Killian's Blog/Website/Whatever

Recently, I: --watched Prometheus, and it was amazing. If you watch it and have no idea why I feel this way, ask me. I don't want to be spoily. --finished a work project. --survived finals week. --took on another freelance project. It's a horror monologue! Looking forward to channeling a little Poe. This is my first project for stage, too. A little intimidating, but it's the kind of challenge that gets me excited! --started reading The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoyevsky is, sigh, wonderful.  --began working out 3x a week (consistently!) --moped about a little. --haven't drawn enough. Other things: Work and I have a complicated relationship. When I'm overloaded with school and contract deadlines, I can't wait to be done, can't wait to take a break. Once I finish and have a few minutes to breathe, I'm bored. So I jump right in to the next project, because the alternative is wasting hours refreshing pinterest and twitter while dissatisfacti...

Life is terrible and wonderful all at once, every minute, and I find it confusing and difficult to handle sometimes. Gonzo, I need your existential guidance. Let's split a cigarette on the front porch and think about space and belonging, and then we can go back inside and be funny blue whatevers and no one will be the wiser.

I made a crazy discovery today. Pre-note: this is not really the most academic post, so don't go citing me or yelling at me for not being scholarly. It's popular to claim that most holidays we celebrate now are appropriated pagan celebrations. But Halloween is super interesting in this sense. Our first impulse is to claim that Halloween--All Hallow's Eve (the night before All Saints' Day, which is the day before All Souls' Day)--was purposefully placed on October 31/November 1 because that's when Samhain took place. Only, wait a minute! The Roman Catholic Church and the Irish Catholic Church were very different establishments back in the day. The Irish Catholic Church--the establishment you might assume would do the appropriating--celebrated All Saints' Day on April 20. So it's pretty much accidental that the two became related. Doesn't that BLOW YOUR MIND? Dia de los Muertos was more intentionally moved--it's related to an Aztec celebration ...

Ah, sweet October, my favorite month. Oddly, Halloween, which is my absolute favorite holiday, has been screwing me over regularly, post-childhood. But, in true Halloween spirit, I refuse to give up. I will decorate my parents' house, I will wear a costume, I will drink apple cider and hot toddys for days, and it will be as awesome as possible, considering the circumstances. Since the beau and I are apart this year, the sexy Lewis and Clark costumes will have to be put on hold (dang), but I promise I'll have pictures of my solo costume invention on the bless'ed day. Now, for some updates! They're not that important, but I'm telling you anyway: 1. For some of you, this one's kind of important: I've changed my Twitter handle from @TalesnTeacups to @killianczuba. I've been debating this change for a while. It seems like a good idea, especially as I start to submit stories. I think Twitter is awesome, and I would love for people to find me on it easily. ...

I went to the beach this weekend--Rockaway, Cannon, and Ecola. The Oregon coast is probably the best coast, not that I'm biased or anything.  It was 65* and absolutely beautiful. And tide pools are the way to my heart. It was a much needed break from Real Life. Ok, business: As you can see, I am still in the states. Daniel is abroad, workin' hard at his awesome new job and impressing everyone with his mighty brain. I am not going to get into why we are in two such drastically different geographical locations, because it's a long and complicated story that makes me grumpy. But  we  are fine. As a unit, we are awesome--and that's really what matters. :) Since I'm not really in a chatty mood, I turned comments off. After this, it should be back to blogging-as-usual. Thanks bros. But, back to distractions, look at this table I painted! It used to belong to my great grandparents. I've always loved this table, but th...

We leave very, very soon. Tomorrow will be a flurry of last minute laundry and errands and packing. If I think about it for more than a second, I get kind of overwhelmed. Instead, here are a bunch of pictures from a trip to the lake like THREE WEEKS AGO! It was a great day--lots of swimmin'--even if I *did* have to spend most of the afternoon on my laptop (I know! I know!) DOING HOMEWORK (OMG I KNOW). So, yep. Lots of errands to run still. I don't want to talk about this whole "moving experience" in too much detail before we get there, because, again, thinking about everything makes me want to vomit. Give me a week or two to decompress (and finish my next grad school packet). Hopefully we'll have new pictures of our flat, too! Though it miiiiiight not be furnished. We may be sleeping in a pile of blankets on the floor for a while. I'm ok with it. It's carpeted! haha. Alright. Now for the obligatory photo of my cat: More pic...

“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.” --Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast.  Repeat.

