Rambles and Rants

Happy Birthday to Me!

2011-01-04T10:37:00.003-06:00

Yesterday was my birthday. (Yay!) It was pretty much with the awesome and massive with the cool.
We ended up going to DC for the day...although that wasn't my original plan. X3
My first thought was that we could go see the new Tron movie. Except...we did that last week. One idea down. (It was a really cool movie, though. XD)
Then I thought...well, maybe we could go to Ice at the Gaylord Resort. We ended up doing that last week too. (Also really cool. And COLD. 2 million pounds of ice carved into sculptures of the Grinch and such made for a very cold place. :D)
So...yesterday rolls around and I'm trying to figure out what to do. "Um...let's go to...the...Bureau of Engraving and Printing?" I say uncertainly...and so that's where we go!
It was a good day for it too...there was hardly anyone there. We hit the building just in time to catch a tour and went through with plenty of elbow room to spare. (I did have a group of cranky people behind me who made nasty comments every time I paused to look at something. 'Ohmigosh, how horrible to get stuck behind someone who just stops in these skinny hallways and escalators and gets in our way.' I felt like smacking them before I was through. XD) I really never pictured the people who work at the Bureau as big burly guys with hugely muscled tattooed arms and beards and ladies with long (I think they were painted purple) fingernails and such. Then at the gift shop I got a keychain...full of shredded money. (How could you go to the giftshop and not get something full of shredded money I ask?)
Then we went to-...wait, hold on and back up a minute. I skipped a part of the trip!
We stopped at Union Station on the way to the Bureau to snag a treat - pound cake for mom, muffins for my sibs, and a giant almost palm-sized coconut macaroon for me. (Which, though good, I do not think I will get again because it was so big that the center, instead of being chewy, was almost gooey. A bit much. I was chewing for like a half hour afterwards. X3)
Then we went to the Holocaust museum, since it is right next to the Bureau. It was a very interesting, if deep, museum. Lots to read and look at and watch.
By the time we got through it, it was WAY past lunchtime, but we decided to have a granola bar (and the other halves of our treats from earlier) and keep going.
Where? I really didn't have a clue at that point. We'd exhausted all of my ideas. XD
But, one of the presents I was getting was a Buddha Board (pictures to come later in this post), and we needed to track it down first. So we went to the Hirshorn museum and then to the American Art/Portraiture museum to find the one I wanted. Since we still had some time to kill we wandered around the AA/P museum (saw a couple of...very...very...strange exhibits and I sat and marveled at the MVSEVM (a miniature museum, it's VERY cool. Look it up on google or something. :3)
Then our stomachs said we needed to go find food, so we went back to Union Station for chicken salad sandwiches of awesomeness. (We've become sort of regulars there, the workers know us on sight. X3 ) The lady was so sweet - when she heard it was my birthday she tried first to give me a free drink, but I had already gotten our drinks from someplace else. So she gave me my sandwich for free. :D
Then we wandered around Union Station for a while, looking in the shops. (My sister got a nifty scarf, my brother magazine about the new Tron movie, and he almost got a cool-looking Hot Wheels car...except that it rang up at FOUR DOLLARS. They only sell for a dollar at Toys'R'Us, so we were all like 'I dunn think so.')
When we got home, my 'cake' awaited! My dad asks me the other day what I want for a cake, if he should make one or go buy one at Sam's or what. My answer? 'Let's have Cinnabon cinnamon rolls!' So that's what we had. Was kinda funny watching him put the candles in. XD
Then I got my presents, most of which I had chosen myself. X3
And while my sibs worked on catching up on journals (because they hadn't written in them for a couple days and were behiiiiiiiind), I ran upstairs with my awesome stuff:

A cuuuuute pair of new boots (that will take...a little bit of getting used to because I hardly ever wear anything with ANY sort of heel. XD)

My Buddha Board. (Which, as you see below, works perfectly well. Cool effect as the picture fades, like in the second photo.)

A treasure chest box to keep my geocaching swag in - I've been looking for something suitable for months now and found this the other week in an art museum. Now my swag doesn't have to be kept in a plastic sandwich baggie on my shelf. Yay!

I have another pop-up book by this guy (Narnia), and love it. I came across this one in the same museum I found the treasure chest in and REALLY loved it.

Recently I've been on this HUGE Wonderland kick, where I've bought a whole bunch of Alice-related stuff...this was perfect to add to my little collection. X3

I took pictures of two of the pages. Aren't they incredible?

There's lift the flap pages on the sides (you can see one in the left side of the tea-table page photograph) that ALSO have popups. It's impressive.

Finally, I got this great how-to-draw book - the only gift I didn't know about before my birthday. XD

I love Chris Hart's stuff, he does such beautiful pictures. The girls in this book are super cute.

But wait, there's more!

