What's this? A list post that's not promoting a recently-released book? MADNESS. I bet you didn't know we still did those, did you? But we are currently between book tours, which means I get to think of other things to talk about. And that means that I can do the thing I've been meaning to do since the beginning of May, which is some graduation reflection. Specifically, I wanted to look back and reflect on some things that have changed or stayed the same for me or about me since I arrived at Cedarville — other than the obvious things, like the fact that I'm four years older and know a lot more about writing and design and marketing and such and live in Virginia again instead of New York. (Of course, I just mentioned all those things, so I don't even have to include them on the list!)

Graduation Reflection

1. I'm rather more confident when it comes to people things. For one thing, I'm more comfortable talking in front of people. I think the fact that I was required to do it at least a little in almost all my classes sophomore year helped, as did playing and running D&D this past two years. I actually got to the point where I would volunteer to speak for my group any time we had presentations or such — not because I necessarily enjoyed it, but because I didn't mind doing it. I also became more comfortable taking charge of groups — to be honest, I may have gotten too comfortable doing that, which probably did not do wonders for my popularity. But once I didn't mind actually talking, I found that the best way to stay in the loop about what was happening was to be the one running the loop. So . . . that's what I did. (That may also have contributed to my willingness to talk in front of people; I was the one who was in charge of everything and knew the most about what was going on, so I was the one who did the most talking about it.)
2. I'm also more comfortable with criticizing professors when they deserve it. I remember back in freshman year, I mentioned in one LATE Club post that I was terribly bothered by how negative my classmates' attitudes towards a particular professor seemed to be, not because I thought they were wrong but because I didn't think we should talk so much about it. I . . . am over that now. I still do try to keep in mind professors' good points, and I respect that they have their positions for a reason, but if I have a problem with them, I will talk about it. (Respectfully, and not to random people on the street. But still.
3. I actually have less solid goals than I did when I started? When I started at Cedarville, I had a very specific idea of what I wanted to do — job type, industry, location, everything. (And, yes, it was basically a full-time version of the internship I'd just completed, but in a different state). Now, though, I'm interested in so many things that I'm kind of like "I could do this . . . or this . . . or this other thing . . . they all sound good, really." I'm not sure if this is progress or not, but it does make job searching easier, so there's that. (It's just weird, though — I had a sort of idea that you go to college and you leave with a better idea of what you want to do with your life, but the opposite happened to me.)
4. I somehow developed a social life? And became a person who organizes things? And by "things" I mean group events. (In terms of actual orderliness, I am exactly as inclined to organization as I was before college. Which is to say, I'm mildly obsessive about some things and can't be bothered with others.) Sometimes group events involving upwards of a dozen people. Sometimes even things involving whole clubs of people. This is coming from me, a confirmed introvert. I'm really not sure how any of that happened, but I'm glad it did . . . except for the fact that I get lonely more easily now. So that's not ideal. (The fact that I still have D&D to hang out with a lot of my closest friends helps, for the record.)
5. And finally, something that's apparently stayed the same: I don't move on super easily unless the rug gets yanked out from under me. This is actually something I've been thinking about with the whole COVID-19 thing and the fact that neither of my senior years have gone the way I wanted them to or given me all the time I wanted with my friends. In high school, I moved to New York the summer before my senior year, which meant that all the last moments with my friends had to be compressed into the space of a few months. And then COVID-19 sent everyone home from college with even less time for goodbyes and last hurrahs and so forth. And I hated both of those, but . . . there was actually a benefit? I didn't want things to end, and I didn't want things to change, and I didn't really want to get on with the next stage of life in either case . . . until all the things and people I was attached to in that stage either got stripped away or reset, and suddenly I was ready for the potential of the next stage and excited to move on. So, I'm not saying that God orchestrates my life so I get slammed with catastrophes every time I need to move on from something, buuuuut . . . there's a trend developing. That's all.

For my fellow 2020 graduates: what do you see about yourself that's changed since you started college? Do you feel like any of the things I mentioned apply to you as well? And if you're not a 2020 grad (which a lot of the people following this post probably aren't), feel free to share something that's changed for you in the last four years! I'd love to hear your perspectives!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

April 2020 Doings!

Well. That month probably existed. I mean, I'm 90% sure it did and it wasn't just a mass hallucination since a couple reasonably significant things happened in it. But since I may look back in the future and have my doubts, let's get going with recording the Doings!

Writing!

• My goal for April Camp NaNoWriMo was 30,000 words, 15K of which were in Blood in the Soil/Earth, and 15K of which were in other projects — namely, D&D, a white paper about NaNoWriMo, and my capstone paper. And I'm happy to say that I pretty much achieved that, with a grand total of 36,046 words at the end of the month. Plus, I actually wrote every day in April, which makes me happy! (It helps that I really wanted to get those writing streak badges on the NaNoWriMo site.) I hit my official Camp goal on April 25, the same day I finished drafting my capstone. (As it turns out, including your 15-page academic paper in your Camp wordcount is a great way to boost things up and keep yourself from getting distracted from said capstone.)
• My wordcount per project wasn't quite where I wanted it to be. I ended up with only about 13K words in Blood in the Soil/Earth and a bit over 2K in other projects. Again, a lot of that was because I spent a few days working on my capstone and only my capstone, plus I slowed down on everything once I hit my goal. (I did flirt with the idea of trying to hit 40K, but decided I had too many other things that needed my time and energy.)

Reading!

• So, yes. Another low reading month. On the upside, four out of the five were really good books, and the last one wasn't bad.
• On Stories, Adorning the Dark, and Orthodoxy were all for my capstone. I can't recommend the first two highly enough; if you are a writer or you want to be a writer or you enjoy creative pursuits in general, you need to read them. They aren't "how to write" books, but they have a lot of wisdom and insight and are generally very enjoyable to read. I was less impressed with Orthodoxy, but I was also reading it on a time crunch and frustrated by the fact that it wasn't as relevant to my actual capstone as I wanted it to be. (Also, I was tired and couldn't appreciate it as much as I wanted to.) I may have to come back to that one at a later date when I'm less exhausted.
• On the fiction side, I read Moonscript (which I had as an ARC) and Empress of All Seasons (which was also an ARC, but one I won from Emma of Awkwordly Emma). I'm in the blog tour for Moonscript, so you'll hear quite a bit about it in a week or two — though I have been helping Hannah share character art on Instagram, so if you've seen that, you've seen a bit of my fangirling. For the moment, suffice it to say that it was excellent. Empress of All Seasons was a bit less impressive; part of the problem may have been my mood, but I got frustrated with too many things to say I really loved it. I am glad I got to read it, though, and there were some interesting elements.
• Update on reading goals: I'm at 21 books read out of a goal of 99, which puts me 12 books behind schedule. Part of the issue is that Cedarville canceled Blind Date With a Book this year, which is when I do a lot of reading, plus March was 99% madness. Hopefully, I'll catch up over the summer. I'm doing better on my other goals. After this month's capstone reading, I'm at four books outside the speculative fiction genre (out of a goal of twelve such books). And I'm at a total of six books published before I was born, one of which (Orthodoxy) was published all the way back in 1908! Plus, I've found out that one of the libraries I have an account at has a sizable e-collection of Chesterton, so I may give some of his other books a try.

Life!

