Makes me think of “last friday night” xD  Ahem.  My sister flew into Chicago with the USC band Thursday and we met up with her on Friday, it was so good to see her again!  It had been almost a year seeing that she didn’t come home for summer.  Just went out to eat and talked, oh and watched the pep rally at Navy Pier.  On the way back, I wanted to check out a kawaii store that I had no idea existed up until a month ago.  Unfortunately, they were closed :c  Checking their Facebook page again it seems like they may not be around next year which makes me sad.  So my mom and I are planning to go back on Monday (yes, Halloween) to check it out and maybe go up to Arlington Heights.  I’m really hoping we get back after trick-or-treating, I hate passing out candy.  Stupid kids that don’t dress up.

Anywho, on Saturday I went to the USC vs. ND game with my dad.  We sat on opposite ends of the stadium but I was so glad I went!  Eventhough the ND fans are kinda harsh, then again if it were at USC I’m sure USC fans would be brutal.  The game was great, to me at least!  I like it when my team is winning the entire game!  Really, I like winning more than a good game.  Kinda sad, ne?  But watching the band was fun, USC has a stronger prescence to me.  I’m biased, I know.  Oh but I’m glad I was finally able to see the “stake” in person.  I have no idea what to call it, when the drum major stabs the field with his sword.

Fan-girling (for lack of a better term) aside, USC was really lucky they won.  Lots of penalties in their favor.  Not to mention the ND defence “didn’t know what was going on” as an ND fan said.  Something that really bothered me was all the standing.  Can’t people just sit down?  Standing changes nothing except you make everyone behind you stand too.  It was up and down the entire game >.<  One last random thing, there was a USC fan sitting a couple rows down from me and he somehow vanished durring the 2nd quarter…  Yes we were in an ND section, I wasn’t wearing anything to give my position away.

Not much else to speak of, working on a new layout.  All of the ones I’ve been getting together in Photoshop seem rather crappy to me…  I need a change but I have no inspiration.  I will perservere!

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So, I got sick.  Very unhappy about that.  I’m starting to get over it now, thankfully, but yesterday was torture.  I’ll spare you the deatails.  But there is a silver lining for me, re-discovering Hawaiian style food.  Slightly tarnished just because someone can’t bring home plate lunch for me.  I mixed up something simlilar to guri guri (goodie goodie) last night and am enjoying it today.  I used to eat it when I was sick as a kid.  Also am craving Kal Bi, Mochiko chicken, unagi don, and a plethora of other dishes I can’t seem to find here.  Must mean I’m getting better ^_^

The day before I got sick, I found out about Rainmeter.  It’s something similar to the Windows sidebar except you can arange it however you’d like and it has some different features.  Started messing around with it but didn’t get that far…  Also am learning more about PHP and MySQL.  For some reason the commands for MySQL make a lot more sense to me than PHP…  I’m still rather confused as to how everything needs to be set up for it to work.

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I’ve actually been keeping myself kinda busy.  Played Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening & Dragon Age 2, started on Professor Layton and the Curious Village, and went out with a friend!  I got out of the house with someone who isn’t family!  Big step for me.  We had dinner at Granite City, which was delicious by the way, and he needed to pick up stuff for school so I went with him to Best Buy.  Apparently, I need to watch a bunch of movies -.-

Speaking of watching, I’m almost done with the second season of The Mentalist and am making my way through Axis Powers Hetalia!  Can’t bring myself past episode 45, love Iggy’s ending song!  For whatever reason, I love it when they have a different country featured~  I may just have to invest in the manga too, been on a manga kick lately.  Though I am very near being broke.  *sigh*

Had a few very wierd dreams last night.  2 really stuck with me, the first was that I caught a shiny koffing on VDex.  Which I ended up doing earlier today, a pleasant surprise.  The second dream made me sad, Fenris somehow went crazy and I had to kill him.  But the sad thing was, near the end of the dream he started to be “concious” of what he was doing and wanted me to kill him.  Thankfully, I woke up before he died.  He’s one of my favorite characters…

Lets see what else…  I’m dreading this weekend.  And Monday for that matter.  I’m just really anxious, work, meeting new people, and manning a booth (probably by myself) on a topic I know nothing about.  How’d I get myself roped into that…  I’m a push-over, that’s how…

Oh, I need to mow the lawn.  *flails*

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I can’t say that a whole lot has happened.  I’m back to being a recluse, trying to find things to keep me busy.  Going between wasting time on the internet, cooking and making things out of clay.  Speaking of clay, I’m considering buying “plain” clay and painting it instead of using different colors.  The thing is, I’m not that good at painting.  But I keep getting the clay where it shouldn’t be and the piece looks funny.  I guess it’s something to keep in mind.