While my sibs were journaling, I came up to my room and got on my computer to visit with some of my friends before going to bed. I have a group of really good friends on a website called gaiaonline, and not only did they all wish me happy birthday, they all sent me virtual gifts! X3

So I got a whole bunch of awesome items for my avatar on Gaia, including a few I'd been wanting for a while.

All in all I think it was a pretty great birthday.

Even if we did end up walking, according to 'Chuck', my Pokewalker (named for Chuck Norris, 'Walker', Texas Ranger? XDDDD I know, it's a HORRIBLE joke, but I love it), fourteen THOUSAND steps yesterday. WOW!

So that's my 'birthday report' :3

And the second blogpost in like a week! Isn't it amazing?

We'll have to see if I can keep this up. Maybe I'll do a picture post next time, since I've actually been using my drawing tablet for more than just a glorified mousepad and have stuff I can show you. :D

Christmas 2010!

2010-12-26T09:14:00.005-06:00

Long time no talk, ne?
'Pologies for that, I've been busy. XD
I'll try to be better about posting, particularly since I've been making cute stuff in various places. (For one thing, I've been playing with my tablet and have started having some digital art actually worth saving and showing.)

Buuuuuut.
Christmas was pretty much with the awesome this year.
I decided to make all of the gifts to give to my family this time. Made four amigurumis (which I'll put up pictures of in another post), one for each of my parents and each of my siblings. What I worked hardest at making, though, was the scarves I gave my sister and brother.

This one is modeled by my sister but actually made for my brother. (When I took the picture I couldn't very well have him wear it, could I? XD)
It's HUGE: about five and a half feet tall and probably at least 10 inches wide. Striped yellow and black (Pittsburgh Steelers colours, his favorite football team), the scarf totally made his geeky mathematical self squee in delight - the 'striped pattern' is actually a visual representation of the first 100 digits of the mathematical expression pi. You know, 3.1415......etc. So the first 'stripe' is 3 rows wide, the next one 1 row, then 4 rows. '0' is made by switching colours every stitch to make a dashed line.
His face, when he realized what it was, was the BEST thing I saw all night. I was afraid his eyes were going to pop out of his head, they went so wide. XD
It's also an INCREDIBLY WARM scarf - my sister, when she posed for the picture, could only keep it on for about half a minute because it was 'really, REALLY hot'. Good for cold, windy DC trips, no?

I made this scarf for my sister, and it didn't take NEAR as long as my brother's. His was over 550 rows of 80 stitches each of straight knitting. Took more than a month and a half to make it.
My sister's took about a half a week. XD
I saw the idea for this one in a crochet magazine...didn't buy the magazine, but I looked over the pattern and remembered enough of the details to recreate it.
It's meant to mimic the look of the paper chain garlands. (I used to love making those.) And the colours, for my Beehive president sister, are the value colours - although finding the right shades was a bit of a pain, particularly the gold! (For anyone needing 'gold' yarn, Simply Soft's bone colour is just right. :3)

Alright, enough of the stuff I gave to people, onto the stuff I got! XD

Christmas Eve we always open family gifts. And for sibling gifts, we started the tradition a couple years back of going to the dollar store to pick out a couple of fun things for each other (the siblings). Part of the fun is in trying to figure out what people would like without bumping into them and keeping the items secret so they don't see! (Although since I made/had already bought three gifts for my brother and sister - the scarves, an amigurumi for each, and a necklace for each I bought at the Renaissance Festival almost two months ago - I didn't get to play. *sigh*)
So, from my sister I got an awesomely cute colouring book, a pack of Blue's Clues stickers, and a package of Goetze's caramel creams (already eaten!), and from my brother I got a pack of silly stickers, a cool book to read, a fun puzzle (which I forgot to have in the photograph! ^^"), and a package of 8 fun-size 100 Grand bars (partly eaten. XD)

From Grandma Weatherston I got this pretty purple blanket in the right. Then parent gifts - purple Eeyore pajamas at the bottom of the picture, the Hunger Games trilogy (an AWESOME set), and the giant WALL-E plush in the left (affectionately named WALL-A since he's ginormous compared to my other WALL-E plush, just like the WALL-As in the movie tower over WALL-E. XD)

Christmas morning!
Stockings are always my favorite to open. X3
There's always yummy candy (not pictured because I've already eaten most of it!) and little presents - mini stuff is always my favorite!
We take turns opening presents, my sibs and I. When they both opened their squishy packages and got socks, I thought for sure I was getting some too. Maybe fuzzy socks to keep my feet warm on those early seminary mornings?
Nuh-uh! I got an awesome Cheshire Cat hat - perfect, since I didn't really have one...and the one I kept borrowing from my mom didn't like to stay down over my ears and keep them warm. This one most definitely will keep my ears warm. XD
Then, holy cow cool, I opened the other package and found a game I've been dying to have since it came out - Pokemon Soul Silver is the DS remake of my second favorite Pokemon EVAR. (Pokemon Yellow being my first favorite. :3) One of the niftiest/funniest things about it is it comes with a Pokewalker - a pedometer. XD
I know JUST how to get a ton of steps on it - slip it in my pocket whenever we go to DC. That'll do it. *laughs*

