Wednesday, December 25, 2002 11:23 a.m.
Listening to: Once in a Blue Moon from the dorama With Love (ahh I love this song!)

Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope everyone is having a happy holiday! Mine is okay, I guess. Once again, it is nice to be home for the holiday. While I loved living in SF, being alone on holidays did kind of suck. My parents seemed to like the gifts I got them, which is good :) They got me a 27" TV for Christmas, but we set it up in my room a few weeks ago, so there was nothing else new for me under the tree or anything, but I don't mind, I love my TV :) It's a nice size for my small room, and I wannow watch TV from bed, and actually be able to read the subtitles, yay. My other TV was too small (and my eyesight too lame) for me to do that. Woo hoo!

In a little while we are going over to my aunt and uncle's place for xmas dinner. I am kind of feeling bleh about that because I am such a homebody, and I like just staying at home and laying around doing nothing, but I guess we should go visit. I just wish I had something nice and Christmas-y to wear, but I don't -_- I don't even have anything 'nice' to wear, all my clothes tend to be super casual. Hrm, gotta dig up something remotely nice for holiday wear. I guess I should have asked for that for christmas :)

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I am still very interested in my new hobby, Old Time Radio, radio shows from the 30's-60's. Thanks to ebay and Free Domain and the mp3 format, I have been able to build a nice little collection rather quickly. I love listening to the old comedy shows. And I find all the shows that were done during WWII to be fascinating. From the commercials for classic stuff (buy the NEW Philco phonograhic radio!), to the patriotic pep talk, to the random stuff of their every day lives (food ration points, conservation of paper, women in the workforce, etc.) to be really interesting. I like Bob Hope's USO comedy for the troops. So far I am leaning towards comedy and musical specials over dramas or mysteries, but some of those are good too. Right now my collection includes a few hundred shows each of Command Performance, The Bing Crosby Show, Bob Hope Show, Our Miss Brooks, Burns and Allen Show, The Shadow, and a few sampler cds that have one or two episodes from a ton fo different shows. I am thinking of getting the Jack Benny Show next.(800 episodes in mp3 for , woo!)

On the anime front, I am watching lots of misc stuff. Watched some Puchi Puri Yuushi yesterday. Wow, that is cute. It's pretty fluffy and generic, but cute, so I will probably continue it. I also caught some Heat Guy J. That show has the character designer from Escaflowne, and wow, it shows. The hero totally looks like the son of Allen and Hitomi. And this one girl looks like Hitomi with Pink hair. Hmm what else have I watched.... oh, I finished watching Seikai no Senki I and II. Wow, great series. I want more! I reallllly hope they make more anime from those books, they just can't leave it where Seikai no Senki II ended! How mean of them! I have a lot of other anime I need to watch piling up now. OOf, gotta sit down and watch all of this soon!

Bleh, I have to work tomorrow, but only for 4 hours. But it's from 7am to 11am so I have to get up early =_=. I need to pick up my schedule for next week because I have made an appointment with my dentist to finally get the crown put on this tooth that I had the root canal done on a few weeks ago. Man, this dental saga will never end, I swear. A few days ago my tooth was hurting so badl. I finally went and filled the perscription for Vicodin that my dentist had given me for the tooth pain. However the vicodin didn't help much at all. Kind of useless, actually. I think the problem was that the temporary filling my Endodontist put in my tooth after he did the root canal was just about gone. I tried to get to another dentist so they could help me with another temporary filling, but this xmas week all the dentists offices around me appear to be closed. Doh! So I went to the grocery store and bought a do-it-yourself temporary filling kit. I was a little bit messy, but I managed to pack the filling material into my tooth myself, and wow, it feels a lot better. The temp filling kit is pretty cool. The stuff dried hard just like a real temp filling. Now I just have to make this last till my appointment on monday. Hurrah for dental issues!

I am sad that xmas will be over soon. My neighborhood is GREAT at this time of year because everyone puts up colored lights all over the place. It's fun to just walk through the streets at night. There are lots of trees, so all the neighbors wrap tons of lights around the tree trunks and then through the branches. Very pretty! The lights will only last till new years though, and then people will take them down, which is a shame. I kind of wish they would stay up all year long, but I doubt people would like that when they get their electric bills :D

Anyway, enough general rambling from me. I hope everyone has a great holiday and a happy new year!

Sunday, December 8, 2002 10:59 p.m.
Listening to: uh, Riverdance or something, it's on TV.

