Photo Booth

I went by my local Apple store today and played with the video iPod
(gasp! so gorgeous and lustworthy and the quality so so nice!) and the
nano again and the new iMacs and Photo Booth. These are the
results. Commentary can be found on my flickr page.



Also, if you look at the screen in the bottom right hand corner of each
image, you can see that it changes. That's because that was a
monitor playing the eminem commercial.

Know what's a great song?

"You can do magic" by America.

Anyone ever seen the movie Baron von Munchausen? (sp?)

Explanation of my grandmother's birthday:
It used to be considered very auspicious to have your birthday on New Year's Day because of the specialness associated with the day...would bring good fortune and all that jazz. So in older generations of Japanese there's a surprisingly large percentage of people with birthdays on 1/1 (thanks to their parents' creative documentation). We don't know when she was really born, but we think sometime in august.

Oshoogatsu is the japanese word for new year and Osechi ryori is the traditional japanese breakfast you eat on new year's day. At midnight the night before you eat noodles because they're long and help tie together and give a smooth transition to the two years. The breakfast itself has a billion different parts, and it's up to you and how much you're willing to cook how many of the dishes you'll eat. I'm too lazy to talk about all of them, but here are some of them:

Renkon (a root with holes in it) for "easy passage" (through the holes)
little shrimp for flexibility
little fish for the strength to swim with (against?) the current
beans for health
little bags of mochi for...prosperity? or is the mochi for...oh I forget.

Okay, I'm forgetting a lot of them, so instead I'll direct you here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osechi

and paste this blip from an article:
What, exactly, is osechi ryor? Osechi ryori is special food often cooked at home to celebrate New Year, one of the most important of Japanese festivals. New Year’s is a sort of Christmas and Thanksgiving wrapped into one, a time when family gather to celebrate. While osechi ryori differs by region and from family to family, the food has a lot in common. Some of this food is arranged in multi-layer lacquered boxes called jubako. The top box or tier often includes kamaboko (boiled fish-paste cakes), hiriame-no-kombujime (flounder with kelp) and kohada-no-sunomono (punctatus marinated in vinegar). The second box or tier might contain kabu-no-sunomono (turnip with vinegar), ebi (prawn), kuri (sweet chestnuts), and toriniku-no-terriyaki (grilled chicken basted with a sweet soy based sauce). A third box or tier might contain tai (sea bream), Ika (squid) and namabu (wheat glutton). The fourth or bottom tier might have nishime (boiled vegetables). Other of other foods may also be served in a variety of bowls along with osechi ryori. These include: kuromama (black beans in a boiled syrup) which symbolizes good health, kazunoko (herring roe, or eggs, most often seasoned with soy sauce) which is a symbol of procreativity, kurikinton (sweet chestnuts and mashed sweet potato boiled in a sweet sauce), nishime (an artistically arranged assortment of vegetables and burdock and lotus roots, taro and other ingredients), tazukur (a small sardine dish) that symbolizes a good harvest, and namasu (salad of shredded Japanese radish and carrot seasoned in vinegar). Other New Year’s dishes also include yakizakana (grilled fish), tosa (a special drink of spiced sake drunk in celebration and in prayer for the upcoming year, Kagamir-mochi (pounded rice cakes) offered to the gods, and zoni (a soup made of mochi along with vegetables, fish, chicken and other ingredients, seasoned with miso, a fermented soy paste).
(http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=404)

But we don't have ours in fancy lacquer boxes.

ps--check out the lyrics to "underwear" by the magnetic fields. cracks me up.

pps--tonight is daylight savings.

The question is this:

Do I spent 30 dollars plus gas money (say 15) to go see TMBG on tuesday the 8th in San Diego? That's sort of when I'm supposed to be in northern california with おばばさま, but buying plane tickets on this short notice will be too pricey, right? I should wait a few weeks to do that, RIGHT?

I owe it to them, I think, since they're so great in concert and I just spent 45 to see CoCa down there. However, maybe it's about time I cut down on the spending a little bit...my past few credit card bills have been a little bit insane...

But they're so GOOOD!

(sings: "they might be giants--OR--they might be giants...")

Hey who wants to go visit Seattle with me? (I say after saying I shouldn't spend so much money...sheesh. I'm incorrigible.)

this time

in my falling-asleep stage (before I was really in the thick of things) I managed to dream about something so stressful and worrisome that I woke up feeling sick to my stomach. Don't really remember what it was about.