• This was a weird month in that I was really busy, but not a lot really happened.
• Obviously, with the quarantine on, I've spent most of my time at home. As such, pretty much all the stuff that happened was either baking, class, or D&D-related.
• The one thing that happened that didn't involve staying at home was driving back to Cedarville at the very start of the month so my sister and I could get our stuff from our dorms. It was not a fun trip, but it also could've been much worse. We also ended up getting a flat tire about an hour out from the hotel where we were staying, which was . . . interesting. I was minimally involved in the whole thing; I was in the other vehicle, and I did not get out to help my dad and sister change the tire because, quite frankly, it was cold and I didn't think I'd be much help and the gas station we stopped at was kind of sketch. Thankfully, we were able to get the tire fixed the next morning in time to go load up our stuff. In general, it was just a lot of driving (and then a lot of packing and unpacking in between the driving).
• On the college classes front: this month was a lot of final and close-to-final projects and papers and such, all of which turned out really well! I got to pull off a lot of crossover between classes and aspects of my life: my capstone is about how story influences faith (and vice versa), my final project for graphic design involved a lot of writing and a fun bit of near-future sci-fi storytelling (which my professor apparently loved; it got me one of the best grades I've ever gotten in any of his classes), my final Report Writing project was, as I mentioned earlier, a white paper about the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program, my honors capstone pulled a lot from my PWID professional project that I did earlier in the semester, and I managed to work some JavaScript into my Web Design final project (which was supposed to be just HTML and CSS).
• Finals week was also a weird mix of chill and not; I only had one final exam (Graphic Design I, of all things), but I had a presentation and basically two papers and two projects, which took up a lot of time. I made it to the end, though, and now I've officially graduated Cedarville with a proper degree. (I'm supposed to get my actual diploma by mail in a few weeks.)
• Obviously, we couldn't have an actual graduation ceremony for reasons of the pandemic. But Cedarville did put together an online video ceremony/recollection/speech thing, so that was a pretty good substitute.
• In terms of baking: I would like to point out that I was on the sourdough bandwagon first, thanks. And I've actually been doing less bread baking than I normally would because all the stores are still out of bread flour, so I'm only making things that I think I can risk using all-purpose flour for.
• Still, I've been doing a bit of baking. A short list of the food-based adventures:
  • Replica Bertucci's rolls at the start of the month (SO GOOD).
  • Soft sourdough rolls for Easter — also very good, and they worked very well for ham sandwiches.
  • Crusty sourdough rolls. I made the double batch; they were yummy, but they used a TON of flour, so next time I'm just making a single and making the rolls smaller.
  • Sourdough crumpets — actual crumpets this time, with biscuit cutters taking the place of crumpet rings. They were DELICIOUS, a bit like a cross between an English muffin and a pancake, but better.
  • And, just yesterday, flatbread pizza with apples and cheddar cheese and sourdough chocolate cake. Yes, you read that second one correctly. It didn't turn out quite as well as I hoped, mostly because we mixed by hand when we should have used a mixer, but it wasn't bad.
• Finally, on the D&D front: the climax of my campaign's second season has been stretched from its intended two sessions into three due to my players not even considering what I thought was the obvious choice. (In all fairness, said choice involved asking more questions of a character whom everyone had agreed was kind of a prat, so it may not have been as obvious as I thought.) So, we've been kind of taking the long way round and accidentally doing things on hard mode. We're all enjoying it, though (except for the part where the poor paladin who got stuck in the middle of the group in a stairway battle and had to just hang out using her wand of magic missiles until people could move out of the way).
• And in the other D&D campaign, we've dealt with the whole orc situation (with mixed success) and now it's my character's turn to have backstory-related plot stuff. So that's going to be interesting. I'm excited, but my character is not. (She started adventuring primarily to get certain family members off her back, and she enjoyed not having to deal with those family members on a daily basis, even if she did sometimes miss her younger siblings. And now that she's going to have to deal with those family members again, she's probably going to be falling back into old habits a bit. It's going to be a very interesting challenge for me to roleplay, and it's going to be pretty confusing for some of the other players, because however much my character is frustrated with her family members, they're still her family, and she will defend them to the death even as she argues with them.)
• On the downside, the other major thing that happened this month is that the fast router we've been using for WiFi got shut off. Thankfully, it lasted for most of the semester, but now I'm trying to figure out how to do stuff when we're on more limited data. Normally it's not a problem; I just go to the library whenever I need to do something internet-heavy. But, obviously, all the libraries are closed now . . . But yeah.

May Plans

• Obviously, the next big thing for me is finding a job, something that kind of went on hold when the pandemic hit. I have one possibility from before the pandemic, but for the most part, it's going to be a lot of searching. I have some new sites to search for remote work, so that's exciting.
• The other big thing is working on my novel. I haven't been really pushing myself on the novelling front, mostly because I've always had five other more imperative things to think about. Now that I actually do have more free time, I plan to get busy, which means hopefully finishing it sometime in the near future. (Not sure exactly when. Much like Mechanical Heart, it's a story that I originally intended to be fairly short, but which is turning out to be a bit of a beast.) To that end, I'm setting a goal of 25,000 words on Blood in the Soil/Earth or a thousand words a day, which should be doable but will still force me to stretch my writing muscles a bit more. (I was originally thinking a full 30K, but I've missed several days of writing, and this will give me time to catch up.)
• The D&D group I run is going to be meeting a little more sporadically for most of May, both so I can sort out my internet situation and so I can work on the next season and a half's session plans. To that end, my other writing goal is to write three episodes over the course of the month and to come up with and write summaries for another three. (For context, my method is to write summaries of D&D episodes as I come up with them so I don't forget what I was going to do, and then I use those to write the actual episodes.)  Generally, D&D episodes aren't hard to write, but they do take time, so this one may get adjusted depending on how other things go.
• In addition to job searching, I hope to get in contact with the people I've worked internships for before and see if they need an extra writer/designer on deck. I don't want to overload myself with job searches and writing also in the mix, but I do want to try to get some income sooner rather than later.
• (I also should take this time when I can't be on social media a lot to figure out some proper social media and marketing strategy for author things. I've been saying that for a while at this point; maybe it'll finally happen now.)
• And, of course, I have the usual assortment of fun things — reading, baking, watching movies and shows, and actually playing D&D (including a potential new campaign?) — that I want to fit in somehow. Here's hoping that I can get my hands on some bread flour soon.

How are you holding up under the pandemic? Did you do Camp NaNoWriMo (and if so, how'd it go)? If you're a college student, what are your plans now that the school year is either over or almost over? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah Pennington

March 2020 Doings!

Hey'a, all! So, I think we can all agree that this last month has been utter madness, yeah? It feels like overnight, we went from "This is normal" to "State of national panic," and we're all realizing why "May you live in interesting times" is considered a curse. But for now, most of us are (I'm pretty sure) alive, so the Doings! go on as usual.

Writing!

Social distancing can't stop a good adventure, y'know?

• My goal for March was 300 words or 30 minutes per day, five days a week. I'm happy to say that I've mostly kept that goal; the only week I failed to achieve it was the second week of March — aka, the week that all insanity broke loose. Before and after that, I've kept up pretty well, with a daily average of close to 750 words per day.
• Most of those words went towards D&D writing. As I think I mentioned at some point, I wanted to get the rest of my D&D campaign (or at least this season of it) written before Camp NaNoWriMo began. I didn't quite achieve that goal, but I mostly accomplished it, so I'm happy.
• In addition, my DM for the campaign I'm in asked if I had any info about my character's family that I wanted to give him. My response was basically "How much do you want?" My character's family is a pretty significant part of her backstory, plus I love character creation, so I took the opportunity and ran with it. The end result was about nineteen pages long and had three or four paragraphs of information for each of the twenty-ish characters on my character's family tree (all of which are parents, step-parents, siblings, or step-and-half-siblings, for the record). My goal was to provide enough information that if I (or someone else) ever needed to play them as an actual character, the only thing I'd have to do would be figuring out statistics and exact mechanics. Given how disappointed I was that I can't actually play some of them, I think I succeeded.
• Outside of D&D, I've lately been doing some brainstorming on the realmatic theory of my multiverse with a friend of mine, basically figuring out implications of the parallel and perpendicular worlds that I proposed in this year's New Years special. It's been fun; he's much more of a planner than I am, and he asks good questions that help me find the holes in my ideas and the concepts that need more development or don't make sense. I also ended up making diagrams in Illustrator to help me think through my ideas, and that was unreasonably fun.

Reading!

