NOOOO!!!

It can't be! But it is! ~,~ I can't believe it's the end of the month. That's 31 days, flew by, just like that *snap*. 2009 can't go so fast! I looked forward to it for so long, and I feel like I've accomplished so little since the year's begun. Then again, I've read 9 books this year. 10 if you include If you want to Write. But still, it's a strange feeling. ~,~ The year's going by too fast for me. All I can hope is that February is better. *sigh* That's all I wanted to say.

Ooh, BTW, I really want to know what you guys thought of my prologue. Honest opinions. No feedback makes me think you don't like it. I'm sorry, that's what I'm thinking. Prove me wrong.

Ember & Prologue

Before I tell you how my writing went, I just want to say that I saw the movie of The City of Ember tonight. It was awesome. Just like I expected it to be. Walden Media did such a great job turning the book into a good film. It is my opinion that they do the best at that kind of thing. It's a rare thing where you can say that the movie was as good as the book, but this was really good. My sister and brother didn't even read the book, and they enjoyed the movie too.

I'll admit that there were some strange things that weren't in the book, like why were there large insects and a monster mole? That's just plain weird (^,^). But it was exciting. I cared so much for the characters, just like I did in the book, and even though I knew what happened I hoped they would find the way to get up and out of Ember. The ending makes me hope for the sequel.

Okay, my rant is over. Anyway, I believe I had quite a productive writing day. First I spent an hour on Write or Die, and wrote 2,180 words. That made me feel really confident and did me a lot of good. I fixed a lot of places in my story and I believe I added just over 1,000 words. Of course, these numbers probably mean little to you.

You want to read my prologue, don't you? That's right, the 1s have it. Thanks for that, guys. That's the easiest thing for me to write, because it's been the same for a long time now. It's actually a part that comes in the middle, but I forsee that when my book is published, it'll do good as the prologue. (Notice I say when, not if. I will be published, you'll see!)

*Psst* Don't worry Jacoby, you're not outlawed from reading my prologue. It doesn't matter to me anymore that I haven't seen your prologue yet. I understand that you still need to work on it. I still hope I will see it sometime soon, but I'm going to let you see my prologue first.

I hope you guys give me helpful comments. Remember, I haven't shown this to anyone, except for my immediate family. Enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Late at night, in a distant part of Imazia, far from the Fantazian Forest, rain poured heavily on a large, black stone castle. Hedges of wild brambles surrounded the castle, thorny creepers creeping up its walls, clutching the many turrets as if meaning to choke the life out of them. That is, had the structure been alive in the first place. Indeed, the solemn building looked so dark and dismal that it might as well have been dead. Only one light was on at this time of night, high up in the tallest tower where the creepers hadn’t yet ascended. In this room, an old man waited patiently at the window, watching and listening for something other than the falling rain and thunder.

This man was the Warlock.

Over the din of the storm, his sharp ears picked up the faint sound of flapping wings. The Warlock made a grimly satisfied smile and turned away from the window. He walked slowly and stiffly with his age to the great, golden, throne-like chair that was set in the middle of the room. The large, wooden staff that he used to walk made an echoing thunk every time it hit the floor.

No sooner had the Warlock sat down when in flew a large raven that perched on the window sill, dripping wet. The bird ruffled its feathers in an attempt to rid itself of the cold, wet rain. The Warlock opened his arms in a gesture of welcome. “Ah, there you are. I was beginning to wonder what had become of you. You’re very late, you know,” he said, though in a lazy tone of indifference.

The raven hopped off of the sill and made a raspy reply. “Awwwwk, aaawwk!” It shook itself dry once more and walked towards the Warlock. When it was right in front of him, the raven grew bigger and instantly morphed into a tall, young, dark-cloaked traveler. He had damp, windswept black hair that almost hid his pointy ears, wide gray eyes, and a sharp, beak-like nose. “The storm slowed my flight, Master,” said the traveler apologetically, his clear voice quite unlike that of his raven squawk.