The good news is that later last night/this morning as part of a big dream involving me living in a weird apartment/dorm complex I ended up running out the door without pants on (underwear, shirt, no pants, go figure), and when I realized my error, instead of dying of embarrassment, I decided to play it cool, so I plastered a big smile on my face and ran back home as if I had meant to do it. I think the fact that no one was laughing at me helped me retain composure, but still. If it means that that degree of mettle is already swimming around my subconscious, I've got to go pull it out.

In other news, I'm seriously considering some sort of self-imposed moratorium on electronic communication, just for a few days, for the sake of my mental and emotional well-being. There are a few unhealthy habits I'm trying to break, and that's not going to be possible if I've got my digital IV drip going 24/7. So we'll see if it has to come to that.

For now, it's off to the hammery, where I'm not even special enough to see real hams. Sigh.

Casting quarters into wells that hold our dreams

Today was a good day because I swam this morning, and I had a good hair day. (har har--you think that's funny, but it's true.)

**********

Does anyone remember the sitcom from the 80s or 90s where after closing time a bunch of mannequins would come to life?

**********

Here's a question for you East-Coasters:

Do you get orb spiders in the pre-snow fall? Because if you don't, that seals the deal. New England has at least a solid 25% of my loyalty. I already really liked the fall there, but not having to worry about walking through giant spider webs (it seems the center is always at eye level, so you focus on the spider right as it's two inches from your nose) would make it the undisputed winner of that contest. There's no doubt that I find my winter much more convenient, and my summer is not sticky like yours, and my spring lasts longer than Hanover's (longer than 2 weeks isn't hard to do, though), but fall...you win, New England. That is, if you don't get the spiders. If you do, well, then, the jury's still out. (That's okay, though, because it's probably still at 20% with or without the spiders.)

It seems my life's become much more boring since I've started being out of the house from eight thirty to five thirty every day. Sigh. That artistic motivation I mentioned earlier is dead already. It took about three hours. Oh well. It'll come back. At least all this time spent sorting dailies from thirty stores into piles on the floor (it's great--it's like cleaning someone else's room, which is something I'm quite fond of) keeps me from thinking too much about other things. ...kind of. When it gets too mindless it's daydream city. :
Odd, last night I dreamt of Whitney again, except this time we had a huge conversation about how she stayed behind when her family moved to Arizona (I don't know if she did or not, but they did), and it was cool, because I hadn't talked to her in a long time and she's a neat person. I wonder why in the world I've been dreaming about seeing her again. (We used to have the best wars against her little brother and his friend. We didn't have nerf guns at home but she had a whole box full, so we'd get the walkie talkies and a stack of guns and hide out on the hillside and engage them in all-out firefights. It was majorly sweet. I really, really want to try paintball, except that I'm afraid of getting hit from close up and bruised. I used to love playing laser tag, and my favorite thing to do was snipe from close up. I'm a big fan of guerilla warfare. I had terrible sportsmanship because I used to hide behind things and sneak behind my enemies and then shoot them in the back from where they couldn't see me. I get such a rush from being the unseen warrior. Heh, heh. There's nothing better than hearing "wait, what the heck? who just shot me?" Wow, that was a freaking long and random aside.)

dangit!

Foiled again! Jess Glago was the only student in the Maya class to be mentioned by name in the article in the lastest issue of the alumni magazine (they did a feature on the class, albeit only 2 pages' worth). In fact, it was pretty much the Lorie Loeb and Jess Glago Show. Dangit! I thought I had that one in the bag...the alum who wrote it emailed Mike and I to tell us we were the only ones whose name she remembered...sigh. Oh well. Garr, jessica, garr. :P But hey, that's cool, you're famous to any alums who read the article now. :)

How come everything I think I need

Always comes with batteries



This is the picture I was talking about.



carry my joy on the left, carry my pain on the right



I like prangstgrup's lecture musical and their silent dance party and their start-up sound. I've been in that auditorium at Columbia.



I'm tired of the old shit let the new shit begin



Ilya made me a lifehacker. I feel more productive already.



be brutally honest, was it better before me?



As silly as it is, I'm really proud that I can tell Miles from Coltrane.



what do you think it means?

it's not that I'm so busy,

it's that I have nothing to say because nothing's going on.