Streamload is, um, sort of a file storage and sharing service. You can store your own files (music, movies, etc) on their servers, and instantly share it with others. And, depending on what type of account you have (a free one, pay, etc) you can download a certain amount of stuff to your computer. So, for example, if I have a video in my inbox on my streamload account, and someone else wants that video, I can streambeam it to them, and they instantly have access to it to download it if they want to. You can find out more about Streamload at www.streamload.com

Thanks to my dad, I am developing a new interest in OTR, Old Time Radio. I already love old movies and musicals and classic Hollywood, and when I lived in San Francisco, I loved the radio station there that used to play old music. Not 50's early rock/pop, but earlier stuff, like big band, standards, crooners, etc. Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney, Sinatra, Bing Crosby, etc. However, I didn't really realize until now when I was looking for what I wanted to get my dad for Christmas, that there are a HUGE amount of old radio shows floating around there for sale and trade for very low prices. Old radio shows are so interesting, in my opinion. There were serials and one-time broadcasts, and variety shows, and stuff in every genre. A lot of old TV shows started off as radio shows. And some classic movies have radioplay versions too. I like the mysteries of The Shadow, Sam Spade, and the humorous stuff like Our Miss Brooks. And Burns and Allen were great, of course. Most of these radio shows are so old that they are all in the Public Domain now, and can be distributed freely. And now with MP3, people can collect hundreds of episodes onto one CD. Collecting old shows is really easy. So far after a little browsing, RadioSpirits is one of my favorite sites. They have lots of OTR collections for sale (in regular CD format) and you can listen to some OTR shows free from their site. Ebay has a ton of CDs in mp3 format being sold for just about any old radio show you can think of. Whee, new hobby! Lots to catch up on! Hours of entertainment! These shows are great to listen to in the car. I just need a car stereo that plays mp3 cds ^_^;;;

Bleh, I have to go in to work early tomorrow. I wish I had regular working hours. Instead, they change every day. Hate that -_- I DO like this job a lot more than my old MCI job. Over there, people usually were calling in because something was wrong, and they were angry. Now I take calls for generally pleasant people. Of course, they get cranky when stuff isn't in stock, but at least they usually realize there is nothing I can do about that except suggest other items.

Ahh well, I better get to sleep now, I have to get up early >_<

Wednesday, December 4, 2002 11:37 p.m.
Listening to: Vampire Princess Miyu OST

Bleh, Keenspace is annoying me. They are having server issues, so my comic can't update. They don't seem to know how long the problems are going to last. My comic has been frozen for about a week now. I hope people don't think we've quit or something :) I can't upadte the front page to say why there haven't been any new comics. Eeeek!

I SHOULD be taking this time to work ahead in my comic, but nah, I procrastinate. I'm doing a little non OO art, which is nice to do once in a while. And Kourin's in Finals Hell, so I guess this is a good time for us to take advantage of Keenspace's problems and rest. I still hope they fix their problems soon though, I don't want to lose our readership, such as it is.

Hmm what else... work is bleh, but I am still plugging along. With Christmas coming up, it's getting pretty busy, and frantic Christmas shoppers are NOT fun to deal with. Talk about cranky! It's not my fault they put off their shopping, and now everything is out of stock.... but anyway....

I finally caved in and got a Streamload account (Emi801), so I am happily grabbing what japanese dramas that I can get. I am currently looking for all of Love Generation, Oishii Kankei (Delicious Relationship), Long Love Letter, and anything else that is romantic and cute and happy-ending-ish. I did pick up the dorama 'Love Story' (the one made like last year) on ebay. Haven't watched it yet. I also got some VCDs of Itazura na Kiss drama, even though I had that raw on VHS. All teh dramas I taped on VHS have some tracking issues due to my VCR being a piece of crap, so I am trying to replace what I can as VCD or other types of files on CDs. If you happen to have any interesting dramas, feel free to send them to me ^_-.

I am sitting here, looking at Amazon.com, and adding stuff to my wishlist. I don't know why I bother, it's not like I can actually get any of this stuff, but it's kind of fun to see an item and click on a big yellow button as if I was buying it ^^ Too bad it's just the "Add to Wishlist" button, heheheh ^___^

Tuesday, November 19, 2002 01:12 a.m.
Listening to: Nothing

Well, after going through hoops with my insyrance company, I finally got approved to get the rest of my root canal done. Hooray, hooray. -_-;; My appointment is for next tuesday. Can't wait to get that over with so I can tackle the rest of my fin dental problems :D

We are starting a new storyarc in my webcomic that I have been looking forward to for a very long time. This one should be a lot of fun. Rin and I have done a lot more pre-planning for this part of the storyarc than we have done before, so hopefully things willb be a bit more coherent ^^ Not that we have had any complaints so far (I get almost NO email about OO at all, so I have doubts anyone actually reads it anyway) but maybe people will be able to tell we're really having fun with what is gonna happen next ^^ More parody goodness.

