I thought this was funny, but it lies unless it's not counting you because I know there's two other girls out there with the same name as me. I found one on Myspace and one on Facebook, and I know they're not the same girl because the one with a Myspace is too chubby to be a track star. So ha.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 2 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

After a second Google search, it appears that the Facebook girl with my name no longer has my name because she got married, so I suppose that does make it accurate.

I'm back in Hawaii now, got here a week ago tonight, and classes started on Monday. I'm only taking four classes this semester: Japanese Culture and Communication, Politics of Japan, Japanese Translation Workshop, and World History to 1500. How boring. Especially the politics class - the teacher is just...christ. I wanted to fall asleep the entire time. The only thing keeping me awake was the fact that Nic was there. I missed him. A lot. I hope we can still be good friends again this semester.

Already got homework in one of my classes, the trans. workshop...Rogers handed us a three-page story on the first day and told us to know what the first section says by today. T_T I've still got two sentences to go, and lord knows the rest aren't very good translations. At least he doesn't expect us to write up and turn in our translations, it sounded like it's going to be all oral. Technically I also have homework for history, but I'm too lazy to open my book and read the chapter. I have a feeling that Rogers' class is going to eat up all of my time...maybe it's a good thing I'm not taking five classes. Did I mention that I get to sleep in the whole semester? Not that it matters, because my room faces due east and we don't have any curtains to speak of (but we did put a sheet up over the window) so the sun wakes me up at like six every morning. MWF my first class is at 2:00, TR at 12:30.

Other things...on Saturday my new roommate (Erin) and I rented a car. Red Mustang convertible, whoohoo! We visited Rainbow Falls, Akaka Falls, and then we drove over to Kona-side and went to a beach in Kua Bay. It was pretty fun. I put sunscreen on, but I still got a little burned. My nose and forehead started peeling yesterday, but it's not that bad. Erin, on the other hand, came back looking like a lobster. After we came back we signed up for the Atlantis submarine trip in Kona which is on the 6th. It should be fun.

I haven't been around lately because about three or so weeks ago the backlight in my laptop died. I used my mom's computer until I left. On the night before I left we sat down and tried to replace the backlight ourselves, because I'd ordered a new one, and we thought we'd gotten it right because the screen came on again and everything! Then I left, had a murderous 24 hours in airports and on planes with not much sleep, and got into Hilo and got checked into my dorm and got my stuff out of storage and all that good stuff. The next morning I fired up my laptop, the screen worked fine for about 15 or 20 minutes, and then BAM! the backlight went out again. Boy, was I pissed. Luckily my loan refund money came through that day and I was able to get on eBay and buy a whole new LCD screen element, and that came yesterday and I got my computer fixed. Yay!

Writing-wise...don't make me laugh. I got about two writing sessions in during the whole time I was using my mom's computer, and now that classes have started I don't have too much time. I'm about 4k from reaching 25k on my fanfic, but I'm not entirely sure that I'll be able to get that done by Sunday. At least this weekend is a three-day weekend, with Labor Day and all. Never did get around to even starting on the other two stories I had planned for the summer, but oh well. I should start thinking about what I want to do for NaNoWriMo - it's still a toss-up between starting the Amaranth trilogy or Kobreck's story. I'm leaning towards Amaranth, because I'm still not sure about which plot I want to go with for Kobreck.

Ah...the endless battle of getting my mom to get rid of shit. We started going through her books on the shelves in the living room and managed to put a bunch on Amazon (and another nice pile that wouldn't sell there out in the garage for the next sale). Speaking of garage sales--what luck! They've decided to hold a second neighborhood garage sale at the end of the month. Free advertising, hooray! To be honest, we never even pulled the last one down... all I need to do is go price the new stuff we've found to sell, tidy up a bit, and open the garage door and we'll be ready to go. Well, and I have to take my checkout table back down there too. And find some $1 bills. Tonight I'm going to pull my mom down into the basement for some hardcore cleaning.

Peter did the funniest thing last night--he was tickling Lucky's face with his claws! I joined a forum for turtle owners to find out what he was doing. Guess it means he's just telling Lucky who the boss of the tank is. I'm definitely going to have to get him a bigger tank as soon as I can afford it.

Ran a bunch of errands today (yay!); spent a bunch of money (boo). Target called and said my prescription was ready so I went and picked that up along with some other things. Then I went to Video Games Etc. to see if they had a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and they did, so I traded in Etrian Odyssey and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for store credit and got Tactics for $25 instead of $40. Then I wandered down to the other end of the little strip mall there to Fantastic Sams for a haircut. Took about four inches off the ends, and it feels great. Last, I went to Walgreens to have some passport photos taken. I'll have to go pick those up either tonight or tomorrow, and then I need to figure out if the downtown post office (one of the two passport places in the city) is open. I know damn well the county records office is closed, because that's in the courthouse basement which was throughly underwater.

Anyway. As you may or may not have noticed, this entry follows the last one rather quickly. I'm going to try and update more often.

On the writing front: July started yesterday, as did the second month of SuWriMos. I didn't get my second story started yet, though, because I wasn't feeling too great last night. Need to get on that today. I'm not worrying about the fic anymore--it'll get done when it gets done.

Yay. Been home for well over a month, and things are going good. I've been bringing in the money via eBay and Amazon, and I've made over $500 so far this summer. Made and Etsy shop too, but haven't sold anything there yet. Things slowed down this week, though, with my mom gone on a trip and she took my camera so I can't list anything but books which I don't really have any more of to list. @_@ Can't wait until she gets home in a few hours, then I can start listing more stuff. Oh, and presents! She bought me a mood necklace in the shape of a penguin, and a bottle of plum wine. :D Can't wait!

Misty's been a right little stinker, getting in to all sorts of trouble and peeing on shit. D: She doesn't like the smell of plastic that's been in the basement or something, so I've lost some plastic canvas stuff to her and there's a nice stain on the leather ottoman now. Anyway, she's a little attention whore, always getting into faces and crawling up on laps!

Writing-wise, the first month of the Gaian Summer Writing Months is wrapping up today, and I'm about 5k from where I should be (and I'm not sure I can wrap it up in 5k, but I'm going to try because I'm sick of it already). I chose my pokemon fanfic as the first story to work on, but with a lack of plot resolutions it's not going anywhere very fast--although I might be able to salvage it now. Aiming for finishing it up by mid-July. Tomorrow I'll go ahead and start my second story on schedule and work on them both until I finish with the fic.