“Please, don’t make excuses Gris, I don’t need to hear them,” said the Warlock in his same lazy voice. “You’re here now and that’s all that matters.” The Warlock sighed, apparently bored with the proceedings, and waved his staff so that an armchair appeared out of thin air behind the dark traveler. “Please take a seat, my boy. It has been so long since I’ve had news from you. Tell me, have you finally found the Great Unicorn?”

Gris slowly sat down in the materialized chair, readying himself for his report. “Master, I have searched long and hard for your Unicorn. I promised I would find her before the start of the Yellow Season and I have. For weeks I flew all over the Mighty Mountains, searching every cliff and cave until I finally found her. She resides on the tallest mountain of them all, where the dwarves protect her and she’s closest to the stars.”

“Hmm, Mount Kijam,” murmured the Warlock. He stood up and smiled, satisfied with the young man. “Thank you, Gris, for your diligent work. I am now that much closer to succeeding in my plan. The Great Unicorn shall soon be ours.” He left his throne and started to pace the room in his excitement. “When I have her horn I will become the most powerful Majik Kaster in all of Imazia. And then Gris, I shall have my revenge, and nothing will stand in my way!”

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Ta-Da! There you go. That was it! So, what do you think?

Unofficial Poll

Okay guys, before I start writing like crazy, I want to point out that your comments aren't very helpful. I'm not going to write about all 3. You can only choose 1 from the 3 options for me to blog about tonight:

1: My prologue (It's just about as long as LouMac's prologue, though doesn't say quite as much.)

2: A quick summary of my book (That might be hard for me to do, I don't know. Every time I try to explain it to a friend I'm not sure how to proceed and just tell them it's a fantasy-fiction story and that shuts them up. I'd like to tell someone who understands what it's about though.)

3: How I got the idea for my book (This is actually a good story, I think. You know, the actual day I thought of my novel was soon after Valentine's Day.)

There. Now if you can't decide which would be better to read about, you'll just have to wait until tomorrow. Remember, only choose one. I'm going to save the others for a future Writing Day, so don't worry. You'll see those soon enough. Just pick what you'd most like to read tonight.

Alright, I'm out. I guess I'm just procrastinating the moment when I have to start working like a maniac. 2 days in a row. Phew! I wonder how much work that will generate. Okay, I'm out.

Monopoly Madness

My sister, brother and I played Monopoly today. That was pretty fun. We played for just a little over 2 hours and my twin Annette won. It was crazy, she got both the purple and light blue (or grey) sets and put hotels on everything! She kept robbing us of our go money! All of us kept landing in jail too, so that was wierd (uh, sorry, weird. Isn't it weird how the word weird is spelled, with an ei instead of ie? Isn't it supposed to be i before e except after c? Of course, you all have probably made that observation before in your life, but it's fun to point it out).

This picture of a pink Monopoly set is so cool! I just searched Monopoly on Google Images, this came up and I'm like, "That's perfect!" in my head.

It's so pretty. I really wish I had one. Oh well.

So tomorrow is my next Writing Day, and the day after that I have another one. 2 Writing Days in a row! Boy, that's a little scary. But no, it's going to be fun, lots of fun. I'm not afraid to write.

Tomorrow, as a special surprise, I feel like showing you, my fine readers, either 1: My actual prologue, 2: A short summary of what the book I'm writing is about, or 3: The story of how I came up with the idea for my book. You get to decide which. Comment to tell me what you'd prefer to read and I'll post it up.

Obama's in the house!

As you can plainly see, my countdown for President-Elect Obama to become Mr. President is complete. It's almost hard to believe. The inauguration was amazing to watch. I half wish that I was able to be there myself, up in Washington D.C., freezing my butt off, experiencing the electric buzz of the 2 million strong crowd, seeing all the huge political figures as close as I can possibly get, either on a screen or, if I was extremely lucky and gifted, as little, recognizable dots in front of the Capitol Building. It must've been incredible for all those who were there today.

