Looks Like I Can't Do it All...

My writing yield for the month is (drum-roll please) 7082 words.

Sigh...I know, compared to the other months that's pretty pathetic. As is painfully apparent by this number, I was not able to write 500 words every day while being a grad student and holding down a part-time job. My life is clearly busier, but this still makes me frustrated. I feel like if I was hard-core enough, I could do it.

But I suspect that somewhere at my core, in the place of an iron-will, I have a slightly melty cream filling.

Friend of the Week: Sarah! :)

Obituary: Dr. Desmond Hamlet

It is difficult to believe that a man with such energy and vibrance is now gone. His eyes truly shone when he taught. But a person like Dr. Hamlet does not simply disappear. His booming voice will echo forever in the minds of his students, whether it is to simply remember a terror for comma splices or the enthusiastic encouragement to truly express ourselves. I have posted two very similar messages in both guest books to the obituaries linked at the bottom of this post. But I shall reiterate my sentiments here:

I wish I had taken more time to express to Dr. Hamlet just how highly I thought of him. I still remember my class with him: Words and Ideas, a freshman course that I thought would be boring. However, upon entering, I was greeted by his energetic enthusiasm for the subject and booming voice, which is probably as close to the voice of God that I will ever hear. I still remember he took the time to talk to a harried-looking freshman with a suitcase full of books, and he told me that he had once been the same. He scared grammar into me, challenged my ideas, and encouraged me to write what I really thought, even if it was completely the opposite of what he thought. Often times it was. But Dr. Hamlet was one of those rare people that can look at something they do not agree with and still analyze it fairly and seemingly objectively. Many other professors had told me that I should write what I really thought, but Hamlet truly meant it with every fiber of his being. I remember he practically wrote another essay in the margins of my paper about why I thought James Joyce wrote poorly. But when I flipped to the end of my essay all in red, I was shocked to see an A and an excited note about how he didn’t agree with a word of it, but I had argued well. I already loved to write before his class, but I will always remember Hamlet and the difference he made in my writing and how I thought about writing. He made me really believe that my ideas were worthy. He was strict, but it was because he really believed in writing and expression. I will always be grateful for everything he taught me and that I had the privilege and honor of knowing such a great and brilliant man.

McPeek Obituary
Columbus Dispatch Obituary

RAM, SAM, and Gilpatrick

I was just reading an article for class (or rather I’m currently reading it and should be doing so now) but the fact that serial access memory is shortened to SAM made me pause and chuckle. In my mind I see a little Gilpatrick lounge inside every computer with Sam sitting down, his feet on the table, watching TV when some command tells him to go search the computer memory. The little computer Sam will probably grumble, set aside whatever food he’s eating, and go and get it.

Maybe this won't help me understand computers but it sure makes this article less boring. Gosh, I miss Gilpatrick.

Is She...Dead?

No. I'm still alive. I haven't felt like it at times, but I am. There have been a couple times through the week where I could have blogged but didn't. There are several reasons for this. One is that the blog may have consisted of something like: "Ogg...sleepy." The other is that there has not been much of note for me to share. I could probably still post a sentence everyday. But the utility of this is questionable. It seems most my readers appreciate my longer, thoughtful posts. The only things I've thought to remark on recently is that I discovered there are cinnamon bun Creme Savers (which are awesome), and that I really hate it when people knock on the doors of public restrooms that are locked. If it's locked, then there's someone inside, or it's locked for some other reason, likely by someone with the key. I know sometimes kids amuse themselves by crawling under the stalls and locking the doors, but I was in a single room restroom. What's someone going to do? Ooze under the door crack, lock it, and then ooze back? So yes, I'm in the restroom, but I'd rather not announce my presence or talk about my activities therein, thank you very much.

It's been a full week. I think most the exhaustion really comes from adjusting, though. Once, I've got certain things like food and transportation down pat, those will hopefully drain less of my energy. Plus, they really weren't kidding about needing at least 8 hours of sleep in grad school. I skipped two days of novel writing because I ran myself so haggard, but on Thursday the TA was kind enough to provide us with snacks at our last class, and it really perked me up more than I would have thought. So some of my exhaustion may be from low blood sugar. Mom was right, I should carry snacks with me. I'll try to remember to buy some when I go to the store tomorrow. But I'm proud to say I managed to write a little over 500 words both Thursday and Friday, and I hope I'll be able to make-up for the missed two days by writing at least 1000 Saturday and Sunday. We'll see. But if I can at least keep up the writing, that will be something.

