Wow, it's been a while...my time in Japan is going so fast! For Golden Week (April 30-May 6) I took the shinkansen down to Kyoto to visit an internet friend (a fellow Gaia Online moderator), and I stayed at her apartment. She only had two days off of work during the time I was there, so I mostly just got to go exploring by myself. I visited many temples and gardens and did a lot of walking. I also went to the Kyoto zoo. Together, my friend and I went down to the Gion district and found a place that would dress us up as Maiko and take our pictures. It was expensive (about $110) but it was worth it! I had a lot of fun. The whole trip cost me around $700, which wasn't too bad. $250-ish of that was the shinkansen tickets.

This past weekend I took a day trip into Tokyo and went shopping in Akihabara. I took $250 with me. The very first store I went in was a used computer store...I walked out with a cute little Asus eee PC for about US$180. Then I wandered around all the model and figure shops and bought some little things, since I'd already spent most of my money on the computer. Oh well.

Other than that, things have been pretty regular. I go to classes weekdays, and Friday nights I help teach two English conversation classes, one with elementary kids and the other with adults. Weekends I just lounge around, or I try to go somewhere new. Next week if the weather is nice I think I am going to go up to Shinrin Koen, which I have heard is a very beautiful park.

I have not been doing much writing lately, except for about 1,000 words of The Cutter House last month. I want to finish that story for SuWriMos this year.

Fuck fuck fuck I leave for Japan in less than two weeks. I started packing tonight~

Anyway. Day one of epic two-day shopping spree was today. It started out not-epic. My brother was supposed to get dropped off at school and then I was going to get dropped off back home after my appointment at 8 a.m. and then Scott was going to pick my brother up from school while my mom went to get her hair done, but my brother decided he didn't want to go to class so it didn't quite work out that way. Instead, we took Scott with us and went to my appointment, then drove around for a bit and went to Home Depot to look at daisy seeds and miter saw tables and cacti, after which we accompanied my mom to her hair appointment.

It took three hours to do her hair.

I entertained myself with Rune Factory, and Scott wandered off across the street to some hunting & fishing store, which kept him happy. After her hair was finally done we went to get some lunch, and found a nice $5 buffet at a Chinese restaurant. MMMM, CRAB RAGOONS. THEY ARE MY WEAKNESS. After lunch it was time to shop, shop, shop! First we hit Goodwill. I found a very nice reddish skirt for my steampunk outfit, as well as some regular wear - a nice pair of black shoes, two tank tops, a blouse, and a pair of khaki pants. Next stop was the Salvation Army (conveniently located the next block down), where I FINALLY found a shirt possibly suitable for my steampunk outfit as well as a cute little jean skirt, a brand-new comforter for my bed, a beanie baby penguin, and an IC-Y penguin music speaker thing that dances! It's rather cute too. Oh, and a purse that my Dana fits in.

We stopped at Dairy Queen after that and my mom and I got hot fudge sundaes, then it was on to a local consignment store called Plato's Closet where I got a nice pair of capris. Then I went next door to Jo-Ann and picked up some green ribbon and gold grommets to finish my pseudo-corset. I have yet to locate the hammer.

Got back home, started washing my new stuff, and also started packing which I already mentioned. I can't wait to leave.

Awhile since the last entry. Been busybusybusy! I started sewing some stuff for Etsy - little coin purses - and then I got distracted by making myself a fake corset for my steampunk outfit. I made a rather nice bracelet for it before that.

Went up to Bellevue this last weekend, and conned Scott into driving us up to Dubuque to go shopping Saturday. The plan was Goodwill and Menards... well, on the way I spotted an Office Depot that was going out of business so we just HAD to stop. Yay sales! Most of the stuff was 40-60% off, and they weren't too empty yet. I picked up some shipping supplies for my Etsy business - 50 DVD-size padded mailers for $20, a big roll of brown postal paper, three big rolls of packing tape, and a postage scale that goes up to 16oz. I told my mom not to let me near the paper section but apparently she didn't listen because I walked out of there with a nice black suede journal. I also picked up some bonding cement for crafting and blue and red pens for editing. My mom got new batteries for our phones (both the handsets were dead...downstairs we were using the speakerphone, and the upstairs one would start beeping about low battery within five minutes of use). She also got some printer paper and a bunch of toilet paper. Between the two of us we spent $93, but it was worth it.

