Canderous and Cade's Crazy Cantina: a shiny new fanfiction social thread!

Heeeey, been a bit since I've popped in here. I went to Crystal Coast Con, in North Carolina, as I think I mentioned I was attempting to do. Anyway, I had a blast, survived despite my mother's worst fears (And even if my car *had* broken down, it's a county full of Marines. 75% of the population or something is Marines). Aaaaand . . . I met a guy.

I just, er, neglected to give him my phone number 'cause I was chicken and thrown by the flirting and the looks he kept sending my way. Guys don't do that with me. Heh. So now I have to figure out how to give it to him without sounding like an idiot. I do know how to contact him, and I have, I just haven't brought up the whole "Hey, you spent the whole time staring at me, and I think you're hot" thing.

 

"By the way, if you ever feel like chatting on the phone, here's my number."

It's a casual response, it should work fine.

 

Yeah, he lives in Ireland. A bit long-distance.

. . . I like to play around with astrology websites and this silly tarot app on my phone. Three websites and an app are all telling me to tell him RIGHT NOW that I'm interested. It's bad enough I get it from my mother, now I'm getting it from the internet itself???

 

Perhaps they are trying to tell you something.

 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I went ahead and did it. Now I need to not, y'know, freak out.

Oh, Force, why are relationships so stressful?

 

If we knew the answer, we'd all be in happy, peaceful relationships.

Hell, witnessing the stress of relatives' relationships is stressful. I could go on about my brother's wife, but I won't. I'll just sum it up. His wife lost her job and hasn't been looking for another, but she's a shopaholic and a major packrat. Now she has it in her head to start a business. She needs a website, which my brother will build, but she hasn't made the mockup. She wants to do photography, so my brother spent $700 on a camera package for her. Her Photoshop skills are slim to nil, so any editing would be done by my brother, with leftovers most likely sent my way. She can't seem to figure out how to market herself, she has no motivation whatsoever, and she spends her days watching soap operas on the Internet or looking at lolcats.

I told my brother to tell her that if she doesn't pay for the camera in a year, he's going to take it and him and I are going to use it for stop-motion and to take macro images of bugs.

 

Oh god. I fail at relationships - I've never even been on a date. I've been friends with this guy since grade nine and we are now in second year at the same university and are in many of the same classes and we like many of the same things (Star Wars, history, X-men, pretty much anything nerdy). To quote my best friend: 'him and I are perfect for each other. We should have tall, lanky, brown haired, blue eyed, glasses wearing, genius babies who will grow up to be Indiana Joneses’. I have wanted to ask him out for a while now, but there's that hole awkward thing when he says no and we can never look each other in the eye again. Why are relationships so stressful?

 

Heh, sounds like a plan. My SIL is the one who works, as my brother's disabled. But . . . she and I have clashing personalities, let's put it that way.

 

Approach it slowly for this one. Don't necessarily ask him out, but say something like "Hey, want to go to that Thai place down the street?" or to a movie or something. Just start with casual get-togethers and allow things to progress from there.

I don't claim to be an expert on this. My relationships blow. Most of them were with people whom I've met online. When it comes to meeting people face-to-face, it's a lot tougher. My history of relationships doesn't exactly show much promise... First one ended in the guy's death (drunk driving accident the night before prom), the next ended with the guy two-timing, the third ended with the guy's death (lost his life to a genetic disease), the fourth ended with the bad idea of becoming business partners and the guy not paying me for the work I did for him. The fifth is still going on, but it's difficult, as he's in Michigan and I'm in Pennsylvania.

 

Sorry to hear about some of your previous relationships. I hope this one works out for you. Long distance relatinships can be hard, but they can work out. My aunt is going on 7 years married to a guy that use to live in Africa.

As for my love life, I'm alright with being single for now. Sometime, ten years from now, one of my nerdy guy friends is going to find himself lonely, he'll look at me and go 'single, rich, smart, funny? Why didn't I see you existed sooner?". From what I've seen, when your a full time student, dating is a balancing act at best. My best friend and her guy are going through a rough time (which I am not exactly sad to see since in June they were being idiots and planning to get married after only a year of dating), since she barely has time to sleep in-between school work and her job.

 

Planning to get married after a year of dating isn't weird around here. My mom and stepdad dated for four months before they got engaged, and they've been married 21 years this December.

 

My brother and his wife were dating for nine years, lived together for one year, and got married. Their relationship has its issues.

 

I know you really can't tell how successful a marriage is going to be by the amount of time the couple dated (heck, one of my aunts lived with a guy for 6 years. When they finally got married, it lasted 6 months). But when your 19, and that's the only relationship you've been in, it is kinda scary for onlookers. Especially for my generation. For older generations that was the norm, but for the average 19 year olds, marriage is the furthest things from our minds.

 

I think I was engaged within a year of dating. Then we had a long distance relationship for two years while I finished college. I have been happily married for 17 years...unfortunately next year is our 25th Anniversary. Meh, they can't all be great years.

 

My mom has yet to get married. Have no idea what happened to my actual father (haven't seen HIM since I was 6 or 7) and my mom has been dating my 'step-dad' for over a decade now. I somehow doubt they will ever get married.