1. Gravity Falls . 4 Eva. I can't wait until it comes out on DVD so I can buy it and watch it as my pre-sleep lullaby while I'm far away from home in the UK. It takes place in Oregon, you understand. It is the story of my life. 2. Comics. All of them. A few I read this week (as a reward for finishing all my homework): Saga , Prophet , Marceline & the Scream Queens , and Are You My Mother?   (links are to first issues in the run--or, in the case of Alison Bechdel's book, Powell's--in case you want to read them!) 3. Breaking Bad, even though it is stressful and I sometimes have to play bejeweled while I watch because I am bad at handling tense situations (yes, even when they are entirely fictional). 4. The new F. Scott Fitzgerald story  that was in this week's New Yorker. It might be my favorite piece of his that I've read (if you read it, you'll know why). I can't believe the New Yorker rejected it the first time. Haters.* 5. These roasted pot...

Moving. It has been an... experience . Does that sound bitter? Good. It's supposed to. I'm in kind of a bad mood. Let's start with the neutral: --Our schedule over the last week was like this: Pack. Moving Truck. Train back to Seattle. Fly to Philly. Wedding. Fly back from Philly. Move the rest of the stuff to Portland. This all took place over seven days.  The negatives (or: Why I Bave Been So Angry/Tired for Weeks--the short version): --Visa trouble.  --Tons of tiny little hang-ups that have added up to Energy-Draining Pains in my Butt (ex: thinking our cat ran away the day we had to drive down to Portland with a moving van*, having important documents arrive at our old address the day after we didn't live there anymore, Comcast being butts, UPS being butts, the British Consolate being butts, butts just everywhere, SHALL I CONTINUE?) --I have another grad school deadline in 6 days. I'm not as behind as I was last time, but I'm not as ahe...

This whole moving thing has been a lot more difficult than expected, in a variety of directions. D and I have been "kept busy" by visa applications, apartment hunting, and strange piles of paperwork, all in addition to our regular work/school stuff. It turns out that grad school + moving is not my favorite thing in the world. I'm glad I started school when I did, but it maaaaaay have been a better idea to try and defer until January. Oh well! Nothing like a little extra pressure around a deadline, eh?  Yesterday I had a little weepy moment over a coat. (I think the coat was a metaphor.) Things we still have not figured out: absentee voting (important); exactly how the British government functions (confusing); how we're actually going to get everything done (mystery). Welp, I have like +100000 more packing to do, and homework due in about 3 days, and a work assignment due in a week, and a family thing this afternoon, so I guess I should get off my butt. Just wanted...

our days look like this things: 1. Daniel and I are re-reading The Great Gatsby  because we are very cultured.* It's pretty good. Some parts are AMAZING! and then other parts are like "Really, F. Scott? Really? You just spent god-knows how many words saying nothing . Homework: go read Dickens and then try again." I'm allowed to make this statement because I am in grad school. 2. I got assigned to the Celtic Myth team at work! There was much rejoicing. There was also much purchasing-of-books. Through some kind of magic boon of willpower, I refrained from buying the super expensive/hardcover ones. 3. I finished Zadie Smith's  White Teeth yesterday. It is one of my new favorites, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Everyone! I'm just gonna go ahead and call Smith brilliant right here, and I mean it. Those of you who regularly hear me yell about books know this is a big deal. I don't often make it to the end of a book and think "I would p...

(guest post by Daniel) "Yes, Ms. Fitzgerald*, I  quite  agree, it is a  lovely  day for a tea party." "You look positively  famished . Another scone?" "Beg pardon? My mental state? Don't be silly, I'm  fine . Now where did  Wilson  get to..." *Flannery, AKA F. Cat Fitzgerald, AKA The Dowager Countess Snugglepaws

Alright. It's done. I'm home*, I'm doing laundry, I ate a hearty breakfast. The only thing non-pajama-wearing on today's agenda: Powell's. I will leave there many dollars poorer and one well-stocked reading list richer. Then, I'll return to the Casa de Czuba and work. I will work on my job, I will work on my homework, and I will work on packing (my life is one suitcase after another). The last ten days were so absolutely, incredibly odd. For every evening spent socializing and stepping out of my comfort zone, there was an hour of sleep and relaxation lost;  for every motivating craft talk and amazing reading, there was a quiet, growing panic working its way into the back of my mind; for every minute of blissful removal from real life, there was (rather, is ) the consequence of returning to real life after totally ignoring it for ten long days. Basically, f or every positive, there was a negative.** But I learned much, I ate relatively well, and I slept littl...