I feel like shit today. ;_;

I went to summer storage when it opened last night, and they were like "well you can't put your shit in here if you don't have a room but there's some limited storage in tiny rooms which will probably fill up fast so you better go haul ass over there if you want a chance."

So I went over there, and they told me I couldn't put my plastic box in there. But I love my Boxy! ;_; So I went to repack the stuff (my comforter and pillow--I wasn't planning to put them in until later in the week, but since they were like "OMG IT'S GONNA FILL UP" I didn't want to risk not putting it in there, because they wouldn't fit in my suitcase) and then they sent me RUNNING AROUND IN SEARCH OF TAPE because I was out and needed more. And I was like OMGWTFBBQ and I cried. A lot. But I got a roll of tape in the end. Then I went and said goodbye to Boxy and put him down at the bottom of the steps with a "free to a good home" sign (he was still there this morning, but I'm sure someone will adopt him).

But OMG last night was terrible. T_T I took some sleeping pills but I think they've stopped working, either that or I was really fucking stressed and upset because the last time I remember looking at the clock it was something like 1:30. And I went to sleep with just my top sheet and this stupid little ugly brown throw blanket my mom sent me and my foam pillow for the plane which is too tall for me to use in bed as a pillow. Then I was cold when I went to sleep, even though I didn't leave my fan on and I closed the windows, so I put on some jeans and socks and my sweatshirt but a couple hours later I was hot and took them off and changed and then I switched to using my sweatshirt as a pillow. And then I woke up a couple times, like at 6:00, and I got out of bed at maybe 9:00 or 10:00 (can't remember) and I'm really sore and shit from lugging my boxes up the stairs to the storage room because there was no elevator over there. And I only have one Advil left because I took the other one last night before I went to sleep. If I don't feel like shit later (and can find somebody's umbrella to borrow 'cause mine's already in storage) I'm going to walk down to 7-11 for Advil and chocolate and probably ice cream too.

This morning I made some oatmeal and I had to borrow a bowl from my roommate and use her kettle and then I ate it with my knife because that's the only piece of silverware I didn't pack because I still have a loaf of bread and some peanut butter and jam. And then I called my mommy to wish her happy mommy's day and whine at her and she was all like "I don't care if it would have been 3 a.m. when you called, you should have called me when you were upset!" and then I got all wibbly and she promised to make me lasagna and an angelfood cake Sunday for a coming-home dinner and then we decided that my birthday cake should definitely be a rum cake.

And now I am working on this stupid essay and the only thing good about it is the heating pad on my back and I want to have it done in two hours because then I need to go to the library to meet with a study group for my Japanese test which is tomorrow morning which I'm worried I'm going to not do good on because my plan was to study every day since Thursday but I haven't opened the book up yet.

I WANNA GO HOME ALREADY. T_T T_T T_T

I hate blue cheese. Why? Because it tastes like ass, yet if you put it in front of my face I'll eat that shit anyway. I had some on my salad for lunch, which is what spurred this revelation. Speaking of my lunch, why do they have to make their salads so HUGE here? I spent $6 on that thing, and I seriously ate only like a third of it. Anyway, back to blue cheese. It started over winter break; I blame my friend's mom. She brought a big-ass bucket of the stuff back from shopping at Costco, got it out and was like "have you ever had blue cheese?" And of course I'm like "no, don't think so..." so she's like "here, try." And I tried. And I was like "GOOD LORD this shit tastes like ASS!" (and the aftertaste is even WORSE).

Fifteen minutes later I was about ready to come right out and say "look, can you put this shit away already? Because it STILL tastes like ass, but I'm STILL eating it." And I don't know why. And it was the same at lunch today. I was like "okay, w/e" and ate my eggs and some blue cheese and the tomatoes. And because it was HUGE SALAD WTF I didn't eat all of it and I was sad because it was going to waste, but hey that's life.

But enough of that. Hell, it's quite been awhile since I posted anything, hasn't it? Things have been hectic with school and all. One of my classes piles on the papers like there's no tomorrow, and it looks like I'm going for a solid C in Japanese this semester. Marine Biology lab is all sorts of fun; our first time out was last Monday and we collected seaweed to press. Flippers are fucking hard to get used to.

In more extremely recent news, my Christmas present finally arrived just last week. Yeah, it's a little late, but what the hey, I'm happy with it. It's a (I would say sexy, but brown and orange isn't a very sexy color scheme) 500GB Seagate FreeAgent which I have dubbed Orpheus. I now have more space than I'd ever dreamed of, especially considering I was, at one point before I buckled down and burned some stuff, down to 3GB free on my laptop's 80GB drive and 2GB free on my 30GB external. Miranda (the 30GB) will hopefully be going to a new home soon, once my friend scrapes together some cash. She (both Miranda and my friend) are excited, I assume. Miranda didn't have much to say on the matter, being a piece of metal and plastic. My only beef with Orpheus, however, is that he gets quite hot sometimes and I'm worried he's going to overheat. And that would be very bad, because all my music is on him and only about half of that music (sans up-to-date tags, ugh) is backed up on CD. That could be disastrous, but at least we got over the first hump of not being DOA.

Yay, it's Christmas! Let's see, what's been going on...on Saturday my friend Kari and I went to Hana, which involved a two-hour drive on what I'd easily nominate for the windingest road in the world. It only took us two hours because the speed limit was 10-20 the whole way, the curves were so tight. There was also a bunch of spots where the road was only wide enough for one car, and some of the time you couldn't even see if anyone was coming before you went. We got where we were going, and stopped for lunch at Waianapanapa State Park. We fed some mongeese then walked around, saw the blow hole and the caves and then we went into Hana for some ice cream and to go into some gift shops, and then we drove back home. On Sunday night we went to the Christmas party of one of Kari's friends, Akira. It was great. There were seven of us, six girls and Akira. We played I've Never and told sex stories. Too much information! We didn't get home until 2:30 a.m. Yesterday, Christmas Eve, we went to the Maui Ocean Center and looked at the fish and the turtles and the sharks and stuff. It was nice. Then we went home and opened presents. Kari got me a penguin necklace. Debra got me a freshwater pearl bracelet and a Kmart gift card. Scott got me a stuffed penguin I named Robbie, and mom got me a little penguin keychain I named Ai and put on my purse. Then we went to a Christmas party/dinner held by one of Kari's cousins. Lots of food there, and two puppies. <3 We played Bullshit and I lost terribly because they were different rules than I was used to. This morning we got up and I got some more little stocking stuffer presents from Debra, and then we went over to Kari's dad's house and opened more presents. He got me a cute little water fountain for my desk. Then we took a drive out to Kari's uncle's land and stopped to see the horses and went down into the bay. It was really muddy out there. We didn't get to go all the way down to Jaws because we didn't have the keys to the gate, but the waves weren't very tall anyway so there weren't any surfers out. Then we came back and I called my mom and stuff, and now everybody's just lounging around before dinner which isn't for another couple hours.

