Greetings, Mortals

Ohohoho.... I am writing this on my brand new Compaq Presario - my big Christmas present for this year. This baby is one sweet little piece of machinery... Although calling it small is something of a lie. It's a laptop, but it's got a really wide screen - perfectly set up for watching DVDs. So yes! I finally have a DVD-rom drive, and it works beautifully. The screen's gorgeous - nice and bright. It's built for low power consumption, so the battery's supposed to last for a really long time - about three and a half hours if my battery timer isn't lying. I have a 40 gigabyte hard drive, which is twice as good as my old laptop (and that was with the extra hard drive too, haha) and I'm slowly transferring all my anime onto here. Speaking of which, anime plays great once more - no more stupid mpeg conversions! My mp3s were the first thing to make it onto this machine - they sound gorgeous playing through the speakers. I can't get over how great these speakers sound. A great improvement over my Thinkpad's speakers, which were stuck underneath my hands when I was typing (stupid design). No more Dot, sadly, but I have a touchpad now. I wonder how it will affect my drawing capabilities. Hm, haven't tried that yet. Oh, the coolest extra feature has to be the ATI Radeon 9200 - one helluva graphics card. I can run Alissa's Enter the Matrix game on here perfectly - the home computer can't even do that! And I finally got the Nintendo 64 emulator to work (w00t!!) so we spent the morning duking it out with Super Smash Brothers. I love that game... ^^; Heh, goodbye SNES emulator. We shared some good times, but now I can finally play Ocarina of Time, which I've been longing to for more than a year. Heh, I'm so bad. Waaai!! Did I tell you how much I love these speakers?!

Mya, so I did get some other cool things - I have a nice big Japanese-English dictionary. I'm still mad that Di Gi Charat's stuck at MIT. Well, guess I'll be back soon enough. Meep! But first, there's Florida. We're leaving tomorrow afternoon. I think we're coming back on New Year's Day. Gotta be back at MIT by Sunday, so I'm going to be back there before I know it. Heh, Alissa got me a matching toe-sock and glove thingy - very cute! And Kelsey got me a new watch, which is exactly what I was needing. Hooray for sisters. ^_^ I got Kelsey these awesome fuzzy toe-socks (popular, ain't they?) which she's wearing today, and I got Alissa a Hoobastank CD. More loud music. *rolls her eyes* At least I won't have to hang around here and listen to it for much longer. :P And now that I'm playing Stabbing Westward and she's in here listening to it, she's gotten all interested. Hahaha, look out Mom...

So Christmas was pretty quiet all in all... Mom's still in California - she'll be back on Monday, after we're already in Florida. Too bad. Hope she had a good Christmas without us. In the evening, I played Yahoo! Graffiti with my MIT friends. It was a lot of fun - I was impressed by everyone's guessing abilities. I won the first game, mostly because Kelsey was watching and kept coming up with really good guesses. Yay sisters again. ^_~ Hmm... Being so happy at home makes me think about all the other people out there who aren't as fortunate as us - I feel a bit guilty about getting such an awesome laptop - I definitely didn't need anything this nice. I hope all the soldiers who couldn't come home for Christmas are staying safe. May they all return soon. -_- *gets depressed and signs off*

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Stabbing Westward - You Complete Me
Current mood: Couldn't be happier

Home Sweet Home

Aaah... It is so good to be home. There's so much variety in the food available... And there's a DVD player... And the Christmas tree... And my sisters! Yeah, being home makes me happy. ^_^ I've spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how JBuilder works. I figured it was time to re-teach myself Java since my software engineering lab next semester is taught in Java and they don't really teach you Java - they expect you to already know it, which is kind of evil. <_< Heh, so my sister gave me a problem from her programming class and it was nasty and tricky (and also really really short). It made me pretty sad. It's like when I see her artwork - I feel like I'm falling behind. She's moving forward so fast and I'm stuck at a standstill. I totally blame MIT. Darned school sucking up all my free time and not letting me do what I want. Oh yeah, I've got a couple of my final grades in. I passed 6.002! My grade is low and it's doing murder to my GPA, but at least I passed! I was terrified that I would have to retake the class, which would be the worst thing ever. I'm worried about 6.042 as well... I hope I did okay, and that my final grade isn't going to trash my GPA beyond all recognition. I got an A in Japanese, but I was expecting no less. That was a cool class... I have to remind myself to study up on Japanese over vacation and IAP so I'm not all rusty in the spring.

