my heart is a glorious machine;

I left for work with time to spare, which turned out to be an excellent idea, as barely five minutes passed before I had a dreadful accident and had to wheel the Angelusmobile back home.

This is what happened. I was bicycling, yes? I do this all the time. I got about a block and a half past my house, and there's a slight not-even-a-hill, but enough to make one's bicycle go a bit faster than it would on a flat sidewalk. This hill also ends at a crossing. I always stop at the end of the sidewalk anyway, but suddenly I realised that there were cars going through there now, so I put on my brakes. Only my brakes decided not to work properly, or really at all, and the only thing my head could come up with in the two seconds prior was for my bicycle to collide with the closest large object.

This happened to be a massive metal crossing pole, which I hit head-on. Or rather: chin on. Yes. My chin and my bicycle tire took most of the blow. Oh dear, my poor chin. I reeled for a moment, said, "OW" multiple times -- and then kept going, because I did not wish to be late for work, and anyway, it hurts like the dickens but I'll be all right eventually. Only it took me fifteen more seconds to realise that my bicycle tire was making funny noises because it had half come off the rim. (You may all collectively facepalm.) So I turned around and walked the bicycle back home -- and only then did I realise that my chin was bleeding. Kind of a lot. ]

(Of all of the crazy stunts the Angelusmobile has pulled, THIS IS THE WORST. Try to tell me he's not trying to kill me. I dare you.)

So, yes, Dad drove me, after I cleaned off my chin with a washcloth and covered it in Neosporin and bandaids. I only ended up being two minutes late and nobody noticed.

So: first day. Not as gorgeously awesome as my training in Waldenbooks -- calendars can never match up to books -- but everything went well, my co-workers were nice (Scott, the most talkative and friendly of us, also plans to take library science!), I only messed up the cash register really badly once (really badly; we had to void the whole sale and start over; I was mortified). We had very few customers, since we were still setting up, and we hadn't any cash in the register, so they couldn't pay with anything but credit and charge cards. So, I organised calendars all day. Would you believe the largest sellers are dog calendars? We sell approximately thirty thousand of them. It is positively obscene. I have grown to loathe them already. (Furthermore they are nearly all schmaltzy, with rubbish photography.) There are lots of animal calendars in general, most of them also consisting of very bad photography. Actually I do not like very many calendars for this reason, though there is a Victoriana one I am interested in.

On my break, I NaNoed, and wished fervently I had been smart enough to pack a bloody lunch. I had no money, either, so I couldn't run off to a nearby restaurant and grab a sandwich or some such. And we are right next to my favourite cinnamon roll place, so I smelt that all day and was ravenous by ten o'clock. And then I didn't eat till nearly three, oh dear! Mum took some time coming to pick me up -- I should have written some more, but I was in my usual rut of "NOTHING IS HAPPENING; WHAT ON EARTH CAN I SCROUNGE UP TO WRITE ABOUT NOW?", so I read Library: An Unquiet History instead, until Mum came, and, to my extreme gratitude, bought me a sandwich at Arby's. (Bacon on fried chicken; delicious!) The bloke behind the counter, noticing my bandaid patch, which was quite falling off at this point (and this was my second one), said after he found out how I'd gotten it that he'd thought I had a piercing gone horrifically wrong. This mental image I found fainly terrifying. (If there's that much blood, I want my money back and then some.) 

We came home, I washed my chin again, and went down to one bandaid -- and no noticeable swelling, hurrah!, but a terrific looking bruise instead. Good Lord, is it ever ghastly looking. Some of it is a blood blister, too, although not raised, and -- ugh. Really, really ugh. It is simultaneously very painful and numb.

And then we all walked down to vote (except for Dad, who voted after he dropped me off, and then went to work) -- we brought the siblings and Mum showed them how things worked and such. I really feel as though I ought to say something Great and Important about this, but I didn't feel terribly Great and Important, just pleased and proud that I'm able to act upon my views about how the country progresses. And, hey, I got a sticker, and candy.

Also, I am at over five thousand words, and something has happened at last. Hmmm.

So, yes, I has new hair, and I love it very much. I love going to Renee at Rainbowtique, because every time, I go with only a vague idea of what I want done with my hair, and by the end I have a completely brilliant haircut that is absolutely me. All of us girls went -- only Leandra didn't get her hair cut, she just played with all of the hair on the floor and tried to attach it to her own head -- and we all look quite nice, though I haven't got pictures of everyone else.