I've probably seen more rainbows this past week then in the rest of my life combined. Something like eight. TODAY, though, I saw two things I'd never seen before. The first was a double rainbow--two rainbows right side-by-side--not very complete, kinda short, but they were there. It was really cool. Then the rainbow on the left/on the inside got stronger as we drove, and turned into an absolutely perfect rainbow. A perfect arch, solid all the way, with both ends on the ground. It was totally awesome! I was staring at it until it faded (good thing I wasn't the one driving!) I'm really disappointed I didn't have my camera with me and that neither of us had a cameraphone, but we'd just gone to the mall for some Christmas shopping and to see a movie (The Golden Compass). But I was happy just seeing such a cool thing anyway. ^_^

I saw my CC at dinner tonight, and talked to her. Turns out there's another girl who looks like me, and she thought I was her. I knew I should have questioned her when I went there, but obviously I wasn't thinking clearly. Anyway, a taxi has been called for tomorrow morning and soon I'll be in Maui. It's just a matter of braving the airport now...and I'm a little worried because there's only 20 minutes between when my flight gets to Kona and when it leaves for Kahului. I'll have to ask about that at the desk when I check in.

Yesterday was probably the worst day of the semester...which is odd, because it was also technically the last day of the semester. It makes much more sense when you understand that I probably tanked my Japanese test yesterday morning. I hate my Japanese teacher. But we shall save that rant for sometime next semester when I'm pissed about just that, not other things in general. Anyway... I spent pretty much all of Tuesday studying for my Japanese final. Stayed up until 11:00 studying (which is past my self-imposed bedtime of 10:00). Had a fairly decent night's sleep, in contrast to both Sunday and Monday nights when my roommate showed up at 2:00 a.m. and woke me up. Got up, went to the test, etc. It was made of suck and fail. I spent about 20 minutes trying to work out how many points I could miss and still manage a C. He put kanji in the writing section that we'd never had to write before! WTF? It pissed me off. I don't think I did very well, but I'll continue to be optimistic until I go look at my final grade.

That was only the start of fail, however. I was glad it was over, it was my last final, I was free! Whoohoo! So I went back to my room to start downloading my prize, the game Portal (I got it legally, STFU, I bought it off their website for $20). That took a couple hours to download so I dinked around and did laundry and started packing my suitcase and cleaning my room. Portal finished downloading, I was psyched, I installed it...and then when I went to play it the fucker crashed at the loading screen. I got super upset. Finals were over! I was supposed to be happy! Why the fuck was this game interfering with that? So I went to the troubleshooting section of the site and did a bunch of stuff they said to do to hopefully get it to work: uninstalled AVG, ran a test on the file, tried to dick with the frame refresh rate, updated DirectX, all that good stuff. And each time, it kept crashing. I sat down and cried for a bit, and thought about finding something to kick. Now, all during this time I was doubly pissed because I was trying to track down my CC to sign up for a checkout time, and every single time I went to her room (about six times throughout the afternoon) she wasn't there. Finally I got calmed down a little when I got Portal to work. Now instead of crashing at the beginning it just lags like hell and crashes right after I save, but at least I can play the damn thing. So I was happy for a little while.

Then, the killer. I finally cornered my CC. She looked at her list and told me I WASN'T ON THE RETURN LIST FOR NEXT SEMESTER. WHAT. Words cannot express the utter "WTF NOOOOOOO" I felt. She said I needed to go talk to Housing in the morning. I hate when people say things like that. I went back to my room and bawled for about 45 minutes because I can't handle these things. During that time I called my mom six times (five on the home phone, once on her cell) and left three messages (two incoherent ones on the home phone, one on the cell where I actually managed to get the problem across). She didn't answer any of my calls, but I knew she'd call me back. I needed to calm down and since I couldn't get a hold of my mom to help me with that, I went online and watched four episodes (21-24) of Avatar: The Last Airbender which I'd started watching last October and then forgot about. That helped a little. Around 11:00 my friend Megan came over (not sure why she came over so late though--I was expecting her at like, 8:00 or 9:00) and we traded music and there was almost some EXTREME FAIL when she knocked my external drive off my desk and it hit the floor but thank god it was okay so no harm done. I told her about what had happened earlier, and that helped a little. She left a few minutes after midnight. I was bushed--it was the latest I'd stayed up all semester--so I went to sleep.

Jump to 4:30 a.m. My mom's calling me back (8:30 her time, she'd just gotten up for work) to make sure I'm okay and to find out what exactly the problem was. As I could speak understandably at this time (I'm invincible when I've just woken up, but unfortunately that's the only time) I told her what the problem was and asked her to call Housing for me because that's what mommies are for and she loves me. I figured it probably had something to do with the fact that we owed them $400 and I had delivered an I.O.U. letter with my form instead of a check. So she promised to call them when it was morning here, and call me back after she did. I went back to bed. She called back at 8:30 (waking me up AGAIN, but it was okay) and said that Housing had told her I was on the returning list and she didn't know what the fuck the problem was. Since I was slightly more awake at this time--I'd only been half asleep when the phone rang--I remembered that my CC had, in fact, not asked me for my name when she looked at the list. I also remembered that the one time I had spoken to her previously in the semester, she had mixed me and my roommate up (our names both start with J). I assumed this is what happened, because my roommate is, in fact, not returning next semester. I am slightly pissed at the mix-up she made that caused me undue angst, but I'm also glad that everything's (hopefully) ironed out. We shall see at 7:30 tonight when she comes to check me out if this is in fact the case and it was just her bad.

