Photos of Real Italian Culture

There are a lot of pictures in this series, so bear with me.


The thing that has affected me the most has of course been my bathrobe. You see, I left mine in Texas. Now I had gotten used to the way things are back in Catherine Hall, were all the showers have a small changing area, and at home, where I can have the entire bathroom to myself. Not so here, where there are not only no changing areas but six people sharing a bathroom. Rapidly I realized the necessity of having a robe to get myself to and from the shower and for warmth in my pajamas.

A consultation with a well-intentioned guidebook revealed the name of a store that ought to have sold such things. For all I no it did, as I never managed to find the place. When we went looking, Treco, Anna, and I instead managed to locate Chinatown. I did not even know Rome had a Chinatown, but in a few weeks when I finally break under the strain of eating pasta two meals a day every day, I will know where to find alternate food.

The next day, chastised by our inability to opperate a guidebook properly, we went to the supermarket down the street, where we found amongst a truly random assortment of goods -- many of which were not legal for sale in the US -- bathrobes. Now I had three color choices: white, which I rejected on the grounds of being hard to keep clean; pink, which I rejected on princepal; and the third, which by lack of other choices I was forced to accept, which is a color that I describe as "prison jump-suit orange". Asside from one little eye-scorching detail, it's a pretty nice robe.

Details, details

I signed up for a 1 credit, pass fail course here in Rome where we go teach English in one of the local schools. I figured that my Italian isn't very good, and their English isn't very good, so working together one of us has to learn something. The thing is, I was ready to sware, until about five hours ago, that we were going to an elementary school.

Now either the Italian devision of schools is vastly different from the one we use in Texas (not unlikly) or I was just mistaken (also not unlikly). The point is, that the kids, who I will be tutoring, are not what we would call elementary school age in the states. There are mostly in the 13-14 year old range. That would be 7th or 8th grade back home. That would be middle school.

This could get interesting.

Today we just introduced ourselves (14-5 odd of UD students, I didn't count) and played a short game. This ran overtime because there were 13 year olds who had to stop and discuss everything. For the next month or so we're going to write letters back and forth (i.e. the students will write us letters, we'll correct their grammer and write back, and then they will write again) before we go back to the school. At the end of the class in April they are going to come to a luncheon on our campus.

This could get interesting.

Baby steps

Baby steps are important when doing new things.

Baby step 1:

The Doppleganger, the Trec, Nick, and I wanted food. It was two in the afternoon and it was Sunday. We had two options, since the Capp Bar and the Mensa were both closed: we could either 1.) go into Rome and wander around until we found something or 2.)stay in Due Santi and wander around until we found something. We chose option two, and started walking. Now the pizzaria just outside the gate is closed for remodeling, so we started for the grocery store. 15 minutes later, we arrived only to be forcably reminded that the natives are not heathens like us Americans, and that the store was closed on Sunday. We walked back to the intersection (of 3 roads in one spot, it boggles the mind) near the school all the way debating on whether it would be better to a.)walk to Albano, b.)go into Rome, or c.)wait another three hours for dinner in the Mensa. We were on the verge of making a decision when three other UDers came out of the bar accross the street, and after crossing, tell us that it is not only open, but there is food and the lady working there is nice. So, we had lunch there. Baby Step 1: operation cross the street is complete.

Baby Step 2:

We got cocky. Spured on by our success in crossing the street, we went into Rome on Monday evening. The purpose of our visit was to buy a bathrobe for me. [I left mine in Texas, and was starting to slowly go mad, as there is no changing area for the showers in my suit, or any of the others for that matter.] I had consulted the guidebook, found the address of a store that ought to have had such a thing, located the store on the map, and written directions from the metro station to the store. Thus armed, the Doppleganger and the Trec joined me for an adventure.

We cought the bus into the city without problems. We got on the correct train without a hitch. We got off at the correct station with no problems. We steped off of the metro and into the Twilight Zone. We followed the signs to la uscita, the exit*, which led us up an out of service elscalator. Out of service things are not unusual over here, so we climbed up and got our exercise for the month. We reached the summit to descover tha it had been blocked off at the top and that we had apparantly gone up the extra down escalator. Trying to appear as nonchalant and non-tourist-like as possible, we left the station.

We emerged on the serface to descover three things: 1.) the sun had set while we were underground; 2.) most of the buildings in the area had some sort of scafalding on them; 3.) we were in Chinatown. I did not even know that there was such a place, but there we were, surrounded by Chinese resturaunts and stores for blocks around. The next time I get really sick of the food in the Mensa I'm going back there. I consulted the directions, and we proceded down the street and around the piazza, and failed completly to find the place.

