should become castaway

Friday, 1 December, 2006 at 1:33 pm

“And sometimes this Blog is just a diary, or a reminder. You forget the things you were certain you would always remember, especially the tiny things, and all too often they’re the things that matter.”
Neil Gaiman, December 1, 2006

I know he said that in reference to his daughter, but dang I still love how he writes.

My teacher said in class: she’s lived in Michigan, where it snows, and when she was moving to California she thought, oh yay, the sun is always out! But it’s so cold here! Not outside, but inside. Her husband said “we have to go get sweaters!”

Hah, yeah, no one heats (public) buildings around here. >_> My mom’s even got the thermostat at home down to 66° since last winter. I never even gave that a second thought. Do other places heat to a comfortable level during the winter?

Yesterday I forgot to turn off the heater (we don’t have a thermostat) in the morning, so it was on pretty high all day until I got home at 5:30. Hidek and his friend had the windows open since they don’t know how to work the heater. -.- So I don’t have the heater on now, and I’m wearing a tank top, shirt, thermal top, sweatshirt, leggings, and sweatpants. Still a little cold though.

Wednesday night it was really cold. I think it went down to 42° while we were checking the weather. Thursday morning there was ice on my car! Only the rear window, but still! This one site Hidek’s friend checked said that average and record temperatures in SLO are more extreme than temperatures in Berkeley/Davis. O_o I understand the highs; they’re more north, so naturally it’s cooler. But the lows! How in the world can we get colder than the Bay area??? They get fog! It rains often there! We’re in what’s called the Gold Coast. (I think it’s a just marketing/tourist gimmick though.)

Last night I stayed up til 1:30 am working on my blog. XD; Moved the last of the pMachine entries to WordPress. No more pMachine floating around uselessly on my domain anymore, woohoo! Installed plugins for tags and weighted tags and for weighted categories. So now you’ll see those around.

Borders trip and journals

Wednesday, 29 November, 2006 at 7:05 pm

As mentioned in the previous entry, I went with Hidek to Borders. I was going to buy a mag to get one last example of a grid for my art class, but I forgot to check natalieportman.com to see if she was in any new mags. (She isn’t. I guess she’s really busy working now.) Didn’t know if Evanescence was in any magazine out now either. So I didn’t buy any magazines.

I was looking at this one mag, I forget what it’s called… It’s about (I don’t even know the word) modifying/editing/cutting up/accentuating/something your clothes. I was gonna buy it, but it’s $14. ACK! There was also this drawing magazine that looked interesting (despite my lack of drawing as of late), but that was expensive too, $12, so I didn’t get it. *tear*

(I have, or had, $60 allowance [four weeks’ worth, since I won’t be home for a while], I spent $16.08 on a CD with ten songs on it [but it ended up being worth it XD], and I still need to buy Christmas presents. I won’t actually need all my allowance, but I also want to go on a clothes shopping spree since I haven’t really bought anything since spring [tank tops absolutely don’t count], and I’m thinking of spending my Christmas money on a GBA SP since the DS doesn’t play Gameboy games and I don’t like GBA games sticking out at the bottom and I don’t know why but the D-pad on the DS Lite doesn’t work for me. Either it’s too small or my thumb is too fat or maybe there isn’t enough height to it; I just find myself working a lot more to move around than I would on, say, the N64 D-pad. [I think my favorite D-pad would be on the Super NES uber-tastic controller, whatever it’s called, the one with all the little switches on the top. I don’t like the Gamecube’s, just because you have to reach so far over to get to it.] Wow I’m being really rambly and long-sentence-winded. Too much caffeine! O_O But back to the original point of this parenthetical aside, that’s why I didn’t want to buy the magazines. Or what I’m mentioning next.)