This morning my dad gave me an introduction to the Art of Pruning.

Dad: green thumb
+
Mom: black thumb (<--her sister also has a black thumb, but her mom is queen of ikebana/bonsai/growing things in general...what would that be, like, two green thumbs?)
-----------------
???

Maybe I won't kill things like my mom, if the talent skipped a generation.

Kina got a new corn snake called Jeremy Fisher, so now Hubert has a friend. This is all your fault, Dan.

I joined 43 things and 43 places. One more way to waste time online, but hopefully this one will inspire me to get off my butt. (In fact, one of my 43 things is "get off my butt." A little bit of irony there.)

one more wish to you

Apparently I'm so good at checking other people's math and entering inventories that I've been asked to come back to Honeybaked next week. Oh yes. I am moving up in the world. I tell you, I've gots da mad temp0r skillz.

No, but seriously, my dad's new associate (did I tell you he hired a japanese doctor? totally gonna practice on him) has a patient who imports anime and sells it to Cartoon Network. I'm not getting any hopes up, but maybe I can weasel my way into something better than ham.

I saw the video for "my humps" today. *groan*

ps--I was wrong, they do have free samples. in the fridge. their turkey is better than their ham, imho.

pps--I have renewed artistic inspiration. here's hoping it lasts.

that was good.

I got dressed up after work to look like I had attitude so I wouldn't get spit on by some angsty high school boy in size zero jeans with prettier hair than mine and eyeliner and a tight hoodie and a red handkerchief tied around his leg (there were sooo many there). When you're at a show alone you're more prone to being judged by strangers, I've found. Because of that I completely missed mewithoutyou and didn't get to buy my ticket to the Jason Mraz show next week. Oh well. I caught the end of dredg and they were good. I like music that makes me feel like I'm on drugs (dredg, Jason Mraz, and long extended guitar solos at the ends of concerts fall into this category), as well as music that makes me feel like I'm somewhere else (trance, imogen, some new age fall into this one, among others), and music that makes me feel powerful (like a lot of rap). The blood brothers' lead singer was the kind of vocalist who'll be out of a job in a few years because his vocal cords will be reduced to three or four microscopic fibers from all the screaming. I could have gone without that, but it gave me a chance to sit down.

Coheed and Cambria themselves were great. Fancy backdrop this time, and sort of a scripty-thing going on in the sense that they opened exactly like their album and played through for a few songs before breaking back into old stuff (so the bassist got to scream after all). I stood in the back on the wheelchair ramp and leaned against the railing, so not only was I safe from flying teenagers, I got something to lean against AND an elevated view. You taller people would not believe what we shorter people have to put up with when we go to concerts. Even at a foot above ground level I was still susceptible to the fro of the 6 foot something guy who decided to stand right in front of me. (why do the tall ones have to have big hair too?) The music was amazing...don't really have much I can say about that. It was really good to feel it. Would have been more substantial if I'd immersed myself in the sweaty crowd, but I wasn't feeling up to it. The one mistake they made was having a scripted exit...they finished the final chord and immediately walked off the stage as a really calming, peaceful, eerie little melody began to play (accompanied by pretty blue lights) that made people think that something else was coming, plus it was all too calming to make people want to scream for an encore. As a result, it was the weakest post-show applause I'd ever seen, and I started to get scared that they wouldn't come back out (even though no one in the room was leaving, because we all knew it was coming). I could sense the fear course through the room as people desperately tried to rouse a cheer from the crowd. After a failed rhythmic clap, someone got a chant going, and that finally did the trick. Phew.

On the way home...wait. Let me start over.
I'll be the first to admit that I was born without an internal compass. I once ended up halfway through Pendleton on my way to LA (but this was six months after I had gotten my license and I hadn't done that much freeway driving, neither did I have good directions to go by, and it was dark so I couldn't see the signs...) and my mom has never let me live it down. However, while I may not be able to tell east from west (my mom says "the mountains are to the east, the ocean to the west," you can never see the ocean, and the mountains are only visible on a clear day, and I'm too lame to look at the sun), I like to believe that I have a *sense* for getting myself un-lost. A good skill to have since I tend to get myself lost on a semi-regular basis. So sometimes I perform an experiment--if I find myself lost, rather than pull a u-turn and try to retrace my steps, I rely on my spider sense to bring me back to civilization (or wherever it is I'm trying to go). This also applies when I'm on foot. And it always works. I can find my way anywhere, it just might not be via the most direct route. It makes me feel better about myself, if nothing else. Reassures me that I won't starve to death if I ever get lost without my Thomas Guide or a cellphone.