Just after we had thrown in the towel and started back towards the metro station, we were approached by a group of half a dozen Chinese tourists who were even more lost than we were. We were between Manzoni and San Giovanni, and they were looking for Termini, which is the main train station two stops further down the line. We tried to give them subway directions, and when that failed, we told them to follow us, because we were going that way anyway. We were most of the way back to the station when they finally decided that we didn't know any more than they did, and stopped to ask directions from some of the locals. They did not come running to catch up with us, so I can only hope that they eventually got wherever they were going.

The three of us got back to the station with no further event. The train back to Anagnia was packed, because it was Monday and rush hour, so we spent the twenty minute ride standing. We got to our bus, and found that it was also packed, and had to stand for the ride back to Due Santi. Said ride lasted about 45 minutes because it was the evening rush hour as I said, and traffic was bad, and we made more stops than we had coming in. It was cold outside, and there were a lot of people onboard, so the upperwindows, the ones that we could see out of while standing, fogged up. Luckly the Doppleganger was able to snag a seat after another guy got off. She took a short nap, and woke up while were stopped at a light, then turned to me, nodded to the window and said "Isn't that our bar?"

I bent down to look and sure enough it was the bar at which we had eaten the day before, looking ahead through the front window I saw the car dealership. I alerted the Trec, who reported that someone else had already pushed the button to request a stop. So the light changed, the bus went through the intersection and pulled up to the stop, which is about a 100 yards down on the other side of the light. We squized our way out the door and made it back to campus just in time for dinner.

Results:
1.)get to Rome: sucess;
2.)find something in Rome: failure;
3.)direct Chinese tourists all the way back to their hotel: failure;
4.)eat food somewhere other than the Mensa: failure;
5.)buy a bathrobe: failure;
6.)get back to campus: failure

Over all: Operation buy a bathrobe in Rome was a failure. Nothing bad happened to us exactly, no one was assulted, or had their pockets picked, or was kidnapped by gypsies, but we didn't do any of the things we tried to do either. We decided to go back to taking baby steps.

Baby Step 3:

Tuesday, in order to not allow our momentum to be slowed by the previous day's failure set off for the Leon Supermarket. This was the same market which had been closed on Sunday, but we were willing to give it a second chance because breakfast is served in the Mensa at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m., in preperation for 8 a.m. classes**, and we were all pretty sure that we will sleep through breakfast more than once this semester. It's about a 15 minute walk from campus, and uneventful except for the dangers presented by Italian traffic.

Texans and Italians share a disregard for the speed limit. For instance, on the road right in front of the campus -- which is wide enough for two vehicals to pass each other if they are both Vespas -- the speed limit is 50 km/h. I'm not sure what that translates to in miles, other then know that the allowable speed would be a smaller number if expressed in the Imperial system. What it means is that as one walks along the edge of the street (because there is no sidewalk until one gets out to the main road and even then everyone has let their hedge overgrow and it is only possible to walk one abrest) there are cars whipping by at speeds closer to 90 km/h. The other big hazard to pedestrians on this walk is the nursery just next door to the supermarket. It has a six foot high fence*** with some very serious looking spikes on top of it. So far we've made two trips to Leon and back, and none of us have been impaled upon this thing yet. Stay tuned for future developments on that front.

At the supermarket we find food. Cheap food. Good food. Sodas in 1.5 liter bottles, for less than 2 euros. Kindereggs for 75 cents. They also had a random assortment of other things which amazed us uncultured American barbarians, such as frozen baby octopi, sold in bulk. The Trec and I were sucked into the display of books**** which is why the Doppleganger was the first one to spot that the grocery store also sold bathrobes.

Results:
1.) get to grocery store: sucess;
2.)procure Nutella and crackers for breakfast: sucess;
3.)find a bathrobe: sucess;
4.)return to campus with spoils: sucess.

Baby step 3: operation walk down the street is a sucess.

Our next step will either be to go to Albano, the next town down the bus line, and explore. Or follow Dr. F's directions and go into Rome and find the Temple of Hercules an the Temple of Saturn. Whatever we decide, I'll have the story here, along with pictures of more Italian cultural oddities.*****

-Yami




*The Italian exit signs are green, with a white rectangle on them that is evidently supposed to represent a door. These rectangles are accompanied by white arrows to indicate which direction one must go in order to reach an exit. The viginette is completed by a little stick-figure man, of the type that addorn restroom signs the world over, bent into an attitude which is either a sorry attempt at the Thinker or running. As an American, I interprate these signs to mean that one should run to the falling white rectangle. It took me a few days to realize what they really meant, used as I am to glowing signs that say EXIT in six inch high red letters.

**A practice which would be illigal in any civilized country.

***six foot = head height for the Trec and Nick and too close for comfort for me.

****I am taking insturuction from Mark Twain's essay "Italian without a Master" and grabbed the first Harry Potter book in an effort to improve my Italian by reading it.

*****If I can find an Office Supply store, I am going to get myself one of those falling-rectangle exit signs.

This is the first post in a series...