• So, yes. That is a grand total of three books that I've read this month. They were all very good books, though, so that counts for something, right?
• As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I reread the Wingfeather Saga so I could review the new editions. They're just as good this time around as they were the first, if not better. If you want to know more, you can check out the post I wrote with my thoughts.
• The other book I read was Bryan Davis's new release, Let the Ghosts Speak. And — yes, it was weird. But it was also twisty and mysterious and atmospheric and thought-provoking and excellent for reading while curled up under the covers on a dark night. On that note, I apparently misreported the release date; it came out in paperback on Amazon just a few days ago, so if you want to pick it up (which you should; it's excellent), you can do that already! But, yeah. I'm going to post a full thoughts post next Friday, but you don't need to wait for that unless you really want to.
• I also finally finished reading the Schlock Mercenary webcomic. Or, rather, I caught up to the most recent posts . . . which means I'm stuck reading it at the very slow pace of one comic per day. I mean, don't get me wrong; most of the webcomics I read update once a week, so this is an improvement! But since I initially read it at the rate of a few books a day, it's a tiny bit agonizing. But it's still a very good webcomic. (I also discovered a few other very good webcomics in the last several weeks, so perhaps I shall do another "Favorite Webcomics" list at some point in the near future.)

Watching!

• So, funny story. My roommate loves this movie, Romancing the Stone. Despite what the name implies, it's an Indiana-Jones-esque adventure movie featuring a successful romance writer as the lead character. Anyway. For the past year at least, we've been saying that we should watch it together — but we never did, because we can barely find time to watch Avatar, let alone a full-length movie.
• Then, after I get back to Virginia the second time, my family decides to watch a movie. And we're going through the usual "well, what are we going to watch, given that no two people in this household actually have the same taste in movies" dialogue (we really don't; it's a problem), and I ask about another movie that my parents had out from the library that Alana really enjoys, The Great Race. And the parents have already watched it, but my mom brings up the fact that we actually own Romancing the Stone . . . so we watch it, because we can all actually agree on it.
• And it was actually really good. I honestly might prefer it to the one Indiana Jones I've watched — though that's partially because it includes some of my actual favorite tropes. It also helps that the female lead actually does take initiative and isn't just useless — she sometimes is clueless, yes, but it scans as a more realistic "city slicker lost in the jungle and in way over her head" sort of clueless, so it doesn't really bother me.
• (I still find the timing of when I watched it ironic, though.)

Life!

• So, we left off our last Doings! with me still at home, just finishing up Spring Break. This Doings! finds me home once again . . . but that's getting a bit ahead of myself.
• I did actually go back to Cedarville, for the record, getting back Sunday, March 8 — which was, honestly, a really good day. My friends and I celebrated with a cheese-and-game night, which was both delicious and delightful.
• Monday and Tuesday were a bit rough, as I was tired even with the rest I'd gotten over spring break and I was having a hard time getting back into the rhythm of life. Tuesday, Dr. White, Cedarville's president, made an announcement in chapel that no, Cedarville wasn't going to shut down; we were going to keep on going as we had.
• Aaaaaand then things went sideways, and Tuesday evening, one of the girls in our dorm with a late-in-the-day class said that her professor had strongly implied that Cedarville would be shutting down after all  — and once I'd heard that one rumor, more seemed to come out of the woodwork. That Tuesday night was honestly harder than any other day or night this month. All that's happened since then has been hard. But the mix of certainty and uncertainty — the fact that I knew things, but I couldn't act on them because I didn't know them — the fact that I knew but couldn't ask any professors about it because I wasn't supposed to know — that left me sleepless and afraid.
• Wednesday morning, people tried to carry on as normal. The chapel was packed; everyone was waiting to hear what was going to happen. Dr. White had our chapel speaker speak as usual, though he kept the message short. And then he came up and made the announcement: Cedarville was going online for two weeks; all students who could vacate the dorms were to do so by Friday, and classes were canceled for the next two days so professors could figure out how to transition.
• My sister and I hastily made plans: we'd spend the weekend with my roommate's family so we could let the main rush of departing traffic get ahead of us and so I could have a little more time with my roommate, just in case. Then we headed back to Virginia a week after we'd returned to Cedarville.
• Since then, we've mostly been trying to find a rhythm and attempting to keep up with all that needs to be done. Everything seems to take longer at home because I don't have class times and meal times and evening plans and everything else to work around. And I am utterly sick of seeing people talk about having all this free time at home, even anxiety-plagued free time. Technically, I do have more free time than I did at Cedarville. But it sure doesn't feel like I do.
• Anyway. On a happier note, I got a new laptop! It's very sleek and fancy and can fold into a tablet if I want it to. And it comes with a digital pen/stylus, which is going to be great for graphic design and art stuff once I figure out the most effective way to use it. And it's just so pretty and crisp and actually works with Bluetooth transmissions without a USB dongle thing and yeah.
• I also tried out another new sourdough roll recipe, this time with sausage-sandwich-type rolls. Mine turned out a bit shorter than I intended them to; I think I worried too much about making them big enough around and not enough about making them long enough. (I miscalculated which directions they'd puff, pretty much.) But they tasted great and ended up working well enough for Italian sausage sandwiches.
• Also, the last two D&D sessions in the campaign I'm a player in have been interesting. Long story short, we were trying to temporarily take control of a sizable band of orcs so we could stop them from attacking a city (because we had seven people including NPC allies, and that's not enough to take on a thousand+ orcs) by tricking them into thinking we were someone else (a plan my character was not 100% on board with, but she couldn't come up with a better idea) . . . and we actually were succeeding for a while. And then my character decided she wanted to check on an NPC whom the orcs had captured and whom we were hoping to rescue, and that indirectly led to our sorcerer, who was leading the deception, making a couple mistakes that revealed he wasn't who he claimed to be . . . not to everyone, mind you, but to one particular orc. Who then decided to corner my paladin in the dead of night and question her until she tripped up, which happened a lot faster because, y'know, deception is not my or my character's strong suit. So, yes. The party wizard and I were the only ones of the party still in the camp (the sorcerer was off doing other things; the ranger and the fighter/warlock had gone to track down another orc), so we got chased out, and then our sorcerer rolled poorly multiple times while trying to teleport back to us and high-key nearly died, so . . . yeah. This is why they tell you not to split the party. Also why you shouldn't try to run a con with a paladin in the party. Even if the paladin isn't so strictly lawful that she'll sabotage the plan on principle, the odds of her being able to keep up the cover under pressure aren't great.

• Also, I made crumpets. Well, technically, they're pikelets. But still. Life goal accomplished.

April Plans

• I'm probably insane, but yes, I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo. I'm aiming for 30,000 words, primarily on Blood in the Earth/Soil (nope, still haven't decided which one I'm naming it) . . . but, I also have a session left to write in this season of my D&D campaign, a white paper, and a capstone paper. So, in the interest of not going crazy, I'm going a little bit rebel and ruling that at least half or 500 words of my daily count have to be in my novel . . . but the other half can be other projects, whether that's D&D, school projects, or another writing project with a quickly-approaching deadline. Hopefully, that will help keep me sane.
• My sister and I also have to go back to Cedarville this month to get all the stuff we couldn't cram into our car on the trip down, so prayers for that would be appreciated. No one likes the fact that we have to travel, but we also need our things.
• Outside of that, I'll just be keeping on with business as usual, or as close to it as possible with the online classes situation. It's honestly starting to feel almost normal at this point, even the pandemic, which is . . . scary. But normal means that people, myself included, are functioning, so I'll take it.
• In D&D news, the campaign I run is about to hit its season two finale, which I am very excited about! I have the whole thing written already, though I do need to make a couple edits based on last session. (I may have made those last night after I finished writing this post. Hard to say.) I think it'll be a properly difficult challenge for the end of a storyline, and we should have some interesting character moments . . . I hope so, anyway.
• I would like to be able to do some baking at some point, but we'll see if that happens or not. Flour, as it turns out, is on the list of things that are hard to find (partially because of people stocking up for social isolation; partially because everyone and their aunt is apparently doing sourdough now). We'll see what happens.