( pictures and tales of the new hair (& other things), stage i and stage ii. so, you pretty much have to read the whole post. ha ha!><div style= )

Well, today was very productive. I am rather satisfied, and filled with that pleasant exhaustion that comes of doing things (not-disagreeable things, even) all day.

I remembered about half an hour before an appointment with my therapist that I had an appointment with my therapist, and still managed to show up late -- it's a good thing I can run the half a block to his office in about sixty seconds. It was a productive session. I have been feeling better lately, possibly because I have kept busy, and possibly because of the further acquaintance of A Very Splendid College, which I will ramble about some other post. And then I went to the library, because I hadn't been able to go Saturday, found several books, read a newspaper, and had my shoes complimented on by a stranger. (They were my very fantastic granny boots, but still. I was flattered.) After acquiring some mint chocolates at Hockman's, I returned home to deposit my books and press the Angelmobile into service, as I wanted to go to the university library near where we used to live and realised how little I wanted to walk all the way there. Only Mum was going to CVS and there was a useful coupon for mascara, which I was nearly out of, and besides, this was Epic Mascara which we cannot usually afford. I tell this very dull bit of story in order to explain why I was then dropped off by car at the Penn State library and walked home later.

I do have a card at the Penn State library, despite not being and not intending ever to be a student there -- because they do have fantastic books, especially for research purposes, and general geekery. Unfortunately their selection is limited to Things They Teach, and it being a small, small-town college, this is not vastly extensive, but despite this they have a good if small selection of books on folklore, and OMG YOU GUYS THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY ON A SHELF OF HONOUR I KID YOU NOT. The tragedy is that it is Not Allowed to check out the OED, or even a volume -- the W volume, by J.R.R. Tolkien! It is also Not Allowed to check out The Vampire Encyclopedia (encyclopaedias are off-limits, although this is such a little one that I think it was Following The Letter Of The Law, and not the Spirit), so I had to sit down at a table, skim through all of the entries, and copy down the pertinent facts and ideas. *nods* I got some very lovely ideas and some very crazy facts -- vampire pumpkins and vampire watermelons are valid folklore elements? Seriously, what? Also, vampire garden tools were feared in Eastern Europe. OKAY. The author, while attempting to remain Scholarly and Distant, occasionally let forth an unexpected burst of subtle snark, which I loved kind of a lot, even if my trust in his judgement was tempered somewhat by his extensive praise for Anne Rice.

The librarian on duty was extremely helpful in guiding me to books on life at the turn of the century and similar books (alas, nothing about libraries seemed to be in the catalogue). I heart librarians. Plus she had a sign up in her office urging you to park your hot air balloon somewhere else. ♥ So I trundled home an hour or so later with my satchel so full of books that I had to carry the largest of them under my arm (an anthology of "modern fairy tales", authored, not traditional, from some Romans on down to Robin McKinley -- this has nothing to do with my NaNo project, but it was too awesome not to grab. There was also a book about the moon and its significance in folklore that I am going to have to come back for.). So I have a history of twentieth century fashion, for visual reference; a book of essays on British folklore, London: A History (there was a much larger and more extensive London: A Biography, but it was so large and I had so many books already that I am saving it for the next trip), a book on Victorian London, and a book on How our ancestors lived, which seems to have some pretty detailed mundane information on daily life that will be fantastically useful.

So, yeah, I've never actually researched for a novel before. This is kind of neat. I just hope I manage to temper all of my shiny new book-learning lest my novel become one of those obnoxious historical fictions that hurls random historical detail in your face at the expense of the story. Also: it does not hurt that this is pretty much my favourite historical period. Researching it is FUN.

Now I am very very sleepy and will go to bed. Yes yes yes.

First off: Here I am on NaNo! Friend me, or however it works in those parts, and we can keep tabs on each other. (Also, my user-picture has me missing my hot pink hair all of a sudden. Perhaps after my cut and going strawberry-blonde-red, streaks could potentially come back into being.)

( more rambling about vampire-hunting librarians and me not having nearly enough plot. )

Right, church in the morning, so sleep now.

