I met with Jeremy yesterday and got my anti-depressants increased a bit, which is helping, and also got a prescription for Adderall! Which is really helping! It was amazing being able to focus and be calm and think and just be able to do stuff without having to force myself. It was great.

Also, my guppy fish babies are starting to show color. The two oldest are getting some yellow in their tails and one has a bit of black too, which is really nice looking. They're turning out to be some good looking fish. :)

I want to read more books this year so I thought I would make a list of things to read during the rest of this year.


Under the Dome by Stephen King (currently reading)
Anasi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Desperation by Stephen King
The Shinging by Stephen King
Cell by Stephen King
Misery by Stephen King
Pyramid by Terry Pratchett
Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
The Graveyard Book by Terry Pratchett
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling (coming out later this year)

I figure for the rest of this year, that's enough books on the list. Especially since the fall semester will be starting for me and MacKenzi in about a month or so.

Right. I haven't gotten much done on my NaNo novel. I'm really really far behind. Like, a week behind in my word count. It's bad. But I think I might have reached a break though. Maybe. Because my biggest problem is wanting to get straight to action, to skip the "boring" set up parts that are important and can be really emotional and suspenseful if I do them right.
( cut for nano musing )

The last time I did NaNoWriMo, I wrote the rough draft of Dusk, which was an idea born from discussing what Twilight would have been like if Edward's behavior (stalking, breaking into her house, controlling actions) hadn't been so romanticized by Stephanie Meyer. My friend and I also concluded that lesbians make any story automatically a hundred times better.

Anyway, I've recently gone back to editing this story which I mostly completed by the time NaNoWriMo came to a close. It turned out that the story needed more than 50K words to complete it so while I "won" NaNoWriMo, I didn't quite finish the story although I was drawing close. But since I've recently begun editing this story, and I've got a lot of work to do for college, I'm hesitant to try and participate in NaNoWriMo again even though I didn't participate last year either. I just sort of assumed that I wouldn't be involved this year, and I don't even have an idea to work with.

I'm wondering whether it would be a good idea to give it another shot, but make it perfectly clear to myself that if it doesn't work, it doesn't work out and it should definitely be only my second priority. BUT if I can get back in the habit of waking up at 5AM (a habit that has fallen to the wayside as I find it harder to get to bed at 10PM, and also find myself more exhausted by returning to kung fu), then I should be able to get up and write most of my daily word count before heading off to classes. In this case, my NaNo project wouldn't interfere with my school work at all because I would have most, if not all, of the rest of the day to work on class work if necessary. With some proper time management and some quick plot planning right now, I could do this easily.

That still leaves me with the dilemma of what to write about. The first idea that popped into my head was a zombie apocalypse. That may be because The Walking Dead has just returned to television and also because I was just watching a show about zombies last night. Whatever the reason, I think it could be a good idea. I think it would be really fun to write my own zombie apocalypse novel. With lesbians, of course. Badass ones.

I've only got a few days until November 1st so I'll begin sketching out my characters and plot. Then once November rolls around, I'll decide for sure whether I'm going to participate or not.

I woke up at 5:30AM, got up, dressed, had some toast and went walking with MacKenzi. I had gone walking with MacKenzi and her mom yesterday, but her mom walks too fast for me, and by the time we got back to the house, I was tired, thirsty and starving. Today MacKenzi and I decided to let her mom do her walking while we would go at our own pace. We started at 6:30, and walked a mile in half an hour. When we got back, I was feeling good. I wasn't overly tired, and I wasn't hungry. The toast was a good idea. A really good idea.

I'm going to continue getting up at 5:30AM so I've got plenty of time to eat a small breakfast before walking. I'm also going to get into the habit of working on a project of my choosing for half an hour to an hour after walking (with a shower in between, of course). I figure that'll help me get back into my writing, and once college starts back up again, I can use that time to work on home work or get a head start on major projects (or the research for them). Once I get my course schedule at orientation (on August 31), I'll figure out a second block of time (and perhaps a third or fourth or a 'just in case') for doing homework and projects during the day (or working on a project of my own if I don't have any homework or school projects just too keep me in the proper mindset about those times).

Something I discovered yesterday was this website called ZenHabits which had some really great tips for simplifying and de-stressing your life. One of the things the author talks about is getting rid of clutter--on your desk, on your walls, even on your desktop. He gave a link to some really awesome programs, one of which was Launchy: The Open Source Keystroke Launcher. It's really great because it can open all sorts of programs and documents quickly without having to clutter up the desktop. My desk top is almost completely cleared of anything save the screen saver now, and I love it.

Since he's also a writer, he also gave some links to programs that would make it easier to write--one's were they took up the whole screen and had all the options hidden until you put the cursor where they should be so all there was was a plain screen (with a background image) to write undistracted. The one I downloaded was Creawriter. I've poked around it, but I haven't had a chance to use it yet. It looks really neat, though. I played around with the setting and changed the background image to one of rain hitting puddles of water (which I found on Google), and turned off the ambient nose for now (the cracking of a fire).

