So far this migraine has lasted five days. It doesn't show any signs of ending.

I haven't updated in months, and I feel rather guilty for that, as well as for finally updating with something rather unpleasant.

I've just been feeling so awful the past few days that I felt a strong urge to let people know I'm still around.

Last night after work I ended up breaking down and crying because I didn't think I could stand it anymore. My prescription migraine meds don't seem to be doing their job anymore. I don't know why, but the pain is just barely dulled instead of being gone or mostly gone.

I called off from work today. The meds managed to make me incredibly drowsy even though the pain didn't go away, and I was having terrible nausea that kept me from even trying to eat for nearly a full day. Even though I know I was in no condition to work (and quite honestly had been in no condition to work all weekend, even though I forced myself to go those days) I still felt guilty for not going in today.

Now I really need to make an appointment to see my doctor. My medication obviously needs to be adjusted. I haven't had a migraine like this since I started taking my current dosage of medication about six years ago. During those years my migraine typically only lasted a day or two at most.

I'm really not looking forward to the appointments and tests I will probably have to go through. For not I'll just be grateful if the migraine goes away before I'm scheduled to work again on Wednesday. Even if it doesn't I'm planning on resting up in the mean time and then, hopefully, I will have the energy to endure eight hours of work.

I just stepped outside to see if I would need a jacket or my winter coat to walk to work today and noticed that the mail had arrived.

I was not expecting a package to be stuck in the mailbox. It turns out my copy of Pokemon HeartGold arrived over two weeks earlier than the shipping estimates online predicted.

So now I'm extremely excited, but slightly disappointed. I need to be out the door in about three minutes, so I have no time whatsoever to start playing. Of course I have an 8 hour shift today too so it'll probably feel like forever and a half until I can come home.

I must admit though that the happiness has made my headache seem slightly less terrible. At least that won't make my shift any more intolerable. It's going to be tough staring at the clock every chance I get just to know how long I have until I can get home to my DS...

I have a cold.

There's no point in even trying to guess where I caught it as I've been around a ton of people since the middle of last week. On top of that I haven't had a good night's sleep regularly in quite a while now, so I'm sure my immune system isn't in the best condition.

I want to write even though I feel like crap. The will is there, but I can't quite bring myself to actual produce words that contribute to a story. I am writing this, of course, but this isn't nearly as complicated as a novel. In addition to that fact there's also the sad fact that it has taken me far too long to write just a few sentences for this entry.

I wish I could go to sleep, but I don't think I can sleep any more just yet. I slept for almost exactly half of the day. I was actually rather impressed. Lately I've been getting by on 4-6 hours a night. Then again, my body probably just seized the opportunity to get slightly caught up on sleep.

Okay. Either I've been writing sentences that are long, twisty and don't make too much sense, or my reading comprehension is on a downward spiral for the night.

I'll just post this before my better judgement takes hold and makes me delete all of this in hope that I'll construct something a bit more sensible later. At least I'll be able to look back and laugh at myself later if it really is as bad as I think it is.

Japanese!

I'm not using it for my career yet. I don't have a career at this point. I don't plan on working at a convenience store part time forever though.

In semi-related news, my professor told us this week that everyone that participates in the translation project will have their name listed in the credits. Exciting!

I ended up working 9 hours today instead of 7. Tomorrow I'm working 8 instead of 5.

The extra hours are very welcome paycheck-wise, but I really can't stand my job for such long periods of time. Well, I can, but I need a little more notice. I was called at 7:30 this morning and asked if I could start at 9 instead of 10. That's not a lot of time to prepare myself.

There's a ton of things I wanted to do tonight and now I'm not doing any of them. I'm just worn out.

I want to go to bed, but I'm not sleepy. It seems like a waste to be awake and doing absolutely nothing though.

Blah. I'm just whining.

I might as well go back to staring off into empty space.

Today is one of those days that make me hate being female.  I'll leave it at that.

The temperature isn't even supposed to reach 30 today. I hate it when it is this cold. Pretty much any desire I had to do anything that required me to go outside today is completely gone.

I'm staying inside and hiding under a blanket as much as possible.

I won NaNoWriMo this year with a word count of 50,301.

I'm pretty excited, even if a lot of the word count is random conversations between the characters because I was having a hard time figuring out how they would normally interact and that messed up how I envisioned them reacting in some really important scenes.

A lot of crap is going to need to be edited out at a later date. I really do like the story with the direction it is going now so I will be keeping parts of it. The later parts of the plot need to be plotted out better, and I need to figure out how a lot of minor characters I came up with actually fit into the story. That stuff will probably be put on hold for at least a little while though.

I want to get back to work on my 2010 NaNo and finish the second (and third!) book for the series so I know exactly how it all ends and I can go back and start tightening up the plot. After that I'll probably see what I can salvage from this year's NaNo and start working with that while 2010's cools off again.

