For the second time in two weeks my hard drive has taken a powder, has taken a nose dive, has taken my sanity....

My laptop gets heavy usage, on 24/7. I am hard on hard drives, so when mine turned up corrupted two weeks ago, tragic but not too unexpected... replace drive, and begin the laborious process of replacing files that I hadn't backed up. Reinstalling programs, getting things off discs, downloading things... new bookmarks, new tweaks to all my fave programs. Everything was fine until I updated windows, and the infamous "Must restart system, restart now?" My laptop's last words.My hard drive has a read error and my computer won't boot up.

Not again...

I just want to cry. I tried reinstalling windows, it won't get far enough to do it. I put the drive in another laptop, same problem. A wonderful Western Digital Scorpio drive has been killed. Since this is the second drive to die, my laptop is the problem and is murdering the drives before their time, and I am unable to replace it.

I am so shocked at how much this upsets me. I feel like my life was tied to that laptop. My friends webpages, my email, my music and videos

My book...... ahhh my book! Thankfully I had printed it out a few weeks ago, so I have a semi current copy on my desktop, but the ability to just pick up and write anywhere.

Maybe this is God's way to get me to do something with my life. I am sure someday I will thank Him...

but right now I just want to kick Mr. Gates in the crotch. Grrrrrrrrr, Windows sucks!!!

School lately has been an absolute bear, I have very little time anymore, what little time I do have, I spend writing... I need the world to stop for like a solid week so I can catch up on everything.

Ike has come all the way to Chicago. We have had rain for several days straight. We got 10 inches. I don't know how people do it who actually go through the hurricanes. All this rain is too much and we are half the country away. We got 6 inches in our basement. Our basement is unfinished and just used for storage, but it was packed to the gills. Now my sister and I have the auspicious job of going through and throwing out oodles and oodles of stuff. What fun. I am hiding in my room doing this instead of facing the basement.

Auuggghhh! Better face the music.
Blah!

I have been having loads of fun finding new videos of DBSK with subs. I figured out how to use Clubbox (thanx Soompi forum for the detailed explanation!!!) It is really easy to get my hallyu daily fix with all the wonderful people who update their blogs, websites every day. I have a few that I regularly visit to find out what is happening halfway around the world.
My girls and I have been bonding over the vids. Ah, the internet rocks!

My collection of mp3's is extensive and I had to organize all the id3 tags. That took me a long time, but now it is all good. My mp3 player with the 80 gig hard drive will be getting a work out in the next few days.

Learning Korean is going well, I have a text book for the basics plus a book on how to pronounce Korean. Given that the english language doesn't have certain sounds that I will be hearing and expected to make, the book on pronunciation is really important. That book is also fun to read. I think I will be getting the author's other books as well.

I just got over a nasty head cold and my left ear is still clogged and I can't hear out of it. I am a silver lining kind of gal. Not being able to hear has kind of been nice.. Let me explain why. There are ten of us in my family. We live in a big house with six bedrooms, but with 10 people, it can be noisy. I have been enjoying the forced quiet . I usually have earbuds in my ears listening to music 24/7 but I haven't needed to since I can't hear all the ruckus. Normally my earbuds dim the noise to a manageable level and it is my escape to just listen to music and tune out what I don't want to deal with. Is someone talking loudly in the next room, turn up my music. Is the tv on next to me while I am trying to do something, crank up that DBSK baby! Do I need calming music at bed time? Listen to the quiet tunes to help me fall asleep. [My DBSK bedtime playlist... Beautiful Thing from the Vacation soundtrack; Doushite, their newest single; and Love in the ice, the Soul Power concert rip (I don't like the album version)] I play them on repeat and my mp3 player has a sleep function and I am always asleep before the half hour timer is up.]

Ok, I feel like I have 70 million things to talk about, pardon the flipping from subject to subject, it is just my ADD kicking in.

I have a certain pair of ear buds that are my favorite. I have tiny ears and the normal earbuds are just too big. Sony had this nice pair that fit into my minuscule ears. The problem is that they don't seem to make them anymore. They changed their format to a larger size. Ppphhhbbbtttt!!!
I have had this pair for a few years now and the sound is still great. The rubber that was coating the wires couldn't stand up to me falling asleep with the buds in my ears and rolling over them while I slept. The coating started coming off. What I ended up doing was pulling off all the soft rubber . They are actually my third pair. The first one, the rubber came off and I threw them away. The second pair my macaw bit through (grrr.). This third pair has to last. The wires weren't damaged and I crocheted over the cord and made it fuzzy. It is really soft now and doesn't tangle as much now either. I love them! I will use these until they finally die. I am really hard on these things and they have stood up to my use and I wish Sony still manufactured them.