Alright, so it's a lot later than I had planned to write it, but it's still morning, and now I've written it. Mission accomplished! I'm making progress already. 

I've been at MacKenzi's house a week now, and so far it's been awesome! We haven't gone out much, but we've had fun hanging out with her family, playing video games (she's gotten me into Kingdom Hearts, and now I need a Playstation), we've hung out with some of her friends who are awesome, watched some Disney movies, and generally had an excellent time!

I'm starting to eat better (ie. I haven't been snacking as much or drinking quite as much soda, plus Mama D makes a lot of healthy food) so that's really good. I'm starting to use the eight pound dumpbell I bought when I was here for Thanksgiving but wasn't able to bring back with me. MacKenzi and I also went walking with her mom early one morning. I want to do more of that, but I seem to be catching up on sleep as I've slept through my alarm about three times already and woken up twice only to go straight back to sleep. I'm starting to take my anti-depressants again so hopefully that will help, and we're trying to go to bed earlier (we stay up late doing random things like surfing the internet and playing games). All in all, I'm feeling really good.

The only problem is the ants. They're coming up through the floor boards or cracks under the doors or something because there's plenty of ants. MacKenzi and I had to spray down the room with ant killer a few days after we got here because they were crawling all over the curtains at the end of the bed, and some of them were straying onto the bed. We just had to spray the room again because they were coming in through the wall behind MacKenzi's pillow. (Or at least they had to be because the fuckers were suddenly all over her pillow--I noticed one on top, she killed it, I flipped it over to see if there were any others and BAM there were like six. She says there were only three, but it doesn't matter because there were two on the wall directly behind it so same difference--THERE WAS A FUCK TON OF ANTS OKAY OMG WHY)

Also, THE LEGEND OF KORRA TRAILER CAME OUT YESTERDAY. I'm so excited! I can't wait for this series, I really can't!

Those tornadoes that touched down in Massachusetts? Yeah. Not fun. Thankfully, I was out of their way, though one did rip through the west side of my town. I was in a neighboring town at my parents store so I wasn't in much danger, but knowing there's a tornado only a few miles from you is kind of scary. Alas, I have no pictures, but I have some video of the lighting and thunder. I got it using my girlfriend's phone, but I'll share it as soon as I can get it on to my computer.

So, sometime last year I accepted prompt requests from friends and family on facebook. I completed half of them and then fell away from writing them and writing in general. I figured in the spirit of making it a goal to write more that I would pick these prompts back up and finish them.

( fic list )

Updated: Deleted the "late" prompt because Nicole thought I asked for titles for the fics as well as prompts. So "late" shall be the title of the story.

I was checking Latest Things today, and I read an excellent post by cluegirl titled An Open Letter to the Men of American and the World, on the Subject of My Feminism. Here's an excerpt.

You are not incompetent, gentlemen; you do not need a system, acknowledged or unspoken, to guarantee that you will earn more than any woman who matches you in effort, education and rank. You do not need your boss setting handicaps against your female coworkers so that you can get ahead. You do not need to resort to seduction to get your promotions and raises at work, and I know you realize that your female co workers should not be suspected of it when they do attain them. You are better than that, wiser than that. I know you are. And that is why I am a feminist.

You are not petty toddlers who can't mix in public without making fart jokes, throwing mud at people and stealing their snacks for a lark, and there's no reason at all why you should not be expected to behave like the adults you are. It is, in fact, insulting to you as adult men that those amoung you who do behave like apes should be given a social pass on it even when it makes all of you look badly. There is no reason why the worst behavior of the most childish of your gender should set the level of society's expectations for you. Most of you don't even agree with the drunken douchebag making a sloppy pass at the office ladies, and most of you find his behavior pretty repulsive. And I know you've got it in you to check him, to tell him to quit his shite, to cover his arse, and stop making your gender look like crap-throwing apes, because you are better than that. I know you are. And that is why I am a feminist.

You are not sociopaths, biologically incapable of empathy, sympathy, or altruism; you are emotionally sapient creatures, entirely capable of perceiving, understanding, and extending grace to those whose emotional and cultural experiences do not mirror your own. You don't need special, easier societal rules made just for you because the ones for everybody else are too hard. You don't have to be rape survivors in order to get that making jokes about rape is a creepy thing to do. You don't have to be a waiter to know that stiffing your waitress is makes you a selfish boor and a cheapskate. You don't have to be the one trying to cover your shiners for work in order to know that beating your domestic partner is unacceptable. You don't have to be the one with a restraining order against her former boyfriend in order to get that it's not cool to follow and harass a girl until she breaks down and gives you what you want. You know right from wrong, and knowing that it's wrong, you are entirely able to just not do it. I know you are. You know you are. And that is why I am a feminist.

I definitely suggest reading all of it as it's really good.