I decided that I need to learn to read Japanese faster, and I'm mad that I left my Japanese Di Gi Charat manga at school. There's nothing at home that I can easily read - there's too much kanji. So my mom suggested that I hop online and check out Kinokuniya's online bookstore, since they have a ton of Japanese books (manga included!). She'd been wanting to look up some Japanese books there too, but she needed to wait 'til I came home to use my laptop (since it's got Japanese support). I tried it out, but I can't use the search engine since it requires you to type in actual Japanese characters. I was able to look up Chrno Crusade only my surfing over to the Japanese site and copying the title from that page and pasting into the search engine. I was dismayed by how expensive the Chrno Crusade books are - $13 each! That's a lot.... >_< I consider English manga expensive, and it tends to run around $10 a book. Japanese stuff tends to be around $7. I've seen some for as low as $5, and they do go up to about $10.... But $13?! That's as much as those overpriced Di Gi Charat English mangas that I buy (I returned the fourth one yesterday - I was really disappointed by it). Didn't really see anything I wanted at Borders yesterday either... Though the second book of Kenshin is out already. I know if I start buying into that series though, it'll be bad, since it's what, about thirty volumes long? *shudders* Pita Ten doesn't come out until January and Galaxy Angel's release date is in April so I'm going to have to wait for those shoujo series that I'm interested in. And I keep saying that I don't like shoujo. Such a lie, seeing that half my collection is Di Gi Charat. ^^; Well well, I just found out that Bleach has been licensed, so that's kind of cool. Don't think I'd really buy it though. Hikaru no Go is set to come out soon too, which is way cool, though that's another horribly long series (not as long as Kenshin though - only about twenty volumes :P). But what I really want is some good Chrno Crusade manga. Chrno is the best! Eheh. So is Fullmetal Alchemist, for that matter. But neither of those two titles have been licensed. Hm, not sure what else I'd be interested in...

Anyway, I have a plan for getting my hands on some good Japanese manga. Sarah and Vikki and I are planning to take a trip to New York City during our three-day weekend in January, just for kicks. Sarah wants to go skating in Central Park, and I want to go see some museums and it would just be a really fun thing to do. Aaanyway.... Since we're going to be there, I can probably get over to Kinokuniya for a bit! So exciting - we went there last summer. It's an awesome place, and they have a ton of manga in both English and Japanese! So yeah, Chrno, wait for me! Though that still won't solve the price issue... At least I won't have to worry about shipping. Ahahaha..... I am so excited. Sarah's going to kill me. ^_^;

Myah, well, I just started writing since I didn't have a good idea of what to work on in Java. Still don't. But I guess I ought to try to think of something. If I don't write before then... Have a very merry Christmas, everyone! Or whatever other holidays you do or don't celebrate.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Stabbing Westward - Save Yourself
Current mood: Blaaah....

Lord of the Movies

Okay, so I really should be working on that biology practice final, but I just got back from seeing Return of the King, and I have to write about it before I forget to and never say anything. Eheh.

Wow. We had quite the adventure tonight. Sarah and Vikki and I got free tickets to see Return of the King tonight, courtesy of Course VI (my major - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science). Well, actually, I didn't get a ticket, but Jim, who is waaay cool, gave me his since he was going with Random Hall. The show was at 7, but we met around 4 since we wanted to get good seats. We got to the theater around 5 and wandered around a bit before we got in line, since I'd never been to the Loews at Boston Common. Classy place. Anyway, we got in line and it was cool - there weren't more than twenty people ahead of us. But then things started going downhill. First, every time we sat down, this annoying usher guy would come over and yell at us to stand up and pack closer together. So we'd stand up. And no one would move. And then we'd sit back down again. And then the guy would come back and yell at us some more. It was all very annoying, especially since the people in front of us weren't sitting, but had sprawled all their McDonald's food all over the place. And then the usher guy threatened to kick us out. Mm-yeah. Nice guy. Of course, after Vikki and Sarah decided to yell at him, he disappeared, so they couldn't. :P

