Quick recap of my feelings re: Level 2 of the JLPT! I took it this morning, but omg it already feels like it was years ago. D:

( I can't believe I got up at seven-thirty. )

So I totally forgot to change the excerpt on my NaNo profile before I went to work today, and by the time I got home it was too late! xD hahaha, oh well. But huge congratulations to everyone who won!! I know I've said this to several of you already but I'm just so proud of you guys that I feel the need to say it again, lol! I'm already looking forward to the next crazy novelling season. :)

In other news, tomorrow is my sixth of six straight days at work. I'm not too happy that I ended up working six days in a row the week before the JLPT, especially when I booked time off specifically for studying purposes. I'm really getting sick of how understaffed we constantly seem to be, it's ridiculous. At least tomorrow I have the option of leaving early. :/ Fingers crossed I can somehow wrangle my way out of my Friday shift, although I don't really see it happening, so maybe you should save your finger crossing for the hope that I somehow manage to pass the test!! x)

ahaha, won't you guys be so glad when it's December seventh and I can finally stop talking about this?? YES!!!

~ First off, if anyone cares, I edited the answers to my movie quiz into the post. And now I am stealing ( another meme. )

~ I should probably mention at some point that I have kinda-sorta-mostly dropped out of NaNoWriMo this year. In a previous entry where I was freaking out about my ability to finish NaNo and pass the JLPT, the_wykydtron correctly pointed out that I would be more upset if I failed the JLPT than if I failed NaNo, and ... there it is. I'm glad I made this decision, because I have definitely felt less stressed since I made it, but at the same time I'm really bummed and really frustrated that I let myself get so behind in both tasks that in the end I had to drop one completely. I shall just have to do lots of writing in December to make up for it, I guess! :3 (lol, but remind me to change my excerpt before it's too late! I'm not sure I like the current one enough for it to be up for an entire year. ^^; )

UGH though, the amount of work I'm having to do to protect my precious little study time! It's like as soon as I decided that studying was my number one priority, all of my co-workers have a desperate need for me to take their shifts. Often because they have exams to study for, lolariously enough. Well too bad, I booked this time off and it is MINE. :P

~ My mom's work is doing this thing through the Salvation Army where each employee is assigned a child in need to buy a Christmas present for! My mom was supposed to buy a gift for a five-year-old girl, and so yesterday she and I went and bought a bouncing Tigger board game sort of thing (and the necessary batteries) and a Dora the Explorer puzzle. (lol, yes, a puzzle - I'm totally going to be one of those adults from whom no kid wants to get presents, haha!) So that was fun! Mom asked what my work is doing for the holidays and I kind of laughed at that. Like, one year I think they did a can drive, and that's about it. I don't have a lot of faith in the humanitarian spirit of this company. :X

~ November has gone way too quickly, what the heck. :|

For some reason, lately I feel like writing a lot of random posts about music I shamelessly enjoy. Having said that ...

HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS AND HATERS TO THE LEFT

THIS IS A ~*~MAKI GOTO APPRECIATION POST~*~

( cut for a lotta youtube )

Things that are not awesome:
1) NaNoWriMo ends in nine days and I have only just now passed 10k. I'm not even really sure why this year is going so pathetically for me ... it just is.

2) The JLPT is in fifteen days and I am so completely unprepared. I am starting to seriously feel like I am going to fail. One of my co-workers asked me what will happen if I fail, and I replied with "Nothing," but ... I still don't want to. I'll really hate myself if I do. I don't want to have to wait another full year to take Level 2 again when it's already been five years since I passed Level 3!!

3) The above two points are frustrating me very much right now. :( I feel almost as if I should give up on NaNoWriMo so I can focus completely on the JLPT, but at the same time I intensely don't want to. ffffffffff I dunno. My next couple days off I just gotta BUST IT. And I have to ignore the temptation to fill up my days off with social outings, because I've just had an awesome four days off, but I definitely did not get any work done. :/

Things that are awesome:
1) I woke up this morning to a Christmas card from firecrackerrrr! <3

2) My co-workers being their ridiculous selves.

3) I've finally written over 8,000 LJ comments!! bahahahaha. >xD I'm pretty sure the last like 2,000 of those are entirely from July till now.

4) This song.

