I got hardly anything done yesterday. I was really tired and went to bed early, then ended up napping a couple times during the day, too, and then have been tired for the last several hours which means I just sort of sat here not really getting much done (but I didn't want to go to bed until I had finished a few things). :(

Also for some reason there's some sort of fuckup between Verizon and T-Mobile, so when people with Verizon call our phones (T-Mobile), they get a message saying all circuits are busy or something. D:

Anyway! On to the happiness...

1. The excerpt for this really bad gay romance is hilarious. I am almost tempted* to pay the $6.99 for the full book because I know it would provide much enjoyment in ways the author never intended.

2. This whole hair-dyeing thing is going very slowly because I am lazy, but I did use the toner on my hair yesterday, and here is a picture of me post-toner. My hair's still pretty yellow, but it definitely took out the worst of the orange. I meant to do the blue today, but that didn't happen, so hopefully tomorrow.

3. There is a World of Warcraft version of Peggle! It's only ten levels, but I will take anything I can get! Also it's free, yay. (And it's not an add-on for Peggle or Peggle Nights, but a stand-alone edition, so you can play it even if you don't have the others.)

4. Carla's going back to Indiana to visit her folks (and friends) in January and her parents are actually paying for the ticket! This is pretty rare for them, and not due to any lack of money.



*Not really, but maybe if it were half that price.

1. Carla got her new computer today! My old laptop (which she's currently using) is really starting to die (looks like it needs a new hard drive), so instead of saving the new computer til Christmas, we decided she'd just start using it now.

2. Had a nice walk tonight. Four miles, which is longer than we've done in a while. She's been busy with school, I've been busy with work, there's yoga two nights a week interfering with our schedule, and then for the past couple weeks she's been sick. But tonight Alexander wanted something from the Apple Store, so we walked down to the Promenade and back. Stopped at El Pollo Loco on the way, yum.

3. Speaking of chicken, I was boiling a whole chicken earlier today for use in enchiladas and I kind of forgot about it on the stove and so it got cooked way longer than I meant it to...but that ended up being a good thing! The chicken was just falling off the bones!

1. Thanks to the people who recommended Sally's, I have hair dye! We walked down there last night and it turned out they had quite a large selection of non-natural colors by four or five different makers. I ended up gettin Manic Panic, so we'll see how that goes. Last night I did the bleaching (here's a pic of me all bleached) and later today I'll do the toner and then the dye itself.

2. We got our Walmart order in the mail today with this nice lined sweatshirt. It's so cozy! I really wish there was a Walmart near us because it's so nice to find clothes in large sizes that aren't horribly expensive. But if it's something we're pretty sure is going to fit okay, the website is a good option (I love the 97 cent shipping).

1. I got all my Jump translations done yesterday, instead of just One Piece (which usually shows up late Wednesday nights, but was already up when I woke up at noon). So today I can just relax, no set schedule. Woohoo!

2. I got more writing done!

3. I got Super Mario Wii in the mail. So hard to wait til Christmas!

4. Speaking of things I ordered from Amazon, last month or so my mom was talking about wanting some books she used to borrow from my aunt, but now my aunt lives in Oregon, so that's not so doable. Anyway, I told her about BookMooch and said I had a ton of points if she wanted me to mooch her something. So I got her a couple books and then she remembered another author she wanted to reread and said if I found anything I could just give them to her for Christmas. I found one, then decided to look on Amazon for the others and I finally remembered to do that last night and found four of the five I needed being sold used through Amazon fulfillment, which means just like any other Amazon purchase, if you order over $25, you get free shipping. The books were like $3.50-4 each, compared to the ones from other sellers that were just a few cents, but shipping for a book is $3.99 now, so since I got enough stuff (we had one other thing to order that we'd been saving until we had enough to get free shipping) and got free shipping, they ended up being cheaper (plus I get them altogether from one place rather than a bunch of different sellers).

