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I hadn’t gone hiking in months, and I had a free day with my dad today, so we decided to go. My dad went on a hike a few weeks earlier to Rattlesnake Ledge with a group of friends, and so he suggested we try it again. The hike was very popular, and we passed by people speaking many different languages. Most I couldn’t make out, but I recognized German, more Eastern European ones, and some Asian ones. Dad speculated that it was because this hike was popular with tourists. Or perhaps, this area was more diverse than I thought. …

The novel’s going well. I’m getting more done this week than I expected. Either I work through a whole chapter, editing bits here and there, or I’m rewriting scenes, doing at least 500 words/day. I got through three chapters this week, 10-12. If I have 27 chapters, at this rate, I’d be done… *gets out calculator*… by the end of the summer! That’d be awesome if I could keep up this pace…

In other news, I’ve gotten my UK Visa started, and I set up my appointment for them to get my “biometric data,” a.k.a. fingerprints. I waited this long …

Today I finally started tackling the project that is cleaning out my room. When I leave for Scotland, my mom is planning on renting out our house and going to Arizona. So, when I leave, I have to pack everything in my room, either in the suitcases that are going with me, or into boxes to be stored at my dad’s. I’m hoping to get rid of a lot of stuff. Clothes, crafts, papers, trinkets-turned-junk. But one thing I am not ready to part with is my small library of books. They are in boxes, waiting for me to find …

I finally feel like I’m back in the swing of things. I suppose Mondays can do that. But mostly, it’s cause I’m finally getting over this cold, and this bad sunburn is starting to fade and heal. I got it a couple days ago when I stupidly forgot my skin nearly never sees the sun, and didn’t put on sunscreen, and ended up looking like a lobster. It was like having a heating pad that starts to get uncomfortably hot, but you can’t take it off.

Since I’m feeling better, I started working on my novel again. After an hour …

I watched a documentary about Tolkien and the adapting of the Lord of the Rings from books to film, and a realization dawned on me. For a while now, something like this has been wandering around my brain, but I haven’t yet given it serious thought. Before Tolkien, the culture and history of dwarves, elves, goblins, etc. weren’t anywhere as thought-out. They were in folktales, but there was no standard. Nowadays, ask someone what an elf looks and acts like (the tall ones, not the short Keebler ones) and if they are even slightly interested in the fantasy genre, they …

I don’t know about you, but my July 4th was spectacular. For the first time in many years, I was in Seattle on Lake Union to see the fireworks. I think it was the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen. Sure, there are good ones on TV; they’re even set to music. But nothing can compare to the fireworks exploding all across the sky above you, the booms so loud you can feel them. And they definitely have improved fireworks technology from the last time I saw a live show. There were some pretty incredible ones. I was very lucky …

The color purple has been on my mind lately. Not the book, the color. My new luggage is purple, and two of the four t-shirts I bought the other day are some shade of purple. For the longest time, it was only my mom’s color, as if she owned it. Every day she wears something purple, and many days, her whole outfit is that color. She could definitely be described as “the purple lady.” If you ever see her, you’ll know why. Shoes, blazers, scarfs, you name it. For the longest time, I must have felt that wearing or using …

These past couple weeks I came across a snag in my writing. At first, Shea was a Knight of the Guard. Boring, right? So I changed him into a Knight of Callaghan. I gave them a backstory, and it’s not all nice things. I realized Shea is going to act differently around people because of this. This fact set me back to almost the beginning again, and I started feeling overwhelmed, like this rewrite would never get done. After meeting with my writing group last weekend, I started brainstorming a little more, understanding which questions I needed to be asking. …

I’ve been steadily plugging away at revising my novel. It hasn’t been a chapter a day like I’d hoped, more like one or two chapters a week, but I’m still getting stuff done. Yesterday I realized I didn’t like the name of the wizard in my story so I went to my trusty name website and looked for a good one. I also didn’t like the name of the magical door, so I tried looking for a name for that one, too. I’ve found a wizard name, but not one for the door yet, among other things that need new …

There’s something about baking cookies. Getting out your old favorite recipe. Buying fresh ingredients at the store. Turning up tunes you can sing along with–namely, the Beatles–while you work. Mashing the butter into little bits because you forgot to leave it out to soften. My favorite part: using a spoon to eat the rest of the dough after you put the cookies on a baking sheet. Waiting for them to bake, and smelling them when they’re ready. Finding out you accidentally put them too close together, so you have to use a knife to cut them apart, and realizing that …