...a series on the theame of "I'm in ______ and you're not!" But I'll get to that in a moment.

So between the last post and now Christmas happened. It was nice, the family did family things, the Church did Churchy things, and a good time was had by all.

Before Christmas, the semester ended and I ended up with a B average, which is not bad for UD. Now comes the fun part. This semester, I'm in Rome, as in the capital of Italy, not the town in Texas. More accuratly I'm in a suburb that is about 45 minutes out of the city by bus, but it's still cool.

Last Saturday morning, I attended mass at the Vatican, in St. Peter's Basilica. The alter at which we were was in one of the basement catacome-y things, so on the other side of the alter was a hallway, with a window in the wall opposite us, through which could be seen the tomb of St. Peter. On our left was the tomb of Pius XI and on our right was the tomb of JPII.

From the Vatican we went on a walking tour, and saw the Spanish Steps and Trevi fountain before meeting with the rest our groups on the Campdolio(sp?). That is one of the most popular places in the city for weddings, and we are in some couples photos, cheering maddly because they were nice, and put up with their photographer's shenanagans. From their, we walked down the back of Capitoline Hill into the Forum. When they say "all roads lead to Rome" this is where the proverbial roads are leading. That's what the picture above is -- my feet on the road leading down into the forum.

The lady running the bar accross the street* was really nice to us, and the closest thing within walking distance that is open on Sunday. So, many fun things going on. Stay tuned as the Doppelganger, the Trec, Nick, and I go looking for a comic shop (we have a map and directions to the place, if we don't get at least one funny story out of this than something is wrong) and we attempt to get tickets to the Olympics.

There is a new link in the side bar to my new photo bucket where I will be posting the best of my pictures this semester.

*the Italian 'bar' is more like what Americans call a 'cafe', it serves cappucino, pasteries, and the like.

Victory is mine! Again!

As the new icon will show you, I won this years NaNoWriMo! The final count was 50,987 words, which translates to 77 pages of single spaced Monotype Corsiva. Now, granted, the last 11 pages of that are complete gibberish, and they were the first thing to go the other day when I busted out the marron pen and started revising my rough draft. Still, I won NaNo!

What other fun stuff has happened since my last post... well, Thanksgiving, but there was lots of fun with that, so it will have to go to its own post. Let me just say this: there were 17 of us, and we had 11 pies. ^_^V

Winter Cottillion was tonight. I'll have pictures up if I ever get them from Princess. I still need to get my Halloween pictures too, now that I think about it. Anyway, Cottillion, lots of fun pretty, pretty, I love my dress. My brain is fried, I think it is time to go to bed. I had 8 dances this year, which is more then last year, but still less then have the card. I didn't get a tango, which makes me sad because I love that dance, but I did get all the waltzes. True, the last one was with Princess because we looked around, noticed that there were no guys not dancing, looked at each other, and decided that we were not going to sit the last dance out, gosh darn it. The ratio here being what it is, we were not he only girls dancing together. Anyway, I'm tired. I'll probably ramble more later.

-Yami

P.S. Pyro and I managed to waltz without causing any casualties this time. ^_^V It's only taken us a year to get our act together.

NaNoWriMo and AM Radio

Actually, those two topics have nothing to do with each other, but I aim to discuss them both anyway.

I ended yesterday with 11,951 words, which beats Monday's goal by aproximatly 300 words. That would be great, except yesterday was Thursday. I am not done writing yet for today, so I'll come up with that number sometime tomorow. I'm getting this thing done, slowly but surely, not dropping out at Week Two for me this year, not me no sir. To that end, Katie80 and I (and anyone else I can rustle up for the occasion) will be meeting tomorrow for a write-in.

Now to spread the gospel of AM talk radio. My roommtes and I discovered this wonderful thing quite by accedent. I had gone home for the weekend, and in the ensuing hurry to get out the door, had forgoten to turn off my alarm clock, as my roommates found out at eight o'clock on Saturday morning. Not knowing which button to push to shut the thing up, my roomates solved the problem by unplugging it. I can't say that I blame them, really. So, Sunday night, I notice that the alarm clock was unplugged and replugg it. I then reset the clock and the alarm, and went to bed without resetting the radio station. It turns out that the defalt station is one of our many AM talk stations.

I have tried every form of music as my wake up station, I have even tried NPR, and I have slept through every one of them, but the nutty guys in the 5-9 block on AM 570 wake me up. As a bonus, they are really, really funny.

I found the accelerator...

That's right, I am no longer stuck in nutral, I got into gear and the story is moving, darn it. I called it quits today with 10,039 words, which is just a bit over last Sunday's goal. I'm starting to make up for lost time, now if I could just ignore the fact that my goal for today was 15,000.

I also had time to get a suprising amount of my homework done (always a good thing to do, since NaNo is for fun and homework is for a grade). Now here's praying that my sore throat, itchy eyes, runny nose, and slight head ache are all do to allergies and I'm not actually sick. Allergies I can tough out, sick is hard to do.

