np: The Lord of the Rings soundtrack ^_^ Yay! Daddy got it for me! ^0^

Yo~ooo!! Interesting few days, since break came. What to say, what to say. Start on Friday, I guess? Friday! Got lotsa happy gifts from friends! ^0^ First of all. THANK YOU PHILANA~AAA!!! Iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou! Hikaru no go manga r0x0rs. X3 And just so you know, I only had up to volume 3. :p So you didn't have to worry about me having it after all. ^_^ And I had actually rented up to 12 or 13, so it's even better! X3X3 *glomp* I luuv you phi~iii!!! XDXD Ahem. Yes. Dignity. Yes. Well! One piece of amusement: Amanda gave me a Jenga set because she thought I've been really stressed out lately, so whenever I get really stressed out I could knock the tower over. ^^;; My friends always watch out for me, yes they do. ^_^ Where would I be without my friends? I'LL tell you where!! I'd be locked up in my room, drugged to the point of overdose with tylonel to stave off those dratted headaches, sucking in the radiation of my computer monitor at every waking moment, subsisting in silence with only the buzz of my computer keeping me company. Textbooks, worksheets, binder paper and pencils would clutter my desk, and I'd wake up every morning to the prospect of another fun-filled day at school. I'm not impugning the worth of school. School is a major part of my life. I love learning, I love improving myself, I love making myself into someone who is powerful enough in the mind to do something in the world. But there's other ways to grow; and though I couldn't do it myself, my friends help me grow in ways my poor, short-sighted intellectually-inclined little brain would be unable to direct me to: ways to enjoy life, and interacting with others, and finding reasons to exist. I couldn't do it on my own. On my own, my natural inclinations would lead me to a quiet hermitage, intellectually fulfilling but ultimately deadly, for when I'm left on my own for too long, I become very melancholic and depressed with the way I see things going. My friends are my perspective. Nothing from within me could ever replace them. So... LOVE YOU AA~AALLLLL!!! Merry Christmas!! ^0^ Philana, Kenji, Kix and Jen, and Amanda, Sarah, Melissa, Saara, Sachiko, Christy, Perinda, and Elaine, and Matt, Katherine, Henry, Patrick, and all my other Robotics colleagues... Of course my mom and dad and my sister! And my adult friends, Ms. Kampf and Mr. Shinta and every other teacher I've ever had... Oh, I love you all. ^_^ You've done so much for me without ever knowing it... Just by being there for me you've effected me. So thank you, all of you, for giving me... Well. It's not really something you can put in words. So, just thank you for giving me what I couldn't give myself. ^_^ I'm afraid that's the best I can do...

Crap, I'm getting sappy in my old age. Hmph. Well! After Friday... Saturday! Didn't really do anything Saturday. ^^;; No wait! I finished Prince of Dogs by Kate Elliot. ^_^ Ran out to get the next book in the series, Burning Stone. Then, Sunday, went and spent a day with Jen! ^0^ We went to see Lord of the Rings again (^_~ yes, again. for both of us. Third time Jen's seen it, second time I saw it. We lo~oved it. ^_^) Well, that's after we went to grab pearl milk tea. ^_^ Thanks to the pearl milk tea, I needed to go to the restroom really bad...for two hours. >_< I'm proud of myself! I held it! And I didn't get lost going to Shoreline! And I didn't get lost when me and Jen went to eat lunch with her family, either! ^0^ Good Chinese food. Then, I didn't get lost when I drove Jen and I to Valley Fair either!! X3X3 I r0x0rs. I r0x0rs my toe s0x0rs!! ^_~ Yeah, Christy gave me toe socks. Those things are funny. X3 Yeah, I was talking about Valley Fair? Okay, I'm really random today, aren't I? Okay, so I was going 85mph on the highway and people were passing me. o.O Just had to say that. AND I FOUND A PARKING SPACE AT VALLEY FAIR!! On CHRISTMAS-EVE-EVE!! ^0^ That was special! I now know how to handle the Christmas parking crowd. You have to be a little bit pushy, and you have to have an older car than the other people around you. ^^;; Not like my car's decrepit or anything; but it's an '89 Acura Integra. It's seen a few miles. Now, stack my Integra against a new BMW and see who's willing to take a small risk. ^_~ When it comes to a contest of wills, I'll win. :P I WILL NOT tolerate people cutting in! And I have an old car to back my sentiments up. ^_~