The semester, that is. This coming Thursday is the last day of classes, and on the 14th I'm off to Maui for a month. Hooray!

November is over; NaNoWriMo has come and gone. I ended my book on Sunday night at 50,008 words and have vowed never to touch that horrible thing again. Next year, I'm going to be a lot more prepared. Next year, I'm not going to get stuck and ramble on about nothing much and then figure out that 50k I've barely gotten to the actual plot and that I would be better off scraping the damn thing entirely by slapping on a very anti-climatic ending. Andy put the smackdown on Abracadabra's plans and said "get back to me in 20 years when you have a plan that might work." Then he leaves, and that's that. Sure, there's room for a sequel (or another 50k worth of book), but it's not going to happen. Cyberpunk just isn't my thing. Oh well. At least I got some writing practice in, and had fun doing it. I love being to finally go to a write-in, we had lots of fun and I got a new sticker for my computer. <3 It was a great day, Sunday.

Over break things are going to be pretty laid-back. I don't plan on doing much, if any, writing, but I might start working out a couple plots for this summer and next November. I've got some books to read and some games to play (I'm getting Portal on the 12th, as a thank-god-it's-over present after finals). And plenty of Japanese lyrics to romanize and music to tag. I can't wait until January--my mom's shipping me my Christmas present then, a 120GB external HD that I can stuff full of music. <3 It's gonna be great.

Indeed. Truthfully, though, there's only one full week of classes left before the end of the semester--all the others are short weeks. This coming week we've got Monday off for Veteran's Day, the week after that is a three-day week for Thanksgiving, the week of the 26th is a full week, the week of the 3rd is our last week, no classes that Friday, and then the week of the 10th is finals week. I'll be blasting off to Maui for winter break on probably the 13th or 14th.

My NaNo is progressing. Just progressing, nothing more. It still doesn't have a title. I just crossed 16k words--I've spent all day trying to make up for the fact that I wrote a grand total of 5 words yesterday. Yes, five. And it wasn't even a whole sentence--I was just appending an existing one. But since this is a three-day weekend, no worries. 600-ish more words tonight and I'll be where I'm supposed to be. This weekend I'm going internet-less: today was no-Gaia day, tomorrow and Monday will be absolutely no internet at all until I'm at 20k and all my homework is done. I really need a break from there, anyway.

Oh! And I got a nice surprise today. ^_^ A new free phone came in the mail for me! I hadn't realized they were sending me a new phone, I thought it would just be a new SIM card or something. But no, it's a new phone (well, new by my standards...the box says it's refurbished). It's a little nicer than my old gray clunky one--smaller, slimmer, and it's blue and gray instead of just gray. Instead of transferring my number over I'm just going to get a new number, because that's less hassle and it means I don't have to call them and be put on hold for half an hour. I used my old phone for the last time and called Scott--I thought my mom was going up to Bellevue today, but I guess she had to work the bar instead so she wasn't there yet. I wasted my remaining 9.5 minutes on him and packed that clunker away. I'll probably drop it off in the phone donation thing at Wal-Mart (if it's still there), just to be nice. It only cost me $20 in the first place--it's a freaking dinosaur-phone. I'm glad to be rid of it.

Now, back to writing! And I think I'll change my music...I've had nothing but Buck-Tick on shuffle for the last six hours. Something new is in order.

This week has been terrible. For Monday I had a self-imposed 1st draft due for my creative writing class (I didn't like my 1st 1st draft so I wrote a new one, but I ended up going back to the original story anyway because I was lazy...). Tuesday brought some slight relief, but not enough because I spent the entire night on Gaia participating in the Halloween event after I finished writing the 2nd draft of the story. Wednesday I wrote an entire six-page research paper which was due the following day. Took me seven hours. I also had two tests Wednesday, in French and Japanese. Thursday I had to write another paper (only four pages this time, though, and it was already half-done--thank god). Thursday was also the 1st of November, which meant NaNo, but I wrote about 500 words and that was it. Yesterday was PMS hell, but today even more so; I've had a headache all damn day and I haven't gotten anything else written because I've been on Gaia doing the event (which is probably what gave me the headache in the first place, but whatever).

Things that were vaguely decent about this week: one, I got a PM from the Gaia admins: I've been accepted to become a full-fledged mod! Two, I got an 81 on the Japanese test I took Wednesday. I'm very happy to have a B. My last test was an 88, but I fear that was probably the highest test grade I'm going to manage in there. I'm going to really have to work my ass off studying for the final if I want to get at least a B-. I'm not sure if it will count towards my major if I get a C. Three, I got chocolate. Not much, but there's more on its way courtesy of my mom. Should be here tomorrow. <3

Speaking of majors and classes, I went online and picked out my classes for next semester (even though registration doesn't open until the end of November). Hard schedule.. Japanese 302, Meiji Japan, Structure of Japanese, Marine Biology, and Marine Bio Lab. The last two are Gen. Ed. classes (ick). Both Meiji Japan and Structure of Japanese are writing-intensive 400-level classes: ouch. But the Japanese history professor is leaving after this year, so Meiji Japan is the only Japanese history course that's being taught so I have to take it.

On to more interesting things besides my already horrendously-behind NaNo: I finished both The Wind From Del Damos and Star Seekers pretty early on in October. The latter's ending I wasn't to happy with, but then again I'm not happy with pretty much the entire thing. There's a lot of TWFDD that I'm not happy with either--but hey, that's what editing's for! I still haven't decided on a title for my NaNo--or where the hell it's going right now. I'm sure I'll figure something out soon; as long as I can get to 5k words by the end of tomorrow I'll be back on track and good to go.

The semester's almost half-over already...I've got a midterm coming up this Friday. Things have been pretty busy lately.

Happily, Gaia finally fixed the permissions for mod assistants (i.e., me) yesterday afternoon, so I went after that with a vengeance. On Monday night I participated in stealing the virginity of the NaNoWriMo forums when they opened up for this year. It's crunch time now! I'm still looking for a new title for Terpsichore/You'll Rue the Day. October's been designated as "1k-a-day" month, so I can finish up The Wind From Del Damos and Star Seekers. If everything goes as planned, I should have The Wind From Del Damos finished by the end of next weekend.