My mother called Verizon and apparently chewed them out until they relented and promised to send out an internet installation force this evening, instead of on Monday. I am well pleased (and also amused). I now have a way to watch Pushing Daisies tonight, as we do not get television until tomorrow. I am also considering making pumpkin cup-pies. If not this week, then next? (If only I had someone else to watch it with. :p)

My bed is on its frame at last, but I am still feeling somewhat overwhelmed where my bedroom is concerned -- so many books! (I know, I know.) And the ones which actually belong to me rather than being Family-Owned Books are rapidly increasing in number, and besides those are quite a lot I don't want to let out of my sight. I have two shelves in the shelfiest closet full of my most important books -- one shelf with my poetry, and the books I am closest to, and another shelf with my books-about-the-English-language and my Tolkien (of which there is a lot), and one more shelf with Harry Potter and Anne Shirley and some L'Engle. There is a box of books I don't need to have in my room, and two more boxes of books which I haven't found places for just yet. The closet most full of shelves I am turning into a reading nook -- it's quite large, and tall, and has a sort of -- bottom shelf? which is exactly right for sitting in, once I take out the air mattress the Presbyterians left in there, and put in some cushions. Other shelves currently house attractive vintage boxes of papers (one is a hat box), a pile of notebooks, and an amusing little collection of items: a blue glass inkwell shaped like George Washington's head (look, I don't know, I didn't buy it) filled with two feather pens, the fountain pen barefoottomboy sent me for my birthday, and a black cloth rose, nestled with left-over magenta Manic Panic and cheap black nail polish, and the notebooks.

By the way, my black and pink notebook, which I will have to take pictures of as the pattern never ceases to make me very happy, has been officially designated the Evangeline Notebook (I may start calling it Evy -- the black-with-felt-overlays spiral notebook Kyra got me for Christmas wrapped in sparkly paper named itself Edward, and now all the notebooks are clamouring for titles and starting unions and things). I am hoping things start being written in there soon. I have attempted to write a list of characters, but nobody except for the three sisters even has got names, and the youngest sister is on her third name now. (She started out as Priscilla, which suited her, but the middle sister is Camilla, and that would be silly. She was Phoebe for a while, then, but that didn't suit her much, and now she is telling me that she wants to be called Briony, even though I told her I wanted to use that name some other time, but Briony Nox does have a ring to it, and it does have a sense of feistyness, and the youngest Miss Nox is a bit of a spitfire. Which I can already tell. Though none of the Nox sisters is exactly docile and conformist to begin with. I haven't written Briony into the notebook yet.) The mother is vague, the father isn't showing up at all, despite my trying so very hard to have a complete happy family in one story at least, the primary vampire is nameless, and I am trying to do what Orson Scott Card said in Characters & Viewpoint and think about who else is in the story? -- who works at the library with Evy, who is part of the vampire-hunting organisation, who are the Noxes neighbours, their friends, who owns the shops where they buy food and household supplies, who are the vampires? (But then the vampires are the absolute most difficult bit of the entire novel. Oh dear.) But not a lot is coming clear. HALP.

Digressions aside. The bedroom desperately needs sorting, the living room is not currently very liveable, but the kitchen is coming along nicely. The stove, we have discovered, was manufactured in the sixties -- it's full of vintage quirk and whimsy. The shelves are metal and painted white. The kitchen itself is largely yellow. Most things have been put in their cupboards and drawers and the refridgerator, and Mum & I are planning a fifties and sixties diner theme of decor, already established by the stove & cupboards. There will probably be ruffled curtains, and already she has bought a pair of vintage metal signs. (Excuse me, a bloke came into the library just now and said something and his vocal inflections sounded disturbingly like Connor. I'm not sure which of the crowd he was, which is good, for both of our sakes.) 

Last night I registered to vote. It was very exciting. Well, no, it wasn't, really; I walked into the office and collected an application and filled it out and had to remember the new address (I am currently terrified that I mixed a number), and then I walked down to the post office -- this was after dark!! -- and slipped it through the mail slot. But yes, I will be voting, hurrah. And that is likely the last discussion of American politics that you will see on this journal for some time, wot wot.

I had lunch in the back yard. There's a bench on the border of it, but that clearly belongs to the preschool next door, which was in session, and I didn't want to get myself into unnecessary trouble, so I sat down on the edge of the hill instead. The house is on a hill, which is sort of more like a very soft short cliff -- the road is straight down from the edge of the yard. (Well, no, the two yards of grass are straight down, and then there is the road.) It's been raining -- very cosily, making lots of pattering on my window! -- so everything was a bit damp, but there's long bit of wood at the edge of the yard, and then bracken all the way down from there, so I sat on the wood and dangled my legs over the road and watched people go by (or anyway when I wasn't reading Ender's Game). I foresee much interesting people-watching in my future.

And now I am desperately craving sweets, so off I go home...on the route that passes by places which sell such things. La la la la la...

(Shall be catching up at last over the next several weeks, and yes, of course there will be many many many pictures!!)