I'm Back!

Hi pretty ladies (and gents!)

I'm back on the web again! It feels really good to be back, let me tell you that. I could have been blogging since Monday if the free internet that I use did not decide to take a short vacation. The truth is since last Sunday, I had no internet at home :( I was so ready to post and then when I dialed into the system, I only received the busy signals, bah! So the internet port at school decided to get a switcharoo to a new one without telling us and until very late last night, I could not go online at all. But now thanks to the invisible internet God (and some technicians), I'm able to check my email again!

So what happened during the internet-free period?

Let me tell you ladies it's a boring world and I wished I had more games installed in my computer. The all-mighty machine that I called my laptop all of the sudden became this most mundane instrument. For many days, I only used it for one purpose: to type my NaNoWriMo novel! So without further ado, I'm really happy to be back!

But if you're wondering what else happened besides the NaNo typing? Well, let me tell ya, a lot!

1. I got a new camera and it's a sexy beast!

About half a year ago, I broke my old camera, a very ancient Fuji Finepix. It was an accident: I was using self-timer to take a picture of myself (that's level 10 of camwhoring for those who are into "the art" hehe.) When I just turned my back away from it, the camera toppled and fell on the floor. A mechanical part inside the lens broke and since it could not retract, it decided not to let me take any pictures either. The bad thing is that's my first camera. The good thing is I got it for free since it came with my laptop.

So after half a year of pondering on what to get and where to buy, the day finally came and I got this sexiness from New Egg for a very bargain price. New Egg also threw in a 2MB SD card and a camera bag, that's really generous of them. Also, they shipped my stuff super quick and packed them really well. So yay to New Egg!

The Canon PowerShot A590 IS

I was pondering between the Ạ590 IS and the SD1100. The second one is Canon's more expensive point-and-shoot model with the ELPH technology (don't ask me what it stands for, I have no clue!) It's about 60 dollars more expensive than the A590 and has virtually the same features. The Ạ90, however, has a bigger screen, an optical view finder (which is kind of useless for me), more optical zoom, and takes wide-screen photos, all for 60 dollars cheaper!

The only complaint I heard from people who uses the A-cameras from Canon is the short battery life. This line of camera all uses AA batteries and the ones you get from dollar store won't make it. However, I use my rechargeable AA and it's doing really swell. So if you need a simple point and shoot digital camera, the Ạ90 IS is a good start. If you have more money in your pocket, as that's where I consult first, go ahead and get an SD750 and above. Canon makes really good cameras and the picture quality from this one is truly wonderful.

2. I went to some NaNo write-ins and met some really wonderful writers in my area:

After 2 weeks of just writing at home, my word count got quite a beating. While other people got to 20-30K of words within days, yours truly was lagging behind with merely 10K. The low word count was actually a week ago and since then I trippled my productivity. Now I'm comfortably in 30K and beyond zone, which pushes me to a very bright potential of completing this challenge altogether.

At the first few days, I barely made it through 1000 words per hour, which is quite slow in my opinion. Then as the word count kicked me in the butt, I madly typed like an insane person and last Friday completed my first 5K challenge (sounds like running to some of y'all!) It all went much much easier from there: 1K here, 2K there and I get around 3,000 words a day much easily. Yesterday I decided to take a break to let my creative juice flow and today I'm writing again, aiming for that elusive 35,000 words goal.

Writing with other people is much more productive than I expected. After a session, each of us stepped out of the room with three to five thousand written words under our belts, can you believe that? During this NaNo, I've learned so many things about writing and hope to one day teach people, especially science students, the whole process. It's very easy, actually, now that I realized the whole damn thing! (Please excuse mi lengua!)

3. It finally gets cold in herrre, brrrr!

This time last week I wore short sleeves t-shirt and now I'm bundling up head to toes with my heater turned on. For the past few days, it was 20-something degree Farenheit at night (that's waaaay below zero degree Celcius for folks who uses the SI.) Yesterday morning, I woke up to see nothing on my paper thermostat that had the lowest temperature at 54 degrees. The room was ice-cold and it took me and my heater a while to bring the room back to 54-and-beyond.

So everyone, let's bundle up and save some energy, ok? I actually feel fine when the room is in the low 70s now.

What else? Oh, I got a haircut and found out my hair was dry. A dose of moisturizing shampoo at Aveda and my hair shone again!

I think that's pretty much it, other stuff I won't dare to put online. But anyways, I'm glad to be back. Blogging will resume as normal as of today. Mr. Internet, don't go wonky on me again. I need you!

Take care everyone, I'm so glad to see all of y'all again!
Dao

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