But the other half of me is quite glad and satisfied that I was able to view the celebrations from the comfort of my own home, on television, with all the camera angles and close-ups. I loved that all 5 of us, my parents, my brother and sister and I, were able to sit together near the T.V., happy, warm and plenty proud. I find that much preferable to being jostled in that kind of crowd, tired and hungry, but feverishly hopeful that I'll spot Obama with my own eyes so I can tell my grandchildren in the future.

A few comments on the Inauguration events:

1 ~ I could hardly believe that Former V.P. Dick Cheney was in a wheel-chair. I hadn't heard about his fall or back problems or whatever he has, but I was really surprised. I was laughing inwardly when I first saw him leaving the White House with Joe Biden. I mean, you've gotta admit, it's pretty pitiful that this guy, who used to have the second most important job in America for 8 years, managed to end it all in a wheel-chair. That's the final image he's sending everyone. A little embarrasing, I would think. I don't want to sound mean or anything, but I personally think he deserved it.

2 ~ I really liked Air and Simple Gifts, the composition that John Williams wrote special for the inauguration. It was just so beautiful, I can barely think of words to describe that kind of music. I want to hear it again sometime soon. It was cool that the famous musicians Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma actually participated in playing it, on violin and cello, respectively. I don't know their works a lot, but I know their names, and they did really good. That very last cello note by Yo-Yo Ma? Wow.

3 ~ Barack's speech after he was sworn in was amazing. This guy has a gift for delivering profound speeches. I can picture him doing a great job as my president. He will get the job done and make change happen everywhere, because everyone wants to help him, and why wouldn't they? He makes me want to be a better person, and help this country. Though I didn't decipher any "Ask not what your country can do for you" moment in his speech, I still loved it, and I have a feeling that it's going to be just as, if not more, historic.

Okay, that's the second complete post I've written on a library computer. But you know what? I don't really mind in this case. The main reason is that I've still got 20 minutes on my session to go, so I'm not exactly rushed, unlike the last time.

On another note: Guess what, J.? I got the book If You Want to Write. If this book is as helpful as you say it is, then I bet it'll be super useful for me before I start my writing day tomorrow. Besides that, I want to say something that I'm not proud of repeating to you (I know you probably have a lot on your mind right now without me bugging you all the time), but...

Wehn aer uoy giong ot sned em yuor pulogroe??? I ma gntietg vrey itpanmeit wtinag aonrud lkie tihs.

There. If you're smart, you'll know exactly what I'm trying to say.

On a closing note, I hope everyone is as proud of this enormously historic day as I am right now. Thank you, and God bless America. Good luck, President Obama!

It's All Good

Hi, everybody. Sorry I haven't posted in a really long time. Yeah, right now a week feels like a long time to me. I hope all my friends out in Blogger World have had a good weekend and are doing well, as well as their friends (please get well soon, J.N.'s friend!). I'm fine myself. I've been reading a whole lot. After I finish The Titan's Curse I plan on tackling The Host by Stephanie Meyer, which looks absolutely monstrous. I can't wait to get started.

Sorry I didn't tell you how my past 2 Writing Days have gone. On the 14th I did really good work. I still worked for about 4 hours, but I broke past 1,000 words! I fully attribute this boost to the website Write or Die's help. This is an awesome application for writers who procrastinate too much. Just check out. You won't regret.

On the 17th I didn't appear to do as good, but I think it's because I took away about as many words as I added, so the word count wasn't that reliable. Plus since it was a Saturday there's usually a lot of T.V. watching going on, not conducive to a writing atmosphere. I stayed up for SNL, which was awesome. (Since Amy Poehler left the show, it looks like Kirsten Wiig is the funniest person there.) Next week will be a rerun, but the week after that Steve Martin is going to host. Probably to gather attention for his next Pink Panther movie. He's an okay Clouseau, but no one can replace Peter Sellers.

But I digress. I just wanted to say a little "Hey there," that's all. A friendly "How's it goin'?"