1. I was really good yesterday about doing a little bit of each thing on my to-do list when it came to large projects that couldn't be done in one sitting. I so often feel like I have to do a huge chunk and then I stress out about not having time for it and it makes me avoidant and then I don't get anything done on it. I'm trying to train myself to do smaller chunks. A page each day will get done eventually, but if I never have the time to do the whole thing, it will never get done and then I'll hit a deadline or be super behind and argh. More stress.

2. Speaking of which, I got some writing done! I find it really hard to get anything written when there's no deadline these days, because it always seems to be lowest priority on my to-do list, but I actually made myself write and got about 300 words done. It's not much, especially compared to NaNo folks who are writing like 3000 words a day or something, but for me it's a lot, and it's progress.

3. I finally got like six hours sleep yesterday evening. For some reason when I have insomnia, evening seems to be the best time for me to sleep. Unfortunately it's my least favorite time to sleep, and I don't like to get on that schedule, especially now with yoga on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6.30-8, because that means I'm tired during class or have to be woken up for class. I'm feeling tired right now, though, so I'm hoping I can get some sleep this morning.

4. Yesterday I told my mom I had some cash for her for the rent and when she came over she asked if I needed anything at Costco first, so I was able to have her get toilet paper and laundry detergent and bread, yay. I wish I had known earlier, though, as I went to the little market nearby and got a gallon of milk for $5, when I could have gotten two for the same price at Costco. :-/

5. I got an email from Amazon saying because I ordered Super Mario, I now had a $10 credit for any video game! So I'll see what I get for Christmas in terms of Lego games and whichever one I don't get, I'll buy that from Amazon. (The credit is good til the end of January.)

1. I think I'm pretty much over my cold, and I have to say, that's got to be the "best" cold I've ever had. I never did get more than a little congested.

2. We went ahead and bought Carla's new computer yesterday. Still going to save it for Christmas, but I wanted to make sure Amazon didn't suddenly run out or take forever shipping. We ordered from Amazon instead of the Apple Store because it was $20 cheaper, plus no tax (and tax on an $800 computer is around $80 so that's a big savings!).

3. We might be going karaoke this weekend! I hope they have the new Lady Gaga song.

1. Now that I beat Lego Star Wars, I've started playing Lego SW II again and am once more really into it (there was a lull between beating the first one completely and picking this up where I didn't really feel like playing, but once I got back into it I found it completely addictive). I played a level last night with the emperor as one of my characters and found it hilarious how he cackles the whole time. (Also it was a long and fun level with lots of stuff to bash and monies to find, which is my favorite. Plus I got True Jedi and the rest of the mini kits and the red brick for that level, woohoo!)

2. I am really loving this nice fall weather we've been having lately. Yay, fall!

3. I got an email from Amazon last night saying my package had shipped. What package? I thought, and then I saw...it was New Super Mario Bros for Wii! I'd preordered it and forgotten it was being released on the 16th. I have to save it for Christmas, but it's still exciting.

4. I got an email from a guy who pays me by western union and I have monies to collect later (after sleep). Yay, monies!

1. I was productive yesterday! Got two of the five Psyren chapters done. Got a short story and a couple very short doujinshi translated. Finished up the last of the Asano Inio shorts for Kotonoha. Finished reading a book (my 63rd this year!). And did some lyrics-tranferring on my website. I wish I'd done more, but it's not bad!

2. I seem to have caught Carla's cold, which is a total non-surprise. I think there's been maybe twice that she's gotten sick and I haven't. I pretty much expect it. But the nice thing is that I seem to have gotten a super light version of what she had. While she had a sore throat for a couple days followed by several days of heavy congestion, I had a scratchy/dry throat for a few hours, which then morphed into light sniffles/stuffed up nose. I definitely feel stuffy, but not to the point where I need to take decongestant, and at this rate I doubt I'll be hacking up gunk from my lungs or anything. Considering I had a lingering lung thing earlier this year, I'm really glad not to be doing it again.