The week two gauntlet

Going in to week two with a deifcet is not a good thing. It only makes a bad week worse.

I stopped writing last Thursday about 500 words short of that day's goal. Then I went home for the weekend, and nothing ever gets done when I'm at home, including NaNoWriMo. So my collective word count for Friday and Saturday is 0. On Sunday I started trying to play catch up, and managed to get to 5633 words, but to be on track I needed 10,000 or so. Right now I have 6,757 out of 13,333. Ah well, what kind of college student would I be if I didn't procrastinate?

As for the plot, as the writing has gone on it has morphed a bit, as was to be expected. Now, I am writing any bits of the legendarium and/or culture and/or history that surrounds the Celestial Sphere, usuing Harmonia as my narrator, because she has an (almost) unique experence from which to explain everything. Also this gets me to clear my brain of all those little cultural bits which have been floating around in my brain for a year but which have yet to find an actual home anywhere yet. Like explaining how the radios works, yea, that is going to happen.

As a totally random aside: I played Doom 3 today when I went home to vote. It r0x0rz, I must say, but ^%$ the lighting is hard to deal with. I only had like an hour with it so I didn't get very far, but I keep getting killed by those two zombies that attack you right after you leave the airshaft in the return to HQ mission. Why can't you have a gun and the flashlight? That ought to work for the pistol if nothing else.

"Join the Dark Side. We have candy."

Kelly, who is probably the nicest person I know, was the RA on duty last night, Halloween. So naturally, she dressed as Darth Vader as she made her rounds. She did this with a bowl of candy, knocking on doors and greeting people with the above line. She was also accompanied by an entourage, which amongst other things, included Megan, in her Ren dress, carrying Genesis's CD player, which we were using to play the Imperial March as Kelly walked. It was hilarious.

I lived through midterms, and got away with a light mauling. I only had to take two, thank God, which means that I avoided a lot of the stress that my pre-med roommates are burdened with. The good news is that I got a 97 on my economics mid term. The bad news is that I did so poorly on my Italian mid-term that I don't even want to think about it. I have until the fourth of this month, that would be Friday I guess, to decide whether or not I will stay in the class.

On a more positive note, NaNoWriMo began today. I am ahead of my word count right now. My goal for today was 1,666 words, and I got 2,220. Let's hope I can keep my momentum up all month, I'll need it especially next week (the dreaded week two) and over Thanksgiving Break (when my entire family will conspire to disrupt my noveling attempts).

This year's project is called A Time for Peace. It is the history of the rebellion which takes place roughly 150 years before the start of Die Complex, which is my novel from last year. The problem with writing in an alternate, high-magic, world is there is so much that needs to be defined. As I've been working on DC, I've found that I have trouble explaining things. If I take the time to explain all the odd things that are particular to the Celestial Sphere, then the thing ends up like something by Victor Hugo -- with huge blocks of text that do nothing but establish a setting so that one line which actually progresses the plot can make some sort of sense. It was really giving me trouble until I finally decided that this history and setting would get their own explanation, and I gave my self permission not to explain things in DC. A Time for Peace is a little about the setting, but mostly about the historical events that overshadow everything that happens in the Sphere afterwards. After this, I hope to be able to go back to things like Die Complex: stories about live for mostly unimportant people who just happen to live in the Sphere. Or put another way, like the cozies my mom likes to read, only not on Earth, and with more explosions. ATFP is being told from the first person prospective, a first for me, by Hinoska Harmonia, one of the eight Salcenian lujan. Someday I might explain here just what that means, or I could finish this, get it published, and you all could just buy a copy.

Here's the first paragraph:

Lorimawtre and Shamroukh were the first gods, do not ask me who came before them. It would be like me asking you to describe events which took place before your parents were born, and expecting you to speak from experience. What matters is that they were the first.

I would also like to announce that earlier last month I passed two major writing milestones. The first is that I filled my first steno pad for Die Complex and that I have finally moved on to the second one. The second is that I received my first rejection letter for a novel I submitted to an open call. Since it was the first version of DC, it is probably just as well that it was rejected. In about a year or so I hope to make it presentable enough to send out. For right now, it is on the back burner (or more accurately in the hanging file under my desk) and is going to stay there until at least the end of November.

something Nano-y this way comes...

So Friday was the first of October, and consequently the first day of NaNoWriMo sign-ups. I signed up, and helped the hoards of Nanites crash the site for the first time this year! I can't wait to start this year's story. I think it will make Die Complex easier to write if nothing else. Speaking of DC, it's coming along, it really is. Genesis says that I am not to share any part of it with the Creative Writing Club. I think I disturbed her a bit last year when I let her read the first chapter. ^_^;

Speaking of the Creative Writing Club (the name has to be capitalized when typed, its in Article I of out consitution) I'm going to try to organize a write-in or two during NaNoWriMo with the group. Katie80 and I were bouncing some ideas off of each other last weekend, it should be fun.

