I kept thinking yesterday that it was Friday, what with akatonbo's extra night off coming at the start of her work week, and mine coming at the end of my work week. Usually Thursday is the only mutual day off we have, then I sit up all night and costume while watching X-Files and Star Trek, then take her off to work. So night before last, I was watching TV and costuming, and thought I'd have to take her to work... and kept being kind of startled when I realized that I didn't. And then today actually being Friday, I only just recalled that I still don't. Three mutual days off in a row never happens unless we specifically ask for days off...

So I've been mostly car shopping during the daylight hours, and costuming at night. Between those things, also went to my old vet clinic and asked if they have the medical records for the bunnygirls. They don't, so we're just completely baffled as to where the girls' medical history is now.

On the costuming front, Hokuto is done aside from shoes, gloves, garters, a couple extra buttons on the shirt (maybe an hour of work at most), actually attaching the medals to their ribbons (waiting for paint to dry now), and the cravat. I'm waiting to see if they'll get the variety of sparkly fabric that mithrigil used for Sei's cravat before I make that last part, and she found gloves which will at some point be sent. So basically I need to figure out where I can get little clips for the garters (I think I know, though), buy some buttons, and then figure out what exactly I'm going to make the shoes out of, though I have some old pairs of sneakers I may just build on top of. And we got fabric yesterday for Nokoru, which should be amazingly simple after this, except that I may have to make tassels and frogs by hand.

I just hope the wig problem works out okay. Tried to get the same wig as my twin is wearing, for obvious reasons, but Amphigory is out of that wig, and Cosworx doesn't have quite the right color. I ordered one from there anyway, since 1 and 1B don't look very different unless you're in really bright light, but since Amphigory said it was a supplier issue and they wouldn't be able to get it for a month... well, Cosworx might have the same supplier issue, unless they order their wigs from a supplier in advance, meaning that what's listed on the dropdown is what they actually have in stock right that moment. So I may have no way to get the right wig at all before Otakon. :P But there are a couple backup possibilities if Cosworx can't get it either. I just hope there are no supplier issues with that manufacturer.

The car search has been kind of frustrating, in that no one wants to actually give us prices - they want to show us cars that "we could get you financing on". Look, I don't care what I can get financing on. I'm pretty sure I can get financing for an affordable monthly payment on a lot of things that are twice or more what I want to spend. I care about what I'll actually be spending, and what cars are available that can be had for that price. Not "per month", not "for X amount of months" - the actual end price. I know what I want to spend, and that's what I'll be spending. Not more, regardless of whether it's a low monthly payment and barely any money down. I'd rather pay as much as I have up front so there will be less to pay in the future, in fact. But dealerships just want to talk about how much money we could get through their financing program, so mostly we wind up sitting around and listening to people talk about stuff we don't need to know. :P

But we have test-driven a few cars that I liked. Sadly, the PT Cruiser I kind of fell in love with has horrible mileage, so nooooooo - our best prospect so far is a little Chevy Cobalt, but it's perhaps my LEAST favorite color for cars (white) and not very interesting. It just runs very nicely and has very good mileage, and we could get an '05 within our price range, which would make it the newest car I'd ever have DRIVEN, let alone owned. Yesterday we went to another dealership, and after doing some financing preliminaries, and then sitting around for a couple hours waiting for the woman who could allegedly tell us what we might get approved for, the woman who had already been taking care of us asked if we wanted to take a walk over to Taco Bell with her, since it might be a while... and then told us frankly that in our financial situation, we could get a better financing deal than their "we'll approve anybody! (and then give them a ridiculous interest rate)" dealership and thus could easily acquire a cheaper car elsewhere, and gave us her husband's card - he works at a more ordinary dealership - and said she'd give him a call to let him know to take care of us, since we'd been so patient. I totally appreciated that. ;)

Meanwhile, one of our banks doesn't want to give us a loan because we have hardly any credit history (which is what the aforementioned dealership's program is all about - they will help people without credit or with bad credit build it up quickly), and we're still waiting on word from the other - which won't come today due to the holiday. Crap. Not too worried, though - dealerships seem to be a lot more eager to finance car buyers than banks, and my dad noted that in his experience, the dealerships often have better deals.

