Sweet Dreams

Name the five most annoying characters ever.

1. Umbridge from Harry Potter
2. Ren Mihashi from Big Wind-up
3. Sae from Peach Girl
4. An/Natsumi from Sailor Moon
5. Alice from Tweeny Witches

In other news, still plugging away at my Nano novel. I'm currently at about 34,000 words, which is just a little bit behind where I wanted to be at this point. My goal for the week is 37,500, so it looks like I'll have to do some writing this weekend to catch up, especially with Thanksgiving next week. (Why did they have to pick November of all months to hold it; wouldn't one of the summer months make more sense, considering that many Nano-ers are still in school?) Ugh. And Mama just decided to play hooky from work because one of her co-workers annoyed her yesterday. -_- I hate having to write when people are home!

To be honest, I'm really tempted to just call it quits. (It's not like I can even call myself a winner if I get to 50K, since 10K of it is made up of scenes from last year's draft.) The beginning went well, but I seriously have no idea where this story is ultimately going. I'm not enjoying it any more. Still, with only 16,000 left and ten days to write it in, I might as well stick it out to the very end, right?

Name 5 characters whose wardrobe you would love to have.

Assuming I had the body to pull their wardrobes off...

1. Ran Kotobuki from SuperGALS
2. Rin Sohma from Fruits Basket
3. Yukari Hasekawa from Paradise Kiss/Nana O. and Nana K. from NANA (I like both of their styles pretty equally)/heck, pretty much any outfit worn by any female Ai Yazawa character ever *laughs*
4. Rachel Benning from Red Garden
5. Ayu Tateishi from Ultramaniac Aya Mikage from Ayashi no Ceres (Changed my mind)

Now, back to Nano-ing! 

I gotta come up with an idea for NaNoWriMo. -_- It just hit me today how soon November will be here, and I have no idea what I'm going to write! I may have to resort to last year's abandoned plot. Yeah, I know I lost interest in it only a few days in, but I think that was more the fact that I was obsessed with Sims and wasn't really interested in writing anything, period, rather than the idea itself being bad. However, if I do use it, I'll probably make a few changes, namely changing the main setting from London to Los Angeles. I think that'll be easier to write. It was just around the time the main character was supposed to go to London that I quit, because I didn't have time to do the research I wanted to do.

Then again, I'm also kinda, sorta interested in writing a supernatural mystery story. I blame it on all the supernatural anime I've been watching lately. I've never written one before, though, so I don't know... It might be best to stick with something I know I can do. Romance may not be my strong suit, but I know I can write it. A mystery? Well, to be lame, that's a total mystery to me!

On a positive writing note, I think I actually may finish the rough draft of To Be By Your Side by the Halloween deadline I set. I've actually just started to write what will probably be the last chapter. (I haven't decided yet how I'll break things up.) Granted, I'm sure I'll have to do quite a bit of rewriting because I still want to use the scenes I said I might have to cut and some of the newer scenes are rather bare-boned at the moment, but it feels good to at least have the main parts almost done. I may even have it ready for posting by Christmas. No promises, but we'll see how it goes.

Yesterday, I had a Sims marathon that put my seven hour marathon on Election Day to Shame.

9:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m., with only a half hour break to eat supper and check on things on-line.

Clearly, I'm addicted. -_-

But Lucy (the eldest daughter) got pregnant! And she gave birth to twin girls! (Which meant, of course, that I had to give them my "twin" names: Eva and Zoe.) Yes, you read that right, twins again. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing that I keep getting twins. *laughs* I guess it must run in the family. I seem to remember looking at the family tree and seeing that Jennifer's (Lucy's and the first twins' mother) brother also had twin daughters. Does Sims 2 work like that? I know the big thing is how appearance DNA is passed down through the family, but I wonder if a hereditary higher chance of twins does as well...or if it's just because I let my Sims have Woohoo even when pregnant. (Hey, pregnant women are supposed to be horny at certain parts of the pregnancy!) The world may never know.

And then there was the wedding. I think so far the ability to have a real wedding instead of one of those quicky affairs is probably my favorite improvement from the original game. I really did it up right. Once Eva and Zoe had grown up into children who no longer needed my contant attention and their parents (Lucy and the father, who moved in when Lucy got pregnant to help with the bab(ies)) had the night off, Jeet (as I call him, because he has a rather ethnic name that I can never remember how to spell) took Lucy out to Londoste and surprised her with a ring at dinner. I then spent the next day setting up their wedding, which was a blast. Only family was invited, because I was worried some jealous ex-lovers might cause a scene, but it was still really lovely. And now Lucy, Jeet, and the twins have moved out, which should make the house a lot more manageable. I was going a little crazy there for a while, trying to keep eight Sims happy and healthy. *laughs*

So, now I've done the pregnancy thing (twice) and the wedding thing. I guess all that's really left is for somebody to die. John, the patriarch, is a couple of days from becoming an elder, so I'm going to turn the aging back on and let him die. That's terrible of me, isn't it? But I really want to see what happens!

