Math final is done so there’s nothing left to do for this semester!  I cramed the day before (very bad idea) and found out I forgot most of the stuff from the previous chapters x.x  This morning I think I had a good handle on most of it, the only thing that still gave me problems was graphing.  And of course there were at least 3 problems (out of 15) that required a graph.  And no problems containg i.  Or a few other things in the packet, I’m just glad it’s over.  Took half the time on it though so I’m not sure if I really screwed up or I really knew what i was doing…

While I was there, I picked up my art final.  Waited around for 10 minutes because the door to the office was locked before checking the class room.  Still no dice so I went back and the door was open!  No idea who opened it or why but I got my final and got out before someone told me I wasn’t suppoded to be there.  Anywho, 250/250!  I think that made my day.  He wrote “good work ethic” on the back which made me giggle.  The second to the last day of class, my project was done so I played DS for an hour before he said we could leave early.  Ironic.

So, just figuring out trip stuff.  Because he’s stressed out, my dad’s stressing me out by asking my opinion and then demanding the logistics down to the hour.  Half the time I’m just the messanger and these are my moms/sisters ideas.  Fortunately we found out some of what’s going on the first leg of the trip last night.  The next leg should be more relaxed.  But there’s still a lot to do before we leave >.<

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Ugh.  I just need to get this out of my system.  So today wasn’t an out and out bad day, little things just kept bringing me down.  Maybe little things snowballed a little too, entirely emotionally though.  Ok, just for a little background, I close beta tested a game at the end of spring break and wasted hours grinding getting to level 40 to get perks in open beta.  Earlier this week, open beta was pushed back to May and I had joined a guild already with the expectation of making a character and being able to level her a bit before I leave on vacation.  Well, the OBT starts the day after I leave.  And I no longer have a laptop so I’ve been trying to figure a way to at least create my character during the first few days.

So, I spent my morning/early afternoon looking around for internet cafes and it seems like you can’t install anything on their computers/server which I completely understand.  It’s just that I found out that my sister’s computer can’t run games and her boyfriend’s so busy she won’t ask if his could run games.  So I’m stuck with hoping I can install the client on a flash drive and be able to run it in an internet cafe.  I mean, if they don’t allow you to install games, running somethng from an unkown source is equally risky.  So that’s doubtful.  Only other option is a cousin (we don’t get along) who has a Mac and I don’t know if his is able to support gaming let alone run something not designed for a Mac.

Point #2: A person I was friends with a couple years ago contacted me.  Lets just say he seriously pissed me off and probably didn’t realize just how bad at the time.  Prior to that series of events, we were really good friends.  What I want to do is be a complete bitch, but that doesn’t do anyone any favors.  I’m not sure how I should proceed.  My brain is telling me to stay away and break off all contact while I can, emotionally I want to rip him a new one (obviously), but it takes guts to contact someone things ended badly with and apologize, even though he didn’t at first, and I respect that.  And I guess part of me still wants the friendship that was lost.  But thinking about it, if I haven’t cooled off after 2 years, what makes me think I can cool off in a week or less?  Ugh, I hate myself sometimes >.<

And the third thing is my grandma called letting me know somewhere is hiring.  I had this crazy notion that I might want to find a summer job where my grandparents live.  How I am right now I don’t think I can hadle the summer over there.  No computer, no alone time, no car, and being thrown into family and work responsibilities with minimal experience.  Yes I have a job, but I don’t work much plus I’d have to get used to living there.  I don’t want to anymore but I feel obligated to try because I planted the seeds.  I really hate myself sometimes.

And finals.  Only 2, but I ‘ve felt my resolve slipping for a week now.  Well one’s out of the way and I had a giggling fit durring it >.<  It was art, and aparently my “design” was more disturbing than I thought.  I thought it was amusing and that’s probably what caused my giggles.  Math is next Thursday and I haven’t done the review packet and I have no idea how I did on the last test.  If I get it back, I better not look at it or else it could shake my confidence.

Wow, this is insanely long.  I can’t find a spoiler so this is how it’ll be :c

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I hope everyone had an enjoyable Easter, I certainly did c:  My parents and I went to Chicago to a couple museums.  Well, my mom and I went to the Art Institute and my dad went to the Museum of Science and Industry.  I’m one of those people who can’t spend all day in a museum so 4 hours was plenty for me.  My dad’s the other way around, he could spend all day and still not be done looking around   Anyway, my mom decided to get a membership so we could come back and look at everything we didn’t get a chance to see.  Seriously, 4 hours isn’t enough time.  We got through maybe a quarter of the exhibits thorougly and breezed through a handful.  I couldn’t believe they allow pictures! ♥  Only without a flash and only for permanent exhibits but still.

