek to be surrounded by infinite numbers of cats, but I love my cats more than anything in the whole world.

Went tonight to see La Clique at the Hennessy Spiegeltent. Somehow I'd gotten the impression from Oz and various other representations that Hennessy would not be much to my liking. As it turns out, it's delicious. :) Also delicious? A beef and mushroom pie smaller than the palm of my hand but in taste, so big. (In my mind those last words were spoken by Enrico Colantoni and therefore much more entertaining than they look on the screen.)

La Clique was great bawdy fun. In early tonight because of my early flight to London tomorrow. As opposed to last night when I was out drinking Bulmer's till 2 AM. Bulmer's is quite the tasty cider. Also, several of the people from work I was out with are very into Stargate, so I felt right at home.

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:49:15 GMT

So it's 2:30 in the morning here in Dublin. I seriously thought I'd be able to sleep through the night (when I failed to keep my eyes open another moment around 6 PM), but I guess the time difference and jet lag have thrown me off completely. Because I think usually I can sleep longer than this, particularly when I have stayed up that long.

So I surrendered to wakefulness and got online to look at my kitties, thanks to the magic of my supercool boyfriend. He set up a webcam for the apartment before I left so I can see how my boys are doing. Yesterday I saw Lethe in the chair, and a few minutes ago Chaos was by the window. I have the greatest boyfriend ever.

In other news, the plane ride was very long, and Kevin Smith's autobiography is kind of aptly titled.

ETA: Ooh, right now both Chaos and Lethe are visible!!!

Oh, and Brendan Hines has a new TV series!!!

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 01:20:09 GMT

And I considered going to the panel for this at Comic-Con, because it was created by a former Lost staff writer (Javier Grillo-Marxuach). But the days were so packed, and you really had to make careful choices to make sure you got to everything you really wanted to see...of course, if I had known Brendan P. motherfucking Hines would be in the show, I'd have prioritized it quite a bit higher!

Way to go Brendan! Now I have to check out ABC Family's The Middleman.

Also, I just saw an article in which Brendan was named as some dude's ideal casting for Superman, which is beyond awesome.

Odd times, odd measures

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:35:26 GMT

So there were some bad goings-on at work, in which I apparently demonstrated that I am not a good project manager, which is kind of ironic, considering I have never in my life actually wanted to be in charge of anything. At all. Even a little.

Well, except everything. I would make an impressively awesome superhero, goddess, or like, empress or something. Like Ororo, I guess. Big stuff like meting out justice and saving those in need from evildoers, had I the mojo, I'd be terrific at that.

But real-world stuff, like what others usually seem to be ambitious toward? No interest from me. I've spent probably less time than anyone else I know even wondering what it would be like to be a boss, much less hoping to become one. It's just not in my nature. I like being part of things, and I like helping out where I can, and I like doing stuff I'm good at most of all. I have neither the inclination nor the aptitude to be a leader of any kind.

It's kind of a mystery to me how I was expected to do this at all by anyone involved. Literally, in every meeting about the project, I was like a deer in headlights, and I kept saying to people, "Look, I just kind of got stuck being in charge of this, but I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm not really comfortable." And yet somehow it was some sort of a shock when other people involved finally realized I was really uncomfortable and really unsure what I was doing.

At first I felt really crappy about how the whole thing blew up, because you know, people are pissed, and the experience was embarrassing. But they'll probably get over it, and I'm getting over it already. As I commented to my friends when I was having the initial horror stress meltdown, it's still not as bad as that day at work that became the friends-only post several months back. I mean, when you've got a baseline like that, there's some great perspective for you.

Left work early today to see a doctor, as I am finally opening my mind to the wide world of anti-anxiety medications. Not as a long-term solution, but as a way to get through the impending trip to Dublin, which will no doubt have some very fun parts (i.e., seeing We Will Rock You with Glenn and hanging out in London together), but which also has been a big source of upcoming stress for me ever since we started planning it. I'm sure it's no secret that I just don't like being away from home for long at a time. I really don't like being away from my cats, and I'll miss Ace. So you know, what with various things that have created stress for me at work, plus this trip, I'm toting along a very modest scrip for the generic equivalent of Xanax. Hopefully things will get easier to deal with again after that.

In other news, Lethe has come to sit and purr on my desk beside my mousepad, which is lovely.

Okay, try again

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:04:09 GMT

I keep meaning to post and then not spending any time online away from work, which results in long, disjointed rambly nonsense once in a while and nothing most of the time.

