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lonetreadSo, this is going to be a huge update full of everything I haven't got a chance to say, yet, as I think of it. Expect random.
As far as JuNo, my total word count for the month was 26,108. For reference, that's almost 10K better than I did in NaNo '07. If you're curious, I wrote 66 and 3/4 pages and finished 10 stories; the most words I wrote in one day was 2527, the least was 110; and I met my daily quota of 1613 exactly 4 times the entire month. Lol. Definitely got things written, though, so it wasn't a total loss. If you want to know what I ended up writing that I never finished/posted, let me know and I'll tell you and probably share if you're interested.
Now, television! (First, I'm going to backdate a related rant I wrote the other day, so keep an eye out for that. Second...) The Philanthropist has been really good lately, although "Nigeria, Part 2" was a disappointment. That wasn't kidnapping; at worst, that was dub-con transportation and at best it was a security measure. I mean, really. All it was was "I have to have a bag over my head? Really? Yes? Well, okay, since you're taking me where I want to go, go ahead". Fail preview was fail. Anyway, "Kosovo" was awesomely sad, almost as much so as "Myanmar". Great stuff. And "San Diego", which I finally got around to watching yesterday, was terrific, too. Good stuff, that show.
Ditto Mental. "House of Mirrors" was so depressing if you were familiar with David Reimer, omg. Like, it was really well-done, if you ask me, but just sitting there thinking about my own experiences ("What do you see?" "Me". omfg YES THAT.) and David Reimer and how he killed himself and so on, damn. Depressing. Good, though. (I loved Gallagher's totally nonchalant, "I see you've made your decision". <3) And "Do Over" wasn't bad, but it totally Jossed "Echo Half-Heard". I mean, I held out hope till the very end (I honestly expected the camera to pan up over that whatever-it-was in the way and reveal that Becky had disappeared/was a hallucination), but then, no dice. Sigh. And I'm afraid WH13 (which I've caught up on and is awesome) is going to do the same thing to my WH13/DZ story/personal canon. But for now... :)
Burn Notice and Royal Pains have been good, as always. I'm really enjoying Strickler (although is it just me who thinks he looks strangely like Rudy/Brian from Dexter (who was played by Christian Camargo, says Wikipedia, so it's not him, but damn if it doesn't look like him). And as for RP, man, Friday's. That last scene. I couldn't quite make out the name on that text message, so it wasn't as effective immediately, but once they showed the preview, I was like "oh, god, awkward, lolol." Awesome, awesome, looking forward to it.
And speaking of shows that are awesome, Leverage and Dark Blue. I only started watching Leverage at the beginning of this season, and that only because it's so popular over on comment_fic, and I don't even know everyone's names yet, but it's good. And Dark Blue is OH MY GOD AMAZING. Like, seriously. I can't pile enough praise on this show. Every time I watch it I start looking forward to the next week's almost before that week's is even over. It's so incredibly great. Everyone should watch it. :D
Finally, the Name Change Saga. Dad and I made it to Dallas and got me fingerprinted; you can't see the right building from the street, you have to go through a security checkpoint, through one building, then around another metal detector into the second building behind the first one and it's crazy. Then you feel like you're going to visit someone at jail or something, that's how close you are to the jail, lol. But so, anyway, I managed to get fingerprinted ($5, by the way, and the printer's ink does wash off if you use enough soap), and we went and found the court building.