*eyes her tagboard* Randy, I do expect to be at Project A-kon next year. I have been to every A-kon for the last 8 years, so I should be there again next year. Maybe I should actually start on some of my artwork for the A-kon art show NOW instead of procrastinating until the last minute like I always do.... Nah... I have too much other stuff to work on.... Cafepress recently started offering calendars, so I want to come up with a nifty OO calendar for 2003. That would require 13 color drawings from me. Hrm. I am also considering auctioning off any art commission on ebay if anyone is interested.

Okay, I gotta go now, gotta get up realllly early tomorrow -_- bleh!

Thursday, November 14, 2002 12:34 a.m.
Listening to: "Spirit" by Pamelah

Yeah, I have been bad again about blogging -_- *sigh* I did try a few times, but then I made the mistake of leaving my entry sitting overnight without posting it, and then poof, power failure due to rain, and well, I have been too lazy to go and rewrite the entries ^^ (I lost another entry thanks to Spike-neko stepping on the power switch to the surge protector my computer is plugged into -_-)

Anyway, I'm still here, and doing fairly well, I guess. I am employed, though it is yet another sucky job, and I am still applying for a real 'career' type job as often as I can. Man, there is nothing to even apply to anymore, much less be rejected for @_@ Since my last post (ouch, 3 months) I went to about 4 interviews. One for a real job (interview went great, I thought, but then I got an email from them telling me that I was one of 2 finalists for the position, but that they decided not to fill the position at all at the moment and they would keep my info on file- I think that was their gentle way of saying they picked someone else) and the other 3 were for lame sales positions. I turned down one once they told me what the hours were (insane insane insanely long shifts) and the other turned out to be outbound calling (NO WAY).

I am currently working taking orders for a catalog, and performing Third Party Verification for AT&T. The pay sucks, but it's better than nothing. Man, 5 years in college.... I feel pretty lame, but seriously, It's impossible to find anything here >_< But the search goes on!

With my work money I have been continuing to pay off my bills (I must have good credit, my credit card company keeps trying to get me to let them extend my limit to K. Um, no thanks, not right now!).

I have also been floating in my dental hell that I have been in all year. Now that I have some money, and an individual dental insurance plan, I have been attempting to get this darn root canal that I need done. I have only been working on trying to fix this tooth since last April -_- Anyway, I went to my new dentist under my new plan, and he starts to do the root canal, but then in the middle of it,he starts taking more X-Rays, and then decides that he can't finish the procedure because of the way my tooth is formed. It's too complicated for him, so he refers me to an Endodontist to do the rest of it -_- GRRR! I wanted to get this over with! So I went to the Endodontist today just for a prelim. exam so he can look at the x-rays, and he said he will give it a shot. So now his office and my other dentist office are wrangling with my insurance to get the procedure covered. Even with coverage, it's gonna cost me 3 -_- Major suckage, I tell ya! But at least I will finally get this over with, and I can move on to the rest of my dental issues, hehehe :D

Manga and anime wise.... well, I have been watching Spiral and Haibane Renmei lately. The new Naruto series is pretty lame, IMHO. I did add several new shoujo manga summaries to my Random Shoujo Manga Page not that long ago, and I have gone and started yet ANOTHER page. (why do I keep doing this to myself, starting new pages? Heheh^^;;) The new page is devoted to a specific shoujo mangaka that I like a lot, Miwa Sakai. The new page isn't quite finished, but you can view what I have so far by looking HERE. I recently ordered some more shoujo manga from BK1 and some used manga from BookStudio. I am waiting for it all to arrive. Manga! Manga! Manga! w000t!

