Workouts and Ramblings

So it really wasn't an earth-shattering decision for me to start working out or anything. I mean, I've been failing at it on-and-off again for the past couple of years. Over the past six months, two people have been convinced that I was pregnant because of my physical appearance, and Alek discovered (to our dismay) that he can no longer pick me up and swing me about in greeting anymore.


I'm not sure exactly how much I weigh anymore, although I'm willing to bet it's somewhere in the ballpark of 160lbs. People tend not to believe me, mainly because I dress in a way that more or less hides the weight, but the fact of the matter is that I am five-foot-two and I am about twenty, maybe thirty pounds, overweight.


It's not really a New Year's resolution or anything, this has been something that I've been struggling with for some time now. However, since it's a new semester, and I've always had the tools to get rid of this excess weight, I decided that I would go at it while my resolve was still fresh. (Come to think of it, maybe that's why people always come up with these resolutions around New Years?)


So, my goal is to get my weight down to 135lbs. Tomorrow, when I make my trip to the gym, I'll check and see how much I weigh. I really don't want to know - part of me is afraid that it's going to be more than 160lbs, but I know I really can't be that overweight. Can I? Oh well, I'm going to try and stop worry about it, because I'm finally starting to do something. I managed to lose ten pounds in high school just by changing my eating habits, surely by exercising daily and watching what I eat again, I can get back to where I was at - sort of - when I graduated high school.

I also plan on attending the 10am yoga class on Saturdays, to try and get some activity into those days. Every Saturday I will post my weight and how much exercise I got that week. 


Aside from my body-image stuff, I've been continuing to scribble in my writer's notebook, trying to figure out where I'm going with Otaku. I did finally torrent a copy of Welcome to the N.H.K., which is a little weirder than I thought it was going to be, but then again, that goes for most manga/anime things that I encounter, with the exception of Fruits Basket (don't even ask me what I though FLCL was going to be like...). I had a chat with Yuko, who lives in my dorm and is here on a student visa from Japan, and she was explaining to me what the Japanese otaku are like and how they are viewed in Japanese society. It was a very good chat, and just convinced me even more that Yuko is probably the sweetest girl I have ever met in my life who wasn't about to join a convent.


I'm hoping to get my hands on a decent MP3 player that I can take to the gym with me, it's kind of lame having to listen to the radio station that everyone on campus thinks is "awesome", because let's be honest, my playlist consists of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, The Offspring, MIKA, Cake, and UVERworld, with a sprinkling of Sting in there, along with some Backstreet Boys, Tonic, and one song by Jet. Obviously this really doesn't pertain to most of the demographic to which I belong. I think my cousin has an MP3 player that she doesn't want anymore, I may ask if it's still up for grabs.


Speaking of The Offspring, I've been listening to their most recent album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace, and it's not nearly as bad as Adam made it out to seem. Yeah, obviously it's not the same as the music they've been making for the last, what, twenty-five years? But Dexter Holland has been wreaking havoc on his vocal chords for a long time and he just can't do anymore what he did on Smash or Americana. To be honest, I think I actually prefer this to their earlier stuff, although of course you gotta do the classics, I would be pissed if I went to a concert and they didn't play "Come Out and Play".


At any rate, time to work some more on the scarf that I'm crocheting for Alek (I swear, at some point I will post pictures!) and watch some cartoons. Did you know that crocheting for an hour will burn 100 calories? For me, at least.

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Switching it Up...

Well, not even a week into the semester, and I've already dropped my only two theater classes and pretty much said "screw you" to the entire theater department. Honestly, studying it in college has completely ruined theater for me - it's not even fun anymore - and I decided to ditch both my directing class and my theater theory class for a "how to teach grammar to kids" class.

I'm still trying to find a copy of Japanamerica, by Roland Kelts, although I have finally gotten my hands on a copy of Welcome to the N.H.K. (the light novel). I'm still trying to collect "research" materials (e.g., books that have the same tone that I'm going for... I'll have to ask my fiction prof if he has any suggestions) and trying to come up with a plotline (I'm not even sure how it's going to end yet at this point, it depends on what my characters end up doing). So far I've had only response on the otaku website that I requested, and I know it would be the worst idea ever to go waltzing into 4chan and ask them if they would please let me interview them. They would absolutely rip me apart.

It's surprising, how difficult it is to find material to help me write this book. I thought there would definitely be a lot for me to work with, and a lot of people willing to help me out right off the bat, but I guess not. My buddy Zac, from Some Sort of Loli Breakfast Machine, has been pointing me to articles and giving me insight into the world, but he's more wota than anything else, and he assures me that although wota and otaku look like the same thing, the details are surprisingly different.

Well, I have my Multicultural American Lit class here in half an hour, so I should probably get ready for that and then take off. Probably I will post again later tonight.

Otaku: A Love Story

Okay, so that part where I said that I was gonna go to bed? I lied.

Instead, I tried to make my speakers work on my computer, which they won't, so instead I started making a Writer's Notebook, a place where I can jot down ideas like character names, novel titles, things I want/need to read, novel ideas, etc.

And I came up with an idea for a new novel. Something to keep me from getting burnt out on deAngelis, which is awesome, because I really just need to step away from it for a while. There are a couple of people who will be pissed that I'm deciding to put it on hiatus, but the fact of the matter is that I care about deAngelis too much to let myself get sick of it. I want to finish it, and get it published, and if I work on it so much I want to puke, that's not going to happen.

So, I'm starting something new, something fun, something that I haven't been stressing out over since I started college.

Instead, I'm going to try my hand at literary fiction. I take a fiction writing workshop class that is all based around short literary fiction, and my prof says that I'm ready to be published. Also, I need something that isn't so depressing and dark. Let's face it, that's what all of my fantasy/sci-fi is.

Image via Wikipedia

This new novel currently has a working title of Otaku: A Love Story, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Mainly I'm just going to be writing a story about two people trying to forge some sort of relationship. One of them, the chick, is relatively mainstream about her fandoms. The other guy, though, is an "otaku". Maybe I'm using the word wrong, but essentially he's a huge anime and manga fanboy. Alek told me the other day that his obsession with certain anime characters probably caused him to spend more time in his room watching anime and reading manga and going to cons than learning how to relate and deal with real-life girls, and that's apparently why he doesn't have a girlfriend. I decided I wanted to write a book about it.

I've already put a couple of posts up on message boards asking anime and manga fans (preferably men, but women are okay, too!) to volunteer to fill out a questionnaire that I'm going to construct, or to (preferably) agree to a Skype interview. We'll see how that goes.

I'm pretty excited about all of this! I can't wait to get started!

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