Yeesh, it's been April since I last updated. *pets forgotten LJ journal* In fairness, I think most of you follow me on twitter and have probably seen and heard the important bits of my life.

Pendant: I continue to keeping up with my promo job, helped by my tendency to prepare early drafts ahead of time, so I just have to double check credits/spellings at the end. I went to the East Coast Pendant shindig organized by fabulous M & Chris and enjoyed board games and museum tours with my fellow Friendants. I met several Pendants that I'd only interacted with on twitter or heard perform. I discovered that Cards Against Humanity is utterly insane crack and apparently my brain is perfectly okay with this. The Art of Video Games exhibit gave me such flashbacks to my childhood, looking at the Colecovision and its controllers. I hadn't been to American History Museum since it was renovatethd. The First Ladies' gowns are stunning and the Star Spangled Banner still gives me chills even in its tattered state. The downstairs section was perfect for comics/tv geekery with George Reeves' Superman costume to Jim Henson's original Sam & Friends puppets. Such a contrast between the Jim Henson we usually know with the beard and genial smile to the clean shaven "suit" from his early photos! We also snarked mightily on the Edison vs Tesla rivalry -- judging by the exhibits, the American History Museum definitely falls on the Edison side of the fence.

Apartment: Less said about the carpet disaster from a few months back. At least I'm not out on my ear or anything. And comapred to some people in the area, I got off pretty easy on the derecho storms. We don't usually lose power for long, but our A/C just needs a storm to blink at it. Compared to one friend with a tree through her roof, I had it so easy.

Work: Comes in waves, I'm afraid. Some weeks are a whirl of activity trying to get things done and other months are dead. Right now, we're in a bad lull because Drupal isn't working the way we need it to. Databases make up a lot of my workload, so I'm doing a lot of "busywork".

Reading/Writing: I can't remember ever reading so much. I completed both my Goodreads and my TBR challenges to the point I moved on to the next level up on the TBR challenge. Not that it's really stopping me from reading new books too. This is good because I've written very little this year. I have no trouble coming with ideas, but for some reason sitting down and writing is just not happening for me. I haven't decided what will happen in November. I may watch from the sidelines and cheer everyone on.

Cons: I daytripped both Baltimore and Small Press Expo and utterly overwhelmed by the crowds. (I need to type up and put up my adventures on the blog.) I'm hearing that complaint a lot from the bigger conventions. It's very at odds with the message on the comics websites that comics is dying and yet the characters/movies/cartoons are more popular than ever.

Music: I went to see baritone Nathan Gunn perform at the Kennedy Center. Yes, he is quite handsome. Lovely voice too. I actually joined the 21st century in acquiring an red iPod Nano. I apologize to my twitter for going on and on in my adjustment period. I anticipate listening to A LOT of podcasts and odd music in the coming months. Maybe I'll make headway on the audiodrama backlog.

Sports: Oh, my Nationals. *pets* Maybe next year. Football gives me joy (Alabama) and mixed emotions (Redskins).

What else, oh LJ list? What am I forgetting?

So yes, I've fallen off a bit in the updates. Sorry about that.

Most of the news is good. I survived my first job evaluation of my life. (I've probably been evaluated as a temp but it was more behind the scenes and boiled down to "Do we keep her or not?") This evaluation gave me high marks all around and translated into a lovely raise which couldn't have come at a better time. I'm still having some hair pulling communication issues with the writers sometimes, but I do love my job. Just don't ask me about author queries or last minute additions to a database...

Apartment complex seems to have backed the hell down. They gave me a real year lease again, rather than month-to-month thing. We're having the carpet repaired tomorrow to take out some wrinkles. At least I don't have to pack up the whole place again.

DC sports is in a weird tizzy this week between game 7 (agh!) of the NHL playoffs, the NFL draft and the Nationals starting guns blazing out of the starting gate.

I cannot wait for the Avengers movie to happen already. The buildup has been insane and I'm hitting the point of avoiding websites for spoilers. I'll be down in Richmond for Free Comic Book Day caravan; a group of us go around to three-four shops for comics and movie afterwards.

I've been reading a LOT which stuns even me. I'm already halfway past my conservative Goodreads challenge of 30 books. Mind you, there were some shorter books and manga mixed in there. Now if I can just return to more writing.

There have to be other things I've left out, so ask?

I'm contrary. I'm not of those Thin Mint lovers and I get nauseous at the smell anything peanut flavored. (I hated selling M&Ms for the Choir.) My recent favorite was the just-retired Lemon Chalet Cremes. I went through entirely too many boxes of those. Before that, I liked another creme-filled cookie (Van'chos, maybe?), but that was back when I was still in the Scouts. I even have my sash and pins somewhere.

Er, yes, I do like Oreos, how'd you guess? And my equally missed strawberry-flavored Milanos. *mourns*

Someday I'd love to do a podcasting panel, if to share my perspective both from a promotional standpoint and from the audience's eyes. There are so many little things that drive me crazy as an audio drama listener. I admit a lot of this is in reaction to the recent Katniss Chronicles. They have a beautiful site, it's very nicely designed and stylish, but lord do they make getting episodes a pain. And when that's your basic content, that strikes me as a Problem. (And I get that their direct download/Podbean site has delayed/maintenance issues, it's just frustrating.)