I am STILL plugging away with my Webcomic. If I ever go for long periods of time not updating this page, it is probably because I am working on my comic, and if you go to that page, you can see what I am up there. I have been invited to UshiCon in January as a guest, and to host a panel or two. I can't imagine OO being popular enough to actually warrat a panel, at even a small con like this, but hey, the con is local, so I'll go :D I am imagining at the panel, me sitting at a table, with like 2 people who wandered in thinking it was a fanfic panel, or something, heheh ^^ I will also have a table at their komik market, so I guess I had better come up with something to sell there. I dunno. It's not like we sell much of anything at the OO cafepress store. Maybe I'll jsut give away sketches if anyone wants one :D It will be a good excuse to take my copic markers somewhere :D

I am thinking of changing this blog layout again, even though it is probably a sily thing for me to do. It's not like I blog a whole lot, and I haven't really posted much using this layout, even though it has been up for a while. hmm. Maybe I just feel like designing a new page in general. O_O egads, no more new pages! Wahhh! Hehehehe :)

I think I will end this now before the power goes out, or my computer freezes, or some othe rbizarre thing happens to prevent me from posting yet AGAIN! Thank you to the people who have been signing my poor tagboard! :D

Monday, August 5, 2002 12:37 a.m.
Listening to: "La La La Love Song" from the dorama Long Vacation

Bleh bleh bleh.... As usual, I haven't been blogging because I don't have much to report, really. I'm still broke, am unemployed (darn banner ad design job ended...) and I am stillllll seeking employment. I have a test I have to go take on Tuesday for this training program offered at UT Austin. I have absolutely no idea what will be on the test (all it says is bring a pencil and photo ID...) but if I get an A on it, then I can apply for this whole paid training/internship type of thing. The pay is very decent (for Texas, anyway... couldn't live on it in California ^^;) so I am hoping I will do well on the test. I wish I had some idea what was actually ON it though ^^;; The website just describes it as a skills test, and that is IT. how freaky is that? Yeesh...

I finally got my one nice shoe back (how silly...) so I am gonna do the rounds at temp agencies after the test is over with. Emi needs money, yes she does!

To help myself get along, I am selling off a big stack of my doujinshi. Well, I will be, as soon as I can top procrastinating enough to actually write up the ebay listings for them. I have Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Gravitation Remix, Tokyo Babylon, Card Captor Sakura, Yu Yu Hakushou, etc etc doujinshi that I must part with. So far all I have actually listed is one Tohru Azumi Yu Yu Hakushou doujinshi. And it got bid on. Yay! I have two more Tohru Azumi YYH doujinshi to sell, and some Yuri Narushima (author of Youmg Magician, Planet Ladder, etc) YYH doujinshi as well. Whee!

So, anyone wanna trade J-drama? I don't have much that is in an actual easy-to-trade format (like VCDs) but maybe by trading I can expand my collection :D I have stuff on VHS, but I don't want to trade copies of any of that because my VCRs suck at making tape copies. There are tracking issues -_-

Anyway, the doramas I have available for trade (I am looking for VCDs) are:

Monday, July 15, 2002 08:14 p.m.
Listening to: "Myself" by myco, Full Moon wo Sagashite OP song

Yeah, as usual, it's been forever since I have blogged. I did try blogging a few other times, but the first time, we had a power failure (my fault for not turning off the computer during a storm...) and the second time my computer crashed on me. I just haven't been able to build up the motivation to retype those blogs. Bleh ^^;;

Yes, I know this blog layout is messed up... maybe I should just come up with a new one using an image from one of the artbooks I got at AX. And I'll test it on as many browsers as possible before putting it up... but then I feel kind of lame, changing the blog layout more than I actually blog ^^;;;

So yeah, I went to AX. Hurrah! My sales of art at the A-kon art auction enabled me to afford to go to AX. I was very happy! I did a road trip to LA with Dave and Amber. They drove down from Dallas, picked me up, then we took I-10 all the way through New Mexico and Arizona. We drove the trip straight through. Dave did most of the driving. (amazing!) I drove for a couple of hours while Dave napped. We paused a couple times to take 1-hour long naps, but basically it was non-stop driving. It took about 22 hours to get from Austin to Long Beach. Whew! On the way there we faced flooding, 106 degree heat, and sandstorms, but we made it :)

AX was fun. I don't like the Long Beach Convention center too much (everything is too spread out!) but it was great to see all of the SF and #fy-gumi again, and the #fs people! I missed everyone a lot. Living in Texas again sucks, I wish I could afford to go back to California ^^ My contract job seems to have faded away, so I am back to looking for work again. I am not sorry I left MCI though. That job sucked bigtime. Anyway, I did the usual stuff at AX... the Karaoke room was pretty much a #fy room, as most #fyers were staffing it the whole con, so I spent a lot of time there. As usual, I was annoyed by the number of bootleg DVDs and CDs being sold in the dealers room. I am such a hypocrite. I bought 3 artbooks and some pr0n (*ahem, hehe*) in the dealers room, but most of my purchases ended up being away from the con. On Saturday we went to Book-off, a used bookstore over in Gardena. They have lots and lots of used manga, with sections selling stuff for per volume, and popular stuff going for like .50. I got a lot of random things there, and was very happy. But the best was yet to come XD

