Novel: Have pretty much dropped all together. I think i need to make a contest or something for myself to force myself to edit it. I’ve tried NaNoEdMo in the past and it never really worked for me… but i’m sure i can figure something out.

Moving: Right now i’m mostly focusing on the money issue. I finally sort-of started a beaded jewelry shop on Etsy (i say ‘sort-of’ because my weekend blew up and i only got around to listing one item. and i’m still working out the whole scheduling-my-own-business-around-my-day-job thing. meh.)

Webcomic: Fell off the update wagon a bit. Funny coincidence: the next strip was to be one on Yo’s hibernation patterns. So, yeah, my comic disappears for three weeks and then comes back on a girl who can’t stay awake long enough to do anything.

Happiness Project: Well, i’m still doing stuff with it, but i’ve finished my Month of Working on it Every Day.
I finished up the very-non-calendar-month on Wednesday.
On Friday the cockatiel i’ve had since i was twelve died.
Yeah.
So.
Not very happy, that.
Especially since cockatiels are mad crazy social birds. And i have another cockatiel. And the other cockatiel spent twelve hours shrieking at the top of his lungs in search of his buddy.
I want to be all tearful and say no other bird can ever replace Neelix and Jean-Luc and i will just have to get along without him because it will be ages before i can even consider another bird. But screw that. Jean-Luc was lonely and Jean-Luc is vicious and there’s a difference between ‘total replacement’ and ‘having another gentle bird around’. So as of Saturday there is a shy, sweet, and otherwise non-vicious seven-month-old cockatiel in a cage next to Jean-Luc’s. And Jean-Luc is happy, or at least no longer shrieking from loneliness, and i am happy(ish), and Data the Cat is… well, he’s not happy, he’s actually quite jealous of all the attention baby Wesley is getting. But he’s a cat, he doesn’t do happy without at least an hour of worship to the cat-god involved. But basically everyone involved is much happier than we would be if i didn’t get another bird, so i guess it works out.

random other stuff

• i seem to have officially failed in the update-my-blog-once-a-week goal. First official failure, WOOHOO! (see? i really am enthusiastic about my failures. It means i tried. It means i ain’t no wussy. And in this case it also means i no longer need to stress out if it’s Day 7 and i have nothing to say, cause whatever, i already failed the whole every week thing.)

for the sheer sake of ‘updating every week.’

Sit-ups: 45 at a time, 150+ in sets. w00t me.
Screnzy: failed.
Comic: still going.
Happiness Project: also still going.
Bonsai: not dead yet.
Novel: have been ignoring.
Moving: am seriously considering finding a cheap-as-possible hotel to live in until apartments are sorted. City i end up in to be determined by city with cheapest inhabitable rooms.

I am having an absurdly fun time working on my Happiness Project. I guess that’s kind of the point…

Some randomness:

• Stuff which makes me Feel Good and stuff which makes me Feel Bad are more closely related than i previously realised. Odd.
• There is nothing like tracking the tag ‘happiness’ on Tumblr for random bits of glee. There’s the expected happiness quotes, and happy pictures, and gratitude journal entries, but also sweet touching stories – real, unforced, this-is-how-my-day-went-and-it-was-happy! diary pages. I love it.
• I. Love. Maps. Especially metro maps, apparently. This is the sort of thing i technically knew but which didn’t really get into my head until i started the HP. In the Happiness Project book (which i haven’t actually finished yet, but whatever, i’m working on it…), there’s a section on collections and various reasons they make some people happy. ‘Hm, well, i doubt i’ll start really collecting anything any time soon, but as a wee mental exercise, what kind of things would i collect?’ I do plan on starting a proper knife/sword collection soon, but anything else? Maybe tarot decks? Bonsai trees? Antique books?
  Turns out you can get suggestions for anything on Hunch. Including collections. And OMG MAPS WANT NOW PLZ.
  So much for ‘not starting a collection any time soon.’ Granted, right now my ‘collection’ is all-digital, held together in Vi.sualize.us, but i have a new obsession. And i have no idea how i’m going to go about this, but i want to get together with the genealogists in my family (of which there are surprisingly many) and make some sort of Family Tree-Map. Make me happy. Make the history geeks happy. Win all around!

yay happiness.

In an effort to actually work on a Happiness Project every day, for a (very non-calendar) month, i’ve made a list of Happiness Project tasks to spread out over the next two weeks (day 15 is ‘Re-plan Happiness Project.’ Because i suck at planning things that far in advance, and besides it’s quite likely i’ll come up with whole different happiness-inducing ideas in the next one week, never mind two).