And on the subject of last weekend, as the post below says, I saw Serenity this weekend. It is an outstanding movie, and I'll leave it at that since the fangirl squeal defies transliteration, and anything else I could say involves spoilers.

Serenity.

Go see Serenity. Go see it now, 'tis rocking awsome.

Victory is mine!

AJ is a god among mortals. He not only has my computer online without wires, and furthermore, he has all three laptops networked to one printer (mine). He then proceded to go next door and repair the damage done to the sound on Katie's laptop last year when she dropped it that one time she tripped on the stairs (although to be fair, she took more damage then the computer did). In exchange, I'm creating a couple of NPCs for his campaign. The poor guy's already created over 40 of them and he's not done yet. He has to have an underground revolutionary front for the PCs to join when they arrive in the city ruled by the theocracy that has outlawed arcane magic.

In other news, I am declaring victory in the War on Grey Walls. Lin and I have posterafyed (not a real word, but it should be: it's a verb meaning to hang posters on everything) all the walls, and hung lights from the cealing. Every available horizontal surface has at least one knick-knack on it. The room officially feels like home.

Classes have started, it's going to be an interesting year. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I have no classes whoes focus is English, instead I have Elementary Italian I, Wiemar Germany, and Biblical Hebrew. Dr. Z is very sweet, even though she talks at us very quickly, its better to just play along then to try to take notes in her class. We have a quiz tomorow in her class. It's the fourth time the class has met. It's the second week of school, and we're still studing the winter on 1918/9 in Wiemar. In Hebrew I thought I was doing well, I memorized the alphabet over the weekend like I was supposed to, then on Monday we learned vowels and all bets are off.

On Tuesday and Thursday, I have Fundamentals of Economics and Tolkien. Dr. W, the Econ professor, has a group on facebook devoted to him called "W-- Says Some Funny F***ing Shit!" On the first day of class he had "Scientific Method" written on the board with all sorts of stars and lines highlighting it. He explained that it really didn't have anything to do with the class (but if anyone wanted to talk about how the scientific method applied to economics, he was willing to entertain debate), but he thought that was a cool looking thing to have writen on the board the first day. It's going to be a fun class. Tolkien is taught by the same professor I had for King Arthur last year. Another class with Dr. M (he's normally a French professor, I'm not likely to have him again) and an excusse to read Tolkien, how can this not be good? Now I have seven more weeks to figure out what I am going to write my paper on...

Speaking of writing, I still can not believe that I am done with Out of Exile. I've gone back to work on Die Complex. I really do like the characters, which is, good someone has to: Aihan and Sashinka are not easy to get along with, much less like or love. It's about time to get a new steno for that one, the one I started last November is almost full. (Has it really not even been a year? It feels like I have known these two a lot longer then that.)

I never thought I'd be this happy to go back to school

Well, I'm free of the evil summer job, there may be a rant coming soon about stupid customers, I havn't been able to vent it all in one place yet, so look for it here.

I'm in the quad, my classes have stated, and everything is just gravy. Except for the fact that I have the wrong eddition of the Hebrew book, so I need to buy a new one, and sell the old one. Ebay, oh how I love thee. Add that to the cost of the one Tolkien book that I have yet to buy, and the seven dollars I owe the modern language department for my German Course Pack, and the $212 dollars I spent on three texts the other day at the book store, and the $120 in texts that I spent on all my other books togther (including the wron edition of the Hebrew book), and I have been majorly screwed by my textbook bill this semester. So much for the money that I was trying to save over the summer. With my luck there will be a Course Pack for Economics as well. Once I finally get a total for all of this nonsense, I'll complaine about it here, I'm sure.

To top it all off, my roomates and I went in together and bought a wireless router. Lin is stuck with a cord, because she has a desktop, which is fine, between the four of us we have enough ethernet cords to run it behind and under the furnature so it's out of sight. The problem is that Princess and my laptops are acknowledging that the wireless network exists, but they can't actually find the Internet (I'm not kidding, she actually got an error message that said that). AJ is a computer fixing god, and he spent a couple hours in here attempting to fix the problem. He got Princess up and running, Bridge never had any problems, Lin we knew was going to have a cord, which is why the router is connected to her computer, but I am still not working right. Open house hours ended, so he left his notes where they could be found again, and agreed to come back tomorow and see just what the heck is wrong with my devil-machine. For the time being, I'm still connected to the wall via a 15 foot long cord connected to a plug that is about eight feet away, with most of the excess coiled under my feet. In addition, the cord running to Lin's desk also goes under my chair because we don't want to hide it away so everything looks nice until we're sure it all works. I want my wireless high-speed internet, damn it!