I am such a manga h0, and I was in my element when we went over to the Torrance Mandarake. The Torrance store was having a closing/Moving Sale (Torrance location is closing, but a new Santa Monica location just opened) so they were having a massive clearance on manga. They were trying to get rid of as much manga as possible, and the current deal was 'as much manga as you can fit into one of the boxes we give you, for only '. Each one of their boxes could fit a little over 100 volumes if you are a good packer, so I left there with three boxes full of manga (and some doujinshi), totalling about 320 volumes, for only plus tax. Now there is a manga deal! Heh as if I needed any more manga... At any rate, I am still working on a list of everything that I purchased that I will post here. I do have a few duplicate items that I will probably try to ebay. most of the manga I got was random obscure shoujo stuff, old-school shounen, and piles of shounen-ai-ish stuff (like things published by Chara comics, wings, hanaoto, beboy, etc). It's taking me forever to list all of this, and the piles of manga in the center of my floor are getting difficult to walk around ^_^

I also met some OO cosplayers at AX. There was the mother-daughter team that was at Fanime. They were back as Lycidia and Petra. That was so cool! And a friend of Kourin cosplayed as a yummy Beauty Man Garden waiter. Woo hoo! Hooray for sparkles!

It's also a new anime season, and all sorts of interesting new shows are coming out. I am still really enjoying Full Moon wo Sagashite, and 12 Kokuki, but now we also have wonderful things like Saikano (Saishuu Heiki Kanojou) which is an amazing story-- I have the manga, and it's great to see the animation!. I love this series already! I also like the look of Witch Hunter Robin. It has a very cool style to it and interesting atmosphere. Rikujou Boeitai Mao-chan is a very cute, if sort of random and pointless show. It's from the creator of love hina, and the character designs seem like direct rip-offs. Cutesy fluff. Samurai Deeper Kyo is exciting. I dodn't have the manga for this yet, though I have been eying it for a while. I never got around to ordering it. I may do so, after watching some of this anime. I wasn't that impressed with UFO Princess Valkyrie. It seems like another one of the recent trend of loli-fanservicey shows like RizelMine. Bleh. I kind of like the catgirls though. But we need more catboys! I am a bit behind on Rahxephon and .hack//sign, though I have the .hack OST pre-ordered. It comes out soon, yahoooo! (after that no more spending for me, Emi is broke until she gets another job, boo hoo)

Hmm, what else... Well, I got back from AX last wednesday, and Was feeling sort of jetlagged or worn out or something, so I didn't do much the day or 2 after that. But now I gotta go back on the job hunt again. However I left one of my shoes in Dave's car (whoops) and I kind of need it if I want to interview anywhere (I don't have many shoes, it's a sad tale, folks...) so I better pester him to mail it back to me or something, heheh ^^; There aren't any decent openings for web design here (or anywhere, infortunately) and I can't afford to go back to school yet, so I gotta work for a while to rebuild the cash. I am not seeing any decent listings though. But heck, anything has to be better than that MCI job. I'm gonna do the old temp-agency rounds again soon. Bleh. Oh, I know, I should check to see what jobs are available at UT. University Jobs might be steady, or something... I dunno. Ah well. It's summer, it's hot, and I am a lazy ass. ^^;;

I guess I'll end this entry here, as I don't really have anything else productive to say :D I will update the blog links I have listed shortly. And I guess I better look for suitable images for a new blog layout. (Is it too soon for a new layout? Should I revamp niko-niko's layout instead? it's been angsty Bishounen for almost a year now...)

Thursday, June 13, 2002 02:45 p.m.
Listening to: er, nothing

Hmm thanks for the info about the ad-free tagboard, Sarah, I'll have to go take a look there! Kind of funny how I am all annoyed by the ads on teeh tag board when I have a degree in Advertising, and I make ad banners for a living ^_^

Yeah, I know, I'll have to start designing stuff for more cross-browser compatability. I remember when I worked at IGN/Snowball, I had to spend forever making sure everything we did looked good on browsers ranging from IE, to Opera, to Netscape, to WebTV. (man, web TV is a pain to design for...). But since I stopped working there, I have been very lazy ^^ I use IE mainly, and 90% of my blog visitors use IE also, so I was mainly designing for that. I did usually try to make sure that my blog entries were usually at least readable in other browsers like netscape (even if the design was broken, and I admit my effort was very minimal) but yeah, I haven't tried designing anything for Mozilla yet. I'll have to get off my lazy ass and start designing cross-browser again ^^ *rolls around lazily* so.... lazy....