Then we had breakfast before moving onto the 'big' gifts - the nonstocking stuff.
The drawing book is one I knew I wanted - I have a whole bunch of other books from that company and LOVE them. I'd never seen the finger puppet one before ever. The patterns are SUPER cute. Guess I'll have new stuff I can make while I wait for my brother to finish in Seminary or my sister to finish in Piano. XD
I LOVE the Alice bag. I recently got addicted to all things Wonderland, I'm not sure why. But this bag is absolutely GINORMOUS and wonderfully cute. I'm thinking it may work really well for a crochet bag...or a drawing one, since it's large enough to hold sketchbooks with ease!
Maybe it will be my supply bag for the Drawing class I'm going to be taking Spring semester (yes, you heard me right - I am FINALLY going to take an art class. I'll talk all about it in a different post, though. :3)
My final gift, and a very cool one, is the mystical looking ball in the bottom of the picture...it's a Fushigi ball, made for the art of contact juggling, a form of juggling where the ball never leaves your hands. It was made pretty famous in the movie Labyrinth - remember the crystal bubbles Jareth juggles? Well, that wasn't done by David Bowie but by Michael Moschen, one of the world's foremost contact jugglers.

That's not all, though! (Well, that is it for the photographs. XD)
We also got a bunch of cool stuff that's not for any one person but for the whole family.
We got a number of Wii games (including Epic Mickey, which was COOL, and a Disney karaoke game), a bunch of board games (I love The Game of Things and Quelf looks totally awesome), and a really nice easel for painting and drawing! AWESOME!

So I'd say it was a pretty great Christmas. :3
I'd write more, but I'm busy hunting down Pokemon, keeping mah ears warm, and trying not to drop this heavy ball on my foot while trying to balance it on my fingers. Ciao!

Zoos Aplenty!

2010-03-20T20:58:00.005-05:00

This has been a busy week for the Weatherston Zoo Crew...in less than a week, we've gone to zoos 3 times!

The first came earlier this week, when we went to the Baltimore Zoo with our friends the Cornwall family.

As you might tell from the pictures, much craziness ensued, from butt-watching rhinos, flying down slides, turtle-riding, and cowgirling.

Snoozing like a polar bear sounded like a good idea by the end of the day.

Today, we had decided to go to the National Zoo in Washington DC. At least until Mom noticed an article in the newspaper than mentioned that at the celebration of the second birthday of Samson the elephant at the Baltimore Zoo there would be served cakes made by Charm City Cakes. As in the Charm City Cakes of Ace of Cakes fame. [Google if you've no idea what I'm talking about. It's only one of the most loved shows in our house. They make AWESOME cakes. Go look. Now. Shoo. Then come back.]

The problem then is...do we go? We had just been to the Baltimore Zoo, and still wanted to go to the National Zoo...but cake! By Duff! Cake!

So we did both.

Mom didn't tell Stevie what we were doing until we were almost there.

He then proceeded to drool. Vastly. We nigh well needed a mop to deal with it.

When we got there we quite a bit of time to kill until the gate opened. Then we rode the tram back to the part of the zoo wherein the celebration would occur. We walked (swiftly) past the animals, for of course the elephants are found in the very backmost portion of the zoo. We missed Duff himself by only a few moments - Stevie glimpsed a man on a motorcyle roar off, who we realized later must have been him. Several of the CCC girls were there, however. They were kind enough to pose in a picture with Stevie, as well as sign his zoomap.
There were a number of activities planned. The serving of the cake, of course (we were first in line). Signing a card for the guest of honor, as well as writing birthday greetings on the sidewalk with chalk (which then got drawn on by little kids coming later). We saw the cake that the zookeepers made for Samson...not something I'd want to eat, but it looked yummy for elephants.
We chose to have the chocolate cake filled with delicious peanut butter filling over the one with raspberry. Good choice, I think.

We may have gotten filmed in line...and my Dad may have gotten filmed licking his plate clean - watch for us in 3-4 months on an Ace of Cakes episode in season 9! *laughs*
We skipped the rest of the birthday bash, as we had another zoo to get to!

The National Zoo had crazy amounts of people. Almost no parking whatsoever, and a crowd of probably thousands of people.

The trees were blooming. They were extremely pretty. Looked like a huge group of white butterflies settled on a bare tree. Or popcorn. Depending on your point of view.

The prairie dogs were posing.

As were the meerkats.

The pandas were...eating. And eating. And...well, you get the idea.