Fanfiction... I started writing my own fanfiction featuring the DBSK boys... I got up to 120 pages... It was incredibly fun and rewarding to write. I really *saw* my character, like I was watching a movie play out. It was really cool...When my muse would hit me I could crank out 30 pages. I even had a light up pen to write at night as the words flowed. I carried around a note pad because ideas would come at the strangest times. It was all going well and I had one of my peeps read it to critique it. She is an english major and a sophomore in college... umm... she knows all about DBSK and she kept saying things like "They wouldn't do that. You need to change that. Don't tell the story, show it." She brought up all this stuff and I realized that I was not ready to have someone read my story. I kept writing it for others to read it, at least that was my original intent... after I spent weeks on it, pouring out my heart, everytime she would pause and say "Umm..." I would cringe. I didn't realize what a personal experience it would be to write.  I decided to not post my fan fiction. At least not this first one.

I had probably revised the first 30 pages 10 times already. Everytime I would sit down to write I would read at the beginning of my story and then change things as I went. Two hours would go by and I was only up to page 50. Finally I had to resort to skipping to the end and writing. If I did read it through, I had to skim.

My other problem was that I wanted to write like it really could have happened so I wanted every little detail to be true to life. Would a Korean person do this, is this how you address a person you just met. I got books on Korean culture, food and customs. I did research, studied... If something didn't ring true, it would ruin my story. I was even picturing people reading the story and wondering if it was true. That is how I wanted it to be...
Then I read some information that would make what I wrote about impossible. The part that this new information related to was integral to my story and took up half of the writing. I was shattered.

I had to step back and chill on the writing for a while. I knew what direction my story would have taken, what was going to happen in the rest of the book, the ending... sigh. I wish I wasn't such a perfectionist. I wanted my story to be as if it could have been real. Since I learned the fact about one of my characters, it ruined it for me.

I tried to start a new story, and I have a good foundation started, but it just isn't as fun as the first one was. For my first ever story, I thought it was good. My bf loved it and said it was really good. He has a book published. I felt really good writing it, it just filled me with complete joy. I would laugh, clap at the screen, it just felt great... now... sigh... this sucks... I know I have control over what I write and I can write whatever I want... but still... *I* can't continue knowing what I know... [giant sigh] I said earlier that I had poured my heart out into the pages, and I feel that is why this is bothering me so much.

I haven't found the silver lining here yet...

Well, my new story is very different from my first one. My original story turned a smidge smutty and I didn't feel comfortable posting it to the internet where anyone could read it. My new story is very G rated and everyone can enjoy it when I am done. I guess that would be the silver lining in all this... [again giant sigh...]

Ok, I am totally depressed thinking about this... I am going to bed... Love in the ice coming up...

Peace out
Kiki

Yikers, I wish I could see this concert in person. I have seen clips from fans that have been posted to youtube and some clubboxes...  I have posted up pics, to see all of them check out the scrapbook. Ahhh droolage, where is the towel?

I want to learn a new language... Japanese or Korean. I watch more asian tv than american tv and it would be nice to know what they are saying. I have to wait for shows to be subbed by others. I would like to become proficient enough to become a subber one day. Also, in my fantasy life, I will be traveling to Korea or Japan.

I asked around and found that people feel Japanese is easy to speak, but hard to read. Korean is easy to read, but hard to pronounce. Most of the shows I watch are Korean, so I think I am going to learn that language first. I ordered some highly rated texts from Amazon, but I don't have them yet. I found a few universities with study helps so I have high hopes that it will go well. I've already learned Hangul, the Korean alphabet, from a cool website.

I ordered a few cookbooks with authentic Korean and Japanese recipes. I have always been fascinated with other cultures. I look forward to treating my family and friends to some cool new dishes..

Speaking of my family and friends, they are praying for me. I spend much of my time online and they miss me. I have brought several of them over to my side.. the dark side. We will watch movies, dramas, concerts, listen to music, etc. It is nice having friends to share your obsessions with.

One of my friends [who doesn't know how deep the rabbit hole goes] saw my laptop yesterday. I have a picture of JaeJoong (from DBSK) as my desktop. She was, "Oh... who is that."

"He is a member of this band." I smile as I point at the computer. Their newest single is coming out of the speakers. I had the Amazon website open and she saw my cart full of Korean books.

"Oh, are you still into Korean things?" Looking down her nose at me.

"Yeah." I say as I shut the lid of the laptop. She will never understand.

Hi! I am totally a newbie when it comes to this... This will be my first journal entry. I have read tons, but never put my crazy thoughts down in print. Yikes, I don't want anyone to know what rattles around my head! I would scare people!