06-22-03 @ 12:46 pm EDT

I wonder if I lost one of my readers? Last I knew we were on good terms but it's been a while. Hm. Maybe they're just busy. I have to learn to stop worrying about such things, but I can't seem to help them getting to me after certain periods of time. :/ If it helps, I THINK I've improved a little bit...I used to get upset if a mere day or so had passed and I hadn't heard back from somebody I expected to hear from...now I try to wait longer, though I do wish I could just let it slide. People have reasons; I won't always know them. I'll keep editing my items so they show up in my most recently edited list and maybe they'll pop by and notice them someday when they have the time. *shrug*

Yah, the new Harry Potter book. Obligatory mention. I'm waiting for the paperback because I'm stingy and all the other ones I have are paperback and I hate it when things don't match. :P Plus I'm waiting until the entire series is out before reading them. I did read the first one, and started on the second, but now I plan to just wait until they're all done because my memory is so poor, I wouldn't be able to remember what's already happened. I don't find the books REMARKABLY STELLAR, but then again, I don't find them lousy, and I respect Rowling as a writer because she started out with practically nothing and now she has just about everything. (I wish I had HALF the popularity she has...heck, a TENTH of the popularity would be nice!) And she seems to know how to hold her own. All the crap she has to face from the "Witchcraft!! Witchcraft!!" crowd and from all these morons stealing her books and releasing snippets prematurely...I have to respect somebody who can put up with that sort of junk without flipping out. She must have lots of patience. I realize I don't really follow her and for all I know she IS throwing hissy fits behind closed doors, but in that environment, who wouldn't? I caught part of an interview with her on TV once when she was talking about a parent who suggested she omit or edit out part of one of the books to make it safer for children or something. Rowling was understandably offended. People do not need to read if they do not want to. It's an EDITOR'S job to tell a writer what they should and should not do with their writing, and a WRITER'S job to decide if they want to act on that advice or not. Readers can certainly influence what a writer is going to do, and what editors are going to put out, but to tell her how to write her own book? She held her tongue pretty well, but I sensed her anger. And I understand it completely. The book was already in print; like she's going to change it on the advice of a mere parent? (One who probably hadn't even read the entire thing!)

But anyway bla bla bla. No I do not have the book. I did not rush out to a store to get it bla bla bla. They do not have parties like that where I live. I'll wait for the paperback. When is that? Several months from now? *sigh* I want to just HOLD it and see how FAAAAAAT it is. Probably around Manitou Island thickness. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. ^_^

I just love how much bigger they keep getting with each one! I can't wait to see how thick the LAST one is. *cackle*

And they say that PEOPLE WON'T READ LONG STORIES! Another reason I respect Rowling; she's proven THAT wrong, just as I thought.

I had a veritable knock-down, drag-out with the Muffin this morning...I swear I was about ready to wring his little neck...I was screaming at him, and chasing him, and pushing him over so he rolled head over heels with his butt in the air, but what was he doing in response...?...poofing up, yes...but also getting in my face...and jumping at me...and affixing himself to my leg...and chasing after me...AAAGGHH DAMN YOU CAT!! CAN'T YOU TELL WHEN I'M PLAYING AND WHEN I'M MAD?!! He does poof up but I swear that the louder my voice gets, the MORE he thinks it's a game! I really WAS incredibly pissed off with him...I really do get the urge to hurt, but I won't do that to him, I swear...I pushed him over only because he was attached to my foot and I wanted him to back away from me, hence he went rolling over onto his back...looking rather miffed as he did so...but toward the end of it he had me getting so hysterical I was beginning to laugh out of pure frustration because he is just SO STUPID!! I can't believe him. Something is wrong in this cat's brain that he could have thought that THAT was PLAYING.

>_<;;;

Ma's not awake yet. Sheesh, it's 12:30 and she's still sleeping! She'll never get anything done at this rate...

Oh yeah! UPDATES! Dar! I FINALLY finished copying all my dreams into HTML files! *huffpanthuff* I didn't know it would TAKE so damn long. It's a wonder I don't have an embolism from sitting like that all morning. So I've started the revisions on my dream journal (now renamed "Dreamforest"--I just can't settle on a nice original name for that thing :/ ) and have already redone the first ten entries. I've realized this will be difficult for when I reference other entries by name--as the main entries are now going to be titled by date--but I guess I can go in and edit those parts later to include the date so readers will know which entry to look in. BLAH! Like people are going to be digging around in it anyway? I can't help it, I'm anal. But the redone entries look a LOT nicer and more orderly! I've subtitled all the dreams in bold/red/underline and each entry title gives the date they were dreamed as well as how many dreams are in that entry. Neat, huh? OCD at work. :)

And I'm still plodding through proofing the revision to Part 7 of the Chronicles; there is a WHOLE lot of additional material to this one. I think it used to be around 30kb; now it's about 85. *guh* Humongo, but the plot additions explain the brutality in Part 8, as well as Nehekhi's decision to support ousting General Djiu. And yes, now there's at least an explanation as for where the hell he went during Part 8 and why he wasn't home at the time. Sheesh. I'm about a third of the way through that--14,000 words, I think--though I have only about 5000 more to actually proof; the rest is the old material that just needs to be browsed over to make sure it still goes with the new plot. Bla bla bla, is it echoing in here? Hello?

I feel slightly "up"--manic--today. Like I want to write to everyone and write everything and you know the story already if you regularly follow Skew because for some reason I periodically go through these phases yet never seem to get much done as it is and so why even bother because I'm just wasting my time writing a journal entry like always anyway. I hope the length of that sentence explained it better than I did. :/

Well, maybe I should go TRY to work on something else now? Even though like I already said, I probably won't get anything done. That's the problem with these phases, no matter how creative they make me feel, I just dilly-dally and can't decide on any one thing to do, and hence accomplish nothing. Except journal entries. *sigh*

Maybe more later. Tar...