School's been going okay for the most part. I say "okay" because I completely bombed my first Japanese test of the semester. I went to Japanese, and we got our tests back. Like I'd figured, I failed it horribly. I got 49%. At the top, in lovely big letters underneath the grade, was written the fear-inducing "SEE ME." After class I went up to him, and he told me to meet him up in his office in five minutes. Went up there and waited, trying to calm down. He came back and we sat down. I started bawling, etc., we talked about various things I could do (study group, tutors, Japanese-speaking friends, getting a cassette player to listen to the tapes, sitting in on another teacher's lower-level class, etc.). He said it was okay, he knew it wouldn't happen again, that it was just the shock of switching over to the new book and diving headfirst into literary Japanese when before we'd just done conversational Japanese. Then he asked me about time, and if I had a job; I said no but I needed one, and then asked me if I had financial issues and he was "all that's okay, everybody has something distracting them and it's not always good." We looked at my grades from last semester and he said I'd stayed pretty much the same, hadn't dipped up and down much grade-wise. Then he said he'd switch the chapter sections around, so we'd do the dialogue first and then the massive article of doom, and that if I could get my hands on a cassette player he'd loan me the tapes to listen to. There was also more discussion about forming a study group for the class. Last, he told me that I could only go up. All in all, I came out feeling pretty relived about the whole thing

But enough of that. I've got two new baby turtles! They hatched on the 2nd. My mom's supposed to be sending me pictures tonight. >w< I can't wait to see them! And I need to come up with some names...

I finished The Wind From Del Damos right on time with 45k. I've been working on it a little at a time since then; hopefully I'll have it finished this month. Maybe this weekend I'll sit down and write a bunch. After that's taken care of I'll move on to Star Seekers, and then The Cutter House.

Classes started Monday; I've survived the first week! I'm taking French 101, Japanese 301, Japan, Intro to Creative Writing, and Cultural Anthropology. The last is the only one I'm not overly fond of (except for the papers! I started working on the first one, that isn't due until the end of September, on Tuesday when we got the assignment XD). French is awesome and so is the teacher (she's a native French speaker and has an absolutely horrible accent!) It's going to be really easy, I think, because French and English and Spanish are all so similar (I took 3 years of Spanish in high school). Creative Writing I'm still a little worried about, but eh. I think things will get better once we get past the readings and on to the writing part. It was fun, though--the very first day of class he did a little introduction and then had us write for the rest of the period. On Wednesday I asked him if he knew about NaNoWriMo, and he said he'd heard of it. I promised I'd get him the details in October when I posted the flyers for it. Japanese...Japanese is the only class I'm really worried about. We got new books this year, and they're very intimidating. So much Japanese! And Rogers-sensei isn't very good at explaining things--I still don't understand Japanese grammar, and it's my third year!

Anyway. I'm still plugging along on The Wind From Del Damos. I've got about 9k to go until I reach my goal, but I'm running out of ways to connect my plot together. Originally I didn't think the plot was going to stretch to 50k, but now I'm really stalling on it so I think it might. I still only have to reach 45k, though, because the extra 5k is coming from Star Seekers. I'm going to push to finish that in September/October--I want to have a clean slate for NaNo!

SWEET. My new MP3 player arrived today! It's so awesome. Check it out! It's very tiny! And cute! And doubles as a USB flash drive! And has an FM radio! In short, it's totally cool.

There's a kitten asleep in my lap right now. She's getting big! Her racing stripes are starting to show up better. We can't wait until she's old enough to have her front claws removed. She shreds curtains. D:

The Wind From Del Damos should hit 20k today or tomorrow. I would be excited, except that means I reach the end of the second chapter and have to jump to chapter nine and face the lack of 30k word's worth of plot. Okay, so I know vaguely what they're going to do, but...it's a little sketchy. I had a dream the other night that I want to turn into another novella. D: Too many ideas! I need to finish Star Seekers still, and The Cutter House.

It's not a happy summer for my mom & her friends. D: First of all, on the afternoon of the 14th, her best friend Dawn and Dawn's husband Jamie (James) were in a motorcycle accident in Wisconsin. You can read the article here: Six hurt when car, cycles collide. Dawn broke her back and screwed up her leg. I guess she still can't feel most of her legs, but she can move her right leg a little and she had surgery on her ankle yesterday. Jamie screwed up his leg too, and had a few broken ribs and a collapsed lung. He's doing better too. They got the worst of it. THEN, just this weekend, Scott's friend Dave (look two posts down--I just went fishing with he and his daughter in May!) died early Saturday morning from complications related to lung cancer (he was diagnosed in February). My mom's in Bellevue tonight for the funeral tomorrow.

To make my own summer worse, when my mom was talking to Dawn --the other Dawn, not the one who was in the motorcycle accident--about Dave (this was last week, before he died), she let it slip that my grandpa was terminal (prostate cancer) and he'd been told so in March or something and she never even told me! So I broke down and had a nice cry about that, and she tried to tell me that if you really thought about it everyone was terminal lol and that he wouldn't kick the bucket for another few years anyway and the man is 70-something anyway for chrissakes! But I love my grandpa. ;_; My mom asked me that, if either of my grandparents died while I was in Hawaii, if I wanted to come home for the funeral. I told her it depended on which grandparent it was. >:( I don't care too much for my grandma anymore, ever since that trip to Florida the summer before my senior year.

Anyway. Enough about death and injury. I have a new kitten! The world should rejoice! Little fucker scratched my foot up. My fat cat is trying to eat packing tape.

I've got my footing for now on The Wind From Del Damos. I crossed the 10k mark this afternoon! I was feeling in a writing mood, so I also added a couple hundred words to The Cutter House. It's still progressing, albeit extremely slowly.

Boring summer is boring.

I've been a lazy bum and neglected to get a job; instead I've been selling books & CDs on Amazon and random crap on eBay. It doesn't get me much, but it pays for gas and DDR. A-yup. I've got two DDR pads on their way to me, and DDR Extreme 2 in my grubby little fingers.