Okay, anyways, AFTER the damn parking lot. Wandered around the mall with Jen for a while; she just had Patrick left to shop for. I had my entire family. :/ But it worked out okay! I got Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card for my dad, a gift certificate to Forever 21 for my mom, and I randomly spotted a Clow Card set at Sun Coast for $8 for my sister. O_o I picked that baby up real quick! Jen didn't find anything there, so we went to Fry's (nerdville! w00t! Oh, a tangent, I finally know what w00t means. ^^;; Thanks to Patrick! Root! Hacker term, for when one has broken the system! Means you've accomplished something! Okay, I got it. Root got transmuted to woot, and then it was 1337ified into w00t! Got it) and Jen got her present for her bro, and then we went home! I missed the entrance onto the highway. Twice. Coming from both directions. :/ Ended up going a full circle. Not fun. But at least I didn't get lost! The whole day, I DIDN'T GET LOST! ^0^ w00t!!!

Fun day, Sunday was. Teehee. Got home, wrapped presents, drew Legolas until I went to bed. ^^;; Obsessed? Nah. But I WOULD like to say that Jen shares my obs... PREOCCUPATION with Tolkien's lovely blond Wood-Elf. ^_^ I have a LEGOLAS ACTION FIGURE! I can shoot the arrows and everything! Almost lost one of the arrows. :/ But Legolas is NOT me! Legolas has majorly 1337 arching skills, as the movie attests. ^_~ 1337 dagger-wielding skills too! Heck, he's just 1337 in general. ^_~ Must...draw...Legolas...fanart...

Must...stop...drooling... Anyways! Christmas Eve! Highlight: watching Fruits Basket 3-9. I have a new favorite anime. o_O What an absolutely beautiful show, in sooo many ways... I can't even say anything. I have to go watch all of them again... oh, and Fruits Basket is, like, the only show where I love both the opening song and the ending song to death. ^^;; And I am so in love with the title of the show now, after seeing episode 5. ;_; Err, I think it was five. Onigiri! Oh, I love Tohru. ;_; She is the sweetest teenage female anime character I have EVER SEEN. She actually deserves to have the attention of both Yuki and Kyou, which is more than I can say of every other anime female who finds herself on the critical point of a love triangle. I HATE most main female characters, especially of shoujo manga/shows... (notable exceptions being Sakura of CCS and Sana of Kodocha, but they're young, like, 10 or 11! most teenage female characters are...garh.) ...but Tohru is Tohru. She's great! And her friends are great too! The Yankee and the Goth. ^_^ And considering the theme of the show (the Onigiri in the Fruit Basket, and all that wonderful stuff...Gawd i love this show...) her friends are quite appropriate. And Shigure is absolutely delightful! The novelist who loves to piss of his editor...but had the manuscript done long ahead of the deadline. Just neglected to tell his editor. Oops. X3 Yuki and Kyou are WONDERFUL main guys, and I find the metaphors and symbols in Fruits Basket much more deep and meaningful than those of Utena, which I often feel just tries to be cryptic for the sake of being cryptic (or maybe the author was just stoned. That's a possibility...) Fruits Basket actually touched me. Deeply. There aren't many shows or books that do that. So I'll have to go watch it again! ^0^ Fruits Basket is shoujo as it SHOULD be!

I gotta stop now. Dinner time. I'll finish up with Christmas Day (today!) later. ^_^ I love you all! Merry Christmas! Be happy with the ones you love!

np: May it be (Enya. Lord of the Rings Soundtrack. Wow.)

*_* duu~uuudddeeee....