After that was our second unplanned stop; we went down the strip to Petco and went and looked around the aquarium section for about 20 minutes. Did I mention that we were in Scott's truck and we bought more than we could actually fit inside it because he didn't have a cover on the back? It was tons of fun. Anyway, third stop was Goodwill because I wanted to go clothes shopping and it was the entire reason we were up there in the first place. We probably spent about three hours in there poking around and trying stuff on. I was rather proud of myself - I'm trying to turn my look around, get away from the jeans-and-t-shirt image. I did not buy a single t-shirt or pair of jeans. Yay. What I did get was 8 blouses, 3 pairs of pants, a jacket, a belt, and a really nice, barely-worn pair of leather ankle boots. Some nice name-brands, too; mostly Old Navy and Mossimo. Finally we were done with that. I managed to spend $52, which was only $2 over my self-imposed limit so I think I did pretty darn good. Last, we headed over to Menards. I bought two bags of milk maids because they were 2/$5. Scott got some garden hose connector thingies, looked at tools, and explained to me what joiner biscuits were.

On Sunday we went down to Scott's house and didn't really get much accomplished. We started to boil some skulls, and mom and I did a bit of dusting and sorting. I started on cleaning the big tank in the living room but I got bored and the snapping turtle was not being very helpful so I went to feed the other turtles and I just realized I never fed the snapper in the living room. Oh well. While poking around in the kitchen, we discovered a box full of jewelry Scott had found rooting through cars in junkyards. I appropriated a ring, a locket, and a small opal pendant. We discovered that among the jewelry was a 14k gold chain (broken) and a 14k gold heart pendant that my mom wants him to take to a jewelers and get the stones tested to see if they're real diamonds. There was also a chain we thought might be Italian silver. I also found a nice Sheaffer ink pen (the kind with the nib that takes the cartridges) and I cleaned the nib out and he let me take it because I had ink at home for it already.

Sunday night on the way home we stopped at Wal-Mart for some groceries and I got some socks so I could wear my new boots (all I had before were ankle-socks). There were some nice bras on sale too, but APPARENTLY the dressing rooms close at 10pm so I couldn't try them on and thus didn't buy any.

Now we come to today. My mom's tax return came, so she put lots of money in my account which is now gone because plane tickets to Japan are fucking expensive ($1400!). But HOLY SHIT I AM GOING TO JAPAN IT'S REALLY REAL NOW! Ahem. Today I also made my 10th sale on Etsy, and got my first returning customer. Then I discovered BUCK-TICK had come out with a new single last month (GALAXY) and a new album (memento mori) just last week, so I went out and tracked them down. Going to work on those lyrics now for my Kumiuta site.

The writing...oh. What's that? I finally finished The Forest of Stone in either late January or early this month. Besides that, I've just been plotting how best to go about editing Daydreamer. To help me with all my stories, I made this wonderful chalkboard globe. It's seriously great. If I can find more globes for cheap or free, I might even make some to sell on Etsy.

I got SO MANY PENGUINS OMG. Anyway. We opened some presents at home on the night of the 23rd because I insisted upon it. I was so excited about this "magical penguin thing" my mom had been telling me about! It turned out to be a really cute white and silver penguin-shaped cookie jar! I am using it to store all the candy I got. Lots of candy. My mom also got me a pair of red penguin pajamas and a red shirt with penguins on it. My brother got me a little stuffed penguin ornament. On the more boring side of things, my mom also got me a new razor and a tin of "Cashew Thunder" which is chocolate-coated popcorn and cashews, yum! I've got one more present from my mom left open, but I already know what it is, and that is a $35 gift certificate to Build-A-Bear so I can build a penguin, yay!

