I've been a bit distracted with several things.

First — I came down with a cold. (I still have it, although it's not as bad as it used to be.) Hero Material got it first, then lovingly gave it to me. I think he called it “early Christmas present”. Hmmm. But he paid for the doctor's visit and medicine, so I guess all's forgiven.

Second — I decided to do NaNo. Well, technically I'm not working on a novel from scratch, but more like trying to finish Acts 2-4. I've written like tons of different pre-drafts and scenes and snippets, but none of them really gelled or gave me any insight into my characters. Hence NaNo.

Scarily enough I'm writing many of my scenes out of order right now. I've never jumped back and forth like that, but with WriteWayPro it's easy to rearrange scenes, etc. So I'm giving myself permission to write later scenes first. Once I got over the initial resistance, I realized that it was actually helpful for me to do it. I can see better why Angel and Mikhail fell in love in the first place and why they thought it couldn't work, etc., and why they broke up but why they're together again now, etc. etc. etc.

BTW — is it wrong for me to like the ruthless Russian mafia boss more than the U.S. bureaucrats in my story?

Third — My netbook is having the same issue it did last time. It's been, like, a week since Samsung fixed it. They took it back — again, very courteous and apologetic. So I'm without a netbook for another week or two until they repair it. (Hopefully permanently…)

Fourth — I reformatted my Macbook this week. I use Apple Boot Camp to use XP on it — that's my preferred OS; the Mac OS just does not feel very intuitive to me — but BCXP refused to shut down correctly for two weeks in a row. It's partially my fault for having installed all kinds of stupid programs that I shouldn't have in the first place. (And the fact that when I first created the HD partitions and so on I think I did something wrong b/c the driver installations, etc. didn't go very smoothly…)

Anyway, 30 hours later, it's done, and my computer's faster. Yay. :)

Fifth — Hero Material and I started on another drama series: Dexter. It's just so twisted, I love it! We're still on the first season. Can't wait to watch the rest.

Finally — the Olympic season!!!!! I'm a huge fan of figure skating (have been since Kristi Yamaguchi's heyday), and I've watched the first Grand Prix events. Yuna Kim rocks my world, and I'm so thrilled to see Shen and Zhao skate again. Shen and Zhao are my sentimental favorite in pairs, and I want them to achieve their dream of winning the Olympic gold medal. It'll be a first for China.

I'm also rooting for Yuna since I adore her skating, and it too will be the first Olympic figure skating medal for Korea.

OTOH — I'm heart-broken about Mao Asada. She's just imploded this season. I don't even know if she can make it to the Grand Prix Final, and it won't be the same without her. I have my own theories on why she's not doing so well this season based on the media coverage. Gambatte, Mao!

Oh and if you're wondering why I don't seem all that interested in Evegeny Plushenko's comeback…well, it's because I don't think he's all that exciting to watch. I mean, yeah, his jumps are great and he can do some interesting footwork, but something about his skating just leaves me cold. I also suppose it's because I still long for Alexei Yagudin's awesomeness — great jumps, great footwork, superb artistry. Unless he messes up unbelievably, I think Plushy will win the gold medal. Brian Joubert's been incredibly unprepared and erratic at Trophee Eric Bompard, and Oda can't seem to land quad jumps consistently. Evan…well, he reminds me of Todd Eldridge — another dull dull skater.

As for why I don't care about Sasha Cohen's comeback…well, I'll believe when I see it. I think it's nothing more than a publicity stunt on her part, especially since all Sasha seems to talk about is her “injuries”. If she does show up at Skate America, Yuna will crush her, and maybe even someone like Rachael Flatt and Fumie Suguri may be able to beat her.

My prediction? Sasha withdraws from Skate America, shows up at the U.S. Nationals and gets a spot on the Olympic team. The international judges are brutal, and with the more severe crackdown on underrotations and wrong edges, Sasha won't do very well. But American judges at the Nationals will most likely overscore her. I hope Sasha proves me wrong, but I'm not very optimistic.

How about you? How have you been doing? Any cool plans? Are you excited about the Vancouver Olympic Games?

I know I talk about my hamsters a lot, and some of the blog pictures are a bit low quality, so Hero Material took some good ones.

Here are three pictures of Shiro & Peanut. Shiro is a pearl white Siberian hamster, and Peanut is the first son she had with Kuro.

First up — Shiro. This is her surveying her kingdom. Hero Material and I call her Kuiin Hamu (Queen Hamster).

The next two are pictures of Peanut. He's very even-tempered and sweet. He adores eating egg yolks, and as a matter of fact, he's eating one in one of the pictures. (He looks very ferocious when he eats.)

Aren't they just adorable? :wub:

After years of talking about it on my blog, I've decided to post some pictures of the place. (I went there today to gorge myself…! :mrgreen: )

The place is up on a big mountain in Yamaguchi Prefecture, and it has its own altar. It also has a nice shrine and several stone statues of Buddha, although I have no idea why the small ones wear red hats and bibs.

When I first saw it, I thought maybe it was a baby Buddha and needed some extra…er…help to keep clean or something. Occasionally you see one yen or five yen coin offerings around the mini-Buddhas, but this time I didn't see any. Must be the recession.