(lisa just saw the Lord of the Rings movie. *_* duu~Uuudeee!!) Okay, let me try this again. Wow. Woowwww. The only thing that detracted from my experience at ALL was that the speakers in the theatre we were watching the movie at were retarded and were crackling and fading in and out from the end of the Mines of Morria (sp?) until they left Lothlorien. :/ Not cool at all. But the movie! Duu~uuddeee... Crap, there we go again. #1: Gandalf is cool. #2: Beautiful music (enya!). #3: Hobbits are short. How the did they make Elijah Wood look so short? Good camera angles. Re~eally good camera angles... #4: Elijah Wood has really really big blue eyes. #5: Merry and Pippin are funny. I had forgetten quite how funny they were. Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out which is Pippin and which is Merry. #6: No Tom Bombadil! ;_; #7: I love Legolas. Long blond hair and pointy ears are undeniably sexy. Good things elves don't exist in real life, or I'd be in big trouble. #8: Go~orgeous scenery. Absolutely breathtaking. I WANNA LIVE IN RIVENDELL!! >_< Rivendell, not Lothlorien, mind. I'm the classic architecture type, not the woodsy type. Someday, I'll be rich, and I'll build a house for myself like Rivendell! (in my dreams.) #9: Galadriel was scarier than I remember her. #10: Strider is cool. #11: Orcs are ugly. #12: Nice pacing. #13: Legolas can shoot three arrows in, like, 5 seconds. o.O I probably exaggerate, but it sure seems like that... Is there an Orlando Bloom fan club? #14: Went to the 6:30 showing, so I was actually out by 9:30, so I'll actually get some sleep tonight! ^0^ I could go on. Ohh~hhh, I could go on. But I don't want to spoil anything more for anyone else. ^^ Besides, have other things to talk about!

This week: Got math test back, the one I thought I failed. Got an A. :3 Barely an A, but still an ~A~!! X3 I seriously thought I had failed that one... Then, on Tuesday, did NEA speech and got Econ test back; A's on both! ^0^ Then, I heard I got a 98 on my last essay for Lit AP, on Dubliners by James Joyce. o.O That's really good for Lit AP. And this by word of mouth, too... WAI!! ^_^ I have a calculus test and a physics test tomorrow, though. But I can't seem to bring myself to care. ^^;; Oh well. I already studied for them Sunday and Monday and Tuesday, so I think I'm pretty ready.

Only thing I'm worried about is the Tribes econ presentation Friday. And Christmas presents. >_< Gah!

Elves are cool.

np: Jude Mermaid, Yasunori Mitsuda (;_; This is such a gorgeous song... Makes me all... I dunno, puts me in mind of the deep forest, soft green leaves in lacey layers above my head, illuminated from outside and within by misty light, a thin waterfall and a brook flowing softly against the rocks, ambient light catching on motes of dust and waterdrops, everything warmed underneath by carpets of deep green moss....silence and sadness and beauty and solitude... God, it is so me. o.o Makes me wanna go see the Lord of the Rings movie even more...)

I have committed the requisite sin of any city driver- I have driven the wrong way up a one way street. ;_; I realized my mistake pretty quick, luckily, and got myself turned around even quicker, but still... GARHH!!! >_< I. Am. Never. Driving. In. San. Jose. Again. 'kay? Don't. Ever. Ask. Me. To. >_< Yeah, anyways! And then when I was coming back home, I couldn't find the entrance onto the highway going north. South, I could find. Couldn't find north. I almost got so totally lost. ;_; Luckily, I had a map, and managed to orient myself, but not before I drove through downtown, the residential areas, AND the ghetto back areas. >_< #&$^!! $&(%!!!

Oh, and then I majorly spazzed out. I am so freaking worn out it's not even funny. I was convinced I was going to burn out yesterday. Like, you know, KABOOM, Lisa go bye-bye, spend the rest of her life a vegetable type of burn out? I am so tired. I think at the stated reason I chose to take the class load I'm taking this year, Physics H and Calc BC and Lit AP and Bio AP and Econ AP and Chinese, not to mention co-leading the literary magazine and performing my robotics officer duties and tutoring two people, was that I wanted to test the limits of what I, personally, could handle in terms of mental load. I think I've found that personal capacity. I think I can survive this semester reasonably successfully, as it's almost over, not more than two or so actual school weeks left, but I'm never going to load myself down like this again. It's not fun at all. It slowly burns you out. It takes a little of your strength at a time, slowly, over the months, until you're little more than nerve and skin and bone and overworked brain. It's so hard to withstand......It's so wonderful that vacation is coming so soon; I soo~ooo need the break. Must recuperate. And I haven't even had the chance to go Christmas shopping yet! ;_; mooo....