So, not being on my computer all afternood caused my latest round of free lance writing to be late, again. Grr...

Speaking of writting. I'm done with OoE. Genesis has the disk in her hand. I need to go over there and type one more thing in the proper spot (she's holding the hard copy of the thing as collateral). I also want to finish going through the hard copy I printed out a few weeks ago, then write up a copy with my coments and rantings all over it so I can pass that along to the others. But really, it's done.

It feels weird, after all this time, to be able to look at Milcha, Mishe, and the rest and tell them "I'm done with you, your story is over, please leave me be." We're still a long way from being published, but I'm going to miss constantly having something to write about this group. Genesis has ruled out the possibility of a sequal with the whole gang - I don't think any of us want to collaberate again - but Milcha and Mishe have enough going on in their pasts that they might have a sequal, then I could also do more with Vadamel and Evi, both of whom I love dearly, but there isn't much room for this in Out of Exile. On the other hand, OoE isn't their story. I also have an idea for a short story, one with just Milcha, who has always been the star of my part of the story.

The realization hasn't quite sunk in yet that now I can just sit down and finish Die Complex. No more sneaking a new version of the outline, or some long hand work in on the side when I'm supposed to be doing something else, I can actually lug my Steno pad around and not have to hide the cover from Genesis. I now have an excuse to leave Genesis's (un-named) world and go play in the Celestial Sphere. Why is this hard to do?

One day more...

In less then two weeks (I week from next Thursday to be exact) I will be done working at Penney's. I've been reading Les Mis during my breaks at work (I stashed an unabridged copy in my locker), which has the affect [or is it effect?] that when I clock in I have to resist the urge to sing "One Day More" and when I clock out I have to bit my lip otherwise I start humming "At the End of the Day." I have also learned everything I never wanted to know about a very strict convent and the Battle of Waterloo. Thank you, Victor Hugo. I'm looking forward to the tour of the Paris sewer system which I've been told is upcoming.

Classes start on the 31st, and I can't wait. I never thought I'd say that.
I ordered my textbooks already, and every time one of them arrives I feel like Christmas has come early.

I am in the home streach on OoE. There are two things holding me back right now. The first thing is that I printed out a hard copy of the whole thing (and killed my dad's color ink cartrage in the process, the blue is totally gone) and am reading though it, leaving comments as I go. I'm in the infamous Chapter Five right now.

The second thing is that I have to somehow define what a Seaman is. They are a big part of Amathountin culture and Vadamel is one, so this has to be said somewhere for the benefit of all the Tessarean characters and the reader. The problem is, the definition I use in my head is, "Just like the Ranger from D&D, only with water, not the wilderness." This is not going to work in the narrative. To complicate matters still further, Evi is the one who will be doing this explaining, and she is the least developed character. I know in my head what would sound right for her to say, but the other three people I'm writing this with don't. Help me out here, anyone.

-Until later,
Yami no Hon

An update and the Half-Blood Prince

Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't read the latest Harry Potter book.

I liked Snape! For five books I have been defending him to my family and friends, saying that 'if Dumbledore trusts him then he's all right, even if he is mean to Harry'. What can I say, I watch German movies; I like the dark anti-hero type characters. I figured that he would do something cool and redeem himself by saving Harry (or something like that), and this happens instead! I feel kind of betrayed, but it's not like Rowling hadn't been giving us plenty of hints about this happening. But wow... I did not see this coming. /rant

Colorado was fun, even though that was over a month ago. I have my copies of Genesis's pictures, and I've stuck them in an album. I've written on the backs of them, but I need to do some scribbling on the album itself. Fun, fun.

I have a job now. I'm a cashier at the Penney's outlet, and I hate it. I can't wait for school to start again so I can quit. I sware, if I didn't need the money for Rome I would not have even applied.

On the other hand, I'm doing a bit of free lance writing for an ENworld contact. That makes me happy, even though I won't be able to go to GenCon this year. This isn't the the thing I was working on in Colorado. I did get that written and submited ontime, but I wasn't accepted. Oh well.

I'm still waiting on my rejection letter from WotC for my response to their open call last March. That can't be too much longer and it looks like they'll have another one this fall (an open call, I'm not hopping for a rejection leter) so if I can get something together I may give it another try.

OoE is coming along nicely. I'm still hanging around the battle scene, a further review of the manuscript reveled that we had missed a day somewhere in there. Fortunatly for me, that's Genesis's problem to sort out, I'm just working on what I've already got.

DC is on the back burner for now, and it's staying there until I finish OoE. Hopefully I'll be able to return to it soon, because I have some ideas about how I can rescue that sagging middle section.

As for my other literary goal this summer, Anne Frank has been returned to my bookshelf. I only got about half way through it, but I've read it several times before in English, and am familiar with the play, so it's not like I don't know how it ends. In exchange, I found a copy of Hundejahre by Gunter Grass at Half-Price books, and I'm going to read that instead. He writes interesting things, it should be thought-provoking if nothing else.

