Tag: Neil Gaiman

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.

car, buying, site and comp stuff

Monday, 30 October, 2006 at 9:55 pm

Well I took my car in to the dealership (not the one I bought from) and it was just a faulty seal in the fuel line, something like that, that could have been leaking gasoline. Eep. Cost my parents $300. Mum’s going to try talking to CarMax to make them pay for it because they had to drop the fuel tank over the summer to fix the fuel gauge, and they probably didn’t fix it all up completely which caused this recent problem. Don’t know if they’ll pay though. Hope they do. Got an oil change too, so I also hope there’s no sludge buildup in the engine.

Saturday my brother and I went to Best Buy. He bought Shaun of the Dead, and I bought Pink’s I’m Not Dead album and Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire special edition DVD. I was going to buy Absolute Sandman (Borders and Best Buy are right next to each other) but I remembered I had a 25% off coupon in my e-mail. I bought it the next day, when we went grocery shopping.

Insert rant about Border’s membership suckiness on actually saving me any money. I liked Waldenbooks’ Preferred Reader system, even though it probably would have put them out of business. I don’t know if I spent enough to reach the minimum required to get my holiday savings. *twitch twitch* I wish it were a minimum of $5 savings instead of $10.

Umm … I realized while writing the entry that I bought a $100 book when I bought Absolute Sandman volume one, and that if I doubled that amount I could buy this limited edition of American Gods. (But I think I’ll just buy the Melinda story. Or ask for it for Christmas. *grin*)

Ehm … I haven’t really touched Absolute Sandman yet. I kind of feel like Martin, Bart, and Milhouse when they bought the first issue of Radioactive Man. Don’t touch it! The oils on your fingers will ruin the pages! I already feel that way about (non-mass market paperback) books and try to only touch the outside of pages, how much worse will I be with a $100 book?

Last night I finished the whole process of backing up files onto my desktop so I could install Norton AntiVirus 2007 on my laptop. I don’t want to type up everything again but basically: the install was really slow, I stayed up til almost 12 finishing, and after it installed I didn’t restart I just shut down, so when I started today everything loaded really really slowly. I’m thinking the slowness is because I only have 256 RAM. I wish Daddy could figure out how to add to my RAM. boo.

I guess I didn’t need to backup everything, but I’m glad I did ’cause I was meaning to ever since summer. The reason I was reluctant is that I don’t want to abandon my laptop, I love (in a totally non-materialistic manner) my laptop and don’t want to stop using it just because I got a newer shinier toy. But I think I’ll keep maintaining my site files on my laptop. Even though I prefer to design on my desktop. XD; Also most all my music is on my laptop. I think I’ve turned it into my non-portable, ancient “paper weight” mp3 player. haha. Mickey loaned me his not-so-good but-still-great-nonetheless speakers, so those are connected to my laptop and the cheap Dell speakers are left on my desktop for Starcraft. I’m happy.

Absolute Sandman

Friday, 20 October, 2006 at 4:10 pm

*twitchtwitch* Something else I want. Must have. NEED. *snerk* But I don’t have $100, or even the $70 Amazon is selling it for.

I want a first edition though!! I’ve developed a taste for those things, ever since Neil Gaiman pointed out the differences between the first edition and second edition of Anansi Boys. At the time it didn’t matter much to me which one I bought, but since Waldenbooks Borders Express had the first edition, that’s the one I got. I grew very attached to it. When Fragile Things came out I made sure to get a first edition. Now Neil Gaiman has Absolute Sandman out and … and … I just NEED a first edition! ;_; *brat*

(Curse you, Neil! *shakes fist toward the sky*)

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save Harry Potter

Tuesday, 1 August, 2006 at 11:58 pm

Don’t Kill Harry!

That cracks me up. Probably because Harry Potter isn’t one of my favorite characters. I don’t really care for him. As long as she saves Ron and Hermione I’m happy.

But I have read stories where characters I’ve cared for have died. Thinking about it though, I don’t know if I would have those characters saved. Their passing adds something to the story, I suppose.

On the other hand, I’ve never read a story where the main character died. That is a bit weird, don’tcha think? Then again, I do want to see Harry die. I just think it would be … different. Something new. It would definitely make an impact. XD

Oh! I just remembered, a Neil Gaiman story had the main character die. Definitely, definitely, the character couldn’t have NOT died. It would have been a weak, lame, boring, disappointing conclusion.

On that note, hmmm … *grin*

naproxen sodium and rats (tho not together)

Saturday, 8 April, 2006 at 3:45 pm

I had a “naproxen sodium” (generic name; it can be sold under the label Aleve) this morning, and because I was kind of rushing I swallowed it without water. I’ve done it before! But I guess then I would take more care to drop it farther down my throat …

Regardless! This time I think it stuck in my throat. (I’m never sure if a pill sticks in my throat. It doesn’t feel like a lump, or really like anything’s stuck there. It’s just … pressure.) A few minutes after I guess it started dissolving, and my throat esophagus (by this time it’d traveled far down enough to get the more technical term used) started kind of burning. Not hot burning, a cold-ish burning … So I just kept swallowing spit (because I was in the car and not near a drink) to try and get rid of it.

It really hurt. :( A different kind of hurt than heartburn.

When I got home an hour or two later I ate some food. It still feels weird though. Like a cool (think “minty”) feeling behind my breastbone. I just hope I didn’t do some irreversible damage or anything. >_>

***

I think I want a rat.

I bought a Neil Gaiman rat from Lisa Snellings-Clark recently. I was looking through the other rats, and I think the Magic one is so cute! I like the Valentine’s one too.

Somewhere around the time I bought rat!Neil I found someone’s Livejournal that I read through a bit. This person had a few rats, and she kept posting stories and pictures of them. I thought they were cute. Plus people have said rats are smart.

I was thinking of getting a rat ’cause I want a pet during school, you know that whole “pets relieve stress” thing, but I didn’t want a dog or cat, I wanted a small pet. I didn’t want a guinea pig, because I thought it’d be a lot of trouble, too much trouble, with classes and all. So I thought of hamsters next, but then began to think that maybe a hamster would be too small for my tastes (although I guess there are ones larger than dwarf), and also that I wouldn’t like a nocturnal pet. (“Aww, you’re sleeping again? :(” *later at night* “Go to sleep! You’re keeping me up!”) So now I’m considering rats, although I’m still not sure.