This is a water outlet near the Shrine of Vending Machines. It has a huge Buddha surrounded by baby Buddhas wearing red bibs. Again, I'm not sure why the big one isn't wearing a red bib except that maybe it's because he's their father and thus needs to look dignified…? There are three spotlights around him as well, so that he can be lit at night. I've never been up at the Mountain Bandit Shack past four PM, so I have no idea if people worship him or pray to him or anything like that. I'm sure people do pray for good luck at the shrine though (the real one, not the one of Vending Machines).

Now, this is just a thing of awesomeness: the Shrine of Vending Machines. It's a little hard to see, but it's there in the background under the roof. Ever seen one anywhere else? No? Me either. It's near the parking lot, with seven separate vending machines that sell everything from Coke to cold chocolate to hot chocolate to ice cream. One thing it doesn't have is a beer vending machine. Not that the Mountain Bandit Shack doesn't have one of those, too — it does — but it's far from the Buddhas and the shrines. Maybe to show some respect?

Not that you have to go that far. Respect or no, the place has a beer vending machine. How can any hot spot in Japan be complete without one? Beer vending machines are everywhere you want them to be, except maybe at some somber war memorial or something.

And here's me looking around for a table. Guests get to sit wherever they want, so it's important to find a good spot — not too sunny but not too chilly. I look serious in the picture because it's a serious business. And the picture on the right is me wondering, “Is that ours?” every time a waitress walked by with food.

This is our waitress, doing double-duty at the gift stand. (Check out her uniform. Everyone there wears that funky head thing and a black shirt & pants.)

Finally, we get fed! Just look at all the food! My favorite steamed fried rice with veggies and meat and so on, my favorite saucy chicken on a stick and my favorite gyoza! Everything at the Mountain Bandit Shack is extra delicious.

Nom nom nom.

Oh…and we had a visitor. I think he was hoping for some scraps, but alas, there was nothing left for him.

Gomen ne, neko-chan!

I got a chance to have dinner with treasure hunters. They're absolutely wonderful and fantastic to talk to. And they have a great sense of humor about everything. I was somewhat disappointed that treasure hunting isn't as glamorous as it's made out to be in Hollywood movies, but oh well. :) You can't win everything, huh?

According to them, you have about a 1% chance of finding something valuable. Of course that means you hope that what you find after ninety-nine failed attempts is so big that you can recoup your cost and have some money left over to live off of or fund your next venture. You also need to know a lot of people, know your history, culture, etc. A lot of the stuff you haul from the ocean is from shipwrecks. Some of the examples the treasure hunters quoted were the big Spanish ships that had been taking silver from South America to Spain but somehow never made it to their final destination. And you also have Japanese ships that took gold from China, the Philippines, etc. during the last world war.

I soooooo wanna go treasure hunting…! (On the 100th and finally successful attempt, of course. ;) )

status: I'm almost done with the first major turning point in my story. W00t. :)

Over at Romance Divas, LaurenBethany posed an interesting question: Are you a drifter or a rower?

In other words, do you go with the flow or plan your writing career?

I've always been a rower. I've always set goals and went for them. But this year I've lost track of that. I've drifted, letting the currents take me where they may for months.

The biggest part of it was numerous disappointments I've had. They cut me deeper than the rejections I've received during my initial agent hunting phase. Perhaps I've had unrealistic expectations. Perhaps I've failed to insulate myself properly. These things have taken toll on my creativity. It's harder to write, harder to think and harder to stay focused. The more I obsess about the past disappointments, the more impossible it is to do what I needed to do.

If I don't row my boat, it's going to go wherever the currents go. Unfortunately the currents don't care about me. I do.

Now I'm focusing on small things that I can control. I'm learning how to control my pain (physical and mental), how to insulate myself to protect my Muse, yet at the same time how to relax and laugh at myself and have fun. Life is too short to wallow in misery. Though I've wasted a lot of time drifting, I want to grow tougher and prepare myself for whatever insanity life may throw at me in the future. Isn't that all anyone can do?

My left ankle has been bugging me ever since July. The pain kept fading in and out, and it's worst when I wear flats rather than high heels! (Talk about weird, huh?)

On Wednesday I felt the most horrible pain shooting from from my left foot and ankle. It's gotten progressively worse even though I haven't been using it much. I limped my way to the rehab clinic today, which is only two blocks away from my apartment (thank God!). My divine therapist asked me if I'd ever injured my left ankle, to which I answered negative. Guess he thought maybe I didn't rehab it correctly or something. He seemed confused since I don't do any special exercises or anything that could've hurt my foot and ankle. He examine them then massaged and tape them. When I mentioned it to Hero Material, he told me that maybe I have a slight stress fracture.

The only problem is I have no idea what I could've done to cause it. Remember how I said it started in July? Well, the only thing I did a lot in July was shopping. How can shopping cause stress fracture? (Okay, I did walk around for six hours one day at an outlet mall…) Since returning to Japan, I haven't walked much or anything. How can the pain get worse?

If it doesn't get any better soon, I need to see the doctor. I'm kind of dreading it. Not because he's not a nice person; he's fantastic. It's just that every time I see him, I get bad news. Oi.