Oh, and a kitten. We got a kitten. I forgot about that. Actually, we've currently got a kitten and her momma, but momma cat is hopefully going bye-bye real soon because we're sick of her and she's probably sick of being locked in my mom's bedroom (we already have two grown cats, and momma cat is a little protective of her kitten. Needless to say, no one gets along very well--plus momma cat has claws and our cats don't). The new kitten's name is Misty. She's a gray kitty with dark stripes. <3

Yeah. So. Um...what else...I went to see the new Harry Potter movie this morning. Umbridge was scarily pink and giggly. Watched the fourth one last night at a HP party. I haven't yet decided which movie is my favorite yet. I'll be getting the last book the day it comes out.

Writing...urk. I've been attempting to write a new novella, The Wind From Del Damos (previously The Wind From Heaven, but it got a massive face lift which included an entirely new plot). I may put it up here eventually, but for now you can read it here. As you can see from the bottom of the first post, I also spent some time in June working on finishing up Star Seekers. Plans are still green for Terpsichore (or whatever the heck I've been calling it lately) to be written in November for NaNoWriMo.

Well, I got back in Iowa on the 12th after another airport/flight stint. My luggage decided to stay behind in Chicago, but we got that all sorted out and it got home all right. I hung around my brother's birthday/graduation party long enough to say 'hi' to all the guests, give my brother his present, and eat some cake, and then I went to sleep for a few hours. When I woke up everyone was gone and the fire pit was down to a few coals, so I went out and had some marshmallows. On Sunday we drove down to Bellevue to go mushroom hunting. We found about two pounds, but they weren't very fresh. We ate some of the best ones that night and threw the rest away, then ate the ones my mom had found before I got home. We also went to a graduation party in Bellevue and I had brownies. Yum.

The week that followed wasn't too eventful. I got Pokemon Pearl as a welcome home present from my brother. Twice I went over to his friends house and we played Wario Ware and Guitar Heroes.

The 19th we had a garage sale. We didn't do very good. I only made $14.25, minus $2 for a waffle maker I bought at one of the other garage sales. We closed early because my mom had to go get her tire patched and I wanted to go with her, and nobody was coming anyway. When we got back we packed up and my mom and I headed out to Bellevue. We spent the night there, and then Sunday morning (yesterday) I went to get a fishing license and then we went out on the Mississippi below the dam to fish. There were seven of us: me, my mom, Scott, Scott's dad, Marie (Scott's neice), Dave, and Dave's daughter Sam. We went down a ways, but didn't catch anything much. We went back to the dock to drop off Scott's dad and Marie, and then we went back out to a different spot and had much better luck. The totals for the whole day:

• 8 Drum (4 big, 4 medium)
• 5 Bluegill
• 2 Catfish
• 2 Suckers (thrown back)
• 1 Shiner (used for bait)
• 1 Mooneye (thrown back)

Poo. Spring break will be over after tomorrow. I don't want to go back to classes! Oh well. 41 more days until I can go home!

All righty. On Monday night I wasn't feeling very good because I ate moldy bread on Sunday without realizing it, but Amanda dragged me out of my room anyway and we walked downtown with Brion and a couple of other people I didn't know. We went to the dollar theater and saw Pursuit of Happyness, which I didn't want to see and which I didn't like anyway. I had a hotdog before the movie and we stopped at Burger King on the way home. I felt better on the walk home. We also stopped at 7-11, but I didn't go in.

Tuesday, Amanda and I biked to Kope Kope (a coffeehouse/cafe type place) and we hung out there for about four hours. I wrote a little over 300 words of Star Seekers and had two passion fruit Italian sodas, a turkey sandwich, and a slice of chocolate cake.

On Wednesday we biked downtown, and because my butt was sore from riding Conni's man-bike we switched bikes and I rode Amanda's. We went to the art store because I needed to get some paint and get a cat fix, and then we went to the farmer's market. We bought some longan (sort of fruit related to lychee - I didn't like it) and some mountain apples. We also bought toe rings, and then we had some shave ice and biked back up. We went to the house of Amanda's parent's friends, and got to make dinner for them (chicken broccoli noodle casserole thing) and then we made chocolate chip cookies and watched Bones and American Idol.

Thursday we went back to Kope Kope. I had a turkey sandwich, a passion fruit Italian soda, and a strawberry-lemonade smoothie. I wrote 1,000 words of Star Seekers, and then we played one round of Battleship (Amanda won) and a game of Scrabble (she won again, but only by ~15 points).

Friday was a lazy day. Neither of us got out of bed until 3:00. Today was only slightly less lazy. I wrote another 500 words of Star Seekers and didn't do much else. Conni came back. I got a package from my mom with my Easter chocolates, but I can't eat them because I've got a cold sore in my mouth that really hurts and it makes me sad.

I need to get my ass in gear and finish Star Seekers. Chapter 17 is ~1k from completion; then I just have to write chapters 18, 24, and 25 and I should be done with the damn thing.

Oh, and HOLY SHIT GUESS WHAT ELSE HAPPENED?! I got made a helper in the Writer's Forum! My dream come true. =^o^=

Yay! My DS came on Monday night, and I've been playing Animal Crossing since then. Got my first house and store upgrades already. I'm trying to figure out the wireless thing, I went to the lounge, but it spent so long testing the connection that I got impatient and gave up. I've also been playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, 'specially tonight. I'm partway through the second trial. This game's hard...I thought I'd be able to get through it without referring to a guide, but no such luck. I wonder how my uncle would do if I were to let him play it. He's a lawyer and a big strategy gamer. He'd probably breeze through the whole game.

Anyway. I haven't written anything lately, except for about 1,200 words last week on a short story The Cutter House I've been too busy with other stuff. Spring break is coming up, though, so if I can pull myself away from my games long enough, I might get some serious writing done. Maybe I'll challenge myself to wrap up Star Seekers.

He shut his laptop off and stood up. "Well, I've got to go to class now," he said, shouldering his bag.

"Okay."

He took a Coke out of his pocket and she giggled. He looked slightly put off. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing!" she exclaimed with a smile, and he took a drink.

"You've never seen anyone pull a Coke out of their pocket?" He shrugged, gesturing to his bag. "No other pockets." She shook her head, and he glanced at the clock, and then he moved towards her for a quick half-hug and put an arm around her. She tried to do the same.

"Your bag's attacking me!" she said with a laugh; he apologized, not sure what else to do, and backed away. She watched him go, as he walked outside and passed the window; they looked at each other once more before he disappeared out of sight behind the vending machines and she was left staring at her own reflection in the glass behind them.