But today is US Open Tennis all day, which means I have a lot of time on my hands. I hung with it for a while, but my attention wanders when it comes to sports. Any sports, even when the players are largely entertaining with their eccentricities and tantrums. Someone broke a racket earlier (possibly as earlier as yesterday--there's been a lot of tennis on this week), which was kind of funny.

So...read for a while, some comics, some Seagalogy, which is wicked funny and actually makes me want to watch a Steven Seagal movie for the first time in my life. It's by Vern, the most entertaining critic ever.

Petted my kitties a lot--Chaos seems to be over his little snit, which is a great relief, as said snit involved his making of our bed his litter box. Turned out he objected to the recently upgraded covered litter box. Not too surprising, really; that thing would be very dark and confining, like a port-a-potty, and who wants to use those all the time?

Scott and Megan called to tell me they'd gotten a copy of Wil Wheaton's new chapbook for me at PAX. Yay! You guys rock! As does, as previously established, Wil Wheaton. I talked to him at San Diego, asking if he had copies of his new manga for sale, which he did not...I didn't know yet about the chapbook, because I hadn't checked his site since before I left for the Con. So when I did finally see the post mentioning his new chapbook, I was already back home and feeling like I'd missed out. Then I learned he was coming to Seattle for the big gamer con, and with nearly everyone I know in attendance, I asked for a favor. Very cool friends I have.

So, random things about the Con, over a month later (I suck at posting anymore):

Very awesome CBLDF Live Art Jam. Terry Moore was highly entertaining; the Dawn sketch by her creator was seriously one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen happen right in front of me; Jim Lee's Batman sketch was beyond belief, not just because he inked it in part with a tampon, though that added greatly to the spectacle.

The CBLDF Auction, however, the night before...kind of lame. The guy running it was actually obnoxious, which is probably a bad way to be if you want to make people want to give lots of money. He kept derailing the auction with these LONG boring speeches on topics not relevant to the cause he was there to represent, such as an exhortation to us all to condemn the increase of other media involvement in SDCC, because it's supposed to be about comics, not TV shows...blah blah blah, but seriously, the grand old days he was reminiscing about when most booths were just comic book vendors don't sound so great to me. And more importantly, stay on topic! Sell some art! And by the way, if you could not tell us at length about how you got a piece ten times as cool as you're about to auction off for less money than you want us to pay? That'd be great too.

Panels--awesomeness in panels that we managed to get into. The only one in which I even tried to ask a question was Sanctuary (SciFi channel, October 3!). Sanctuary is the new show that originally premiered online in webisode form and was really cool and high-quality sci-fi, made by and starring various Stargate folks (instant win). I asked if Peter DeLuise would be doing any writing and/or directing now that they've gone on the air. (Peter DeLuise is one of the coolest people I can even think of.) And yes, indeed he will be directing an episode of Sanctuary, they confirmed, which makes me look forward to it even more.

In the Dean Koontz panel, which was great by the way and made me want to start reading his stuff again (there was a time when I had read absolutely every book he'd ever written), the first question asked was the only one I would have asked if I'd felt like getting in line: When will he finish the Chris Snow trilogy? Later there came a question I found amusing because it used to vex me as well back in the day: Why can't I find a copy of The Book of Counted Sorrows? I remember looking for that in used book stores and libraries, you know, back before Google. The answer of course is that it does not exist, which I did figure out when the styles of the poems attributed to it began to get more and more diverse, the references more modern.

Saw the world premiere of The Lost Boys sequel, which wasn't as bad as one might have reason to expect but also not as good as one might wish it to be. Very bloody, goofy excessive gore and tits and ass, like they didn't trust their plot or script or cast enough to pull back and just let the movie be what it was. Which is sad, because if you trimmed away all the ridiculous blood and guts sequences, you'd have a not bad little flick with just enough heart to be worth watching.

So that's probably it for now. We'll see what filters down next time I sign in. Maybe I'll have finished with Comic Con by the time I go to Dublin (!!).

Computer reassembled, wireless enabled, XP reinstalled

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:56:23 GMT

First update since the move, I guess, basically because my computer spent several weeks as a pile of components and wires in a corner of our new kitchen. Our new place is terrific, and we've really made a home of it and so far stayed totally on top of everything. Every time we vacuum, we throw away an entire extra cat worth of shed hair.