However, holiday. A lot of places probably won't be open today, thus we can't run assorted errands, and the woman we spoke to yesterday seemed to be indicating that her husband at least wouldn't be at the dealership today... which means we can't do much today except maybe hit some other dealerships in the meantime, and possibly be more firm about "No, really, not financing info. PRICES. As if, if I walked in here ready to write a personal check for $10,000 or under today, do you have anything that you would sell me?" And maybe buy those clips and buttons, since I know Jo-Ann's is open for limited hours.

Basically I'm incredibly bored, except for the brief period of time that I spent playing case 3 of Apollo Justice tonight. Mwahahaha jerky rock stars. :D Possibly I should get back to writing that fic which I left on a nasty cliffhanger, even though on days off I try to get things done that I can't do on work days. Writing I can do at work, so I don't waste my valuable home time on it much these days...

Aw... I just got salmoned again, and the guy didn't want to talk.

( If you don't know or care about descriptivist versus prescriptivist grammar, you may safely skip the rest of this entry. )

What I'm twitting about today:

• 13:21 My hair feel so nice! Also I am mildly naughty and had a beer with lunch! Tasty Sam Adams Summer Ale #
• 18:30 wow dave is late. ;_; I hope he calls soon. I'm huuuungry. #
• 19:01 ... I think I'm allergic to Hamburger Helper. O_O. Or at least something in the Cheesy Italian Shells one. #
• 19:03 Also I need to remember to buy some chap frames for my Subversive Cross-stitches. #
• 19:04 ... cheap frames, not chap frames. *sigh* #

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So I went on a 10 day trip to China almost entirely subsidized by the UC system. Woooo!!! It was a once in a lifetime experience and I really had an incredible time... and a much, MUCH needed vacation touring Beijing and Shanghai.

I am much too lazy to update with lots of details, but suffice it to say Beijing is a beautiful city, and I had a wonderful time, saw lots of amazing sights, and met lots of great people.

I took way, way too many pictures there, and I uploaded them online! They are located here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/cwcain/ChinaPhotos2008Part1Beijing

http://picasaweb.google.com/cwcain/ChinaPhotos2008Part2SuzhouHangzhouAndShanghai

Now to try to sleep and finally get over jetlag! Yay 15 hour time differences and an international dateline. zzz.

So, today I was puttering about the lab and doing my thing. Which, at the moment, was to help prepare stuff for the educational day camps the lab runs during the summer. Then I hear that someone was using the school's phone number and slipping cards into people's doors claiming that their children had been enrolled in a camp that is not a part of the school's educational camp regimes. Alarm bells went off immediately in my head; this guy is either a fraud or some creep planning to use the camp as a cover for kidnapping. Someone brought up the idea of calling the police, so I hope the lab follows through on that.

With Summer I term ending, my internship will formally end too. But, I'll probably stick around for a couple of weeks after so that I can take advantage of the opportunity. Then when it gets hotter, I'll head back home to work on that novel.

I need to talk to management later about the neighbor playing loud music at this hour.

This week's questions were suggested by pageless.

1. What drink wakes you up best in the morning?
2. During the day, what do you drink to keep going?
3. Do you drink the recommended 8 glasses of water per day? Why/why not?
4. What are the ingredients of your favorite mixed drink? (Doesn't have to be alcoholic!)
5. Are you a coffee drinker? How do you take your coffee, if so?


Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/thefridayfive/1466.html

Old sets that were used have been deleted, so please feel free to suggest some more! Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going.

So, in order to calm my bitter feelings, I spent all day today seeing Hancock, having lunch, and working on the Impala. Movie was good, lunch was better, and I've only gotten about a quarter of the car sanded. Lots of rust to deal with, and way too many dings and dents for my liking.

I hope you smarmy bastards at AX are having fun, even though we all totally agreed not to go because downtown LA is a sucky place to have a giant con, but WHATEVS. This is the first one I'll be missing since what.. freshman year of high school? Take lots of pictures, text me when something awesome happens, and buy me Supernatural fanart from Artist Alley. Especially if you can find Ponderosa, because her stuff is wicked hot.

Sigh. Like, my whole flist is GONE, so who am I going to stay up late with now that I pretty much have all weekend free? BLARG.

Also, Happy Birthday Shannon, if you even still read this.

IT IS HOT. SOMEONE PLEASE TURN DOWN THE SUN.

EDIT: I fucking love Sera Gamble, and I appreciate everything she does for us. I should have proposed to her when I met her at Comic Con last year. I suppose there's always this year! <3

I'm working 4 jobs and looking for a house. I'm saving you all the roller coaster madness that is house hunting.

