Tomorrow is March!

And therefore NaNoEdMo. All I know is that this month has gone on way too long. So tomorrow I have to get up early and get my editing done, though I've not gotten up early in months. It's no longer an option to sleep in, since I have school to get done in the morning, a piano lesson in the afternoon, then house cleaning and babysitting. I won't be able to get any time in until 9 PM or so, which isn't acceptable. Probably. No. It ISN'T ACCEPTABLE.

I'm procrastinating royally, by the way. I should be cleaning my room and setting stuff up. Making sure I have everything in order, picking out an editing hat. I'd use my writing hat, but I worry that mixing tasks may disrupt the use of my writing hat. Maybe I'll go without so far, and only break it out if I absolutely need it.

Um, that's it for today. BEWARE!

Return of the ACT Scores

This should be the last post obsessed with my ACT scores. They came in the mail yesterday, and although I didn't get the score I kinda hoped for, but I got what I needed. A 29 composite. I wish I could've gotten a 30, but oh well. I did get a 25 in the math test though, so I don't have to take Intermediate Algebra and waste the time and money. That means straight to College Algebra and then probably Calculus or something for my second semester.

What's funny is that I typically find the English test the easiest, but I never score the best on it. My best score this time was actually the Science test, which is always a total joke. All reading and interpreting graphs. Oh well. Math was still my worst, but that's ok. The stupid thing doesn't matter as soon as I'm in a college. Seriously. Torture that matters once. Doesn't make a difference after that. Annoying.

Good news is now I get to pre-order Pokémon White for myself! And then I need to figure out how I'm going to bribe myself with it during NaNoEdMo. Probably something like no Pokémon until I'm done with my time or some such.

Let's see, I should probably update on my goals... I'm getting tired of Latin, but at least I get the notes taken. I can't wait to move on to Italian or something. I'm still going crazy waiting, and last night I finished the project I had been working on for a friend last night, so now I've got nothing I want to do for a few days. Grar.

What? There's such a thing as school? Nah, that's just a myth.

EdMo in a Week!

New rule: I'm not allowed to bore my (non-existent though they may be) readers with such repeat annoying topics as the anticipation of this month being over already, please.


NaNoEdMo is in a week, which means being concise and non-repetitive, and things like that. I have cleaning to do, studies to work on, writing styles I can brush up on, video games to play, Python to program in, even stories to write on, if I like. I should make a to do list.

Instead, I'll talk about my goal list again! Here it is, for all to enjoy, again:

• Take ACT again (February 12th)
• Finish Fictionpress story (February 25th)
• Participate in NaNoBloMo (January)
• Edit Crystal Frontier (about to start, deadline May 25th)
• Finish Latin (March 11th)
• Write a story in/translate a story into Ganyi (Tentatively October 31st)
• Complete Italian course (Window: March 13th - August 11th)
• Participate in NaNoWriMo (November)

 So pretty with those unsavory tasks crossed off the list. I could use a game plan for what's next though, and it's about time I really cleaned my room and got stuff organized again... A friend just recently asked me to give suggestions on a story she's editing, which serves the double purpose of project and helping me get my editor's hat on for next month.

Hooray! Stuff gets done.

Maybe I've Been Looking at This Wrong

Maybe this isn't an intolerably long period of waiting between things to do. I should be calling this a refreshing between wearying projects. Ok, "wearying" is overkill. How about... A refreshing break to catch up on things before I launch into another project. Doesn't roll of the tongue as well, but it's more accurate.

Anyway, it's getting kinda hard not to just go ahead and start on something. I finally busted out my "I'm bored" story for something to do. Not that I don't have anything else I can do. I could clean and organize my room, get some actual piano practice done, get ahead on math, science, reading, etc. But what I really need is a Minecraft project. I think my brother and I were going to make a replica of the Roman Colosseum with buttons to open doors to creepers and zombies and the like, in case the battles get boring for Caesar. That means building a cylinder out of cubes again. Noooo! Oh well.

Let's see... what else could I do? Maybe resume my Python course, if I'm so bored. Nothing like typing code to while the time away. Maybe I should add something active to the list, too. I've already been an idiot and managed to get both my kite and the spool of string stuck in two separate trees, though. Maybe something not involving wind, yeah? I could rig something to get my kite and string out of their trees, and probably fail and kill myself in the process. Sounds like fun!

Is It Really STILL February?

I try to make it a habit not to complain about time going slowly or anything like that, what with life honestly going fast enough as it is -- seriously? 2011 already? I'm graduating this year? -- but for some reason February seems to drag by for me. Maybe it's the Groundhog day thing, which gets my thoughts on spring, and the traditional Kasnas teaser-days, where we get some 50-degree days in the middle of all of the blech. We've had a fun winter so far, lots more snow and ice skating than usual, but when it starts to melt off, I'm ready for it just to be warm. Of course, we're not done with the yuck yet.

