Excerpt from my NaNo Work from today

The dark figure walked directly up to Ryan, and as he approached, Ryan looked up. He pulled one of the earbuds from its place nestled inside his ear canal and looked at the guy with that jock-blank expression that could be interpreted as a challenge, a question, or a statement depending on the situation.

“Ryan.”

“Um, do I know you, Bro?” The bass of his voice sounded forced to me.

The question took the man aback. At least, that’s how I interpreted the arched eyebrow which was about the extent of his reaction, but something told me that it was quite expressive for him. He was incredibly pale, and his black hair fell limply around his head, a wet curtain that was parted in the front for ease of sight. He was dressed from head to toe in black, but the look of the clothing was high quality. The breeze shifted slightly and I could smell that dusty, dead scent that I had smelled in my apartment earlier today. That, and a more intense, sharp scent that I couldn’t place that was just beneath that.

“Yes. You do.” the words had the sound of command in them, and I could see his eyes shift to a greyish slate color as the pupils and irises seemed to just recede “You know me, and you had work to do for me.” Ryan’s schooled expression of neutrality shifted into actual blank. His muscles relaxed, and his eyes lost their focus. “Did you find the werewolf?”

“I don’t understand…” Ryan stared unblinkingly into the man’s eyes.

The man narrowed his eyes slightly and leaned forward, as if adding his body’s weight to the push of whatever he was doing. “Who did this to you?”

“I… Was…”

I could actually see a very slight, pale glow coming from the vampire’s eyes now. “Tell. Me.”

A small trickle of blood started to flow from Ryan’s budless ear, and he looked in pain, but still kept his eyes locked on the vampire’s.

Shit.

I stood up very slowly, and moved with a predator’s grace; each step I took was slow and deliberate as to not make noise outside of the norm in the area. I kept a very low profile, and hoped that this mojo was taking the Vampire’s full attention as I stalked out of his peripheral vision along the wall. Once I could see nothing but the back of his head, I angled carefully away from the wall and started moving toward him. My head was completely still as the rest of me shifted and walked forward. Ryan suddenly screamed, and that sound set me into motion. I darted forward and angled to tear at the Vampire’s hamstrings with my teeth.

I was fast. He was faster.

I felt the muscles tearing beneath my fangs and I threw myself forward and to the side to get out of reach of any retaliatory strike. What I didn’t take into account was that this thing was supernatural as well. The one that had hit my throat happened to do so when I was still shifting, and whatever magic was in me that rearranged all my bits just dealt with that. I wasn’t shifting at the moment, and this guy was much faster. So, even though I did score a hit, I got raked along the right side of my body with some vicious claws that felt like they tore much deeper than they should have. Like, I was pretty sure ribs were supposed to be there for just such a situation.

I hit the ground with the left side of my body rather than my feet and slid around on the wet grass so that my head was pointed at the Vampire and Ryan. Instead of jumping up to a standing position and darting back in, which I am pretty sure was what I commanded myself to do, I twitched and may have whimpered. Ryan fell to his knees holding his head in his hands, and the Vampire grinned maliciously at me, baring incredibly long fangs from the top row of his teeth. “Well well. How convenient.”

The vampire took a step forward and almost fell flat on his ass. He glared at his own leg, and I saw him grow slightly paler, which I didn’t think would be possible, and I could see the muscles that I had torn apart mend themselves through the tear in his expensive pants. He made a displeased noise as he then walked forward. “I liked these pants. I think you will have to suffer some for tearing them.”

Ryan looked around with a completely confused expression as he tried to make sense of the scene before him, but I turned my full attention on the vampire and pictured the much more powerful and muscular form that I had taken earlier. The shift would heal up the wound in my side, but I was not sure if I would have time.

“Hey!” I heard Erik’s voice coming from behind me somewhere, followed by a flash of lightning, a crack of thunder, and the vampire was thrown backward against the wall of one of the old brick buildings with a satisfyingly wet-sounding thud. I desperately wanted him to quote Sigourney Weaver right then, but I doubt either he or the vampire knew the reference. Pop culture references were the first thing to go with supernatural age. He stepped into my view and walked forward until he had placed himself between the vampire and both Ryan and myself.