So after standing/sitting for about an hour, the show before us let out. And people said that it was awesome and we were getting all excited... And then the fire alarm went off. And we got yelled at to leave the theater. What the hell?! So we got herded out of the theater and the people kept telling us to cross the street and get away from the building. Now, that would have been fine if there were a serious problem, but no fire trucks ever came. It was stupid. After about 15 minutes of being screamed at, we crossed the street. And stood in the rain. And then all these people started flooding back in, and we got swept along. Frightening - total mob mentality thing going on there. Could've been dangerous. Anyway, Sarah led the way and cut a ton of people by weaving through the crowd - we eventually reclaimed our original spots in line. We got these emergency re-admit tickets... Hm, reminds me that I've still got that in my pocket... *pulls it out and sets it aside* Man, of course, this thing means that I have to go back there again and watch something. I'd rather have gotten a cash refund. For my free ticket. ^_~

Alas, when we entered the theater, somehow, everyone in the world had gotten in there before us, and all the good seats were taken. And we had been waiting in line for two hours! WTF. What more can I say? We got stuck way off on the left side, but at least we were pretty high up. In the end, the seats weren't that bad, but I feel totally cheated. Sarah and Vikki left to go and rant at that usher guy, since they were full of righteous anger. It's not like there was anything he could do though. *shrugs* I stayed and guarded the seats - I'm not really into yelling at other people anyway. I was pretty mad, but I also kind of mentally sat back just to see what else they were going to throw at us. I don't know - I've been feeling kind of distant lately. I drew though. I have more pretty Thraxxin pictures... I just wish I'd drawn them on white paper instead of on lined paper. My initially happy Thraxxin became an angry Thraxxin with his gun out. It looked better than what I'd started with anyway. He doesn't do happy all that well. Is drawing the only way that I express myself? Is that why I've been drawing so many upset/depressed guys this semester?

Aaanyway... We saw the movie! OHHHHH MY GOODNESS. THE BEST THING EVER. I remember being in awe of The Fellowship of the Ring. Then I saw The Two Towers and wasn't nearly as satisfied. Maybe because I'd been so impressed by the first movie. Though when I saw the extended edition of The Two Towers, I liked it a whole lot more. Y'know what? It's probably because they changed a lot in the movie from the second book in ways that I considered 'unforgiveable' than they had for the first one. But for Return of the King... I loved every single minute of it. Aaaah! It's truly epic. And the audience was great. There was a lot of applause at all the right places. It was a ton of fun. And Legolas! Ah! Total eye candy. There's nothing like blond hair and pointy ears... ^____^ There's this one horrible line that he said that was totally stupid. Guess he's not got much of a brain under that perfect hair of his. But he's got another moment of glory in this film (longer than that sweet jump onto the horse in The Two Towers, mwah) and it's just great. And Aragorn is amazing too. He's such an inspiring figure. But I really really loved Sam. He's really the true hero, I think. Oh my goodness, listen to me go on like a crazed fangirl. Heh, I remember after seeing the second movie, I was all, "Blah. Lord of the Rings. I'll let the other girls scream over it and go back to my anime bishounen." And then I saw this, and I love it all over again. I so can't wait for the extended edition to come out - I'll bet it'll be great. Too bad it's going to take about a year... Aaah... And I really would like the soundtrack to this movie. I wasn't really interested in the sountrack for the second movie because it was similar to the first, except for that overplayed Rohan theme. But this movie had a lot of new stuff, and it was really good. Especially that bit with the Irish whistle. It was really pretty.

Whew. Okay, I'm done. o_o; Hm. Why are you reading this? You should go out and see the movie!! :D And I should go and study! Hahaha..... Okay, I'll force myself. 9am finals are evil beyond belief, but not getting enough sleep beforehand is even worse. G'night!

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Stabbing Westward - So Far Away
Current mood: Finals? What finals? LOTR rules! Yaaaaay!!! *hyper hyper*

And Now For Your Daily Dose of Depression

Ohhhh.... I am bored. So I will write in here before midnight for once! Fancy that. Today was my 6.002 final (that's Circuits and Electronics for you non-numerical types). I was really nervous about it (rather more like 'scared silly'), but it wasn't as horrible as I was afraid it would be. It was tough, but not impossible. I hope I did all right... I'll find out in a week! Wow, I studied for that test as I have never studied before. I spent a lot of time preparing and felt like it didn't help... Hm. Now I still have to study for biology and math, but those aren't until Thursday and Friday. Doesn't mean I should slack off though - 6.042 isn't going to be easy either. Discrete Mathematics, ugh.

