Any opinions on corgis as pets?

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Taking the Fluffy's-at-the-farm idea too far?

(( link ))

Lore hopped around her room, trying to pull her boots on, cursing under her breath. Why was it, like, required for girl superheroes to have something vinyl? She had resisted for a long time, but it really did seem weird to go out there in completely matte materials, even if it shouldn't, why was she falling for the popular stereotyping, especially when it made her damn Firebird boots SO hard to pull ON? Dammit!

Finally, she popped her heel into place, and sat back on her bed with a sigh. Lore had to go on patrol tonight. There was no question about that. But, despite there being a total lack of question, her mind kept on wandering back to Duffy, and her eyes somehow always found their way to the little blue phone on her nightstand. She hadn't actually talked to Jack in six months. Six months. And now -- she had no idea what he was thinking, if Duffy had even talked to him, what their decision was, but --

She was a hero! A superhero. Heroes did not hide in the face of danger, even such oddly indefinable danger as calling your ex-boyfriend and best friend to confront him about his new boyfriend (ex-boyfriend?) and the fact that you outed him to said boyfriend as a murderous insane villain and.

Okay. Doing it. Dooiiiiing it.

Lore inched her way over to the nightstand and picked up the phone, her red gloves vibrant against the dull blue metal. He was still on speeddial. It's not like she had any others vying for the slots, after all. All she had to do was press five and then dial. Or just hold down five, although she always forgot about that. And. Okay. Beep. Five.

Now. Beep. Dial.

Lore bit her lip hard as she heard the familiar tinny ringing through the small earpiece, and then fell back on her bed in amazed, happy shock at the sound of Jack's voice, even if he was being unbearably rude.

“What do you want?”

“Is that how you start all your calls?” She couldn't help it. She was grinning. Jack's voice!

“Just the ones that actually start with my caller’s ID saying Loretta.”

Lore pushed herself up onto her elbows, frowning. “I’m seriously in your phone as Loretta?” Easily distracted, yes, but this was just as important as the Duffy issue.

“…Let’s start again. What do you want?”

Okay, not just as important. Lore sat up, leaning her elbows on her knees. “Has Duffy talked to you yet?”

“You’re calling me on a phone to talk about this? You do realize I have fucking electrical powers, right?”

Lore sighed, rolling her eyes, even as she found herself grinning again. Jesus, it was nice to talk to Jack again. Bad circumstances, sure, but -- still. Surreal as hell, sure, because they had only once ever talked about his powers, and that conversation had not ended well. “Yes, but you can’t do anything to my cell phone, Jack. Please. You think I can make your oven explode just because there’s fire involved? Don’t be a twit. Duffy’s talked to you.” He obviously had, since Jack seemed to know what she was referring to.

“Yeah, thanks for that.”

“Jack--” She tried to interrupt.

“No, I’m pretty sure you’ve done your fair share of butting into my life this year. This decade, how about.”

He lapsed into just enough silence to let Lore quietly say, “Come on, Jack. I just wanted to say...” What did she want to say? How was she going to put this? He was going to hate her no matter what. Didn't he already hate her? What did she have to lose?

“Well, say it.”

“That I’m not sorry.” Well, that was one way to do it. Lore screwed her eyes shut.

“What! You fucking bitch, you call me up after radio silence for six months, only to not apologize for ruining my fucking life? Again?”

Falling back onto her bed, Lore grimaced up at her speckled ceiling. “Oh, please. Like you didn’t know this had to happen. Jack, face it: you screwed up.” It felt really good to say that, especially since she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was true. It wasn't just about this, it wasn't about lying to Duffy or, at least, not telling him the whole truth. It was the fact that Jack had gotten involved in all this shit in the first place! If he had just told her about his powers, but -- okay, not the issue right now. “You want to know why I’m not sorry?”

“Because you’re a vindictive cunt?”

Lore actually smiled at that. “No. Because I want you to get better. And now… now you’ve lost two people, Jack. I know that at one time I was important to you. Maybe I’m not anymore. But I was, okay? Don’t deny it.” It was hard to refer to their friendship in the past tense, but -- truthful and probably good to confront out in the open.

“… I’m not.”

