Preparations for Austin are proceeding apace. All the big ticket items - plane tickets, rental car, hotel - are taken care of. I have my clothes, and yesterday I got a hair cut. I just need to get some make-up and buy new shoes. Ugh, you guys, I have spent so much money. SO MUCH MONEY.

Yesterday I decided to make it a point to work on my posture, so I wouldn't find myself at these roundtables and seminars all hunched over like Quasimodo. Today my back hurts. Sigh.

I found the greatest tumblr ever: Fashion It So.  It is exactly what you might think.  It is a tumblr devoted to the fashion of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  IT IS AMAZING.

You know the saying, "April showers bring May flowers"? Kansas takes it seriously. Yesterday Laura and I were in the kitchen in the morning, and noticed how muggy and dark it was outside. Then both outside cats suddenly appeared at the back door, crying to be let in; not one minute later, the sky opened. It was as dark as just after sunset, rain came down in lashing pelts, and the winds had to be in the 60-70 mph range - I ran through the house closing windows, but Laura saw a 50 foot tall tree in our neighbor's back yard lose one of its big limbs. The rest of the trees swayed so much that at times they were nearly perpendicular with the ground. Then we had several minutes of heavy hail. Glorious thunder. After about seven or eight minutes, the wind died and the rain lessened, as the leading edge of the storm moved past, and we were in for several hours of steady, gentle rain.

IT WAS AWESOME.

Laura and I had errands to run, and as we drove we saw a lot of trees with downed limbs, a few that had fallen clean over, and a lot of wooden fences that were kaput. Parts of the city lost power, and let me tell you, six lane intersections should not rely on people understanding the rules for when the lights go out. However, we prevailed, and picked up Sherlock Holmes on DVD (yay!), exchanged media at the library (yay!), picked up a thin crust Mediterranean grilled chicken pizza to bring home and bake (yay!), and watched some Terminator and Caprica (yay!). Dinner with Grandpa, then we headed over to Cabela's, which is an enormous outdoor sporting store.

Laura and I have been talking about going camping since last summer but have never gotten around to it - we were in the clearance section and found two big mummy sleeping bags - as you can see from the link, these are quite pricy. We found two, both rated for 15 below zero, on clearance for 40 dollars apiece. One had a broken zipper, and they took off another ten percent. (Grandpa and Laura fixed the zipper with a pair of needle-nose pliers in about five minutes.) Now all we need for our planned-to-take-place-in-two-weeks camping trip is a hand-cranked LED lantern, a hatchet, some wasp spray, and...a tent. We have a tent, but it's super-old and not all that big. Our neighbors have an awesome, two-room tent but we're not sure about borrowing it, since they're way into camping and use it all the time, and I'd hate to damage it. Tents are expensive, and we're not likely to find one big enough for less than $150, which...no. I don't have that. So we're looking into that, because that's kind of a big part of camping.

We had a lovely day yesterday! At least to begin with. My dad took two days off work to watch the tournament to spend time with his family, and Laura was off, as well, and Sarah and I were free because of spring break. It was lovely and sunny outside, in the mid-60s, so we packed up a picnic lunch and went to a big state park up in Weston, MO, which is where the Applefest is held each fall. Sarah ended up going to Lawrence's Art History museum with a friend, but Grandpa came with us so it evened out.

The wind started to pick up while we ate, but it was still pretty nice out. We drove to downtown Weston and found some good deals; I bought the most adorable tiny glass bottles filled with little pieces of amethyst and topaz, and Laura got a few strings of stone beads, at a little rock shop. My mom picked up a tiny tin of Irish coffee at the Celtic store (they had the most beeauuutiful leather-bound notebook, but it was $70), and I bought a rosemary-scented candle at my favorite candle place - if you like candles for their scent, and don't mind paying for it (and they're pretty strong, so you don't have to burn them for long before the scent fills the room, so they can last awhile), I totally recommend these; I find them much better smelling than Yankee Candle, for instance. I have my personal recs if anyone is interested.

All this took about ninety minutes or so; by the time we were ready to leave, about two and a half hours after we arrived, the temperature had dropped fifteen degrees and the wind had picked up. By the time we drove home, it had dropped another five degrees.

A few hours later, it started sleeting.

By the time I went to bed, we had two inches of snow on the ground.

And by the time I woke up this morning, that had doubled. It's been snowing all day. We might have ten or more inches by tonight, and it's supposed to keep going till tomorrow morning.

Stupid March.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Ours was pretty ho-hum, much as it always is. Laura and I had contemplated going to the Best Buy Black Friday sale, but decided against it Thursday night when we saw something on the news about lines already starting. Which, like, is stupid. And some stores opened at 4am? There are very few things I would rush out to buy alongside thousands of screaming crazy people at 4am.

So, I have a new movie I'm starting on. I'm at that point where I'm still doing research, and am just getting ready to write up character bios and outlines, but it's frustrating, because I feel like I already have the entire movie IN MY HEAD, and if I could just...upload it, or something, that would be so much easier. I know that scenes I've thought of that play in my Brain Theater as so dramatic and scary and awesome right now will either be a total pain to bring to the page or will end up getting cut entirely as I start finding the shape of the thing. But I'm really excited and I think it's going to be cool. It's sooper sekrit for the time being; I'm waiting until I workshop the first of the stuff before I talk about it, just...because. I don't know.