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So she sayeth...
Monday, January 28, 2002 09:31 p.m.
If you read this and you've been contacted about a survey, let me subtley remind you that January ends this week. PLEASE send them to me. I will also be bugging you directly. :D
Oh what a fine weekend it was! :D And I say that with vigor and life and meaning and (now) well-rested legs. Last week was jam packed and I couldn't sit down to blog or email to save my life, but now I have some time since I don't have anythig to read for Weds. AP class. (yes!) I love movie night. Anyhoo, last week was busy with I-Fair preparations and general getting my homework done. I still have too much to read in history, but I'm getting by. I had best be. Midterms are already two weeks away and I'm good as lost in that class. o.o; Too many facts flying at my face at once. Oy.
I physically ached all over this weekend thanks to fencing on Thursday--I've been slowly getting over my cold but it was still hanging on that day and also thanks to not working out since November, I was hurting quite nicely. Wednesday and Thursday we had dress rehearsal for I-Fair entertainment. What a fun waste of time that was. Two hours of sitting and waiting for people to get started and then going through the acts. We were eleventh (out of thirteen) so we got to sit there for awhile. They wanted everyone there at the beginning too so there was no way of weaseling out of it. But at least we got to practice our play on stage--which was very good for us. I'm only cranky about it because I had to be up at 7 a.m. the next day for class and rehearsals began at 10 p.m. Friday I was going to help making the booth but got fed up with waiting to get our supplies so I told folks I was ducking out to help the rest of our club who were making food for the food festival--which I promptly went to do. We made Japanese curry, onigiri (tuna/mayo and umeboshi kinds!), and sushi (w/ just veggies). That was a lot of work. ^_^; But we did it. I'm not fond of onigiri or sushi, but I love curry, and our curry was VERY good. :D I'm so proud of the people in our club who made it. They rock! After that I collapsed at home and watched the first Trigun DVD with some of my roomies and Matt. They hadn't seen it before, but were very amused by it. Vash especially--but who isn't? :D
Saturday was the I-Fair. To our great pleasure, despite all of the I-Fair preparation proceedings seeming about as organized as my laundry basket (it's organized in that everything is in one place and I know where it is :P) the actual event went wonderfully well. That's not to say *we* weren't a bit flustered about getting everything done in time. We definitely were, but we ended up prepared on Saturday afterall--as did everyone else. So it was all good. ^_~ Actually, it was great! First there was food--there was only one person serving so, being my roommate and all, she took the opportunity to convince me I should come help too. So, being me, I said sure. So I got up too early for a Saturday morning and went out to serve food at the Japanese table. We were joined shortly by several others. From there I ran over to the Japan booth--which was wonderful this year. It was smashing with lots of neat Japanese goods. Naturally since four senior members of the Japanese club went to Japan within the past year. :D I toured the other booths and saw many interesting things. After the booth we went back home to rest up for the performance. Between the end of the booths was the flag presentation and two outside acts whose names I don't remember. ^^; Then came the Big Performance--I-Fair student entertainment. Again, wonderful! There were dances (as usual) of a great variety, singing, and even poetry reading. We, of course, did our patented style of Japanese Club skit with an interesting moral. Somehow they always end up with a moral. This year the moral was: don't be an ass, don't be mean to your brother, and for god's sake don't steal from fairies or they'll pull your nose and bite you. >:D! The audience was very amused with our play. I actually had to pause saying my lines so they could finish laughing at one point (they were supposed to be laughing, BTW.) I was happy that I got to wear the yukata I bought in Japan for my play costume. I even got the thing put on right with some help from my fellow actresses. And it FITS so well (the arms are a bit short though...) which makes me feel very warmfuzzyhappy. After the performances we came back to the apartment and geeked around until bedtime. We had a great reading the
Official Ninja Homepage This is another example of pure e-crack. XD We even signed the guestbook, but it now looks like it's since been flooded out. What the heck? o_O;
Anyhoo, I'd best be getting to work. Later.
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "4-bit pr0n...?"
Tuesday, January 22, 2002 12:29 a.m.