"zomg we found a house, it's awesome, and we can afford it!"
"we're going to talk to mortgage duders, I'm scared!"
"mortgage duder is my neighbor, weird!"
"mortgage duder remembers preapproving other apps on house and thinks numbers we have are wrong"
"checked numbers, and the other offers are $100K more than we were told. oops"
"seriously bumming about house"

That's in the space of about 4 hours. Well, cept the first finding of the house. Rinse and repeat the excitement and the letdown. Over and over and over.

Man it was such a great place, too. But alas, out of our price range. :/

In other news, COSMOS has started, so I'm TAing again, I have a new client, my advisor wants me to start working on my thesis topic so I can advance to candidacy, and my grandma told me she doesnt think she'll be around anymore come Christmas.

So... it's out there. What do you think?

http://www.gamesradar.com/wii/mega-man-9-wiiware/preview/mega-man-9-exclusive-reveal/a-20080702154756565049/g-20080626165055938021

No discounts this time, but friends list does get first crack.
Non-cc PayPal only; will accept e-check, but will wait to ship until it clears.
Shipping is $2 US, $3 international.
Not particularly interested in swaps at the moment.
My feedback is here and here.

These are all imps/decants. Partials are all at least half full.


GCs - $2.50/ea full, $1.50/ea partial

Full
Aizen-Myoo
Al-Shairan
Dirty
Golden Priapus
Obatala
Oya
Shanghai
Snake Oil (aged approx 18 months)
Titus Andronicus

Partial
Akuma
Jabberwocky
Kathmandu
Ligur


LEs - $3.50/ea full, $2.50/ea partial

Full
All Souls '06
Bad Luck Woman Blues
Beltane '08
Dark Delicacies (original DD)
Gingerbread Poppet '05
Itaso Kansei Nenkan Joro No Fuzoku
La Befana '07
Lady Luck Blues
Monster Bait: Bloody Mary
Monster Bait: Ventriloquist Dummy
Rangoon Riptide
Spooky

Partial
Poisson d'Avril


Sniffies - 1 free w/purchase
Marae
Hunter Moon '04

 

18:26 @ymmat haha, it was a quote from The Closer XD

00:00 XD "So, what's your porn name?" ... "I'm Lightsaber Central!"

01:30 hot w/headache :/ have choc cake milk and The Closer to get through it

08:27 Neighbors are toking up early this morning. I guess it's wake-n-bake Thursday.

Posted once a day from my twitter

ObReminder: If you torrent & watch it, be sure to also buy a copy, etc. (At some point after this, I will make the post about how coming from anime fandom totally means I have no guilt about watching leaked/etc copies of things before they're released in the US, because I find the reactions of a lot of people really interesting and I want to talk about it, but I want non-spoiled people to be able to participate in the discussion without worrying about accidentally scrolling up.) And yeah, I promise that I'll cut-tag and spoiler-label any comments I make about it between now and the release ... I'll also repost the fic, or a pointer to said fic, in a few weeks when the DVDs release.

That having been said: WIND ME UP AND WATCH ME GOOOOOOOOOOO

(omg, I stayed up so late to watch this and write this post. time to fall over now.)

( Continuum reactions including script quotes, analysis, & fic, so: spoilers! )

I will be spending all of today in barely restrained terror that I will be asked to work holiday overtime tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

A twenty-sided die from 2nd century AD.

And yeah, I know D&D is a recent invention, dating back just a bit further than I do. But the most widely-known use of non-6-sided dice is D&D in particular and RPGs in general, so I decided to go there. ^^

I go to a Special Needs school twice a month and the teachers there want me to plan lessons. I'm kind of at a loss.

The kids at this particular school have high physical handicaps. Very low mobility. Some have partial paralysis and have trouble speaking.

One class they want me to plan for is an Elementary Class, 1st grade mental Level, high physical handicaps. They have trouble even with Japanese and I'm at a loss at what they want me to do in terms of doing English activities with these kids.

The teachers suggestion?... easy simple game.
Me: Um... what kind of game?
Teacher: Oh any game ok...
Me: -_- that's a big help, thanks

I've planed easy games, but I guess they aren't easy enough... the only thing I can think of that has worked is match memory, but it's getting rather old. I've tried arts and craft type stuff, but it's a bit hard with physical limitations of the kids.

any ideas?

People often forget the true meaning behind their actions. It's a sad consequence of the world that we live in, the society that we "thrive" in. As a simple example, people pet a cat because it's fun to put the furry little thing. They don't think to themselves, "I should pet the cat in such a manner that it feels really good", they just pet the cat. It's the consideration of the cat's feelings that make the difference in this situation.

