Christmas

Tuesday, 26 December, 2006 at 2:45 pm

A computer-less weekend! Oh my!

Let’s start on Saturday. Mum wanted me to help her make the cookies, so I did that. We made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (or chocolate chip oatmeal cookies?) with some coconut thrown in ’cause Mum likes that, and “holiday nuggets.” I dunno what they are. ._. They’ve got lots of shortening and butter and sifted powdered sugar and chopped nuts, and they’re covered in powdered sugar. Very good. heehee.

Since Mum was doing other stuff (I forget what), and my elbows are I am so frickin weak, we got Mickey to hold the bowl for me while I stirred everything into dough. ehehe. And since Mickey was sacrificing his time, I thought we should put on some Christmas videos so he wouldn’t be so bored.

We watched Timmy’s Gift (Precious Moments), then It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (saw the first and last Christmas specials on TV last week), then Care Bear’s Nutcracker Suite, I Love Lucy Christmas special, Madeline’s Christmas (that tape’s going bad ;.;), then Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (and an added short that’s on the DVD), then Mickey’s Christmas Carol, then Brand Spanking New Doug Christmas special.

Grandpa’s birthday was the Monday (or Tuesday?) before, so he and Grandma came over for Chinese take-out to celebrate. My great aunt had them over for dinner earlier that week, too. Uncle R couldn’t come Saturday ’cause he had to work. XD So we had good eats. Then Little Women, the 1933 version with Katherine Hepburn, was on, so we watched that. Grandma could name practically all the actors. o.o But then again, I just remembered that she asked me only once where Hidek was. Hmm. It was Grandpa who asked about a dozen times during the movie, “Is that Katherine Hepburn?” *blink*

They left a little while before the movie ended, to pick up Uncle R? So Mickey popped in another tape and he, Mum, Daddy and I watched the Hey Arnold and old Doug and Edith Ann Christmas specials.

At nine Meet Me in St. Louis was on, so Mum and I watched that until 11. ^^ One of my favorite movies, wheee!

Sunday I wrapped my presents to everybody (except Mickey and Hidek ’cause Mum did that for helping her with the cookies), then made the brownies. Mum watched The Homecoming while she made the yams. I like that movie all right, but I guess at my age it just moves too slowly for me. When I’m older I’ll probably enjoy it more. I didn’t watch the whole thing. I left around the time John Boy went to the church. Oh, I guess I went on the computer over the weekend. I talked to Adam, then went to bed at midnight.

Christmas day Mum woke me up at 8:30. I got dressed, opened my Santa present ($15), then we were actually on time and left at 9. *shock* The streets were so empty. XD One of my favorite parts of Christmas. L.A. is so dead! We got to Auntie G’s, unpacked, hung around for breakfast that Tadash and Noelle and Auntie made. Mickey and I washed the dishes and Mum dried and put things away. Then we watched Hidek beat my cousin’s husband at Texas hold’em and win $5. XD; Then we opened presents. Noelle liked her present from us. :D It was a $20-bill folded into a ring and it was in a ring box. XDD Noelle Tadash and SM00 gave me a Dooney & Bourke wristlet that SM00 picked out. I like it, it’s cute and not ugly like lots of purses out there nowadays, and it’s definitely classy.

Tadash got the Axis & Allies boardgame, so the boys and aforementioned cousin’s husband and Uncle G played that. I did the money. Muahahaha, that is my role in (boardgame) life. I finally learned how to play the game. o.o My brothers had played with my dad’s game since elementary school, then Tadash has been borrowing it lately, and we never really knew how to play. ahaha. It’s a role-playing game. o.O Gotta roll dice, always roll dice, more and more dice… I’m okay. I’ve just never seen so many dice in one place outside of a game store. I think they got through three rounds of turns.