Both an exciting and tiring thing I did this week was my work orientation and training. It's exciting because I learn many cool super librarian things so that I may soon be a little super librarian who shall hopefully be able to upgrade to big super librarian. But it's tiring because all the librarian super powers have to be taught to me very fast so I can throw on my spandex sweater set as soon as possible and fight with my amazing bookish powers!

Anyway, let me know if you would be interested in me blogging random short stuff everyday or if you'd prefer that I only write when I have something interesting to say.

Friends of the Week: Tim and Becky! Thanks for commenting!

Chrissy also commented a while back, and she's my sister of the week every week, but I thought she deserved a colorful name.

The Other Me....

They forced us to get accounts in Second Life for one of my foundation courses so we could have an educated opinion on whether or not the university should teach a class in Second Life. Yes, apparently many educational institutions seriously do this. Now, while I acknowledge its use as a tool in distance learning, the fact that people could feasibly come to class with rabbit ears (or as a rabbit), with green hair, or decked out in a leather catsuit troubles me. I dunno. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. I also had to take on an alias because I couldn't use my real name since last names are selected from a drop-down menu. I like my last name. And Cherie Lee is not the same as Cherie Eel (one of the options I did NOT select). I ended up with MeiLing Greenwood since the first is my Chinese name and the second just sounded nice. I was tempted by the name "Darcy" which was available, but I didn't like how it sounded with MeiLing as much as I liked Greenwood. There were no sensible Chinese surnames or I would have chosen one. My dear friend Punya would likely find this sacrilegious, but she's free to snap up the name Punya Darcy in Second Life. It's probably still available.

The average SL resident is too cool for me, though. So this is my avatar. I tried to keep her as toned down as possible, but I couldn't resist giving her radiant green eyes. This is not so much because I don't like having brown eyes, but more because the poor girl couldn't look as beautiful as me no matter what I tried, so she needed something to console her. I also kept on her lipstick because I couldn't make her lips naturally as dark as mine. You can adjust both shirt and pants, but this is as far as either would go to cover my avatar. I guess Second Life didn't get the memo that midriff shirts went out of fashion last season. At least she's wearing chain mail, though. That's cool, I guess. It was free, which is why she's wearing it.

The fact that I spent most the time designing the appearance of my own avatar, and that was mostly in an effort to make her look quasi-respectable since the default appears to be "preppy teenager", also makes me dubious of Second Life as a serious or professional environment.

So on a whole, I still have to agree with the First Life website.

All Bets Are Off

Grad School doesn't start until tomorrow and yet I'm already behind it would seem since I was not paying close enough attention to the hundreds of emails flooding my school inbox. So I already have a lot of work I need to do and thus will have to stop the deal I have had with my sister about blogging every day. This does not necessarily mean that I will not blog every day, so I would appreciate it if everyone still checked my blog from time to time. This is obviously something I enjoy doing, some nice me time, and I would like more than anything to keep it going. So I will blog whenever I can. I will even still try to blog every day. I just can't promise anything. I definitely cannot promise to read a fanfic if I miss a day unless that fanfic is assigned for one of my courses. So I'm sorry Chrissy.

I may be able to reinstate this deal, however, once I get used to grad school. Or I may drop off the face of the Earth for a while... But that doesn't mean I don't still want to hear from people. Knowing I still have friends may be the only thing keeping me going at times, so please still say hello from time to time if you can.

Also, one last random piece of fun news before I may not have time: They've actually based a TV show off of commercials.

Now don't get me wrong. I admit I did like those commercials. But I still think this says something about the state of modern TV, and it's probably a big part of the reason I don't regret no longer watching it.

Words, Words, Words

I wrote 20,130 words in the month of August. This is rather shocking since it's more than I expected and more than I wrote in either June or July. Especially amazing since I admittedly had to skip two days when my jet-lagged brain just couldn't do it. I did, however, write some by hand in my journal on the plane just so I wouldn't waste good thinking time (my laptop was, and still is, on the fritz). This proves my newfound dedication because I hate writing by hand. Not that I particularly like being a slave to this devil machine, but my handwriting is positively dreadful and rather depressing to look back at. I can read it, though, which is better than some people I guess. But I also prefer the computer for the ability to move text and go back and smoothly add things. Plus, if I write something by hand, I know I will have to type it later, and I hate typing possibly more than I hate writing by hand. I don't mind typing (or rather finger-pecking) what's in my head. But typing stuff already written is the most menial thing imaginable.