I'm very happy here and very comfortable in ways I hadn't been in so long I'd forgotten about them. There's something about getting out of a place where you spent most of the worst moments of your brief and ugly marriage (I mean, it's obvious, but I never bothered to consider it, because it was a good apartment in other ways and moving is expensive, et cetera). I actually feel like it's easier to think all of a sudden. I've been singing again. And I don't stop when Ace walks in the door, because I'm totally okay with myself around him. He's the only man I've been involved with with whom I felt as at ease around as my cats. I feel like it's okay to fail in front of him, that he wouldn't suddenly look at me differently, because he already accepted I was capable of failing but also knows I'm capable of doing good things. I'm rambling on again about stuff that all comes down to I'm in love with this fantastic man, but I swear I keep thinking of new ways to say it, which is why my infrequent LJ posts are so often in that general vein.

So, other stuff...Comic-Con San Diego last month! Can't believe my failure to have a computer set up resulted in a failure to post about Comic-Con like immediately--I'm actually ashamed of myself for allowing the entire five days experience wait and simmer in my brain so long, because simmering does good things to food but bad things to memories, allows them to steep and soften and blend and lose their distinction somewhat. So, yes, ashamed.

But let's see:

Chris Giarrusso was there, and I asked him to sketch me a Nick Fury, which is awesome and will shortly be joining his amazing Amadeus Cho on our wall. I also bought his brand new book, Rock Paper Scissors, just released that week, and I read it the same day and laughed like crazy the whole way through. I'm a big, big fan of his work.

Glenn and I went to see the pilot for Fringe, which has one big selling point for me: Joshua Jackson is one of the stars. The show seems pretty good, and I am looking forward to seeing more of it. I realized recently that I have yet to watch any of JJ Abrams' projects through to the end, so I have no way of knowing whether or not I trust him as a creator. Lost is the first show of his I've been into (I watched the first season of Alias on DVD a couple of years ago and thought it was fucking ridiculous), so I guess we'll see. There was this novel being hawked one month in a bunch of Marvel comics, and it was written by Duane Swiercynski, the guy who writes Cable, and I'd been enjoying Cable's first few issues, so I went out and bought the novel, Severance Package.

It was really good for a long time before it suddenly really wasn't any good at all. I've read a few novels like that over the years that are just great until the end which sucks so much it makes you angry. Son of Rosemary, in which the plot of Rosemary's Baby advances thirty years before being rewound thirty-one, thus invalidating the entirety of both books' plotlines with that horrific old "and it was all a dream" twist of the narrative knife. Ladder of Years, in which a woman leaves her unappreciative family and strikes off on her own to find herself...and she does a good job of it too, until her cold, aloof husband mumbles something like, "I wish you'd come back," and she falls into his arms with an, "Oh honey, that's all I wanted to hear!"

And then there's Severance Package, which is a tight, exciting thriller with genuinely surprising twists, and I didn't necessarily like all the twists, but I appreciated them, and they made sense. But he couldn't leave well enough alone and went for the horror movie ending that made absolutely no sense and was in fact impossible based on everything else that had happened within the last chapter. Spoiler warning if you care...the villain is last seen trapped in an upper floor of a tall building, with a fire raging around her, and she's unconscious, and injured in many grotesque ways. It is explained that later an unused parachute will be found in the ceiling crawlspace, and that was presumably meant to have been her exit strategy. There are cops and firemen all around the building. And yet the sole survivor hurries home after the terrifying ordeal to find (dun-dun-dun!) the villain alive in his apartment, holding his baby in her bloody arms!!! And, fade to black on his screams of horror.

This is why I stopped buying Cable. I don't trust Swiercynski with endings, so there's no point getting involved in something that will be a good ride with a crappy finish. So where I started was talking about Fringe--I have hopes that it will not be like the X-Files, which clearly had no idea where it was going and so was capable of brilliance but got lost in its search for an overarching plot.

Wow, that went off in many directions, which is I guess what happens when you fail to update for a while. And I've still not said much of anything about San Diego. But Stargate Atlantis is about to come on, so I'll put this aside for now, and maybe my thoughts will arrange themselves into something useful by the time I return.

(Stargate Atlantis...exploring planets...) :)

I love love love Dr. Horrible!

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:36:25 GMT

Everyone go watch it. Now.

Then when it stops being free to watch (this Sunday, I hear), man the hell up and buy it. It's that fantastic.

http://drhorrible.com