News, Good and Random

French the llama, is it only 4 (almost only 3) days until Christmas!!!??!!!??!?!?!

(For an explanation about the "french the llama" thing, visit this video. It's nothing bad, I promise.)

Okay, so, some good news.

Darling Dearest is doing great. She's gained significant movement back in her left side since last I saw her. She has a slight case of "word salad", which, in case you don't know, means that sometimes she gets the words she means confused with a different word. However, it's much better than it was when she first woke up.

On the down side, she's very, very angry, but that's also understandable. She hates relying on other people, so I totally expected her to be pissed off at the nurses and such when she can't do what she wants.

They're going to start physical therapy with her soon, and she'll probably really like that. She's been trying to crawl out of the bed for a while anyway.

I'm doing good, myself. I've upgraded from crutches to a walker, and hopefully I'll be upgraded to a cane before I head back to college. It'll be hard to get to room on the second floor with a walker.

My Christmas shopping is done, I believe. I just got the last thing today. It's a great present for my mom.

Also, I've been very interested at cryptograms. They're very interesting and fun...but I'm rubbish at them. So...hopefully I'll improve. Also, I'm trying my hand at crossword puzzles. I'm rubbish at those too.

I've found myself not writing like I should be. I'll want to, I'll get on the computer...and then start surfing the net instead. I've been trying to make myself. Gotta get that discipline ready for next year.

I participated in an amazingly awesome project a few days ago. John Green, YA author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns, is also known for his video-blog project The Vlogbrothers, which he does with his environmentalist/musician brother Hank Green. They're both very funny, and both promote ideals that I hold very dear myself, including green technology, reducing your carbon footprint, and promoting to charities.

Every year the brothers Green head up a project -- which they have dubbed the Project for Awesome. It's a great project where all of their viewers (dubbed "nerdfighters") get together to take over YouTube. You make a video promoting a charity that you really like. Then everyone spams the crap out of the comment sections, rates the videos, and favorites them, so that most popular, most discussed, and most viewed pages are all Project for Awesome videos. This is meant to raise awareness about charities to the average YouTube viewer, instead of them watching videos about water-skiing squirrels.

I participated in it--a 48 hour event--and I am proud to say that not only were all but two of the videos on the most discussed page Project for Awesome videos, but on Twitter, Project for Awesome trended above everything, including the movie Avatar, which made it's debut during the project for Awesome. John Green's goal was to trump Avatar, because it cost $250,000,000 to make, and, as John said, the Project for Awesome is free.

Anyway, so that's what I did with my weekend. It was fantastic. I was very proud to do it. John also auctioned off a pair of what he called his "nerd glasses"--the proceeds went to charity. In addition he's donating $1000 to his favorite charity from the list.

On a tiny sidenote, should you want to help with a charity, but have no money to do so, go to freerice.com. There's a vocab quiz there, and for every question you get right, they donate rice to starving nations. Totally free, and totally helpful in "decreasing world-suck," as the Brothers Green put it.

Anyway, that's all I've got for right now. Tomorrow my brother will be putting up Christmas lights and our tree. I'll be there for moral support mostly. And then we're going to see Darling Dearest before coming back for Christmas Eve with mi familia. Then it's back up to the hospital the next day to spend Christmas with Darling Dearest--because we will have our first Christmas together, dammit!

I hope you and yours are having a very Merry Christmas, a very happy Hanuka, a very happy Kwanza, or whatever it is you celebrate. As long as you're a live and you've got people to celebrate with, then you've got the world.

Happy Holidays all and Best Wishes!

Happy NaNoWriMo!

Today is November 3rd, which means that NaNoWriMo has begun. Even such writers as John Green knows that it exists, and I really wish I could partake this year. Someday...ah...someday.

Anyway, so I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween weekend. I sure did. I went to a masquerade ball a couple of days before -- with a mask I made myself. It looked pretty damn good, too, if I say so myself. The best thing about it -- and really the best thing about being in college surrounded by fellow nerds -- was all the Star Wars themed costumes. At one point a Sith Lord and Luke Skywalker got into an epic lightsaber battle before Luke had disarmed the Sith Lord of his two lightsabers and thrust his lightsaber into the Sith Lord's chest. Ah...nerd-dom!

The only thing better than a Sci-Fi movie based costume is a literary nerd costume! Someone came dressed as the Ghost of Christmas Past!!! I wanted them to win the costume contest so bad, but the winner was someone who came dressed as an urban gangster...yawn.

Back to the Star Wars stuff, though. At one point, Luke walked up to a girl dressed in white and asked, "Are you Leah?" She responded with, "No. Padme." He responded, "Sweet." The flirting was pretty obvious, and I almost shouted "Incest! Incest!" but I didn't want to be that guy.

Halloween night I watched a couple of horror movies -- really good, cheesey ones, including Zombie Strippers (yes, that is a real movie, no, it's not a porn, and no, you shouldn't watch it if you're easily disturbed. I thought it was funny as hell, though.), and Trick or Treat (a movie featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons about the evil spirit of Rock, so you know it had to be freakin' funny) -- and played Apples to Apples with a couple of friends that came up from my hometown and Darling Dearest. She beat me...of course.

Now we have three gigantic bowls of candy and only me and my Dearest to eat it all. I wanted to give a lot away, and she almost strangled me for suggesting it.

So, it's after Halloween, and you know what that means...

WE GET TO FORGET THAT THANKSGIVING EXISTS AND JUMP STRAIGHT TO CHRISTMAS!!!!!

I may have already done most of my Christmas shopping... I love it that much. Darling Dearest will love her presents, and I really can't wait for all of my friends to get their gifts. I love giving gifts.

I also may be hinting heavily for several books in the near future (including the most recent addition to the Hitchhiker's Guide series).

Speaking of gifts, one of my good friends was nice enough to purchase the Rent movie soundtrack, a rare find indeed. I have yet to find it in any music store. My friend heard me lamenting about my lack of funds, and soon he was insisting to buy it for me. I am now a very happy fellow.

Sorry for the sporatic nature of this update. I've had many essays to write, many books to read, many poems to create, and not a lot of freetime. Hopefully things will slow down soon, although I doubt it. It's creeping up on the end of the semester, things will only get more hectic from here.

Anyway, good luck to those who decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. I'll be rooting you on from the sidelines.