Anyway, usually time only goes this slowly if I'm waiting on something, but what? Pokémon Black/White to come out March 6? NaNoEdMo, so I can work on Crystal Frontier? Latin to finish up so I can work on Italian in earnest? My ACT scores to come back? Probably some mix of the things. I do want to get started on writing something again, but I'd sure like to get at least a little editing out of the way before-hand. Besides, I'm no good at getting up early in the winter.

Oh, yeah... Pokémon Black and White come out next month. I'd kinda been set on not buying them, but then while I was looking at some site for other information I saw that one of the starters was a sea otter, and that kinda snagged me. I had no particular reason to buy in, and a few reasons why it'd be a waste of time due to the lack of desire. I don't get that much enjoyment out of them, right? The new Pokémon look kinda stupid. Why do I need to spend money on yet another Pokémon game? I've gotten a game out of nearly every set since Generation II. I skipped... FireRed/LeafGreen. My brothers got those. I did get both Ruby and Emerald though. I also got Diamond and Platinum. I have HeartGold. I've never completed the Pokédex, ever. I've beaten the league in all of them though... but... I don't get that much fun out of them... Or maybe I do. It's fun exploring new areas and fighting with new trainers... maybe I'll get it. So now I have a deal with myself. If I get my ACT scores back by the time it comes out, and if my scores are up to par (math in particular!), then I can pre-order the game. If I don't get the scores I need... huh. Haven't though about that, honestly. I guess I have to wait until it comes out to order it or something. It's my money, so whatever, I guess.

When is February gonna be over?

Is It Really STILL February?

I try to make it a habit not to complain about time going slowly or anything like that, what with life honestly going fast enough as it is -- seriously? 2011 already? I'm graduating this year? -- but for some reason February seems to drag by for me. Maybe it's the Groundhog day thing, which gets my thoughts on spring, and the traditional Kasnas teaser-days, where we get some 50-degree days in the middle of all of the blech. We've had a fun winter so far, lots more snow and ice skating than usual, but when it starts to melt off, I'm ready for it just to be warm. Of course, we're not done with the yuck yet.

Anyway, usually time only goes this slowly if I'm waiting on something, but what? Pokémon Black/White to come out March 6? NaNoEdMo, so I can work on Crystal Frontier? Latin to finish up so I can work on Italian in earnest? My ACT scores to come back? Probably some mix of the things. I do want to get started on writing something again, but I'd sure like to get at least a little editing out of the way before-hand. Besides, I'm no good at getting up early in the winter.

Oh, yeah... Pokémon Black and White come out next month. I'd kinda been set on not buying them, but then while I was looking at some site for other information I saw that one of the starters was a sea otter, and that kinda snagged me. I had no particular reason to buy in, and a few reasons why it'd be a waste of time due to the lack of desire. I don't get that much enjoyment out of them, right? The new Pokémon look kinda stupid. Why do I need to spend money on yet another Pokémon game? I've gotten a game out of nearly every set since Generation II. I skipped... FireRed/LeafGreen. My brothers got those. I did get both Ruby and Emerald though. I also got Diamond and

ACT: GO AWAY.

So because I don't have much else to chat about, we'll talk about how the ACT went. It's comprised of four tests over English, Math, Reading and Science -- in that order. The English is the longest test with something like 60 or 65 questions, but it's also the easiest. A few of the questions strike me as somewhat subjective, as far as sentence placement and wording and stuff. Whatever. It was still easy. The math section was what I was after a better score on... I don't remember exactly what score I need to get out of Intermediate Algebra. I'm still not sure if I did well enough. I don't know much about matrices or... some geometry stuff. If you have a circle circumscribing and equilateral triangle circumscribing another circle, and you know the radius of the outer circle, what's the radius of the inner circle? I have no clue. That was one of my tests. I gave a guess.

Reading is easy. Scan the article, read the question and options, find the answer, answer the question. Science is... annoying. I think it went better this time than last time. Reading and interpreting graphs doesn't count as real science to me. Oh well. It's done. I don't have time to take it again, so if I have to take Intermediate Algebra, whatever. I need a... 22 for College Algebra. I think my last test got me a 20 or something. I should check. A few points shy...

