Recently in Fun with Friends Category

I started my novel for National Novel Writing Month at 1am this morning. It wasn't a problem to stay awake -- my upstairs neighbor helpfully stomped around until 3am. I'm calling him Mr. Stompy from now on. Hell, that may be the name for my new novel. I'm undecided.

Anyway, the last time I successfully completed NaNoWriMo, B joined me in the 50,0000 word writing madness. She has too many commitments to do it this month, but she rashly said that she'd blog every day in a show of solidarity.

Since I know her to be an indifferent blogger, I issued a challenge about who'd be successful in meeting their goals in November. We haven't agreed on terms, but I imagine there are cupcakes involved. If you have thoughts on that, please share. I'm willing to grow the stakes beyond dessert.

If you're part of NaNoWriMo, my user name is Zesmerelda. Add me as a writing buddy or drop me a line to get together to write. I'll be haunting coffee shops throughout Chicago. Otherwise, you can follow my progress via the badge I have on my blog. I hope you'll cheer me on!

After seeing this ThinkGeek movie I knew I had to get a zombie plushie because, well, they're evil little dolls. Fortunately Pattie's happy birthday provided an excuse for an evil purchase!



Enjoy the movie.  Drop Pattie a Happy Birthday on Twitter @Piratealice -- you still have a few hours left.

The thing about wearing that shirt is you have to expect some sorta payback. That's all I'm sayin'...

[T-shirt via Think Geek]

I like how meta this is...taking a photo of being videoed while driving through Austin. I'm still absorbing everything from the past few days, but expect some insights to hit the blog soon. 

No grackles were harmed in the making of this image.

I thought of the perfect birthday gift today for a good friend.  She's interested in learning Spanish, has a natural curiosity about the ins and outs of colloquial terms, and has successfully learned a language on her own.  She can sling slang in two countries so I thought I'd pick up a set of Pimsleur CDs or audio tapes so she could get started in another.  Great idea, huh?

The problem is I have no way to shop for such a gift on-line.  Why?  She's a native Japanese speaker and I wanted to get her a "Japanese - Spanish" set of learning materials. 

Have you ever tried shopping for language aides?  Sites like Amazon, or even Pimsleur make the assumption that since you're coming to the site via an English IP, then you must be looking for an "English - Other" set of tools.  There's no way to change the context of what I'm searching for to get rid of this underlying assumption.  It's frustrating.

In the past, I have purchased items from Amazon's German site but that only works because I know what I'm looking for, because the interface between the two sites is similar, and because I can use Babelfish to figure out words I'm unfamiliar with.  It didn't work well in this case.

I don't know of a brick and mortar store to consult, so I think this idea is toast.  I'm back to square one for ideas! Ack!