Well, my cold's almost gone. I'm really sick of having a messed up sleep schedule. I don't know how long I can keep up this alternating 5/6 hour nights with 9/10 hour nights. @_@ Blargh. My sickness didn't help the fact either. Anyway. I don't have much to say right now although it's been a few days between blogs. I had a decent weekend. I got to see 12 Monkeys in its entirety for the first time. Again, I saw the ending without seeing the beginning. That seems to be a problem for me. Hmm. Matt and I also visited his grandma for dinner. She lives in the next town over. I also found that there's a Maid Rite in Galesburg. :D! I'm going to have to drag my city slicker friends out there some time. I don't think they have them in Chicago and the surrounding areas, but I'm really not sure. I don't live there. ^^
This week is the International Fair--my last one. *weep!* As usual, we're doing food, a booth, and entertainment. We decided to do a play of a Japanese fairytale called "The Mallet." Basically, two brothers: one good, one bad. Bad brother gives poor good brother dead silkworm eggs and bad rice to save him from starvation. Those things actually work for the good brother and lead him to a fairy glen. The good one sneaks a magic mallet (that can give you anything you want) away from the fairies and uses it while the bad one would use it for evil. The fairies punish the bad brother, but then the good one forgives the other one for being mean and evil--particularly to him. The End. I get to play the mallet-weilding bishounen leader of the fairy children. Yup. That's right. :p Of course, they're probably going to change the narration to make my character female--which is fine by me--but I still found it funny that I'm playing this character. The original text describing my character is something like "Then there rose up a beautiful boy, about fourteen or fifteen years old, the eldest and the tallest there...The boy took up [the mallet] and went and stood within the circle of children. He laughed and cried, 'Now what will you have?'" I'm of course the tallest of all the people playing fairies. o.o;
Today was amusing because I was low on sleep and what sleep I did get was ravaged by my hacking cough. I've felt extremely worn down all day long and my brain has been sludge along with it, but out of my babbling, I've said some amusing things (like the quotation below.) I just "woke up" for the first time today about an hour and a half ago, which is bad. I want to sleep now. o.o; I really hope I'm not turning into a night owl. I can't afford that. Unless...I just stay up all night and then go to class having not gone to bed. Hmm... It's amazing where lack of sleep and friends as nutty as you are will get you. It got me sitting on the living room floor eating chocolate pudding singing "Where is my Hairbrush." I'm different! ^_^;
Anyway. My roommates thought this particular line of thought was frightfully amusing. ^^ My roommate's paraphrase of what I said is below. I'm tired now so I can sleep. Bai now!
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "Is life like a computer game, and if so, does it have lag time? As you get nearer to absolute truth, does the lag get less?" -- Me, (paraphrased)
Wednesday, January 16, 2002 11:18 a.m.
Well, I got sick. Blech. I hate being sick. It messes up everything. Especially now since I'm not in public schools anymore, I can't milk the fact either and stay home from school or anything. :p Heck, I can't even skip work. And I'm not even too sick to not go to class--one of my professors is *very* annoyed by people who skip his class (which is I guess is the reason he scheduled it at 8:00 a.m. O_o) and I have a quiz in my my other class today--so I get to go. At least my Cowboy Bebop 5th session DVD finally came today. Yay! It's at home...but I still got it! :D;
Hey, it's actually snowing now! Amazing! How much snow have we actually gotten here this winter. Um, none, to speak of. It snowed once or twice while I was at home--not that it accumulated to even an inch. I was surprised to come back last week and actually find snow on the ground--especially since Galesburg is usually warmer on the average than home. We'll see how long it stays though. It was sleeting the other day, and then everything melted and then turned nasty cold. Ugh. I think I got spoiled in Japan this summer. I got used to all that heat and humidty, now the very thought of anything under 30 sends me into chills. o_o Someone knock some sense into me. I sound like my Californian and Floridian aunts/uncles. This is not good for me since one of my choices for places of living next year is Colorado. :P
Well, for class I saw Planet of the Apes (the original) all the way through for the first time last night. It makes a little more sense now having seen the first half hour. ^^; I hadn't seen the part before Taylor gets separated from his group, but I've seen the rest several times. It was pretty good. I'll admit, it was fairly obvious sometimes--even heavyhanded--with the message it was trying to convey. I also noticed for the first time that Rod Serling had a hand in writing the script. My guess it's THE Rod Serling. The opening monologue Taylor gives is very Serling-esque from what I've seen on the Twilight Zone. Seeing the movie again makes me wonder what the new version is like. I have yet to see it.