In other news, my desktop computer, with all of my Minecraft stuff on it, broke the other day. Same problem as it's had before, it stopped sensing the hard drive. Last time we ended up taking everything apart and dusting it with canned air. After that we didn't get the drive hooked up again right, so it was somewhere near a week before it was turned on again, when I finally had it plugged into the power source again. It worked happily for a while, until now. I know not why. I never did solve the problem before, so I don't know how to solve it now. My mom thinks it's probably the heat sink, and it overheats because I leave it on too much. Maybe, but then why doesn't it work when I leave it off for a few days? I don't know how the heat sink on the motherboard causes the hard drive to malfunction, or the motherboard to malfunction ONLY in sensing the hard drive. I don't know much about hardware, though. I just don't want to lose all my Minecraft work. That'd be annoying. Wiping the drive wouldn't help, I think. It's not been the drive itself in the past. I won't lose my work to corruption, at least.

Another goal down. I get a little break this month until March, which is NaNoEdMo. I'll work on Crystal Frontier, hopefully get it done, and then... I guess I'll go ahead and plot my next idea. I dunno what for sure. Maybe Crystal Glare. I don't want it to take a NaNo again. It's probably at least... 70k or so, and I don't care to extend NaNo into December, thank you. Not sure why... I don't mind a multi-month project in the summer, but not around November. Oh well.

I'll be finishing up Latin next month, then is Italian, which will hopefully boost me into some better skills. I should listen to Italian audiobooks again. Podcasts, videos, anything with spoken word would help, I think. Onwards!

Nerves

The other week I was talking about how things are almost never as bad as the anticipation of them. Crud. Tomorrow I get to go to the high school and take the ACT, which stands for something something test, but I don't remember any more. Stupid test, stupid math score.

Actually, I didn't find the test too hard last time I took it. My math score was low, because I hadn't taken any trigonometry or Algebra 2 at the time. Every time there was an absolute value equation or anything mentioning a trigonometric function... hey, I don't think I've picked that letter for a while. We'll go with that one. I just had no clue what they were talking about. Without the education, I couldn't even make an educated guess. But the test isn't so hard. I won't get a perfect store, I'm sure, but it's not a hard test. I think I'm more nervous about driving out to an unfamiliar school early in the morning, by myself. Stupid nerves.

Better news is I'm caught up on Latin now, and I'm enjoying my Italian kick. Two whole days now! I've been poking around the Italian internet, particularly looking at Pokémon stuff. I don't understand a whole lot, but it's kinda that immersion thing I think. We'll see if it actually does me any good. Sherlock Holmes is interesting, but the language is a little old. Blogs and newspapers provide me with a little bit newer diction, even if it's not magnificent literature. That can come later, yeah?

Another Goal Down!

I uploaded the last few chapters of my Fictionpress story today. Now I'm done messing with ancient stories I hate! For now, anyway...

So that's... two goals down so far. NaBloPoMo is finished, story uploaded, Saturday I'll take the ACT and that'll be finished. That leaves editing Crystal Frontier next month, finishing Latin and starting Italian next month, writing/translating a Ganyi story eventually, NaNoWriMo in November. My list is ever-shrinking! It's awesome.

O.o JUST now on Amazon saw "Le Avventure di Sherlock Holmes." Wow. Might need to get that one... it's on Kindle, too. Pretty simple. I should get myself some Italian readers or something. I did order "Lo Hobbit" once, but instead of a copy of the Italian book we got two copies of "The Hobbit" in English. The mistake never quite got corrected... Oh well. Oh, and "La Guerra dei Mondi," or "War of the Worlds!" Awesome. It's kinda fun to read the titles. I also saw "Pinocchio," which isn't surprising, and "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." I'm supposed to read that later this year. This is kinda fun...

How I Become Behind on My Goals

People on forums and the like explain unexpected absences with things like "real life got in the way." But what do you say when the internet gets in the way of real life? I wonder if I should be asking this question somewhere other than the internet...

Anyway, I'm now a week behind on Latin, because I was way too lazy to work on it last week, honestly. I'll blame the fact that I lost my fountain pen that was with it, a disposable one that it might be. What's that? I have a whole box or two of them in my room? Yeah, but I just feel so bad... that fountain pen that went springing off I know not where... it was almost out of ink maybe, but even so...

Ok, so I guess I'll be a week behind starting Italian, or I'll get two lessons done in a week sometime (ouch!) or something. I won't just give up on the thing. That's just stupid. Seriously. I actually kinda like Latin, to be honest.

In other news, I finished writing out that Fictionpress story the other day, though I'm sure I left a lot of loose ends going. I don't care. It's DONE, dangit. Now I just have to edit it and get it uploaded. No problem, right?

Oh, and the ACT is this Saturday. There's that too. I'm a little nervous. Instead of working through my Pre-calculus book, I decided to just write a report on the functions using internet and my Geometry book and whatever else I could scrounge up. I put in how they applied to the physics I knew too, though I doubt I'll need that. It helped cement their use in my mind, anyway. Maybe I'll send the report to my brother or someone who could grade it, or at least check that my facts were accurate.

So yeah... things humming right along.... I can't wait for spring....