Korean Dragon Vase

Dragon

Knight Front

Knight Angled

They came out a little blurry but it’s harder to tell because they’ve been re-sized.  We also looked at the Impressionist exhibit a little bit.  I pretty much looked at Monet’s paintings ♥  Someday, I’ll have a print of one of his water lilly paintings.

After we re-grouped, we headed up to the Arlington Heights area.  My mom heard about Mont Blanc (a pastry shop) from a co-worker so we checked it out.  If you like Japanese style cakes and such it’s really good!  I’m guessing French as well but I’ve never been to a French restaurant so I’m not sure what French food is suposed to taste like ^ ^;  I still have to try the Tiramisu and Creme Brulee we brought home but the Green Tea Cake was very light and creamy~  Then we gorged on sushi at Sushi Station.  Well sorta.  You don’t eat as much (I think) because waiting for the kind of sushi you want to come around gives you time to feel full.  I was stuffed regardless   On the way out I tried my luck at the Gachapon and ended up with some Bowser & co. stickers.  Not too bad, I wish I would have gotten more.  Maybe next time c:

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Avi in commemoration of π day which was Wednesday~

So this past week was like a blur.  Got together with a friend, went to Indy for sushi, made a Pie for Pi day, and pretty much wasted the rest of my time pixeling and online.  And I haven’t started my homework or taxes.  Procrastination is not the smartest idea.  What I did not do this spring break: read more than a page out of my new Javascript book, burn new CDs, play in the CBT for Spirit Tales (I hope to change this before Tuesday), clean my room, finish the Rilakkuma bento origami set.  More time please? ; -;

At the start of spring break, I started a thread on Vdex making pixel “Pokewalkers” and didn’t really expect it to take off.  So far I’ve made 22 of them (not counting 2 I re-did) and 2 other sprites (a trainer sprite and something using a base I made) plus “extras” for the Pokewalkers.  My eyes hurt >.<  Don’t get me wrong, I love doing it but I have other things I need and want to do.  I guess it’s just because I hate making people wait which is something I just have to deal with.

I’m dreading work tomorrow, we’re booked for parties and we usually get a few drunk people come in.  >.<  Well, I guess there’s a silver lining, I should stay at least 5 hours.  I need to find a better job :c

I hate to leave it on such a depressing note, so the pie I made is delicious!  It’s Sour Cream Apple with a crumb topping~

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雛祭りおめでとう！  I’m way too old to celebrate Girls’ Day but my parents always do it anyway.  They seemed to have forgotten though   Ironically enough my cousin just called to wish us a happy Girls’ Day.

Anyway, I wanted to post today and figured I’d be in a bad mood after work so a quick one before work will have to do.  Art midterm went over pretty well, slapped a line of text on the bottom because it was empty and really didn’t care how it looked.  So it was sloppy and crooked but whatever, I just wanted to be done with it.  As for the math quiz, I almost got a passing grade one it…  I made some really stupid mistakes, memo to self: drink more coffee.

Getting back into pixeling a bit, stayed up till 11 last night working on something.  I need to figure out fur texture but it’ll do for a newbie like me I suppose.  Also started on the origami bento, I need more desk space…  And I still need to look for more avatars and burn new CDs.  Maybe I should have a to-do list running at the end of each post.  Nah, to annoying to bother with.

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My mom and I went to Arlington Heights on President’s Day~  I wasn’t thrilled about it at first but I figured that she only has so many days off and it wouldn’t hurt to miss out on a day of homework and lounging around the house.  We hit the mall first and I kept telling myself that I wouldn’t buy anything there.  I failed at that.  Ended up getting bank greeting cards because they were so cute~  Besides, eventually I’ll make use of them.

Went to Godiva as well and my mom got some chocolate.  We tried the dark chocolate with sea salt and didn’t care for it.  My dad thinks it tastes like orange chocolate so we’ll let him finish it

Then went to Sushi Station for lunch.  It was packed!  Waited for about 20 minutes but it was worth it.  The sushi was good (I’ve had better, but for kaiten sushi and the price it was better than average) and they had interesting combinations.  There was one with coconut even!  Had strawberries with sweetened condensed milk for dessert, which I will “make” when strawberries are in season.