Good things that have happened: Finished NEA speech (friday night). Finished math homework (saturday night). Took nap (saturday afternoon). Downloaded X TV 09 (friday-sunday). MiRC crashed my laptop twice (saturday). Wait, that's not a good thing... Okay, forget that one. I'm almost finished with King's Dragon by Kate Elliot; good book. Wrote Christmas list. (I want Lord of the Rings action figures! ^0^ Especially Gandalf and Legolas!! Nerd? Nahh. Fifth grader, that's me. ^0^) Calmed down. Laughed when father recounted story about my Uncle, who, upon going to a gardening center looking for manure, told the people there "I want some bullshit." Me uncle had just come from Taiwan, didn't really have the slang quite right yet. :P We finished the literary magazine. I watched three new episodes of Card Captors. Yes, I KNOW it's the 'icky' dub, but the only icky parts are actually the voices of the younger kids (Li, Tomoyo, and Sakura >_<) and the fact they cut out so many of the episodes. And the name changes. I still go very much Eriol (er, Eli) coolness in the skiing episode. ^0^ Hey, I don't mind watching the dub until the subtitled DVD's come out in America! (waits for fangirls/fanboys to call her a heretic). And, yups, I feel better. Surprisingly. Sometimes I just need to run off some steam. ^^;;

One more week til break...one more week...

np: We Like to Party (Venga Boys- egad, she has english music! O_o but i lub this song, so there! it's so ha~appy!!)

WAHAHAAHAHAAAA!!! Yamaki took a ride on the happy train, everyone!! X3 Who says english dubs don't have good lines? (to fill in those unversed in the lore of Digimon, Yamaki is the supposed villain of the first part of Digimon Tamers, the third season of Digimon.) But anways, as the dub put it, Yamaki took a ride on the happy train in this morning's episode. X3X3 'N he's kewt when he loses the suit. ^_^ Teehee!! HAPPY TRAIN!! I love Digimon 03 more and more and more and more. ^_~

More happiness! I finally sat down and figured out how to use IRC to download files! ^0^ I already downloaded Fruits Basket 9 (it was 189 MB o_O) and am in the process of downloading Fruits Basket 6 and 7, and X TV episode 1. (yes, i managed to download FB9 before 6 and 7. And I've had 8 for quite a while, but couldn't watch it because I didn't have 6 and 7. eesh, makes me head hurt.) Still, ith cool. I like IRC. Oh wait, no I don't. >_< FB6 timed out. >_> Grr. Okay, must look for alternate source... Of course, I haven't watched 3-5, and I have them. >_> Ya think maybe I should watch them first, before I worry about getting 6? Maybe?

In other news, I watched Star Ocean EX #1-5 yesterday, loved it lots. It wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyable, and I'm actually getting to like Celine, despite her, ehm....bounciness. Yes. Bounciness. She's funny. ^^ But I want SOEX 6 because ASHTON'S in it dammit!! >_< wannit wannit wannit! grr. (note: claude is cute. but it's kinda hard to not laugh when some of the characters say his name, becuase they make it sound like "clod" and that's...rather unfortunate. ^^;;)

Better go do homework. I'll leave you with a final bit of randomness: just for kicks, I took a picture of my desk with a digital camera and used it as the wallpaper for my desktop. My desktop! ^0^ Get it? (peanut gallery: boooooo. you're fired.) Oh, shut up. No one appreciates my humor...

Happy train, everyone! Get on the happy train! Choo-choo!

peanut gallery: you're weird.

np: nothing

Damn it all anyway!