I performed this experiment last night, since a wrong turn put me on the other side of Mission Bay from where I needed to be. It was a nice night, and I had CoCa on to prolong the feeling, so I decided not to rush and just follow my nose. It worked, and I got a nice relaxing drive amongst the pretty lights of San Diego and Mission Bay in the dark.

So yeah, it was good.

have you seen it?






and smaller loves

I am a monkey.

or something.

First day on the job=barely worth writing about. I'll keep it short so you don't die of boredom.

It's at Honeybaked Ham's corporate office, and happens to be right next door to a prison I didn't even know existed. I thought that was funny.

It's a very tiny office, full of only a handful of employees (and another temp twice my age), including some old people, some 30ish females, and one late 20s guy who doesn't seem to do anything all day but purchase and install new lamps around the office. Dress code, well, isn't, really.

I spent the day putting together things to be mailed to their retail stores. Fun thing: got to play with the postage-by-phone machine. Hooray for feeding envelopes and labels through a speedy little printer! My fingers are raw from all the sticky.

I also got to sit in the VP's chair since he wasn't in today. All the people in the office who didn't meet me looked really surprised when they saw a little girl sitting in the comfy exec's chair in the big office. Heh, heh. Should have pretended I was the new boss.

Also, there are plastic pointy things called "Nylon Prongs" which hold the hams when you cook them. I had to fill forty envelopes with fifty each of these little buggers from out of a giant box (and filled my hands with fiberglass-type...fibers...of nylon or something) by guesstimating how much my fist could hold (I did an average over several test grabs...just to be scientific) so I wouldn't have to kill myself counting out fifty each time. There were two left over. I took them as souvenirs. I'm pretty sure I'll never find a good use for them.

I also did mind-numbing things like separating the pink, yellow, and white sheets from huge stacks of that old-fashioned printer paper with the tear-off feed holes on each side. I retained my sanity by making each task a test of how fast and efficient I could be. I wanted to frustrate my superior by making her hiring of a temp more work than if she'd done it herself, simply because I'd finish each job so quickly she wouldn't have time to do any of her own work before she needed to give me something new to do.

So I didn't *really* want to frustrate her, but that was sort of what I was going for.

Apparently tomorrow I get to check some math in Excel (read: select cells, click "SUM", draw check-mark on piece of paper, rinse, repeat). At least I'll get to listen to my ipod. Or at least they haven't told me to stop yet.

Thrilling. But hey, I'm a huge fan of menial labor, as long as I know I have alternative methods of making a living available to me should I choose to pursue them.

May your night be exhilarating and productive.

-m

My internet is currently down AGAIN, but I'm going to bite my tongue and instead draft this in textedit. Look at me being efficient. (Note: this entry's gonna have some cuts in it so it doesn't look so scary long on the front page)

Today I got my first call from my temp agency. Tomorrow I start a week-long stint as a file monkey for Honeybaked Ham's corporate office. Sweet. A week seems just long enough to get my kicks without killing myself, so that's fine. It'll be something to do during the day. It makes my trip to San Diego on thursday a little more squeezy, but I'll live. I probably won't like the openers anyway. Woohoo, ham.