"Oh, I'm doing quite well. You?"

"Just fine and dandy. You going to send me the prologue soon?"

"Uh, yeah... sure thing."

"No pressure! No pressure or anything. The last thing I want to do to you is give you pressure."

"No, it's fine. I really am going to email you very soon."

"Great. Well until then, catch you later."

"Yeah, write you soon." *Logs off Blogger and starts fixing things up in prologue*

(Honestly, no pressure.) OK? That about wraps it up. Catch you later, guys!

I saw it!

Whoooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What an awesome movie! The actors were great!!

Bella reminded myself even more of me in physical form. Of course, I have shorter hair and she has more of a baby face.

The action was so quick! It's like... fwoo!...pyew!...close-up!...wow!!!

Robert Pattinson (Edward) is cuuuute! The vampire family was really nice. I especially liked Alice. She was perfect for the part.

The movie-makers did a pretty good job, I gotta say. They were really close to the book, but were smart enough to use all the right, necessary adjustments. All the scenes with action in it were so cool, like with the baseball game and the final showdown with the tracker. The ending is definitely open-ended, hope they make the next in the series very soon! (Although, what's the deal with Victoria? Well, I guess I'll find out when I read New Moon. Never mind, everybody. Don't give anything away for me!)

Despite all my praise here, I still think the book was marginally better. It's easier to feel the action through words rather than film, in this case. Maybe because with books, it's easier to lose yourself in a story because you kind of, I don't know, merge with the characters, becoming them for a time, feel what they're feeling. That's as opposed to movies, where you see the action happening to definitely other people. Really good actors they may be, but still, other people.

It's a little late now, so I guess I'm going to sign off very soon.

On a side note: I read a bunch of blog post updates before I started writing this. Here's my list:

~Ditto's Pad, "The Crazyness"(Thanks for thinking of me and easing my mind, Jacoby. You might want to fix your Cazyness to Crazyness, though. Just add an R.)

~Farworld, "Book Clubs" (He wrote some really good stuff if anyone out there is looking for inspiration)

~ThE bLoG oF A. e. heDgES, "New Poll" (I voted for Rubik's Glitch. I think that definitely sounds like a cool band name)

~Future Carido/Author, "I typed this many words today." (She turned me on to a good sounding website, which I haven't seen yet, but will check out tomorrow.)

I love all the blogs that I follow, and I think these were really good posts. ^_^

On another side note: If you ask, I'm wearing a scallop shell on my neck. My mom made a necklace out of it quite recently. Of course, it's pink, with a pink ribbon. I love it. I think it matches my sweater very nicely. Okay, I don't often talk about my looks! Especially not in writing! I better get off now.

Edit~Oh wait, I just forgot! I have a Writing Day tomorrow. I'm probably going to be holed up writing my book, which I promise to talk about a little bit more tomorrow, after the day is out. Oh yeah, and Kaza! I started The Dragon's Eye! I'm 5 chapters into it, and it's rather good. You can expect a review from me very soon about it, if I'm not mistaken.

A whole month of Blogging!

I don't know about you, but I am astonished that I have officially been a blogger for an entire month. I've had so much fun and have learned a whole lot from this experience. It's as if I've been doing it forever now. I question why it took me so long to discover the joys of blogging, much like I question why I've only started eating with chopsticks this year. Please allow me to reminisce for a couple paragraphs.

I remember that I started and finished the awesome 13th Reality book, The Journal of Curious Letters (written by none other than the legendary James Dashner. Whoo!) late September-early October. I thought the series was ultra cool, so I went on ol' handy-dandy Wiki to research Dashner. In the resources, I saw a link to his blog. I clicked it.

I was informally introduced to a truly awesome dude, the Dashner Dude, through his blog. He's smart, funny, and since he's a famous author he gives everyone a little peek into the publishing world and his own life. I thought it was really cool, but then I closed it and didn't come back to it for several weeks. Finally, a month ago today, I remembered his blog and looked at it again. After reading the new posts, (which were cool) I saw the button that allows you to follow a persons blog. I thought this meant you simply were emailed post updates or something, so I pressed the Follow button.