And Missy was...getting pennies. Her penny collection must be worth lots by now! A couple of dollars, for sure. *grins*

All in all, a sucessful (but tiring) day.

Tomorrow we go to an art festival!

First Trip to the Science Center

2010-03-20T20:21:00.006-05:00

Recently I blogged about the trip we made to the Science Center for Pi Day. That was not our first trip there.

The first trip we made was the week prior. It was to be a 'short' trip...we did not explore EVERY part of the building.

The very first thing I saw and was excited about as we walked up to the strange-shaped building that is the Sceince Center was the sign for the geocaching exhibit. [Aside: I LOVE geocaching...even though I do not yet have access to a GPS. ^^" I do my best by studying other people's pictures, reading their comments, and googlemaps. It doesn't work vastly well, but it's still fun. For those who do not know, geocaching is the hobby of finding hidden caches of items and such by using their GPS, then logging their visit to the cache on geocaching.com.]

I thought it was super cool that they had an exhibit, including caches hidden around the harbor that you can borrow museum GPS to find. (We haven't done that yet.) When we later went to the exhibit, I was the only kid to go through the entire maze they had, reading all the signs. (Dad came with me. ^^)

That was not, however, the first thing we did. First we watched the new Alice in Wonderland movie from Tim Burton on the IMAX. In 3d. It was pretty awesome. (My favorite character was probably the Cat. Or the Dormouse. Except for that icky eye-poking thing she does.)

After that we did some exploration of the museum.

Dad got tired and decided to rest for a bit.

On a bed of nails! Ouch!

Not really.

We went up to the roof of the Science Center, where they have a really cool telescope. They also have screens you can hold in front of your eyes so as to safely look at the sun. It filtered out light...and made the sun appear green.

We even got to look at the sun through the telescope. Needless to say, you got a lot better picture. Dad spent a long time looking through it.

I couldn't see through very well...sometimes having glasses means suffering the curse of being unable to through telescopes...microscopes...binoculars...

I like my glasses, however. I enjoy clarity in my life. *laughs*

I did manage to take a picture through the telescope.

I was feeling pretty good about my picture...until one of the guys running the telescope goes "No, no, no...that's not a good picture...this is a good picture!" He spends several minutes getting me a closeup picture of the sun...it even has some action going on toward the left side - a sun flare. Looks like a little curved thread.

As long as we were on the roof, I wanted to get a good shot of the view. Only way the view could be better is if they had built it so you could face the water.

Finally, just some other pictures I took of the interior of the building from varying heights.

I imagine that these probably will not be the last time you see blogposts about the Science Center around here...it's become a very popular place for our family!

Happy Birthday!

2010-03-16T17:47:00.003-05:00

Today's my Grandma Elna's birthday!

I wanted to wish her a very happy birthday!

We love ya here at the zoo crew.

^_____________________^

Happy Pi Day!

2010-03-14T20:10:00.009-05:00

3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510...

Enough of that.

Today is March 14th! 3.14.2010!

I discovered 'Pi Day' a couple of years ago, but this is the first time I've actually celebrated it.
Now, I don't like math, but I do like the concept of a math symbol-related holiday. And a reason to eat pi. I mean pie. I also enjoy making pi jokes. (Mathematician: Pi r squared. Baker: NO! Pies are round!)

Well, when we went to the Baltimore Science Center last week (which I will get around to blogging about), we noticed that today would be Pi Day, and they would be doing special events to celebrate.
Both my brother and I decided that we...had...to...go.

So we did. ^^
And it was awesome.

Now, the weather was a bit icky...but we didn't care.
The birds might have, though. They looked kind of miserable.

My brother signed up for the drawing to get into the pie-eating contest. He didn't get in. Too bad, he would have whomped on those kids! Most of them barely touched their pie, because they didn't want to get their faces dirty.

The science center was doing a lot of cool activities: there were hula hoops (Pi is important in calculating the circumference of circles, of course), pi colouring pages, making pi necklaces (three beads of a colour, then one bead of a different colour, then four beads of a different colour, etc.), reciting as much of pi as you can (Let's see...chocolate, pumpkin, apple...oh, you mean the digits?), stringing pi along the stairwell of the building, one digit at a time, like a number garland:

There was eating pi...at least, Moon Pies.

My favorite, however, was piku and piems.

Celebrate

Day with haiku.

Traditional form:

Five seven five; or Pi form:

Three then one then four.

Call me the

Poem Master.

Feel free to make up

Your own 'piems' for Pi Day.

Does it look like fun?

The one I made up at the building actually went like this:

The symbol is cool!

As for the food, I think that

Cheesecake is better.

We did spend some exploring the rest of the science center too. We went to a couple of planetarium shows and played in most of the exhibits. (They wouldn't let us go play in the Kids' Room. My plan of hijacking someone's kid to get an in was nixed by the family. *sigh* Guess I'll have to plot something else.