3. Today the Metro Gold Line opens and you can ride it all day for free. Carla is going with Alexander and some folks to check it out, which sounds fun and I wish I could go, but while I'm not feeling horrible, I don't want to exhaust myself and make it worse. Plus my sleep schedule is off and I will probably crash this afternoon. Also I have a busy, busy weekend (still three more chapters of Psyren and a bunch of stuff for daemonicangel and I need to translate some lyrics so I can do an update and and and!). So no train for me, exciting though it is. Maybe some day they'll actually build a line that runs out to the westside. Ohoho. Who am I fooling? (Actually there is one planned to come out to Culver City, which is further than anything so far, but still not at all convenient for us.)

4. I got my yuletide assignment! I'm pretty excited about what I got. I had been thinking I might get matched on that, because it was one of the very rare fandoms I offered (I offered several that were super tiny, plus a couple that were bigger (plus Glee, which is one of the biggest this year, but I only offered Mercedes and Tina, so that probably cut out most chance of me matching anyone *cynical*)), so I'd already been thinking about what I might write if I got it and what I had been considering will fit right in with what my recipient requested. :D I don't think I'm going to try and get a pinch hit this year, but I will definitely be writing Treats when the time comes.

1. Finally remembered to order a new sweatshirt from Walmart. I hope I like it and it fits, because it's a pain to return stuff since unless you want to pay for return shipping, you have to take it to a store and there isn't one near us.

2. It looks like I will be translating Psyren after all! I did a chapter a couple months ago and it seemed like they had decided against scanlating it after all, but then yesterday I got an email saying they were going to do it and could I translate the five most recent chapters. Gotta get on that!

3. I cut my hair last night and it actually came out the way I wanted it to! Usually what I do is buzz my hair down to a few millimeters (like a 2 or 3 on the clippers) and then just let it grow out until it starts to bug me, which is usually when I can start feeling it on my neck. The thing is, while I like it buzzed, I also do really like how it looks when it's in various longer stages, including the length where it starts bugging me on my neck. In the past I've tried cutting just the back and had no luck and just eventually had to buzz the whole thing. But this time I managed to get the back good and leave the front/top/sides. So the back is between 2 and 9 on the clippers and the front/top/sides is about an inch and a half to two inches. I think it looks really cute.

Here's a pic with my crappy webcam.

One reason I wanted to leave it a little longer is because I've been thinking about dyeing it again. I used to dye my hair fairly regularly, but it's been years since I've done so, both because it seems a waste when it's so short and because my hair naturally darkened to a very dark brow, almost black over the years, and I really like my natural color now.

I'm not sure of the color, though I know for sure I want something "unnatural" as I've never been a fan of dyeing my hair to look as if the dyed color is my real color. I've done both red and blue before and liked both, but the red faded really fast and only stayed pink a short time before settling at a nasty orange. Whereas the blue faded fairly quickly, too, but I liked the green it settled at pretty well.

Here's one with the blue just after I dyed it and here's the green it faded to. I don't appear to have any pics of the red at any stage.

I see there's a Hot Topic at the Westside Pavillion (I knew there used to be one at the Santa Monica Mall, but the mall is torn down right now, so I guess they moved to the Pavillion), so maybe I'll go there sometime in the next week or so and see what they have in the way of dye. (I have no idea where else might sell unnatural colors.)

Because my weekly Jump translations have moved from Thursday nights to Wednesday nights/Thursday mornings, I am totally discombobulated. I kept thinking yesterday was Friday, but...it wasn't! Today is Friday! And yes, that does make me happy. I know most people are happy to see Friday come, but not me. The weekend doesn't mean relaxation and a rest from work for me. It means omg another week has ended and I'm still so behind!

So I'm happy today is Friday because it means one more day I can try to get stuff done. For some reason I wasn't very successful last night and I don't know why. :( Today will be better, though! I DECLARE IT TO BE SO!

Also I sold some more CDs yesterday. There's still plenty left, though.

1. Finally got my McShep Match fic posted to my journal, along with the commentary. Only two months after it got posted to Match! :p

2. Already translated Naruto and Bleach, as they got the scans up really early again this week.

3. I think I can make my 75 book goal for the year after all! I'm pretty excited about that. Good job I have lots of short books on my shelf. XD

4. I was wibbling on going to yoga last night because Carla has a cold and didn't feel up to it and I was getting anxious thinking about going by myself. But I went! And it was fun! We did a lot of leg stretching, which I like (and am good at!).

