Shifter COMPLETE!

So, last night at about 12:45, I FINALLY finished typing Shifter. As I may have mentioned earlier, once you've finished writing a story by hand (as in pencil and paper), typing it up on the computer is never as fun. And it takes me a while. I do have about 5 books I'm in the process of writing that I didn't bother to write first. I just type them. But I always have one I write by hand (right now it's Briena's tale). Because I can carry a binder and pencil around with me, but I can't really carry my computer. And our laptop died.
But, either way, I finally finished typing Shifter. I have to re-read it for errors, and then mom and dad read it to catch any mistakes I missed. Then I send it to people like Ellen and Nicole. Now, Ellen's good at reading things quickly. NICOLE on the other hand, takes a very long time to do those things. You may have noticed that she took forever to write that blog post earlier on. And she hasn't really checked the blog since. Then my old english teacher, Mr. Daniel, likes to read my stories and he catches things everyone else misses. I'll email it to him once everyone else is done. SO, now I can get back to work on other things.

Cute Link

Hmm. Well. looks like I can only load really tiny pictures. Maybe something's wrong with the computer. I'll have to ask the computer expert my mom knows. And I still can't put up scanned pictures. I guess they're too big.

VICTORY!

YES!!!! I finally got a picture to load onto my blog from my own computer. Admittedly it's a small picture, but it IS a picture. It wasn't working when I tried it before. But hopefully I can get it to put up a larger picture now that it's working. I'll give it a shot.

People Who Ruin Movies

So, people make good books into movies (and sometimes they make bad books into movies). That's a well-known fact. Sometimes they do an excellent job. Usually that means they follow the book pretty closely. But sometimes a director can improve on one of those bad books. But if a book is good, then don't try to change it around! For example, we just got back from seeing Prince Caspian in the theaters (It's my second time). It's better the second time, but the first time I was pretty disappointed because they screwed up a lot of stuff in the book. For example, they messed up the timeline. A bunch of things happened out of order. They added that whole battle where they broke into the palace. And they made it all war and not as much magic. The end of the book was awesome because they went around gathering all the tree spirits and other people and it described the entire forest rushing at the enemy. In the book, there were about 5 trees. And they didn't really gather anyone. And then they made Caspian and Susan kiss. No, it wasn't a big romance, but still. It wasn't in the book. They have to add in random romance. Those are the two big things directors love to do to movies. Add in random war and random romance. I mean, the movie was okay if you hadn't read the book, but they did mess up a lot of the book. The book was good, so all you stupid directors stop messing everything up! Let the author keep his stuff the way it is! Why do you think you can improve on what the author has done? And if any of you try to make one of my stories into a movie and you change things or add random romances and wars, I'll set my dragon on you!

Beijing

So, I neglected to say this earlier, and I just realized that it might be an interesting idea to post about my trip to Beijing. I wrote up a summary to send to mis amigos, so I'll just post it on the blog. I did get tired of being descriptive, so just listed a few things.

So, let me tell you a little bit about Beijing in general (and despite some of my comments, I did have a good time). First of all, you can't see the sky. It isn't blue, but is covered in white, almost grey smog. And it's really hazy. You can't see off of the highway without things getting blurry. And the air smells funny.
Another thing is shopkeepers. Whenever you walk by store, they shout, "hey girl, hey girl!" trying to get you to come in. And if you enter the shop, they pick up all this stuff and show it to you, trying to get you to buy it. One guy followed me around for 10 minutes.... It's almost impossible to get out without buying something. It gets really annoying. And if you leave without buying something, they will sometimes shout after you, or CHASE you. I had one guy screaming at me. And you have to barter. Because things are really over-priced unless you haggle.
And drivers are crazy. They do whatever they feel like.
Many of us also lost a lot of weight due to the food. It was all fried food, and during lunch and dinner, all some kids ate was rice since some of the food was pretty gross (breakfast had at least some familiar foods). There was hardly any fresh food. And there was a lot of tea. The second-to-last day faced us with whole fish and whole shrimp. That means head, eyes, fins and skin (for the fish) and legs and shells (for the shrimp). I kinda lost my appetite...
Parts of China are pretty dirty and run-down...
Our days were packed with activities. Even though it was exciting, it’s nice to be home and just relax.

