swordBeatsPaper

I don’t quite know why, but I’ve been a bit of a fangirl lately, thanks to my friend who introduced me to Doctor Who. It’s brought up my old desire to travel to Scotland or Ireland or England or somewhere awesome over there on the British Isles… one day, mark my words, I’ll get there! Anyway, if you haven’t heard of Doctor Who, or have but haven’t watched any episodes, I highly recommend it, especially the seasons with the 10th doctor, David Tennant. What a cute little Scottish bloke… and so, so sad I had to get into the show after he leaves it.

I’m also following Neil Gaiman on twitter (@neilhimself), and enjoying it. He’s such a great author (please, please read American Gods, it’s brilliant), and these days he’s winning all sorts of awards and doing all kinds of cool geeky things. For example, meeting Felicia Day (star of The Guild another must-see if you haven’t), and possibly, eventually, writing an episode of Doctor Who… I really need to start reading some of his other stuff, like The Sandman. I mean to try to do that over the coming break. When I’m not writing my own fantasy stories, of course.

Photo: I haven’t been able to take many pictures these days, so I’ll give you a little snapshot of all the Doctors over the years. David Tennant is the one on the left, in the middle.

Last Monday wasn’t a good day. Started out with a bad dream, then various annoying things happened all day including not having my iPod charged and forgetting my umbrella, until the day got better in the evening when I finally got to watch my Monday night TV shows, namely Chuck, 24, and Heroes. Today, it’s different. I woke up to go get a cinnamon roll at the cafeteria, and checked my mail to find the coat I’d ordered quite a while ago finally arrived. Despite the fact that I have a quiz today and I had to do errands during my two-hour break, I treated myself to a Japanese lunch. Plus, tonight I get to watch my favorite shows again. Lesson: if you ever fear (or even think you know) you will have a bad day, make it good. It’s possible.

This weekend I had some extra time, but instead of writing I listened to a radio show on BBC Radio 2 hosted by David Tennant and Catherine Tate. They’re brilliant. But because I seem to not have motivation every weekend, and next week I have midterms, I’m putting off writing until my winter break (extended a week because of the Olympics!), when I don’t have other things to do or distract me. I’m so close to the end of my first draft that I am setting a goal to finish it over the break.

Photo: A lovely picture I took a while ago of my favorite sushi… unagi. Eel, for those of you who don’t speak sushi.

This weekend I had a simple assignment for my mythology class at the library, basically an intro to the library system so that we know how to use it when we get research papers in future classes. Despite the tediousness of some of the questions (find the call numbers for Greek literature), I have to say I had a lot of fun browsing through old books. It was crazy, the number of old volumes that I could pick up and not know a word of because it was in Greek, or Latin, or French. And all the tattered, faded covers! It almost made me want to have a research paper to do, so that I could have an excuse to look through the books more often. Almost.

And, on the other end of the spectrum… I went clubbing for the first time last night. At first I wasn’t even planning on going, but then my friends started running out of people to go with them, and I thought of something to wear, and soon I was getting ready to go. I mean, I’m legal in Canada, I might as well see what it’s like, since I’ve heard good things!

On the way there I was nervous, naturally. It didn’t help that the person with us that had gone clubbing the most had the most to drink beforehand. I’d chosen to not have any at all. Personal choice. She was quite tipsy, so she wasn’t able to help quell my anxiety. But we got there and inside the club smoothly, no hitches beside my friend trying to remember which bus stop it was near. The minute the bouncers finished checking my ID, I started down the steep staircase, feeling the booming music, and forgot how loud it was going to be. When I realized this, much of my fear went away. Nothing like loud music to get rid of any awkward arriving-at-a-party feelings. And, nothing like feeling the bass vibrate through your body to get yourself moving to the music. The music was all techno that night, with some popular songs and a lot of bass. Which I was quite happy about.

There were a few creepy guys, lets face it, you have to deal with that at a club. But according to one of my friends, they weren’t as persistent as they were last time. Course, there were some cute ones too. But most were taken. Hours of dancing and awesome music passed, with some sitting and some drinking (none by me).

We left when things started dying down. It took entirely too long get a cab afterward, since we were in the clubbing section of town and things were starting to wrap up everywhere. We were tired of waiting, so we wandered to where we thought there was a bus stop. The bus didn’t come there that late, though. Lo and behold, we found a Blenz Coffee that was open at 3am. I didn’t know any coffee shops stayed open that late! But we stopped and warmed up, and finally when we called this time, a cab showed up. We got in, had a fun conversation with the cab driver on the way back, and got back to our rooms, exhausted. Fun times.