So I've been listening to the same CD over and over for the past few days. I've heard it about 7 times. I just played it a while earlier and kept thinking that I'd already heard the current song that was playing... But that was because I'd already played it two or three times earlier today. x_x Oh well, the music from Last Exile is good to work to - all strings and orchestral inspiration. Yay.

Final crunch-time makes me sad. Christmas is only a bit more than a week away, and I can't feel that at all. I can't look at anything beyond my upcoming tests. It really annoys me. Blaaah.... Christmas. It's a love-hate time of the year. I love Christmas because I get to go home and be with my family (and you should be able to tell by now that my family's pretty important to me). And I don't have to think about classes or school since the semester will be finished. And there's a tree. And usually snow. Lots of snow this year. Hm. But Christmas-time means Christmas shopping. Which I hate doing. The only good kind of shopping is grocery shopping but I can't very well give my sisters a loaf of bread or something. Arrgh... My mom's not going to be here for Christmas this year. She's going to California to help her parents move into their new apartment. They were originally going to go to China but it didn't work out, which is really too bad. Still, my grandmother just got out of the hospital so it's best that she doesn't go gallivanting off to the other side of the earth. I worry. I worry too much. But if I don't, then I only think of myself and that feels horrible and selfish. I've looked back over the past semester and wonder where the time went. Did I make myself useful for anyone? In the grand scheme of things, do I matter at all? I feel very isolated. I feel very alone. My friends are in my kitchen studying for economics and here I am punting biology and getting all depressed again. Geez, must be a real drag for you to be reading this, hm? My apologies.

Things to be happy about:
- My cell phone died but then it revived. Guess the battery was dead, and the charge light wasn't working. But it charged back up so I don't have to be so panicked about that.
- Going to see The Return of the King on Wednesday night. Even though the biology final's on Thursday morning. But it's Aragorn! And Legolas! And hobbitses!
- 6.002 is OVER! Hopefully I will have passed the course and not have to take it again because that would suck beyond belief.
- The Galaxy Angel manga is coming out in March. And there's more Di Gi Charat manga to be bought.
- I borrowed DVDs from the anime club to take home and watch. Lost Universe - I've been wanting to watch it for quite a while. Actually, if we had Slayers TRY, I'd finish that up, but we only have it on VHS, not DVD. *sniff*
- Maybe I'll see friends when I go home. And even if I don't, we're going to Florida. Where it's warm.
- I can draw.
- I can draw Jesper.
- Okay, I can go into the kitchen and hang out with the others and draw Jesper.

I shouldn't be depressed. There's so much for me to be grateful for. Buck up - just one more week and then my first semester as a cynical sophomore will be over.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None
Current mood: Scatter-brained

Anime... Because I Never Talk About It!

Fyuuh... Tonight was the club's pre-finals madness showing. It was pretty... special. If you really want to see something that'll make your head spin, watch Noiseman Sound Insect. The freakiest 15 minutes of my life ever. It makes no sense! Actually, I want to watch it again to see if I can understand it the second time around. Should I be scared? <_<; On a happier note, I started watching Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu! a few days back, and I love it to death. It's so funny, and so cute! And the music is totally addicting. I was really looking forward to seeing the anime version of Chrno Crusade, but I've been rather disappointed so far. Maybe because Chrno hasn't transformed into his adult self yet, which will happen next episode (So exciting! *drool drool*). Ehem. Yeah. I don't really like the series so far... The enemies are cheesy, and I kind of don't like how Chrno sounds, and how Joshua showed up so early, and... Aargh, there's all these little things. The manga is so much better. Same goes for D.N.Angel. What can I say? It's generally true that the book is better than the movie... Same goes for anime and manga, I guess. Though the Fullmetal Alchemist anime gets two thumbs up from me so far... I really like it. The action's great, and the questions are deep. It's pretty episodic, but it's totally enjoyable. The best thing is how they play up on Edward's touchiness about his height (he overreacts whenever someone calls him short... it's great ^^). It's in the manga, and the anime producers seemed to overlook that detail for a while, but they certainly have been playing up on it quite a bit in the more recent episodes. The action's really well-done too. Very fluid and interesting. Alchemy's never been so much fun. ^_~

