Wrappin’ Up The Month With Fog: January Edition

First Wrap Up of the New Year! Let’s get to it! 🙂

Once More Unto the (Writing) Breach

• Changing History: I managed to post three chapters last month, which is not as much as I wanted to get done. I also did not get any work done on Entwives at all.  I feel a little bit stuck to be honest, I’m going to try to push through that this month, even if it means skipping ahead.
• Surprise!: I started a new, exciting project this month, completely unexpectedly! Not only is it in a fandom that has been currently ruining my life (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), but it is also my very first collaboration! The story is a High School Alternate Universe fanfiction, based on this tumblr post:

I am really excited about this project and my collaborator is a complete delight! I’ll be sure to keep you guys updated as progress is made.

Have You Hugged a Book Today?

I’m sort of failboating here. Not good. Part of the reason is because I haven’t been listening to my audiobooks, like I did last year. And I am out of time when it comes to actual paper, apparently. I’ll see what I can do to fix that, but for now let’s take a look at what I did finish this month!

Here’s the link to my star rating breakdown if anyone needs a refresher. It’s also up in the header 🙂

• Books I’ve finished:
  1. Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire- Four Stars
  2. Wolverine and Jubilee: Curse of the Mutants by Kathryn Immonen- Three Stars
  3. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Vol 1 by Ryan North- Three Stars

• What I’m currently reading (In order of Date Started):
  1. The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss– I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVEN’T FINISHED THIS YET, WHAT AM I EVEN DOING WITH MY LIFE???

• Book to Screen:
  1. The Help– I put this off for a long, long time. And even though I tried to wait until the book’s effect had worn off, it wasn’t long enough. The movie just can’t compare. It was good, don’t get me wrong (I mean, it did make me cry… twice), but the book was so much more. I actually don’t think it would be possible for anyone to make a movie that could compare to the book for me. I enjoyed it, but only in that it made me want to read the book again 🙂
  2. I feel I should mention, I’m trying to live tweet whenever I watch one of these movies. If you’d like to follow along, or just go back and read my reactions to some of the movies I watch, the hashtag I use is #fogwatches

#Hashtags and other minutia

I did pretty well on the social media front this month! Yay me! Let’s play those highlights!

• My Favorite Tumblr Reblog: Truth talk.

• My Favorite Tumblr Post: Poe Dameron is ruining my life, someone help…

• Twitter Retweet: Look me in the eye and tell me this was necessary.

• Twitter Post: In honor of Alan Rickman’s passing I watched Sense and Sensibility. I expected it to make me sad, but instead it just made me angry.

• Instagram: I’m constantly in awe of how much my friends just FLIPPING GET ME! ;P

• Instagram: My crafting accomplishment of the month- Supported Spinning!

• Just For Fun: I CAN’T UNSEE THIS, OH LORD…

Do I Actually Have a Life?

For the first time in several months, I actually have something to report in this area! Two things actually! Let’s get started! 🙂

• My good friend, Elissa is my Gandalf.

You see, not long ago she sent me a link to this post, by a blog called Nerd Fitness. It was all about walking to Mordor. Now, I know what you’re probably thinking:

And I concur. Wholeheartedly. In fact, after checking out the original website that contains the details of that particular walk, I felt a little bit overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. I mean 1779 miles? ONE WAY??? Eep.

But if you’ll look closely (and scroll down a little farther) there is another path that we might take. The path of that great (albeit reluctant) adventurer…

The path of Bilbo Baggins to the Lonely Mountain.

So, as a fan this really appeals to me, I get to start my adventure with the adventure that started it all! As a couch potato that is easily discouraged this also appeals to me, because (according to my calculations) the journey is only going to be 1755 miles, round trip! That’s still a lot, but because I am a complete nerd, I modified Nerd Fitness’s Google spreadsheet and broke the journey down into (mostly) manageable chunks. So, I went out and bought a Fitbit Flex and I have started my journey!

You are welcome to follow my progress on my modified spreadsheet, or even save your own copy of the spreadsheet and walk with me! After all, Bilbo didn’t go it alone:

Either way, I’ll be sure to keep everyone apprised of my progress, both here on the blog and probably on Twitter and/or Tumblr. Because nerd things deserve to be shared! 😛

• Anybody use Duolingo? It’s a free online program and app to learn a language. I discovered it before, but never really committed. Now I think I want to try again, starting with Spanish. It’s a fun app that feels a lot like a game and I’m really enjoying it 🙂 If anyone is using it, or feels like signing up, feel free to find me and make me a friend, I can always use the competition! 😉 As always, I’m fogisbeautiful.

“And In Conclusion…”

• Writing- I’m already having to modify my goals for the year. But that’s just life I suppose 🙂 In February, I plan to finish posting my edited chapters of Changing History: Second Chances, finish the first draft of Entwives, and finalize an outline for my Force Awakens collaboration. This is going to be a lot of work, but I’m going to do my best.
  
• Reading- Get my audiobook files fixed, so I can start listening again. Finish The Wise Man’s Fear. Start The Gunslinger.
• Social Media- Keep up the good work, yo! 😉
• My Personal Life- According to early calculations, I expect I can almost make it to Bree by the end of the month, if I’m persistent. I think I can make it through my review of the first section of my Duolingo lessons and also finish up the second section as well.

And that’s it! The first Wrap Up of 2016! Not a complete fail, not a complete win, but I’m working steadily and that’s what counts 🙂 See you all in February!