Headed off to Mitsuwa, our usual stop, for unagi and pastries~  And picked up a few things when browsing the bookstore:

Saw this and had to get it, origami bento featuring Rilakkuma!  I’m not particularly fond of him, but origami + bento + kawaii = love~  Haven’t opened it yet, not sure where I’ll but the finished set…

Also saw these, I remember looking for them online a couple years ago and decided to pick them up.  I don’t really know what to use them for though ^ ^;

Another impulse buy.  I didn’t read the back when I bought it, just saw they were pokemon stickers and grabbed them.  Apparently, they’re for goals.  You set a goal (maybe 10) and every step you accomplish you place a sticker in that spot.  The more I’m thinking about it, the more I think there should be 10 goals…  Reminds me of a Daruma for easy goals.  But I’m not sure what my goal(s) should be.  Plus I’d want to reward myself for every sticker I put on seeing they say “prize.”  Need to think about that one.

I figured out what I’m going to to for my art midterm!  Well, I hope.  Haven’t done anything like it before so I’ll have to experiment first before I commit to it.  Also have a take home quize in math so I’ve got my work cut out for me this weekend.  Hey, those are goals.  Sorta.

I need to find new avatars =/  And burn new CDs for my car.

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Ahem…  I mean Happy Valentines Day!  Still no boyfriend but that’s fine with me.  While I would like to have a special someone, I doubt it would work.  I mean, I have other priorities and have no interest in tying the knot in the next 5 years, maybe even 10 years.  I’d rather be financially secure first.  Besides, I’m rival romancing Fenris right now, can’t start feeling guilty

I’m near the end of act 2 in DA 2, and am still not used to playing a mage.  Part of it is I don’t want to draw aggro so I don’t use spells much and another part is the spells have such a long cool down that I keep thinking I’ll need them later.  Not to mention I still think that I’m doing decent damage with basic attacks.  I know this isn’t true.  But I’m not planning on fighting the Arishok one-on-one.  I need the rivalry points   Oh! But I must state, Varric is my favorite character!

It seems like school has taken over part of me.  Well, that’s probably a good thing, but I’m only taking 2 classes.  Anyway, I have a pretty good idea of how I’m doing in both my classes.  Passing both ^_^  Not sure which is the better grade (haven’t crunched the numbers, and probably won’t) but I feel much better about math.  Aced the first test!  Plus~  He gave 5 bonus points to everyone to offset that people genrally do poorly on the first test.  Soooo my score was perfect ^o^  Yes, I know it’s just pre-calc.  Lemme have my moment day of happiness  ¬_¬  And for art, I think he just grades easy.  But the art mid-term has been announced/assigned.  No idea what I’m going to do…  Pretty much you get to pick whatever you’d like to do as long as you fill the entire paper.  No direction + fill entire paper = lots of frustration and possibly a poor grade.  I like my white space too much.  So I spent an hour on deviantart trying to get ideas and I’ve still got nothing.  I feel slightly screwed.

Last night I made red velvet cupcakes.  First time using the cupcake pans and the recipe and they ended up over cooking…  I smelled them “burning” (they didn’t burn thankfully) with almost 2 minutes to go and just yanked them out.  I need to make them again because they don’t taste like red velvet T_T

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I really need a stress management strategy that works for me.  I always get so frustrated with the art class (a rant on that later) that I’m not paying much attention in math.  I’ve always had a hard time “quieting my mind” I guess you could say so I’m always thinking, not necessarily about what’s important though.  So when math rolls around I keep getting drawn back to my frustration and thinking about how I can fulfill the requirements of a project while making it look at least half-way decent.

So, rant.  We’re working with shapes now and the next project has to have personal meaning and be easily understood.  Black and white, with shapes cut out of a square.  A pain already.  So making thumbnails I put together 4 that are pretty much stand alone objects.  Come to find out, today he says it has to have objects interacting.  Ok, fine, maybe I missed that part.  Re-working things, I hear him tell another student something to the effect ‘make it a moment in your life.’  Wait.  He said last class it doesn’t have to tell a story and while this doesn’t explicitly mean “story” it means a period of time that probably pertains to a story.  So I’m back to square one.  I have a feeling that this is going to be a “basic requirements met, piece of crap” art piece.  Small tangent, with another assignment he had us each present it to the class stating “this isn’t a critique.”  It ended up being a critique.

Now that that’s out of my system, I was reading an article in Time recently about shyness.  Actually, it was about introversion but on the cover it had “Shyness.”  Anyway, I found it interesting being an introvert.  Not only interesting, but soothing too.  I hadn’t expected that a magazine article pretty much saying ‘it’s ok to be an introvert in an extrovert’s world’ to help me feel more comfortable in my own skin.  Being a loner doesn’t bother me as much anymore.  I still need human interaction, don’t get me wrong, but I guess I’m happier with less than the average American’s amount.