5. Next week I'll be translating a new series for Kotonoha called All Rounder Meguru. It's a seinen series about shooto, which I was afraid might not be that interesting, but I read the first volume and it's really good!

6. I ordered a binder last night. O_o I'm pretty nervous about it, actually, because it's hard to know what size or style to get, especially if you're fat, and they're not cheap ($35 including shipping). But I decided on the 997 from Underworks. They seem to have a good return policy, so if it doesn't fit well, hopefully I can return it and get a different size.

1. IHOP has holiday pancakes! 4 different kinds. There's pumpkin, which I have had a couple times now (both at IHOP and Coco's) over the past few years, so it's kind of boring now, but there's also gingerbread, eggnog, and pecan pie. I had the gingerbread ones Monday morning when I went out with my mom and omg they are so good. Really, really strong gingerbread flavor. I will definitely have to go to IHOP again before Christmas. (I'd also theoretically like to try the other two flavors, but I don't know if I'll be able to tear myself away from the gingerbread.)

2. I got a whole lot of stuff done yesterday. I am quite impressed with myself!

3. I read the new Fullmetal Alchemist the other day. It's getting so much awesomer as it nears the end (I didn't think it could get awesomer, but it is!). And speaking of cool manga, I read a one-shot by Hoshino Katsura yesterday called Zone, which is the story that eventually became D.Gray-man. I was unable to find it in Japanese, sadly, but the scanlation wasn't too horrible (at least in terms of clunkiness; not having the Japanese to compare, I can't say whether or not it was accurate).

4. I am almost finished with the commentary for my mcshep_match fic! So I will be posting that (and reposting the fic to my own journal) probably later today.

5. The first comment here is made of awesome!

1. I enjoyed yoga last night. I am always loathe to go, because ugh, I have to go out of the house and leave my computer and there's people there and I get sweaty and ughhhhh. But I usually end up enjoying it.

2. I vacuumed the house this morning, finally! I have been meaning to for like a week, but now that daylight savings is over, it's starting to get dark so early that by the time I wake up, there's really not enough light to do a good job. So this morning I wasn't really tired yet when Carla woke up, so I just decided to vacuum then, when there was lots of light coming in the windows to illuminate the dust all over the floor (you could see the paths where we walked most often!).

3. I just have one page left to translate on the next chapter of Saint Young Men, so I will start the photoshop phase today or tomorrow. In an effort to get me to stop dragging my feet so much when SYM comes around, I've decided I'm not going to do as much background editing. In the early chapters I wasn't editing SFX at all, but I was editing any background text. Then with the last chapter I did, I started editing all the background text plus the SFX. But there's just so much editing that just thinking about working on this series puts me in full-on avoidance mode, so in order to be able to work on it at all, I think I'm going to really have to cut down what I edit and leave more background stuff in Japanese (with notes if it's anything relevant to understanding the story).

1. Got another book read last night. If I can read two books a week from now until the end of the year, I could actually make 75. *chooses short books*

2. The Forbidden Archive is open! I'm pretty excited about this. Years ago when I was in Vampire Chronicles fandom, it was all on the downlow because Anne Rice hates fanfic and her lawyers were harrassing people. But there was one archive and it was kept kind of secret. Then the fandom died off even more, and the webmaster stopped maintaining it. But recently some people have revived it again, this time with a more modern interface that allows authors to upload their own stuff. They've already added some of the older fics and just created accounts for the authors, and will be continuing to add old stuff, but also allowing old and new authors to upload stuff that was never on the old archive. A few of my fics are on there already, and I'll be slowly adding more. I'm just happy that the site didn't die altogether.