I got the KOR box set from AnimEigo today. Man, was I annoyed when I found out that they didn't include the OP/ED on all of the episodes! How could they do that? Argh! ARGGGHHH! The OP/ED are part of the show, omitting them from each episode changes the viewing experience. Bleh. Oh well. Now I just wish VIZ would release MI on DVD. I want that so badly. I have been tempted to get HK bootleg MI DVDs, even. I'll keep hoping that VIZ will realize there IS a market out there for MI. Ugh, I hate how they release stuff.

Okay, gotta run to the store now. Ahh, my thrilling life...

Tuesday, June 11, 2002 04:10 p.m.
Listening to: "L.O.T ~ Love or Truth" by M-flo

As usual, I am too lazy to blog. Or too busy. Or something ^_^;;

Well, it's been a week since project A-kon, but I must say that I did have fun at the convention. I can't believe I have been to 8 of them now! Shocking! (kind of sad, really...) But it was fun to catch up with friends that I haven't seen since last A-kon, and meet up with some friends I haven't seen since I moved back to TX from California. I shared a room at A-kon with Val, Nuriko, Dave, and "Dave's Girlfriend" (ahahah). Nuriko was one of the bridesmaids at Ruby and Largo's wedding (Largo from Megatokyo) so that was kind of amusing ^_^ Apparently Nuri and Val are friends of Ruby. Nifty! I actually managed to watch a little anime at A-kon, which was also shocking. I don't think I have actually watched anime at an anime con in a very long time. I have usually already seen everything. But I sat down at A-kon and watched Gakusaver, which was really funny. I want to get a copy of that :) It gave me many ideas for OO, actually. Uh, what else did I do... well, the convention was really crowded this year. Think that it is either too big for the hotel, or the loss of the other hotel tower due to Airport construction has really made the event too closed in. I look forward to the con moving to larger digs. I did a tiny cosplay this year, wandering around wearing an antenna on my head as if I was an alien from NieA_7. I ran into some friends who were wearing the antennas, and they had some extra wire, so I made myself one. Fast, cheap cosplay! :D I might do it at AX too, I am not sure.

I went to the Megatokyo panel, which was pretty cool. I feel sort of sorry for Fred, surrounded by so many fans ^_^ It must be overwhelming. At least, I'd imagine it is... I met a few OO fans (once again, I am shocked that anyone actually reads OO, considering I get almost NO email or anything about the comic) Fred answered a lot of amusing questions. Ukyo wandered around the audience, trying to be entertaining like Dom. I thought he did a good job. Seeing him reminded me I really need to get OO moved to Aniverse one of these years... I am so lazy... The audience seemed to miss Dom a lot. Personally, I ph33r the thought of him singing yatta with the green leaf underwear, but that crowd was strange XD Someone asked a question about the lack of females doing online comics, which I thought was odd. I mean, I think I know of at least as many comics by women as by men, if not more. I guess it just depends on what you are interested in. Certain subject matter is sure to have more male comic creators, while other genres are dominated by women. Fred also pointed me out briefly at the panel, which was like O_O. Everyone turned to stare at me, and I doubt that any of them knew who I was, just that Ffred was pointing me out ^^ A bit embarrasing!

Lets see, I did really good at the art auction this year! All of my pieces sold! I was shocked (yet again!) by this. I think this is the first year I have returned from Akon without any art left over. I still have stuff that didn't sell at Akon like 5 years ago XD Not that I would try to sell that scary stuff again. No wonder it didn't sell... As usual, I am amazed at how much fanart goes for at auction. My highest selling piece went for like , but that isn't even close to how much other people's stuff went for~! Someday I'll manage to break the 0 mark. Some day... ^^ My artist friends who also had stuff in the art show did good too (better than me...) Chad and Diana's stuff was selling for outrageous amounts, and Jason seemed to be doing well also. Of course, they also have artist tables in the artists alley where they do sketches and sell stuff there as well. I have never had a table in the artists alley before. I guess I don't feel confident enough, and I don't really have anything I could sell, unless it was on-the-spot sketches or something. Other than that I wouldn't know what to do! Maybe something OO-related? Not enough people know about OO to buy anything from the table, I think.