In another Half-Price Books purches, I found the first two seasons of Xena on DVD. Battle on!

And, to end this note on a downer, my Grandmother C-- died at the end of May. I flew back from Colorado for the funneral, which was nice. I got to meet a lot of relatives whome I had either never met, or else had last seen when I was a baby. Mom and the twins made ribbon birds like she used to, and we gave them out at the funeral as buttonairs. Her grave is in a real nice area of the cemetary: it's on a hill underneath some old oak trees that give good shade. My Great Uncle J--, her brother, brought some dirt from South Carolina where she grew up and we sprinkled that on her grave. All in all, we're doing OK, although Grandpa C-- is awfully lonely. Any prayers you can give him are appreciated.

Counting the days until school starts again,
Yami

A waltz down memory lane...

I spent the night going through a stack of about thirty of my old floppy disks. It's been a while since I'd even thought about them beyond a "What are these doing on my desk?" and they brought back a few memories.

Group Fics from two messageboards I used to hang out at were on there. I found a copy of _Friends without Faces_, a poem that one of the people over at the Breeding Ground wrote a few years ago. I still like it, look for it in a future entry. I found a copy of _Out of Exile_ from right before we started the latest round of revisions. [I also found and old copy of Milcha's character description, it may be one of the oldest. It was last modified in Febuary of 2002, which was about the time that I started writing in it. She started life as a manuscript illustrator. Although I notice that, if this document is really as old as I think it is, M&M's father had always been K.I.A.]

I found a Ronin Warriors fanfic that I wrote sometime in middle school. It's incompleate, and well on its way to Mary-Sue-dom, but there are elements of the character and the transition I was using to go from scene to scene was kind of cool. Wayani may be making an appearance in my original work soon. Maybe I can put her somewhere on Nariell.

There was a smatering of old school projects, including my summer reading project from my sophmore year of high school. I guess I'm saving it in case it might be useful someday. I also have at least two copies of the Evil Overlord List. You know, just in case something horrible happens and everyone else on the Internet looses their copy. Or something.

The real gem however was on a disk with a yellowing label. "[MY REAL NAME]'s Disk" is written on it in my Dad's handwriting. Underneath it, in my best 5th grade handwriting is the word "script". I remember thinking at the time that it was so cool that I had *my own 3.5 inch floppy disk* because it was a *computer thing* and Dad was letting me *use the computer*. This document was written in an old version of Word Perfect, which means that to open it I have to use notepad, and at the begining there is a good chunck of what appears to be wingdings before my writing occurs. More gobbeldy gook and random spacing follow (or I may have discovered the TAB key, who knows) throughout. But if you bear with it, this file, over a decade old now, is the oldest attempt at writing a story that I still have. I remember at least one older one (from fourth grade possibly?) but if any copies still exist, my Mom's the only person who would have them. It's certinaly not in any sort of digital format.

As I said above, I wrote it in 5th grade. I got the ideas from my friends -- we'd sit at lunch and talk about it -- but I was the one who did the actual writing. The plot was something like this: aliens bent on world domination (and aren't they all) land at our school and start with the making of the chaos. The heros, who were thinly disguissed versions of ourselfs, when on to defeat them. I can't remember how exactly they were going to do this; like so many of my writings, it is incomplete. It was going to be a movie script, and I was going to be the next George Lucas. Here's an excerept:

Alien Teachers From Outer Space
Prologue: Exterior school: a giant spaceship wrapped in "Kevlar'lands on the roof of the school. The words "Alien Teachers FromOuter Space" appear on the screen.

Opening Scene:
Interior front office: Lester and Stephen are inthe office on the way to detention, when Mrs. Reval walksin,:"I'm here to cheek out."
She chechs out, and leaves the school.
When she walks out the front door she sees a shadow andlooks up. An alien spaceship wrapped in "Kevlar" hovers overhead. A light shines on her and she turns into an alien.
Einstein(from the side):"I always knew she was an alien."
Inside the space ship:
Alien 1:"Take a look at the gasmeter, and tell me what you see."
Alien 2 looks at the gas meter which reads empty.
Alien 2(screaming): AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!WE'RE GOING DOWN! WE'RE GOING DOWN! ABANDON SHIP! ABANDONSHIP! BAIL OUT! BAIL OUT!"

The only thing I've changed to this was rentroducing line breaks that were lost when I changed formats. Everything else, painful typos and all, is the original document. If I ever get around to relaunching my website, look for this thing in its entirty. Wow, "Alien Teachers from Outer Space" what a name.

Till later,
Yami

The end is near...

My last final is tomorrow. Less then 24 hours from now I will be at home, and in all likely hood, I will be asleep. I've heard sleep is nice.