“And now – Duffy. Two people on the loss side, two relationships that – could have really mattered. And what have you gained? Money? Infamy? A few broken bones?” Sure, it was mainly guesswork, but she wasn't dumb. Learning about Jack moonlighting as Harkness had explained about how he always managed to pay rent even when he was between jobs and why he had insisted on that weird electric car.

“A lot of money.”

“Yeah, because you care so much about shit like that. Just…” She wasn't sure how to continue. She wasn't sure if she should continue. What if Jack wasn't even really listening, what if she was just wasting her time. Why was she wasting her time?

“What.”

“Jack, just think about it logically. There’s two roads in front of you. One where you keep losing people, the other where you might even gain lost friends back and, if that doesn’t happen, you can make new connections that actually stick. Just. Think about it.”

“Lore, you’re a bitch.”

He didn't sound that angry. Lore rubbed her eyes. “I know. …How’s LA?”

“Nice. Seattle?”

“Rainy.” She grinned a little.

“Heh.”

Even that small burst of laughter, however fake and forced it was -- Lore wanted to help him. “Jack…”

“I gotta go.”

“Right. Alright, just. Think about it, okay?” Not going to push it, not going to push it.

“Thinking.”

Lore said quietly, “Bye.”

“Yeah.”

She didn't hang up until she heard the click of his phone closing, then she pressed the end call button. Setting the phone gently back on her nightstand, Lore looked at it for a few moments, chewing on her already chapped lips. She really really wanted to believe that this might finally shake some sense into Jack's thick skull. Might get him to snap out of his juvenile obsession with being the bad guy. Might even realize that you didn't have to define yourself like that. She sighed, grabbing her mask out of the hidden drawer under her bed, and sliding it on. She couldn't think about him right now. Lore had done all she could, and now Firebird had to work.

---

Jack's side of the conversation here.

... Attacked by superheroes, but -I'm- one.

What the crap.

Seriously. Last night, I'm minding my own business out on patrol, and first Shadowgirl JUMPS me and is all WE SHOULD BE BFF, then while I'm trying to figure out her angle and what she wants with me, Windwalker appears out of nowhere and, of course, assumes I'm in league with Shadowgirl and spends the next ten minutes blasting me with air so strong I can't summon a single flame.

It didn't help that Shadowgirl eventually helped me out (Once Windwalker's fans short circuited) and... Jeez, the Everymen are going to kill me.

I need to see Jack, but he works late tonight, so hopefully I can catch him SOMETIME.

Well, it's that time of year.  The time of witches and ghouls and goblins, candy and sweets and tricks.  Well.  I'm not doing anything tonight.  I thought I was -- I even have a cute little ladybug costume I made, but Jack's cancelled on me and I'm in too bad a mood to go out on my own.  I'm still just amazed that he would -- well, obviously Ms. Girlfriend is more important than Ms. Best Friend.  : /

There's always loads of scary movies on TV on Halloween night, so I think I'll stop by Bartells on my way home, pick up a six pack of some girl beer (ie: wine coolers!), popcorn and maybe some slightly discounted Halloween candy.  I might even dress up in my costume just for me.  (It is super cute, after all.)

Boss isn't in today -- he has two young kids, so I think he's doing things with them, which is nice.  That means all I have to do today is man the phone and let everyone who calls know that, well, Boss isn't in.  AKA: Lore's going to get a lot of reading done today!  So that's nice.

We get the Seattle Times delivered to our office every morning, and I tend to read it over my first cup of coffee and -- blah.  Whole front page is covered with escapades of our masked heroes today.  Even the entertainment section is dealing with costumes of superheroes or something.  I know I'm in the minority, but.. come on.  Superheroes bug me.  What's the point of fantasy and imaginings and creativity if stuff like superpowers and magic planes and flying actually EXIST?  When anything can happen, it's like there's no point to hope.  I know, it's a weird view, but I just... it bugs me.

Plus, Seattle's superheroes SUCK.  Hahaha.  No one outside of the Puget Sound has even heard of them, because not a ONE has any powers.  They're like more boring, less rich versions of Batman, every single one.