And as for writing this weekend, I had to give myself a break. I’ve been feeling stressed and a bit homesick, and I had other work to do. Including watching the crazy awesome Saints vs. Vikings football game. 😉

Photo: A lunar new year display at the T&T, an Asian superstore in Vancouver. Sorry, this has nothing to do with either studying or clubbing. But it was such a cool display, I had to get a picture of it when I went shopping! That’s a whole dragon, by the way, not just a head. So. Cool.

The workload at school is gradually increasing, and it’s about the time I need to stop and convince myself to not worry. I feel guilty procrastinating and then find out later I hadn’t needed to worry about it, since it took so little time. I thought I’d share a few ways I’ve been de-stressing, since everyone has to work on it these days.

As for ways to escape my current reality (aka TV and movies, I haven’t had time for books), I’ve been watching Chuck and Heroes, and my friends are getting me hooked on Dr. Who and 24. I try not to miss a single episode of any of them! Another friend is into football, and I’ve been watching a few games with her, rooting for her teams. Also, I went to see Daybreakers yesterday. It was a bit too gory for me but the storyline was well done, how they created a world taken over by vampires.

I was also reminded of one of my favorite logic puzzles today, found at the Conceptis website. Doing a puzzle like Pic-a-Pix or playing tetris on Facebook with some good music (Metric, The Killers, etc. etc.) are great ways of de-stressing! Or procrastinating…

In other news, I managed to make my goal of 1000 words of my story this weekend! I think I’ll do 1000 each weekend, plus another 500 during the week if I can. I didn’t write much yesterday, and I was worried I’d run out of time to write it all today, but I finished. Plus a few extra words. I’m writing the climactic scene; my story is getting very close to being done. I’m excited.

Picture: A simple completed Pic-a-Pix puzzle. They’re a bit time-consuming, but it’s very satisfying to see the picture at the end.

It all started with this amazing door-size dragon poster I found at the poster sale here on campus. My friends suggested I buy it, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to, since it was a tad expensive and I had little room on my wall for it. But I decided to buy it anyway, and a friend helped me stick it to my ceiling, above my bed. Now, I wake up to an amazing picture of a burning castle at night, a dragon in the foreground with a moon behind it, and a man with a long overcoat and a sword overlooking it all. I got to talking with my friends about how inspired it made me feel to write, and I got one of my friends inspired to write in the process. That in turn made me want to pick up writing my story again, and… here I am, writing the ending to the first draft of my novel.

It will take a little while to write the ending, as so much has to happen. But at least I’ve started it. I’m sure I’ll have to do many revisions of this after I finish, and I’m a little daunted by the work. However, I know that very few people who want to be writers manage to finish anything, let alone finish the first draft of a novel. I’ll be celebrating in no time. Right now, I’m trying to do 500 words a day on the weekend, and as much as I can during the week. 500 words may be too much do to every single day. Yesterday I started writing and got 700 words done, and today I got 600 more done. I seem to get on a roll after the first 500. With my “writing music” playing in the background (Loreena McKennitt, David Arkenstone, Enya, Noirin ni Riain, the LotR soundtrack, and more), it feels so good to write. I feel at home.

Photo: A gorgeous view of the mountains from the ferry, from my recent trip back home over winter break.

Link: Small picture of my new poster.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and I’d like to state some resolutions. Perhaps telling people about them will make me stick to them more than I would otherwise. Let me say also that I’m not making up resolutions just to have them; I normally don’t. But who doesn’t view the year’s end (and in this case, the decade’s end) as a fresh start? This time, I’d like to use it as an excuse to change a few things up.

Firstly, I want to blog more often. It’s been a challenge for me to keep a steady flow of blog posts, as you can probably tell… I tend to take a few months off every once in a while. Perhaps I will devote one day of the week to blogging, that would be a way to remind myself to do it. I do enjoy writing and photography, I just have to remember!

Secondly, I would like to study a little harder this term. I let the reading of my textbooks slide a little last term, and though it probably didn’t impact my grades too much, I would most likely have an easier time during tests and labs if I really applied myself, focused on the reading, did as many practice problems as I could, etc. I want to kick this term’s butt! This may leave me with less time for myself, but it’s worth it.

I will still have some free time, and apart from the times I’ll be with my friends, I want to devote it to reading. I have so many books that I’ve only half read, or bought but not read at all, and they deserve to be read! I know they’re all good books, to different degrees. And as I go through them, I’ll put them on my Shelfari bookshelf (see the left column of my blog) and you can check out what I’m reading.

