The Ten Tenors - Swinging on a Star

As the year is drawing to a close I thought it was time to wrap it up with something fun. The Ten Tenors are my last discovery as far as music goes so here it is my favorite bit so far:

Listening to their albums on repeat right now and driving everyone around crazy, hehe.

Story: Santa Clause Extraordinaire

So... the month of December was a bit of an experiment. Since I wanted to work on a new story, I decided to try something new in order to avoid the usual writing like crazy for two or three days in a row followed by a week or longer breaks. This time I wrote 1000 words per day, every single day. It wasn't hard to keep up with this routine, it was relaxing, except for maybe during the weekend as I don't usually write during the weekends but I prefer to read instead. It worked well until last Saturday when I finally gave in and caught the cold the rest of the family had been fighting for a week or so. After that I couldn't focus anymore and I had to cut back on writing. And my brilliant plan went down the drain... at least I have the consolation that I'm quite advanced in the story and there is still hope to finish the first draft by the end of the month. But this is not what this post is about.

Yesterday evening I was drugged up to my eyeballs with antibiotics, tylenol, cough syrup and two or three other things to chew the doctor gave me, and having an extra radiator by my side because I refuse to move my desk from the window corner where it gets pretty chilly in the winter, probably that's why I got the cold too, or at least it helped some but I'll never admit it, so being in a slightly happier and fuzzy mood I typed something. I revised it today between coughing fits, never try that, it's a waste of time, and then I sent it and now it's up already. While reading it on the site, I was giggling and ROFLing and LMAOing at the sappy and cheesy things I can write when I'm under influence. The thing is, the editor liked it so I'm sitting here scratching my head and wondering whether should I change my field of writing. I won't, but I haven't written any romance in quite a while so maybe it was time.

Santa Clause Extraordinaire

2009 Animated Movies

9 – By far the best realisation and story. A little sad though…

Planet 51 – Very funny and entertaining. Quite a pleasant experience.

The Princess and the Frog – Nice to see another typical Disney movie. Maybe not as good as the previous ones, but decent enough. It reminded me a little of a Paul McCartney music video. And the soundtrack kicked ass as expected.

A Christmas Carol – Haven’t seen it and I’m not going to. Not a fan of the story and even less of Jim Carey.

Fantastic Mr. Fox – Awkward dialogue but it was nice to see the old school at work again.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs – Unfortunately the authors paid too much attention to the visuals and little to the story itself. Besides, I don’t like the animated movies that portrays people, they always look fake.

Astro Boy – Looking forward to see this one too.

Ponyo – Not as good as Howl’s Moving Castle, but still pleasant to watch.

Ice Age 3 – The first one was fun, but now with a sequel to the sequel the story is getting a little old.

Up – Interesting visuals, but maybe because of that the story dragged in places, to the point of becoming almost boring.

Coraline – Well, I’m not into horror movies, even if they are animated, but I guess it wasn’t that bad.

Monsters vs. Aliens – This was pretty bad, really not worth wasting your time with it.

SF Signal - Official Sci-Fi Geek T-Shirt

Here's a funny thing...

I've entered my share of contests in my life, some I've won and some I haven't, but whenever I did I had to work for it. I've never won a contest finalized with a random draw.

Unlike me, little brother is an ace of random draw contests, he wins them more often than not. He just won an Official Sci-Fi Geek t-shirt from SF Signal. All he had to do was enter his name.

Now this is what I call luck!