So on to cooking, made 2 kinds of ice cream and have 7 egg whites in the fridge waiting to be made into macarons.  The first ice cream turned out really well!  Tried salt again and found a recipe that, when cutting down the salt, tastes almost exactly how it did in Japan.  Second one was eh…  It’s pear-pecorino flavored and used half-and-half instead of heavy cream and one less egg than the salt recipe.  But the thing that messes it up for me it the cheese, I think it really should have been grated instead of chopped up.  Possibly add less of it too, the pear is really over powered.  Fortunately (I guess), I had double of the pear puree so the extra would work well as a topping.

I need to find another hobby…

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It’s summer now and I’m trying to lose weight, seeing that it has been accumulating more than I’d like it to,  so checking nutrition labels sounds like a good idea.  Pulled a cup of greek yogurt out of the fridge, as it has a lot of protein for yogurt, and checked the rest of the facts.  I was stunned.  100 calories, no fat at all, low sodium and sugar content, and 20% of the recommended amount of calcium.  Granted, I always get the unflavored “skim” version.  Comparing it to another 6 oz yogurt makes me wonder why I ate those before.

If you’ve never had greek yogurt, it’s thicker and more sour than regular yogurt, a bit drier too.  It lacks the odd sweetness regular flavored yogurt has, which I am glad for.  Instead, I add about one and a half tablespoons of honey while I’m eating.  I like the contrast so I don’t mix it in.

Anywho, no art stuffs.  Too lazy to scan, maybe I’ll put 2 up this Saturday.  Working tomorrow though (wo-hoo!) and am a bit apprehensive, it’s been 2 weeks since I’ve gone in.  What else…  Oh!  I kinda tore a tendon, it hurts.  My dad gave me exercises to help heal it, but I haven’t been doing it…  Not much other than that!

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I’m realizing how to be more responsible.  I know it’s rather late to realize it, but I guess I feel like acctually doing something productive.  Like dishes, cleaning up, learning a new language.  Ok, the last one’s not a responsibility, but I’m gaining some momentum.  So, to get feelers out to see how much of what I’m feeing is long term, I’m going to set a goal. *gasp!*  Something I haven’t done in years.  I’m going to start small and fairly short-term in the grand scheme of things, not only because my moods fluctuate so quickly but also due to my fear of failure.  My first goal (in forever) will be an artistic one (because it sounds attainable), I must create something artistic once a week for a month.  Sounds pretty easy for art majors, but I lack thier drive and talent.  So on Saturdays, I will post a picture of what I made be it clay, drawing, or something else I feel like making/doing.  I’ll try and challenge myself a bit but I dubt anything will come out well.  But it’s ok, it’s just a test.

I’m also planning to open up free hosting for those who are interested.  And meet requirements.  But I guess my fear of failure is hoding that back a bit, I’ve never done it before and I’d hate to let people down.  So, meh, not sure when it’ll happen.  If you happen to be interested and want more information, leave a comment or e-mail me (admin@melancholy-dream.net).  /shamelessplug

One final note on contacts, maybe due to the fact they’re a higher perscription I get kinda drowzy when doing close work with them.  Driving and such is great because I’ve got about 20/12 but everything else is “oh, this was interesting/fun about 10 minutes ago, can I sleep yet?”  They’re still a pain to take out and put in >.<  *sigh*  Hopefully my glasses will be in by the end of this week.

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Really, I think I am.  Most people I know of are stress bakers, but I can’t seem to bake very well so I cook other things.  It’s really strange for me, always hearing people complain about making dinner and realizing that I would rather make it than order a pizza.  So right now I’m waiting for creme brulee to get out of the oven.  I’m really unorthodox when it comes to custards.  Whenever I add hot milk to eggs, the eggs cook on contact.  Maybe the milk is too hot, but I use a work around.  Pretty much (for this recipe) I add the yolk mixture to the heavy cream and let it cook on the stove, stirring it constantly.  When the ripples start to get larger (thicker, fewer, whatever you’d like to call it)  and it feels thicker, I remove it from the heat and call it good.  Not sure how bad this is or how it changes the flavor/consistency, but it works a lot better for me.

Anyway, on Mother’s Day I attempted macarons.  They failed epically.  They were the wrong shape and over cooked to burnt.  Come to find out, I didn’t mix the meringue enough and the temp was too high.  And they were in there longer than they should have been.  So I picked up a book in the bargain section at B&N that I hope to try out later this week.  But I found out just how expensive almond meal/flour is…  $12 for 1 pound.  Guess who’s not getting anything else till she gets paid.  But I think they’ll turn out better this time, I know what I did wrong and have a very good idea as to how to fix it.

In other, non-cooking news, I’m trying out contacts.  I still have issues getting them in, but I don’t think I’ll have a choice come tomorrow.  I need new lenses and really love my frames so I’ll need to send in the frames for the lenses to be made.  I wonder how I’ll feel about contacts after wearing them exclusivly for a couple weeks!