*****

I've fallen in love with Ladera Ranch, the several year old city located in what used to be a valley between my house and Saddleback Mountain. The city planners really got it right this time--the "mercantile" area (as they call it) is extremely cute, quaint and main-streetish while still looking new and interesting, there are footpaths that run from a road behind the shops into the residential area (so your kids can ride/walk to the store), the houses range from small and adorable things with front porches (but tiny yards, gotta make some sacrifices) to big houses with big yards and mountain views that look more like the typical suburban development to little condo complexes where six or so places all open into a little shared courtyard with benches and stuff and a walkway that leads out to the main street... They do a really good job of changing up the designs and colors so they don't have every third house identical (the plague of suburbia: cookie cutter housing developments). The elementary school is next to the middle school, and the school's library doubles as the city library (only downside: no adults during school hours, so as to avoid molesters, I suppose) so the kids have a great resource/place to go study if their parents can't pick them up. Plus there are no huge streets in the whole neighborhood so your kids could pretty much walk everywhere. There's been a big shift in these parts lately towards not knowing your neighbors, so I think this project was an effort to reverse that. There are parks scattered throughout, even a little gazebo for performances and a mini baseball diamond. Trees everywhere, too, and all the houses are just overflowing with things growing around and on them (I love ivy on houses!). Oh, and all the bigger intersections are roundabouts. :P The whole place really feels like someone manufactured Maine (don't ask me why) or something in southern california. It feels east coast, not west coast. It's "Hometown USA" right across the street. If all that sounds funny to you people who are used to this sort of thing being natural, it's new to me, because I live in, well, not that. I had just about given up on raising kids here, even though I love the weather and the location/opportunities, because I would be afraid to let my kids walk across the street by themselves, but Ladera Ranch has redeemed Orange County for me. Not that I don't still love New England, but this place doesn't have the bitter cold winters or snow that requires shoveling.

*****

Do you remember when Nintendo Power used to make images with their collected spine art (confusing description, sorry)? Like when you'd stack them all next to each other and you'd see mario or link? That was cool. :)

*****

When I was helping my dad with his shelves I found a really old copy of The Divine Comedy, not to mention two copies of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (I'll take one, thank you very much), and A Tear And A Smile by Kahlil Gibran. (I've got to get my hands on a copy of The Prophet. I'm sure he's got one somewhere.) I haven't started Anansi Boys yet (have to finish the hard sci-fi book I'm reading right now just to prove to him that I like that genre), but as soon as I'm done...I've probably got five or six lined up. Then there's Why I Am Not A Christian and Marriage and Morals by Bertrand Russell, Narcissus and Goldmund and Siddartha by Hesse, Wuthering Heights, and I never did finish The Poisonwood Bible (even though I said I did and gave a report on it in senior english). Yay. My dad said at one point he'd set aside for me all the books he owns that have "changed his life," so to speak. So that's all something to look forward to. (Maybe I'll reread Fahrenheit 451 and The Giver, too...I like those.)

*****

Here's something that's...um...awkward. Emi wants to introduce me to the twenty-something chef at the restaurant at which she hostesses. He's "interested in meeting me," but I can't get her to understand that without knowing anything about me or having seen a picture, the only thing going through his head is "I sure hope this underage hottie has a comparable older sister." He's apparently a musclebound mexican who enjoys working out and fixing up cars. And he's a chef at a golf club restaurant. Uh huh. AND, she wants me to meet the 23 year old new band director at my high school. I don't know why she's trying so hard to play matchmaker all of a sudden, and with weird candidates, too. I'd really rather avoid being set up with anyone at this point. Not really...yeah. Not interested. I guess that's what high school girls like to do, though.

*****

Apparently my sister and her friend have a new favorite game (the old favorite is "Would you rather..." with the grossest possible alternatives, like "would you rather eat a plate of dog poop or have all your friends spit in a cup and drink it?" Or there's the game's variation, the opportunity cost game, wherein my sister asks, "Would you swim in a pool of vomit for $500? $1000?" and tries to discern exactly how much you value your dignity) called "Marry, Kill, Do." You give someone three options (people, animals, objects, anything goes) and they have to choose one to marry, one to kill, and one to do. If you're sitting in a car of four people, that game gets dangerous. One scenario I was given as an example was, "A 12" length of pipe, Mrs. L (my senior english teacher), and an In'N'Out burger." I can tell you right now which one anyone would kill (hint: it's the only thing that's sentient), and the last two really depend on who you ask.

-m

*****

--The sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Checkering the ground--from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent upward; he looks up--the clouds are split
Asunder,--and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
...

-A Night-Piece (excerpt), Wordsworth

I am a web junkie

I just found out about the facebook's new photo album feature, so I spent my evening (pre and post halo) putting lots of pictures up. Here I go again with my eternal struggle--I yearn to be the mysterious one, but while I'm not paying attention I go ahead and run around the room, screaming and waving my arms. So much for conservatism. I try not to put everything out there, though. I reserve some of the good stuff for special people.