Grand Prix Final 2009-2010

Grand Prix Final 2009-2010
2-6.12.2009
Tokyo, Japan

Results

Junior Men

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Yuzuru HANYU	JPN	206.77	3	1
2	Nan SONG	CHN	204.99	1	2
3	Ross MINER	USA	196.09	2	4
4	Richard DORNBUSH	USA	191.80	6	3
5	Grant HOCHSTEIN	USA	187.92	4	5
6	Artur GACHINSKI	RUS	178.03	5	6
7	Stanislav KOVALEV	RUS	163.20	7	7
8	Kento NAKAMURA	JPN	142.78	8	8

Junior Ladies

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Kanako MURAKAMI	JPN	160.53	2	1
2	Polina SHELEPEN	RUS	159.29	1	2
3	Christina GAO	USA	151.47	5	3
4	Ksenia MAKAROVA	RUS	147.29	3	4
5	Anna OVCHAROVA	RUS	144.96	4	6
6	Angela MAXWELL	USA	137.55	8	5
7	Kiri BAGA	USA	122.35	7	7
8	Ellie KAWAMURA	USA	120.93	6	8

Junior Pairs

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Wenjing SUI / Cong HAN	CHN	160.45	1	1
2	Narumi TAKAHASHI / Mervin TRAN	JPN	145.80	2	2
3	Yue ZHANG / Lei WANG	CHN	137.19	5	3
4	Tatiana NOVIK / Mikhail KUZNETSOV	RUS	134.33	6	4
5	Kaleigh HOLE / Adam JOHNSON	CAN	132.17	4	5
6	Britney SIMPSON / Nathan MILLER	USA	128.62	7	6
7	Ksenia STOLBOVA / Fedor KLIMOV	RUS	122.19	3	8
8	Alexandra VASILIEVA / Yuri SHEVCHUK	RUS	121.35	8	7

Junior Ice Dance

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	OD	FD
1	Ksenia MONKO / Kirill KHALIAVIN	RUS	141.21	1	1
2	Elena ILINYKH / Nikita KATSALAPOV	RUS	139.36	3	2
3	Maia SHIBUTANI / Alex SHIBUTANI	USA	138.75	2	3
4	Kharis RALPH / Asher HILL	CAN	124.75	4	4
5	Ekaterina PUSHKASH / Jonathan GUERREIRO	RUS	119.50	5	5
6	Isabella CANNUSCIO / Ian LORELLO	USA	118.11	6	6
7	Lorenza ALESSANDRINI / Simone VATURI	ITA	106.78	8	7
8	Marina ANTIPOVA / Artem KUDASHEV	RUS	106.69	7	8

Men

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Evan LYSACEK	USA	249.45	2	1
2	Nobunari ODA	JPN	243.36	3	3
3	Johnny WEIR	USA	237.35	4	4
4	Jeremy ABBOTT	USA	235.38	5	2
5	Daisuke TAKAHASHI	JPN	224.60	1	5
6	Tomas VERNER	CZE	192.32	6	6

Ladies

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Yu-Na KIM	KOR	188.86	2	1
2	Miki ANDO	JPN	185.94	1	2
3	Akiko SUZUKI	JPN	174.00	5	3
4	Ashley WAGNER	USA	162.07	6	4
5	Joannie ROCHETTE	CAN	156.71	4	5
6	Alena LEONOVA	RUS	156.55	3	6

Pairs

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Xue SHEN / Hongbo ZHAO	CHN	214.25	1	1
2	Qing PANG / Jian TONG	CHN	201.86	4	2
3	Aliona SAVCHENKO / Robin SZOLKOWY	GER	200.38	2	4
4	Maria MUKHORTOVA / Maxim TRANKOV	RUS	198.35	3	3
5	Yuko KAVAGUTI / Alexander SMIRNOV	RUS	183.01	6	5
6	Dan ZHANG / Hao ZHANG	CHN	180.25	5	6

Ice Dance

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	OD	FD
1	Meryl DAVIS / Charlie WHITE	USA	169.44	1	2
2	Tessa VIRTUE / Scott MOIR	CAN	168.22	2	1
3	Nathalie PECHALAT / Fabian BOURZAT	FRA	147.62	3	3
4	Sinead KERR / John KERR	GBR	145.33	4	4
5	Anna CAPPELLINI / Luca LANOTTE	ITA	139.21	5	5
6	Vanessa CRONE / Paul POIRIER	CAN	135.99	6	6