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luzula1) My cold can go away any month now. Arrgh. It's almost gone now, but I can still feel it lurking in my throat, just waiting for me to get chilled or something so that it can pounce again.
2) I discovered a way of improving the sound quality of my mp3-files considerably (exporting in joint stereo rather than stereo), but I've thrown away most of the raw material of my earlier podfics. I did still have American Way, and the file on the archive has been updated, but the ones earlier than that are un-fixable. Grrrrr.
3) I want to get better at reading. Listening to what I recorded before I got phonasthenia, I think I sounded better in some ways, even if I know that I was using my voice in a bad way. I think it's that now, I have to devote part of my mind to breathing in the right way, which takes attention away from the actual reading. And I still don't have as much control over pitch and phrasing in general--it's like I had to learn a whole different way of speaking, and it's hard. I don't need reassurance or anything. I mean, this is not the "I suck" feeling, it's just...frustration at not being able to do something as well as I want to. I'm thinking of taking singing lessons again, maybe that'll help.
On to more cheerful things:
a) My Big Bang fic is now over 13 000 words! \o/
b) I love Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander books so much. &hearts &hearts &hearts I just finished The Reverse of the Medal, and I'm going right on into the next book. It's funny, I don't feel fannish about the books at all, in the sense of wanting to read or write fic. I just love them. I love Jack and Stephen, and I so admire O'Brian's ability to characterize a place or a person just with a sentence or two. It might be just an unimportant side character, but he can paint a really vivid image with just a few words.
Aaaaand of course I couldn't be allowed to finish this post in an upbeat way. AAARGH.
Just after I finished writing, one of our housemates came in and basically said that he thought that everyone else felt that my boyfriend and I should move out. He felt that our differences were too great to be worked out. And yeah, I knew we were fairly different people living here, but I've never felt that to be a problem. Examples of the concrete stuff he mentioned was: 1) that I (Luz) have a hard time with perfumed cleaning products and asked if we could use un-perfumed ones for the cleaning of common areas 2) sometimes we cook lots of soup at the same time and take up room in the kitchen 3) sometimes I ask people to close the door to the living room when they have people over and make noise late at night. How are these things insurmountable difficulties? I don't get it. Some of the other people are younger than us and have never shared a house/apartment before, so maybe they don't get that you have to compromise when you're six people in one house. If people tell me about stuff they're irritated about, I'm quite happy to talk about it and reach a compromise. But maybe the differences are more of a personal nature--I never notice stuff like this until it's forced on me, so yeah.
Anyway, he sure reached his objective--after this, I have no wish to stay here. We're looking around for something else, and have one possible place that we're looking into already. Let me just relieve my frustration: AAAARRRGH. Uh, thanks for listening.
2) I discovered a way of improving the sound quality of my mp3-files considerably (exporting in joint stereo rather than stereo), but I've thrown away most of the raw material of my earlier podfics. I did still have American Way, and the file on the archive has been updated, but the ones earlier than that are un-fixable. Grrrrr.
3) I want to get better at reading. Listening to what I recorded before I got phonasthenia, I think I sounded better in some ways, even if I know that I was using my voice in a bad way. I think it's that now, I have to devote part of my mind to breathing in the right way, which takes attention away from the actual reading. And I still don't have as much control over pitch and phrasing in general--it's like I had to learn a whole different way of speaking, and it's hard. I don't need reassurance or anything. I mean, this is not the "I suck" feeling, it's just...frustration at not being able to do something as well as I want to. I'm thinking of taking singing lessons again, maybe that'll help.
On to more cheerful things:
a) My Big Bang fic is now over 13 000 words! \o/
b) I love Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander books so much. &hearts &hearts &hearts I just finished The Reverse of the Medal, and I'm going right on into the next book. It's funny, I don't feel fannish about the books at all, in the sense of wanting to read or write fic. I just love them. I love Jack and Stephen, and I so admire O'Brian's ability to characterize a place or a person just with a sentence or two. It might be just an unimportant side character, but he can paint a really vivid image with just a few words.
Aaaaand of course I couldn't be allowed to finish this post in an upbeat way. AAARGH.
Just after I finished writing, one of our housemates came in and basically said that he thought that everyone else felt that my boyfriend and I should move out. He felt that our differences were too great to be worked out. And yeah, I knew we were fairly different people living here, but I've never felt that to be a problem. Examples of the concrete stuff he mentioned was: 1) that I (Luz) have a hard time with perfumed cleaning products and asked if we could use un-perfumed ones for the cleaning of common areas 2) sometimes we cook lots of soup at the same time and take up room in the kitchen 3) sometimes I ask people to close the door to the living room when they have people over and make noise late at night. How are these things insurmountable difficulties? I don't get it. Some of the other people are younger than us and have never shared a house/apartment before, so maybe they don't get that you have to compromise when you're six people in one house. If people tell me about stuff they're irritated about, I'm quite happy to talk about it and reach a compromise. But maybe the differences are more of a personal nature--I never notice stuff like this until it's forced on me, so yeah.
Anyway, he sure reached his objective--after this, I have no wish to stay here. We're looking around for something else, and have one possible place that we're looking into already. Let me just relieve my frustration: AAAARRRGH. Uh, thanks for listening.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-09 10:31 am (UTC)Well, not if you haven't read the others in the series, because they really are like one super-long novel published in twenty parts. You should start with Master and Commander. I've heard other people say they find that first one a bit slow--I didn't think so, but to be on the safe side you might want to have something else on hand, too. Hmm, totally engrossing and escapist...if you like fantasy, you could try the first Temeraire book, by Naomi Novik? It's basically pretty similar to O'Brian (set during the Napoleonic wars), except with dragons, and perhaps more immediately engrossing and escapist. *g*
Yeah, that site with the notes is indeed funny. It could be so much worse!