It turns out that trying to create and upload a website with 7 layouts, go to a job I don't enjoy, move house and write all at the same time leads to burn out... which occurred Friday. Who knew? right...

Anyway after taking a couple of days off, I'm back on the war path.

I've celebrated the improvement of my web skills by making a cute index page for gakushi.net

I am still writing, I have 2 stories on the go (one kind of emerged and deviated from the first) I should finish at least one by the end of the week.

2005 Writing in Review
- I posted 27 finished stories in 2005
- 24 out of the 27 were Prince of Tennis
- 13 of the 24 were Yuushi/Gakuto
- 6 were Atobe/Jirou, 2 were Shishido/Ohtori and the remaining three were Gakuto/Jirou, Ohtori and Oshitari and Kabaji
- The 3 stories that were not Tenipuri were 1 Harry Potter, 1 Gundam Wing and 1 Fruits Basket
- in 2003 I only wrote 3 stories, in 2004 I wrote 12
- I have 3 stories in progress
- I cut/didn't finish 61,733 words which is 154 pages. No doubt some of it will be recycled into something else.

Accomplishments
- Writing a long Yuushi and Gakuto fic
- Wrote 2 stories of around 10,000 words
- Opened and designed: Love Complicated a Yuushi/Gakuto Archive, Afternoon Delight a Jirou/Atobe archive and Secret World my personal archive.
- I feel my short stories are becoming very polished
- Involving myself more with other LJ users and the fandom

Failures
- Letting work get to me so much that I posted no stories between April and July

Fic I'm most Proud of
- I'm proud for finishing Strata, but in terms of pushing boundries and feeling out characters and motivations I am most proud of: Quickening and Seasons Between. Quickening because I wrote in from Jirou's POV and explored what he might be thinking in a serious manner. Seasons Between because I really pushed Yuushi's personality into a very selfishly needy place, where Gakuto is more often displayed as being needy for Yuushi.

One Fic I'm Least Proud Of
- Everything is a learning process so I wouldn't say the story is a failure but I'm not happy with it. The Follow Through It's not the worst thing I've written but I feel it had potential that it never achieved so it bothers me the most.

Thoughts
This year I learnt to push myself for the last 6 months of 2005. I tried to participate more both socially and with my writing. I attempted to improve my terrible archiving habits and I started 3 web sites and purchased my own domain. I also feel that I've learnt a lot about my writing style and environment. I have a better idea of what emotional state and habitat I can write in, I also learnt when to force it upon myself.


For 2006
- I would like to write more long stories, I feel my short story writing is quite polished
- I would like to try a writing schedlue see If I cn get myself to write for a reasonable length of time four times a week
- One lenghty Atobe/ Jirou fic for my website
- I would like to complete and post 40 finished stories for 2006

My big goal for 2006!?!?
I would like to start a Prince of Tennis Annual Fanfiction Competition. Three Categories 2 prizes (1 reader vote win, 1 judges pick) for each category all stories over 10,000 words. I'm going to Japan in April and will be purchasing prizes for the winners while I am there.

As Prince of Tennis doesn't have one big website that most people go to I would really like to see this competition done as a joint effort between owners of different websites/comunities/boards. If you think this is a good idea and would like to help, please let me know.

( only interesting if you want to know what to get me for my birthday ^_~ )

Since we are in a Share House naturally we won't spend money on something like an Xmas tree. Last year jade_kitty, my house mate, drew a tree on a peice of brown paper I brought home and we hung it up. I think we significantly improved upon the concept this year!

Since some people were interested and mostly everyone should've recieved their greeting by now I will post the gallery of Phone Hangers I had made for LJ xmas gifts.

All phone hangers were made by the lovely snowbunny



( See Them All )

I hope everyone was happy ^____^

The state of Texas has invalidated all marriage in an attempt to ban gay unions.

yanked from solaas

Welcome to the iHouse.

If you own a PC and you buy Sony CDs I highly recommend you read the latest news on Sony's Anti-Piracy Software.

Read moffit's post and buyer beware, cause Sony's out to get your PC.

DRM this, Sony



EDIT: The absolute classic ending to this story (for me anyway) Read this article In which he complains about the DRM protected CD and recieves instrcution that after 4 paragraphs end with "If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do."

Must stop trawling LJ and start writing. I swore I wouldn't go to bed until I'd written 5000 words, and I just tossed out 1500 so I'm back to scratch again and procrastinating so much.

I want this story to be about 10,000 words and I have less than two weeks. Why am I struggling so much with this one?

On a happier note I made a promise to myself that I'd be more outgoing on LJ. I've always had this irrational fear that if I just commented people would be like, 'hey who are you?' And of course that just isn't so, I've learnt over the last two weeks that people like to get comments just as much as I do... and when I write it down like that I look really silly.

Well I blew all my b-day money on a new electronic accessory. I got a little white ipod nano. However, this event occasioned the sad selling of Gakushi's ipod (Pink mini iPod) I almost cried when I wiped him back to factory settings. The new owner will treat him well and I'll have visiting right... but he's apparently getting a sex change.

Nano is much less difficult to carry around and I got a handy lanyard to hang him from very cool. After much deliberation over a new name I settled on the sickeningly sweet, Gaku-nano-chan. I'm still considering going with baka-nano! but he's already named now.