How was your March? What's something good that's happened in your life lately? Are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month? (And if you are, do you need a writing group? Or another writing group? Deborah O'Carroll and I made one, and we have spots open!) Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah Pennington

February 2020 Doings!

Behold! I live! I apologize for dropping off the face of the earth, blog-wise, the last two weeks. With classes, writing, social events, and the need for decent sleep all coming in front of the need to write blog posts, blogging just didn't happen. And, fair warning, I might be a bit spotty for the next couple months as well. But for now, I'm here (and on spring break!), so let's get on with the Doings of the last month!

Writing!

• My goal for February was to write 500 words or 30 minutes a day, five days per week. I kept that goal for the first three weeks, and then I gave myself the last week as a grace week because I had a lot to get done before I left on break. Still, I wrote a total of 16,707 words, with an average of 756 words per day, so I'd say that's pretty solid.
• Most of those words were D&D-related, unsurprisingly. I wrote a one-shot, plus three campaign episodes (one of which could have been a one-shot in its own right — that one involved homebrewing my own monster villain, which was interesting), plus the Valentine's Day short stories. For anyone who missed those, they showcased the first meeting of a pair of NPCs from my campaign from each person's perspective. Ardent's perspective was on Light and Shadows, while Tiria's was on Dreams and Dragons.
• Outside of that, I did a little more work on Blood in the Earth/Soil, which mostly consisted of finishing up the scene I'd been working on and then writing the first line of the next scene. (That next scene is what I've been working on during break; it's going well. One of the sisters who hasn't been in the spotlight much gets to play a bigger role and interact with Eun-Ji, plus plot stuff is set in motion. It's great.) I also toyed with another writing project, but ended up dropping it because it conflicted with a different novel (or novella) that I plan to write in the future.

Reading!

• I did a little better with reading this month than I did last month, which is good. I finished up my reread of the Illuminae Files around the beginning of the month. Everything I said about them last month stands; they're excellent books and I anticipate coming back to them many more times. Also, can I reiterate how much I appreciate that the authors didn't give us a grimdark ending? Or grimdark anything, really? I think it's become almost a trend for endings of YA fiction to focus almost as much on what was lost as what was gained, but you really don't get that in this series.
• How To was also excellent! I think I may have enjoyed What If? just a little bit more, but I think How To is a little more helpful in certain respects. If you're a writer who tries to get some measure of scientific realism in your stories, I'd recommend picking it up; even though most of the advice is sarcastic, there is some genuinely useful information in here (especially if you tend to write dramatic, over-the-top villains).
• At the end of February and beginning of March, I did a little early celebrating of March Magics by rereading Charmed Life and The Many Lives of Christopher Chant (the first two Chrestomanci Chronicles, nicely contained in one volume) and Castle in the Air. I actually enjoyed both of the Chrestomanci books more this time around than I did the first time — which is saying something; I really like Chrestomanci. And Castle in the Air was, of course, delightful.
• Continuing the reread trend: Redwall's been on my mind on and off throughout February, so I decided to reread Lord Brocktree to see how it held up. The answer is "surprisingly well" — the prose and technical quality of the book are nothing special, but it's refreshing to read a book where the good characters are solidly good, the evil characters are truly evil, and friendship, bravery, and appreciation of life are celebrated so honestly. I'm toying with the idea of doing a Great Redwall Reread now and perhaps even blogging about it if I have time. We'll see.
• I also reread 101 Dalmatians after we watched the movie a few days ago. That one didn't hold up quite as well, but it was still fun. There are some delightful interactions that didn't make it into the movie. And, y'know, it's a fundamentally family-oriented story and we all know that I have a soft spot for those.
• In terms of nonfiction, I've spent the better part of the month slowly reading The Design of Everyday Things, which is, contrary to what I expected, not about the history behind how various ordinary items developed into their modern forms. What is it about? User-centered design, that's what. Is it giving me flashbacks to User Experience for the Web (aka my second-least-favorite PWID class)? Also yes. But it is actually a good book, and it's honestly relevant to some of what I want to do professionally, so I'm going to finish it or go down trying.
• Not reading but still bookish: I did participate in Jenelle Schmidt's February is Fantasy Month again, though not as extensively as usual. I did manage to sort of keep up with the Instagram challenge for a few weeks, which was fun.
• Finally, a quick update on how my reading goals are going! I've read twelve books so far this year, which puts me five books behind schedule, but I should be able to catch up without too much trouble, especially if I end up rereading Redwall — those aren't short books, by any means, but they go quickly. I've also only read one non-speculative-fiction book, but I'm in the middle of a second. I'm doing a bit better on reading older books — I've gotten in four of those. I mean, they're all middle grade-ish, and three of them are by Diana Wynne Jones, and pretty much all of them were published after 1956, but still. It's progress.

Watching!

• Once again, I haven't really watched much of anything this month; I've mostly been too busy. My roommate and I did watch the third episode of Avatar season 2, but that's pretty much it.
• Well, and my family rewatched 101 Dalmatians while I was home for spring break. That was quite fun. (That's why I ended up rereading the book as well.) It's kind of underrated, and if Disney tries to make a "live action" version of it like they did with Lion King and Lady and the Tramp, I shall be immensely annoyed. (I'm already annoyed about Lady and the Tramp, but there's nothing I can do about that.) Also, the art on older Disney movies? Gorgeous.
• (I also have a new appreciation for the title sequences of Disney movies after having taken graphic design classes. I know it's not exactly graphic design, but it's related, and yeah.)

Life!

• Most of this month was, to be honest, taken up by either classes, homework, or writing. As such, my main impression of most of it was of being busy and tired.
• (Not that classes and homework are bad things, of course. I actually got to design the branding for a fictional university for one of my PWID classes, and it was SO MUCH FUN. Like, yes, it was tiring and it took effort, but there's a reason I want to go into branding and marketing if at all possible.)
• My roommate and I did make it down to Orion to take advantage of their drink of the month and their Valentine's blooming tea special. So that was fun. The blooming teas look pretty cool, and they come in this adorable glass teapot and it made me quite happy. (Also quite warm, as it was snowing that day. I was distinctly displeased.)
• On an exciting note, I went to the spring career fair that Cedarville hosts and actually had several very good conversations! I'm not sure if anything will come of them, but I'm hopeful. And the companies that seem to have the highest potential would both mean I'd be spending a lot of time around engineers and scientists, which I would honestly be fine with and would probably even enjoy. (I mean, I already hang around STEM people a lot; why not continue the habit?)
• On a less exciting note, I officially stepped down as an Inklings workshop leader this month. This is a decision I've been contemplating for several months, and I finally made up my mind after the TDK Academic Integration Conference (which I'm not talking about here because it was largely frustrating for me for entirely personal reasons, but some good things did come out of it). My workshop group has only had one person regularly show up (other than me), and it's been frustrating for both of us — and workshop, in general, has been taking up more emotional and mental bandwidth than I can spare ever since the start of the school year. I feel bad about not seeing the year through, but I think that this was best for everyone (especially since the one person who did come to workshop can now move to a group with actually active people in it).
• I also spent several afternoons in Centerville so my roommate could take a series of exams that she needs to get into grad school. That wasn't great for my productivity, but it was a nice change of pace. And now she's done with that, and we celebrated with a trip to Lola's Mexican for chimichangas, which were, as always, delicious.
• And this past week, I've been home on spring break — thank goodness! I've enjoyed being able to relax and spend time with my family and not have anywhere particular to be. It's possible that I should have been more productive over break than I was, but at the same time, I've gotten a reasonable amount done, and I needed the chance to rest.
• As per the usual, being home meant trying a new sourdough recipe. This time, it was crusty sourdough rolls, and they turned out super well (as you may have seen on my Instagram). If not, behold the deliciousness:

March Plans

• I'm going back to my January writing goal of 300 words or 30 minutes of writing per day, five days per week. 500 wasn't unbearable, especially with how much I was writing D&D stuff, but I think this will be more manageable. Plus, next month is Camp NaNoWriMo, so I don't want to exhaust my writing inspiration in March and then have nothing left when April hits.
• I also have lots of books to read, especially since I've gotten ahold of ARCs for several upcoming releases: the Wingfeather Saga rereleases, Moonscript, and Let the Ghosts Speak! I think this is the most ARCs I've ever had at one time, haha. (On the downside, I'm behind on the Wingfeather Saga ones because I can't figure out how to get the ARCs from Netgalley to my Kindle. The emailing thing doesn't seem to have worked. It's a problem.) Plus, of course, I have plenty to reread, and I may try to join in with the Fellowship of Fantasy book this month. We'll see.
• More importantly than either of those: classes still exist. I want to have my Honors final project at least drafted, if not completely done, by the end of the month, and there's the usual deadlines in other classes as well.
• In terms of social activity: D&D will continue to be a thing. Also, my friend group is doing a second cheese night the night we get back to Cedarville, and I'm psyched about that. And part of the TDK Quizbowl group — myself included — is going to a tournament at the end of the month, which I'm really looking forward to. (Not just because that means I get to be back in Virginia for a weekend, but also because it's going to be fun.)

How was your February? How do you feel about rereading books you used to love? What movie do you never want to see Disney remake in "live-action"? What plans do you have for March? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah Pennington

January 2020: First DOINGS of the DECADE!

Hey'a, everyone! It is the last day of January and a Friday, and that means it's time for the first Doings post of the decade! WOOT WOOT. I have no idea why I'm making such a big deal about this, but it's something different, so we're going with it. Anyway. January's been one of those months where it feels like it's actually two or three months stuck into one, so that's been interesting. We'll see how much I remember to recap.

Writing!

• So, as far as writing quantity goes, I'm doing great. My goal was 300 words or 30 minutes of writing per day, five days a week, and though the start of the month was a little rough, I had some really good days and I currently have a really nice streak going. My total for the month so far is 24,214 words, not counting whatever I write today.
• The majority of that has been on D&D stuff, both because that has a closer deadline (I need to have a new session every Friday) and because D&D is currently easier to write than my novel. Around the beginning of the month, I planned out all the episodes for the semester, so I just have to expand my summaries into actual playable session outlines.
• I've gotten some done on Blood in the Earth/Soil, but not as much as I'd like. Again, D&D is higher priority and easier, and all the bits of my novel that I'm really excited about seem very far away. I mean, yes, they'd be closer if I worked on the bits that I'm writing now, but . . . yeah. I did manage to finish one notebook and start a second, though, which is exciting!
• (D&D is going great, though. We've had two sessions so far this month — we had to call off one because of someone's birthday — and everyone seems to be having a good time. And I'm putting Plans in motion, and everyone just hit level 5 and it's all very exciting for me.)

Reading!

• I really haven't read a lot in January — I've been knitting, and I haven't had many gaps between classes and such in which to sneak a few chapters.
• I finished King of Scars literally the day before Christmas break ended, and I have kind of mixed feelings about it. In all fairness, I really should have realized that, no duh, reading Nina's POV would be a constant reminder of that one bit at the end of Crooked Kingdom that I really disliked. Somehow, Zoya ended up being the best POV character in the story, which is impressive given how much I disliked her in the original trilogy.
• Two of my other main reads were retellings: Shadowkeeper (Hades and Persephone crossed with Castor and Polux) and A Curse So Dark and Lonely (Beauty and the Beast). Shadowkeeper was a great concept with an execution that was ok but could have been better (though it's still worth the 99 cents that it currently costs as an ebook). A Curse So Dark and Lonely has been on my TBR list for a while and is definitely one of the better Beauty and the Beast retellings I've read. The characters were great, and, wonder of wonders, people actually tried to communicate with each other after they argued instead of being huffy and stubborn. WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE. Also, it's excellently twisty.
• I'm finishing up the month by rereading the Illuminae Files, which I intended to do over Christmas break but didn't have time to read. I thought I'd just hold off on them until my next break, but then I ended up with a spare hour Monday afternoon during which I was too tired to do anything productive, and I was right next door to the library, so I figured I'd see if they had the first book . . . and they did, so I reread it in three days, and it was just as good as I remembered it. I think the reread was made better not just by the fact that I could pick up hints and clues and such but also by the fact that I took the AI class last spring and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey as a part of that, so I was reading the bits about AIDAN kind of in light of what I'd gotten then. I'm currently partway through Gemina, which is also as excellent as I remembered. (Actually better, since I'm attached to Nik this time around.)
• I'm also keeping one of my reading goals and reading outside the speculative fiction genre! Currently, I'm reading How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, which is the most recent book by Randall Munroe (aka the guy behind XKCD and What If?). It is, as you might expect, excellent and hilarious and highly enjoyable. Absolutely would recommend.

Watching!

• I really didn't watch a whole lot this month. I saw about two-fifths of The Scarlet Pimpernel (the one with Ian McKellen in it) and thought it wasn't bad, though I didn't get to the part that I actually wanted to see (aka the part that's the book proper and not the flashback material put in chronological position). It was long and late and I wasn't feeling well, though, so I didn't finish.
• The roommate and I have also started watching (rewatching in her case) season two of Avatar: The Last Airbender. We've gotten through the first 2 episodes, which includes the "Cave of the Two Lovers" episode. That . . . was a thing. Also, Sokka in that episode is basically me during a lot of D&D.

Life!

• In case anyone was curious: the homemade artisan bread that I was working on when I posted my last Doings post was delicious. The loaves fused oddly, which wasn't great, but they tasted amazing. Definitely going to make those again once I'm home.
• But there will not be any baking for a while because, guess what, I'm back at Cedarville.
• For my last semester.
• Please insert the appropriate nervous screaming noises here. (If you've lived in the same dorm as me for any length of time, you probably have a pretty accurate idea of what that sounds like.)
• Anyway, yes. It's my last semester. I'm enjoying most of my classes, and even the two classes that I'm not crazy for, I like the people there and I'm glad to be taking one last class with them, if nothing else.
• But I'm basically in two web design classes (Web Design II and my independent study) and it's a lot, but I'm really enjoying it. Coding and scripting and such are weirdly satisfying in a way that graphic design and writing aren't, and I can't really explain why, but yeah. It's great. I like it. There's about a 30% chance that I'm going to find a way to work these skills into my PWID professional project (read; basically a pre-capstone project), though it kind of depends on what my professor and I decide.
• I'm also back in a class where the amount I talk during discussions actually affects my grade, and it's surprisingly hard to adjust after a full semester (possibly a full year?) with no classes like that.
• Outside of classwork: my roommate got Sentinels of the Multiverse (aka one of my favorite strategy games ever) for Christmas, so we've been playing that a fair bit whenever we both have a decent chunk of spare time. I've gotten to test out different heroes, which is fun. My favorites are definitely Fanatic (basically a paladin with wings; she smites evil a bunch and occasionally heals people) and Chrono-Ranger (time-traveling cowboy and bounty hunter whose effectiveness is directly proportional to how many bounties he has out at any given time). I've also determined that how much I enjoy playing a character is determined as much by aesthetic as it is by mechanics.
• My online D&D group is also still going strong. We had some MAJOR REVELATIONS dropped on us, not last session but the session before that, and some of us are still processing that, but we have a very clear objective in front of us right now, which is nice! And it does not involve negotiating with dragons other than the one in the party! Which my character is very happy about!
• Also this month was CU Lead, which is a leadership conference that all org officers are required to go to. It was not a fabulous day — it rained, some of the vital conference information was only available in an app that I couldn't download, and there were a lot of people. But it was a lot more helpful than last year's conference, with more practical advice and less theory and devotional-type stuff, so that's good.
• Additional not-terrible thing: CU Lead was the Saturday before MLK Day, and for the first time ever, we got MLK Day off from classes. So we had that day to make up all the homework and social stuff we didn't have time for on Friday, at least. And the chem club had a game night that evening, which was fun. (Oddly, the chem club game night was more fun than the Inklings game night this past week, even though I knew fewer people by far. I think it has to do with the personality dynamics of the people in the club.) And my roommate and I went to the Mexican restaurant down in the town for lunch, which was completely and utterly delicious.

