Hey! I'm moving to http://www.wakethedemon.com

See you folks there!

So...I am in Chicago now.

It's amazing. I've been using these crazy adjectives the whole day. I've been in Chicago for about 18 hours and I can't believe how much I missed America. Sure, it's got more than its fair share of problems, but home is home is home, right?

I'm currently staying with BF's family who are, as I affectionately put it, The Awesomes. BF has six siblings and with large families, considering there's so many different personalities, I expected to come up against at least one less-than-enthusiastic family member. But, nuh uh, this is not the case with The Awesomes. Everyone is just awesome, awesome and I adore everyone. They've got a beautiful home in a really high-priced community. Seriously. The houses in this neighborhood look like places you see celebrities and senators walking out of in the mornings. There seems to be a trend among the houses here that involve a rather alarming amount of gables. I don't think there's a single house in this neighbor without at least 3 gables. The Awesomes call it "Gable-litis" which seems to be rather apt. I will take pictures and post them up just to prove my point. Don't get me wrong, all the houses here are gorgeous, but the architectural design here kind of makes me smile. BF's house is at the end of a cul-de-sac and they've pretty much got a forest for a backyard. It's awesome. I know, I'm saying "awesome" way more than should be legal in one blog entry, but I'm having  a hard time trying to find other, equally, um, equal descriptive terms. Yeah, and I call myself a writer, blah blah blah. :P

The flight coming into Chicago's O'Hare was, unfortunately not so awesome. The one great factor was the fact that I got to be on the same place with BF, which until yesterday had not been possible. But Korean Mom power is a power to be reckoned with and Mom managed to get my flight nudged up one day to match with BF's flight. The dude at the standby counter assured my mother that the flight into O'Hare would be me and BF sitting at the emergency exit which is pretty much unparalled in the leg-room department. This was, however, not the case when we connected to this particular flight from Narita Airport. We ended up behind an elderly Southern couple who made full use of the reclining seats. When I mean "full use", I mean, the man's head was practically in my lap for the duration of the trip. Not very pleasent, the food wasn't great, and my legs were killing me 2 hours into the flight. Thank goodness the flight itself was only about 11 hours. If it had been any longer, I think I would have lost my head completely and just started screaming.

I never had so much fun going to the library where I borrowed a huge stack of books, most of them YA, but I did borrow two or three Terry Pratchett books I had somehow missed. We went to the supermarket which was an adventure in its own and I got to experience the daunting spiciness of the Xxxtra hot Cheetos. They are hot. Really. I couldn't eat more than six before I had to give up, due to the painful ringing in my ears.

It is now 5:04AM in the morning, and although I got a few hours of sleep, I think I'm going to just stay up until tonight. I dunno. Unfamiliar place kind of makes it hard to sleep and besides, I have way too much to do today. Got to get a state ID, a cell phone, open up a bank account, find a job, buy a watch, try to find a charger for my Korean cell phone, get some more t-shirts, since I had to pretty much throw most of my clothes into the donation bins in Korea. Must also go to the mall to get gifts to send home to Mom and Dad.

Although! I did get something for me last night, at, like 8 in the evening. I did a quick run to the Best Buy and got a Gateway netbook. It's such a cute little thing, got it for a little under 300 bucks.





 I think I'm pretty much set as far as big monetary things go. This netbook is very comfortable to type on, which had been a concern of mine with netbooks, just because they're so tiny. But in this particular netbook's case, the keyboard is almost the full length of the computer itself so typing is amazing easy. It's got a nice webcam so I can chat with Mom and Dad back home, and the HD memory is nothing to laugh at, although those with 1TB of data will probably laugh in my face. The only problem I kind of have with the laptop is the touchpad which is a tad bit too responsive for my tastes. I might have to go out and get a mouse.

Well, it's light outside now and my stomach feels a little queasy from not really eating anything.

I think a bowl of Lucky Charms will hit the spot very well, don't you?

Saw "How to Train Your Dragon" yesterday and had a total blast. I think this was the best movie I've seen this year thus far and am including it on my "Favorite Movie" list, right up there with Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away.

Right now, writing is a major, major pain. Now that I've started to hit the middle, every word takes three seconds more than it used to, and I'm starting to scrabble for anything, everything that makes sense, or kind of does. It took me past 35k to realize that NOTHING happens.

*heads desk*

Wow. Here I was, just typing, typing away like the proverbial Raven tapping away at Poe's window, only to come to the daunting and utterly humiliating conclusion that so far, all my characters have done was talk. Talk. Talk!

*heads desk again*

So, I've got 39.3k of DoMD and once again, the same feeling I felt when I wrote "Demon Moon", "Walking in Darkness" and "Snow Prince" plague me...maybe I should go and find a real job. Like, really. A real effing job.

But you know what though? I see the light at the end of the tunnel. And unlike Terry Pratchett, it is neither a fire nor a stick of dynamite to blow everything to kingdom fucking come. I realize, no, remember that, hey, I wrote and completed full-length manuscripts and fuck it all to hell, I can do it again! I can!

So, really...the only way writing has gotten any easier is the knowledge that I've done this before. It is like Everest, you see. Only the fact you've done this before makes it easier...in a sense. But every time you scale the gigantic mountain, you are once again faced with a fact that you could, potentially, die.

Here's to hoping I don't die, eh?