I took my fingerprint card and my petition and went inside while my dad waited in the car. It was fairly easy to follow the signs to the Family Court room, but that was the only easy part. For the record, when you print forms like that, don't double-side them to try and save paper: they won't accept them. I walked up to Person #1 at the desk and she takes one look and is like "It's supposed to be on one page and then another page" and I was like "D:" because they're also supposed to have the originals and I was worried I'd have wasted the whole trip and have to print out a new form and get it notarized all over again. But thankfully, she's just like "Go up to the Law Library on the fourth floor and copy it". So I went, and that was easy enough to find, but then I didn't have change for the copier. So I had to leave the building, get change from my dad outside, and come back in. I copied the petition and went back to the filing desk, and Person #2 was like, "Hmm, okay, petition, okay, do you have the Order?" and I'm like "Yeah," and I show her, and she says, "This has to be single-sided too." And I'm like "DX" and I go back up to the Library and copy that too (and make small talk with some lawyer-looking guy who was the second or third person to ask if I was 21 when I explained what I was doing there, which makes me wonder if I wouldn't have been allowed to do everything myself if I wasn't). So I finally get that copied, and I go back down to the other room again -- thankfully there was never much of a line there (it was a Monday morning) -- and Person #3 takes my petition and does her thing with it, and doesn't need my Order after all (despite the fact that she was sitting right next to Person #2, who'd asked for it), but she didn't take my fingerprint card. I was all "Do you need this?" and she said no, and as she was doing her thing I asked her if she was sure, and she was, and that really should have been my first clue I had been Doing Something Wrong. But anyway, I pay my $223 and the petition gets filed and she tells me to go up to some other floor and find the 303rd Court and get a name change packet.
I go up to where she said, walk over to the first place I see, and as it turns out, that wasn't 303, but the guy there was very nice and directed me to where I was supposed to be. I wander in that direction and can't find a place that looks like the first place I was at, but I see a room labelled "303rd" that looks like a courtroom and figure that's not where I'm supposed to be, but that it's close and if anyone's there they can help me. So I go over and open the door and almost run right into this sheriff woman as she's leaving. I explain that I'm not sure I'm in the right place but that I was sent up here to get a "name change packet". She says okay, locks the door I'd just come in behind me (after assuring me I'd still be able to get out), and says she'll go look for it for me. She wanders off into the courtroom proper and doesn't come back for forever. Like, just as I was starting to get really antsy and wondering if she'd left me there to rot (and I'm a pretty patient person), she finally comes back. "This is all I could find," she says, and she busts out a fingerprint card.
I'm like "D8" and I say "I already have one of those" and I show her mine. She shows me how hers is pre-printed with the court info on it and says that what I was supposed to do was get fingerprinted on the pre-printed card and then DPS would know who to send it to once they'd run the background check. So I point out where it says on the petition to attach the fingerprint card, and that gets her just as confused as I am at that point. So she walks me out of the courtroom and across the hallway to this glass window with people behind it like I'd been at earlier with the first guy and I'm sure was where I was supposed to have gone originally. She and the woman behind the glass talk for a while, and I find out that apparently she'd actually texted someone while she was looking for my packet but that that person was "probably on the plane already", lol. Anyway, as it turns out, that particular part of the petition is a lie, and DPS and the FBI really do have to run background checks with your prints and then send the results to the court. So I ask the sheriff if I can just write the printed stuff on my card and send that to DPS instead, and she says she doesn't know and I should call DPS and ask them. (Later, when I did, it was busy and I was lazy and I just did it and sent it, figuring that I'd know by whether they cashed my check if they'd accepted it and that I didn't see any reason they wouldn't.)
Then the other lady's like "And once DPS gets back to us, you call us and we can set up your court date." And so naturally I ask "How do I know when you've heard from DPS?" and she says "Call us in six weeks and ask." For the record, I'm back in school by then, so coming home for court's going to be an adventure, but at least now DPS has my fingerprint card and the court has my petition and the ball is rolling.
So, to sum up, dos and don'ts about changing your name in Dallas County, Texas:
1. Don't double-side anything. No, seriously. Just don't do it.
2. Don't follow the Travis County instructions. Yes, even though the Dallas County website directs you to them. They're idiots with half a brain between them, and their website is worse. The Petition and Order are okay, though. As are these instructions.
3. File the petition first, then get fingerprinted.
4. Give yourself a lot of time. Everything involving a courthouse apparently takes significantly longer than you'd think it would or should.
5. Take the DART to the court building. The meters nearby don't work, so you're basically parking illegally right next to a courthouse and more policemen than you can shake a stick at.
6. If you end up mailing a fingerprint card to DPS, the postage is 88 cents.
Hopefully the rest of the process goes smoother than all that. *eyeroll*
ETA: Oh, and as far as pronouns are concerned, if anyone's curious, it was about 50/50 the whole time I was at the courthouse. More than once it was two people using different pronouns having a conversation with each other, which is always entertaining, lol. Ah, good ol' pronoun fun. I'll be glad when I can finally have surgery and can change all my documents and put that crap behind me.