So because I'm leaving school tomorrow afternoon, the process of packing my stuff is well underway. I was sitting at my desk a few minutes ago, and I got an idea for a story that I wanted to write down, so I yanked open the desk drawer where I keep all my notebooks... and it was empty. I packed my writing stuff earlier today, so I had to get up and go through the back of binders on the other side of my room before I was able to write my idea down. *pouts*

My goal is to spend the rest of this week typing Out of Exile, with an eye towards finishing my bits and getting it back to Genesis before I leave for Colorado in a week. We'll see how it goes. If I finish OoE before I leave, then I'm taking Die Complex with me, otherwise just OcE stuff gets to make the trip. In either case, I'm leaving my dictionary behind and taking my copy of Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank with me. I want to spend the summer working on my German reading comprehenson. I don't feel that I'm quite at the level I should be and I want to fix that before I start advanced classes next semester.

Gah. This semester is barely over, I can't start worrying about next fall yet.

There will probably be nothing from me until school starts again in September. The 56K at home is to slow for updating this thing to be at all worth the time. As a checklist for me once I come back, I present the following goals.
By the time I leave for Colorado, I will have finished typing my changes to OoE.
By the time I come back Colorado, I will have at least one location thought up for Blue Devil's open call.
By the time school starts again, I will have finished at least one German book, not written for small children.
By the time school starts again, I will have finished v.2.0 of DC.

Wish me luck, and see you in three months.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

It's 5:00 a.m. I have six pages of a reasearch paper that has to be 12-15 pages long written. This paper is due at 9:00. I don't think I'm going to be sleeping tonight. Have I mentioned how much I detest Mondays? If I havn't, I dispise Mondays because I never seem to be forced to go without sleep on any other day of the week. There are other reasons too, to be ranted about as they occure(sp?).

I'm finnaly getting the inspiration to finish Die Complex, now I just have to finish typing Out of Exile so my co-writers don't kill me first. I have to force myself to get that done, so I can force myself to finish DC. I'm already starting to gather notes and insperation for my next three projects, I wonder how many things I could balance concurently.

On the other hand, none of that matters if I don't get this paper done.

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Update: I got no sleep, but I finished this paper. I have my grade back, got a B on it, too. I also managed to get all my other papers done and in as well these past few weeks. Go me! Now all that remains is to finished OoE.

Ending Radio Silence

First, take a moment to say a prayer for Pope John Paul II. The world lost a good man today.




On a more personal note (and one related to my writing which is ultimatly, why I started this blog):
Knock on wood, as of about five minutes ago I am done writing all my parts of Out of Exile. Now all that remains is the typing. Genesis, I'll get it to you soon, do you read me? Soon.

Die Complex is still plodding along. I got my application for the open call at Wizards of the Coast in (I payed something like 15 bucks to have that thing overnighted, the Post Office had better have gotten it in on time), now I have to finish the darn thing. Aihan and Sashinka are fighting my efforts to finish the story every word of the way. On the other hand, my roomate edited the first three chapters for me, and about a week later we were watching a movie and she said something along the lines of "I could see Sashinka doing that to Aihan." and I agreed. Whatever it was (curse my memory) would have been compleatly in character for me. I must be doing something right if someone other then me can get a grip on Sasha's characterization after such a limited exposure.

Speaking of Sasha's...
This is a plug for a shameless plug for a website run by a couple of friends of both Genesis and mine. [Something is wrong with the syntax in that last sentince. How do I fix it?] Refracted Light is a site devoted to sci-fi and fantasy book reviews, from a Christian perspective. I agree with their analysisesessss opinions for the most part, and their friends, so if anyone is reading this, you should also go give their site a look-see.

That's it for now.

Hello Again

Well, its been a while since I last posted, hasn't it?
Let's play catch up. Since I last posted, I failed completly to win NaNoWriMo. I printed out everything I had written, then attacked it with the pen of the editor. [Insert thunderclap and ominous-sounding music here.] I started a rewrite, and am now about 1/3 of the way done with it and when I say rewrite, 'drastic changes to plot and setting' is probably more correct. For starters, its no longer an AU version of our solar system, its set in a whole new place that is still searching for a decent name. Wizards of the Coast has an open call for any and all sci-fi, fantesy, or horrer novels, and I am hopping to be able to submit something to that. *knocks on wood* The longer I work on this story the more I like it. Even if nothing comes of this open call, I still hope I'll be able to go somewhere with this thing.

Speaking of stories I want to take somewhere...
I have been writing a novel with some of my friends from high school for oh, four years now. We are in the process of putting together a final draft. I have the book now, and I'm still having trouble ajusting to the fact that there is only one sceen left for me to write, and after that, everything I do will just be cosmetic changes. When we started this, I don't think I really thought we would ever come close to finishing.

If you add to the the different RPGs I'm writing in, and all the school work I have (schools been in session for three weeks and I've already had two papers due) , February is going to be a very busy month for me.