“Dramatic, but it will do.” a voice I didn’t recognize came from behind me. It sounded old--it had that scratchy papery quality that truly old women uniformly attained, and held a note of authority that came with experience of having those around you do exactly what you say. “See to the… Sam.” Laura entered my vision, and I watched the vampire with a smoldering hole in his chest dart away so fast that it made the first one I had encountered earlier that day look like the slow, stupid turtle in the race with a hyperthyroidic hare. On crack. And red bull.

Then Laura’s eyes went white.

Everything else went black.

Meh

Been a bit homesick of late. I'll post again soon with something more interesting, but I'm still alive :-)

Observations on DE

Lieutenant's Log (I am so not a Captain out here...), stardate: 2017.270 (year, and day of that year out of 365 by the way--yes I'm a great big nerd :-P)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/27/Flag_of_the_United_Federation_of_Planets.svg/1280px-Flag_of_the_United_Federation_of_Planets.svg.png

Delaware is a strange planet. I believe that the inhabitants may be resorting to cloning for their population. Evidence of this is prevalent in the classes I am teaching--one in particular. I have a good six or seven girls that I cannot tell apart or get my mind to stick name-to-face. They all have the same basic hair color (dirty blonde), the same basic facial structure (high cheekbones, dimples, light colored eyes), the same basic skin tone (what I am coming to label as "beach-tanned"), and the same basic fashion.

I am also noticing that they are supplementing the normal growth cycle of their male population to encourage height. I am regularly passed on the street or in the halls by people remarkably taller than I am. This is a strange feeling--having to look up at someone. It is... disconcerting.

Additionally, there is a strange social habit here of conducting pleasantries in the MOST inconvenient place to the flow of pedestrians (and vehicles) whenever humanly possible.

• Narrow staircase with people ascending and descending? Stand right at the top and block both. 
• How about a hallway that narrows down due to strange architectural choices? Stand in a small group right at the point it narrows down. 
• Tons of people walking quickly to try and get to a walkway at a traffic light? Suddenly stop and catch up with a friend from high school in the middle of the sidewalk. 
• Waiting at a traffic light at the head of the traffic? Great time to compose that lengthy email on your phone.

These are daily, not just every so often events. Perhaps there is some telepathic aspect to the population that allows them to know when such aspects transpire and adjust to them without inconvenience. More research is required.

Duckburg!

Greetings all,

So Disney is remaking DuckTales! (woohoo)

I watched the first few episodes today. It was pretty good. I like the updates that they've done (and come on, David Tennent as Scrooge McDuck!) Totally worth the watch.

https://img00.deviantart.net/8d44/i/2017/223/3/9/ducktales_2017_by_annemate-dbjq71c.png

This week has been pretty busy with work. Grading proposals for students (and then meeting with the ones that were way out in left field) took a good chunk of time. It didn't help that the program that we use crashed Wednesday evening. I got it all sorted and worked out, even if a few of those students just emailed me today about some of their problems instead of coming to their appointments.

Silly freshmen.

I've been doing some character development with my main character in the new story. So far so good, and he's definitely getting more in-depth and unique.

No new revelations about Delaware and the surrounding areas.

Aaron and I finally finished watching Luke Cage, and we have moved on to Iron Fist so that we can check out Defenders, even though it is apparently not getting much in the way of ratings.

That's about it for now. I'll post something more exciting this week.

Glorious Mexican Food!

So, for one I am changing my "daily" tag to "general" since I am having trouble getting on here daily.

Okay, so the movie I went and saw, "Mother!"
Well...
I went into it woth absolutely no prior knowledge other than the trailer I linked in my last blog. Literally. A colleague texted and said Hey you want to go see this movie and I thought "What the hell is that?"
Trailer was watched.
Okay, looks creepy.

So 5 minutes into this movie, I'm hooked, because I am looking at it from the standpoint of What the hell is going on here?! because characters were not interacting correctly, and the setting was strange, and I had all kinds of theories running through my head. All of which were way wrong. I felt like there was one piece of super important information I was missing most of the way through the movie.