One thing I found that was really cool was a small area devoted to the IMAX theater. It has lookthrough spots where you can watch the IMAX projector working, which was neat, but I found the display that compared different kinds of film fascinating. The two short, skinny films are VHS and such, while the bottom filmstrip is the IMAX film.

After we got done at the science center, we drove past a really funky looking art museum-thing. (I'll put pictures up in a slideshow soon as I figure out how).

When we got home we had dinner (mm...burgers). Since Stevie was bummed about missing the pie-eating contest...which he won, despite his 20-second handicap! But only by a few seconds...seconds I had lost because I had to stop to breath through my mouth because I'd gotten whipped cream up my nose! My sinuses are still burning. Kids, do not snort whipped cream. It ain't pretty.

Then we had pie. Chocolate cream. Mm.

But we ate it with chopsticks. *shrugs* That's life at our house for ya.

This morning, I actually sent out a message to my crochet group about Pi Day...with some links that I had found. I found an awesome hat to make my brother, as well as an amigurumi pi symbol. I'm thinking birthday presents, maybe?

So, overall Pi Day was much with the fun.

I hope everyone else had a great Pi Day...and if not, there's always next year!

It's farewell

Pi Day this year.

May next year

just as much fun!

[Slideshow of art museum to be added as soon as possible.]

[Am also working on drafting blog posts for everything from the trips we did in Texas to the move to this point in time.]

[Apologies for the screwed up formatting - I CANNOT get it to stay right.]

Long Time, No Post.

2010-02-25T09:39:00.002-06:00

Betcha've been wondering where I've been, ne?
I am currently writing this from the lofty heights of my new bed, in my new room of our new house on my not-so-new laptop on our new wireless internet!
There's a lot of information in that sentence in there, isn't there? :)
Well, we skedaddled out of Texas about a month ago and arrived in Maryland in time to admire the vast snowpiles that accumulated during our week of travel. We spent about a week and a half in a very nice hotel (Mariott Residence Inn...stay there on a weekday if you have a chance. The one we were at, at least, did 'social hour' dinner. Between that and breakfast, we didn't have to make our own meals at all!). Then we got our house: a tad bit smaller than the recent houses my family has had, but we'll make it work.
For the past couple days I've been sleeping in pillow and blanket piles on the floor first, then my mattress, but last night we put together my new bed (and shifted it around and around in my room because it didn't want to fit anywhere) and now I get to sleep on it! Pictures will be forthcoming later...this'll be a text-only blog this time. *laughs*
I was a little concerned about falling off in the night - I used to have a short daybed, but now I almost need rockclimbing equipment to climb onto it - but I awoke this morning still on the mattress. *whew*
I changed bedding sets to go with the bed...baby Eeyore didn't really go with black-painted wood. Now I've got black sheet, a red comforter, one black pillowcase and two silky red ones. I also got a giant black suede pillow that is super comfy to lay against while reading or playing gameboy.
It's a good thing this bed has a bunch of understorage: drawers and cupboards and such. There's not enough room for my TV cabinet! I gave it to my sister for her princess TV.
Another good thing mentioned was that our house has wireless! I no longer have to fight everyone else for internet access, which will probably equal a lot more blog posts from yours truly. I used to type up the posts in a word document, then copy it over, but this is much easier.
It was a little sad and pathetic the first day we got the router in, though. I had brought my laptop down to test it, and my dad's laptop was out, and the main computer was up...and I was chatting to my mom through facebook when we were half a room apart from one another. XD
Now I've loaded yahoo chat, and it will be useful to talk. If she wants to ask me a question, and I happen to be online, I don't have to go downstairs. Vice versa, too. If I want to ask something and she's on, I can do it from my bed.
Let's see...what else is important? Oh, yes. I went to the library last night (technically I was dropped off while the rest of my family went to a meeting)...or rather, one of the many libraries in the Anne Arundel county. There's like 16 of them total. This one was really nice - it was two stories, with kid's book downstairs and everything else up. There's a good selection of everything, and a very high checkout limit (99 items, though I won't check out THAT many). I picked up a few things with my new library card. I went through the main line, though I was fascinated by a self checkout machine. Maybe I'll try that next time!
Right now life is kind of sluggish...still trying to get everything settled. I've been doing a lot of computer, gameboy and reading. I really should start my cool crochet project I've decided on as my next big project: It's a piano keys scarf for my music-loving, piano-playing sister. Looks like great fun, and it will be the first big non-amigurumi project I've done in a long time.
I picked up a cute book of bug afghans, though...made of squares with bees and ladybugs and dragonflies, etc. We'll see what I feel like doing after I finish the scarf.

Well, I believe that covers the most pressing news in my life. Since I have continual access to the internet let's see if that will make me be a more regular blogger!

Happy New Year!