Hmm. I'm pretty much babbling today. Anyway. I finished that survey for my project, and I'll probably be contacting people about it soonly. I wonder if I should somehow put it on my blog or something. But what are the chances someone, other than certain speakers whom I'm going to beg for favors (of taking/distributing the survey :P), reads this thing AND speaks Japanese? o_o Yup. That's right. Yeah. So anyway. I'm going to lunch and class now. Have a nice, snowy day.
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "I hadn't realized that humans could be monogamous creatures."
"On this planet it's easy!" -- Dr. Zaius and Taylor from Planet of the Apes
Monday, January 14, 2002 09:48 p.m.
I feel yucky. I'm getting sick, tis why. There's nothing more inspiring than starting off a new semester feeling like you've been hit by a bus full of germs. My throat is giving me the most pain. I hope it doesn't turn into strep or anything. I swear I had tonsilitis back in November, but it went away before I even bothered about thinking of going to the doctor. Yay me. But on onto more exciting things like:
Monkey Island! Yes, I came home yesterday to find my roomate playing the Secret of Monkey Island and upon which I told him he fought like a dairy farmer. XD Apparently, they're now selling the first three PC Monkey Islands as a bundle. o_o I think I found a home for my lonely mall gift certificate. :D Come spring break, I'm going to see if I can pick it up. I have the discs to SoMI somewhere in my house--I owned it back in the day, but I've since lost that little booklet that contained passwords to let you in the game. I haven't played any of the other ones, but I'm assuming they're just as wacky fun as the first one.
Also in game playing news of my roommates, I found them playing the Japanese version of Bust a Groove 2 last week. They were playing through with each character to get the endings. The Japanese version has a seperate ending for each of the main characters. We're not sure about the hidden ones. I got to see Kitty N and Tsutomu's ending. Apparently Tsutomu has a problem with wetting his pants when he's excited, and Kitty-N is in love with Michael Doi. O_o Unfortnately, says the game, he cannot love any girl back. Then they showed a picture of him on the beach wearing a speedo standing next to really buff guy also wearing a speedo. I *really* didn't need to see a nearly naked Michael Doi...Bleah.
I also got to play some Super Mario Smash Brothers the other day. It was pretty fun, although I didn't quite understand the concept of the game (other than kill the other people more than they kill you) at the time, so it was kind of...well, bad. But it was fun! I also have been playing KoF '99 (PSX) and Capcom vs. SNK (PS2) with Matt on a semi-daily basis. I'm so bad at fighting games. O_o; It doesn't help that Matt just handed me the controller and we started playing either. Me, with bad fighting game skills and no knowledge of which button is punch/kick/etc. (because I've never played either game before now), trying to figure out the moves from the book (which button was kick again?) whilest trying to fight Matt who's already been playing both games by himself for several weeks. XP I've beat him a few times though, and I can toss projectiles at people like none other. XD
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "Lovely Mai ga mairima~~~su!" -- Mai, KoF (I don't like her, but this quote amuses me to no end XD)
Friday, January 11, 2002 10:40 a.m.