On the morning of Christmas Eve we headed down to Scott's parents' house for the festivities there. After dinner was the gift exchange, and then the general opening of presents. For the exchange I got a very cute (and warm and comfy!) pair of penguin slippers! I also got a pair of penguin earrings and a pair of pajama pants with penguins on them. I didn't get a stocking since I was too old (whatever, my brother's only two years younger and he got a stocking!) but he gave me the toenail clippers and gum out of his and I got the extra candy ornament, which was tootsie rolls. Regular gift-opening commenced. I got plenty of gift certificates: $10 to Best Buy, $10 to Wal-Mart, and $35 to Target. I also got another pair of penguin pajamas but they were pink and I didn't like them as much. More about those later. A stuffed penguin, which I named Dustin. Hmm, what else... candy, and... OH YEAH. BEST PRESENT EVER. I got a freakin' birdhouse. What is so special about a birdhouse, you ask? Well, my mom's house guests totaled my car. So my mom and Scott made me a birdhouse out of it! It's painted the same shade of red, my license plate is the roof, the perch is my key, and it's got the Mazda symbol above the opening. And my turtle air freshener is hanging from the key. I think I'll probably use it as a piggy bank, even though it's weatherproofed.

The drive home from Scott's parents' house on the night of the 26th was absolutely terrible. The fog was so bad that we had about 5 to 10 feet visibility the entire way home. And the fog was doing some funky blowing thing. It looked like snow, but it wasn't. It was just moisture. It was actually pretty warm out, probably in the 30s. Anyway, against all common sense we got back and decided to go shopping before going home. Visibility was a little better in town, at least, with all the lights. We went to Best Buy first, and I spent my $10 giftcard and another $10 on a pair of Skullcandy ear buds, because I needed some new, comfortable earphones. Then we went to Burger King and got dinner, and then to Barnes & Noble because my mom had a $20 gift certificate she said me and my brother could split. I used my half to get the second book of Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series. After that we went over to Kohls because I wanted to return those pink penguin pajamas. In their place I got a sweatshirt with penguins on it and an undershirt that was on sale for $1.20. I think it also paid for some socks my mom bought. Anyway, my mom told me to go look in the luggage section because I need a new suitcase for Japan (the one I've been using, which is my mom's, is falling apart something terrible). I found one which was exactly what I wanted - one of those huge psuedo-duffle rolling ones. And hooray! All the luggage was 50% off. So against all better judgment (and because I argued we weren't going to find a better deal anywhere else) I convinced my mom to drop $120 ($240 originally) on a new suitcase. It's bright red, yay.

After we got out of Kohls my brother was complaining, so we went home and dropped him off and my mom, Scott, and I went back out to go to Target and Wal-Mart. We went to Target first and I used my $35 (plus another $5) to buy a really nice Swiss Army brand laptop case. My mom just bought some wrapping paper that was on sale. Then we went to Wal-Mart, and I bought some rather boring stuff: some dried baby shrimp for Petey, a lunch bag for transporting Orpheus, and two bottles of Arizona pomegranate green tea (YUM). We didn't get back from shopping until after midnight, oops. And then, today, my mom went back to Target to pick up some other stuff and she came back with a really cute penguin night light for me! It sits on a base and has a reddish LED, and when you pick it up and take it off the base its whole belly lights up white. Squee!

Other news is random news. While I was away I decided to peel all the stuff off my DS, leaving it looking rather scratched and rugged, and then I proceeded to doodle on it with a sharpie. Excellent. I started playing Rune Factory, and 'tis awesome. I went back to modding on Gaia today, after so much time away (although I had gone on Monday or Tuesday and cleaned up a whole lot). I listed some stuff on eBay and Amazon today... manga on eBay which sold alreay (yay) and then I put some of my imported CDs on Amazon because I really need the money. Oh well. I still have copies of them. This coming Monday...I am not looking forwards to getting my wisdom teeth out. We'll see how that goes.