February Plans

• I have two basically-final projects that I plan to start this month (my Honors colloquium project and my aforementioned professional project) and it's so weird to think about that. Plus, of course, I have the usual projects and reading and such.
• Writing-wise, I plan to keep going with roughly the same goal as I had this past month, but I'm upping the amount a little to 500 words or 30 minutes of writing, 5 days a week. I could probably go even higher if I wanted to, but I don't want to overdo anything, especially since I don't know how much time class projects will take up.
• That writing, by the way, will hopefully include at least one, maybe two, Valentine's Day short stories (because it sounds like fun and I currently don't get to write any romantic scenes in my WIP). Watch for more about that on my Facebook page sometime today or tomorrow.
• February also means Blind Date with a Book at the Cedarville University library, which I am super psyched for! I'm curious how they're going to handle it this year, but I'm sure it'll be great. I'm going to read so many books this month, haha.
• Outside of that, D&D and orgs and such will probably proceed as per the usual. I do have a couple D&D and other tabletop RPG one-shots that I'm either running or participating in, which I'm excited for. (The one-shot I'm running is set in Eberron, which means I get to be steampunky and I get to mess around with an artificer NPC, so that'll be super fun.)
• And, yeah. That's pretty much it. But I think it should be plenty to keep me busy.

How was your January? Have you been able to keep any of your resolutions or goals from the start of the New Year? What plans do you have for February? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade) 

(Belated) November + December 2019 Doings!

It feels a little weird to be doing a recap post for November and December of last year after doing all my New Year 2020 posts earlier this week, not gonna lie. But I also know that if I don't do this post, I will eventually need to look back at it for some reason and then be frustrated that it doesn't exist. (For the record: I do occasionally go back and reread my Doings! posts, so this isn't out of the question.) So, let's get going. Because I'm covering two months, I'm going to try to stick to just the highlights and general themes — which is really going to be all I remember anyway.

Writing!

• NaNoWriMo occupied most of November, obviously, and is 50% of why I basically didn't post at all in November. As you may or may not remember, my goal was to complete a nonfiction piece and a D&D episode every week, and I pretty much accomplished that. Was it anywhere near 50K? No. But I didn't think it would be, so I'm counting it as a win.
• I have also determined that I have roughly the same relationship with creative nonfiction as I do with poetry: it can be fun to write, and I can do some really cool stuff with it, but it's not my natural state. I can't just sit down and write creative nonfiction if I haven't been mulling over an idea for a few days (a fact that caused more conflict than I'd like between my professor and me). Fantasy, on the other hand — if I'm not burned out and don't get distracted, I can sit down, review where I am in my novel or my campaign, and get a solid chunk of writing done regardless of how "inspired" I am.
• But I did submit some of the pieces I did to actual lit journals and stuff, so we'll see if anything comes of that.
• And Season 1 of my D&D campaign had a pretty good finish! Everyone had fun, and while the finale wasn't quite as awesome and amazing as I hoped (mostly because all the prelude to the final battle took waaaaay longer than I expected and we were all tired by then), I think it still worked well. And I've been working on Season 2 over break, and I have about half the episodes summarized. (Are they the half of the episodes I need? No. But they're there.)
• In terms of actual novel-writing, I was able to write some over Christmas break. I've adjusted my novel's timeline a little to make certain things happen sooner than I originally planned. And I'm still trying to figure out how to get my POV characters to actually interact. But I'm excited about what's coming up, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to work on it a lot more this coming semester.
• And, of course, I wrote the New Year's short story that I posted a few days ago! If you loved Luis in Mechanical Heart, you want to meet Luis, or you enjoyed last year's New Year's story, please do check it out!

Reading!

• I actually read a surprising amount in November? Most of which I could've sworn was in October? But apparently, I did a lot of stress-reading.
• Definite highlight of the two months: Sorcery of Thorns, which is basically one of my top three books of the whole year and absolutely amazing and yeah. In case you missed my Best of 2019 part two post, it's pretty much what might happen if someone took Howl's Moving Castle and crossed it with The Invisible Library and Abhorsen. So, yeah. It's amazing. Read it.
• I've also been working through the Grishaverse books over Christmas break. So far, the original trilogy was ok but not amazing (other than Sturmhound, who is awesome), the Six of Crows duology is as excellent the second time around as it was the first, and the four chapters I've read of King of Scars are solid but cause considerable pain in the feels.
• The main highlight from November was Death Be Not Proud, which is Snow White in jazz age New Zealand. It's every bit as good as that description implies, and I definitely recommend giving it a read.
• Besides that, I read H.L. Burke's latest books, and both were pretty enjoyable. Heart of the Curiosity is steampunk, which Burke does well, and features a sister duo who I greatly appreciate. And Prince of Stars, Son of Fate was fun and twisty and somehow made the forbidden romance trope work in a way that I liked for once.
• And, of course, I have to mention Heather Dixon Wallwork's The Enchanted Sonata, which is a pretty delightful retelling of The Nutcracker and which was my Christmas read for this year. It's more of an inspired-by sort of book, though, when it comes down to it . . . but, honestly, most Nutcracker retellings are more "inspired by" than "retelling." I enjoyed it quite a bit, though I don't think it had quite the same spark as the author's other books.

Watching!

• I basically watched nothing at all at Cedarville, mostly because I didn't have time to watch anything.
• At home, I watched the usual Christmas movies — A Charlie Brown Christmas, White Christmas, The Grinch. I finally watched the new version of the Grinch and thought that it was ok, but it's far less powerful than the original. (I have a long-ish diatribe on why that is, and it hinges a surprising amount on the Grinch's treatment of Max. If you're curious, ask in comments.)
• I also watched a couple more episodes of Doctor Who (I'm almost done with Season 2), an episode of Psych, and the first two episodes of an anime called Made in Abyss because I needed something to do while knitting and didn't feel like listening to audiobooks. Doctor Who was good, though the episodes I watched were all a bit weird. Psych I watched because I'd seen two partial episodes while watching over friends' shoulders and enjoyed those, but I don't think it's a show that I'll continue watching on my own — the concept is fun; the humor and main character are more enjoyable when you're not watching alone. And Made in Abyss is . . . interesting? A bit weird, but the concept is good.
• The most recent thing I watched (and possibly the best thing) was The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (as usual, I'm about a year behind everyone else). It was honestly a really good movie — it kind of felt as though someone had combined The Nutcracker with Entwined and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I saw a fair number of the twists coming, but not from a mile away, and artistically speaking, it was a pretty gorgeous film — frosted fairytale-toyland aesthetic with some delightful hints of steampunk throughout. A bit cliche at times, but still, I'd rewatch it.

Life!