I am going to AX this year though! I really didn't think I would be able to go, but Dave said that they suddenly had a couple cancellations in their room, and they had space if I wanted it. And tehir room is in the main convention hotel too. Sweet :D I look forward to AX. It was annoying to not be able to go last year! But now I'll get to see the SF Gumi again! I have missed them all very much! I am pretty much by myself here in TX. I don't have any friends here to go out and do stuff with. I miss running all over SF with my friends there. Bleh. Anyway, I'll get to see everyone again at AX, yay! And hey, there is a cool guest at AX, one of my favorite mangaka, Hojo Tsukasa, the creator of City Hunter! Wai! Wai! Fangirl moment here. I really look forward to seeing City Hunter published in English in Raijin Comics!

Work has been very slow this week, which is kind of depressing. I hope they give me more banner stuff to do soon! But at least it has given me some time to work on OO. Kourin has been having fun with finals this week, so I wrote the last couple of OO comics. Hopefully I am not mangling the plot too much :) I feel kind of sorry for Eri-chan though, such situations we put her in!

I installed my little graphics tablet on this computer. It's a very very tiny tablet, and I am really bad with it right now, so I don't expect to be drawing OO with it anytime soon, but I am using it on some oekaki drawings, and hopefully I will improve with practice. It would be spiffy to be able to just draw OO with a tablet. I didn't get to scan my Akon art before I sold it all at the convention (how typical of me...) but I do still have all the original black and white line art that I used in making the cels, so I might scan that and add it to my poor neglected fanart page.

Man, those ads on my tagboard are annoying. I didn't realize there was going to be advertising on it. *sigh* I wonder if I should upgrade to the enhanced version. But I can't tell from looking at the tagboard site if the enhanced version is ad-free. Bah, oh well...

Okay, this has been a long and boring entry, so I'll stop now...

Tuesday, May 28, 2002 02:58 p.m.
Listening to: "Addicted to Bass" by Puretone

La la la la I have been a painting freak this weekend. I haven't done much else. I must get all this stuff done for A-kon. So far I have finished painting 2 cels, with 5 more that I am still working on. A couple of those are almost done too. I think I will have all 7 done by convention time. 6 of the cels are fanart and 1 cell is of a couple of OO characters. I also have one pen/ink drawing done. I did a picture of V-chan in copic marker that I /really/ liked, but the paper got bent, thanks to the real vicious-neko, so I am not sure what I am gonna do. I might try to salvage it, or I might just try doing it over again. I don't know. It took so long for me to do, I am so upset that it got all bent. I'll have to see what I can do. I may do a few smaller pictures using copic, maybe of OO characters or something, I dunno. I actually managed to reserve some space in the art show this year (instead of sneaking my stuff in at the last minute as a walk-in. I want to make sure to make the most of my space.

Is there any fanart of characters people would like to see me do artwork of for A-kon? I am trying to draw characters that are popular, but all the stuff I watch is usually too new and obscure, I am not sure what potential buyers might like ^_^ I would like to earn enough money in the art show to maybe go to Otakon or AXNY. Wouldn't that be spiffy? Anyway, I have to get back to work now. Wheee~~~!

Sunday, May 26, 2002 02:28 p.m.
Listening to: "Chloe" from Earth Girl Arjuna by Yoko Kanno.

I added a tagboard to my blog, over on the right. Oooh! aahhhh! Be thrilled and amazed!

Sunday, May 26, 2002 03:02 a.m.
Listening to: "Overhead Run" by Transtic Nerve, from Kaikan Phrase.

Fufufufuffu, It has been a week of much manga for me~~~ hohoho! I am still floating on a little manga high. My order from bk1 arrived, containing 23 tankoubon. Man, amd I a manga h0 or what? All I can say is yeah I am, but at least I am paying my regular bills too ^_^; But wow, it's a nice, warm fuzzy feeling to have 23 tankoubon to go through. I already summarized a couple of my new titles for my Random Shoujo Manga page, but I will probably summarize some more soon.