I DID IT! I wrote 100k in a month (100,677 to be precise)! Wow. I almost can't believe it. This month has been so full of ups and downs... well, let's have a recap!

I started out strong on November first with the first book of my Amaranth trilogy. Mind you, this was the same project I'd tried to start in the summer of 2007, and I'd tanked around 1500 words. This time? I tanked around 7500. On the 3rd I started over with a new project, one of my Kobreck stories. Turn of the century romance/horror. Got off great with that, and wrapped the story up on the 13th with almost 30k even. I went back to Amaranth and skipped forwards to a more exciting portion of the story, and trapezed along from there. Got back on track word-wise on the 15th after an epic 10k day at the write-in. I managed to stay exactly on track until the 21st when I had a day of no words; got caught up again on the 24th, wrote nothing on the 25th (had a test to study for instead), fixed that by the 27th. I hit the end of Amaranth about 1200 words shy of 70k and went back to fill in the part I'd skipped over... and then, the sweet smell of success! I baked a victory cake to celebrate. :D

Amaranth was, to me, a complete and utter failure. Not quite as bad as last year's NaNo, but bad enough. This was supposed to be the start of my trilogy, "the one" to publish. That... isn't happening. Maybe I'll salvage it, but when I do, it's not going to be a trilogy. I'll condense it all into one book, and finish adding what was supposed to be in the other three book, weaving them all together -- alternating chapters between the three main characters. I think that will make it much more like what I'd intended it to be.

The Kobreck story, on the other hand, I'm mostly happy with. Yes, it needs some serious tweaking and trimming (and BOY do I need to do some research for historical accuracy!) but I think that eventually it can be coaxed into becoming a very decent short story/novella. I look forwards to writing many more stories as Breck/about Kobreck. He's just such an awesome character. I do have already another story that involves him, but it's mainly about Layla -- I have yet to write anything for her. Think Dresden files, but with a female lead.

Things to do now that NaNoWriMo is over for this year: top priority is to finish The Forest of Stone. Other things that need finished are The Cutter House and The Tower. Besides, of course, all that pesky editing and revision on all my novel first drafts. Out of those, I'd say Dorei, Daydreamer and The Wind From Del Damos have top priority. Dawn on the Isle of Souls and Star Seekers can wait patiently on the back burner along with Amaranth.

I'm glad the semester's over. I'll be back home on December 20th, and then I'll have a looooong winter break since I won't be leaving for Japan until the end of March.

Just for shits and giggles, I'm going to run Daydreamer through The Fantasy Novelist's Exam.

5. Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world?
Well, sort of. Not to save the world per se, but there's definitely a quest for a magical artifact (Lian's family's sword) involved.

10. Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character?
No, it's her brother, but I suppose that gets me some points.

19. Would "a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan" aptly describe any of your female characters?
Lian is such a tomboy!

21. How about "a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage"?
Taylon's got this baby covered.

25. Do you not know when the hay baler was invented?
Do I care?

35. Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm?
God damn I hope so, because that's the entire premise of the book!

39. Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings?
Elves and halflings, yes.

42. At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines?
How about "ancient dragon caves" instead?

48. Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place?
This will be fixed during revision, I swear.

68. Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion?
Check yes for the elves and fairies, but the humans are playing dirty with the "one ruler" bit (hence why there's a war).

November is here, and god damn am I glad about that. Got my application sent in all right on the 31st, had everybody over for a great write-in. There was cake. It was good. I wrote a lot on Saturday and Sunday but then on Monday afternoon I decided I hated my book again and I started over, this time working on one of my Kobreck novels. It's a turn of the century (historical accuracy? What's that?) romance/horror story. I might still go back to working on Amaranth if I have time since I think I figured out what went wrong there.

Had another write-in on Tuesday, since we didn't have classes, just me and Kevin, and I was productive. Wednesday was also productive, and today as well. I'm about 1.2k away from 15k, and plenty ahead. The going is good. We're having another write-in this Saturday, at Kope Kope. Mmmm, passionfruit Italian sodas.

