I’m excited to say that we’re now 5 hours and 49 minuets from take off. I’ve got the house sitters set, Alpha is well taken care of at Sarra’s and I’m dying to get to the airport. I’m too excited, jittery, rambling, babbling, but I am also very tired. I’ve been going non-stop since I woke up at 10am. Finishing the packing, cleaning and making things neat. I always hated how Mum had made us clean the house before we left for a trip when I was little. Now though, I fully see the advantages to it. It feels amazing to come home to a clean house after a long trip. Everything is in it’s place, there’s room to unpack, do the laundry, and just relax.

Everything is just about ready to go. Just need to zip up the luggage, turn off the lights, and set off on a journey of a life time.

My world travels have developed my complex personality and have made me who I am today.

Germany, Holland, England, Scotland, New Zealand, the Azores and now, Japan.

There’s not much time left before we leave. I’m very excited; to the point that it’s having negative effects though. I haven’t been sleeping well the past few nights. I mostly dream that I’m in Japan, but I’m lost and no one seems to understand anything I’m saying, English or Japanese. I’m sure this is all just anxiety but seriously, I just want some good sleep.

Today I dropped my betta fish Alpha off at my friend Sarra’s place.  It’s a little lonely at my place tonight with out him here and Josh still out of town, but I know that Alpha will be well taken care of while I’m away.

I did finish my bag and my passport cover, though they ended up not matching. I think I used up any sewing talent I had on the bag, because it took two attempts to get the passport cover to work, and even then, it JUST barely fit. >.>  I’m not too worried about it though.

I got out the suitcases today and started packing. I’ve got most of my stuff done just need to pack the hubby’s and we’ll be ready to go. I’ve got all the electronics charging, and I’m going to battle iTunes tonight to add music to my phone.

Lately, I’ve become obsessed with watching J-dramas – Japanese TV dramas, and mostly to get used to hearing Japanese and trying to translate it in my head. There’s one that I’ve become particularly attached to called: Hana Yori Dango – which translates to Boys before Flowers. Here’s what it’s about:

Makino Tsukushi is the only poor student at Eitoku Gakuen, the school of the ridiculously rich and privileged that is ruled by Flower 4 or F4, a group of four boys who come from extremely powerful families: Domyoji Tsukasa, the leader and heir of the Domyoji World Finance Group; Hanazawa Rui, the introverted son of a large company; Nishikado Soujiro, a player who is the heir of a tea ceremony school; and Mimasaka Akira, a madam killer with ties to the underground. If a student gets on the F4’s bad side, he/she gets a red notice and is bullied and driven out of school.

Makino hopes to pass her days quietly– without drawing any attention to herself– but one day, she stands up to Domyoji in defense of her friend. The next day, Makino gets the dreaded red notice. Even though she is harassed, Makino decides to keep going to school because she is a “tough weed”. She declares war right back on the F4. Her resolve gets the attention of her crush Hanazawa Rui and oddly enough, rouses romantic feelings in her worst enemy, Domyoji Tsukasa.

The second season of Hana Yori Dango picks up right after Domyoji leaves for New York. After confessing to Domyoji, Makino has not spoken to him for a year. Rui and the other members of F4 try and help Makino meet Domyoji again by going to New York for the christmas holidays. Though F4 and Makino meet Domyoji again, he has become a completely different person, and so they leave for Japan.

Some time later, Domyoji’s mother annouces that they will be returning to Japan. There, they hold a giant super-rich and classy birthday party for Domyoji and announce something very important. Domyoji, like in the first season, is engaged to a rich girl and heir. The only difference is that they are to be wed soon. What will Makino do?

On the side, Rui begins to fall in love with Makino… will this become a love… square?

Rui –> Makino –> Domyoji –> Shigeru (arranged fiancee of Domyoji)

Left to Right: Mimasaka Akira, Hanazawa Rui, Makino Tsukushi, Domyoji Tsukasa, and Nishikado Soujiro

I’m about half way through the second season, and loving every minuet of it. The actors are awesome – and HOT. I’m cheering on Rui. I hope he gets Makino to fall for him and to forget Domyoji. We’ll have to see. :)

A few days ago, I saw a tweet in my #nanowrimo hashtag stream about an open source program for writers. As a linux user (yes – you read that right), I’m very interested in open source software so I decided to check it out. The program is called Storybook, and it actually looks like it could be useful. I’ve looked at other software for writers in the past, but I’ve never found anything that I’ve been able to stick with. Price and usability, are the biggest issues I’ve faced with them. Among the ones I’ve found most useful are My Writing Nook and Dr. Wicked’s  Write or Die.

But Storybook is different. It’s not a text input screen to keep out distractions, and it certainly doesn’t start deleting words if you stop typing.

About Storybook:

Storybook is a free (open source) novel-writing tool for creative writers, novelists and authors which will help you to keep an overview of multiple plot-lines while writing books, novels or other written works.

Storybook assists you in structuring your book
Store all information about your characters and locations in one place. Then, use the included Storybook features for managing chapters, scenes, characters and locations. A simple interface is provided to enable you to assign your defined characters and locations to each scene and to keep an overview of your work with user-friendly chart tools.

I downloaded this program to check it out in more detail last night. It’s interesting, and like all new software it comes with a learning curve. But once I figured out what I was doing – which didn’t take long since the tutorials on the Storybook site offer an easy step by step guide- I was off entering the outline to my 2010 NaNoWriMo. I will tell you that it is a little tedious to enter all the information, so I would suggest starting with a new project with this program.

What I like:

• Once the information is in the program, it offers you a number of different viewing options. Chronological, Bookview, or by chapter so you can rearrange chapters and scenes.
• The program offers different ’strands’, so stories with multiple POVs can easily be managed and changed.
• Graphs- I know this seems odd, but it can be used to easily find data on you story quickly. Like the order of appearance for your characters, who’s where when, or occurrence of locations in your story.
• It basically replaces all those pesky index cards I’ve been using. A greener way to plot.

Things I don’t like:

• It does take some getting use to the navigation. You can’t double click on a card to edit it (which is what I would expect) you have to click the edit button.
• There was nothing explaining “parts”, at least that I couldn’t find easily. I finally was able to figure out that it is similar to Sequences if you are familiar with the Three Act, Eight Sequence Structure.

Over all, the software looks promising. I’m going to try it out through NaNo 2010 and see how I like it.

Have you tried this software? Please leave a comment, and tell me about your experience with it!