This residency thing is insane. I'm still trying to decipher exactly how I feel about it, but I think a good estimate is that it is proving equal parts useful, interesting, exhausting, and trying. This is exactly what I've needed in the following ways: 1. I'm getting my butt kicked by genius faculty. I can't believe I can only pick four of them to work with directly over the next two years. Then again, I get four of them.  (this place, man. everything's a dichotomy) 2. I've met a ton of people, and a few of us became instant bros. I've also reconnected with a few old bros. 3. It's got me stoked to get to work. Stoooooooked. This is less than ideal for me in the following ways: 1. I never seem to get enough sleep, so I just somnambulate around, making small talk that may or may not make sense. 2. I'm homesick. I miss my cat, my room, my beau. I miss my shower, my desk, my closet. I am tired of looking like a bum who wears the same clothes eve...

Guys. I'm totally losing it. This living-in-limbo thing is so distracting that I can't focus on any task (except, you know, stupid things like dishes) for more than one minute. Facebook is boring and no one ever updates, AND YET: I have checked it--and Twitter--like 10,000,000,000,000 times today. I opened about 7 tabs of letting agencies/craigslist equivalents and then looked at flats for about three hours. I have already looked at all of these flats. I have looked at some of them about 5 days in a row. I can't stop. My mouse moves of its own will!--just clickin' on stuff, showin' me homes we can't have. It's insane behavior, much like when we decided it was time to get a cat and I spent 3 solid weeks scouring Petfinder. Obviously, it's going to work out. We'll find a place. It'll be nice--or, at the very least,  inhabitable. It'll have things like "windows" and a "bathroom". It'll likely be near the City Centre* an...

Remember when you were a kid and you'd be all like "YAY! SUMMER! No school, no job, no responsibilities! I can hang out with my best friend EVERY SINGLE DAY and bum around the skate park and be broke but not give a flying crap because, man, it's summer and we can just we can just watch Almost Famous  in Danielle's garage every night."? Awesomely, I can still conjure up those memories. I can't really remember the feeling , though. You know, the feeling of not being busy and liking it. Summer has been the busiest season of my life consistently for years. This one is no exception. Trying to balance sanity with the demands of work/school/money/family/friends/moving to a foreign country is going to be, um, well, the word "challenging" is probably an understatement. I need to stop looking for flats before we have a moving date because watching all of the good ones disappear might be more masochistic than I can even handle. Fortunately, I got to play ...

Man, deadlines are so helpful. I'm just gonna throw that out there. I love deadlines. They are like jumper cables for your brain. Vroom vroom. In other news, I updated my comic recently. You can view it here . Daniel and I took the weekend off--almost entirely for reals!--and went hiking with some peeps, hung out at Remedy, etc. And I spent about 6 hours of Sunday making a comic, because, you know, weekends. It was actually quite relaxing, and provided some much-needed flexing of the drawing muscles. I've even been feeling the itch to paint a little bit, but that's way more labor- (and prep-) intensive, and I don't really have the time for it right now. Writing is consuming my life. (Note: that is a good thing. A very, wonderfully, spectacularly good thing.) I do wish that we could find an apartment. We can't technically look right now (I mean, I am certainly allowed to bum around and check places out on the interwebs, but not for keeps ) because moving dates ...

There's this trend I'm noticing where I pretty much don't blog when I'm staying at my parents' house. This is likely because the days there are all GO GO GO and squeeze-in-a-nap-when-you-can-'cause-wake-up-time-is-6:30am*. Now Daniel and I are back home, still exhausted, but happy to be in our own little place again. The cat's happy to be home, too. She and Watson almost became friends. Almost. So, basically, life is crazy. In Portland, I: went to the eye doctor; purchased glasses for my broken, nearsighted face**; bought an e-reader***; put lots of public domain books on said-reader; bought too many clothes at Target; bought more clothes at H&M (why do I even let myself go to these places??); got my hair did; replaced my lost ID****; hung out with a bunch of friends, but was sad that I didn't get to see all of them; watched the dog/chickens/guinea pigs/brothers; didn't sleep enough. Today we got back home in the a.m. and were able to get a...

Some of you may have noticed an odd internet silence on my part over the last few days. This is because Daniel took me on a surprise trip to Disneyland. I am not even kidding. (note: some of these are with my phone camera, and some are with the Fancy Cam. I bet you can tell which are which.) Then, the second day we were there, we got engaged. ALSO NOT KIDDING. HERE ARE MORE PICTURES. OBLIGATORY SMOOCH SHOT: OBLIGATORY BLING SHOT*: (it's a little small, so we're getting it re-sized this week. I sported it on my right pinkie for most of the trip. haha) Yep. Now here's the rest of our trip! WHEEEEEE! When we got home, Kait had made us this banner!   It's the most adorable thing in the world (they look like TEA BAGS), and we're going to make sure to take it with us wherever we move...which, ahem, brings us to crazy thing #3.  We're probably moving to Oxford! The UK one...