Not too bad for the day.

BTW — I'm like totally traumatized. I thought Shiro and Kuro were just wrestling around. But no. They're actually in heat. Kuro's been humping Shiro nonstop, and they are doing it in front of me (shameless!). Trust me, it's pretty bad since they're so small and young, and it feels like they're way way too young to be parents. I'm going to have like a million hamster babies!

Ack!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Veteran's Day! No matter how you feel about the current war, please do thank them. They've served our nation with their lives so we can enjoy our freedom.

On the writing front — I've given up on NaNo. It's not that I hate it or anything…well…maybe. But ultimately it just wasn't working for me. The current project requires a bit more thought from me, esp. because I'm dealing with a brand new world and characters. Besides, I can't write the middle section unless I'm fairly satisfied that the opening's more or less on the right track. Why? Because I don't want to throw away the entire manuscript and start over. So currently I'm trying to get down about 1,000 to 1,500 words a day, five days a week. I'm not aiming for a super clean first draft, but I want to be able to keep a big chunk of the storyline and so on. Already I cut about 1k from the opening I wrote during my NaNo attempt because it was just…bad. So I've started a new progress table (see below):

Moving on to general life matters — DD asked me about my dwarf hamsters. Shiro and Kuro are doing great. Hero Material and I spent over $100 on new cage expansions and toys for them on Sunday. They have tubes to nowhere, two wheels, a heated nest, a wooden arched bridge, a new feed box, a sand bath, a litter box, hanging wood blocks they can chew on, etc. They're so happy in their little heated nest unit because it keeps them very warm, esp. in winter. Japanese apartments don't have central heating, so it can be fairly cold at night. (May is convinced I'm going to be one of those hovering mothers who's going to spoil my children rotten.)

Some pictures —

Hamster ball:

A brand new water dispenser:

A newly decorated old cage (contains: a heated nest, a water dispenser, a toilet paper core, a sand bath, a litter box):

An expansion cage / secondary unit (contains: two wheels, a water dispenser, a wooden arched bridge, a new feed box, hanging wood blocks, an L-tube):

Two wheels (one new, one old):

Tubes to nowhere (they connect the cages actually):

A bonus pic — Kuro in her brand new litter box!

Speaking of Kuro — as much as I find Shiro and Kuro adorable, I have a small…err…issue. The problem is that I cook, and sometimes even after a vigorous washing with soap, my hands smell a lil like food, so Kuro — she's the glutton of the two — nips or just outright bites my fingers. But she climbed onto my hands last night and sat there for a bit. So for that, I'll forgive her for trying to eat me. I even wrote a haiku dedicated to my hamsters' uber-cuteness:

The haiku critiquer told me that maybe I should expand my imagination since mine only described something as it was. Maybe next time I'll write about the man-eating Kuro.

BTW — The Big Three begging for $50 billion from the U.S. government made the headlines in Japan. Japanese people are astounded that the Big Three want to use $25 billion out of the amount requested on health care.

I'm usually against bailouts in general, and I'm not sure if throwing money at them is going to solve the real reason why they're so cash-strapped: they are losing market share, and their operation is extremely inefficient.

The Big Three seem to believe it's fashionable to blame the subprime crisis / credit crunch for their cash problems, but even when the economy was doing great, the Big Three weren't raking in dough the way Toyota, Honda and Nissan did. Since Ford has just decided to ramp up its gas-guzzling F-series truck production (hey, the gas price fell!), I'm not convinced that the Big Three will use any of the money to build more fuel-efficient environment-friendly cars. Also I don't think the Big Three will be able to survive even after the $50 billion bailout. Why? Because they can't force people to abandon their Japanese and German cars and buy the Big Three cars. Legislating people to buy American cars would be the least American thing to do, and unless the Big Three can make stylish, fuel-efficient and reliable cars that American public wants to buy, they will continue to burn cash at an exponential rate and ultimately fail. There's a reason why Deutsche Bank downgraded GM target price to $0.00 / share yesterday.

Finally, I'll leave you with a haiku I wrote a couple of weeks ago in my Japanese class. The topic was seasonal joys.

I've never owned a pet in my life. My mother was very much anti-pet (because she hates shedding, cleaning up after animal poos, etc.). So basically I have no idea what to do with animals in general.

But Hero Material loves animals (he grew up with many different pets), so he decided that we should have pets.

Drum roll please…!

We bought two hamsters.

With their cage and everything, we spent about $50 at the pet store near our apartment. Although Hero Material's first choice was a dog, we couldn't due to our lease.

So meet Shiro and Kuro:

Shiro is the white hamster. She's very camera-shy, so I apologize for the picture quality. She's also very feisty, and she tried her best to run away when Hero Material took her out of the cage. Also she's the athletic one of the two. She spent about half an hour or so running in the wheel. I think she wants to try out for London Olympics.

