Nothing happening here, move along

Not much going on, but I know this is the way I keep in touch with people these days, it seems. I am about a minute from the end of the Fast and the Furious vid. I like it a lot so far, though it's been interesting working on it, readjusting my expectations of what I was going to do with it. The other vids I did in Final Cut were fairly heavy effects-wise, except the Wonderfalls vid (which, once VVC is over, I will post, but since it's a premiere, I can't, so don't ask!), and so I thought going in I would do that. But I'm going instead for fast cutting to create effects in certain places that the music cues to, in one case appropriating an effect that klia and thevetia did for their vid at last year's premieres show, Untitled 6, for Touching Evil. They did a single frame against single frame crosscut to create a really cool strobing effect, and in one part of the music this works perfectly, and allows me to use one of the unsweetened deleted scenes from the movie that I've always wanted to use (the gay porn video cover tableau). So I'm pleased as punch, though I have a feeling there will be gripes about the cuts.

The washer saga continues. The certified repairman came on Thursday and poked around in the machine, and said that they installed it wrong, and didn't remove the shipping rods. Apparently there are both bolts and rods of the shipping variety, and that sent the machine into such a tailspin that it fried the circuit board of the computer that runs it (and why I smelled something burning). He told me I was too nice and I should have been on the phone reading them the riot act. I was reluctant, though, to ask for a replacement just because it took me three freaking months to get this damn thing, but I told the customer service guy at the store I was pretty pissed, just... you know, nicely. They will replace it, on Tuesday, hopefully -- they said the shipment that took forever for me to get mine had more washer/dryer combos for the warehouse, so they were in stock. And he promised me they will read the freaking manual. I'm glad they will make good on this thing, but it's been such a nightmare, and I have to move all the furniture again so they can remove the old one and bring the new one in, which is a pain.

Then I had a dermatologist appointment on Friday and found out that I have yet another skin cancer. They think it's just another basal cell, which is the least problematic, but one thing she told me was that apparently there is a strong link for women between being prone to basal cell carcinomas and... ovarian and breast cancer. Since my sister died from what was originally ovarian cancer, and I still don't know yet if I have the gene marker for this cancer even though we're twins, this was not comforting news. But she did say that they have a much nicer way to remove them now, since the one I had removed a couple years ago -- which left me with an annoying and frequently painful scar at the corner of my left eye. Since this is on my top chest, right where a v-neck will show it, I'm glad it will have less scarring. Though I've already torn the bandage from the biopsy... wound, I guess you could call it, off in my sleep . So I may have scars no matter what.

I feel like I'm not doing well by my writing group lately, because I can't seem to move out of writing about my sister or my life right now, and can't really be creative. The things I'm writing just have nothing creative about them, they're either rants or stream of consciousness stupidity like I write here... it's like the ability of my mind to develop character and concepts different from my own life are nonexistent. And I hate it when people say "it takes time" because not only do I already know that, but it's totally irrelevant -- there is no way I can explain to a non-twin what it's like to be one, and to lose one, and it's not really a situation that's going to go away no matter how much time passes. So I don't know if the writing is ever going to come back, in a way. I worry that all this has driven away my creativity and nothing will bring it back. Anyway, I'm going to force myself to write tomorrow and join some local fan friends waaaayyy up north to hunker down and work on fanfic, at least. It may be forced, but it's all I got.