Yesterday was Planning. Today is actually getting around to reading The Happiness Project. Tomorrow is deciding what, exactly, i’m going to use as a ‘happiness toolbox.’

There is an entire Happiness Project Toolbox site, set up by Gretchen Rubin as a sort of add-on to her book and blog, but i’m not sure i’m going to use it. I know full well i wouldn’t use most of it – it’s either stuff i already do, and prefer doing, somewhere else, or it’s stuff i wouldn’t find conducive to my happiness at all (group resolutions?! Introvert alert = not gonna happen. Unless it’s such a ridiculously small group as to make calling it a group almost silly, or so huge as to already have its own movement and website.) I don’t feel the stuff i would use the HPT for is really enough to warrant setting up yet another account on yet another website.

The alternatives are my regular blog, or a Tumblr blog. The former i feel might be a bit unwieldy for this and the latter is… well, it’s not a whole new account, but it is a whole new something i have to set up and maintain and may feel guilty about if i don’t bother with it after my self-imposed Happy Month. Ah well.

I think my favourite happiness commandment of Gretchen’s is ‘don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.’ There is no perfect ‘toolbox’ for me, but there’s three perfectly good alternatives. Just gotta grab one.

and other stuff.

So. Goal #80? Renewing my passport?
This is kind of important because a) My passport is my only photo ID. I don’t drive, i never bothered getting a non-drivers-license government-issued ID (well. besides the passport), i never even bothered getting a college ID once i stopped going to a school which outright required it (i’m lazy like that. ‘I have one photo ID. This is enough. I am not going to waste my time bantering about with stuff i don’t need.’) No passport means no pubs, no piercings, no lots of fun things. And b) I still want to go overseas in the near future. Passport thus required.
Now, my current passport was issued while i was planning a trip to Russia in June 2005. (Note the date. 2005.) So i pulled out my passport to see exactly when it expired. 02 Jan – ‘noooooo, it’s already expired’ – 2015.
Yeah. Passports last ten years, not five. I’m an idiot sometimes.
I’m not even going to bother looking up whether or not it’s possible to renew a passport this early. Even if it is, it’s ridiculous for me to do so. Debating whether i can properly mark this ‘done’, as a self-completing goal, or ‘unable to complete’, as a sherry-is-an-idiot goal.

Actual no-really-i-did-accomplish-something goal: I got my bonsai tree! It’s a beautiful little Hawaiian umbrella tree, which is supposed to be pretty easy to take care of. Now i just have to keep it alive – but i’m starting to think i’m not so bad at taking care of plants as previously believed… I have a pineapple plant which, unexpectedly enough, is actually starting to grow. It’s my bamboo plant (supposedly the easiest plant possible to take care of) which is doing the worst, but it’s also the oldest. Maybe i just need to learn how to really take care of it, beyond simple watering.

I think i’ve gotten through ‘researching adoption’ as far as i can at the moment, considering it’ll be years before i’m actually ready for a kid… oh, and i’d like to move, hopefully to Ireland but at any rate Very Far Away from the Valley, and preferably before trying to adopt (yeah, take a kid who’s already been removed from one home, barely let him get settled in, and then move out of the country. That won’t cause trauma. None at all.)

So most applicable laws will probably change, either through the simple changes of time (i’m thinking it’s going to be at least five years before i’m ready to deal with having a kid) or location (the Hague Convention should keep that aspect from having too much influence, but there’ll probably still be some differences).

But i’ve done as much research as i can this far in advance, and i’ve subscribed to at least thirty adoption blogs. Between the lot of them any major law changes are bound to be mentioned; plus this way i get to better notice all the ups and downs of kids, and social work, and kids traumatised by (social work/first families/foster care/orphanages/Disney films/and all the other potential triggers i’m forgetting about right now), and even more varieties of adoption trolls (including the Well-Meaning Religious Troll – that’s, um. Really one i did not expect.)

I think i can count ‘research adoption’ as ‘done’, then, as it’s as done as it’s going to get without a good dose of personal experience.

random other stuff

• My cousin had a kid this weekend. Or, rather, his girlfriend had a kid… but yay! Children! *digs out knitting supplies*
• Not technically religious trolling, but it does tie in with some of the major reasons i’m not fond of organised religion… the remaining reasons usually attributable to religious trolls.