No, Life is Anime and Calculus.

Well, back to the never-ending stream of work that I have to put up with. I'm so not looking forward to spring semester! Yeah, so I got my midterm back, and while I did not perform spectacularly, I was still above the average, so that is some slight comfort. Slight. What would I do if I were on grades? Guess we're going to find out next semester, huh?

I went to Downtown Crossing on Monday - it's a really cool part of Boston - all these stores in these old-looking buildings, and skyscrapers all around the edges of the place. It was almost surreal - the cobblestone streets sure were interesting - reminded me quite a bit of Germany. It was almost a pedestrian zone, but there were one-way streets everywhere. :P I spent half the afternoon in Barnes and Noble and then the other half in Borders - the two stores are only a couple of blocks apart. At first, I was quite charmed by the Barnes and Noble - it had this cute twisty stairway and the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section was quite sizeable, but then I went to the Borders and was even more pleasantly surprised. It was much bigger! And prettier too. ^_^

Hm, so now I've read half of Brian Jacques' Castaways of the Flying Dutchman and it wasn't anything like I'd expected it to be - I'd expected it to be less, er, fanciful. Shame on me though - since it's Brian Jacques, I should've known. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but it's quite an excellent story. It's really nice to read something by Brian Jacques that doesn't pertain to Redwall. I think he should write more non-Redwall books - expand his repertoire a bit more. Redwall became lousy after the 8th book or so... Isn't he up to 15 books or something? *sigh* That's disappointing...

Borders has a pretty decent manga section - I read quite a few there (manga is Japanese comics for those of you who don't know - very different from American comics though - manga is more of an illustrated story - there's a plot ^_~). *glances around nervously* It's not like I'm going to shell out $15 for one skinny little graphic novel. I probably wouldn't buy manga unless I wanted to draw from it anyway. Or unless it was Slayers manga... ^^; That reminds me, I got the first two chapters of the Rurouni Kenshin manga from some website... It's so cute - and the anime follows it quite well. I guess the manga's never been translated into English, so there aren't any copyright laws stuck onto it yet. I just wish that the rest of the links on the site weren't broken - there's 105 chapters, but I could only get the first two. Very sad... ;~;

Kyaah, well, I still have loads of math to do because I'm absolutely lousy at getting work done when I'm surrounded by distractions like my blog. o_o;

Oh yeah, Kristen, if you read this (which you probably don't).... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Yaaay! Okay, that's all. 'Night!

- Flykyr Skysong

Current Song: .hack//SIGN EXTRA OST - Morgana
Current Mood: Good music makes me happy. ^_^

Cribbage is Life!

Today was the day of the Cribbage Challenge - and I went. It was loads of fun! About 20 people showed up, and we played in Round Robin style for three games, the winners gaining points, etc. in an attempt to narrow down people for the final championship. The championship started off with the top 8 contestants... and I was one of them! *thrilled* Wow, there were some incredible players there today. Heh, so here's how my games went: I won the first match easily since my opponent was not very skilled (and did not have very good luck either), lost the second match because I got lousy cards, and then gained incredible good luck to trounce my third opponent as well. So yeah, I was ranked 7th or something, but I still got into the finals. :P The next game was rough - we were neck and neck the whole way. Finally, my last hand was lousy and I didn't have enough points to go out, so my opponent beat me. It was a really good game though... Frankly, I'm glad I didn't have to play the next person that my opponent went up against - she seemed really intimidating (and I think she won the tournament last year). Still, it was quite an enjoyable afternoon, and I sure strained my brain by doing 3 hours of addition straight! For those of you who are wondering what the heck I'm talking about, there's a really good cribbage website right here which can explain things a whole lot better than I ever could.

Oh yes, I went to go see Roadkill Buffet last night - it was quite funny. Still, I think WPI did a better job when I saw them (that was when I went to visit the campus for the weekend - one of those things, myeh). I was going to go see FLCL tonight - the anime club was showing it, but unfortunately, I could never figure out where it was being shown. And Amy said that a friend had said that it was rather lewd... So I just stayed home and watched some Rurouni Kenshin. I watched this Kenshin movie (Requiem for Meiji Era Patriots or something) and was very disturbed because it was all dubbed in English. Man, those English voices were weird. Kenshin didn't sound girly enough. ^^ Then I watched some of the TV episodes and was much less disturbed. Aaah! Kenshin rocks! He is so cool!

Speaking of cool anime dudes, I found some translated Slayers manga online - Zel is soooo hot! Julie can keep Aragorn (and Legolas too, if she wants him :P), I just want Zel. ^_^; And Rezo looks great in the manga too - I love his hair. Waaah! Anime hair rules! Okay, I'm giong to make a list of anime characters with great hair, and then I'll force myself to turn off this computer and get to sleep. :D

Characters with great hair:

- Zelgadis of Slayers (bet you didn't see that one coming :P)
- Rezo the Red Priest from Slayers
- Just about anyone else from Slayers
- Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin
- Tsukasa from .hack//SIGN (so cute under his hat!)
- Mimiru from .hack//SIGN
- Vash from Trigun
- Gokudo from Gokudo-kun Manyuuki
- Any of the girls from Galaxy Angel (especially Forte! ^_^)
- Chii from Chobits
- Urd from Ah! My Goddess
- Anyone from Digi Charat (pretty colors, pretty pretty colors....)
- Haku from Spirited Away
- Piro from MegaTokyo (okay, so that's a webcomic and not an anime, but close enough)
- Cloud from Final Fantasy VII (hmm.... definitely out of the purely anime genre now - but computer games with anime-style characters...)
- Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII

Mrrm... I'm sure there are a million more that I'm forgetting, but I'm tired, and I should go. So maybe I'll add some more names later. ^_^

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Boogiepop Phantom - Snow Coast
Current mood: Sleeeeepy...