I know this fact is rather contradictory to the lovely picture I have here. By the way, I did NOT draw this picture. It's something I found on the internet a really long time ago and saved. Mad props to whoever did draw it, though. Obviously this is what I wish I looked like while writing. Writing by hand certainly looks more romantic than slouching over a computer. But I'll bet anything that serene fairy has programmed her quill to word-processor capacity.

I also added 1,330 words from my notes. Proving how I like to move things about. These are either from the previous draft or things I write on the fly and later edit into my story, so I don't recall when I write them (though maybe I should start keeping track.) I have, however, recorded when I add them. The reason I don't record their initial writing is because sometimes I never add them, so they can end up being more like mental exercises than strictly countable story progress. Not that thinking about my novel isn't progress. I just always fear becoming one of those people who thinks very hard about writing but never actually does it.

So right now my story is 90,766 words and a few paragraphs more than 139 word-processed pages. If I wrote normal sized novels, I'd be finished or less than a month from finishing. Unfortunately, I do not, and I couldn't tell you how much longer this will take. But if I can keep up the pace, there is a hope of me finishing before the year is out. I certainly do not plan on making this one into the monster the last draft was. But I don't want to impose a length on it either. Very difficult, really.

Brotherhood 2.0 Review

The following is the newest video in a long series of videos. I used this one because the still frame was pretty good, and it's a pretty funny video without too many in-jokes. If you want to watch this series from the beginning, though, this is their first video. And you can go here
for more of their earlier vids. They start at the bottom and go up.



I've been meaning to do this for a long time but haven't gotten around to it. The trouble is that it's gotten to the point where I'm not really sure what to say. I'm simply baffled that everybody doesn't already watch these guys. The majority of their videos are under four minutes, so it can't be short attention spans.

Anyway, I guess I'll just explain who they are and what they do. John and Hank Green are two brothers who have decided not to textually communicate for the full year of 2007. Instead they will only communicate through video blogs and the telephone. I thought the telephone kind of made the whole thing too easy, but they say they almost never use it. They do a video blog every weekday (they get weekends off), and if they miss a day, or are seen to textually communicate, they must be punished. Punishments are decided by the brother not doing the punishment, but they can vetoed by their wives.

John is an award-winning young adult writer and Hank is a notable ecologist and webpage designer (but not notable enough for Wikipedia.) They are also both absolutely hilarious. My kind of people--which means they're nerds and proud of it. Their videos are what reality TV should be, real people who are fun to listen to.

Because this has been going on since January, and they've developed a decent fanbase, there are some in-jokes you won't get if you don't watch it from the beginning. Nonetheless, I thought a good idea might be to dedicate a video to each person that has commented recently in my blog (meaning on this first page here). I'd like to do everyone who's ever commented, but there's no way I'd remember for certain even though it's not that many. However, if you'd like a video dedicated to you, just comment here, and you'll get one.


Becky and Brian: Yeah, you guys have to share one but it's a good one and the part about bears sort of reminded me of you both and what Becky mentioned about the exciting sights at your trip to Iowa. And a quick explanation of in-jokes: "Nerdfighters" is the name of their fanbase and, yes, John really did eat (and video blogged for our viewing pleasure) a blenderized Happy Meal as a punishment for textually communicating with Hank. Since he was going to have to be punished anyway, he asked their fans to donate money to his friend's political campaign to decide how bad his punishment would be. He also waxed a leg and licked a cat.



I should also note Becky is my friend of the week!


Heather: This is John being punished. These are the sorts of punishments Cherianity will be doling out to those who incite our wrath but don't quite merit burning to a crisp. Study it well. (Incidentally, it is also where John eats the blenderized Happy Meal that I mentioned earlier so either close your eyes or don't watch on a full stomach.)




Sarah: Licking a cat. I thought it was funny...




Tim: In which you see the awesome Neil Gaiman and Hank sings a song about Helena Montana. Dedicated to you since you once lived in Montana.




Chrissy hasn't commented in my blog recently, but I know she reads it everyday, so she can consider the video at the top dedicated to her since I thought it was funny and she might too. The trouble is I've shown her most the other ones I really like. Or she can have the Neil Gaiman one for a different reason than Tim does. Some of you may be saying, can you dedicate videos you didn't make? I say: absolutely.