Inspired in wistfulness she began to type.

After only a few minutes--retelling the last few minutes--her fingers ceased their motion and rested on top of the keys. She glanced at the wall for the third time, trying to decipher the writing there. Her fingers traced the sloppy cursive carved into the painting. "Live..." She went back to the top. "Ideas? Voice is...related? Friendly...R-something."

She gave up. It would probably be easier to read if she wasn't sitting right next to the wall and trying to read it at an angle. She went back to typing, then checked the clock, and then listened to the noise of others typing in the background on the other side of the room. Someone's computer made an obnoxious sound; someone else was talking. She wondered if, since it was ten after, she should get up and start walking towards her class which started at the half-hour. She wanted to get rid of the paper in her bag that she'd had to write quickly the night before, having thought it wasn't due until the following week.

After reflecting on all this she found that an additional five minutes had passed, and following another obnoxious beep--she surmised that it might be the printer--she stowed her keyboard and headed to class.

Walking up to the classroom building she met a girl, the ex-girlfriend of a friend who hadn't returned for the current semester. They exchanged chatter, and parted.

She took the elevator, wincing at the ominous scraping sound it always made as it passed the second floor, and arrived on the third.

The girl she had just talked to was there, seated at one of the cheap aluminum and glass tables.

"How did you get up here before me?"

The girl pointed at the stairs on the opposite side of the building.

This story brought to you by extreme boredom and writer's lazy. YES HE DID HAVE A CAN OF COKE IN HIS POCKET. TRUE STORY!

First La'cryma Christi, and now Janne Da Arc? Why are all my favorite bands breaking up all of a sudden? T_T That really sucks.

Kari made me walk to Subway today with her for dinner. It was sprinkling. I got to pet a cat on the way there. I hate walking back up that stupid hill.

Uh. Yeah. That's all.

Novel? What novel? >.>

Classes and all that shit. Doing okay so far, I think. Freaking three papers (well, two papers and a letter) due this week, as well as a biology test. Ick. And I'm not feeling good--sore throat. I was naughty and didn't go to painting class today. Too long a walk, and it was hot out and I forgot my hair tie and the bookstore was still out of paper and I couldn't find a ride and I didn't feel good so I was all "screw it" and went back to my room and fell asleep.

Haven't been doing much writing. I put another thousand words to Star Seekers about a week and a half ago, but nothing much else is getting done. I need to start working on my mom's birthday present.

Oh. And I joined Cyber Nations yesterday. A whole bunch of people I know from the WF joined it too. My country is Afasia, and my name is Jareth Ferold V. I'm on the black team. It seems interesting so far, if a little slow.

Sort of. Friday I got bored and starting romanizing bunches of lyrics again for my lyrics site. I'm up to 7 for Buck-Tick and 23 for The Alfee. I think I'm just going to do two more for the latter, getting all the ones for Going My Way, and then do some more Buck-Tick ones. And if anybody's got the new Alfee album, ONE -Venus of Rock-, I'd love you forever if you'd share.

More stuff. Yesterday I was looking at plane ticket prices for when I go home for the summer. Tomorrow I need to look for a job and do homework, ick. I've been naughty and haven't been writing anything, when I really need to get my ass in gear and finish up Star Seekers. My toes hurt. My big toe on my right foot has an ingrown nail and it's all red and hurts but a tiny little bottle of Outgrow costs a lot. I think that it might have a little something to do with nail polish remover, though. Maybe I could put something else on it, like rubbing alcohol. Would that work? I don't know. Two of my toes on my left foot hurt too, because I pulled my chair back to watch a movie tonight (Rocky Horror Picture Show), and when I sat down my toes were under the leg of the chair and GODDAMNIT THAT HURT LIKE A BITCH. The one is definitely going to be bruised tomorrow.

Er. I can't wait until summer is here. I want to go home! T_T

I bought more stuff, at the bookstore today. I was going to get the four books for my class, but then they were out of used ones so I only bought the one we're supposed to have read out of for next Tuesday. I'll order the rest online. And I bought a sweatshirt with a hood. It's pretty and blue and has school spirit and shit like that.

Then I bought...Adobe Creative Suite CS2! OMG YAY! And it was hella cheap because I'm a student and I got it from the school bookstore. Seriously. $189 for Photoshop, Illustrator, ImageReady, InDesign, and GoLive CS2 as well as Acrobat Professional 7.0. I'm set.

And now I need to go dry my hair and put a shirt on because my roommate's complaining. Oh, and I killed a cockroach last night at about a quarter to two. It was crawling on my arm and woke me up. >:(

So...today was the second day of classes. Monday was pretty uneventful, I have three classes in a row in the morning. Highlight of my day was seeing Nic for the first time since classes ended for last semester. Then I took a break for lunch, went to the bookstore to get the MLA Handbook (the only book required for my English class, thank god), found out the bus schedule was crap and unless I want to sit there for 50 minutes I'm going to have to walk to my painting class. It starts at 1:30; the bus before that is at 12:20. Anyway. I know at least one person in all my classes, which is good. Two of my teachers I've had before, and two of them seem like I'll like them--the professor for my Japanese history class, especially. My English teacher is the only one I'm not too sure about yet.

I went shopping today, since my loan refund came in. Bought a couple books at Borders (Kushiel's Dart and The Faded Sun Trilogy) and some necessary stuff at Wal-Fart. And I got these funky ginger chews, the sole reason being I'd seen an ad for them in a magazine the day before. Damn advertising. I should have gotten the peppermint ones instead of the original, though. And I got some rambutan. Tomorrow I'm going to go back to the bookstore and get the four books for my Japanese history class, and the Adobe Creative Suite. No more crappy PS 6! CS2 all the way, and it comes with Illustrator too. I think I might get a hooded sweatshirt, too, because I don't have one here.

Writing stuff. Like I predicted, I didn't come anywhere close to finishing Star Seekers. I only managed to write a little under 6k words. I'll try again, and try to get it finished by the first week of February--but I'm not holding my breath. I haven't got any plans for anything else until I manage to finish that.