Technically the Axis (cous’ hus and Uncle G) was winning when we had to clean up for dinner. Uncle G gained a lot of land, and he had a huge army. Mickey had land, but his resources were thin. Hidek had pretty much the same as at the beginning (oh, plus 6 tanks and no transport XD) and I think Tadash had about the same as well. He called me a Nazi ’cause I thought the Axis looked like it would win. booo.

Noelle’s family left after/during dinner (after theirs, during ours, hehe). Hidek had me and Mickey play Big 3 then Egyptian War during/after dinner. Afterwards, I read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol. II some then had dessert and sat around listening to grownups talk while Hidek, Mickey, and second-oldest cousin did the dishes. We left soon after that, ’cause Mickey had to work today, and they were starting up The Devil Wears Prada. ;.; I missed it! I uh, also left my laptop and The Secret Garden there. *furtive glance* I was tired and just wanted to leave. ^^;; Mum picked them up from my second-oldest cousin’s husband today though.

Today I just watched my Monk season 3 DVDs (Mr. Monk and the Blackout, I couldn’t remember who the suspect was ¬.¬) and read volume 7 of Gokinjo Monogatari. Wahh, it’s over! But I really liked the extra chapter! Miwako!! XDDD Although I think I might like Mikako more than Miwako now. >.> Probably just because Mikako was the main character and you could go into her character more, as opposed to Miwako who was just a side character and didn’t get much development compared to Mikako or Yukari. :(

many nights go by…

Tuesday, 19 December, 2006 at 10:45 pm

Haven’t updated for a while. Haven’t really had anything update-worthy. I think my brain took a vacation and I haven’t really thought of any post-worthy opinions.

Saturday … uhm … I think I didn’t do anything special. Sunday I went with Daddy to the mall. He went to buy cards for New York relatives and cookies for the neighbors. I went to get 30% off a Nana manga, but Borders Express didn’t have the Nana I want. *tear* They only had 1 and 2. I finished 3 a little while ago, and there’s a bit of a cliffhanger there, so blagh I wanna read the next one really soon.

I bought Hot Gimmick volume 10 instead. I read that last night, and I just kept getting confused. Who are these characters? What’s going on? What happened? Blah. I have to reread the whole series. -.-

Monday … was nothing interesting, really. Mum stayed home because she felt a little sick, and went in to work today. Afterwards we went to the market.

Wow, I’m talking about going grocery shopping as the highlight of my day. No wonder I don’t update outside of school. *makes a face*

What else can I talk about … Oh, on my validate-all-websites’-XHTML project, I got a little further along. With [Blue Book (link to quotes site)] I switched from using html documents to php documents for the pages, just so it’s easier to update the layout. Specifically the navigation. The reason I stuck with frames for that site so long is ’cause I didn’t want to have to update the navi for every single page. I’m happier with the site now! I might actually update more often! I still have to clean out the quotes, get rid of ones I don’t like any longer.

But I suppose that’s only interesting to me. Maybe Noelle.

Um, on Christmas presents I’ve bought or put together everyone’s but SM00’s. I’m gonna go get that tomorrow. The sad thing is that both Hidek and Mickey paid up everything they owe for all the presents (I usually buy stuff and we split roughly three ways), and I’ve got only $21 cash for SM00’s present, and I want to check Borders tomorrow to see if they have Monk season 3 (40% off DVD boxsets) and Nana volume 4. Technically I have only $80 in my checking account (just because the property managers haven’t cashed the rent check yet doesn’t mean I count the $1300 that’s in there), and maybe I can ask Mum for $70 tomorrow for inputting Grandpa’s stuff into Quicken that I can deposit in the bank, and then I’ll feel better about using debit to pay for Borders stuff.

Two sentences that were toooo long. I need to get to bed.

my own home

Saturday, 16 December, 2006 at 1:29 am

Ahaha yeah don’t ask what I’m doing up so late again. D’oh.

Umm … I packed up my stuff last night, so this morning C and I loaded the car from about 9:30 to 10. *blink* Yeah. We had so much stuff. Barely fit in the car. Shocking. Gas was $2.69! Grr. Traffic was good. Normal, I mean. It backed up on the 405 around Sunset. And for some reason, there were quite a few cars on Sunset. Maybe ’cause it was lunchtime. I dunno.