• The semester is over; glory hallelujah. It was a great assortment of classes, and I learned a lot of cool stuff, but I had too many high-workload classes and too many extracurricular responsibilities going on at the same time, and that became very apparent in November and December, and the quality of my work suffered because of it. And, yes, everything got done on time, and I'm fairly satisfied overall with how my final projects and exams and such turned out in terms of quality, I am not 100% satisfied with the grades I got. And I know it doesn't matter long term, but . . . yeah. It happened, and I'm going to leave all the school stuff there.
• (I did learn how to do paperback binding, though! And actually bound multiple paperback books! And taught other people how to do it too! So that was cool.)
• There were three highlights to November: birthday celebration, Thanksgiving, and cheese night.
• For my birthday, my friends and I went to the new Mexican place that just opened in Cedarville and then went to the Ayo dance showcase, and it was a seriously awesome time. I'm not sure if I enjoyed the food or the showcase more, to be honest. But I do know that I'm definitely going back to the Mexican restaurant.
• Thanksgiving was fun; my sister, my sister's roommate, and I drove back together, and we survived the trips both there and back. It was nice to have some relaxing time at home, and I got to do some baking. (I made two types of roll, one regular yeast and one sourdough, and both turned out well.)
• And then when we got back, we had cheese night in my dorm. My roommate and I have been toying with this idea for a while; basically, we invite a bunch of people to get together, bringing with them assorted fun and fancy cheeses and things to eat with cheeses, like crackers and grapes and apples and sparkling cider, and then we just hang out and have a good time. And it was a very good time! Even though I was loopy for most of it! I ate much yummy food, and we played Avalon, and it was just generally a lot of fun.
• December, of course, was mostly occupied by Christmas, which was had in stages: the TDK Christmas party in November (a success), Christmas with my roommate (featuring gingerbread cookies that she decorated while I did statistics homework, because situational irony is a thing), Christmas with the Bible study (featuring a kids' Christmas play that didn't involve people playing multiple roles, along with some very delicious baked potatoes and a surprising number of people my age) and Christmas at home (featuring me, as usual, working until the last minute to get knitted gifts done).
• Christmas at home also featured a lot of baking; I made super soft molasses cookies two days before Christmas, sourdough pizza Christmas Eve, and a cranberry apple pie on Christmas day. (And I helped my mom with biscotti because I've never made it and want to learn how.) Everything was pretty delicious, even if my sister thought I put too much cheese on the pizza.
• AND I FINALLY MADE A SOURDOUGH LOAF THAT WAS THE RIGHT SHAPE! Behold the beauty:

• (And then I made another loaf for my aunt when she came to visit after Christmas and it was not as pretty. But oh well.)
• (I'm also currently making a non-sourdough artisan loaf based on the latest baking challenge on Sally's Baking Addiction, and I'm super excited to see how it turns out.)
• As I mentioned two points ago, my aunt and cousins came to visit after Christmas. It was nice to see them again, and we went to the Air and Space Museum while they were here, which I haven't been to in ages. I kind of ended up getting separated from the rest of my family at the very start of the museum . . . but it's fine. I had fun.
• New Year's Eve was also pretty fun; we got together with our Bible study as usual for an early countdown and lots of good food. And I got to see some of my old friends who moved away two summers ago, so that was fun.
• I feel like a lot of these highlights center around food. Mostly bread and cheese. I'm not entirely sure what that says about me.

January Plans

• I already talked about writing plans in my 2020 Vision post, but as a recap: I'm aiming for 300 words or 30 minutes of writing per day on either my novel or my D&D campaign. I'm also going to try to start gathering some info that I need to figure out my rough publishing plan.
• (I'm also messing around with a D&D one-shot for some friends who are interested in trying D&D but don't want to commit to a full campaign yet, so we'll see what happens with that. My main campaign takes first priority, obviously, but I have a rough outline for the one-shot, and . . . yeah. We'll see.)
• Classes start up again next week, so obviously, that's going to take a lot of my time. I'm excited, though; I have my last two professional writing classes, two web design classes (well, one and a half), a graphic design class, and a one-credit honors class. And even though I have a 9 AM and an 8 AM, I have nothing in the afternoons any day except Monday (when I have the honors class), and I only actually have two hours of in-class lecture time per day (with, again, the exception of Monday). Online classes are glorious.
• (I'm also hoping very much that I can do a repeat of last spring semester and get a couple weeks ahead on one of my web design classes so I'm not as stressed later on. That would be nice, but we'll see how it goes.)
• Speaking of stress, as I mentioned in my 2020 Vision post, I really need to buckle down on figuring out the after-college stuff. So, applying for jobs, obviously . . . but also thinking about grad school? Maybe? My parents recently brought it up as a possibility that I should consider, so I need to figure out if it's worth doing now, later, or not at all. And obviously, that'll take longer than just January, but I need to meet with people and get advice and all that sort of thing.
• Beyond that, most of my plans revolve around trying to make sure I have time to do fun stuff like watching Avatar and other shows with my roommate, actually going to Nerf wars (and maybe ASL club, if I manage to relearn enough of what I've forgotten), and having a board game night or two (assuming other people have time for that . . .). Y'know, fun stuff with friends, since I only have a few months left with most of them. (And now I'm sad . . .)

How were your November and December? Did you get any good books (or other stuff) for Christmas? What plans do you have for January? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)    

October 2019 Doings!

Hello, everyone! So, October. It's been a crazy month, let me tell you. I mean, that is the whole point of this Doings! post, but yeah.

(Also, I just got back from a Halloween party about an hour before I finished this post, and I'm still so hyped. Tired, but hyped. It was amazing. But more on that later!)

Writing!

• So, there's good news and there's bad news.
• And the bad news is that Blood in the Earth/Soil is most likely going to be delayed because I've barely had time and energy to work on it at all this month.
• I'm keeping up with creative nonfic all right . . .
• And I'm keeping up with D&D all right . . .
• But once I get through the week-to-week deadlines and my schoolwork and my various social commitments, there's not much energy left over for Eun-Ji, Azuma, Baili, Gan, Chouko, Xiang, and company. And I wish there was, and I hate that this is the spot I'm in, but I'm not sure what to do about it.
• (And I just added one more thing to my workload . . . but more on that later.)
• The good news, at least for me, is that my D&D campaign is still going well. Everyone seems to be having fun, and I think I've found a good balance between the plot of the week and the overarching storyline. And I've been able to introduce several NPCs who I really like (including one who's showing up tonight), so that's fun.
• (I also learned the importance of testing NPC names for possibly unfavorable mispronunciations — case in point, one of the NPCs last session was named Morin, and some of the players insisted on mispronouncing his name as "Moron." Oops.)
• The other good news is that next semester should be much less stressful, and hopefully, I'll be able to dedicate a lot more time to writing, which could mean extra stuff releasing to make up for the delay? But we'll see how that works out . . .

Reading!

• This was another light reading month, unsurprisingly.
• I did finish Northanger Abbey at last . . . and was not really impressed. The more I interact with Austen's books, the more I think that I'm not really an Austen fan; I'm a Pride and Prejudice fan. That said, there are a couple Austen books I haven't tried yet, so maybe I just don't jive with what I've read so far.
• I also reread Masque because I needed something to read and couldn't get at Prince of Stars, Son of Fate, plus you can't really go wrong with a Beauty and the Beast murder mystery. I have exactly 0 regrets, and it was honestly an excellent destresser.
• The last complete book I read this month was Ghostlight, another sort of magical mystery. It was interesting, but not my favorite thing I've ever read. I may read the sequel, but it's hard to say for sure.
• Finally, I'm currently reading the Thing Explainer, another Randall Munroe book. I feel a little weird whenever I'm reading it because it sometimes kind of feels like a kids' book, even though it's not a kids' book, and I can't help feeling guilty that I'm not reading something more sophisticated. On the other hand, I am enjoying it and I'm learning things, so I'm not about to stop reading it.

Watching!