My package from my mom came tonight, and it was pretty much just a box of candy (after-Halloween candy sales whoo!). All sorts of chocolate for helping me survive NaNoWriMo. Oh, and last night I baked oatmeal cookies. Yum. I keep hitting CTRL+S. Anyway. I have two tests tomorrow, boo. History will be easy, no essay this time; Japanese is what I'm worried about, of course. Studied earlier tonight, but I don't know...I assume it will be the same format as the last, so at least I know I should do good on half of it!

Yea, for NaNoWriMo kicks off midnight Friday. I nanomailed a couple of people about getting together for a kickoff party on Halloween, but I haven't heard back from either of them yet. Sad. D: Saturday I've decided to do the 10k in 5 hours challenge, so that will be interesting. I'll have to go back to the grocery store to get some potato buds and frozen chicken (went to Wal-Mart last night but they didn't have any. Got some canned chicken for quesadillas, though). Anyway. Plugging along with the plot; I'm up to scene 40-something. Need to add more, I think, and work Tondi in there somewhere soon. I think there was something else I wanted to say, but I've forgotten...

Study abroad application is coming together. All that's left now is to redo the first page, pick up my transcript and medical exam sheet, and hope Rogers-sensei gets a letter of recommendation written in time. I want to mail it off Friday, because that's the deadline. So soon...bah. Very hectic two weeks this is. Last Friday was a really freaking long day...I went to see the doctor at 9:00 so I had to get up early, then I had to walk down like a mile to the radiology place for chest x-rays and then walk back. Then there were classes to deal with and such, and then I saw a poster for a wii party that included free pizza and a drawing for a bike and I thought that would be fun! So I went. It was 9:00 to midnight. A whole lot of people came just for the pizza and left. I thought about just playing a game and then leaving, but it was so fun that I stayed the entire time even though I was like only one of three girls to do so. XD I didn't win the bike, but at least it was fun! I'm definitely going to go to any more wii parties they have this semester. I was really sore Sunday and yesterday from all the wii bowling and wii golf, but I feel better today.

On with some other stuff:

X-posted from What's On Your Desk?

From right to left, bottom to top...

A cute little red and white organizer-thing I got at a gift shop; inside are lots of pens, a deck of cards, my passport, assorted hair ties, a packet of kleenex, and my mood penguin necklace. Next to it are a couple notecards; one has a grocery list, the other has a recipe for dumplings. Then there's a notebook for...taking notes with, a pen, my water bottle (sitting on a coaster I made in high school), my laptop, tablet, tablet pen, a pad of lined post-its, my easy button (THAT WAS EASY), and a box of kleenex. Behind my laptop is Orpheus, my 520GB external harddrive, and its personal 5" mini cooling fan. Oh, and there's a picture of a box turtle which I cut out of a magazine on the wall.

Then, above my desk there are four shelves.

My school shelf mostly has textbooks: "Traditions & Encounters: A Brief Global History," "The Japanese Today," "Japanese Culture and Communication," "The Ramayana," "Breaking into Japanese Literature," "Japanese Grammar," "The Handbook of Japanese Verbs," the first volumes of Death Note and Alien 9 (in Japanese), my trusty copy of "No Plot? No Problem!", a receipt for something, a small bottle of cucumber melon lotion, and my watch. Then, my electronics shelf: my MP3 player (Cowon iAudio F2, 4GB, black), my electronic Japanese dictionary (Sharp Papyrus PW-AT770), my cellphone, my Nintendo DS, and Pokemon Pearl. Random shelf: Folder with some stuff the school gave me, a clipboard with drawing paper, my study abroad application, a paper crane, a bottle of peppermint oil and a bottle of "thieves" oil (mostly smells like cloves).

Book shelf has books, duh. "Mistborn," "A Storm of Swords," "Midnight at the Well of Souls," "The Guns of Avalon," "Where Time Winds Blow," "Spacepaw," "The Wizard of 4th Street," Wild Seed," "Men at Arms," "Guards! Guards!" "Wizard's First Rule," "The Gunslinger," "The Drawing of the Three," "Song of Susannah," "The Fires of Heaven," and then the box for my electronic dictionary with the manual for that.