I guess yesterday, our version of Superman, Windwalker -- THE stupidest name ever.. He uses fans and propeller systems to fly and blast people with gusts of wind -- got in another huge fight with Shadowgirl, the leader of the "bad guys" in the area.  Of course Windwalker won -- well, that's the way the paper portrayed it, but JUST as "of course" there's no mention of the huge amount of property damage, or the fact that Shadowgirl got away, WITH the money.  So ridiculous.  I read on SAS.com (Seattle Against Superheroes -- there's only a few hundred of us there, but whatever -- that two citizens were actually REALLY hurt yesterday, one with three cracked ribs, and another with a broken leg and a concussion!  Does the Times mention any of this?  Of course not -- we're not even as ballsy as J. Jonah Jameson over on the East coast.  We have to suck up to our "super" "heroes" for fear of -- what?  They'll turn a fan on us?  Bleh!

The only ONLY good thing about having superheroes around is that they tend to distract any of the bad guys from attacking citizens.  And, for some reason, most of the bad guys in our area DO have powers -- like Shadowgirl: she can basically go invisible, melting into shadows, but she can also use them offensively, and it's -- well, it's scary.  But, like all bad guys everywhere, they tend to focus on any potential "arch enemies" and seem to each have a personal vendetta against one specific hero in the area.

So... I don't know.  Jack and I both think the whole situation is ridiculous, and we're both nostalgic for a time before we were born, when not even Superman was here.  At least Jack and I agree on that, if not on how to treat best friends.

Today sucks.

(( And tomorrow won't!  Tomorrow is November 1st, marking the start of 2008 National Novel Writing Month.  Be sure to check out no_heroes_plz for daily updates of Lore's story.  There will be some corresponding journal entries accompanying the story, and I'll mark those with chapter tags, so you know where they fit in the novel. 
That's also why I had Lore actually talk about heroes today, since we'll definitely be learning more about that whole issue. :D ))

1. If your doctor told you TODAY that you were pregnant, what would you say? Holy shit, seriously? I'd cry. I'm unbelievably not in any place where I could either (a) have a kid or (b) have to think about abortions. And then make her double check, because I haven't had sex for .. two years (hahaha).

2. Do you trust all of your friends? Yeah, definitely.

3. Would you move to another state or country to be with the one you love? I don't know. Hypotheticals are hard, because I think there would naturally be so much more at stake than just "being with your love"... So, maybe.

4. Do you believe that everything happens for a reason? Didn't I just talk about this? hah! Yeah, I guess I do. Kinda.

5. Can you make a pound/dollar in change right now? I think so.

( Read more... )

Change is weird, huh?  Especially when it's sudden and seems to happen for no reason -- or, at least, for unseen ones.

I didn't realize this had been such a theme in my life until today, on the bus.  I had spent most of the ride home blankly staring at this leaf stuck in one of the front wipers.  The bus driver tried to dislodge it a few times by activating the wipers, but the leaf would have none of it.  If nothing, the orange crinkly thing seemed to get more stuck.  Finally, the bus driver gave up, and the leaf continued to get a free ride.

Then, just a block or so before my stop, the leaf just -- was gone.  I seriously can't think of how it managed to suddenly dislodge itself, but it did.  The bus driver hadn't moved the wipers.  There wasn't a big gust of wind, from what I could tell of the trees outside.  It just -- left.  

The suddenness of this is what struck me.  It was such a huge change -- well, relatively speaking! -- but I couldn't see any clear reason why it happened.

So then, as I walked the few blocks from the busstop to my apartment building, I got thinking about other weird sudden reasonless changes in my life.  I mean.. No, I don't -really- believe in change with no reason, because I believe in God and that he has a path for everyone.  So I buy into the whole fate/destiny thing, at least to a point.  But from where we stand, a lot of the time, things just seem to happen for no clear reason and that's ~weird~.

Take what happened last night.  Jack called me as I was making dinner, and we were chatting as I waited for the pasta to boil.  Then he drops this bombshell that he's -- well, wait, let me back up and explain Jack and me.  Jack's my best friend, and I've known him since freshman year of high school.  We went to different colleges (ie: I went to college and he dropped out of community college after three semesters), but even when we lived in different parts of the state, we were still really close.   And now we live like a five minute walk away from each other, and we see each other every day, talk way too much, etc etc.  We're not dating, and we never have.  Everyone assumes we are, but we're not.  But, the thing is... We also don't date anyone else.  Sure, we might go ON A DATE, but that's ridiculously different.  We've actually tried hooking each other up with other people we knew and even gone double dating, but it just -doesn't- -work-.