I just

played Halo with a bunch of people four and five years younger than me while my sister wasn't even home. I lost horribly, yes, but I killed Nick with a rocket launcher twice, and for that I am proud.

Amusingly, that was the highlight of my day.

Will someone come play tennis with me?

This morning in the pool I was making a noise while I was swimming (I forget why) and it reminded me of times when I'd cry during practice for one reason or another, usually because I'd be having a bad day and Lynch would be extra mean to me or something. Crying while you're swimming is actually ideal, since your face is already wet and no one can hear you, nor can they see your face being all contorted. Usually you can get it all out before you get out of the pool and it'll barely be noticeable. It does hamper your speed, form, and breathing, though.

I also remembered how I used to sing lyrics in my head to make swimming back and forth for 2 hours seem less monotonous. Not whole songs, usually just a few bars or so, and it had to be a song with a strong beat and an appropriate tempo that I could stroke to.

...man, that stuff was boring.

Woof!

I am the one and only member (and will probably stay that way) of a new facebook group that I just created. Mwa ha ha. For those of you not on the facebook...I cry for you.

But alright, I'll tell you. It's called "Steve Jobs' Keynote Speeches Bring Tears To My Eyes. (no, seriously.)"

:D

this was the rat, btw

dead rat
Originally uploaded by Beepifier.

(speechless)

JESUS CHRIST I LOVE THIS COMPANY

BrainsGRAGH

For an explanation of the subject line of this post, refer to the design of my new shirt:


I hate hormones, because they made me cry (a lot) while watching the prom queen episode of MADE on MTV. They turned this gothy punky hardcore angry Brittany Fontaine:

into this pretty in pink Brittany Fontaine:

and her prom dress looks a lot like one of mine, except fifty times cooler:

I actually really liked her beforehand (her dark hair with the blond chunks in the front is a style I would have done for myself in high school if my hair had been straighter, and the only thing keeping me from avril eyeliner is the shape of my eyes), and she's really pretty in general, but she looked good afterward, too. The big thing was that it brought her from zero self-confidence to a lot, and when her coach was having her recite self-affirmations into the mirror in the morning ("I am brittany fontaine, and I love and respect myself," "I am brittany fontaine, and I am a beautiful and caring goddess," and great stuff like that) half of me was scoffing at the ridiculousness of it all and half of me was busy being moved by the power of weird stuff like that (once in jazzercise class when I was going with my mom my small, kind of frumpy teacher told the class, regarding a little coffee party or something they were having [which I did not go to...I am not yet a middle-aged woman], "you don't need to bring anything except you and your beautiful bodies," and amidst all the silliness of that statement I actually teared up because her words slammed into me like a wrecking ball and for a split second I understood what she was saying and really, truly believed it, despite all my flaws--it was like a little moment of transcendence into the world of self-acceptance bliss).

But oh, when she tore up her speech and got all into it, the tears, they just wouldn't stop...(and then I realized that I am a moron and need to not watch TV when I'm "emotionally prone" like this)

are you all running as fast as you can in the opposite direction now? probably a good move. the more you get to know me...(look, I'm natalie portman in garden state! you're totally freaked out now, aren't you. you're, like, running for the door.)

In more relevant news, this morning I got myself all set up at the temp agency. I must say that the most stressful part was filling out the job history section. They expect you to know so much about them! Ack! I turned down a full time receptionist job starting tomorrow because I hate phones, but I'm sure that one day I'll be brave enough. I also embarrassed myself by doing kind of lame on the excel test because I kept forgetting I wasn't allowed to use keyboard shortcuts. It was also running on an ancient PC, so it took five hours to load each question. Sad thing is that I scored 87% accuracy on the Excel test but the national average was 67%. Heh. Typing speed wasn't bad, either. I'm definitely faster at typing from my head than from looking at something, though. The word test was laughable, and I did decent on the 10-key numeric data entry test. I'm all set to be a super duper data entry assistant! Yay!

: |

What happens when I get addicted to something

My back is killing me, and this is why:





As I went on I got lazier (note: images NOT shown in the order in which I made them), not to mention that the selection of some types of features is quite limited (not to mention the lack of appropriate colors), so forgive me if I couldn't get your likeness quite right. (If you recognize yourself say "aye" :) ) I would've gone through every person I know if I hadn't started being in pain. :\ It was fun, though.

(From here, thanks Dan for finally finding it.)