Yeah, so I'm supposed to be studying for finals. Only it's sooooo hard to get motivated. I hate 6.002. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I need to pass this class. I don't want to take it over again. Plus, that'd kill my hopes for M-enging too. -___- Aargh. MIT sucks. All you people out there, don't come here. There is much to hate. Oh yeah, speaking of hate... Liang (anime club treasurer) finally made the new club ID cards. He was supposed to do this within the first few weeks of the semester for all the new members. Well, I didn't realize this, but I also got a new card - a permanent membership card for holding the role of librarian. He never told me, and so I never knew to submit a picture for the ID. So I got this surprise new card that I'm going to have for the rest of my life... and instead of the picture of Lindy-goth that's on my normal ID, it was a picture of Tim the Beaver! Aaaahhhhh! That made me really really mad. Who wants to have a permanent ID with the school mascot on it?!?!? I guess that's what you get if you don't submit a picture. Ali-chan said she'd dig out the old picture I sent her last year when I joined the club (she was treasurer then) and get me a new card, which is great. BUT, Liang, major lack of communication, ne?! What the hell were you thinking?! I'm still all annoyed, thinkig about it. Puts me in a fine mood for finals. x_x; There's probably more importat things that I should mention than these petty complaints, but I'm too annoyed to write them down right now. I'm going to bed. *stalks off*

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Shimokawa Mikuni - Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu! OP - Sore Ga, Ai Deshou *heart heart*
Current mood: In pain... Ouch... My head...

I am Sam. Sam I am.

*forces herself to sit down and write* Yeah, yeah, I keep meaning to write, but I'm never in the right mood for it. Thanksgiving was lovely - can't wait to go home again. Saw Millennium Actress - greatest movie ever! It's so well put together... I highly recommend it.

Heh, this week has been pretty low-key. Nothing's due, it's the last week of classes and finals don't start 'til next week. So tonight we started watching the extended edition of The Two Towers. Kind of hard with all these talkative people, but it works. We tried to start around 10, but didn't really start until 11:30. Some people have no concept of time at all! Aargh! So yeah, we only got through the first disc, and all of the action's on the second one. *sigh* The extended edition is ten times better than the original version though - they set things up so much better... We had a discussion though. There's this part where Sam tells Gollum that if he's starving, then he should go ahead and starve and die, and I was all, "Oh, I'd so say something like that!" And Sarah replied, "Yeah, you're Sam. Without the optimism." So that led to a discussion of "What Lord of the Rings character are you?" We decided that Vikki is Frodo, since she's the only person who would give Gollum another chance. Sarah decided that she's not Lord of the Rings material. But then she said she'd be Smeagol, since Frodo and Smeagol are pretty much the same person. Hmm.... Though it seems that lately Vikki has been wanting to declare autonomy from our one-ness. So sad. ;~; Anyway, I'd rather be the Nazgul king because the Nazgul rule. I'd just have to remember to stay away from all the women. I want a cool cape and massive armor and an evil flying black thingy... Eheh heh heh...

Oh yeah, and Prof. Weinberg is Grima Wormtongue. Weinberg is one of my biology professors and he's so boring and horrible. And whenever he asks the class a question, he answers himself with, "I'm glad I just asked that," and keeps on going. And then Wormtongue said something to the same effect and the comparison was hideous. Sarah and I were shrieking, "That's what Weinberg would say if he were in Middle Earth!" Myah.

Jim said he'd give me his free ticket to the Return of the King next Wednesday (they were provided by Course VI... I didn't get there in time to get one -_-) since he's going with Random Hall. So that's really really cool. I owe him something nice. ^_^ Not one of those creepy Gollum figurines that they sell with the Two Towers DVD. Haha, those are the scariest things ever. I don't know why anyone would want one.

My goodness. I spent all of Monday afternoon at work thinking up a back-story for Thraxxin. It was very sad, and there's lots of holes all over the place. Typical me - I have no planning skills. Keeps me entertained though. Makes me want to draw more grumpy Thraxxin pictures though; they are so much fun! Aah! What is wrong with me?! I haven't drawn a girl in months. Hmmm.... Oh well. Thraxxin and Jesper and Link are all so very yay, and if that's kept my spirits up all this semester then why should I stop? ^^; Umm.... Yeah. Anyway, I should get some sleep so that I don't sleep through all my classes tomorrow. Tomorrow's the last day of class! And we're going to watch the more interesting half of the Two Towers! And Sarah's floor has a study break! Sounds like a good day ahead of me. :D

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None
Current mood: Yay!