So, there's that.

Then Jack suddenly springs on me this fact that he's in a RELATIONSHIP.  Okay, he didn't call it that, but ... he said he and this girl had gone on three or four dates already, and the reason he hadn't told me about her before was that he wasn't sure if it was going to be worth mentioning (I know this is a lie -- he's always told me about every girl he's gone on even one date on, usually before the actual date.  So that means he probably KNEW it'd be worth mentioning, but didn't know how to bring it up) but now it seems like it's getting serious, etc etc.  I don't know.  It's SO weird.  It's not like I'm jealous.  I'm really not -- do I have any reason to lie to you, faithful internet?  (Well, you think I'm lying to myself, but that's not it, either.)  It's just another strange, sudden, reasonless CHANGE.

It's like my parent's divorce (NOT THAT I'M SAYING JACK + ME = MOM + DAD).  As I grew up, I seriously never had any inkling they were having ANY sort of difficulty in their relationship.  Then, I go to college?  And during my freshman year they suddenly become separated and then, by the time spring semester finishes, they're divorced.  For a long time I felt like this was seriously my fault -- like it was somehow my job, as their daughter, to be the glue in their relationship and by abandoning them, I left their marriage to decay.  I know that's not true now, but it was really strange and hard for a while.  At the time, I couldn't see any logical reason for the divorce and it was all super surreal.

(A year or so ago, my mom and I got kind of drunk together -- I know, strange -- and we started talking about the divorce.  She admitted to me that she and Dad had always had problems, even before I was born.  But they were just really ridiculously good at hiding any arguments they had, because they had both decided really early on that I was more important than their own happiness, and they would stay together at least until I was in college.  I'm kind of touched that they thought I was so important and special (when I'm seriously NOT), but also kind of... well, I feel like that puts a lot of onus on me, right?  Like, now I have to be super successful and awesome, because they sacrificed so much for me.  Eighteen years of potential love, all so I could have a reasonably lovely childhood/teenagedom.)

So... In conclusion, I guess, change is weird.  Which isn't anything new or anything, but... that doesn't make it any less true.  I don't think I like it.

Hi.  Should I say hi?  I've never had one of these before, but it's a slow Monday at work, and I thought I'd give it a go.  I don't even think any of my friends have one.  I don't really have many friends, and Jack doesn't use the internet, so I don't really know what the point of this thing will be!  I guess... I'll maybe make some "online" friends?  We'll see!

Like I said, today is a slow Monday so far.  For me, at least.  My boss has a day jampacked with meetings and the like, but I finished my last big filing project late last week, and so for now I'm just answering phones and writing some form letters.  Might put in an order for Office Depot later.  Never hurts to have extra paperclips lying around, and that simple tasks can be stretched for a loooong time.  :D

A lot of people hate or at least dislike Mondays, but I don't mind them.  My job's not bad, if a little boring, but it suits me.  My boss rarely bugs me, and I rarely bug him.  He's kinda a bigshot in Seattle, and a lot of the time when I casually mention who I work for, people don't believe me, but he's really humble and stuff, so that's nice.  I mostly got the job because my dad is a Seattle detective and he pulled a few strings.  Not that I'm incompetent -- I wouldn't've been hired if I couldn't actually, you know, file and answer phones, but ... yeah.  It pays the bills, at least.

I had an okay weekend -- I'm sure you're really interested, huh, random and devoted reader?  On Saturday I met Jack down by the piers, and we enjoyed the late sunny fall weather.  Sunday I slept in and went to church.  That afternoon was almost a disaster, because a girl I know from church came over for lunch, and then Jack stopped by, and Jack -- well, that's one of the main things Jack and I fight about, if you could call it fighting.  I'm not overly religious or anything, but I go to church and I believe in God.  Jack thinks that's all a load of crock, and does not hesitate to tell me so WHENEVER it comes up.  I was really worried he'd start up on it all with Carmen there, but he was polite and only a little snarky, and they seemed to get along well enough.  We watched a movie and it was nice.

Almost missed the bus again today.  I really need to figure out a different route, or get my bike fixed or something.  Every morning I feel like I'm running for the bus, even when I leave fifteen or twenty minutes early.  Ridiculous!

Well, that filing's not going to do itself.  I should get on that.  So, goodbye for now, journal!