( See how much smaller! )

Well Sunday was a more controlled shopping session, largely because I was on the last of my allocated money....

Picture is large...

( Check out my Sunday stuff )

Exhausted, not looking like I'll be getting any sleep soon, this week has been way too busy. Juggling a few to many commitments at the moment, but I still had fun!

This is the short enrty on Saturday Manifest 2005: (Pictures are large...)

( Everything I bought... minus the 3 Tsubasa Chroncile books... )

( The Genius of Snowbunny )

Layout changes...

After hours of arguing with livejournal and not getting very far (I'm a little thick) I have settled for a simple modification of my layout and the addition of a pretty gakuto/yuushi image I photoshopped. [EDIT] Image is from a tenipuri doujinshi (pg. 23), I don't konw the title, because I'm illteriate in Japanese. Circle: Usso-Dan. penal-tea.net has a downloadable zip file of this doujinshi up on their site.

New Layout

Date-o?

In other news I have landed myself a semi-date this weekend. I feel... hesitant. Is it wrong to think things would be better if we just continued to email without ever knowing one another? I guess I just think meeting will ruin our fun little games. We'll find out, it's time to stop living my life advised by Flaubert... "The best experiences are the ones you never have..." Been living that philisophy a little too long perhaps.

Well I've been out of commision for a while, but I have been keeping up with the happenings on my friends list.

In Web news...

There are more stories up at the Yuushi Gakuto archive! http://www.lovecomplicated.gakushi.net As soon as I finish the links page and get my ass in gear I'll actually announce it and thank all the authors who have allowed me to put up their work. Soon. Soon... before Manifest surely.

In personal News...

It looks like I might actually go out on a real date of sorts. I have been polietly asked out to dinner by a guy I've been talking to via email. Sounds dodgy right? Well it's not so bad because he is a close friend of a workmate, and my workmate has impeccable taste. At the very least it should be a nice chat, we seem to have plenty in common. Now I need only 1) say yes 2) loose 10 kilos and find a new skirt... I knew I stopped dating for a reason. Life's so much easier in jogging pants!

Work update?

Work is hell and I want to quit my job, so people can stop calling me early morings on the weekend to tell me things have gone wrong and I'm going to have a shit week.

Manifest News?

Well I actually resigned from the committee, but it looks like I've been targeted for the transportation of a large BBQ, for which I'll have to drive a station wagon. I would like to insert at the point that I've never driven anything bigger than a Ford Laser! But I have the day off, so there's really no reason not to help out on this littlest of thing. Refering up to the personal news... might I actually have someone to bring????

Writing news...

Writing got put on hold for webbing and then for working, but it seems to be back in functioning order and I am participating in fic_n_pic and top_cagnotte while trying to ease back into tenipuri500 and start out in 50pot should be interesting.

Hopefully my next post willbe a story!

This Entry is Spolier FREE...

Well I had my book by 9.20 and was home and reading by 10. I finished at 4.45 and I can't really put together any coherent thoughts....

( incoherent thoughts... still SPOLIER FREE... but hidden for those who don't event want to hear general musings )

Well, it wasn't the very next day, and it was more like I mounted a rescue mission than he managed to return on his own.

On Monday, almost 2 weeks after he first went missing a guy who lives only the a street away phones me and says he's seen Max in his sister's backyard and recognised him from the flyer I posted.

It turns out that his sister has been away about the same length of time that Max has been missing.

So I own the only cat in the world who cannot jump a fence. He was actually trapped in the backyard, and because he's a Ragdoll couldn't leap the fence.

But I have him back now, and he's staying with me until my parents return.

Needless to say he is grounded like no other cat has ever been grounded before.

I have phoned every animal shelter in West Melbourne and every vet located in the local and 2 surrounding suburbs.

I phoned CAR (Central Animal Records) and changed Max's status to missing and appened my mobile number as my parents leave on Thu morning for ten days.

I posted 6 fliers to the vets and emailed 5 to shelters.

I did a 60 flier mailbox dropin a 2 block radius of my parents house.

Today I had 2 phone calls.

1. Neighbour saying she saw Max on Thu, which is a day after we last saw him
2. Local saying she'd seen Max in the coles parking lot LAST NIGHT eating scraps

Both women recognised him from the flier I mailbox dropped. We went to coles, but no luck. Early afternoon it was busy, so my parents are returning tonight. I think it needs to be done very very late, but parent, you know. I'll do it myself over the weekend check out the lot at 1 or 2 AM.

So the flier drop seems to be effective. I will letterbox drop another 60 fliers closer to coles, which was farther away from the house than we thought. (Actually mum will drop the fliers)

I truly believe that the two women who called are 100% sure it was my cat. There is niggling doubt that it may be someother stray, but I don't think they'd call if they weren't sure.

Max is faily distinctive looking and both ladies commented on what a large fluffy cat he was.

Have you seen this cutie?

This is a shout out to all my Melbourne, Aus. friends and anyone who may know people living in Melbourne.

My cat has gone missing and I am trying to get the word around, by any means possible. If your friends list is Melbourne based please consider linking my entry.

( Details about Max )

I am stupidly excited right now, because the Pancake Parlour in Canberra has wireless network. So very very happy right now.