 

Do what I did. A mutual friend said he thought we were dating. Later on I said to my friend, "so hey, why aren't we dating?" The rest is history.

 

JediMara77 Lol. So that's how it happened. Thanks for the advice. I may take it, but not in the forseeable future. I like being single and making nerdy sexual jokes with ALL my guy friends, for now at least.

Edit: So he just updated his Facebook status professing his love for someone. It's pretty vague, but it sounds like she's an English major, and considering I refuse to do any Engish courses, it's probably not me
Ah well. Here's to being single, having an excuse not to shave my legs and watching Star Wars at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon in my pajamas.

 

Darth Real Life... *sigh*

Long rambly post commencing-

So my dad made a very last minute plan to come and visit us. While this was awesome since my parents are quite far away, it also fell in the middle of a week surrounded by all-day weekend grad classes. At first, this seemed no problem... I had a little bit of work to do, but all day Monday this past week to get it done. Bam.
Except then I spent all day Monday miserable, nauseous, and puking. So I got nothing done and then had end-of-week scramble. Did have a very nice (if short) visit with dad though, who was on a mini-vacation basically for the purpose of preserving his sanity before he goes back to work and dives into preparing for election things (he's in print journalism- yes, that still exists! ).

As for the guy topic- I was totally not the person my friends would have expected to see married at 21 right out of college. I certainly didn't see it either. I had one (not very serious) boyfriend before heading to college and dating just wasn't my thing and didn't much interest me.
Well... met my husband the day after I moved in for freshman year. Took about a month to talk to each other again, but that was pretty much that. He was in his last year though so we did the distance thing, got engaged when I was 20, then did the really long distance thing when he spent most of my last year in Iraq... then got married the month after he came home.

If you asked me 5 years ago, I would have probably expected to go straight from undergrad to grad school of some sort. Certainly wouldn't have expected marriage or babies yet. But never say never- and in the meantime, Briannakin, man do I miss being able to make nerdy sexual jokes with all the guys, so enjoy it while it lasts!

And on a completely different note, at the end of our class today (last for the course), one of my classmates who I never really had the opportunity to talk with was saying goodbye, and in the course of conversation, said that she could see me as a professor someday. This made me feel a bit warm and fuzzy inside- not because I necessarily want to be a professor, but because I'm the sort who will never know what she wants to be "when I grow up" but would love all the time and money in the world so I can be a professional student. I love the academic world. Don't make me be a real adult who can function in normal society.

 

I've toyed with the idea of being a professional student. Unfortunately, it's too expensive, so I had to go out into the real world.

Pardon, I need to do battle with Darth Real Life. He's demanding yet another duel before he uses Force Frankenstorm on me and several others.

 

My husband accused me of being a professional student. I went to college after school and during the summers when I was in High School. Then when I was enlisted in the Army I got in two years of college done after duty hours. Then I went to a military preparatory school for a year and then to a military academy for four years. Then I decided on an entire different degree and went back to school for another two years to get a second BS degree then another two years to get a Masters.

Recently I went back to college to learn Photoshop. Ack! What a disaster. The instructor was good, but the students drove me crazy. And I am ashamed to admit the students that drove me nuts were my age...which is old. They are asking questions like..."How do I save this?", "How do I open a file?". I am surprised they didn't pick up the mouse and talk into it like Scotty did in that Star Trek movie when they went back in time.

It became unbearably slow moving. I later found out about an online course site called Lynda.com. I would highly recommend that site if you want to learn computer programs. It is $25 a month for unlimited lessons.

 

The really cool thing about our grad program (my husband is working on the same Masters) is that it's basically designed to be military-friendly. It's through University of Oklahoma but they offer classes all over the world and particularly on/near military bases, not to mention online courses, and then self-directed courses that mostly seem to be marketed towards students who are deployed.
So even though we're 90 minutes from the main campus, we're able to take our classes right on post. We should be able to finish it before we end up leaving Oklahoma but even if we did not, there are lots of other options out there to make up any course(s) we might be lacking- which is especially great for me since I'm not sure what sort of academic load I'll be looking at after next spring.

Trak, stay safe and warm/dry! This storm looks crazy! Are you looking at much precipitation, or more expecting to get hammered with high winds (or both)?

 

According to the forecast, I'm looking at both. I'm about two hours inland, and it's to make landfall on the Delmarva peninsula and south Jersey shore. The wind and rain will start Sunday evening and intensify for Monday and Tuesday, until it starts to die down for Wednesday. What the meteorologists suspect will happen when Sandy hits that cold front coming down from the Arctic is that she'll stall over the area. Power outages and flooding are possible and tomorrow, I'll be taking down my Halloween decorations.

I don't want to take down my Halloween decorations. I put in a lot of work for them.

 

Stay safe, TrakNar! And any other fanficcers we have on the east coast. I'm hoping the best for all of you.

I just got back from a wedding for one of my coworkers, which was lovely, and so much fun. Totally worth the drive into the middle of nowhere to be there. We could actually see the stars during the reception! I don't see those often, living in the city, so it was wonderful to see them again.

 

Argh, I am done watching and reading the local news! Now, they're discussing evacuations and stocking up on three days worth of non-perishable food items and bottled water!

 

This is why I'm happy I live in Missouri...

Good luck to everyone on the East Coast.