So, since it was a trip with our music group, we did have a few concerts. I was “lucky” enough to play in the orchestra, band, and choir. That means there was only 1 song in the whole performance that I didn’t play, and that was for only strings (I play flute, if you don’t know, and I also sing alto). Lucky is in quotes because three groups means a lot of work, a lot of practices, and a lot of hassle switching from group to group during performances. I was one of five out of 200 people who was in all three groups. I did have one solo too, in a song called Farandole. It’s a song you might recognize, even if you don’t know the name of it.
We visited pearl, jade, enameling, and silk factories throughout the trip.
We visited the Forbidden City and saw a kung-fu performance.
So, we visited the Great Wall and had a heart attack climbing up the infinite stairs. Literally once we got to the bottom, our legs were twitching.
We got to ride in rickshaws! That was really fun. And since our whole group went at once and it’s only 2 people per rickshaw (there can’t be more since it’s powered by a guy on a squeaky bicycle) we had a whole fleet of little rickshaws rolling down the road. We stopped at a famous bridge, but I can’t remember the name of it. And some random Chinese lady came up and took a picture with me. That was really strange…
We took a tai-chi lesson and attended a traditional tea ceremony.
So, for our last we decided to donate all proceeds to the victims of the big earthquake China had not long ago. And you know what? The government got involved and they recorded the concert (there were a few people who played Chinese music before us-they were fantastic) and we got aired all over China! There were even a few people in America with foreign channels that saw us on TV!!! We're famous! Maybe...
We went to the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven.
We saw a Chinese acrobatics show.
We visited the zoo and got to see the pandas, and we went to the Lama temple (for strange people, this is not a llama temple).
It's a 15 hour jet lag. And 12 hours on the plane robs you of any coordination you have. I was literally staggering to the baggage claim.

You can google clips of our performance on Youtube. Search Aragon High School, Beijing and you should find some.
Here's the blog that was kept of our trip.
http://www.jerryworks.net/aragon/

Sorrel and Ginger

So, remember Sorrel (the dragon) and Ginger (the girl) in the story I'm writing with Ellen? Well, I had another weird coincidence today. Again, not a big one. Just odd.
So, I finally rented "Beka Cooper" from the library a few days ago. Let me read you a quote directly related to our friends mentioned above (Plus they're at Granny Fern's house, and Fern is also the name of one of my characters).
"She made us a lunch of green pancakes with sorrel and ginger."
Sorrel and Ginger! Though I'm not sure "green pancakes" sound appetizing.

Hotness

I don't get some people. The "hotness factor" is just something I've never understood. So, a person is hot because of the clothes they wear, huh? Let's see... if you're a girl, you have to wear really tight, short skirts and shorts. You want to show off as much as you can. But boys have to wear pants that are so loose that they fall beneath their knees.
So, I'm not saying that people can't be good-looking, but I don't understand some of this "fashion."
Now, actors seem to be a big target for the "hotness scale." One big one is Orlando Bloom (I think that's how you spell it). But the way trends go, he might be forgotten soon, like (oh, crud, how do you spell his name) Leonardo Dicaprio. Now, he's a good actor and I loved Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one) but I still don't understand hotness...

Bram (again)

Yeah, I like that one. And I know what you mean. When I get a good idea, I want to work on it right then and there.

Bram

Well I had an epihany like two seconds ago for Bram's character concept! And of course I had to stop everything and draw it out! So here it is ^_^ So Tara look at the other concept art already up and add this one to the group!

FASTER

YES!!! Mom finally switched from dial up internet to the fast kind! So, theoretically I should be able to put up pictures now! This is exciting because now all this new stuff works on my computer that's never worked before. I'm going to try to put up a picture directly from my computer. Hmmm... some technical difficulties. I'll have to try again later

Bram

So, I think I like the one on the top right... There are different parts of them that I like. I don't know. It's hard to decide, in case you can't tell from my post.
Oh, and what I meant by "Let's call the whole thing off" is that we shouldn't have either Ginger or Saleera win because we can't decide who would win. Not that they shouldn't have a duel.

Wait!!!!!

Re: Psychic

That is weird...maybe he can send you more return address stickers!!!! That'd be cool!

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

NOOO!!! We cant do that!!! i've already written the chapter!!! Well considering you've already read and edited, I guess you've figured that out. I happen to like that chapter too!!!

New topic!!

So anyway I've been working on making Tara and my story into a manga/comic thing!!! Woot!!! So far I've finished Chapter Zero!!! Dont ask ^^. I'm maybe halfway done with chapter 1!! By the way, I need opinions on character designs for Bram, Arith's older brother. So here's some character designs.