1. We got the check for the second half of Carla's financial aid yesterday, woohoo!

2. I signed up for yuletide and even got my Yuletide letter written (I wanted to have it written first so that I could include the link in my signup requests). It was pretty tough to choose which fandoms to offer to write for, because once I'd written my letter about my requests, I was really psyched to write those ideas. Which, um. Not exactly helpful. *headdesk*

I signed up for one fandom I've written before, but a character I haven't written, as well as one fandom I have written in, but which I seriously doubt will get any requests. The rest of my offers (maybe ten fandoms) are all new to me. I generally try to write new stuff, because that's a big part of the fun of Yuletide for me.

3. Maru jumping in and out of things.

I forgot to mention the happiest thing yesterday! After waking up Thursday to find that I'd been slapped with a $49 fee on an old credit card because they've decided to charge a yearly membership fee if you don't use the card, I called to see if I could get it reversed. The guy gave me no trouble about reversing it, but said he would have to cancel the card to do so. Fine with me, since I'd been planning to cancel it anyway, since I have no plans to use it and there's no reason to keep it if they're going to charge me a fee to do so.

Anyway, this is the second time in the past year or two that this has happened, so it finally got me off my ass to go through our cards and cancel the old unused ones. You see, although this year we finally got ourselves out of debt, for many, many years we had $20,000+ in credit card debt and were constantly juggling it between cards to try and get lower interest rates. Which meant we signed up for a lot of new cards if they offered a cheaper rate for balance transfers. So the cards just sort of accumulated over the years.

Between the two of us, we called and cancelled about ten cards, leaving us with three cards each. Which I still think is overkill, but just in case we ever need them, they're there. We have two that we usually use and pay off immediately if we need to use a card for something, but I'll try to rotate them so that they all get used a bit and thus not hit with any fees if these guys decide to institute them as well.

It felt really good to get those cards sorted. I'd been meaning to do so for ages, because we really just do not need all of those cards sitting around. It also made me think about how happy I am to be debt free, really for the first time in my adult life. It's such a weight off my shoulders, especially considering less than two years ago I couldn't see a way out of it and thought I'd be crippled by that debt for the rest of my life.

1. I loved today's Wondermark. Don't miss the mouseover!

2. I also loved this super cute picture of a puppy!

3. And this capcha fail.

4. The past few days I've been really good about working on transferring lyrics from my old site to my new site (if you're new to my journal, I've been moving stuff from this old site to this new wiki-based site) and today I decided to compare and see how much I still have left to go...only 350 romaji and 250 translations! And that's all from eight artists + the Digimon lyrics (which were separate, but are now just going to be mixed in because if people want to search just for Digimon, there are category tags). I really feel like I might get this done someday! After over two years of this, it was just feeling like no matter how much I worked on it, it was never going to get done. I think (hope) seeing the light at the end of the tunnel will help keep me on track with working on it every day.

5. I also did other productive stuff yesterday! Always something to be happy about.

1. The Weekly Jump stuff seems to be coming earlier and earlier. I already did One Piece last night as usual, and did Bleach and Naruto early this morning. I have started Bakuman as well, but they said it wasn't as much of a hurry, so I could go to sleep and do it when I wake up, which is good, because I'm kind of falling asleep here. XD But it's still nice to have almost all of that out of the way.

2. I was productive in other areas last night, too! I finished reading my 60th book of the year! (Wow, compared to twenty books last year, and eleven the year before!) I translated two very short doujinshi, half of a one-shot, and a couple pages of Saint Young Men. I wish I'd gotten more done, but I was also traslating the Jump stuff as well, so.

3. We had super delicious grilled chicken and rice last night. OMG it is the best evar.

1. I had one of the best doughnuts I've ever had last night. It was a glazed buttermilk bar. Still warm. Soft and moist on the inside. Crispy on the outside. OMG. Seriously. Best thing ever.

2. It was really foggy last night. I loved it. It's still kind of foggy and overcast now, too. :)

3. I got stuff done last night!

1. I have now read 59 books this year! (And am almost done with While I still don't think I can make 75, I think I will be able to make 70. I have a stack of short books here on my desk to choose from.