Also, thanks to stupid baseball Arrested Development won't be back on until after Halloween. Poopy. At least the Angels are giving the Yankees a good game.

Homecoming

emiandjosh.jpg
Originally uploaded by Beepifier.

Whose sister is sexay? That's what I thought...

This is the younger brother of a guy a year younger than me who had a crush on both me and my middle sister (whom he was a year older than). He can brag to his older brother that he finally got some Grannis action. She still doesn't have a boyfriend, though.

Is it convincing?

A little blurry, but not too shabby for a first try, in my opinion.

freeestyle

I went swimming today for the first time since I got back from the right coast. I smell like chlorine and my hair looks like a bird's nest now (better than cap hair, though), but it feels good to be moving again. Hopefully my dad'll be able to keep swimming with me, otherwise I'll never exercise. *gasp*

also, unf unf.

...

There are college freshmen and high school seniors making foil/masking tape skulls in the garage, and I can hear their Jethro Tull through my floor.

No car + no friends in town = SO BORING!!!!!!! I helped my sister find a dress and get ready for Homecoming tonight, but other than that, the most exciting parts of my day are going grocery shopping or to the bank with my mom and watching movies sometimes at night. My dad thinks I'm a total slug, and I sort of am! There's NOTHING TO DOOOOOOO...aside from work on my resume, of course. :) He offered to play Spite and Malice, but I'm too lazy to get out the cards........arrgghhhh! This house is PARALYZING MEEEE!!!!!!

I think it's time for a movie. Or maybe I should go to Golden Spoon and get some frozen yogurt, even though I didn't work out today. At least it's something to do.

Hooray for broadcasting my ennui over the intarweb!

Oops

Every time I've been to Blockbuster lately they haven't had Magnolia in. There's only one copy, so I hope someone didn't keep it and they didn't bother to replace it. : \ In its stead I rented Little Women since I hadn't seen it in a while, but when I got home I was looking through our video collection and realized that (as I had suspected) we already had it on VHS. :\ Thank goodness for class-action suits and free rental coupons, I suppose. In my search I also realized, to my delight, that we owned The Princess Bride on VHS, as well as Bedknobs and Broomsticks and just about every Disney Movie ever made (up until they started to get lame). I also found out that while I was away at school we bought a lot of great movies on DVD like Donnie Darko (non-director's cut...haven't seen that yet, should be interesting to see what it felt like without the book scenes and such), Big Fish, and KIDS (which I've been meaning to see for a while).

Also, today Emi gave me an autographed paper plate that she got when Nickel Creek played at the MV lake. Yay! :)

!!!

There's nothing like a great lead. But let me rewind.

Tonight I went to go meet Hiwi (hillary, my sophomore year roommate and swing dancing pal) in Pasadena at the Lindy Groove. It was supposed to be a good opportunity to blow off steam, and it was. As I was leaving the house, I noticed that the moon and a planet were hanging unbelievably brightly in the sky. The moon was a narrow orange crescent and several inches below the planet, so it looked as if the former were hanging from the latter. It almost looked like a dangly earring you might find in a store that sells ugly jewelry, except that this was really pretty. (However, when I drove home after midnight I noticed that the moon had moved out of view, so it makes sense that it wouldn't have been visible three time zones over from me at the time I saw it.)

I was also really impressed with my iPod, because on the way up I heard CoCa four or five times (I probably have 30 or 40 songs out of 3800 or so of them, so pretty neat). However, I didn't hear them once on the way down. Also on the way up I was parked on the freeway for ten minutes while a police helicopter used its giant searchlight to look for the "run" in a hit and run that had just happened.

The dance itself was amazing. Let me say it again, there's nothing like a great lead. Even when I'm rusty as all get-out a really good lead can make me feel like I've been dancing my entire life. There was Roy and Mike and J.P. and some other people, including, in the order that I danced with them (this is funny, really): Steve, the "class act" Hillary dated for two months prior to a week ago, who was stylistically amazing, a really strong lead, and said I was "f**cking fun as hell," Eric, a tall guy and really good dancer from out of town who asked me to dance several times even though I embarrassed myself through most of it, and Dan, one of Hillary's friends with whom I was only lucky enough to dance to one slow recovery song, but he's ridiculously clean and smooth in his lead and I barely felt like I was working at all. I did my fair share of dancing like a complete idiot, and I even elbowed one of the founders of the Lindy Groove in the face, and I was red-faced and out of breath and sweaty the whole night, but I had a ridiculously good time. Hillary is the queen of style, as always...I wish my feet were as free as hers to float around as they please.

