Jen FitzGerald's Blog, page 93

My adventures in pod ficcing...

So I finally got around to creating a pod fic. I signed up for a fan works gift exchange, and that's what I offered, so that I'd be forced to finally do it.

Forcing myself to just do it was absolutely not a great idea because I learned a couple of very important things. The most important being, it's not as easy as it sounds.

I have a program that's been recommended by many people in my fandom circles who pod fic or pod cast. The second most important thing I learned was that I don't know nearly enough about the software as I should. Primarily features and function. Which I didn't realize I needed to know until I needed to know them. :(

So...I spent several hours one day, holed up in an interior closet lined with blankets, reading a piece of fan fiction into my computer. Don't laugh about my studio because, come to find out, many audio book narrators work from home in exactly that kind of space. I made flubs and noises as I went and re-read the bits I messed up on, until finally I'd read through the whole story.

When I finally started editing it, I realized that there were a still a couple of rough patches I hadn't caught and that I couldn't fix with a basic cut. I was going to have to re-record those bits and splice them in.

The actual splicing in and of itself wasn't hard, but what I realized right off is that you have to recreate your recording environment very closely--maybe time of day, depending on your physical location, but for me it was actually how far away was my chair from the TV tray holding my laptop and microphone, how far away was my mouth from the microphone, how warmed up was my voice?

I ended up having to choose a different, much shorter piece of fic and read it in one long session. Then edit it in several marathon session because I'd already asked for an extension and was down to the wire of turning it in.

It turned out all right, with no glaring issues, but it wasn't as polished a piece of work as I would have liked.

If I decide to pursue this activity, I'll have to devote some time to really playing with the software, with learning the features, with learning how to standardize recording sessions, etc., etc., etc... I'm not sure I have the time to devote to the learning curve right now. But who know?

Are you a fan of audio books?

Memorial Day

Happy Friday

Have a great weekend!

It was bound to happen sooner or later...

The dreaded menopause has finally decided to sneak up on me.

This weekend I actually turned on the AC because it was too humid in the house. ME!

In years past, everyone else has complained. "It's hot." "It's stuffy." "It's humid." Only DH's pleas were catered to. He pays the bills after all. Everyone was told to "suck it up, buttercup."

But oh man... This weekend we're just hanging out and surprisingly the stuffiness in the house wasn't bothering DH, but I was just feeling ugh and this was even after I removed clothing. So I finally kicked the air on.

It's not all the time at this point, and it's really just been something I've noticed a few times over the last couple of months. Mostly I'm my usual self and feeling too cold more often than too hot.

The joys of growing *ahem* older...

I finally get to see...

Frankenstein on the stage. Well, sort of...

All y'all know how much of a fan of Benedict Cumberbatch I am right? Yeah. So in 2011 he did a three month run of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Ben and Johnny Lee Miller switched roles between the doctor and the creature daily!

BC's monster on the left, JLM's monster on the right.
Anyway, I'd been wanting to see the performance, but the National Theater in England said they had no intention of issuing the performance to DVD. I was definitely disappointed by that news. BUT THEN, I got an email saying that there was going to be an encore theater showing (the fourth one actually) of the play and I didn't hesitate to buy a ticket right then and there.

So in October, I will see my celebrity crush pulling off yet another--what I'm sure will be--brilliant performance.

Time Heals All Wounds

There was a time, not so long ago, that I would have given quite a lot to go back in time. To a time when my kids, Sonshine especially, were still home.


But I've discovered that, as a friend said to me, just because we become adults doesn't mean we stop growing up. Now, I'm not sure what I'm doing could be considered "growing up." I might call it evolving.

Now that I'm not longer having to actively be a mom--not that I was always doing a good job--and which I had been doing since I was nineteen, I can now discover who I am aside from wife and mother. I've been a slow work in progress, but now that other important tasks have been completed, the progress can proceed at a little bit faster pace.

Y'all already know I'm a fan girl, that's been a thing for a while, but now I can explore that a little more like traveling for a fan-run fandom con.

