I LIIIIIVE.

I think I've had several blogposts with titles similar to this.  Oh well.

Five months.  Things have happened.  Hmm.

-I went to the OYAN Winter Workshop in January.  Great way to spend the beginning of the year.  If you don't (which is unlikely since most of my followers are indeed OYANers, so hi to you guys!) then you should definitely look into OYAN.  I mean, if fiction writing is your thing.

-I'm officially accepted into the college of my choice, I have a giganto scholarship from them, and I'm in the Honors Courses.  Huzzah!

-I've read some stinking amazing books.  Check my Goodreads to look because I need to actually talk about stuff that's not going on and on and on about books.

-My Norse fascination has officially ended.  Apparently I inhaled all I wanted and I'm now moving on.  Not that I inhaled overmuch, but I prefer to be a Jack of all trades and master of none.  (Slipshod, maybe; don't judge me, I have a short attention span.)  My poor Prose Edda is still sitting over there, having been waiting to be read since Christmas.

-New obsession - to wit, Japanese culture/mythology/language/poetry - here I come!

-I like pudding.  No, seriously, I am obsessed with homemade pudding because homemade pudding is God's gift to His chosen few who make it themselves.  Pudding is included in my nightly prayers.

-There's a face on my chair.  Like a :D face, etched into the paint.  It's really cute.  It's smiling at me.

-I have a stuffed lobster named Larry.  Larry the Lobster is the official therapist in my room full of characters.  They all go to him and cry into his fuzzy fire-engine-red fuzz whenever they need a break.  Chance occasionally flirts with the lobster.  It's all good.

-DOWNTON. ABBEY.  S'all I'm gonna say.

-Except that IRON MAN 3 Y'ALL.  And we're supposed to get a Thor 2 trailer sometime in early April.  Marvel makes me all... fuzzy and warm inside.  Like I just ate a nice big bowl of pudding.  I'll probably post the trailer the day it comes out, complete with lots of caps/italics.

-AND SHERLOCK.  They're starting filming... I think this week.  Me, a stalker?  Noooooo.  I merely observe.

I think that's it.  It's a good rundown on my life since November, anyhow.  I'll try to post more often.  Lots of writing and TV and movie and otherwise related to entertainment... stuff.  Yes.  Stuff.  I like stuff.

Something else about Chancey-boy.

If you'll notice, he has a playlist.  Scroll down.  There, at the right.  See?  Thank you, Spotify.

Actually it's not the complete playlist.  For some reason it only shows twenty of his songs (he has twenty-seven at the moment).  Sad but that's okay, because "Everybody Loves Me" is at the very top and to Chance, that's the only song that really matters.

Also, in regards to NaNoelle, I have almost 3k over my word goal again.  Yay for car rides of insane concentration.  I'm thinking about celebrating by having a Durarara!! marathon with chocolate milk and bell peppers. 

Too bad Chance loves bell peppers.  I'll probably have none left.  Ah well.

Self-esteem.

Everybody's better at what they do than I am at what I do (and usually they're better at what I do, too).

I never tailor my response exactly right to the person I'm talking to and therefore communication is faulty and I look/feel like an idiot.

There's always someone willing to get on my case for some detail I left out and usually I like and/or respect that person so my pride's stung more.

These are the days when I know it's better if I just stop talking to people before I die of bleeding dignity or broken pride.

These are the days for which anime was made.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch Durarara!! with Chance.  He'll hog the chocolate milk and probably insult me.  But maybe that'll be better than just normal people.

Stuff. Yes. Stuff.

I'm not rightly here.  If you can tell.

First thing.  NaNo.  I was going to update on the first day, but that... did not happen.

But today's the seventh, so I think a week's update is sufficient.

At the moment, I'm completely and totally in love with the story and I'm not even to the really good parts yet.  It's been ridiculously easy to write.  As of tonight, I have about 12.5k words - ahead of schedule!

And then today, we saw Wreck-It Ralph which was, in a better man's words, fantastic.  Ralph was a great character, Vanellope was flipping ADORABLE, and Felix and the Hero's Duty lady and King Candy and - Merlin's beard, it was just a good movie.

"I'm okay - it just glazed me!"

"Why are your hands so freakishly big?"
"I don't know - why are you so freakishly annoying?"

"You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, would you?"
*WHACK*
"Okay, you hit a guy... with glasses.  That's clever.  Well-played."

"They invited Pac-Man?  That cherry-chasing dot-muncher?"

And I admit that half of its charm was the game references.  I actually did play a lot of those games (Frogger. In the background.  Oh yes, one happy girl here), and I was having a flip-out when I saw Sonic doing ads for 'not dying' outside one's own game.

So yeah.  NaNo, going pretty well on schedule.  Wreck-It Ralph is a must see.  That's it for me.

Well, I'm back.

Yeah.  Poor blog. Anyway.

Basically it's the same story.  I've not done much anything of any worth.

I'm on the sixth series of Doctor Who.  I'm still not in love but hey, it's fun.  And Rory is probably my favorite New Who character of all time.

I've also written a lot.  Sparkly Viking Vampire Aliens is coming along nicely at three finished chapters (nine to go) and the sequel to my sci-fi-lite assassin story Deep Six, for now titled Not A Chance, is a bit into its third chapter, as well.  And I've landed on my NaNo project - a novella about some Reflection characters of mine.  I'll probably do some quick charrie sketches sometime.  I'm excited about this novella.

And I've been reading some pretty good books and managing to cut down on books that I don't actually want to read that I just got from the library and feel obligated to read.  Right now, I just started what looks like a promising vampire/vampire parody thing called Team Human.  One very short chapter in and I love the heroine.  We'll see how long it lasts, buuuuut.  Crossed fingers.

I'm quite tired, having had only four and a half hours of sleep last night.  I was going to say more but I think that's enough catch-up.  I'll try to be back tomorrow with more enthusiasm for life in general.  And maybe more to say on Team Human.

Later, stupid faces.

Found In Translation

P.W. Catanese is one of my favorite authors.  His Books of Umber trilogy is amazing and I recommend it to anyone with half of their brain functioning on half-capacity.

I read on his Goodreads blog that Happenstance Found (Books of Umber #1) is being translated into Spanish.  He had a bit to say on the translation business, which can be found here.  But this part I found especially fun:

Manu [the translator] wanted to let me know what he was doing with the character names – in some cases, leaving them the same as the English version, but in at least one instance, changing it to an appropriate Spanish counterpart. My hero, for example, is named Happenstance, a word meaning a “chance occurrence.” That name will change to Casualidad, which has a similar meaning. And while Hap is short for Happenstance, Cas is short for Casualidad. (I love that.) 

I'm sorry, maybe I'm a geek, but is that not AWESOME how that works out?  Happenstance, Hap - Casualidad, Cas... HA!  Brilliant.  Bloody brilliant.