Why I Shouldn't Procrastinate

I'm busily working on my little brother's birthday card. Since it's in the wee hours of the morning now, it is already his birthday. This is why I should not put off making cards and things until the last minute; I always end up losing sleep. To make things extra difficult, he asked that his card be butterfly themed. I don't know why. He assigned each sibling a theme: Dragons, Dinosaurs, and so on. I got the butterfly card. Problem is, butterflies are just about my least favorite things to draw. That might sound silly, but I mean it. I've just got a block when it comes to drawing butterflies. Even back in first grade, I remember being frustrated with them. I simply cannot draw a good butterfly.

So now I'm painstakingly trying to copy butterfly shapes and colors from various reference pictures online and having a ridiculously difficult time of it. He had better like this card when he gets it tomorrow ^_^

I'm listening to the "Inception" score while drawing. This helps a little bit.

The blisters on my feet, especially on my right foot, are really, really nasty and painful, but I'm trying to do everything I can to speed-heal them so I can compete this weekend without making an utter fool of myself onstage, eg., limping around instead of dancing. This is, scarily enough, a very real possibility, since I was not even able to put my soft shoe on my right foot at class today, let alone a hard shoe! I tried looking up tips online about how to heal blisters quickly, but I just ended up finding a bunch of articles warning me to take blisters easily because if they get infected they can lead to death or amputation. I'm paranoid enough without reading stuff like that, thank you kindly.

I think I'll finish this card tomorrow morning. I mean, today morning. Later. When the sun is up. Right.

'Night! Or . . . Morning! Whatever you like.

I found this quite funny; source link at bottom right. Oh, Zelda. I should play that game again sometime, I was so close to finishing it when I had to leave it in Hawaii ;_;

For the record, I was the world's worst chicken flier. Couldn't aim the stupid things.

Hot . . .

You know how I mentioned it was chilly a little while back?

Scratch that. Yesterday broke records with a high of 113 or somesuch insane number. It is hot, hot, hot, HOT. When the wind blowing feels like an open oven scorching your face, you know you have problems.

And this is the beginning of autumn? Sigh.

Oireachtas Coming . . .

Oireachtas practicing officially started today, and I have the aches and pains to prove it. Plus, after losing my beautiful old hard shoes at my last competition due to a mix-up and REALLY poor management by the feis committee, I have a brand new pair to break in which, as any Irish dancer can tell you, means I'm going through a torturous time. I mean, I have blisters on my heels. Blisters, Gandalf! And I never get blisters any more, or at least not for a good many years. It's sad :(

Dance itself, however, remains wonderful. Frustrating at times of course, but always well worth the effort put into it, and more. Blisters become calluses, with a little time. I'll be fine.

Books! I've already finished my Nathan Hale biography, the first of the O'Brian novels I borrowed, and am now happily devouring both "The Mauritius Command" and my book on the American Revolution. So there will be a real proper Book of the Month this month, as well as a good number of reviews, huzzah!

As to writing, I've been determinedly plodding along, and it's going splendidly, actually! I'm really excited to actually be making this much progress in my novel. In addition, I am just getting more and more excited about NaNoWriMo! I've written up a little blurb about the story I'm planning to write--the type you'd see on the back of a book--but nothing more than that, so I can have enough creative freedom to actually write the 50,000 words without hitting a block. I'm trying not to plot ahead at all, which is difficult for me, but hopefully will prove a helpful exercise. I'll post the blurb here once October hits.

I'm currently typing this with only half of my attention; I'm mostly absorbed with an animated short I'm watching on Youtube, "The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello". Steampunk and silhouettes and adventure and creepiness, oh my! A friend recommended it to me, and I'm loving it so far.

Tomorrow I make a birthday card for my littlest brother, who will be turning five this week! And then I'll read some more, write some more, and attempt to make tapioca pudding with the contents of a really old box of tapioca I found in a kitchen cupboard the other day. Hopefully it'll be yummy, instead of poisoning me or something. We'll see, I guess . . .