As far as JuNo, my total word count for the month was 26,108. For reference, that's almost 10K better than I did in NaNo '07. If you're curious, I wrote 66 and 3/4 pages and finished 10 stories; the most words I wrote in one day was 2527, the least was 110; and I met my daily quota of 1613 exactly 4 times the entire month. Lol. Definitely got things written, though, so it wasn't a total loss. If you want to know what I ended up writing that I never finished/posted, let me know and I'll tell you and probably share if you're interested.
Now, television! (First, I'm going to backdate a related rant I wrote the other day, so keep an eye out for that. Second...) The Philanthropist has been really good lately, although "Nigeria, Part 2" was a disappointment. That wasn't kidnapping; at worst, that was dub-con transportation and at best it was a security measure. I mean, really. All it was was "I have to have a bag over my head? Really? Yes? Well, okay, since you're taking me where I want to go, go ahead". Fail preview was fail. Anyway, "Kosovo" was awesomely sad, almost as much so as "Myanmar". Great stuff. And "San Diego", which I finally got around to watching yesterday, was terrific, too. Good stuff, that show.
Ditto Mental. "House of Mirrors" was so depressing if you were familiar with David Reimer, omg. Like, it was really well-done, if you ask me, but just sitting there thinking about my own experiences ("What do you see?" "Me". omfg YES THAT.) and David Reimer and how he killed himself and so on, damn. Depressing. Good, though. (I loved Gallagher's totally nonchalant, "I see you've made your decision". <3) And "Do Over" wasn't bad, but it totally Jossed "Echo Half-Heard". I mean, I held out hope till the very end (I honestly expected the camera to pan up over that whatever-it-was in the way and reveal that Becky had disappeared/was a hallucination), but then, no dice. Sigh. And I'm afraid WH13 (which I've caught up on and is awesome) is going to do the same thing to my WH13/DZ story/personal canon. But for now... :)
Burn Notice and Royal Pains have been good, as always. I'm really enjoying Strickler (although is it just me who thinks he looks strangely like Rudy/Brian from Dexter (who was played by Christian Camargo, says Wikipedia, so it's not him, but damn if it doesn't look like him). And as for RP, man, Friday's. That last scene. I couldn't quite make out the name on that text message, so it wasn't as effective immediately, but once they showed the preview, I was like "oh, god, awkward, lolol." Awesome, awesome, looking forward to it.
And speaking of shows that are awesome, Leverage and Dark Blue. I only started watching Leverage at the beginning of this season, and that only because it's so popular over on comment_fic, and I don't even know everyone's names yet, but it's good. And Dark Blue is OH MY GOD AMAZING. Like, seriously. I can't pile enough praise on this show. Every time I watch it I start looking forward to the next week's almost before that week's is even over. It's so incredibly great. Everyone should watch it. :D
Finally, the Name Change Saga. Dad and I made it to Dallas and got me fingerprinted; you can't see the right building from the street, you have to go through a security checkpoint, through one building, then around another metal detector into the second building behind the first one and it's crazy. Then you feel like you're going to visit someone at jail or something, that's how close you are to the jail, lol. But so, anyway, I managed to get fingerprinted ($5, by the way, and the printer's ink does wash off if you use enough soap), and we went and found the court building.
I took my fingerprint card and my petition and went inside while my dad waited in the car. It was fairly easy to follow the signs to the Family Court room, but that was the only easy part. For the record, when you print forms like that, don't double-side them to try and save paper: they won't accept them. I walked up to Person #1 at the desk and she takes one look and is like "It's supposed to be on one page and then another page" and I was like "D:" because they're also supposed to have the originals and I was worried I'd have wasted the whole trip and have to print out a new form and get it notarized all over again. But thankfully, she's just like "Go up to the Law Library on the fourth floor and copy it". So I went, and that was easy enough to find, but then I didn't have change for the copier. So I had to leave the building, get change from my dad outside, and come back in. I copied the petition and went back to the filing desk, and Person #2 was like, "Hmm, okay, petition, okay, do you have the Order?" and I'm like "Yeah," and I show her, and she says, "This has to be single-sided too." And I'm like "DX" and I go back up to the Library and copy that too (and make small talk with some lawyer-looking guy who was the second or third person to ask if I was 21 when I explained what I was doing there, which makes me wonder if I wouldn't have been allowed to do everything myself if I wasn't). So I finally get that copied, and I go back down to the other room again -- thankfully there was never much of a line there (it was a Monday morning) -- and Person #3 takes my petition and does her thing with it, and doesn't need my Order after all (despite the fact that she was sitting right next to Person #2, who'd asked for it), but she didn't take my fingerprint card. I was all "Do you need this?" and she said no, and as she was doing her thing I asked her if she was sure, and she was, and that really should have been my first clue I had been Doing Something Wrong. But anyway, I pay my $223 and the petition gets filed and she tells me to go up to some other floor and find the 303rd Court and get a name change packet.