2010-01-03T08:14:00.001-06:00

As well as Happy birthday to me today.

I'll try to do some catchup posts soon. Not today, 'cause we're going to go play in Austin!

Beep! Beep! Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

2009-11-22T18:01:00.002-06:00

Today, I decided to use our dying bananas and make banana bread.
Yum, right?
Thus begins the problems.
[Using a quick way of writing because my arms hurt to type]

The Tale of the Bread, from my point of view:

All right. Need two eggs. *look in fridge* No eggs.
*drive to store, buy carton of eggs, drive back*
All right. eggs. *crack, dump, toss shells*
Need margarine. *look in fridge...half a stick of margarine when I need a whole one*
*sigh*
*use half a stick of margarine, half a stick of butter*
Need bananas. *peel bananas...one inch-long segment of peel at a time as the peel disintegrates on me*
Mix. *turn on mixer...bananas try to go flying*
*sigh*
*mix together dry ingredients, add to wet, pour into greased pans, put in oven*
Good. Second batch.
*mix, mix, mix, using butter instead of margarine*
*pour batter into last pan, then scoop into mini-muffin pan*
*put in oven*
[Later]
*go to take bread out, phone rings...continue trying to take finished bread out, newer pan of bread tips over and spills*
*sigh*
*scoot out as much spilled batter as possible, but some sneaks down sides of oven where it is unreachable*
*sigh*
*leave as is...stinky burnt bread smell*
*pull out muffins, let cool*
[Later]
*make dinner (a stir together in pan and let cook from a box meal)...turn on oven to preheat...just as soon as I start putting pan in oven, smoke alarm goes off (from burnt bread smell), I jerk and spill water out of the pan all over the door, sending up more smoke which sets the smoke alarm off half a dozen more times*
*frantically try to clean up/fix meal/air out room/keep smoke alarm from going off*
*open all doors and windows, turn on stove fan, add water to pan and put in stinky oven...finally get alarm to stop beeping every half a minute*

*SIGH*

A New Blog...

2009-10-10T08:04:00.003-05:00

I recently got a digital camera for an early birthday present and have been taking a bunch of pictures with it.
Rather than fill up this blog, which is mostly writing-oriented, with a whole bunch of photos, I decided to create a new blog which would be photo oriented.
http://lithenbourne.blogspot.com/
There is a minimum amount of text accompanying each photo. I choose whatever photo I like and put it when I feel like it.

That doesn't mean I won't put photos up here. I'm more likely now to put up photos to go with my posts now. *grins*
I just wanted someplace to put some of the random stuff I'm going to be taking. ^^

YouTube Tuesday Strikes Again!...but not on Tuesday...

2009-09-27T21:35:00.003-05:00

[Some lyrics may not be appropriate for work or little ears to hear.]
So, went to a local version of the play The Producers the other night. Then watched the dvd version that same night. Very funny, very enjoyable.
Well, tonight when I was waiting for a phone call, I was surfing the net to stay awake. I remembered that there was a scene where there was a change from play to movie - one of the main characters, named Max Bialystock, has been betrayed by his partner Leo Bloom (vagueness to avoid giving away details, sorry. ^^"). He's in jail and sings, appropriately enough, a song called "Betrayed." Now, in the play that we saw, the character sings a brief version of everything that has happened so far in 5 minutes, including intermission break. The movie didn't, obviously, not having an intermission. I wanted to see how the original actor performed it (a much better way, I think.)

However, as I was looking for videos of the OBC (Original Broadway Cast) performance, I came across something...a little different.

The entertaining part of this is that the original Broadway actor, Nathan Lane, is also the voice of the meerkat Timon in The Lion King.
And this was not all...

This last one seemed particularly well-matched. ^^

Maybe it's just my lack of sleep, but they seemed oddly hilarious. *grins*
Night all...gotta go finish up some schoolwork.

Stupid Drivers and Silly Chickens

2009-06-23T12:43:00.003-05:00

Last Friday was my sister's birthday, so we went to Waco.

Well, first we gave her two presents early: her camera, and the chicken I made for her.
For a week and a half I had teased her about the colour this chicken was going to be...and she chose not to wait until that night to get it, but to get it before we left.
I kept telling her while I was making it that it was all sorts of horrible colours - lime green with rust orange feet, for example.
Then I remembered that when I went through my yarn, I had had a skein of a horrible colour that looked just like dried vomit.
So I told her I was making it out of that. She grimaced.
The story kept growing as the week went on, until it was a three-foot tall vomit coloured chicken with a huge hole in one side (where I miscounted stitches, of course), one eye missing, with one leg twice as long as the other.
I used a big box to put it in for her to open...and she was very relieved to open it and find a pink chicken.