The baby computer is still working.

I'm absolutely thrilled. It restarted multiple times last night without so much as a pause in the middle of the restarts. I let it hibernate while I was at work today/this evening and it woke up from hibernation without a hitch. It really looks like I have a fully functional netbook again.

I'm writing this entry on the netbook, in fact. Tonight I'm trying to work on my NaNo from this computer. I'm really surprised that I readjusted to the slightly smaller and slightly rearranged keyboard so quickly. Then again, this was the computer I spent most of my time on for two NaNo's as well as time before the first and after the second. I definitely had time to practice.

The most exciting part of getting this computer back up and running NaNo-wise is the added mobility this gives me. My main machine is a laptop, but my back is not appreciative on the days I carry it along with me in addition to my textbooks. The netbook, on the other hand weighs just about two pounds and its battery life is good enough that I can go for the better part of a day without having to worry about finding an outlet.

Now I should probably go to bed. I have work again tomorrow and I got up earlier today than I probably should have, so now I'm running on a bit of a sleep deficit for the day. I have no idea how I'm supposed to sleep when I'm this excited about just about everything though.

I'm in such a good mood now.

Today started out just so-so. It wasn't anything worth complaining about, really, but not particularly great either.

I had a test in Japanese. I think it went decently. I know I didn't ace it because there were some things I knew I filled in wrong, but it was the closest thing I could think of to the actual answer, but hopefully I'll get partial credit for those since I'm expressing the correct idea in a different way than what was originally intended.

I found out the only time I could meet with one of my teachers today would be around 2:30, which meant I needed to stick around school for a little over two extra hours. Izzy and I went to Subway for lunch, checked out a store that has a ton of cheap used furniture and appliances, and went to K-mart to kill some time. I bought some candy corn off the 50% off rack. Izzy found a popcorn maker while we were out too.

The meeting went fine. It didn't take too long and I got the form I needed signed signed and we were on our way home by 2:45.

Eventually I did make it home. I've felt kind of drained since this afternoon.

My mom brought home Wendy's for supper, which was awesome because we hardly ever have fast food at home (even if I have managed to have some a bit more often than before since I started working again).

I just kind of lazed around and watched some tv this evening. Then I watched the episode from this past Sunday of Once Upon a Time with my mom. I haven't been able to watch a single episode of that show when it airs on tv yet because I keep getting scheduled to work Sunday nights. I don't mind the hours, but it is just a shame that I only want to watch one new show right now and I'm always working when it's on.

A little earlier this week I had a dream about my netbook. In the dream I got it running again. The thing hasn't turned on for me since New Year's Day. I started researching to see if any new information about fixes for the problem were online. I found some information about putting the netbook in the freezer for a few minutes and getting it to start that way. It seemed a little risky because of condensation and stuff, but I figured it was worth a shot since the thing isn't under warranty anymore and doesn't work anyway. More research revealed that a BIOS update seemed to fix the problem with the netbook never posting after it shuts down.

I stuck the thing in the freezer for 10 minutes. I took it out, plugged it in and it works! Then I updated the BIOS to version 2.1, which requires the system to shut down. I shut down, turned it back on, and it actually started. I've been working on installing updates and such for it for the last hour or so and it has restarted without a problem several times now. It looks like I might have my 2 pound novelling machine back.

I'm going to consider this a NaNo miracle.

Yeah, my laptop isn't exactly impossible to move around, but it is pretty heavy, especially if I have my textbooks with me too. It's great for around the house, especially because it has enough room for all my stuff, but having the netbook again will make it much easier to just get up and go somewhere else to write. The long battery life helps in that respect too. Depending on conditions I can get three or so hours on the battery with this laptop, but the netbook has always run for at least 6 hours without needed to be charged.

Blah. I'm too excited to sleep, but I have work tomorrow afternoon/evening. I can afford to be up for a few more hours, but if I want time to do much of anything before work, I really do need to go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour. Last night wasn't very good sleep-wise because of studying and then being restless because I knew I had that test so I need to make up for that a little bit tonight or I'm really going to regret it once I get to work. 9 hours of sleep would probably be just about perfect for tonight.

Now I really need to stop babbling about random stuff here and try to get some more words into my novel if I'm not going to be asleep.

The NaNoWriMo site downtime reminded me that I do in fact have a twitter account.

Let's see if I can use it in a way that actually hold me accountable for making my word count go up on a regular basis.

I have Wild Cherry Pepsi and my fingerless gloves on. There's nothing to stop me from putting more words into my story. Things are actually starting to get interesting too.

I really like feeling excited about what I'm writing.

And I totally just tried to check the word count on this entry. It is definitely November...