On the way home I noticed how nice it felt to put on cruise control and stretch out my legs in front of me as I steered with a few fingers of one hand down a mostly empty six-lane-plus-carpool freeway. I remembered that I really like the song Caring is Creepy, and I thought of this question again:

Just what is it that Meatloaf won't do for love? I've never really paid enough attention to catch that part. Is it the line about "forgetting what she feels like" or something? Hmm. Too lazy to even look up the lyrics.

The worst part of going out is coming home. The part of the drive home that you do every time no matter where you're coming from. On the one hand doing it at 1 am with almost no cars on the road and good music isn't that bad, but I find myself getting impatient when I start seeing familiar streets. Until then it's sort of an adventure, but once I'm back on the 5 south going through Irvine and then passing Alicia, El Toro, La Paz...it's almost unbearably boring and I wish I could just be home already. But I digress.

As I was driving back up towards my house, I looked to where the moon had hung before, only to see empty dark blue sky. However, as if the night felt bad for moving the moon, when I looked back in the opposite direction I saw Orion, clear as day. I can only see the really bright stars from my suburbian house, so it was Orion (and the other major constellations nearby), all alone against a navy blue backdrop, without any extra little specks peppering the inside of his outline. It was neat, and almost fake-looking.

Now my feet are tired and I should take my contacts out and sleep. MmmI hope I sleep well tonight. I think I will.

Goodnight.

PS--AH! Almost forgot to mention! Today I went to the asian market and found the best things ever. They're Japanese (of course, who else would come up with something so random), and they're called トレーニングスリッパ (training slippers). Imagine house slippers, and then cut off the heel part so it only goes over your foot and under the ball. I was able to read most of the Japanese on the bag, and it says that they're for training you to not only shift your weight forward into a more attractive position (think: wearing heels), but it also works your calf muscles like mad, slimming your ankles and giving you definition. I don't really need these, since luckily I didn't inherit Japanese daikon legs, but they were really cheap and it's pretty fun to walk around on your toes all day with good padding under the front of your foot. Plus I like having calf definition, so I figure it can't hurt. :) It's funny, because the bag says "ハードトレーニング用" (for hard training use) and I have no idea what exactly they mean by "hard." I was moments away from blowing a lot more money on a pillow that makes sitting seiza a lot less crippling, but I talked myself out of that one.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Slashdot says:
"eggegg is one of many readers to write to tell us that "Autodesk, of AutoCAD and 3dsmax fame, is reporting that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Alias, makers of Maya and MotionBuilder. Will Autodesk use the inherited expertise and codebase to finally develop their product line for the platforms most of their customer base would prefer, or does this mean the end of development of Alias products on OSX and Linux?"

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Wah wah wah wah wah wah! Maya is SO much cooler than 3dsMax. wah wah wah wah wah autodesk is poopy. They'd better not do anything stupid.

Also, I'm now "out of a job," so to speak. Emi is dropping math because it's making her break down at school (I kind of think it's a cheap move to start bawling at school/work in order to get out of getting in trouble/get sent home early...I know she's not doing it on purpose, but still...), so I'm no longer her tutor. This is actually a really really good thing, since A I'm no longer costing my parents money they shouldn't and really can't afford to be paying me to babysit my sister, and 2 this frees up my afternoons and evenings to get started looking for a real job.

Also, last night I woke up to a shaking bed only to find that my dog's legs were twitching in her sleep. Funny, since I had just told somebody that I'd never seen my dog have running dreams.

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home.

make yourself.

short update from hanover

I had a whole list of things but I forgot most of them:

-Corpse Bride = very good movie, much more sophisticated than its predecessor.
-Feet = good
-Poisonous blood = bad
-That postman book from my childhood where you could read other people's letters = friggin' awesome
-some other stuff too
-the dark = scary
-coffee coffee buzzbuzzbuzz ice cream = too many chocolate bits but very yummy
-Fresca = new packaging
-naps = good
-non-wintry hanover = good
-black t-shirts = good
-old friends = good
-my tummy = talking to me