However, he ended up being named Strawberry Vomit...either Berry or Vomit for short, of course. This is a picture of him and the other chickens I've made.
I'm taking a break from chickens for a while. Next I'm going to make either a turtle, an armadillo, a flamingo, or an otter, I think.

Saw some of the stupidest driving on our trip, though. At one point there was an accident that locked up most of the road, and people were driving over the grass to get onto the frontage road. ><
Impatient people driving idiotically.
We had people cut us off without looking, changing lanes, running reds...all sorts of stuff.
The one who wins the "Most Likely To Cause An Accident" prize, however, was the motorcyclist who drove up between our car and the car beside us at a high speed. Seriously. He drove on the dividing line and just about surprised my mom off the road. He was driving like you see in the movies, all reckless like. Won't be surprised when he gets in an accident.

A Rather Productive Weekend Thus Far (picture heavy)

2009-06-13T18:05:00.006-05:00

Did stuff for other people this weekend.
Plushies first, since they were finished first.

A thank you gift done specially for the surgeons who saved my mom's life several weeks ago.
Framed it and am giving it to them Monday.

Coloured sharpie and coloured pencil for the figure, no lines and watercolour pencil (dry) for the background (except for a metallic pencil for the Emerald City's lines).
Half a day of constant work.

Turned out much lighter in the scan than the picture. Kinda like it though...looks ethereal.

My first amigurumis.
My mom has an internet friend...because of injokes that would take too long to relate, he sends my mom frogs and my mom sends him chickens. Or tries to. It is very difficult to find inexpensive chicken items.
Anyways, I was roaming the innards of the DA monster, when I came across this adorable chicken pattern: [link]
So I made two - one for my mom's friend...then one for my mom when she oohed and ahhed and looked longingly at the chicken.
Now there's two chickens fluttering around our house...but we'll be down to one sometime in the next couple weeks when we send the left chicken to his new home.
Or will there be only one? "I want a chicken..." I hear my siblings murmuring...>>

I used two yarns held together for the main part of the chicken - a regular yellow and a fun fur yellow.

The right hand chicken is bigger because I think I miscounted the stitches. ^^" I was tired.

Lots of accomplishment. My hands hurt now.

Must go finish dinner - gotta make the garlic butter for the breadsticks. TTFN

My E-mail is Going to Throw Up On Me

2009-06-13T18:01:00.003-05:00

I don't get very many e-mails. Or at least I didn't.
Not counting the spam (which mostly goes in its own folder where I ignore it), I would get many 25 e-mails per day...usually all comics from arcamax.com.
The other day...I was bored. I went to the Arcamax site and realized that they had added some comics. So I subscribed to those. The I wandered to the other newsletters...and subscribed to a bunch of them - even ones that I wouldn't normally care about, like political essays.
Then I hit the limit - they wouldn't let me subscribe to anything else.
So today I was bored...again...and I found a way to subscribe to every one of the newletters. Then I sat and subscribed to a lot of "a chapter a day" books. Then I hunted down some crochet newletters and signed up for them.
Then I found out that about.com does newletters for all of their pages.
Score.

I'm kinda scared to think of what my e-mail is going to be like tomorrow.

Ouch!

2009-05-30T08:42:00.002-05:00

Lately, I've been waking Mom up with breakfast in bed.
I got a wakeup call of my own this morning, though it wasn't half so good.
I get up this morning, go to put my feet on the ground...and stare in confusion at my bunny-ear cactus, normally found in my windowsill, but then found on my floor.
Being tired, I blink a couple times, then ignore it and go downstairs.
I put my fingers to keyboard to type and STING. Sudden tiny stabs of pain in my hands and arms. I look closely at my fingers to see that my hands are full of cactus prickles.
At some point in the night, my cactus must have wanted a hug, because it feels like I sat and cuddled it. I have no memory of even touching my cactus, but it seems to have happened.
So right now I'm going through duct tape therapy wherever my fingers sting, because the prickles are small enough I can't see them. *sigh*

Moosebutter Star Wars returns!

2009-04-27T22:57:00.002-05:00

A couple of months ago I put up a Random Youtube Tuesday (here!) that had a man named Corey Vidal did a video tribute to Moosebutter's Star Wars song. In it he had a four part screen where he lip synched all the parts that were sung, and it was actually really funny.
Tonight I was looking at other multi-window lip synchs after I came across a 9-window one, and I came across something totally awesome!
The Moosebutter group did their own video in response to the guy's! They did a recording of their song (slightly updated) and acted out their own roles, just like Corey did.
It was awesome!
So I thought I'd post it for anyone who happens to still read my blog. ^^

Plushiepalooza!