Yay, I got interviewed again!! :D This time the questions are from frauleinfrog. ( News travels fast in Vienna. )

In other news, tomorrow I am going to This Is It for the second time in three days, and a Twilight t-shirt party for the second time in eight days. ahahaha, my life this week is so ridiculous but I love it. FANDOM ALL OVER THE PLACE!! xD Hopefully I can fit some studying in here somewhere. D:

Time for a totally random picture post!

( hontou ni waratteru ko nante iru no kana )

I have done this meme twice in the past but I love it so much I am doing it again!

List seven songs you are into right now, no matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your LiveJournal along with your seven songs. ( Read more... )

For those of you not in the know, I shall be spending the first Sunday of December writing Level 2 of the Japanese Level Proficiency Test. I took Level 3 in 2005 (I can't get over that I last took this test FOUR YEARS AGO -- pretty sure I didn't intend for there to be such a huge gap) and passed with 80%, but now we are less than a month till I take Level 2 and I am pretty well FREAKING OUT. Like seriously, I am cutting down my work schedule quite severely just so I have more time to study. D:

Anyway, I was going through some kanji on Read the Kanji, and I figured I would post ( my Level 2 kanji grid! )

In conclusion: BRB STUDYING!!

lol sorry this post was kinda pointless. x)

~ I just had a surprisingly pleasant five days of work! I say "surprisingly" because I was in box office the entire five days, and so it could easily have gone worse, but I don't think I had a single frustrating guest the entire time! Faith in humanity: RESTORED!! I also sold a bunch of tickets to This Is It, including once while "The Love You Save" was playing over the lobby radio (I still don't quite understand how that song has made it into our Top 40 station, but it's cool that it has!).

~ I studied Japanese for an hour today, awesomesauce!! :D I learned a couple new grammar points, so that was awesome. I basically cannot explain how happy studying grammar makes me. Anyway, for much of my JLPT studying this year I've been doing the exercises in this book, but now that I'm very nearly done it I decided to shake things up a bit and start doing the exercises in this book, which just arrived for me this week. :3 WHY YES that book is all about learning the Level 2 grammar points in a mere forty-five days! We are getting close to test date and I am getting nervous. D: I also got another book that's all for learning the Level 2 vocabularly in fifty days, hahaha. Too bad I no longer have fifty days!!

(Man I do love my growing collection of foreign language textbooks. xD I definitely also own a textbook or two for languages I'm not even studying ...)

In conclusion, I fully expect my November 2009 to be all about NaNoWriMo and the JLPT, and not much else. I am looking forward to a month of obsessing over studying, it reminds me of when I was studying around the clock for the AP Spanish exam and pretty well lost my ability to understand English. xD WORTH IT.

~ In other news, Facebook just told me I should reconnect with a co-worker I saw every day this week and last saw four hours ago. Oh Facebook, you know me so well.

Last night I learned of the K-pop group Kara through a random comment someone made in a MoMusu forum, and today I have had their song "Wanna" on REPEAT. I have no idea why I love this song so much, but omg, I kinda do. (Even if the video uses that "hey let's go destroy my ex's stuff" trope that leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.)

Anyway, I am only letting myself get into K-pop if I can put on hold my desire to study Korean. (That writing system just seems like the coolest thing to me!) I'm supposed to be passing the JLPT in two months!!! And somehow keeping up with my Spanish as well, somehow ... Studying multiple languages was so much easier when I had classes in both of them. I was looking at the list of language tutors on the UVic web site today, but before I get a tutor I should probably decide what I'd want from them, haha. Because I mean, it's not like I have specific homework they could help me with or anything. :/ Or maybe I should just start making use of all those language-learning sites I've signed up for in the past, hahaha, oh man I'm so disorganized.

I did study some JLPT grammar yesterday, though! So. There's that. :) Oddly enough I've been doing better on this workbook's kanji pages than on its grammar pages, something I definitely did not expect! I am a grammar fangirl, hahaha.