Katherine*blink blink* Although I may have translated part of a novel and short story in Japanese, that doesn't mean I wasn't looking up every other word because I didn't know the kanji. ^^; I mean that literally. I be not l33t at Japanese. I'm not even in fourth-year yet. Be assured you'll have less trouble with a Japanese novel than me. ^^;
Hey, look, I have content today! :D Anyhoo, yeah, so what have I been up to besides the obvious? School, yes, that's right. While all you semester people who only got off three weeks ago are still stitting in bed playing video games, I am being rousted out of bed at 7 a.m. to go to class. Yay me. But it's a class I want to take, so it's my own damn fault. Said class is Modern China, which is kind of an illusionary title because we're starting way back in 2000 B.C. and working our way up. This is a good thing because although I've had a course that dealt with Chinese history before, it was two years ago, a 100 level class, and being taught alongside of Korean and Japanese history. So the refresher is most welcome. My other class is AP (Advanced Preceptorial) which is the sister class of FP (Freshman Preceptorial) which all seniors (up to my class) were forced to take because some faculty folks decided it would be good for us to do. O_o; But as of late, they recanted and now there's a cluster of classes you can take instead, but my class is pretty much forced to take AP if we haven't taken the right few set of classes and have no time left to take them--that's me. Although I have a good topic for my class--human identity through the lens of science and science fiction. That means I get to read sci-fi novels for class. w00t! We just finished Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, which was good, but predictable if your're a brazened reader like myself. ^^ I knew it would happen. My other class and a half is honors which is going smoothly. I'm still reading stuff, but I should think about starting the paper soon.
Ah, about that wedding. Not sure about anything for it yet. We're roughly guessing sometime this summer before I go off to grad school, whereever that may be. I started looking at dresses randomly online last night. ^^; Oh, I'm not very impressed by most of them. I hate the idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a dress that I'm going to use once, but I guess that's the way it goes. ... I did find one pretty one though. :D That page wasn't giving prices on any of thier dresses though. I guess it doesn't matter. The only store they have in the US is in California. O_o; I've also decided that despite what anyone advises me, I'll be equipping my bridesmaids with dark colors such as midnight blue or a nice shade of purple--none of this pastel or brown stuff. Yuck. o_o um. heh. I just noticed I said "equipping." Someone's been playing too many RPGs. XD Actually, not since last week. (See next paragraph.) Still, I guess I'm using my EngageRing to change my character class from girlfriend to fiance. O_o; If you want to think about it that way. heh.
So, yes, my game playing. I finished Xenogears over break, as I mentioned before. I got FF Chronicles and Puzzle Bobble 1 and 2 for my birthday (which reminds me I should update my age on the sidebar...) and so I was playing FFIV, CT, and PB like a madwoman before it came time for school to start. As to where I am: I got Cecil to become a Paladin, and Crono-tachi are stitting outside the Tyrano Lair. I'm very impressed with the transfer of FFVI to the Playstation. There are NO load times for anything except save files (which is actually seems like a really long wait because they don't show you a status bar for uploading -_-) and the save menu in general is annoying. Also, I don't remember if this was true of the SNES version, but you can only cast one spell or give one item to a person at a time and it automatically exits one screen back, forcing you to click an extra time. That bugs me too, but other than that it's great. The dialouge is good too--they of course kept "You spoony bard!" for all we geeks. ^^ CT is as it was, only with irritatingly different sound and music--due to the transfer to the PSX--and the menus are also sticky and take way to much time to load. There's added animation, of course, scattered throughout the story. It's all right. Akira Toriyama's art style isn't the best in my opinion--Crono is annoyingly like a red-headed Goku and Marle is a blond Bulma. o_o; Puzzle Bobble is cute, dragony, bubbly fun! :D It's like they took Bubble Bobble and Snood and smashed them into one fun little, addicting game. Actually, I wonder if Snood came before or after PB. o_o I really don't know.
Anyway. Lunch. Class. Then I get to go read my thing at the Catch (Knox literary magazine) reception. How did I get roped into that? I actually haven't read anything I've written outloud since high school and those Writer's Ink meetings of yore. o_o; Ah well, it's only five minutes of my life. I'll live. And then after that the apaato-gumi and I are going to have an okinomiyaki dinner with a couple other folks. :D Whaaaaa! I haven't had okinomiyaki since I left Japan. It's going to be yummy. ^^ Anyhoo. Ja.
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "Cerulean skies." -- CC
Tuesday, January 8, 2002 07:26 p.m.
Well, I suppose I should return from my long absence and non-blogging because I have an announcement. Matt and I are now engaged. ^_^
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "Oh no, I forgot my line!"
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