What did I get? Hmm well lets see... I finally got a couple volumes of Dragon Voice. I have been eying that series for a long time, and it is funny enough that I think I will get more. I also picked up Alice 19th 1-3, which I also find interesting, as well as Aquarian Age - Juvenile Orion volumes 1-2. Wow, lots of cute guys in that, all looking cute and anguished, and tossing magical powers at each other. Oh, and there are wings! Lots of wings! Hmm, what else.... a lot more random shoujo things like Mahou wo shinjirukai? volume 3, and Watashi no Megane-kun volume 1. Man, that is a messed up series. The relationship between the 2 main characters is really dysfunctional ^^ Megane-kun is sort of creepy. I don't know if I should feel sorry for him, or run screaming in terror from him ^^ Lots of emotional baggage in this manga. I also picked up volume 1 of + Anima. Yeah, this series is being scanlated by people. All I can say is hey, I may read the translations of it, but hey, at least I went out and actually bought my own copy of the manga ^^

This is sad, I have all this new manga, and I am already thinking about my next order. It's like chain smoking or something. A terrible addiction >_<

So, my mom is a little bit better now. She was pretty sick and miserable for about 2 weeks. It was amazing how she would suddenly become sicker around mealtimes so I would have to prepare all her meals for her ^^ But after leaving me and my dad to our own devices when it comes to making dinners, I think my mom is almost ready to shoo us out of her kitchen. I am so relieved ^^

Speaking of kitchens, our fridge died yesterday. Poor thing, all the stuff in the reezer was thawed out, and my ice cream was now a milkshake. And there was a lovely puddle of water on the floor from the ice melting. A repairman came out today to try to fix the poor fridge, but apparently it costs more to fix our current one than it would to buy a new one, so that is what my parents are doing. Yes, this is so terribly engrossing, I know :P

Okay, time for me to get back to work on my A-kon art!

Tuesday, May 21, 2002 1:29 p.m.
Listening to: "Don't Let Me Get Me" by Pink

Oof, it has been a loooong week. My mom has been sick all week. I have no idea where she caught whatever bug she has, as she almost never goes anywhere (she and Texas heat do NOT get along) but wow, she has been miserable all week. And me, now doing that happy telecommuting thing, means I am home all day every day to take care of her. I feel so bad for my mom, she has been feeling just awful. I keep suggesting that she should go in to see a doctor, but she doesn't want to. I'm trying my best to take care of her, but it's difficult. My mom hasn't been sick at all in a few years now, so she is taking this very dramatically, laying in her reclining chair and moaning a lot, and making me and my dad cater to her every whim ^_^ I don't mind it, but it's kind of funny how she moans dramatically all the time. So I have been making all her meals all week (now if THAT isn't something that will keep a person sick, I don't know what is ^^;;;) and running around dealing with her "bring me my ____. (2 seconds later) Put this back." all day long. With her being sick, means my dad and I have been making dinners every night (my mom is a homemaker, and usually cooks dinner). Now my dad and I are both very basic cookers. We can manage stuff like pasta, and simple dishes, neither of us is really into preparing rounded meals very well. I think eating our food is prompting my mom to get well faster XD

Tuesday, May 14, 2002 11:06 p.m.
Listening to: "Take My Hands" by Yoko Kanno

Not that I have been blogging a whole lot lately, but I changed my blog layout anyway ^_^ I really should have changed the front page of niko-niko but that involves more work, and I am too lazy to do it.

I am a happy camper, I have line-art done for about 4 pictures for A-kon. I am going to make these into cels. It has been a year since I have done any celpainting, but hopefully I am not too far out of practice. I like painting cels, but I just know my nekotachi will try to get into the paints and everything. I can already picture paint-paw-prints all over the carpet @_@

I think the next personal web page project I will work on is my Shoujo Manga page. I have about 4 tankoubon I would like to summarize for it. Then again, I always say this, and look how infrequently that page gets updated -_- Geh.

I also want to do more winamp skins! I have heard no feedback at all about my new Chobits and King of Bandits JING skins. I wonder if anyone likes them? Bah, I'll Keep making more skins anyway :) All the good pictures have been taken though ;_; And I hate making copycat skins! I could do skins for obscure series no none has heard of....

Man, this summer is gonna be evil on my wallet. The Cowboy Bebop CD Box set is coming out, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi is coming out on DVD, and the Kimagure Orange Road DVD set should be coming out. That's a lot of cash -_- Oh well, I'll just work harder! Maybe I'll make some money on my art at A-kon!

I am watching a new (to me) dorama called "Mukodono". It's about a guy who is a huge, super-famous rock star, and has this super-suave public personality. But behind the scenes, he falls in love with an average girl, and he marries her. Because of various circumstances, he has to move in with her family (instead of her going to his house). The series focuses on their relationship, and how they can keep it strong, yet also keep is hush-hush from the public. The rock star's private personality is very cute and friendly and not at all like his suave public face :) This is a cute drama so far, I look forward to finishing it!

I can't wait till the /hack//sign OST comes out....