Next thing I knew, I was being asked for my profile name, my email address, all these uniform questions, I answered everything as best as I could, and I find that I have my own blogging account! It hadn't occured to me that you had to be a Blogger member before you followed someone. I also didn't know that Blogger was a Google product. I'd been using Gmail and the Notebook for awhile, and I knew those were awesome, so I thought this would be cool.

And it has been. And that is exactly what lead me up to this moment, this post. Did you know that I wrote this entire post using a library computer? Yeah, I'm at the library right now, and I just got The Host by Stephenie Meyer (absolutely ginormous!) and the first Erec Rex book by Kaza Kingsley (for those who don't know it, I share my birthday with her, September 7th! We've emailed a couple times and after this I'm going to tell her that I got her book now). You wouldn't believe how bulky the keyboard is. It's like a typewriter, almost. I'm too used to the flat keys of my laptop. Oh well. Tomorrow I'm really excited, because we'll be going to see the movie Twilight in the theater at long last! I cannot, cannot wait! Strangely, Annette and Adam still aren't finished with the book, but that doesn't matter. We're still going to see it. Uh-oh, my session is about to time out. 'Bye!

Very good news!

I finally finished Twilight! Now I can happily see the movie next Tuesday! I am so excited!!! It was so good. Check out my book blog for my full opinion. It's only too bad that I finished the book way ahead of Annette and Adam; they still have more than half the book to get through. But I didn't mind reading by myself at all. I much preferred it, in fact. I'm very glad that this is a series, though I'll probably finish it very quickly, like within a month or two (if I'm lucky and the library gives me my holds quickly).

Which reminds me. Yesterday, after my Writing Day came to an end, I went to the library and picked up all the remaining books from the Ember series in one fell swoop! Just watch me gobble up these books by checking my book blog often.

Before I end here, I just want to say that I enjoyed another spaghetti dinner with chopsticks (I don't know why it took me until 2009 to realize that eating with chopsticks was so much fun).

One last side note: When are you going to show me your stuff, J. N.? I'm honestly curious to see what you wrote and I haven't heard from you in a while. Email me?

Writing Day #1 Night

Later that Night: Wow, I can't believe that I wrote all day! The time seemed to go a lot quicker that way. Well, according to the time I spent actually writing, it wouldn't seem as if I wrote all day, just under 4 hours of actual typing. I guess it's because I took, if not frequent breaks, then pretty long ones. I took a long walk to the store in the afternoon and took some good time off for food (for dinner tonight, everyone used chopsticks!), but like I promised myself, I never read Twilight. Annette and Adam are on chap. 8 though, while I'm on 10.

I added 663 words to my book. Mind you, I did a lot of rewriting and replaced many words. I've never truly kept track of my word count before, but now I feel a bit more confident that I can reach a high word goal like 1000 words next time. ^,^ And not only did I write a load of words, I feel like I added good quality words. My story needed them somehow. Unfortuately, I didn't get to write anything really original, just added to what I wrote before. I should write an original scene next time. It's so cool reading my old stuff after so long.

But honestly, I'm quite amazed and proud of myself. I didn't realize it, but I hadn't touched my novel since August of 08, 5 months ago! What the heck was I doing all that time, huh? 'Cause I don't know! Ohhhhh, maybe it's because I was reading so much. Too much, maybe. I thought I was getting inspiration, but I was just mostly entertaining myself. This is the reason I've been working on this one book for nearly 3 years. I'm too much of a reader, not enough of a writer.

Still, to stay on the bright side, today it seemed like I had lots of inspiration. Just my decision to sit there and write no matter what really "opened up" my "creative pores," so to speak. Like a mud mask! (I've never tried one of those, it's just metaphorically speaking.) I'm just glad that I had a very positive first experience here, so I'll look forward to the next time. That'll be a week from now, the 14th (7 x 2). I'm glad my family was supportive and not too distracting. I hope next time I will surpass myself in what I write.