On the very top there's a binder with blank paper, a bunch of handouts from my culture and communications class, and a gallon ziploc bag full of the most wonderful and chewy brownie-like chocolate cookies that I made Sunday night. On the wall up above there is a Garfield poster that says "Compute this!" and has Garfield taking a chainsaw to a computer.

Plugging along and such. Had my test in translation on Monday, and I think I did pretty good. Hopefully we'll get our grades back on Friday. I had a paper to turn in today, did that last night (of course!). Two midterms next week, which is not cool at all. Everybody seems to be getting sick...Nic, my roommate, and me. D: I had a stomachache today, but it's mostly gone now after I took some peppermint oil. Wowza did that stuff burn. My lips were cold fire. At least it made me feel better!

I had hoped to get my fanfic done last week, but that didn't happen. Almost there, though! The climax is done with, just have to wrap up the falling action. And I got my first review for it on ff.net, yay. Whatever. I haven't been doing much NaNo planning lately, just been lurking around the forums there.

Gundam 00 makes me happy. It's on Saturday nights at 10:00 here, which is a most reasonable time for me to be watching Japanese television streams. I do love me some hot gundam meisters. I've also taken to lurking on 4chan's /m/ board. Can't wait for the third episode this weekend, Allelujah is gonna be back in the picture~ Can't wait to see what he's like this season. I also want to see what Billy breaks next. Poor, emo Billy.

Yes, it's that time of the year again! November is just around the corner, and the time approaches to write another novel. This year I've decided to start work on my fantasy trilogy, which is something I honestly hope to publish someday. My goal to be published by the time I'm 25 is looming ahead, four years from now.

CTRL+S has already become instinct.

October is going to be a busy month. Besides already running low on money for food (which is a must, since I'm not on a meal plan this semester), I have three tests, a paper, and, possibly, an interview for study abroad. First up is one test and the paper, both next Monday. Two more tests the week after that. Ick.

In other news, season two of Gundam 00 started airing in Japan on Saturday (well, it was Sunday in Japan, but it's on at the reasonable hour of 10pm Saturday here), and I watched that via a live stream even though there were no subtitles and I only understood half of what they were saying. On the same note, I downloaded this neat little program called KeyHoleTV which has live streams of several Japanese TV and radio stations. The quality's not very good, but it's nice to be able to watch Japanese TV on my computer!

October is also devoted to finishing up that damn pokemon fanfic I started way back in June. This weekend I worked on it hardcore and I passed the 25k mark tonight. I hope to have the darn thing finished and over with by the end of the week, so I can forget about it and write that essay which is due Monday. The rest of the month is novel-planning time! With my trusty Dana, I'm able to do a lot of plotting out in class when I get bored with the teacher (this is mostly in my history and politics classes). Things seem to be shaping up very well; I just have to remember to do some checking up on the timeline and whatnot and there's some uncertanties that I'm sure will resolve themselves once I start writing. I'm planning to do the "10k in 5 hours" challenge on the first, but unlike some intrepid novelists there is no damn way I'm starting that at midnight and staying up until 5am. I'll do it the reasonable way, probably in the afternoon or evening.

That's all for now, I think...hopefully I'll be updating this blog plenty for the next two or three months; I'm trying to make more use of twitter now as well (those three lines at the top of my blog), and that's easier because I found a better plugin that doesn't take up a fifth of my browser screen. >.> I also started following a bunch of other NaNoers, and I'm going to try to post my wordcount to twitter every day in November.

Yeah. School. It's been going okay I guess. Pretty much easy-peasy haven't had to really do anything at all except in translation workshop, which requires several hours outside of class every freaking night to stay on top of things. I finally got an electronic Japanese dictionary, though, so that makes me happy. Still waiting for my DS flash thing to arrive. I hope it hasn't gotten lost somewhere. I knew I shouldn't have trusted those darn Canadians.