I'm learning that I like to watch sports--some sports anyway. English football of all things. The funny thing is, DH played soccer as a child and until recently, I had no use whatsoever for soccer. I grew up watching baseball and figured that'd be my sport of choice. But hockey is Sonshine's sport of choice and Stanley Cup playoffs, so I've been watching a bit of that, and then for research for a book, I watched a football match and...I liked it. So I watched another and another and well...now I'm a fan. And I have this super duper app that lets me watch them on my terms.

So as the blog is called...there certainly is a time for everything!

Happy Friday!

"Take Me to Church"

In my wanderings around the internet, I came across this song--well, I came across a video first, but the song spoke to me too. I thought I'd share...

The song is "Take Me to Church" by Hozier. It's a political statement and it's a powerful song.

The first video is the official music video and the second is what came to my attention first.




I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

The Annual JAG Meet was this past weekend...

I spent the better part of two days with two handfuls of wonderful women. We come from all walks of life, we're all ages, some have kids, some don't. This year we missed several usual faces, but were blessed with some ladies we haven't seen in a few years.

This annual gathering is one of the highlights of my year. These ladies never cease to amaze with their creativity and humor. I've thought about not going several times, but this is a place where I can let my fan girl fly and they all understand. :)

Here's to another wonderful JAG meet!

Movie Monday: The Danish Girl

Yesterday I watched The Danish Girl, a film about the first attempt of a sex change operation back in the late 1920s. Artist Einar Wegener always knew he was different--knew he was a woman on the inside from the time he was small apparently. It wasn't until his artist wife asked for him to fill in for a female subject that things came to a head. And although there were some rough patches as Gerda lost her husband emotionally and in a gender sense as Einar spent more and more time as his alter ego Lili Elbe, Gerda loved him enough to support him as he made the decision to pursue the operation.


I'm giving the movie a seven as I really struggled with Einar/Lili's face. It seemed to be the camera focus for a lot of scenes and, while I get that any male actor was going to have a hard time looking like a woman, Eddie's feminine face struck me as just off somehow. That's not to malign his portrayal at all. And for all we know, it was done on purpose. It just didn't work that well for me. Both lead actors did a great job with the emotional aspects and I really felt Gerda's pain as she loved enough to let her husband do what he had to do and be who he had to be.

Have you seen The Danish Girl? What did you think?

My neighborhood market is closing!

A few years after we moved into our house, a Walmart Neighborhood Market replaced the Winn Dixie just up the road. (I'm talking a two minute drive.) I was super excited because I no longer had to drive up to the Super Walmart (ten minutes away).

We've had a mostly happy partnership since then and I could probably tell anyone where anything is in the store. Every weekend for a dozen years I've shopped that store, so yeah.

DD tagged me in a post last weekend about the article in the Fort Worth Star Telegram saying that the store had been under-performing and would be closed for good as of May 29.

We don't live in the greatest part of town, I'll grant you, but that store was almost always busy. It's hard for me to fathom it as under-performing. My MIL suggested perhaps theft was huge issue and that makes a lot more sense to me.

Last Sunday, when I arrived to do the weekly shopping, the store wasn't open. So new hours--9 to 7. Ugh. I returned at nine to find a crowd--there's never been that many people in the store at nine a.m. on a Sunday. I guess all those folks thought there'd be discounted pricing, but why would there be?--it's a franchise. All they have to do is re-allocate inventory.

Inside I discovered that they're no longer stocking produce or dairy. There's no point in me going back in the store. I can't get everything I want or need in a single trip to a single store, so there's no point. This weekend, it's back to the Super Walmart. On the bright side of that--I can get the coconut flavored yogurt I like so much. On the downside...all the temptation of all the other stuff in the store. (Okay, not really. I have self-control, especially when I have no money to actually spend. :) )

So it's the end of an era. I wonder if another grocery store chain will eventually move in there, or if some other type of business will give the location a try. It does make me sad though. I know that some people consider Walmart to be one of our country's great satans, but when money's tight, their prices can't be beat.

Are you a Walmart lover or a Walmart hater?