Shannon Hale, work, sickness, depression, Japanese...

I added a new link to my sidebar. It's to Shannon Hale's website. Besides having written and published a couple good books (The Goose Girl, which I stayed up most of a night to read; and Enna Burning, which took me slightly longer, probably because I wasn't on Christmas vacation at the time), I like her blog! I can identify with her... if you just ignore the bits about being a published, full-time author, wife and mother, that is. Of course, she doesn't know me, but that's okay. I doubt she'll mind me mentioning her.

In other news, I'm working for my brother now, learning to program. Or I'm trying to -- being sick is putting a damper on things. I seem to have what Rachel finally got over, and I hope I get well faster! I really don't want to be sick right now. I'm having enough trouble keeping up with everything as it is, without having the Evil Sickness of Death, with the recommended treatment of doing nothing except taking (short) showers. Poor Rachel, I'm even more sorry now that you had this for a month! Blech!

Do you ever have those days when you feel you're drowning in all the things you need to do, and, even worse, it seems like the load should be easy, the sort of thing other people out there can do practically without trying? Sigh. This depresses Marcy. This may be why she's making two posts on her blog in one day.

On the bright side, I'm learning Japanese faster than the other people in my Japanese-learning-group. On the not-quite-as-bright side, this means we don't get to learn as fast as I want to. I spent a good deal of time last week practicing with Hiragana flashcards until I really could read sentences in it, and then I came to class (the small, unofficial kind) only to find that no one else could, so we reviewed again, and our homework for next week is to be able to do what I already can do this week. See, there's a depressing side to everything. (=

Oh well, I may have depressed my readers (although I doubt it), but I feel better now! I think I'll go watch "Fruitsbasket." And don't tell me this is why I'm feeling overwhelmed. "Fruitsbasket" is productive -- it helps me practice my Japanese. So there.