After that I looked at the notebooks Borders has (no Moleskines, curse Barnes & Noble!). I really really really like journals … I remember the first one I bought. It was one of those cheap ones with a plastic cover and tabs for a lock to go through. (Apparently at that age, no one would think of just tearing the plastic tabs off.) The pages would fall out after a few turns, too. I bought it at a … thing, I forget what it’s called; it was at my elementary school, where all these cheap (but some nice) things would be brought to the cafetorium for kids to buy for the winter holidays as gifts, and where I would end up spending half my money on myself. XD;;

I don’t think I’ve bought a nice journal for myself since then. (I never used that journal either. I think I wrote a short entry on the first page, but lost interest after that page fell out.) I’ve bought boring notebooks at Staples or whatever office supply store. I bought a sketchbook at Michael’s (made from recycled paper, of course). Also bought a blank “Sketchbook” (with the big “S”) from Borders for a multimedia class (it was required for a journal, but I never kept it up *shame*).

Even so, I’ve discovered that I really like journals. I suppose I’ve said it elsewhere, but I just like the potential of creation that these things symbolize (to me). I’d love to buy a nice blank journal and fill it up with anything that I deem worthy. The problem is I don’t have anything I deem worthy of going in a storehouse of creativity. (“Anything” would be thoughts, doodles, sketches, poems, lines, ideas, anything.) So I don’t buy anything nice. :(

But, I think this Christmas, if I have any money left over, I’m just going to go to Borders and splurge on the start of my journal collection. And I’ll force myself to put something in them. Even just dots. Yeah. Dots are good. That’s what’s used in printing. *nod*

I saw this one notebook today. It has “Desire” on, erm, if not the cover, then on the inside. It’s lined, and it has quotes and pictures in it. I thought it was really attractive. :o Partly probably because of The Sandman and the Endless. XD I’ll buy that if I find it again. But I think the first notebook I have to buy is a Moleskine. Definitely.

don’t give up, the storm is passing

Wednesday, 29 November, 2006 at 6:36 pm

Gah! I can’t think! I even forgot to turn on the rice cooker 45 minutes ago. O_o I’m huuuungry now.

I have lots of little things to say that would make nice posts all on their own, but since I’m not obsessively updating the blog (not now anyway *grin*), I’m just gonna pile them all up into one post.

Went with Hidek to the gas station ($2.57), Best Buy (bought The Submarines, am listening to it now; thumbs up so far!), Borders (more later), and Staples. (On second thought, I’m going to make the Borders subject an entirely separate entry.)

I saved bunches of pics of Amy Lee and some live performances and also the latest music video, Lithium. (I wish Americans could buy Kerrang! Er, buy it easily.) I now have 1315 images of Amy Lee on my harddrive. XD; So lame.

rest your head

Monday, 27 November, 2006 at 10:18 pm

Thanksgiving was nice. Everyone but AJ and UG was there. Well, also Bachan. Sorry to drag the summary down. *furtive glance* It really was a nice day, I had a great time. I just had this thought early, before dinner when I saw Jichan, that Bachan wasn’t there. Silly, because she hasn’t been there for a couple Thanksgivings past. Oh well.

I was thinking of taking a picture of the (pool) table with all the food on it, but people were about to start lining up and I didn’t want to run to my room then stand there getting the picture while everyone else waited on me. :o

Oh yeah, a pic of my Japan Expo loot. Shall have to procrastinate on that.

Friday I just sat on the sofa with Mum and ate chips and dip while watching tv. XD Great fun.

Saturday went with Mum to Borders by Santa Monica Blvd. to buy stuff. I wanted to buy Monk season 2 for $20 but it turns out the sale was only for season 1. *shakes fist at Borders* In the e-mail they sent me, they had something covering the bottom of the pic of the Monk box, and they didn’t mention specifically season 1 so I thought it was for all seasons. :( Oh well. Mum got Sylvia Browne’s book on Jesus and I got Othello volume 5. I was going to get Nana volume 4 but they only had 1–3. grr.

O, I didn’t mention, that Tuesday before we came home I went to Borders and used a Personal Shopping Day to buy Inuyasha books and Nana 3. From maybe $48 to $43, ooh I really saved a lot. (End sarcasm.) But anyway. Cliffhanger in Nana 3! *cries* I want 4!!

Saturday night I talked on aim, then when Noelle and her fam came over (after a birthday party, waiting for traffic to lighten) I ate dinner (mmm, turkey soup! *grin*) and watched tv with them.

