My dad and I are trying to troubleshoot my desktop (how can installing drivers on a blank windows installation be so difficult?) ... but which I mostly mean he's doing the work. Somehow in sitting here I decided to try writing haiku in Japanese.

Three conclusions. 1.) I really should actually learn Japanese before trying to write poetry in it. 2.) I also suck at poetry. 3.) The haiku format looks really pretty when written in hiragana as it would have been.

きをかぜに
ゆりうごかした
のどかうた

I'm not even sure that makes sense. Limited vocabulary does not lend itself well to poetry, neither does half-understood references from an online dictionary. OTL

If I could afford to replace the desktop now, I probably would. Just for the convenience. Maybe I ought to go kill something in a video game.

I am still alive ... sort of. In all the technical ways, at any rate. My PC has been down for about two months now, and while I still have some net presence through my laptop . . . it's not good for much. I purposefully got a cheap one because I wanted it for writing, not doing all my fancy graphic and arts stuff.

To be fair I probably wouldn't have been much more lively even with it, though. I just can't seem to adjust to having a life while working 40 hours a week with a 2 hour one way commute. It's draining and then I feel no motivation to do things during the weekend. Well, I did get one doll painted (fairly) recently, so I'm hoping I can get more of them done. Was going to do one today (day off), but then it never ... happened. Oops.

The doll I painted. This photo is bad because I was unable to edit it at all and I didn't have the shiny new lights I have now in my room. I linked to it because the functions of the gallery its in makes it look a little bit better <_<.

Not much new. I am so boring. Been reading a lot lately, most recently Fahrenheit 451. Pleasantly surprised to find it was *not* about book censorship as I've so often been told. If you think it is, you are missing the point entirely. Also planning a trip to Philadelphia later this year with mom.

Maybe I can at least take new doll photos soon, assuming we get the internet working on my PC so I can start getting everything installed on it again .... Last time I was close to getting it back up it died again -_- $1000 in it and it didn't even last a full year before having problems. *sigh*

Today was a day full of peril. Okay, that's a bit too dramatic. Cassie gifted me with a gift certificate to her favorite little book store in Hillsboro. Not really knowing my way around Hillsboro, I decided the obvious solution to finding it was just to bring her along. Took mom's car because it was the only one left when my parents went to work (mom took the car I've been driving because it was blocking hers in this morning).

There is one fairly sharp curve along the way, and my mom's car decided to die on it. Luckily I was able to get the car to turn even sans power steering and coast off the road, because a truck came along before I got it restarted and would have surely rear-ended us otherwise. Turned it off, restarted and it went fine. Cassie says something happened to her like that before and it was a transmission issue. Passed this story off to the parents, they are now aware of the problem.

So, peril aside, the rest of the day went smoothly. Even the tricky street parking (backing up with a huge-ass vehicle blocking your view is not entirely relaxing so far as experiences go). Got a few books at the bookstore, cost me less than $40, but before the certificate it was just over $60. Yay, new stuff to read . . . though I'll probably just skim the plays. (I do not know why I buy plays, I prefer to watch them and rarely do more than just skim them.)

Bought:

• Cat's Cradle -- Kurt Vonnegut (Cassie says I have to review this later, because she's curious about it)
• Othello -- W. Shakespeare
• Twelfth Night -- W. Shakespeare
• Macbeth The Scottish Play -- W. Shakespeare
• Omoo -- Melville (I really liked Typee . . . )
• Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained -- John Milton (I see references to this in a lot of places, it has gotten me curious.

The guy who rung us up took a glance at them and asked me if I was an English major . . . XDDD.

Unfortunately not, but I did consider it when I changed my major from art. Anthropology won out by a slim margin, purely because it was a little more of an unknown.

Woot, got antibiotics this morning. Skin infection over the holidays--go me! Anyway, drew a little today. Still trying to figure out what Babel City (a fictional location in one of my stories) looks like . . . I'm not really good at city design though? . . . bleh. I think this will give me enough to go on to write it, though:

Sorta large, click here to view.

Then I tried to convince someone to throw me a character to draw, since I wasn't feeling inspired to doodle my own. Been trying to most of the week ... apparently I asked the only two people I know who won't bite, though lmao. Oh well, I somehow ended up drawing Satoru in the end. Can't tell my favorite personal character at all, can you?



Actually tried a softer painting style for the colors ... I still totally fail at it. Or more like I don't like the way it looks when *I* do it. *rolls eyes* Someone else could do it at more-or-less the same skill level and I'd think it was awesome, I'm sure.

The horrors of the self-critic. Do you think they make a version of duct tape that would work on it?

While I'm thinking of it . . . I need to get to cutting Satoru's wig. Going to try to make it look something like that drawing. He's decided to go with short[er] hair at the moment.

Tried to keep anything that might be considered sensitive data out of the pictures, mostly succeeded. Pixeled out what sneaked in. Anyway, this is what the cubicle I work at looks at, minus the dual monitors, because that really is a sensitive info no-no XDDD.

Pictures behind the cut . . .

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Seriously . . . I've been working since the end of May and I have yet to figure out a balance between work and free time. I just end up so tired or unmotivated that I never end up doing anything these days. Though it is still such a lucky thing to have a job right now that I probably should not complain.

It's more the motivation really (and I think the tired feeds into it), because managing to do NaNoWriMo last month definitely proves I have the time (even if I wrote 90% of it during my lunch breaks and down time at work . . . . ). I still feel a little disgusted with myself, and I'm really letting my online activities fall behind too. Definitely have got to get the Q*Bee quilt updated this weekend.

Well, I've been doodling a little at work, so maybe I'll try to scan those and post them. It'd be something, right?

Next week marks the Winter Solstice, and thus the annual Lighting of the Serpent ceremony out at Serpent Mound. Luckily I was able to get the actual day (and the snowy/rainy/windy weather alternate date) off from work, as they are always in the middle of the day and I would have not been able to make it out in time to really fully participate this year otherwise. (This also means when I stay out all night like I have the past two years that I won't have to worry about working on no sleep hahaha . . . .)

I'm also hoping that with two days off in a row maybe I can manage to do *something* productive. I dunno, maybe that's just wishful thinking?

Uh ... sorry for disappearing for the last month or so. I was participating in NaNoWriMo, and with working full time I ended up having little time (or energy) to do much else X__x.

But . . . I has triumphant shinies :D



Planning to attempt a new layout today, but I doubt I get it finished . . . . Most likely I will get side tracked elsewhere. This is the first time I've turned the desktop PC on since I started NaNoWriMo. So I'm likely to get lost in drawing other stuff or in playing MMOs or . . . something. I also need to update a few other things, including the neglected Q*Bee quilt . . . .

Edit, 1:51pm: Layout is planned out . . . but the actual coding part of it is the most time consuming part, you know. So I still doubt it'll be up today XD. Still, I've got a plan now so I can work on it a little through the week as well.