I’ve been working a bit on my story about a Japanese girl with amnesia.

Anyway, I’ve been looking up the Shinto religion because I reference it in my Jane Doe story. Apparently, Shinto believes in lots of little gods (kami) that are in pretty much everything but especially nature: rocks, people, rain, waterfalls, grass, cows, etc. They have three main immortal gods, but they’ll worship just about anything they think is a god. Like, someone who is very charismatic.

I found a description or two of Shinto priest garb, plus some pictures. They wear really funny-looking hats.

You may ask yourself: “Is she just doing this because she likes anime?” Well, yes. This story is mainly drawing on my familiarity with anime. But, if you’re honest with yourself, it would have been a waste for me to watch so much anime and learn so many quirks of the Japanese people without using that knowledge. I mean, really, what’s the point of being a writer and an anime fan if you can’t make a blatant show of both at the same time?

Just saw it for the first time ever.

This is possibly one of my favorite movies that doesn’t involve Jane Austen. Or, at least, it’s one of my favorite kid movies. It’s fun.

My favorite character doesn’t even have any lines, and two of the three times we see her, her face is averted. I think this is because she has a funky-looking chin. Let’s just say, if they make a sequel (which I doubt) and use her, I’m voting for a different actress.

This would be, of course, Freeze Girl. Because she’s got spunk. I mean, come on, she freezes all of the punks that mess with her! And she does it in a pleated miniskirt. Dude. Rock on with the feminist action.

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So I visited the library today and it is, as our friend Dan would say, “fancy.” Because you have to think “fancy” in the way Dan does it, with his hand up and pinky in the air and the eye-batting, head-wiggling ridiculousness of it.

How was it “fancy”? Well, you could tell right away it wasn’t a normal library because the parking lot was full. We figured out that one third of those cars belonged to parents with their kids, who were hanging in the kids section upstairs. The other two-thirds of people were on the computers, because the library offers free internet. There was a, like, 1/100 percentile of people who were there to work on papers or actually look at books. But these people were negligible.

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. . . Millions and billions and trillions of cats.

Have I ever mentioned that I love cats? At college, I’d kind of get a yearning to pet a cat every now and then. Alex called it withdrawl. And I’d have to take a trip home or visit a friend who owned a cat to get rid of the feeling.

(Photo taken after he finally came out of the closet.)

(Literally, not figuratively.)

I didn’t, obviously, name him because the name “Tiger” is way overused. He’s orange and white with the clearest dark orange eyes I’ve ever seen and the prettiest pink nose. Alex likes him because he’s manly-looking. He’s very playful, too, which means that he’ll be a lot of fun around here.

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