I go up to where she said, walk over to the first place I see, and as it turns out, that wasn't 303, but the guy there was very nice and directed me to where I was supposed to be. I wander in that direction and can't find a place that looks like the first place I was at, but I see a room labelled "303rd" that looks like a courtroom and figure that's not where I'm supposed to be, but that it's close and if anyone's there they can help me. So I go over and open the door and almost run right into this sheriff woman as she's leaving. I explain that I'm not sure I'm in the right place but that I was sent up here to get a "name change packet". She says okay, locks the door I'd just come in behind me (after assuring me I'd still be able to get out), and says she'll go look for it for me. She wanders off into the courtroom proper and doesn't come back for forever. Like, just as I was starting to get really antsy and wondering if she'd left me there to rot (and I'm a pretty patient person), she finally comes back. "This is all I could find," she says, and she busts out a fingerprint card.
I'm like "D8" and I say "I already have one of those" and I show her mine. She shows me how hers is pre-printed with the court info on it and says that what I was supposed to do was get fingerprinted on the pre-printed card and then DPS would know who to send it to once they'd run the background check. So I point out where it says on the petition to attach the fingerprint card, and that gets her just as confused as I am at that point. So she walks me out of the courtroom and across the hallway to this glass window with people behind it like I'd been at earlier with the first guy and I'm sure was where I was supposed to have gone originally. She and the woman behind the glass talk for a while, and I find out that apparently she'd actually texted someone while she was looking for my packet but that that person was "probably on the plane already", lol. Anyway, as it turns out, that particular part of the petition is a lie, and DPS and the FBI really do have to run background checks with your prints and then send the results to the court. So I ask the sheriff if I can just write the printed stuff on my card and send that to DPS instead, and she says she doesn't know and I should call DPS and ask them. (Later, when I did, it was busy and I was lazy and I just did it and sent it, figuring that I'd know by whether they cashed my check if they'd accepted it and that I didn't see any reason they wouldn't.)
Then the other lady's like "And once DPS gets back to us, you call us and we can set up your court date." And so naturally I ask "How do I know when you've heard from DPS?" and she says "Call us in six weeks and ask." For the record, I'm back in school by then, so coming home for court's going to be an adventure, but at least now DPS has my fingerprint card and the court has my petition and the ball is rolling.
So, to sum up, dos and don'ts about changing your name in Dallas County, Texas:
1. Don't double-side anything. No, seriously. Just don't do it.
2. Don't follow the Travis County instructions. Yes, even though the Dallas County website directs you to them. They're idiots with half a brain between them, and their website is worse. The Petition and Order are okay, though. As are these instructions.
3. File the petition first, then get fingerprinted.
4. Give yourself a lot of time. Everything involving a courthouse apparently takes significantly longer than you'd think it would or should.
5. Take the DART to the court building. The meters nearby don't work, so you're basically parking illegally right next to a courthouse and more policemen than you can shake a stick at.
6. If you end up mailing a fingerprint card to DPS, the postage is 88 cents.
Hopefully the rest of the process goes smoother than all that. *eyeroll*
ETA: Oh, and as far as pronouns are concerned, if anyone's curious, it was about 50/50 the whole time I was at the courthouse. More than once it was two people using different pronouns having a conversation with each other, which is always entertaining, lol. Ah, good ol' pronoun fun. I'll be glad when I can finally have surgery and can change all my documents and put that crap behind me.