• My roommate and I finished Season 1 of Avatar: The Last Airbender, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago. You can check out my season thoughts post if you missed it and are interested in reading my overall reactions as someone who knows a ton of spoilers and basically loved the show before she started watching it.
• We intended to watch a bunch of stuff (mostly Disney movies) over Fall Break, but that . . . didn't happen. I'm ok with that, except for the fact that we were going to watch Aladdin (the original, which I've never actually seen) and I was going to knit a bunch and I was kind of disappointed by the lack of both those things. But we played a ton of board games instead, so . . . worth it.
• And my roommate and I are endeavoring to pick Sword Art Online back up. We kind of skimmed past the Gun Gale Online arc because my roommate doesn't like most of it that much and I was . . . not super enthusiastic about the idea of watching it. As I mentioned to a friend of mine, Sword Art Online is kind of like the DC Dark Knight trilogy, in that it's deep and intellectual and thoughtful and people tell me it's really good and I should definitely watch it, and I want to take their advice . . . but it's also heavy and dark and doesn't have a ton of joy or humor to balance that out, and so even though I theoretically want to watch it, in practice, I avoid every opportunity I get to do so.
• But, as I said, we're past the GGO arc; we picked the episodes that my roommate liked best and watched those; I got a recap of the rest of the arc from her, and now we can move on to the remaining mini-arcs! Which I'm excited about!

Life!

I painted a pumpkin for a contest hosted by my campus bookstore. (It didn't win.)

• So, there are four main highlights of this past October: Parents' Weekend, fall break, academic decision crisis, and Halloween.
• We will start with the chronological first of those items: Parents' Weekend. This is also the easiest one to tell: the first weekend in October was Homecoming/Parents' Weekend, and my parents came up because it's my last year and my sister's first year and both of those are significant. Also, my sister was part of one of the Cardboard Canoe Race teams, so they wanted to support her in that, even though she wasn't actually in the boat. (Her boat did not win, but they did make it across without sinking, so all is well.) Getting to see them was super fun, and we got to go out to eat at Cheddar's, which is always a win.
• That weekend, I also went to Cedarville's production of A Comedy of Errors, which I enjoyed (though not as much as some of the other plays I've seen). The actors all did a very good job, and of course, Shakespeare is always great. Some of the mistaken identity humor did get old after a while, but overall it was good.
• After that, it was a fairly quiet-but-busy two weeks until . . .
• The academic decision crisis . . . which wasn't really much of a crisis, more of an opportunity that I had to decide whether or not to take. See, between the classes I've taken and the classes I plan to take, I'm only one class away from a web design minor, and it was bugging me . . . but I didn't think I could do anything about it because the class I needed was only offered in the fall semester, aka now, and I'm not sticking around an extra semester just to take one class. But my advisor encouraged me to email the professor in charge of the design department and ask if I could switch out the class for something else, so I did, expecting the answer to be no.
  • The answer was not no.
  • The answer was "I've talked to the professor who runs the class, and he remembers you from Web Design 1 and because he remembers you doing well in that class and really enjoying that class, he's willing to let you take this class as an independent study. But you have to start this semester, not next semester when you currently have a lighter workload."
  • So. That sparked a lot of debate and reassessing my plans and calling my parents and trying to figure out if the independent study is doable -- which I've decided it is, but only if I cut down on some non-class activities.
  • Thus why Blood in the Earth/Soil is being delayed.
• In the middle of all that was fall break, which was, honestly, delightful. Once again, I went to my roommate's house . . . but this year, we had my sister and her roommate along for the ride. That turned out to be really fun, as it meant we played a ton of board games.
  • A few of the board game highlights: multiple games of "Sentinels of the Multiverse" (in which I confirmed that my ideal playstyle is not support), two rounds of "Escape the Temple" (fun, but easily the most stressful game I've ever played, and not the best thing for when you're trying not to have a cold), and two games of "Mysterium" (including one in which I played as the ghost and learned that I like that much more than playing as a normal player -- it's a great game, but I get frustrated when I'm trying to work through the clues I'm given and everyone else is talking around me and telling me what I should think).

• • My sister and I also went to the Columbus Zoo with our aunt, which was really fun. We got to ride a camel (I can definitely tell why they're called ships of the desert) and we saw absolutely adorable arctic foxes!!! They were so white and pretty and fluffy and were basically my favorite part. The cheetahs were pretty cool as well, though.
• Then we got back, I had a super stressful week in which I had to do aaaaalllllllll the graphic design, and then reached this week. Which, of course, is Halloween!
  • To make it clear, I am excited about Halloween solely because it's an opportunity to dress up, not for any other reason. I have no interest in the spooky side of the holiday.
  • But, yeah. I basically managed to have Halloween events every night of Halloween week except Monday, which meant I got to wear all the costumes!

 

• • Tuesday: PWID Halloween party. I dressed up as a dragon keeper from the DragonKeeper Chronicles. As usual, no one knew what I was. As usual, I did not win. But I got to walk around with a sword on my hip and a dragon on my shoulder, and I got to eat cinnamon pretzels and caramels, and I got to meet my professor's baby, so I call the evening a success.
  • Wednesday: Inklings creative writing org, with costumes welcome. I thought about trying to be a Jedi this evening, but stuff didn't work out, so I went back to the classic assassin look. (Specifically, I was a Shadowwalker assassin from one of my to-be-eventually-published books, but I didn't advertise the specifics.)

• • Thursday, daytime: So I didn't exactly dress up, but I went with a sort of low-key Jedi-ish look and carried my lightsaber around in my backpack pocket, so I count that. Speaking of which, I have a lightsaber now. Like my sword, it's 3D printed. I still need to paint details on the hilt, but that's only going to be a little bit of work, and it wasn't significant enough that I felt the need to get it done before Halloween.

• • Thursday evening: Orion Halloween Hogwarts party! My roommate and I went to this together, and it was SO MUCH FUN. I did a whole post about the event over on Facebook and Instagram (pick the one you like better), so I'm not going to recap all the details here. That said, it was so much fun, I ate a ton of good food (including Orion's version of fever fudge, which is DELICIOUS and AMAZING), and I got to dress up AGAIN. This time, I was a Hogwarts alum who works with dragons. It was probably my most comfortable costume of the week (with the exception of my low-key Jedi one), but also had the most small fun details. And I got a Hogwarts letter! Which was awesome!

• • Friday evening: AKA tonight, AKA a time that has not occurred as of the writing and publishing of this post. But I've invited people in my D&D group to dress up, and I'm planning on wearing my capelet at least and having my dragon on my shoulder, so it will be a good time.
• Outside of those three things, most of October has been occupied by schoolwork, mostly graphic design. I'm currently in a group project in one of those classes, and it is not my favorite thing, but it's the only group project of the semester, so I'll deal with it.

November Plans!

• So, you may be asking "Sarah, if you're delaying your WIP and taking this independent study, will you still have time for NaNoWriMo?" And the answer is . . . not really. But I'm doing it anyway with a rebel goal of one creative nonfic piece and one D&D episode written and edited per week. Aka, I'm doing the stuff I need to do anyway, but at a slightly faster rate. And then if I have time around those things, I'll work on my WIP as well.
• On a side note, if you have been able to find the NaNoWriMo banners and profile things, please point me in their direction, 'cause I'm kind of lost on the new site.
• The other part of the main November plan is "do all the graphic and web design."
• Seriously, though, basically every weekend in November is going to be occupied primarily with my independent study. It's going to be great (I say only slightly sarcastically; I am really excited for this class).
• In my spare time (such as it is), I hope that my roommate and I will be able to keep watching either Avatar or Sword Art Online; I'd like to finish a season of something by the end of the semester. We'll see how that works out.
• I am planning to go home for Thanksgiving break, which I look forward to. I miss being home. This will also be my and my sister's first drive of that length when we're not following our parents, so that's going to be exciting and mildly nerve-wracking. I'm hoping that we can leave super early Wednesday morning so I don't have to drive most of the way in the dark. We'll see how that works out.
• Also, there's a chance that the TDK Christmas party will end up being before Thanksgiving, and I am not happy about that. I have strong feelings about when Christmas is meant to be (AKA, only after Thanksgiving) and I hold to those feelings with a significant enough conviction that I will have an actual crisis of conscience if the party is before then. I'm an officer, so I have to go, but . . . yeah.

How was your October? What plans do you have for November? Are you doing NaNoWriMo? When do you think the proper time for Christmas celebrations and decorations is? And did you dress up for Halloween this year? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)