Understanding this allows us to open up and broaden our understanding or the world and how we handle our choices. This, my friends, is "metagame". Metagame allows us to see a world as a more fascinating place. We can accept that everything in the world is simple cause and effect, but metagame allows us to identify and control resulting chain reactions. Because of this, having good metagame for games, people, work, or life in general allows for a much more lively daily experience.

Metagame is troublesome, sometimes. I'm currently in a tough situation with my girlfriend. While I have no complaints with her, her family is posing a huge problem to our relationship, from bad parenting to horrible and abusive siblings. The metagame here is to spend time with the girl while staying on the family's good side so they don't do anything stupid and/or selfish. I, as some may know, am getting old plus angry. An angry oldfag. I'm old enough to have the mental authority to tell even middle aged and old people how things really are, and angry enough to do it in the first place. I would say something about the shit that I see at their home, but it's hard to get your point across when the mother does not speak very good English and always talks to everyone around me in Spanish. For one of the first times in my life, I cannot properly vent my anger at her family because staying on their good side is all part of my metagame. I'll go more into this in the future, as there are a few important details that I am intentionally leaving out. In short, I'm pissed and I can't bitch at them about it yet. My metagame tells me that any approach I take will end up in failure and it's futile to try and make a logical and coercive argument against them. This makes very sad.

(Her mother made her feel awful about a mistake, awful enough to make her cry. Her sister walks in a few minutes later saying in a sing-song voice, "You're an iiiiiidiooooot". I had to contain my anger not to fucking punch her out, or at least scream at her that her fucking sister needs hugs and understanding, not your cruel words. Just thinking about it makes me want to rage again.)

So in the end, I'm left with quite possibly the only girl I could ever stand being together with, maybe even marrying... and her family which I cannot retaliate against. It rocks... and it sucks. I'll have to keep most of my metagame to Melty Blood for a while until I can find a way to defeat this foe.

I am happy to report that Sallie Mae, my lender for my venture up to Sheffield, apparently has received my loan applications from my contact at Sheffield.

My loans, according to their loan managing website, are approved and waiting on disembursement.

In other words, I officially have the money to go to school! It's a huge relief, because without any kind of guarantee that I had the money, I couldn't start thinking about a visa application. And of course, without a visa application, I couldn't think about a plane ticket. There is one very small, but asinine obstacle in my way: the British Embassy in America.

Here's the deal with them, and why I already dislike them: the British Embassy doesn't handle questions about its own visas. All questions about visas are put through to a third-party called Worldbridge, who has a contract with the embassy and answers questions about visas over the phone. The kicker about this outsourcing? They charge you 3.00 per minute to call them and ask them a question. Or, I can call a different number and have them just charge me a flat $12.00 so I can ask them some questions. -_-

I can maybe understand why they would do that, if they were receiving calls from idiots all the time. I guess the fee is there to detract people from using the service or asking unnecessary questions, but for those of us who actually need it, we're just expected to cough up? Lame. It still makes me incredibly uneasy. Like several of my friends, I work in a call center. I try to do very well at my job, but I can tell you that people do not always have the answer. They have to ask. They have to put you on hold. And on a 900 number, as you're on hold, the minutes rack up, as do the charges.

Oh, and on a somewhat related note, I forgot to mention that the application fee for the visa is approximately $200.00. I'm already going to be giving the consulate a hefty chunk of change, so why might I have to spend another $15-20 just to have a question answered? It's outrageous. I don't know if I want to take my chances and just send in an application, or not.

Still, on the bright side, things are far more certain, and that makes me feel immensely better.

----

As an aside, I finally saw the movie Once, which was absolutely FANTASTIC. I'm listening to the soundtrack obsessively now. Favorite songs are "If You Want Me", "Falling Slowly" (I wanna do this with Andrew, too. Heh.), "The Hill", "Lies", "When Your Mind's Made Up", in that order. I wanna jam on some of these songs with the Bards before I leave for school, fo'sho'.

What I'm twitting about today:

• 12:11 EEEEE! *fangirl flail* www.square-enix.co.jp/ctds/ and www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53420 #
• 22:17 Ugh. Next time I go to the Doc I need to tell her about the headache -> nosebleed thing. #
• 00:09 I think I would like to like dr. who, but I just can't really get into it. Very sad. #

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