A Long Weekend... Finally!

Waaah! I had the midterm of doom today! It was so bad! I am so lousy at math. -_- Well, I only need to pass... The good thing is that we had no math lecture today - that means no homework over the weekend, and we also have a holiday on Monday so I can have a lovely long weekend. It'll be good. ^_^

Let's see... Plans for the weekend. Tonight, there's an anime club showing, so that'll take up all my time. And then, let's see, there's more Serial Experiments Lain on Saturday and also a show by Roadkill Buffet - MIT's improv comedy group. Could be interesting - I haven't seen MIT's take on improv yet. Guess I'll have to go to find out. And then, on Sunday, there's MIT's second annual Cribbage Challenge, which could be really really neat. Of course, now it's making me afraid that I don't know the rules properly or something. But still, I think it'd be fun. Even though my littlest sister is better than me (she always seems to deal herself the good cards!). Yes, cribbage is a card game, for those of you who don't know. It's too complicated to talk about it here, but in short, you try to get points and move your little markers around a wooden board. Very fun - requires both skill and luck - a lot of luck!

Mike got me hooked on Boogiepop Phantom songs so they've been playing in Winamp all day long. Boogiepop Phantom is a weird anime - I saw the first episode of it today. It reminds me a lot of Serial Experiments Lain - it's got that same washed-out nearly-black-and-white sort of look to it. And it's strange, but not nearly as strange as Lain. :P

Oy! My friend Kristen showed me something on rpgamer.com and while I was there, I noticed that there was a fanart section and the 'theme of the week' sort of thing was to send in fanart of your favorite RPG (role-playing-game) character(s) in an unusual setting. So I created one with Cloud and Sephiroth of Final Fantasy VII fame (the picture's here). And... it was posted! Hehehe... Exciting. Heck, they probably post everything that comes their way, but it's still exciting for me... I wonder what people think about it... *gets nervous* *shrugs*

Well, that comic included me, so it's technically the second Luckless Lindy comic that I've ever made... The first comic involved Mike - being in this comic-drawing mood inspired me to make a follow-up to my original comic. This looks like it could have room to grow into a series. I think that'd be fun, although a lot of work - it took me 3 or 4 days just to pull the last one off! Plus, I'll be having normal classes and stuff come February so I'm sure I'd be way too busy to do anything about it, but I can still dream, right? Hmm, I wish I had a scanner. I don't like drawing comics completely on the computer - it's be a lot faster if I could sketch them on paper first!

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Boogiepop Phantom - Angel in the Dark
Current mood: ^___^

And So it Goes...

It's a really good thing that I only have one class this month - it's a lot of work! Here I am, up late again, having no idea how to do my math. I envy my roommate - she understands this stuff so far, while I'm left behind, trying to figure out what the heck is going on. *grumble sigh* I wish I were smart. And I've got a midterm on Friday! Aaahhhh!

I went to the Museum of Science today. I went with some McCormick folks, but split from them and wandered the museum alone. Rather nice, but I couldn't play virtual volleyball since a team of one is less than ideal. :P Couldn't go to the Into to the Lion Dance class with Vivian since I had math to do still... But I had a nice chat with Kristen - looks like we might be heading to the Anime Boston convention in April - looks like it'll be a ton of fun! She wants me to cosplay as Tsukasa. :3 I rather fancy the idea, actually. My weirdness meter is rising. ^^; Hmm.... not too sure about gray hair - maybe I'll skip that part - but I don't think the clothes could be too too hard to do. I need to find brown clothes though - brown skirt, brown pants, brown shirt, tan short-sleeved hooded sweatshirt, hat, funky staff. Hmm.... The sweatshirt would be hard to pull off. So would the hat. Ahhh! Now I'm afraid that I'd just look stupid. But then, most cosplayers do, so, nothing wrong there, right? Uh, I can't believe I'm actually contemplating this. Heh, but, well, I won't know anyone there, right? I hope Kristen goes through with this. I don't want to go alone. Anyone want to join us? ^_~

Anime update: I'm in dire straits at the moment - out of 20 CDs of anime episodes and series, only 10 actually play in my CD-rom drive. This is very depressing and disturbing. I know that some of these used to work... I wonder if they were handled to roughly or something. Well, in any case, I'm very upset because I don't have a single complete series now. At least all the new CDs that I've made have worked so far. But... I wonder if it's the CD's or the player. Well, tomorrow's quest for enlightenment will consist of me either stealing/borrowing Amy's computer or hooking up my brand new CD-burner (I think it's supposed to play CDs too). Well, we shall see what we shall see, ne? Still, I am very disturbed by all this. *yawn* Well, I've really gotten into Rurouni Kenshin - it's a really really good series! I'm upset that my episode of .hack//SIGN is all corrupted and I can't watch the second half. So I've downloaded almost all of the series, but I haven't watched half of it since I'm trying to get ahold of a better epi 13! Geez, I hope I can watch it sometime...