1. iTunes is the a double edged sword. It's a big massive market, but not everyone loves iTunes. Do not make that your only outlet or source for your podcast.

2. People do want to download the episodes individually. I drag and drop them into my mp3 player to listen to later. Listening from the website isn't feasible or practical most of the time.

3. Please be consistent naming your episode files. If you know you have an episode + bonus or commentary, mark them accordingly. If I'm looking at the folder with your episodes downloaded and can't at a glance see the order, that's a problem.

"Keep it Simple Stupid" sounds condescending sometimes, but really it's just plain common sense. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find your shows and listen to them, right? RIGHT? Being fancy may win you design points, but it won't necessarily keep people coming back.

I've been a temp for most of my working life. They're usually thankless assignments, being shuffled between one library and another. Some bosses love you and appreciate you, but they're few and far between. Especially in the government and corporate environments, there's a contractor vs permanent employee attitude, even if you've been at that assignment for awhile.

So the new job has been an adjustment. The biggest one is being appreciated. And hearing it often from my bosses.

Today my boss told me how much he appreciated that I could see things both on a macro and micro level in our office -- the bigger picture of what we were doing and then figuring out how to make things work. This was after presenting him with the instruction manual for the printing/binding work I'd been crosstrained on. He'd asked for it, but I think he expected me to write it up in my free time at work. (Whenever he thinks *that* is. There's never a lack of work.) But I had it in my memory banks when I came home, so it was what I worked on before the late night movie with M.

The oddest story told by our assistant director is how I was copyediting one of our documents and I noticed something looked weird about one of the figures. I don't have a science background. I only follow the barebones of the toxicology stuff I'm learning. I never even took college level chemistry or biology, because of the added labs/calculus involved. But something looked off to my eyes, too similar to another figure nearby. Yes, the wrong figure had been inserted, but I'd caught it.

All right, so 2011 is not completely fired... yet. It's still on probationary notice.

I haven't posted here in forever, so it's time for a blanket update of life and universe.

After my last post, I have massively decluttered my apartment, losing a ton of old stuff I didn't need and moving some to storage for the time being. The apartment is definitely neater and easier to take care of. The lack of mysterious piles will take some adjustment. They'll re-evaluate it in a few months and hopefully schedule that other inspection at some point. That leaves me time to declutter further on my own. And catch up on my rest and reading.

Work is great. I've been able to mix in working from home. I definitely love the commute to the couch. I've also been cross trained on some printing and binding work. Tiring work, but I do feel like I'm contributing to the actual panels. I'm still getting used to the being paid every two weeks rather than weekly for temp work.

On the Pendant front, I'm still puttering away in Promotions. The Promo corner looks slightly better lit than the mineshaft they hide all the directors in. My first Earth-P two-parter has aired and recorded one ninja role for Supergirl. I've even received my first plea for something called real coffee from Metallo. I guess it's the black stuff my parents drink all the time in the morning...

Now that the apartment crunch has eased up, I'm dipping back into the audio audition well. It's frustrating because I do want to participate more, but I'm also honest on my voice acting abilities. Accents are not my strong suit, so the most I can do is vary the delivery a little. But the only way to learn is to keep trying. And unlike high school, voice auditions don't fill me with dread. At least until Teresa or Jeffrey or Kat ask me to do a step-ball-change combination, and then I'm outta here.

Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies" full stop. I can hear only a snippet and suddenly I'm bouncing around like I know the moves.

Lady Gaga has the most songs in my head, despite the fact I don't own any of her albums. I don't know if this is just trying to tell me to give in to the inevitable or what.

This weekend I went on my nearly annual pilgrimage to the Maryland Ren Faire. The weather was unseasonably warm, so it was very crowded. I wound up the labyrinth necklace shown as my latest icon. I'd walked a local one four years ago, but had never had a chance to repeat the experience.

( Labyrinth walkCollapse )

Doing voice acting really makes me conscious of my surroundings. I live around the corner from the local high school and park, so invariably there is something going on. The high school is not the one I went to, but rather our cross town rivals. Fall means football season, so Thursdays and Fridays are usually pretty noisy. Friday Night Lights is all well and good until you're trying to hear yourself think or speak. Last night, one of the bands was playing Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance". I suspect the visiting team, if only because I've listened to the initial band practices of my high school. They weren't practicing anything remotely that tuneful. One song sounded like something of a 70s television show. I was mostly surprised I recognized the song; I wouldn't have expected to play "Name that Tune" with Gaga.

But I managed to get stuff done today. Kingery lines are finally recorded only a day late, and I even auditioned for Supergirl. On a non-Pendant front, Leviathan Chronicles is casting for new voices. I took a major chance and sent in a clip of my voice. I don't know what will come of that, but I had to give it a try.

I'm beginning to understand the appeal and the problems with headset mics. I bought one for Skype/podcast purposes. Vista's voice recognition program is entertaining, if nothing else, but I'd go nuts saying commands over and over. Then tonight I tested the headset on my lines. I know headsets are frowned upon, but it was so much easier not having to worry about the microphone. I almost felt like I was saying lines rather than just reading stuff off a page for a change. No clue whether I really sound better though. Or whether there weren't a bunch of other issues (i.e. pops, etc.) I'm missing in the process. With the regular microphone, I'm struggling. Hence the frustrations. I have two more days to get these done. Hopefully tomorrow will go smoother.