2. Including the $150ish we already had set aside, we've now reached $450 towards Carla's new computer (over halfway!), thanks to the CD sales. :D We should get the balance of the financial aid money this week, so we can put in a little from that, and then a little every week from whatever I make, and I think we'll definitely have enough saved up to get it by Christmas.

Had a fun day yesterday. We took the bus over to Alexander's to help him move some furniture and stopped at Togo's on the way. There are no Togo's anywhere near us anymore so I haven't been there in years, but last time we were over by him we saw one on the corner of Normandie and Wilshire. They still have my favorite turkey cranberry sandwich, too! The one we used to go to was the one down by Fry's in Manhattan Beach, and before that one closed they stopped selling the turkey cranberry, so I thought it was just off the Togo's menu altogether, but apparently it was just that store. So delicious om nom nom.

1. I got these Blueberry Muffin Pop Tarts at the store yesterday and omg they are so good. They actually do taste like blueberry muffins, not just blueberry Pop Tarts.

2. I dislike daylight savings and don't understand the point of it, but I'm glad to get an extra hour, especially since we're going out and doing stuff later today.

3. I've sold quite a few CDs from my most recent sales post, and had requests for even more. We're hoping to make enough to buy Carla a new computer for Christmas. She sold her Mac Book and has been getting by on my old laptop (which after some very weird shenanigans, seems to be working okay again for the moment), but is increasingly frustrated with having to use Windows all the time. So we're trying to save up for a Mac Mini.

I...really can't figure out where yesterday went? But I somehow did manage to get some stuff done, so yay for that.

Also I meant to put this in yesterday's post, but forgot. Our heater magically started working again! We have a wall heater out in the living room and we rarely used it because we don't spend much time out there. But a couple years ago it just stopped working altogether. The pilot light was still on, but adjusting the little thermostat dial did nothing. So I figured oh well, don't use it much anyway, and figured it was dead for good. But then last night it just magically came on all by itself. I didn't even touch it. It just fell below the temp that it showed on the thermostat (which was the same temp it had been left on these past couple years) and popped on. So now if we're out there and want to use it, we can!

1. The yuletide mods are having an amnesty this year, so anyone who defaulted and was banned in previous years can participate! That means me! :D I'm pretty excited about it.

2. Alexander came over for dinner last night, which would normally not be good for me on a Thursday, since I have Jump translations to do, but I got Bleach and Naruto out of the way in the early afternoon, and Bakuman didn't come in until like eleven last night, so it all worked out. :D

3. I was really productive yesterday, despite it being Jump day (which often means I don't get much else done besides those) and having Alexander over.

4. My mom said I could borrow her car to pick Erin up from the airport when she comes to visit.

1. Still nice and cold yesterday. I love this weather!

2. I got my paper done for yoga* yesterday and it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd thought it would be. The first paper was one of those where I could barely think of anything to say and didn't meet the minimum length requirement at all. But this one I was able to easily get two pages without putting much of any thought into it. (I'm horrible at writing papers, so that is really rare and amazing for me.)

3. Pretty productive day! Not only did I get the paper done, but I also got a good chunk of translation stuff done.

4. I've been on a caramel apple kick lately. Carla introduced me to these caramel wraps. Ralphs has them in a package of five for $1.50, so they're pretty cheap. They're thin circles of caramel and you just wrap an apple in one and stick it in the oven for five minutes, then let it cool off and eat it. Not the healthiest food ever, but as a replacement for a less healthy snack or dessert, it's not bad. It's mostly apple, after all.

5. ???

I was going to say something else and then I got distracted and forgot. D:









*Yes, I'm taking a yoga class that has tests and homework assignments. It's because we're taking it at the college. But it's so much cheaper** there it's worth it.

**Because we're low-income, we don't have to pay the per-unit fee (which would only be $26, since it's a one-unit class, but still), just the general enrollment fees, which come to like $46. That's for an 18-week class that meets two times a week. Plus I get an SMC ID that lets me take the Santa Monica bus anywhere, anytime for free for the whole semester. I took a look at a class offered through the city and it was $75 for a class that was like 8 or 10 weeks and met once a week. I'm sure private studios are even more expensive.