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Madonna - Beautiful Stranger
Current mood: Frustrated

Seeing the World Through Rose-Colored Glasses?

Awr, well, this month looks like it's going to be pretty good. At MIT, all of January is called the Independent Activities Period, or IAP. You can choose to stay home (lucky folks) or take classes, either for credit or fun. Well, here I am, stuck taking the rest of my Calculus II course. Joy. Actually, it's not all that bad, besides the fact that the midterm is next Friday! I really like the lecturer - she actually explains things so that dense people like myself can understand. I mean, I like Mattuck and all, but looking back at my notes from him, I can't really make any sense of them. Too many gosh darned proofs. :P

Anyway, it's nice to only have to concentrate on one class. I spend all day doing the homework - it doesn't take me any less time to do! Probably because I am easily distracted by my laptop. Okay, more like definitely. I just found out yesterday that there is another .hack//SIGN cd out there. So now I have to obsessively look for the tracks. :D Actually, I don't like very many of them. Mostly weird remixes. Still, there's some good tracks on there. ^_^

Mrrm... Well, gotta go if I want to finish watching these Evangelion episodes I just downloaded before I go to bed.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Ayumi Hamasaki - Audience
Current mood: Sleepy

I'm Finally Back at the 'Tute!

Whew! That was quite a long absence on my part! Oy, well, a lot has happened since the last time that I wrote. I survived finals, and even managed to pass all my classes. Let's see if I can do it again next semester... on grades. ^_^;

Hmm... After finals, I went home. Home is nice. There's no place quite like it. ^^ Still, after living without my family for so long, it seems quite different. Strange. I feel somewhat removed from everyone. Distant. It's probably because my room seems so empty. Well, anyway, Christmas was lovely. The big present that I got was a new CD burner for my laptop - I joke about how now I never have to go home. :P I got my sisters MIT shirts - they loved them of course. Too bad I got Alissa a medium - too large. Darn. I'm a rotten guesser.

We left for Los Angeles on Christmas day (in the afternoon). It was a white Christmas after all - started snowing in the morning and was getting heavy by the afternoon. We sure were getting nervous at the airport, with the plane not come and the announcers cancelling flights left and right. The plane finally came and decided to go out again - all the flight attendants wanted to get home. I think we were probably the last plane out of Manchester Airport that day. Christmas dinner was eaten at a well-fortified Jack-in-the-Box. Scary. I'll tell you about that some other time. :P

L.A. consisted mostly of visiting relatives and eating way too much food. As usual. ^^; We went to Knott's Berry Farm and rode the Ghostrider - seriously the coolest wooden rollercoaster ever built. Ride it if you're ever there - it's well worth the wait. We saw the Two Towers while in L.A. It was really good, but I think the first one was better. This movie just didn't give me the same thrill while I was watching it. Maybe because they departed from the story so much more. That always bothers me. -_-;

Heh, we almost didn't make it back home either. We were coming back New Year's Eve and were delayed in Kansas City because of fog in Manchester. I swear, Kansas City is the most unfriendly airport ever - once you're checked into the waiting area, there's no bathrooms, no water fountains, nothing. The area is surrounded by high walls, and as if that's not enough, there's all this netting covering the space between the ceiling and the wall. As if anyone could jump over such tall walls! Stupid. And boring. Those midwest airports are awful, they really are. So is Tenessee. But that's because it's Tenessee. Anyway, to make a dull story short, we were delayed an hour, and finally made it home. We spent New Year's (the actual event) waiting for our luggage, finally made it home, said "Yay, happy New Year", and went to bed.

After the balmy Southern California weather, it was a real pain to be back in NH. Every day, I had to go shovel snow. There's been so much snow lately. Aargh! Well, the end result was me catching a cold. Sore throat, runny nose, coughing, insomnia, etc. Fun fun. And I've got class tomorrow too. Rats, make that today. Grr. I will go to sleep before 1. I swear!!

As for now (before sitting down and writing a lot ^_~), I just finished watching 'Spirited Away' - yet another excellent Miyazaki film. Seriously people, if you haven't seen this movie yet, you really should. And anything else done by Miyazaki as well - all of his movies are amazingly good. ^___^ Ha, actually, my first experience with anime was an old copy of 'My Neighbor Totoro' in Japanese - my uncle gave us a copy that he'd made in Japan. The video quality is quite awful, and we couldn't understand a word of the movie (except for my mom, of course :P) but we loved it. I still love watching that movie. Ach, I'm such a sap. ^^;

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Mike Oldfield - Moonlight Shadow
Current mood: Sick, urrgh.... -_-