I unpacked most of my stuff. ^^;; Still need to set up my desktop, if I do. I probably will; I’ve got the scanlations of Gokinjo Monogatari sitting on there. (I’ve still got the .rar files on my laptop, but then I’d have to unzip them and save them somewhere and there’d just be duplicate files sitting taking up space when I have perfectly good files on my desktop.)

It’s cold here. ;.; Well, I mean, it’s moderate yah (L.A. weather…) but there’s gonna be rain over the weekend (the channel 2 weather anchor said thunderstorms! *bounces*) and it was overcast today so no sun. And, most of all, this house is just plain cold. But Mum said she and Daddy laid down three sections of insulation over … some area … in the old part of the house. I wasn’t wearing a sweatshirt during the day! (No, I was just wearing a tank top, shirt, thermal top, socks, leggings, and sweat pants. *grin*)

…I think I just smashed a spider unknowingly. *shudder* I was lying down on the floor, but sat up to type this entry, and I just looked at my knee where I noticed this daddy long-legs was. eeeee. Creepy. >_> (Note: I like spiders. Just as long as they’re not running toward me or located somewhere on my person.) But … at least it was dead. ^^;; I killed it! *sniffle*

I need to get to bed. O_o

book to movie

Thursday, 14 December, 2006 at 11:33 am

I’ve decided that I will try to stop comparing movies to the original books. Mostly influenced by Neil Gaiman’s comments on his blog. Latest, “A film isn’t a book.”

But it is true. Like Count of Monte Cristo (I read it for an hour this morning and I kept thinking of the last movie), I consider them two different stories. Same plot, similar characters, but two different takes. You just can’t fit all of Alexeandre Dumas’ (paid-by-word O.x) story into a feasible movie. Maybe it’s better as a mini-series…

Also the Harry Potter stories. I was sort of meh about the first book. But I liked the first movie. (I think I read all four books before seeing the movie. I’m not sure.) I found it great fun. I don’t remember how I felt about the other books the first time, but I’ve always enjoyed the movies the first time around. Although the Potter movies are pretty close to the books. So not much of a point there.

Maybe a better example would be V for Vendetta? *hides* Ignoring the Wachowski Brothers-esque elements, I thought it was a good story. It’s not the comic. It’s a different story. I guess liberties were taken to mold the story more to current events. But who’s to say we shouldn’t have that? The original graphic novel is still there, 100% and whole for anyone who wants to get the original story. In the meantime, there’s another idea out there that was based on that story. And after a while, another movie could be made, perhaps one that’s closer to the original story.

That’s another thing, the way people rail against movie adaptations, you’d think the movie was the end-all be-all of the story. But with Count of Monte Cristo you have so many movie versions. Take your pick, which one do you think is the best? Mickey likes the French version. So does Mum. But she still likes the Guy Pierce version. I’ve never seen the French one, so I can’t really say.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, what about movie adaptations that I didn’t like? The ones that come to mind are A Wrinkle in Time and The Face on the Milk Carton. *twitch* Poor made-for-tv excuses of book adaptations. If I forget the story they were originally based on … they’re still pretty bad. But I suppose they work, for the medium that they’re in (film).

Okay, all this post serves to prove is how bad of a writer I am. Blah.

this or that environment edition

Wednesday, 13 December, 2006 at 2:07 am

I decided to not buy scantrons in the package anymore. Hidek was asking me whether he should buy the single scantrons or the ones in a package (why can’t he think about that for himself? O_o), and I was saying you save money with the ones in a package. But then I thought, you have to think about the pollution and whatnot that goes into making the plastic packaging. And probably all that plastic just gets tossed out in the trash to fill up landfills. So! It’s single scantrons for me. >) I’ll pay more to save the planet, yes I will!