In other news, I find this fandom!secret kind of sad but also amusing, because it's so different from my life! Pretty sure when the_wykydtron and I go see a play, as soon as intermission hits we're already discussing gender. Especially when we went to see "The Fantasticks," which was ... interesting. D:

~ lol at how poorly I've been keeping up with my own LJ this past week. ^^;

~ Today I forced the_wykydtron to watch The Neverending Story and in return she pointed out all the plot holes I'd never noticed. Which kind of pained me, because when I was a kid I thought that movie was so brilliant. In related news, the Nostalgia Critic's review is hilarious. xD

~ My test voucher for the JLPT arrived today, and I discovered that the Level 2 test is being held at nine in the morning. D: And the friend I'm probably staying with doesn't live particularly close to the test location, so that'll be a fun morning. Anyway, inspired by the arrival of the voucher, I did some grammar practice ... and got a score of 3/8. Horrendous!!

~ My future husband interviewed Michael J. Fox today! I'm not particularly a fan of his acting work (well, with the exception of the "A, My Name is Alex" episodes of Family Ties and also that episode of Scrubs where he played the doctor suffering from OCD), but I heart him so much for all the work he's been doing to fight Parkinson's disease. And I HATE that he's been accused of exaggerating his symptoms. I don't know what it's like for you guys to watch him, but for ten years I lived with my grandmother as she was suffering from this disease, and in my mind there is no way he is acting. Watching this interview tonight, there were so many times where, for a split second, I felt like I was watching my grandma. And I really heart Michael J. Fox for going out there and doing all these public appearances where it's really obvious he can't control his movements, because on her bad days I'm pretty sure Grandma didn't even really want to be seen by her family members. So yeah, just for all that he's probably one of my favourite celebs, not gonna lie.

(My future husband also did a 2008 interview with Lee Thomas in which they discussed MJ's vitiligo. They reaired it recently and it was an awesome change of pace from all the tabloid trash~)

~ Speaking of awesome Canadians, I've definitely had "Canadian, Please" stuck in my head all day. xD

Real life paragraph: Today I filled out the application forms for this December's Japanese Language Proficiency Test! I'll be taking Level 2, the second most difficult level, and I have no idea whether I'll pass or not. D: Especially since I studied a lot in May and June and since then have sort of ... stopped. So yeah, definitely one of my goals for September is to pull out my textbooks and get back to work. I have been seriously lacking in motivation lately though, argh. :/ I'm looking forward to Monday and Tuesday, my next days off. Maybe this is ridiculous to say but I feel like I've been working too much. :P

Fandom paragraph: The lobby at work used to be filled with the sounds of a DVD that ran a twenty-minute loop of advertisements. Recently, we were all very excited to hear that it would be replaced with satellite radio. For the first couple weeks we had it on a Top 40 station which was okay, but it was getting really repetitive as well so I was glad when I walked into work today to find it'd been switched to a station that plays songs from the '90s - including "Scream"! :D :D :D Sad to say though that the one co-worker I know would've had a spontaneous and embarrassing dance party with me wasn't working today. :( OH WELL, I was still ridiculously excited! xD This isn't the first time I've listened to MJ at work - the managers usually have their iPods playing in the office and they each seem to have a couple MJ songs on them (one manager was singing along to "Heal the World" yesterday, it was really sweet <3 ) - but it was the first time I've heard one of my favourite songs blasting through the lobby, so I was pretty stoked. xD

New Morning Musume PV! It's nothing terribly original and some of the shots are straight out of Utada Hikaru's "Colours" (which I insist on spelling however I like!), but even so I love it! Due to my recently revived Michael Jackson obsession, the first time I watched "Nanchatte Renai" was also the first time I heard the song, and it's so much better than I was imagining, haha. xD; The rapping feels really out of place to me but I love the choruses and the "nande nan darou" parts. I am happy to report that MoMusu's recent releases have all been really strong - I love "Shou ga Nai Yume Oibito" (what a shocker though to hear MoMusu singing about how there's "a wall called reality" - whatever happened to be up and doing future is mine??) and MJ's death was basically the only thing that could've knocked Platinum 9 Disc out of my CD player, that album was my jam for like two months. <33

Man, I need to start studying for the JLPT again. D:

In more important news, thanks to the epicness that is the Michael Jackson Friending Meme (my comment is here, if anyone else thinks they'd find amusement in reading it), I'd like to say welcome to all the new people on my friendslist! :D Hopefully you find my LJ at least passably interesting. xD;

And to connect the two topics of this entry, I think I'll link to this 13nin Morning Musume performance, in which, at about two minutes in, they somehow manage to segue from the end of their song "Love Machine" right to the best part of MJ's "Thriller." xDDD

I am studying Level 2 kanji on Read the Kanji, and this compound just came up: 殺気, "thirst for blood."