But that'll have to wait until later. I gave up NaNo in order to concentrate on Melting Ice, so I should probably, you know, actually work on it some.

*goes off to write*

Curent word count: 10, 717

Admittedly, it could be a little bit higher. :( By this time, I was hoping to be up to at keast 12,500 words, but you know...Sims. (The last entry when I said the novelty had worn off? Yeah, not really.) Oh, well. I'll try to do better next week. *sigh*

You know what, though? If my NaNo novel, by some miracle, is ever published and gets popular enough to develop a fandom (yeah, right), I guarantee you Alison/Samantha will have quite the following. Heck, I'm half-shipping them myself, and I usually stick to het. *laughs* They just keep saying the most suggestive, subtext-y things to each other, and I can't stop them! Silly characters...

Yeah, as I feared, Sims 2 is making it mighyt difficult to concentrate on NaNo. *laughs* I held out until I reached about 2100 words today, but by three o'clock,  I just had to quit and play Sims. The game was calling out to me, "Play me! Play me!"

Evil, eeeeevil game. But, oh, so fun.

Anyway, it was a okay birthday, I guess. I couldn't decide if I wanted a cake or to go a little non-traditional with birthday brownies, so my mom was nice enough to make both. Yum. Plus, we also had barbeque. Double yum. As for presents, of course I got the Sims, but Mom thought a $20 game wasn't enough, so she also let me pick out about $60 worth of manga from Right Stuf. I ordered all four volumes of Cherry Juice, the one-shot manga Shirley (from the mangaka of Emma), Vol. 2 of Sugar Princess, Vol. 7 of Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden, and Vol. 13 of NANA. Everything is either backordered or on pre-order (though coming out tomorrow), so this is one time I'm actually hoping Right Stuf will take their time in sending me my order.

'Cause new manga and Sims 2?

I'll be in big trouble.

Now, off to play Sims!

Happy Halloween!

First, a fannish5 question, since it's appropriate for the holiday and it seems like forever since I did one.

So, Mom had the surgery, although it wasn't for her gallbladder like the doctors first suspected. (It's possible that she will need gallbladder surgery in the future, but that wasn't what was causing the pain.) It turns out that she had a perforated ulcer, which was actually what I kind of suspected. Honestly, it really was only a matter of time until something like this happened, because even though she's a pharmacist technician and should know better, she's been taking over-the-counter pain medication pretty much every day for years, despite all the warnings about it causing possible damage to the gastrointestinal tract if not used correctly.

In any case, the surgery went well, thank goodness. She's going to have to stay in the hospital for another week, though, and she'll probably have to take a leave of absence from work once she does get home. Looks like I'll have to sit out of Nano this year, if that's the case, but, oh, well. Mom is much more important than some silly contest.

Thank you to everybody who expressed their concern, and I'll keep y'all updated if anything else major happens.

You know, a Card Captor Sakura/Ghost Whisperer crossover would be so plausible, what with Touya being able to see ghosts and all. All you'd have to do is figure out a reason for Touya to visit America or for Melinda to come to Tomoeda, which really wouldn't be too hard considering that Melinda owns an antique shop. She could have somehow ended up with something belonging to Clow Reed and decide to do a little research...

Heh, yeah. I don't know where I come up with these strange anime/live action crossover ideas. First it was a Sailor Moon/Grey's Anatomy crossover, and now this CCS/GW plot bunny is hopping around in my head, although I doubt I'll ever get around to writing it. Still, I think it really could work.

Anyway, as you can probably guess, my CCS manga came in yesterday. Yay! ^_^ Well, at least some of it. About half the volumes are on backorder, but I did get the first four of the first series and two, three, and four of Master of the Clow. I've read the first three so far, and I'm very much enjoying it, although I think I like anime!Sakura more than manga!Sakura. The anime did a good job of making her less of a stereotypical shoujo heroine. For example, manga!Sakura seems to be a habitual oversleeper, while anime!Sakura generally wakes up in time to at least eat her breakfast at the table, rather than scarfing it down on her way out like manga!Sakura always does. She sometimes oversleeps, of course, but nowhere as much as manga!Sakura. Also, manga!Sakura is even more Yukito-crazed than anime!Sakura, to the point that it's kind of annoying rather than cute. Oh, well. The manga is still very good (if I ignore the creepy scene where Terada-sensei gives Rika an engagement ring).

I also think I may have an idea for my Nanowrimo novel this year. It's still a bit vague at the moment, but I'm thinking of calling it A Life Less Ordinary, and it's about a teenage girl named Leah who is bored of her life in a small, New England(?) town until she meets a dying boy who teaches her to the value the life she has. Or something like that. Like I said, it's still in the planning stages at the moment, but I think it'll turn out all right. Anything would be better than last year's Mothers of the Bride.