Sunday, went to Michael’s looking for paper for my art journal. Wouldn’t you know, they’re practically all sold out of any type of black paper. Went to Target with Mickey and Hidek. They took down the sign for the Wii (“Due to high demand blah blah blah we don’t have what you’re looking for.”) but they still didn’t have it.

playing catch-up (not catsup)

Thursday, 23 November, 2006 at 2:28 pm

Quick post, since I haven’t updated in a while and I don’t want to be overwhelmed with whatall I haven’t talked about whenever I do get the time to actually write out a post nicely.

Saturday went with Mum, Hidek, and Noelle and her family to Japan Expo. X) It was fun. This year we watched a bit of dancing (last year we watched a bit of kendo [?] and the year before that we watched nothing). Mum thinks it was from the north. Interesting. I have no concept of north and south in Japan. Well maybe extreme south, like the islands or something. I just know Tokyo vs the country.

I bought lots of stuff. :o I brought my $90 of allowance that I hadn’t collected during the school quarter, and I think I left with about $20. *shifty eyed* (I’d planned a MasterCard-type post, nevermind how overplayed that is, but since I’m so brilliant [I’d planned another post with the title “how brilliant am I?” *snicker*), I brought my camera and laptop home over the weekend but forgot the cable, then brought my camera back to school and left my laptop home [I was only going to be there for two days], then I brought my camera home but I forgot the cable! So the list of all the stuff I bought will have to wait until next week.)

Afterwards we went to J-town and went to the Curry House. *drooool* I had a seafood curry. Shrimp, scallop, and squid. :o I had squid! I dunno which white lump it was, but it was all good. XD Went to the Kinokuniya there. First time there. It’s big. o_o It had Kera and most of the Gothic & Lolita Bibles (just didn’t have the first issue). I would have bought one, but I wanted to buy something at a store later (it ended up not having anything good though, boo).

Even when we were there, I was glad I didn’t live in L.A. hahaha! Yes, it’s bad enough on the Westside, traffic-wise, but it’s home. I couldn’t live in SLO. There’s nothing there. SLO and Downtown L.A.: nice places to visit, wouldn’t want to live there. (Oh wait, I technically do live in SLO.)

Um, Friday night when I drove home with Hidek, we left at 2:50 and hit traffic in Santa Barbara, then got through Ventura and hit traffic going up to Calabasas. We got home about 7:30. *was dead* I wanted to stop at the outlet mall at around 6 so I could buy dinner (I was hungry ;.;) but Hidek didn’t want me to. grrr. So to prove to him why I didn’t want to drive, and to prove to myself I could do it, I drove. I know I don’t make sense. :) When I’m angry, I’m contradictory. (And Hidek thought we were near the Getty when we were near Lost Hills. HAHAHA not on your life bub.)

I got off the 101 at Ventura Blvd. Was gonna drive down Beverly Glen (wheee!) but Hidek saw Sepulveda and asked to go there. From there I got on the 405 since it looked good and got off at Santa Monica, to Westwood, then home. My odometer read only 196.6 miles. Weird.

But Tuesday night it was really nice (except for the thick fog in Santa Maria o_o), we left at 8:15 and got home around 11ish. I was a lot less tired after that drive. XD Noooo traffic. Well except around the 101/405 interchange. But it wasn’t bad at all.

Hm. Monday went to class and lab and in lab we worked on HTML. I just halfheartedly worked at the exercise then I started reading web standards stuff. XD Which reminds me, I have to make a webpage before Monday. meep.

Tuesday, lecture lab lecture. First lecture had a quiz. Hope I did all right. *furtive glance* Lab, turned in project (for future reference, I can’t stand white matting). Uh, after that … I tried catching up on the notes I haven’t rewritten, but then I read my friends list on Livejournal and I got sidetracked ’cause someone posted a link on the Something Positive feed to funny cat pictures, which I spent about maybe 2 hours looking at and saving pictures. XD;;;

Yesterday … I didn’t really do anything. And that’s it.