Writing Day #1 Morning

I've waken up relatively early by my standards. I've taken care of the menial tasks of brushing my teeth and doing the bird chores (well, at least replacing the newspaper). I really hope I can get some good writing done today. I've had a pretty long vacation from that kind of stuff, now it's back to work. I plan not to do any other work during the day except for this. I'm not even going to take reading breaks for Twilight, which is tempting (hey, I'll give Annette and Adam a chance to catch up).

I'm just going to sit here at the computer, writing as much new material as I can. I'll keep track of how much time I spend and how many words I get written. Of course, I'm not going to be a zombie at my laptop all day. I'm only human. I'll take breaks for meals and maybe go for a walk during the day. I just hope that I'm not too distracted; my computer station is right smack in the living room, and who knows what kind of movie Adam would want to see or what toys he wants to play with loudly.

Hmm, on the other hand, maybe sometime during the day I can unplug the computer and take it outside with me to the backyard, where it'll be quiet except for cars. I think this only runs on an hour long battery, so I'd have to accomplish a lot of writing by then. I'm not going to set up a crazy word goal for myself today (like a 1000 words a day or something ^.^), since I don't know how much I can do on a given day, but I will have a goal next time to do better than I did now. I mean, what I'm going to do now. (sigh)

How am I going to get any writing done if I keep writing this post. I've gotta stop sometime! Alright, that's enough now. Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it! Come on, Bettina, get a grip on yourself. Just tear yourself away from the post and click Publish. Okay, okay, I'll do it. There, happy now?

Good news, Bad news

Things have been going so-so around here. I just want to go over some pros and slight cons of the day. (I say slight cons because I don't think of the bad side very often, and if there's any badness, it's pretty trivial in comparison.)

The good news is that when Shira and Adam got back from the library yesterday, I had 3 new books to read: Twilight, Coraline, and The Titan's Curse, the 3rd book in the Percy Jackson series.

The bad news is that I'm not crazy about the Percy series, but the first 2 I've been looking forward to for a while (the most obvious reason being that they're both made into movies and there's a lot of hype surrounding them, so I'm jumping on the bandwagon) and I'm definitly reading them first.

More good news is that I've already started Twilight and it's fabulous. (you were so right, Jacoby; it really gets going after a few chapters!)

The bad news though not quite so bad, is that I started reading it aloud with Annette and Adam, because they want to hear the story too. Usually I go through books very fast by myself, reading silently. Saying the words takes too much time and slows down my reading. But there's something pleasant about reading out loud, especially this book, and I suppose it's a good thing that I'm taking my time with this novel.

Good news is that we covered 2 chapters in one night all together.

The bad news (I actually do feel bad about it) is that we had to cancel our plans to see the movie Twilight, since we wouldn't be able to finish the book in time. I've never seen a film based on a good book without having read the book first, so I wasn't about to start now, but I was still disappointed. Why couldn't I have gotten the book sooner?

On the other hand, I suppose it's a good thing we're postponing seeing the movie, because it allows me to finish the book more leisurely.

Unfortunately, for my brother and sister, I've been impatient to see what happens next in the book (as usual) and read ahead of them. A lot. I've left them in the english dust. They've got a couple of chapters of catching up to do, so I'll probably have to wait and become more impatient. (Hey, I brought this on myself)

Back to good news, like I said before, I am really loving this series! I can see why some would compare it to Harry Potter. You can just become lost in this fantastically descripted world.

I'm frustrated however that whenever I read about the handsome vampire boy in the story, Edward, my head always comes up with the face of Robert Pattinson, who plays him in the movie. As much as I dislike seeing movies before reading the book, I dislike having my imagination robbed from me like that (though he is very cute. Just the perfect guy to play Edward) . Why'd I have to watch all those awesome previews?