Found out that the pain I’ve been having in my ankles is due to my ligaments being too streached out.  No way to fix it, unfortnately, but I’ll be able to manage it by strengthening the surrounding muscles and tendons.  At least I don’t have to worry about it tearing.

Tonight’s a DA 2 night me-thinks.

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Happy Lunar New Year!  Year of the Dragon~  Hopefully this will be a good year for everyone, myself and other dragons in particular

Let’s see, I got my computer early, but the enclosure just came Wednesday.  I’ve been off and on transferring files to my new compy but there’s so much that I haven’t decided what I want on this hard drive.  Then again it really doesn’t matter, it isn’t like I could take a desktop on vacation  At least I have my pictures, save data and other files back~ Not to mention another external!

I broke down and bought the monitor

I’m loving this computer ♥ (I can do alt characters now!) Started a new game for DA2 and it’s sooo nice!  I’ll have to see how high I can set the graphics quality and have it run smoothly.  Wish I could afford Skyrim, but it can wait.  Been obsessing over Beat Hazard anyway.  Oh and Amnesia is so scary!  I made it to the desk with the note and had to take a break.  Haven’t touched it since…  Maybe tonight?  But it reminds me of a horror-based Myst, it seems like the player will have to make a decision at the end but there won’t be a “green book” to pick. Anyway, I have to keep a lamp on or else I can’t see the keyboard.

Ohkay. Classes.  Art, I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.  Just turned in our first project yesterday (we haven’t gotten the first assignment back yet) and did a class critique.  Apparently no one had anything they would change about mine, or criticism for that matter. But I probably looked terrified so maybe no one wanted to say that it needs work.  I dunno, just gonna try to make it through the semester. Math isn’t too much better, I understand the concepts, I can do the homework, but for the take home quiz I had to look everything up.  It seems like I can’t remember what I learned, maybe that’s what studying is for…

Now site related stuff.  I was going to make a new layout, but I think I’ll wait.  Seeing that the art class I’m taking it the pre-req for graphic design classes, maybe I’ll learn some stuff I can apply to a layout.  I’m not procrastinating updating the coding I swear!  But one thing math is doing for me is re-kindiling my desire to learn a web programming language.  Still have no idea what I’d use it for, but Javascript and PHP (and MySQL) are sure to come in handy.  Just need to decide which one to learn first and find some good tutorials.  Also gonna try and get that Sozai site up next month, I wanted to get it up before Chinese New Year and have some dragon stuff, but with my laptop dying and just getting my files back that didn’t happen.  Just need to figure out some Valentines Day (and SAD ) stuff.  I have the layout ready to go, but I really want to make it in frames.  It makes more sense to me, but professionally it’s a big no-no.  Not that I’m professional to begin with, but I should try to be.  Maybe that’ll be my pet project, where I can break as many rules as I want!

Long post is long. And my server time is 5 minutes slow >:(

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Not only have I gotten a little more motivated, I feel like I have a better handle on PHP and MySQL!  By no means could I do anything on my own though.  It’s just that I spent weeks using a book geared towards people who already know a programming language and screaming in frustration.  So finally I looked online for tutorials and bookmarked 10+ pages that have helped me, or will help me once I understand it all better.  There was a book recommended (the name escapes me now) that I’ll buy sometime, or I’ll ask for it for Christmas!

Speaking of Christmas, my sister’s boyfriend is spending Christmas with us so that’s one more person I need to think of a gift for.  And buy.  I don’t have any Christmas gifts yet, but the birthday gifts are taken care of!  There are 3 birthdays between now and Christmas that I buy gifts for.  Hopefully, I’ll get more hours than I have been getting so the gifts this year will be nice.

Well, we didn’t go into Chicago on Halloween.  A pipe underneath my car broke so I had to get that fixed instead.  So I passed out candy :c  Also made the avatar/icon for this post, it’s Iggy! xD  He’s not a real favorite, but his “marshmallow” song cracks me up!  I think I may do something else with the background, he looked better without it…  And I may add a ghost or something.

Lastly, site stuff.  Made a decision to keep only the domin names I love.  What?  Why yes, I have other domain names.  They just have nothing there.  Hence why shouldn’t keep more than I’d hopefully use.  Planning to make one of the remaining ones a site for sozai, or at least have it on a subdomain.  Gah!  They all are amazing (at least to me) yet I can’t think of anything suitable for that specific name.  Anywho, I’m making sozai now, mainly “one point” but I’ve got a few other things on peppery-peach that I’ll use.   Yes, peppery-peach is one of the ones I’m getting rid of.  Unless someone else falls in love with it and wants me to host their site.  Which probably won’t happen.

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