SPOILER ALERT (I don't know how to do the nifty covered text for spoilers, so I'll just do a text color and background match, so you can highlight it to see it if you want to read this part):

The missing piece was that the whole movie is a rather dark interpretation of judeo-christian mythology. Pretty much everything and everyone has some kind of parallel in either the christian bible, or to history and current issues with the condition of the planet and how we treat it. The metaphors were abundant and had me holding the sides of my head mouthing what the fuck is going on. I mean, from the moment that Jennifer Lawrence's character (Mother) wakes up after being recreated from the ashes (which is how the damned film starts) it is genesis and moves on until there is a whole baby eating cannibalism scene (Jesus) with masses of people and really bloody wars that are destroying the house (Earth). I could probably spend a large chunk of several pages analyzing, but you get the idea.

Aaron, my colleage, her two roommates and I spent a good hour or three interpreting and discussing afterward. The wine helped with this.

Ari, if you are reading, it's way super squiggy in several parts, just FYI.


And as for the title of the entry today, behold!

They didn't have any chile, of course. Instead, they had a strange (but spicy and yummy) green or red "sauce". So, we had to drive to Kennet Square, located in Pennsylvania, for decent Mexican. Now revel in that sentence for a moment.

Go ahead, I'll give you a minute to reread it.

So, Kennet Square apparently is home to a large Mexican migrant worker community, and thus, there are many mexican restaurants in the area. It's not NEW Mexican, but god, it was closer than I thought we'd ever find out here. The tacos were awesome, the tamales were good (if a little sweet), and you'll have to ask Aaron about the burrito smothered in the "green sauce" because I didn't get any of that.

Bonus, I made these for dessert:

So, I finally made it down to the Days of Knights (local gaming shop) "Game Room" for their casual Thursday Magic: the Gathering. Aaron was able to join me as well. We didn't stay too long, but we did play a round of commander with a young man we met there. He reminded me of Siin, but quieter. He also had a friend that showed up with a slight speech impediment on top of a New York accent (and a possibly unhealthy obsession with Rick and Morty).

https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/rick-morty-split-1-2.gif?w=650

All in all, though, it was decent. It's a small play area, and had a good chunk of people (and it didn't smell bad; AND the bathroom, though a little questionable, had a large pale that was full of paper towels from people washing their hands--good sign!)

My working out is proceeding well. I am taking a break today and may go in tomorrow, but this week I have run a good 3 miles, worked out core and arms, and biked about 6 1/2 miles. Not too shabby.

We are going out with one of my colleagues tonight to catch the flick Mother! which I had not even heard of before; however, it looks creepy and interesting. Also, there will be wine and cheese afterward.

I have also started the arduous process of grad school applications again. I think the processes are purposefully made incredibly obtuse, complicated, and inane just to test applicants' wherewithal to complete the damned forms.

Hitting a Groove

I am hitting a nice groove at this point.

http://i.imgur.com/SoGDB5u.gif

My students are becoming more engaged as they figure out my particular cluster of crazy that I am expressing in class, and how I am doing it. Interestingly enough, the second class I have is more somnambulant appearing than the first one that meets at 8AM. I get to have several observations this semester, which is to be expected; after teaching for many years at UNM, this doesn't faze me in the least. Bring it on!

I worked for a little while on my werewolf idea. I like it. I only got 5 pages or so, then had Aaron read it for an honest reaction and if he thought it was interesting enough to want to see more. He liked it and gave me a bit of suggestions on the internal monologue that was happening that I like. After I finish up with this, I want to work on that a bit more.

P.S. I'm on Book 5 now of the Iron Druid Chronicles. I'm trying to take this one slower so I have reading to do on the treadmill; it makes a mile pass by insanely fast when I'm nice and distracted. Still riding the bike back home on work days, and I went running for about 1.5 miles yesterday at the gym (plus actual gymmy working out whatwith the weights and all). Yay me! I deserve pie!

Speaking of pie... Aaron made an apple pie this weekend. Luckily it was for a departmental picnic that we went to at White Clay Creek State Park (so I only got like, half a slice). It was a nice little gathering, and I met a few people that were quite nice. Still not what I would call friends, but definitely colleagues that are good to know with a possible PhD program here in the future.