'Kay. My mom just really pissed me off today. I know it's supposed to be "all for my benefit"; she's told me that plenty of times. She makes herself sound all noble and self-sacrificial. The problem is she's herd me into careers I'm not sure I really want to do. According to her, I have two options. One: get an engineering degree and then go get an MBA in grad school, or two: go into pre-med and go to medical school after I graduate from college. True, I can't think of anything I really want to do personally, at this point. But that's the problem. She's replacing my developing image of my own future with her own fully develped picture. And that sounds suspiciously like trying to live through your children. Grrrumph. And to think this whole row came about because I asked the Cornell lady who phoned me if I could manage to take some art classes with an engineering course load. >_> Then it got into interviews and how I have to sell myself and exaggerate my abilities and interests and then I went on about how I think it's against my nature to sell myself like that and how I won't change that part of myself for a college and how my mom thinks I ~do~ have to change myself for whatever college I'm going to... >_< If a college doesn't want me the way I am, screw it. I don't want them, either.

Grr. Anyways. Some randomness to lighten this entry up! I was randomly looking through my physics notes, when I came upon this scrawled in a corner: "ET = I fish". O_o 'Kay, I thought. What kinda crack was ~I~ on when I took those notes? So after a little bit of thought and some head-scratching, I deciphered what the symbols in the equation actually were: sigma tau equals I alpha. Dontcha love Greek letters? Anyways, once I had that and once I turned my brain on, I was able to figure out what my little note in the corner of my notebook actually meant: net torque is equal to the product of the moment of inertia and the angular acceleration. Which makes a LITTLE more sense than ET = I fish. So yeah, that's my story for the afternoon. B'bye! ^_^ (who's a nerd?)

np: The Arrival of Baby Harry (Harry Potter soundtrack, track 3! X3)

I just watched the happyhappyhappy Harry Potter movie. X3 Besides that little kid who was complaining about his cold feet :/ the moviegoing experience was actually veryvery good. And that's not even taking the movie into account. X3 Hot diggedy DAMN! (<---don't mind me. i have problems.) My dad and my sister adored it too. We were discussing it all through dinner, and even my mom had to admit she thought it was pretty good (she never ended up reading the book like I told her to. :/ Oh well...) I won't go into the details... But I would like to know how they're going to manage making Goblet of Fire into a movie if they had problems fitting Sorcerer's Stone into two and a half hours. That'll take some ingenuity... But yeah. Anyways. It didn't seem like two and a half hours, the movie was that engaging! The last movie I watched that was like that was Shrek! ^_^ I liked Shrek. Anyway, for the Harry Potter movie, I went in at like 3:30, and when I left it was evening. O_o It freaked me out. Like, when I went outside, I kinda did this double take; I really didn't feel like that much time had passed. The only indication I had of passing time was that I needed to go to the bathroom really bad by the end. ^^ Heehee. Should I rant about all the pretty scenery and the Quidditch match and Hermione's excellent acting and Hagrid's ability to be adorable despite his obvious handicaps and the amazing atmosphere Malfoy gives off and sdfkjhweudkkkkk... I'm going to start into this big long rant and I don't have the time for that. ^^;; I could rant for hours. Already have, to my family. So I'll shut up. But I will say I intend to reread all the Harry Potter books soon. ^_^ After all of my college app stuff is done.

And ~speaking~ of college apps...

I am so~ooo freakin' done with those things!! XD Well, not completely done. Have a few things to polish up on the Rice common app supplement, have to fill out the Harvard common app supplement, have to type up my MIT essays, have to send out all the supplementary slides to the different schools. But that is freaking ALL. X3 GwWajhahahajahaa!! I am so~~ooo |-|3114 1337, c|uc|3z! X3 Sent out UC app, finished Stanford, Yale, and Cornell app, ready to send out the last part of the Duke app and the Princeton app... Even have the clear plastic sheets for my slides!! ^O^ HA! Take that, procrastination!!

Didn't have time to bake scones today though. :/ Oh well... Can't have everything. Bake it tomorrow. ^_^ Wait, must call Jen about CG club!! o.o I feel bad... She's always the one having to call me... >_< Okay, must go call her now...

Final note: the Lord of the Rings trailer is F'ing 1337 too. O.O Decembe~eer.... *_* so many movies i want to see coming out this year...