I'm Doge of Italy!

This weekend was pretty dull... not much of anything happened. I did see the Simpsons movie on Friday, but... eh. It was funny, but I didn't really care too much for it. *shrugs*

Besides that, the only other thing I did was play Europa Universalis 2. I played as Tuscany and tried to unify Italy... which I mostly succeeded in, thanks to playing it on Very Easy. By the time I stopped in 1441, I had annexed Siena, Naples (minus Apulia, which went to Genoa), took Romagna and Marche from the Papal States, and had formed an alliance with Genoa, Milan, Helvetia (AKA Switzerland), and the Papal States (?!) against Austria.

Yeah, I conquered most of Italy in less than 22 years. I think next time I'll set the difficulty a little higher. ^^()

Hm. I'm not doing anything this weekend as far as I know. I wonder if certain peoples would like to get together...?

Giant Mutant 7-year-old Rampages Through South Korea!

Wow. This has been a sparse month, hasn't it? The truth is, not all that much has been happening here... yet, I've still been busy. I'm working the outline for the second draft of Flight 62, which is going well despite the writer's block that struck after I wrote ~20 new scenes. I still need more to boost the wordcount to what I want and to fill in all the little gaps I keep noticing. The other reason I've gone dark is my cousin Taliyah, who I've been babysitting for 2-3 hours every afternoon after work. She's 7. I'm exhausted. >.>

Despite all that, I managed to watch The Host, a South Korean monster movie. It was good! If you like creature features, not necessarily Godzilla-type stuff but at least movies like Jaws or Anaconda, you'll enjoy this. It's written and made well, and the SPFX (creature design by WETA, and the CGI by the same guys who did The Day After Tomorrow) are on par with anything Hollywood can churn out.

Thank God it's Friday, though. The last couple of weeks have been TIRING. -.-

If anybody has called me recently, I'll call you back later today... between work and outlining and babysitting, I haven't been turning my phone on much this week.

That was a long commercial break, eh?

I'm alive! Again! =D

Here's a quick rundown of things that have happened since I last posted:

• July 2: Finished my book! WOOT! XD
• July 3 and 4: Cousins slept over and two days of BBQing for the holiday. And fireworks! Oh yeah, and I saw the most AWESOME movie of the year: TRANSFORMERS!! XD
  
• July 7 to 10: Vacationed in Seaside Heights. More beach, more boardwalk = yay! Unfortunately, my dad wasn't feeling too well the whole time. = /
• July 11: Alan's surprise birthday party in New Rochelle. It was fun! I played beer pong (although I didn't drink any beer... Ed drank my half ^^() ), and saw Candice and Monica for the first time in over a year, and saw Rob, Adam, and Alan for the first time in a while.
  
• July 12: Saw Knocked Up with Kim, Mike, Tess, and Peter. It was funny... it reminded me of Nine Months, only the mother is the one who panics, not the father. And they're not married.
  
• July 13: FRIDAY THE 13TH1! Run for you lives! O_O
• July 14: Hung out with Ed and Candice again, and played Ed's Mad Jack board game. It was great! It feels like something completely new... I can't think of a single game like it

Yesterday, I finally hunkered down and started to read Flight 62. I've read the first nine chapters so far, and here's how it's turned out:

(SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, DON'T READ AHEAD!)

If you don't care, by all means, highlight the following:

Prologue: Okay. It was a dream sequence, but isn't anywhere near as good as the dream sequence in chapter 7. The main problem here is that the writing became VERY repetitive very fast. It felt like I was reading "She did this" and "She did that" over and OVER again. I'm going to hold on to it, because it details Leslie's first prophetic dream and I might be able to use those details later.

Chapters 1 through 4: MUCH better than I feared. The first three and a half chapters are very exciting. I found myself LEAPING for the next page! This turned out so well that I'm now forced to reconsider removing the hijacking storyline, since removing that might ruin the high-intensity suspense the first few chapters have. Things significantly slow down in the second half of the fourth chapter, sensible since its the aftermath of the battle and excusable because, due to some planned jumbling, its probably going to be cut.

Chapters 5 through 7: HERE is where the story turned to crap. This is the Qikiore story arc, and I'm going to cut almost all of it. There are some significant things that happen... I introduce the villains at the start of chapter 5, I have a neat scene with Sharif and the passengers, Leslie and Sharif start to become friends, and then chapter 7 in general is pretty good. Besides those scenes though (and the POV in chapter 7's second half), I'm cutting it. When it isn't poorly written filler, it's just mindless info-dumping that I refuse to tolerate.

Chapters 8 and 9: Better than the last few chapters, but kinda slow. Not much is happening here... I change the setting, I introduce William, and I develop the Leslie/Sharif friendship some more. I think the most interesting scene so far is the argument between Sharif and his uncle, which I know is only the beginning of bigger problems for those two.

[/SPOILER ALERT]

Well, I'm off to read some more. G'night! ^_^