Christmas Feis!

Thank goodness for the written--or typed--word, because I'm coughing so much right now I wouldn't be able to manage saying all this aloud with my actual, you know, voice. I wasn't too dizzy today, which is a huge relief, but the coughing is not getting better at all. It might be getting worse. I had a hard time getting through the Christmas feis today, but it was worth it in the end because it was so much fun seeing everyone and all. I managed to win my treble reel composition competition--wow, that sounds pretentious, hehe. Basically the competition rules were you invent your own treble reel step and then perform it, and I got first, which still amazes me because I liked other people's steps too and I didn't even really get to practice mine or anything or even finish composing it until right before the competition today because I've been sick! I'm very grateful. The prize was a box of Cadbury chocolates (YES) and fifty dollars, so . . . heading back to see "Tangled" again? Maybe! :D

Most memorable moment of the day, however, was when I brushed against a pillar, and glanced at the arm that had done the brushing to see it COVERED IN ANTS. Hundreds of ants. I'm still shuddering; I hate ants something fierce. I don't even know how they transferred so fast. Uugh, I managed to sweep and shake them all off in a kind of frenzied panic, but I've still got this horror that there's still some on me, somewhere. I hate ants.

The weather was really warm today. It didn't feel like almost-Christmas at all.

"Tangled" Tomorrow!

I am so extremely excited about this film, it's unbelievable. It's an obsession. I'm terrified it won't live up to my expectations. Augh, why do I do this to myself?

Here's a shiny new trailer--Japanese, no less!--which is a million times better than the standard American trailers. Why couldn't the American trailer been more like this one in tone? It gave both me AND my 16-year old brother goosebumps. Take a look. The audio is in English, never fear, although the voiceover is Japanese. I tried to get my brother to translate for me, but he was able to manage translating only about 60% of it.



I've been kidding my younger sister and saying that we shouldn't comb our hair until we watch the film. My younger sister is 10 and has never had a haircut, and my own hair is down to my knees, so we are major Rapunzel fans.

Sacramento was gorgeous and fun. The drive there and back went pretty well, all things considered--we got a new 12-seater van, which was really strange, especially since I was sitting in the back and found out the hard way that my parents in the front seats can't hear me when I'm way back there unless I yell at the top of my lungs. HR, my 6-week-old baby sister, cried sporadically but overall was extremely well-behaved. I'm very proud of her.

I did not recall in my championship, but I did place 22nd. To be ranked 22nd in the entire Western Region is not a bad thing; sure I wish I had placed high enough to be recalled, but I am grateful I was able to dance at all, and enjoyed myself. I haven't been to any big competitions in a long while.

My little siblings weren't that excited about the competitions, since they go to feises all the time; dance is old news now. Instead, they were excited about other things: a horde of cows we saw (and smelled) on the drive; trying to translate the Latin painted on the walls of the cathedral we attended Mass in; howling with laughter when the wind blew my umbrella inside-out during a rainstorm; seeing magpies for the first time; collecting the bright-red fallen maple leaves. I liked all that too, as well as the cold weather; it was nippy, but so refreshing a change, especially seeing all the fall colors.

There was a basketball court at the hotel we stayed at, so my dad got a basketball from the front desk and we all trooped outside to play. The littlest kids have never played basketball before, so it was fun teaching them and seeing them attempt to dribble and shoot a ball which is basically as big as them. Then we had an impromptu game after dividing up into teams. It was fun until my 16-year old brother for some reason decided to pass the ball to me by throwing it as hard as he could at my face while I was standing about two feet away from him. I was afraid I had broken my nose at first, but it seems okay now, though still very sore if I touch it. That was the end of the game for me, anyway.

Now I will spend the rest of the month focusing on exercising, "Tangled" (I am saving to buy the soundtrack and graphic novel), Thanksgiving, and my NaNoWriMo novel. Said novel is currently only at 15,000 words, partly because I spent the last week or so devoting all my writing energies to writing a birthday story for one of my sisters (it ended up being 38 pages long), and partly because of how dance has been eating up my time this month. I wrote a lot more on the car trip though, and I'm determined to get back on track. Somehow. I'll do it. I WILL.

I've been wondering today about what book Belle is reading in the beginning of 'Beauty and the BEast'. I mean, Belle is one of my heroes (heroines?) and so I've wanted to know what her favorite book is since I was very small, but for some reason the question has returned to puzzle me today, I'm not sure why. When I was small, I was convinced that the book was "The Princess and the Goblin" by George MacDonald, but I couldn't really tell you why that is.

Three more weeks until "Tangled" is released, and I can't wait! A song, a romantic duet, has been released online by Disney, and it's utterly charming. I'm trying to not remember that before I can watch the film, I have to get through Oireachtas, which is the weekend previous . . . too scary a notion, that!

Another scary notion? The idea that NaNoWriMo is only 2 days in, and I'm already behind. Only by 700 words or so, but . . . eesh. I'm going to stay up now before bed to get caught up. Yes. Song currently running through my head: "Hushabye Mountain" from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". One of my favorite movies, but I haven't seen it in a while, I wonder why I'm thinking of it now?

