Fading Lights

LOOK AT MY AWESOME SHIRT starlit_purple GOT ME FOR MY BIRTHDAY. BECAUSE SHE IS AWESOME. ♥



IS IT NOT FANTABULOUS?

I'm pretty sure I mentioned at some point last year or the year before that rosabelle dared/challenged me to write 1,000,000 words in one year.

Or we challenged each other. I can't remember now.

Either way, I've been keeping track of my monthly word count for the past year. Today I opened the file for it out of habit (I always add my words for the day to this file, partly for keeping track of my count and partly because it gives me a back up if I need it), and realized 'Oh, yeah. I should tally it up, huh? Seeing as this is a new year now, and all.'

Dude. I wrote 184,244 words last year. That's including typos, but still. 184,444 words. My count for 2012 was 56,959. That's more than three times the amount of words. And I actually finished NaNoWriMo for the first time EVER. After like, five years.

I have kicked total writing ass this year. I am RIDICULOUSLY proud of myself right now.

I've been playing Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns for the DS lately. Not sure why; sometimes I just get in the mood for Harvest Moon and find myself tied to it for a week or so. This is the first time I've played this particular edition - usually I stick to my beloved Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life - so it's a learning experience. Definitely different from the one I'm used to.

Thoughts so far:

☀ Damn this version is a lot more complicated than I was expecting. o.O
☀ You can play as a boy or a girl, and focus on either raising animals or growing crops. For my first attempt at this, I picked a girl and animals, because they're generally less complicated. I named her Karone (I intend to name the boy version Andros), which has led to fun conversations about trying to get Karone laid.
☀ Upon introducing my character around her new town, I realized that the only marriage candidates I was interested in were the other girls. c.c;;; (I've picked a bachelor since then, but he lives in the other town.*)
☀ To make the larger animals like you (such as cows, sheep, alpaca, wild bears and boars), you talk to them. To make the chickens and smaller wild animals like you, you pick them up and throw them. The chickens get a little red heart over their head when I do it. I laugh every single time. Artyra even wrote me a story about it.
☀ My lamb looks like a pink tribble. It's a fluffy ball with eyes.
☀ There are monsoons. All the other characters kept telling me to stay inside, and any time my character wasn't running or had her fishing pole in the water, the wind was pushing her to the left. It was *hilarious*.

In summary: I LOVE THIS GAME. ♥♥♥

In other news, I've signed up for Rare Pair Fest and PR Femslash Ficathon. Rarepairfest was because I was blackmailed talked into it by rosabelle. I have no idea why I signed up for Femslash. Maybe I'm a sucker for punishment.


* In answer to anyone else who shares rosabelle's immediate question, no, you can't have your girl marry other girls in the Harvest Moon games. This series is about marrying and having a baby and continuing a family legacy as a farmer. ... And apparently farmers can't adopt.

But it's cute, so I'll live with it.

Today has been a day of ups and downs.

• Woke up too early
  
• Spent far too much time arguing with Final Fantasy VII.
  
• Ate coffee and a donut, and later another donut.
  
• Watched HGTV for awhile, which is both entertaining and depressing in equal measures.
  
• Learned that yet again, the local news station refuses to spent more than two minutes talking about the gay marriage debates.
  
• Was invited out to get dinner with Brother's mom since it's just the two of us in the house tonight.
  
• Ended up watching TV and eating by myself because she got a phone call.
  
• Discovered that while I FINALLY received $50 for my state taxes, I'm being charged $70 for my federal taxes which were confiscated by a previous debt. I ... have no idea what the hell I should do about it. >.<
  
• Found my inbox and Facebook flooded with supporters of equal marriage rights, while many of my Dreamwidth friends are upset about the debate.
  
• Learned from Brother's mom that her daughter-in-law's brothers got into an actual *fist fight* over marriage rights. Which even though I'm not exactly friends with these boys, hurts for reasons that are hard to put into words.
  
• Finally discovered the reason I keep getting Follower notices from Fanfiction.net on my one-shots: they have a new 'Follow/Favorite' button at the top of the page, which I suspect is their attempt at AO3's Kudos button. It's ... a very annoying way to implement a good idea. >.<
  
• Wanted to rant about All The Feelings I have on the marriage issue but had to reign it in a bit, because this is a very conservative family and I'm 90% sure that Brother is the only person in his family who actually supports gay marriage. Still kind of ended up saying more than I intended to (and probably should have). There wasn't any debate or discussion about it, but I got the impression we were on opposite sides.

But there were definite ups, too.

• Ranting and planning and talking with starlit_purple. ♥
  
• Brother's bird has been very quietly and sweetly chirping at me off and on tonight. (Since he often throws tantrums whenever I so much as stand in the room, this is a very nice change.)
  
• This video, which starlit_purple linked on Facebook, which is lovely. ♥
  
• Posts of love and happy things from punkpinkpower and starandrea, for everyone who needed something to make them happy today. ♥
  
• Clicking on one of the pictures starandrea linked and discovering this fabulous collage of win by sheer accident.
  
• A dish of rocky road ice cream.

I love my friends. You are all so amazing and wonderful and full of love. ♥

( Health update! )

In other news, rosabelle is AMAZING and I love her SO MUCH. ♥♥♥ She made my day by saving it. (As usual.)


* The doctor was this tiny woman who looked and dressed just like my Ryokou-chan, except with a southern accent. I cannot addiquately express just how hilarious this is.
** I felt SO BAD for poor Shi-chan. She has a thirteen-hour shift today, and she had to leave early after sitting with me in the ER. x.x
*** As it was explained to me, a hiatal hernia means that there's a small hole in the bottom of my diaphram, and my stomach is trying to escape through it. All that can really be done for it is medication, watching when and how much I eat, and according to my paperwork, trying to lose weight. Which may be difficult with the bronchitis. -_-;;;