Besides Twilight, there's other good news. For one thing, the pizzas we made today were delicious (as per usual.)

On the other hand, I hadn't even wanted to have pizza in the first place. We've had this pizza tradition for a long time now, so in order to get rid of it slowly, I proposed only having it on the last tuesday of every month instead of every tuesday. Unfortunately, Adam didn't remember this, and was disappointed when I told him we weren't having pizza. I felt a bit guilty about that, so Benny, Annette and I roused ourselves into pizza chef mode and actually made the pies in seemingly record time (though no one had a timer.)

On the bright side, my twin and I have finally finished animating the Arabic alphabet, both right and left handed sets! All we have to do is record an arabic person's voice saying the alphabet and their 1-2-3s (as well as a greek person, haven't gotten that done yet) and we're ready to move on.

On the not so bright side, I don't think I've memorized the Arabic letters or names as well as Greek. I need Annette to help me in reciting them. I fell short on my expectations, but in my defense, Arabic letters look quite alike. You can only tell them apart because some have a dot over them or something. But besides that, it seems like there's some website host trouble, so you can't check out the site anymore. I hope that gets fixed soon.

Well, I think that's all I'm revealling tonight (that's probably all you can take anyway). To end this on a high note, tomorrow will be my first Writing Day in my self-imposed, hectic "Buzz" schedule. On the sidebar I have all the days I plan on writing this month. Wish me luck!

Edit: The website trouble is over. Now you can see how we've added the Greek and Arabic languages. You can't hear how the letters are pronounced, though. Here's the link!

Catch-up Time # 2

Alrighty then. My first new blog post of the year (not including my book review of The City of Ember). I have a few things I want to say:

1. I think I'm going to get rid of my movie blog. It's not as fun writing about movies as it is about books I've read. Besides, I can always write about them in my regular blog. I don't need a special blog just for films. So, after I write this post, good-bye Maggie's Movies, and it's one review about Madagascar 2, (which I didn't really like anyway) I'm not really going to miss you. I don't think anyone else will either.

2. Eating with chopsticks is so cool. Since last Friday I've been turned on to it. I've even eaten spaghetti with chopsticks. It really makes you focused on your meal and you get to appreciate it more. Plus it only lets you take bite-sized pieces at a time, so it makes the food last longer. Try it out, it's really fun!

3. On Jan. 2nd I finally got a beautiful scrapbook from an arts and crafts store. It's really suppsed to be a sketch-book, but with it's blank, no-lined pages, I've got an even more creative purpose for it. I'm going to tape all my memorobilia from this year into this notebook. Ticket stubs, reciepts, birthday cards, everything (so far I've even taped the wings of a dead butterfly I found on a walk. Sorry, butterfly).

4. I resolve to write about my progress on my novel more often. Like I put up in my comment to Dashner Dude's most recent blog post, I've devised an interesting writing scheduel for myself. It's quite creative: On January 7, I will write the whole day.(if nothing interferes with that, that is) Then, a week later on the 14th, I will write all day, then 17, because it has the number 7 in it, then 21, then I will write two days in a row on 27 and 28. Then, because it will be February after that, I'll write a week after the 28th, which would be Feb. 4, then on the 7th, then the 11th, and so on and so forth, always writing on a day of the year that is a multiple of 7 or has 7 in the number and even every day of the month that has a multiple of 7 or 7 in it. I know, a little confusing, but I'll be able to keep track, and that's what matters. Doesn't matter if you guys can't keep track!

5. I'm a bit frustrated that I have so many holds in the library, like 15, and only 1 of those holds is ready for me. That's the book Coraline. A bunch of others are only intransit, whatever that means, but it means I can't get them yet! Books like Twilight (which I really want to read before I see the movie!) and the first Erec Rex and the rest of theEmber series. These books sound so awesome, and yet I can't have them! Why won't the library let me have them yet? Why?

There, I think that's enough for now. Thanks for reading. (And again, J.N., I appreciate you thinking about me in your blog.^.^)