Book reviews for October coming up soon! And there's actually quite a lot of reviews this time, too!

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 :)

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.

My Life as a Cyclops

I've got a stye in my right eye, so my vision is currently both painful and impaired. Not only that, two fingers on my left hand are swollen and painful, apparently after contracting an infection of some kind. And on top of that, I have a dentist appointment tomorrow. Life is not treating me kindly the past few days.

On the brighter side of things, my feis over the weekend went really well. I got to spend time with friends, dance with friends, and managed to nab second place in my Championship, which is no mean feat considering I'm still newly back into the competitive field. So hopefully my various ailments will clear up soon so I can get back to practicing.

I still have not seen "Inception", so please don't spoiler me. That's yet another thing on my to-do list once I can see properly again.

Augh, eye hurts, so I'm signing off. I'll come back again once I can both type and see without pain :(

And the Days Go By . . .

I seriously need to start working on my novel. I mean, I've been writing, sure, but not as much as I should. Starting tomorrow, I'm determined to treat this like it's my full-time job. The fairytale is coming along nicely; I hope to have the next part posted tomorrow, but we'll see; I have dance and things tomorrow that will take up time.

Dance is actually taking up a lot of time lately; I'm determined to get into the best condition possible for Regionals this year. Of course the practicing and training is hard work, but to my own surprise I'm finding it rather fun. Not that I don't usually enjoy dance anyway, but it can be wearisome to drill and work and work like that. Now, however, I'm enjoying the hard work. I think it's a side-effect of being forced to be largely inactive for long periods of time. After not being able to practice every day while in Hawaii, I better appreciate the simple fact that I CAN train hard, and am thus more likely to make use of that fact.

This week I finally got around to watching "Fringe", something I've been considering for a while. The first couple of episodes didn't really grab me, but I kept at it and, eleven episodes in, I'm enjoying the show a lot more than initially. It took a bit of time for me to warm up to the characters, I guess . . . or something, maybe the show's tone or pacing. (By the way, I was both delighted with and distracted by the usage of music from "Sunshine" in the Pilot episode. One of my favorite science fiction films ever!) Anyway, I'm having fun with it now. Even if I keep squealing "Denethor! Denethor!" every few minutes, hahaha . . . Still, this Walter Bishop fellow seems like the sort of guy Denethor might have been reincarnated into if such things happened . . . father-son issues, high intelligence, a dangerous interest in dangerous and weird powers/sciences . . . need I go on?

Anyway, now that I've wrested the keyboard back from my inner geek, I can turn my attention to other recent news. Nothing really important, I suppose: I stayed up until 3 AM baking cookies a few days ago, painted my younger sisters' nails, am now almost halfway through "Portrait of a Lady", and have been drawing a lot lately. I've also taught myself to crochet, so perhaps I can finally make those Doctor Who dolls! I made a little mad scientist already; I will post a photograph or two of him later. I still need new charcoal, drawing paper, and calligraphy ink. This weekend I hope to see "Inception", after looking forward to it for months. But first, of course, I need to attend to that writing. So much life to do, but so little time to do it in! Life sometimes just doesn't seem big enough for itself. But I'm sure it is; it's just I have to train my mind to use it properly and to its full potential.

My Quest: 30 Days to Get In Shape

Now that I am recovering from my staph infection--or, at least, I believe I am recovering--I can move around again and exercise again. Which is good, because the Irish Dance National Championships is in one month, and I am as of yet nowhere near fit enough to be in competitive form. I am capable of really working out only once a week in Hawaii due to limited space, and then for the last two weeks of the semester I did not exercise at all, due to studying for final exams. Also, this infection kept me immobile in bed for two weeks, so altogether, I have not had much exercise at all for four weeks.

When preparing for a National Championship, this is BAD.

Right now, however, I feel blessed simply because I have the possibility of competing at all now; at first the doctors were telling me I might need surgery and therefore Nationals was entirely out of the question.

So I must get in shape, and quickly. Hence the title of this post. I am beginning my quest: to get in shape in thirty days. I'll let you know if it is possible. I believe that it is, if I work very hard. It's doubly difficult because the infection has really drained me, so that I'm exhausted all the time (as in, 'I sleep in until two in the afternoon' exhausted), but I'm struggling forward. Today, June 1, I am going to declare the official day 1.

Today I practiced my dancing for about an hour, but it was a light practice. I need to push myself harder. I also just returned from a night-time run of about . . . oh, forty minutes. I am the world's worst runner, but it is a good way of building endurance and strength quickly. My legs will be very sore tomorrow. In fact, they are already sore. I need to stretch.

Wish me luck! I'll update periodically here, letting you know how I'm doing. It'll help keep me on track.

So Much for Infrequent Posting

Wow, no way. This is the tune of Tam Lin? But I Irish dance to this tune all the time!

*Is ecstatic*

And I loved the tune anyways, but now that I know the connection between the gorgeous ballad and this song . . . it's amazing. Whoa.