Am I ... am I really gonna need to know this? D:

You guys you guys I am going to a Hello! Project concert! :D To be more precise, the Hello! Project Wonderful Hearts concert in Osaka on January 18th! :D And I have just discovered that the title of this concert tour is 革命元年, or FIRST YEAR OF THE REVOLUTION, hahahaha what the heck H!P I love you. xDDD

I sorta kinda asked for the cheapest seat, hahaha, so I won't be surprised if I find myself sitting in the very back row, but oh man I so don't care. xDD After seven years of being a fan of Morning Musume I'll finally get to see them, how weird is that?!?! xD I mean I'm looking forward to seeing Berryz and C-ute as well but definitely MoMusu is the main draw for me here. xD; Oh, and with any luck Buono! will make an appearance. And probably Kirari, but I am slightly less excited about her ... JUST KIDDING KOHARU I LOVE YOU TOO! ;D

I feel very calmly excited right now, hahaha. xD Also, last night I found out that like six of the places I want to go in Osaka are within something like five blocks of each other, so the current status of my trip planning: AWESOMESAUCE. xDDD

(Meanwhile, the current status of the novel I'm supposed to be revising this month: ... novel? What novel? :/ )

Some of the things I did today:
( another chance to get burned )

The CliffsNotes version of my life right now:

· Disney World doesn't want me to work for them so I am going to Japan! I have no idea how to plan a trip so despite the fact that I am leaving in early January I still have pretty well no idea what I'm going to do when I get there (besides turn twenty-two in Tokyo Disneyland! xD; ). AWESOME! xD

· As soon as I had to start thinking about the one essay I have to write this semester, all the love I had for school completely disappeared. Okay well mainly I am stupidly annoyed because this essay is for my Greek Epic class, and the prof doesn't want me to write about the topic I thought up because it's "not very original." I am frustrated by this twofold: one, I have no idea how I'm supposed to come up with something original to say about a super famous three-thousand-year-old piece of literature that people spend their entire careers analyzing. (Maybe I should act my major and write an essay comparing the Iliad to Genji?) Two, what does it matter if this topic isn't original? It's not like I'll be making attempts to publish it. Shouldn't essays be about researching and learning about stuff you want to learn about? GOD it drives me bonkers that my HATRED of writing essays is threatening to completely destroy the love I've had for this semester so far. D:<

· I have just now beaten Level 2 of my favourite Nintendo DS game, Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu. This is sorta pathetic because Level 2 is Grade 2, as in elementary school, but I STILL FEEL ACCOMPLISHED! xD;

· I quit my job at the movie theatre today, something I seriously should have done back in May, and yet somehow I don't feel happy about this ... ?! I mean I'm seriously so tired of the job (it's a great job but there's only so many times you can answer THE EXACT SAME QUESTIONS, you know?), so I'll be glad to be free of it, but at the same time I adore almost all of my co-workers, and I'll definitely miss them. :( Oh and also I have seriously no idea what kind of job I want to look for now, a problem which is quite nicely contributing some anxiety to this whole issue. :P (Oh, and also my main manager doesn't know yet that I quit. So ... this could be exciting!! -_-; )

· I haven't really been doing NaNo, but I've definitely been writing this month! :D I plan to spend December hardcore working on my novel in order to finish a sorta kinda readable first draft by Christmas. Which is ... only a month away. But that's okay, I have faith in me. xD;

I am stupidly happy that it looks like 誰 is going to be added to the list of Jouyou Kanji. Seriously, I've been wishing it would be added for like the last three years. I don't know why this matters to me so much. xD; Probably just because I kept trying to look it up in my kanji dictionary and IT WAS NEVER THERE!!!

This entry brought to you by the discovery that my brother has spent the last five years believing me to be an English major. ("But you edited my essays!" he cried out in dismay upon being told this belief was false. "How do you know that stuff if you've never taken a university English class?!") So now I feel I'd better start acting my major. :P STEP ONE: GET EXCITED ABOUT THE JOUYOU KANJI ADDITIONS!! :D

So according to this test, I know about 770-810 kanji. I'm not sure how many I'm supposed to know by this point, but I know that there are plenty on that test that I should know and don't ... D:

P.S. I bet you all want to take the test and tell me your results, right? Right??? >xD