I'm tired of waiting for my box! When's it going to get here? ;_; I wants me some homemade cookies and Christmas presents. This will be my first Christmas away from home...what am I going to do? ;_; I know! I'll get addicted to The Sims 2. >.> That's my present. Why isn't it here yet! My roommate's leaving tomorrow morning. I've got a nice Christmas dinner planned out for me, though. Lemon and cracked pepper tuna fillets with angelhair pasta in alfredo sauce, and apple pie for dessert. ^o^ It sounds nicer than it is, if you know it's tuna fillets from a pouch and pasta roni. The apple pie's all good though--and it was free! I've got a 5lb. box of clementines, too. They were half off with my Safeway Club card...only $5.88! No cold for me, with that much vitamin C!

Anyway...I've been slacking. I was supposed to be finishing up Star Seekers by Jan. 8...so far I've only written about 2k and my goal is 10k. @.@ Naughty naughty! And I started another story, inspired by a dream, called The Cutter House. It's horror, but that doesn't have to do with the title. Cutter was the last name of the family that lived there. Oh! And my typing speed. I'm averaging 40-43 wpm now, yay.

Wow...a lot's happened since my last entry here. First of all, I took a major risk at the end of October--but I pulled through! The last week of October I decided to give the Dvorak keyboard layout another go...right before NaNo started! That meant I had a week to learn to to type again, but this time I did it and I didn't give up! (Unlike last December, when I tried to switch the first time...I didn't do so good with that.) Now, however, I'm typing great again. I started the month off at about 15wpm, and now I'm up to about 36wpm. Still not great, but I'm getting there.

Ah, NaNo. I won--50k on the dot--but it was a lot closer than last year. Last year I finished on the 20th, and had 19 days of typing. This year, I finished on the 28th and had 22 days of typing. Yeah, I ditched doing the two novels and just went with one: Star Seekers. I wanted to get done before Thanksgiving break, but that didn't happen. I got behind, and kept lowering my goal. I never went under the actual minimum (the 1,667 words/day one), so there wasn't any point where I was actually panicking. Star Seekers is far from over, though--I'm going to finish it up in December; it should take about 10-15k more words. Then I'll shelve it for a bit...and then I'm going to rewrite it completely because it's the crappiest piece of crap I've ever had the misfortune to crap out. Yes, I think it's that bad. When I rewrite it, there's going to be 100% more characterization and more boat. That means researching my ass off so I can tell the midden mast from the bowline. And more world development and better traveling estimates for time.

Terpsichore, or whatever the hell it's named at the moment, is likely going to be pushed all the way back to NaNo 2007. Not sure if I'm doing a summer one--I may just be concentrating on the rewrite of Star Seekers...Not to mention that I've got two other novels on the backburner waiting for editing (or in the case of DotIoS, some rewriting--but nothing as massive as Star Seekers). I'm not yet sure what I'm doing with Dorei. Daydreamer will eventually get a part five and some sidestories to go with it, but like everything else those ideas are still in the development stage. And there's a couple of stories to write still too, not to mention The Wind From Heaven! I don't know how I'll ever find the time to get all of these things done, but my goal still stands: have a book published by the time I'm 25.

Only 10 days left, and many things happening! First of all, Terpsichore's title has been changed to America, Land of the Damned. Second...I've decided to write two novels this November, of 50k each! That's 3,334 words a day. Star Seekers will be written first, and then America, Land of the Damned. Last night I started plotting out Star Seekers, and I'm up to chapter 7 on that. It's going to be science fantasy, with PIRATES! I'm excited.

However, I don't know how the heck I'm going to manage to get all these art projects done...they're killing me. Not to mention that I don't like the current unit or the look of any of the projects in (one project which I should be working on right now...I should really try and get it done today). You can see my previous projects on my DA account. They're okay, I guess. The cat one that's my featured deviation killed me.

Besides the art projects, there are a couple other things going on in November. I'm not sure about tests and papers and such, but I expect there'll be a few of those. However, I'll be heading over to Maui for Thanksgiving break (four days) with one of my roommates to visit her family, and I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to get in writing-wise while I'm there. She won't let me take my laptop, but that's why I've got a Dana.

Hmm, Halloween's coming up too. Sometime this week my roommate's going to dye my hair - it's going to be 'burgundy.' My mom's going to be surprised when she sees it!

It's been quite a while since I've updated this place! The summer was full of fun things - mostly fishing with Scott (my mom's boyfriend). Unfortunately, it wasn't very full of writing. Amaranth never took off because I decided that one, it would be better as a trilogy; and two, my writing abilities aren't yet up to par with writing something that epic. So I've shelved it, and moved on to other things. Nothing's been finished, but I worked a little on my short story collection, Slides, and I trashed the idea of having The Wind From Heaven be a manga and I've started turning it into a story. Here's a small part of the beginning:

The figure crouched on the edge of the roof, an irregular silhouette against the setting sun. From his post Avery observed the passersby as they concluded their evening shopping and hurried home to dinner and a warm chair in front of the fire. No one bothered him; anyone who glanced up and saw him immediately cast their eyes back down and picked up their pace. Tongues would wag in taverns tonight for sure--a demon in town, what could that fella possibly want here?

Avery tilted his head back, stretching his stiff neck. The last of the sun's rays glinted off the polished horns which curled against the sides of his head. Impatience tugged at the edges of his mind. Hours had passed and still he'd not found what he knew to be out there somewhere, hiding. Perhaps with darkness he'd find what he sought, but he wasn't sure any more. Maybe he'd been wrong--but he'd felt it here, he knew he had. It was here, in this backwater human town where he was probably the first demon to drop by in years. Power drew him like a moth to a flame, and there was power here. He could feel it in the air, like a static charge. He needed that power.

I know I need to get back into the swing of things, especially with NaNo only a little over a month away. Speaking of that: I'm still 90% sure that I'll be writing Terpsichore. The other 10%, however, is saying that I should start from scratch about a week before it starts. ^_^; School, however, hasn't been cooperating. There was a creative writing class offered, and I signed up for it - but unfortunately there was only one other person there besides me and they canceled it. Then there's my art class, which is a major time-eater. I'm spending probably 5-10 hours outside of class time working on those projects, and there's a project due every week. November's going to be hell, especially since I'll be going to Maui for four days to have Thanksgiving with the family of one of my roommates. They'll probably keep me too busy to get much writing in, and my art project that's due the Monday afterwards? I think I'll be taking my one 'free pass' and turning it in late.