PS: Just finished the film. Strongly recommend you check it out :)

Phoenix Requiem

I advertised the fantastic webcomic "The Dreamer" on this blog in my last post. Now I'm going to recommend yet another, "Phoenix Requiem", which can also be reached using a banner on the sidebar of this blog. The art took a little bit of warming up to, but definitely improved over time, as before long the panels became absolutely gorgeous. Also, it's like a pseudo-Victorian fantasy, so that gives it major like points as well. The beginning's a bit slow, but the intrigue that comes later is well worth it.

Also, the artist/author gave one of her main characters very Tennant-esque hair, and was awesome enough to pay tribute to her inspiration in the following piece:


Gotta love that.

(Picture taken from artsangel's dA gallery, here. It's worth a perusal.)

LIBRARY!

I went to the library today! Yes, this means I finally have a plethora of new reading material. I've been beaming all day.

I discovered a fantastic webcomic last week called "The Dreamer", available here: http://thedreamercomic.com

In brief, it's a gorgeously drawn and very well-written story about a 21st c. era girl who seesaws between living a normal high school life in the 21st century, and living during the American Revolution. The conceit is that whenever she falls asleep, she dreams vividly of her Revolution-era existence, but when she is awake, she is in modern times. Of course, the question is, are they really just dreams? Both lives seem very real, and are both filled with compelling characters, not the least of which is an American soldier who claims he has known her since childhood and who is in love with her. I really like the story's style: the cameos by historical figures like Alexander Hamilton, the complicated but sweet romance, the deftly alternating moments of humor and pathos and action. I'd really recommend it. The author/illustrator's name is Lora Innes, and she is obviously in love with history, for her illustrations are lively and accurate and her characters are all very endearing but appropriate to their respective times. I have a banner link to her site on the right hand sidebar of this blog now. Check it out!

As a person who really likes learning about Revolutionary War/Civil War history myself--and who likes the clothing styles of those times, too--this has really restoked my own interest in the time period and the people who lived then. This is reflected in the reading material I picked up at the library today.

So, complete list of books I have to read now:

• "The Dreamer: The Consequence of Nathan Hale", by Lora Innes (the first issues of her webcomic have been combined into a print copy, so I'm more re-reading this!)
• "The Fortune of War"
• "The Surgeon's Mate"
• "The Ionian Mission"
• "Treason's Harbor"
• "Desolation Island"
• "The Mauritius Command"
• "HMS Surprise", by Patrick O'Brian (not in that order. I'm returning to the Aubrey-Maturin series in a big way, folks!)
• "The American Revolution", by Bruce Lancaster
• "Voices of the American Revolution", by Kendall Haven (I prefer reading about history from contemporary sources whenever possible, hence my liking for Rousseau and the Federalist Papers)
• "Nathan Hale", by M. William Phelps (Biographies! I also love reading good, thick biographies)
• "Alexander Hamilton", by Ron Chernow (Hamilton has fascinated me ever since I was small, so it's about time I read a book entirely devoted to him, even if it's . . . *checks* . . . 700+ pages long!)

I also borrowed "The Amulet of Samarkand" audiobook, since I've been wanting to give it a listen for years. I'm currently listening to Chapter 6, and the reading is very good so far.

At last I have more reading material! I've been floating on air all day because of it. I even have proof:
See? That is my happy library face being happy.

So if you don't hear from me for a few days, it's not because I'm in trouble; I'm just reading and reading and reading. Oh, and "Fringe" and "Supernatural" both return next week, so that might have something to do with it too ^_^

Ta!

It's Sunny Today

. . . which is nice, of course. And it's also a bit chilly, at least inside. That, to me, is the best sort of weather: chilly, crisp, and sunny.