Kuro is not as shy, but quite lazy. She likes to fling the dry herb and leaves we put in the cage (the pet store recommended it as it deodorizes the cage), but she doesn't like to do anything on the wheel, except possibly peeing. She's been eating some carrot bits in the cage.

I'm not getting any work done because I can't stop looking at them. I think they're still getting used to their new environment, and they're rather shy, but I think I'm in love.

BTW — do you have (or have you ever had) hamsters? If so, got any advice for me? :)

Finally! After several days of endless rain, we have beautiful sunny weather! Yay to October!

I started working on the outline for All the King's Women. I wasn't going to do one, but I realized that maybe I should, esp. since it's nothing like I've ever written before (historical fantasy romance). I spent most of the day filling out character sketches. Tomorrow, I'll be working on the basic setting info sheets.

BTW — Hero Material found this on the Internet. Very cute. No animals were harmed in it, I don't think.

Status: Am feeling a bit better about life in general. I realized that I had a little more cash than I initially estimated, so that makes me feel relaxed about it, somewhat. (see below for why)

I'm convinced that there's some kind of evil retrograde somewhere.

Why?

My RAM died. The merchant's being as difficult as possible with the return.

My dishwasher died. It needs to be replaced, most likely, since the current unit's old. This is a completely unexpected and unplanned expenditure, but it must be spent.

Yesterday, my site died. It was the new plugin I installed for WP, and it killed my blog. MySQL refused to import my back-ups. I almost died until I found a file that it would import. If you see any errors on the site, please let me know!

Despite it all, I'm trying to stay optimistic. I'm going through the latest draft of Slayer. I can't believe I missed some of the continuity errors that occurred when I made some changes to the story. I was 500% embarrassed when I discovered them. :oops:

One thing that's really difficult for me is the amount of work that is required for the newly added materials. Unlike some writers who I envy, I'm not the most polished writer. It takes me a while to get it to flow just right. So the new materials take several days before they're on par with the other more polished scenes.

Currently I'm using iPod Touch to review my manuscript. I downloaded an app called Files. It works great for me because it can read *.doc and not destroy all my formatting. (I'm very particular about formatting.) So I'm saving money on paper & printer cartridge. The price of paper went up about 50-100% in Japan, depending on what grade, size, etc. So I'm trying to find ways to reduce the amount of paper, etc. I use as much as possible. Does this mean I'll never print my entire ms? Nope. I like to see stuff on papers. I catch different things on different medium. But Files is one of the tools I can use.

Pre-Historic Era

Doubled RAM. Worked great for one week. Everything's fast. Holy cow.

Fateful Day 1

I get the blue screen of death (BSOD). It tells me a bunch of numbers. Advises me to update my drivers. I do that and run the virus scan, just in case. Virus scan comes back clean. Everything looks fixed. I feel happy. Go to bed at around 3:00 a.m. after the win.

Fateful Day 2

Another BSOD. A slightly different combination of numbers that make no sense. Win refuses to stay operational. Everything shuts down. Force OS to not shut down. Run a ton of diagnostics, which takes about five hours. Finally decided to do a clean install on everything. Still fails. Finally it turned out that I needed some update installed first before installing a different update. This wasn't anywhere in the online manual. Feeling angry. But do another clean reinstall.

The day ended at 5:00 a.m. with another BSOD.

Fateful Day 3

Get up at 9:00 a.m. Hero Material almost becomes collateral damage. Another clean reinstall. Google every error message I get. MS Update won't update. I'm ready to go Kill Bill on IT.

Do a ton of regsvr32 commands for a ton of *.dll files. It turns out that the RAM upgrade is the one that went bad. In exactly one week after the upgrade. Take out the new RAM, put the old RAM. Hardware diagnostic says everything looks great.

Redo install. I'm getting very good at this now. I re-customize everything, esp. the default Outlook profile.

The day ends at 4:30 a.m. with MS Update downloading everything, but refusing to install highly critical security patches. Give up after trying about ten different fixes and workarounds. My eyes refuse to stay open. The war appears hopeless.

Fateful Day 4

Get up and test the final fix for MS Update. Downloads very slowly, but finally installs everything. Run a complete virus scan. The system's clean.

Casualties

• Four days of productivity.
• My sanity.
• Sleep.
• Rambo I — was going to watch it with Hero Material, but I couldn't pay attention and Hero Material got annoyed.
• All the King's Women Ch. 1 — dead; not recoverable.
• The Last Slayer notes update — dead, not recoverable.
• The Lat Slayer master file — managed to salvage. Must make another copy, just in case. (This was backed up via gmail, but gmail told me that the backup was corrupted. I almost died on the spot. Hero Material had to valiantly stop me from bashing my own head in.)
• All my customizations for Office & Win — not recoverable; must recreate everything.

If you sent me an email and never received a response, it probably means I never got your email in the first place since Outlook went a bit wonky during this period. Resend please.