Happy New Year! A new decade is about to begin…

P.S. It’d be interesting to me to hear from whoever reads this blog! Feel free to comment on my posts, leave ideas for posts (I’ll definitely need those if I’m going to do this resolution…) or books to read, anything! Of course, even if I don’t have many readers, I’m going to continue… 🙂

Photo: An amazing work of art on the top of the mocha I got at a coffee shop recently. I wasn’t expecting it, which made it all the more beautiful!

Life has been crazy, and only now do I feel like I have a breather from finals. I have one more week before my next one, so I have time to relax. I was happy to find out my finals were in decending difficulty order: math first, then computer logic, then programming. I was so happy to get the first two over with. I’m pretty sure I passed both of them.

I also get to go home next week! It’s been snowing off and on, but every time it does, it melts away quickly afterward. Last night we got about a centimeter, but it soon turned to rain and it’s all pretty much gone now. Even so, while it was snowing, I played some Christmas music and got a little homesick. But I’ll be there soon!

While I have free time this week, apart from going Christmas shopping and hanging with friends, I plan to do a little gaming, a little reading, and a little playing around with my new netbook. I’m excited to use it next term in my classes, so I can take notes faster, without a notebook, and I can get free wireless internet almost anywhere on campus. The one place I can’t get wireless is in our dorms, which is annoying sometimes. It’s something to do with how old the buildings are and what they’re made of.

Anyway, I hope your holidays are snowier than mine!

Photo: My friends and I took advantage of the snow while it was here. My Texas friend was particularly excited. Love you guys!

De-stressing seems to be the one thing I’ve been doing the most lately. With all the exams, piles of homework, and things to do, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. One thing that’s helped me is listening to music. When I walk to class, I take my iPod along with me. I find that time the easiest to worry; I’m by myself and have time to think. The music helps me to divert my attention. Another thing that’s helped? Finding out my next exam isn’t until the week after I thought it was. That was a load off my shoulders.

On another note, I’ve been trying my hand at poetry for my creative writing class. I had the option to do prose, which is what I do the most, but I thought I’d give poetry a try instead. I’ve found it to be a bit more satisfying–you’re done sooner, you can play with words and form, and explore a wider range of topics. Maybe I’ll do more of it after this assignment.

Speaking of my creative writing class, I’ve been looking forward to today. John K. Samson from the Canadian indie rock band The Weakerthans and his wife Christine Fellows are coming to my class to talk about songwriting! I can’t wait…

Photo: The gorgeous Nitobe Garden. Free for students. Can it get any better?

Today is my first midterm for my Discrete Mathematics class. Sort of like logic for computer scientists. I feel as ready as I’ll ever be, and luckily it’s open note and open book. Although, that probably means if you don’t know the stuff in your notes already, you’re screwed. It’s probably a long exam. It’s the only class I have today, thankfully! I’m getting over a cold, and today I just have a bit of a cough. I’ll have to keep the cough drops going, or I’ll be annoying people during the test. I’ve also been wondering how strict they are about cell phones (only for telling the time and receiving important texts AFTER the exam!) and other things like tissues and cough drops. We’ll see.

Tomorrow, I’m going home for the weekend! It’s Canadian Thanksgiving, so we get Monday off. I’m sad I can’t be home for American Thanksgiving, though. But, this means I have a short time earlier in the year when I can see my friends and relatives. I plan to have a sleepover, hang with the folks, and possibly go swing dancing. It’ll be different staying in a house, and not a dorm, for a few nights. I bet I’ll feel more lonely! But it will be great to see everyone.

Photo: Last night we had a Hamber House movie night. District 9. Powerful movie, I must say.

Overall, university life is treating me very well. I’ve never made this many friends in such a short period of time, and I’m thoroughly enjoying hanging out whenever, wherever. Last week and the week before, we watched the Lord of the Rings (extended edition, of course) over a series of evenings. Watching them with people other than my parents was great; we all understand what’s going on, we love the series, so we all laugh and joke about different parts in the movies. I think, if someone listened in on our running commentary, they’d be laughing their pants off. Now, I have a group of people who like to watch movies, so we will be watching many more in the future!

Today I came upon my first big snag. My first university test. In calculus 3, no less! I thought I was prepared… but about halfway through the test, I realized I wasn’t. I did my best to start working on all of the problems, but I left many unfinished. After a brief freak-out in my room, I talked with some people, got my mind on other things, and managed to de-stress. That’s the other great thing about so many good friends around; you can talk to almost anyone and feel better.

Photo: Who hangs out in a bare, white-walled lounge? The Queen Bees certainly don’t!