Tomorrow is one of my little sister's birthday, and she has requested that I make her pretzels for reasons that I'm not aware of. I've never made pretzels before. But I'm going to give it a go anyway! I'm working on a few art projects right now, one of them being her birthday card. The other is a crossover project I challenged my brother to, where we have to combine the two films "Ratatouille" and "How to Train Your Dragon"--both of which are among my very favorite films, and both of which are rather similar to each other if you think about it. That's not a bad thing :D

I've been playing "Lego Star Wars" on the Wii--it's very, very fun--and in the game, if you shoot C-3PO, he loses a leg and starts hopping around, leading my littlest sister to start calling him 'The Hopping Droid'. It's pretty funny.

Work on my novel continues apace, and it's coming along. Very exciting. Even more exciting is the prospect of doing NaNoWriMo again this year, I can't wait! I am so determined to reach the required word count this year. Mm-hm.

And that's all really, nothing much else has been happening. Oh, I finally went to the library last weekend, only to discover that the library had absolutely NONE of the many books I was looking for. That was a huge disappointment. Hawaii libraries are SO much better than the ones here. Sigh.

Okay, I'm off to go dig the yeast out of the back of the fridge now . . .

It's September Already? Wow.

Hello again, everyone, it's been a while! Life's been keeping me busy--mostly battling off one infection after another, it's ridiculous--but I hope to start blogging more regularly again now. If I were back in Hawaii now, this would be my second week of my Junior year; as it is, I am keeping the brain cells busy by writing, dancing, studying for my driver's license, and, of course--reading!

Sadly, I have STILL not managed to snag any new reading material. An entire summer without one trip to the library--I just might explode with the frustration. As a result I STILL have no Book of the Month feature to regale you with. I will, however, list for you all the books that I have been reading. I've read them before, which is why they don't count for my list of new books read this year, but they were good enough for me to read them again--some for the second time, some for the umpteenth time--so perhaps you'd be interested to have a list of titles:

• The Shield Ring, by Rosemary Sutcliff
• The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud
• The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett
• Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
• The Pearls of Lutra, by Brian Jacques
• The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
• Watership Down, by Richard Adams
• The Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander
• The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

So, as you can tell, I've been re-reading a lot, and mostly lighter books too. Perhaps that is what comes from being around kids 24/7 now; I lapse back into enjoying books written for young adults and children instead of centuries-old literature. This is in no way a bad thing, as all the above books are among my favorite books ever (or at least most of them are) and settled snugly on my shelf next to my Iliad and War and Peace and Moby Dick, but it's still interesting. I go through 'reverting back to obsessing over childhood favorites' phases at time. I guess this is one of those times.

Dance is going well, but I'm trying to figure out a design for my new competition dress; mine is about 4 years old now, and in a competitive arena where dresses go out of style in mere months . . . yep, I'm wearing a relic. My family and I always design and sew my own dresses instead of shelling out a fortune on designer dresses like most other people do, so my dress has lasted longer than most, but it does look old now. Sigh. I've also promised my little brother that I'll dress up as Toothless the Dragon for Halloween so he can ride on my shoulders as Hiccup, so I have that to figure out too!

(Absolutely not-relevant side note here: I'm currently watching Star Wars on my computer as I type this, and just realized that one of Vader's officers is the same actor who played that American rocket captain in "Tomb of the Cybermen"! The one with the annoying fake accent who kept calling Victoria 'Vic'! This just made my day.)

I've been writing a lot, and even though it's pretty hard considering I've got a spot of writer's block, this means my novel is coming along now almost despite itself, haha. Yesterday I baked banana bread; my six year old sister was disappointed initially, but now says she loves it, especially with cream cheese. My little four year old brother however loves banana bread, and basically was asking me if he could eat it every five minutes after it came out of the oven until it was cooled enough to be cut. I do like baking! And making soups, too. I really want to make this lentil soup from a recipe I found recently; I like lentils almost as much as I like baking :)

That's enough rambling from me from now, so I leave you now only with a promise that I'll try to post more regularly and interestingly this month. Oh, and I've been drawing and doodling a lot, so I'll start posting those too.

And I'm 19 1/2 today. I should have made a cake or something, haha. Does this mean I get a wish half-fulfilled today? Hm.