I find it amazing that I've made two updates to this page *after* having officially declared it dead, which is two more than I made in some years while it was still active. Oh well, though. For anyone who's still checking it, here's a link to a blog I've been writing, on the occasion of our having bought our first house:
http://fourmilehouse.blogspot.com
~16 January 2008~
Well. Another year and a half without an update. I think, by this point, that I have well and truly been devoured by Web 2.0, and that the "personal homepage" idea is kind of a relic of the past. My apologies if anyone is still actually reading this, but I don't imagine it's due for an update anytime soon. If this site is the only way you know to keep in touch with me and want to say hi, I can be found here:
http://www.myspace.com/pghkitten
and here:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=682601583
and, if you're interested in the hobbies that have been devouring my life, here:
http://wiki.libraryofhighmoon.com
I can also be contacted at FinaSedai(at)yahoo(dot)com.
Old Updates:
~August 2006~
More than a year and a half since the last update...my apologies for that. I'm still here, just busy and in quite a time of transition lately. What's been going on? Well, among other things:
Current Events:
*First, and probably most important...I got married in June, to my college sweetheart. The wedding was lovely, the honeymoon was lots of fun (albeit a bit soggy...thanks, Tropical Storm Alberto...), and married life has been great. It's a bit strange not being Miss Stacie Chapman anymore, but I'm gradually adjusting to being called Mrs. something instead. :)
*I'm now in my third year (and, with luck, final semester) of graduate school at Duquesne University, studying for my MA in English Literature. This term I'm taking a class on Victorian representations of otherness, mostly centered on race, class, and gender, and a class on Shakespeare in film. If all goes well, I'll have my master's degree by December.
*I have further discovered the love of home renovation (at least inasmuch as it pertains to peeling hundred-year-old layers of paint off things), and we're seriously considering buying the duplex we're living in once we can afford it. Until then, I'm honing my skills with a putty knife and paint stripper; our first project, a beautiful brick fireplace hidden under about six layers of beige paint, turned out very nice.
*At my current workplace, I've moved on from proofreading to actual writing, and am now engaged in compiling hundreds of paragraph-long book summaries per issue. It's not exactly the kind of writing I expected to be doing when I grew up, but at least I can say I'm published now, at least in a technical sense. :) It's a start.
Current videogame obsession: When I have time to play, between school, work, and social activity, I'm probably playing Katamari Damacy or its sequel. It's a bit hard to explain, but in a nutshell it's about a young prince who enables his megalomaniacal alcoholic father by rolling up objects in a giant sticky ball and flinging them up into the sky to make stars. That's the most logical summary I can come up with. :)
Current books I'm reading: The Canterbury Tales, by the great Geoffrey Chaucer, Journal of a West India Proprietor by Matthew "Monk" Lewis, and Julius Caesar by the equally great William Shakespeare. As for books that don't have to do with school, necessity dictates that they be short and light on the brain, so I've been reading a lot of Japanese manga, including Ouran High School Host Club by Bisco Hatori. The anime is pretty good too.
Current music I'm listening to: Since I started buying most of my music through iTunes, all rhyme or reason to my musical interests has broken down. I don't even really buy whole CDs anymore (although I did make an exception for the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest soundtrack). The last batch of songs I downloaded included songs by New Order, Jason Mraz, Lisa Loeb, Real McCoy, and Queen.
Current songs running through my head: An odd combination of all the songs I just mentioned above. Eek.
Current favorite weather phenomenon: Late spring and early fall really are my favorite holidays. As much as I would never admit it in February, I get as bored with hot weather as I do with cold, by the end of summer. I can't wait until autumn really arrives in full swing.
Current paradigm shifts: Getting into the mindset of being a wife, and realizing how many preconceived notions I have about that status, without ever having realized it.
Nothing at all new this month beyond this page. My internet presence these days runs more toward LiveJournal and MySpace, so I'm not even really sure of this website's purpose at the moment. Even so, I didn't want to abandon it just yet. I may end up gutting and/or repurposing some of the pages at some point, but right now things are kind of in limbo. I've still got a presence on Adam's Dungeons & Dragons website, which you can find in my Links page), if you'd like to see some of my fiction.
I've still got some vague ideas about pages featuring some graphics that friends have made, photos, and information on Pittsburgh, but no promises. Any suggestions as to what I might add to make this site more interesting? At this point, it can use all the help it can get. Criticisms/ideas are always welcome. Feel free to write to me, or put them in the guestbook.
For those of you who don't know me yet, my name is Stacie, and I'm a third-year graduate student at Duquesne University. I graduated from Mercyhurst College in 2001 with a BA in English and creative writing, and bounced around Pittsburgh for a few years before arriving at my current comfortable place. For the moment, I have about the best of all possible jobs outside the creative arts--I'm a writer/editorial assistant at an academic journal in Pittsburgh. As for the future, I'm considering eventually seeking my Ph.D. and finding a job in academia, but for the moment I'm putting that on the back burner in favor of other plans, such as possible motherhood in a few years. I'm also an aspiring author; I had four of my pieces published in Mercyhurst's literary magazine The Lumen, and my ideal career would still be in fiction. I have a few of my older works stored online, if you want to look at them. As for interests, I enjoy books, fantasy roleplaying games, theater, music, history, anime, and movies of all sorts.
By the way, before you go, please go and sign my guestbook so I know who's come to see it, if you haven't before. Thanks very much!
(One more thing: special thanks to Adam and Jason for teaching me HTML and helping me with this site, and to Wendy for the graphics she provided.)
Places to Go
The Me Page
This one's content shouldn't be too hard to figure out...just some pictures and info about who I am.
The Gaming/Characters Page
Roleplaying games provide a lot of fodder for my writing, and I have created quite a few characters that I'm very proud of. You can find out about them here.
The Library
Here you will find various writings, both old and recent. I prefer to write fantasy and science fiction, but there is also some nonfiction prose and poetry on the page.
Song Lyrics
This page contains the words to some of my favorite songs, and (eventually) some thoughts about why I like them.
Pictures and Friends
This will ultimately contain information and many pictures of the various people I know, but right now I've only been able to sketch out the page's basic structure.
My Guestbook: http://www.guestbook.de/yasg.cgi?X=181978
My Blog: Stacie's Journal
times.