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I think so!  Well, more like mood deterioration.  I wake up, ready to cope and by the end of the day I want to yell till I’m blue in the face.  So I end up stewing in my room at night.  Thankfuly, my dad took grandma and cousin up to visit people in Michigan today through part of tomorrow.  And they leave Friday morning so less than a day left to deal with them.  *sigh*  Hopefully I won’t do something stupid or rash tomorrow.  Just a little longer…

I finally beat Black!  It was soooo goooood~  Makes me wanna hug N.  But I totally didn’t expect to fight Ghetsis after N!  And for their pokemon to be at such high levels!  A walkthrough said lvl 45 minimum, for the elite four and mine were 46-48.  Used almost all my max revives, too bad you can’t buy them.  But I really am surprised that I didn’t lose.  Oh, another thing that surprised me (more like downright shocked), that Rashiram/Zerkrom and Victini aren’t “auto-catches” if you will.  One being an intrical part of the story and the other being an event.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.  It’s just that for both Rashiram and Victini I threw 1 ultra ball and it caught.  I figured it was part of the story/event but I’m reading that you should load up on ultra and dusk balls before the elite four.  For Cobalion and the grass one (forgot its name…) I had to keep chucking ultra balls.  Weird.  Maybe fire types like me…?

In the same vein, transferred a couple dittos over and got my Rotom (Eeks?  What kind of nickname is that?) and bred a female dratini with extreme speed.  Yay?  Got a lot of breeding to do.  And transferring so I can breed.

And I’m realizing just how bad I am at graphic design.  I knew I wasn’t good, but now I know I need to read some books or something.  In addition to tutorials, but knowledge before application.  It depresses me, but at least I have a better idea of how far I need to go.

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A people sort of storm, not the natural disaster sort.  Well for my emotions it may as well be a natural disaster.  Yes, I’m talking about my cousin and grandma.  They’re due to arrive in less than a week now.  I have a horrible feeling that things won’t go well.  I’ll do or say something rash, I won’t call it stupid yet, and there’ll be another fiasco like last time.  If that does happen, I hope my dad will actually stand by me instead of cater to my bratty cousin.  Time will tell.  In a more practical sense, I’m cleaning the bathroom.

May as well get the negative stuff out of the way now.  Some jack ass on VDex is trying to, in essence, steal from Shiro.  I won’t quote the article or go into detail, but that’s unjustifiable and inexcusable regardless of their economic standing.  It really pisses me off how low some people are.  I feel horrible for Shiro that she has to deal with all this crap on top of her own life.

Back to more mundane topics.  Started playing Aika with a few people from Gaia.  I’m only lvl 10 but I can’t tell what the fuss is about.  So far, it’s just grind, complete quests, and purchase skills.  Not much in the way of character building or community so far.  I really want to play Rift though!  Unfortunately, it’s $50 and I’m broke T_T  Oh well, it’ll have to wait.

Completed my first trade in Pokemon Black!  Got a couple White exclusives (Solosis and Petilil).  Right now I’m grinding to make sure I can beat the last gym and am planning to get a legendary or 2 before that.

Oh!  That reminds me, I’m switching over the fanlistings to a collective site.  Link is on the right.  And along with that, I kinda started archiving my games and pokemon…  Yes, I have no life.  I’ll put up FCs sooner or later for trading purposes.  I think that’s all the site news.  Probably, I don’t do much with my hosting x.x

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About trying to get back into polymer clay, not sure if that’s gonna happen anymore.  I’m finding that it’s more difficult and frustrating than I remember.  I may give something easy a go before quitting, but I’m doubting that right now.  Made a better Bulbasaur, first one wasn’t that easy on the eyes.

The better Bulbasaur with 2 Pokeballs

I really want to make a Charmander, but I don’t want to get really frustrated.  *sigh*  I’ll figure it out.

Trying to teach my mom how to crochet did not work out.  She got frustrated, I got frustrated so we called it quits.She can chain just fine but for whatever reason her stitches get messed up.

On the topic of making things, I attempted a fruit tart last week.  I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out and how easy it was.  The only thing I’d change is how the custard is made.  I’d combine the yolk mixture and milk earlier because I found that the yolk cooks too quickly with simmering milk.  Kinda how creme brulee is made.

It was yummy!

Worked a fair amount last week, 3 hours Thursday and 7 on Saturday.  I know, I need another job.  Usually I’ll get 4 hours a week.

Ok, I just need to mention this: I swear there’s a ghost in the house today.  Been hearing noises at the back door, metal clanging in the kitchen (and nothing moved), and various small noises everywhere else.  No, it’s not the cat.  It’s been freaking me out and the fact that I’m by myself doesn’t help.

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