2009-04-08T18:32:00.002-05:00

Today in Baking we made pies. (I know that has nothing to do with plushies, hold your horses. It will make sense in a moment.) In a moment of intelligence (and laziness) last class, I told the teacher I would make Key lime pie. My reason could have been because my brother loves Key lime pie and his birthday is coming up...but it's not. It could have been because it's the only pie filling in the book that everyone in the family will like (except me)...but it's not. The real reason I chose Key lime pie? It has four steps. Mix eggs with condensed milk. Mix in lime juice. Pour in baked pie crust. Chill. No muss, no fuss, out of class before I'm bust. (Hey, that kind of rhymed! Kind of.)
Most of the other people were slaving over apple, pumpkin, or cherry fillings...except one. As we waited together for the oven to heat so we could put our crusts in we started talking about all sorts of things, from cakes to games to game-related cakes...and so on.
To bring everything around to the title (finally!) I told her about a blog she oughta submit pictures of some of her cakes (nifty cakes that geeks would lust for...like Star Wars insignia and suchlike) to a blog I watch - the video game craft blog found somewhere to the right of this post.
Then I got started talking about stuff I draw (on the subject of geekdom), and I mentioned the plushies I draw (DRAW! Not sew/make but DRAW! This is a sore point with me online...I get comments all the time of people going "Will you make that for me?" Aargh.)
I realized then that I never put up any plushies here on the blog.
So as I promised, my fellow Key lime pie maker, here are (some of) the plushie pictures!

This is (I think) the first plushie I really did like this. I've done plushies for a while, but this is the beginning of this evolution of them. Big round arms and legs and dots for eyes. All details of the original characters remain, just made smaller.
This is Bakura, from Yugiou, one of my favoritest characters ever.
This is the "old-style" plushie, before I started inking with thin-tip Sharpies. Also before I knew how to colour very well.

This is Naruto, from the anime Naruto. Still just pencil lines, but better colouring.

This is one of the first plushies to have Sharpie outlines. I think it really adds to it. It's Vincent, from one of the Final Fantasy games.

Did a couple of Disney plushies once. ^^" Robin Hood.

Maleficent

Finally, these last two are, for some reason, the most popular of the plushies I have up on DeviantArt. Go figure.
Kakashi from Naruto.

Axel from the Kingdom Hearts series.

These are just a few of the many plushies I've done. You can find all of the anime/game/other plushies I've done at http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v607/rana-chan/Plushies/?start=0
I've also done a lot of custom plushies for people, too.

Cute, ne? ^^

Oops!

2009-02-19T08:56:00.001-06:00

Random Youtube Tuesday is a day late today. ^^"
Actually, when I forgot to do it yesterday, I wasn't going to do it this week.
But then I came across a really random video when I was searching for fanart of one of my favorite games.
If you've played it, it's hilarious, and if you haven't, it's still random nonsense and thus enjoyable. *laughs*

More Food!

2009-02-17T07:53:00.002-06:00

Before I start, let me mention that I added a picture to my post about the pizza I made in baking.
I will also add a picture to this one as soon as I remember where it is. ^^"

Anyways. The other day we made cinnamon rolls in baking. Actually, we made multi-purpose dough...didn't find out until the day of the class that it would be cinnamon rolls. I thought we were doing croissants.
We pulled out our dough and rolled it out - my dough was thicker, because there was less room on my counter. That's okay, I like thick cinnamon rolls.
All I put in mine was a cinnamon sugar mixture and butter. Don't like nuts and raisins.
However, to actually cook it at the school would have taken forever - I wouldn't have gotten home until 9pm, and I had a test to study for.
So I took it home to proof and bake.
See, I did have homework, Stevie!
Anyways... it turned out really good. Not as thickly coated with cinnamon as some I've had, and big and fluffy. The teacher made some thick glazing that was really good on it.

I'll put up pictures later.

Random Youtube Tuesday!

2009-02-10T07:23:00.002-06:00

Well, over the past week and a half or so, I've gotten several games. One of the ones I bought just a few days ago for $10 at Walmart, called Line Rider 2.
I've been watching for that game for a half a year or so now, ever since I heard about it, because I really enjoyed the original flash game on the 'net.
I decided that today's RYT would be some clips of original tracks people have made on the original Line Rider game. ^^

There are tons of videos to look at, and a bunch of them are awesome. I just can't put them all up here. *laughs*

The Super Bowl

2009-02-09T06:30:00.002-06:00

Subtitle: "You could bounce a quarter back off those tight ends!"

Last week was the Super Bowl. Hoo...rah.
I've never understood football...I don't see the point in running then stopping, running than stopping. I've always liked sports like gymnastics and tennis where the action is quick and continuous.
I do like the food though. And the commercials. So I don't disappear into my room. I load up my plate with snacks galore and run in to watch the commercials when they come on, then leave when that boring football stuff returns. As I jokingly said the other day, "They play football at the Super Bowl?"
This year, we went all out with food and stuff for my brother, who does actually enjoy watching the game part of the Super Bowl. Since Dad's in Iraq, we women watched it with him. I was tired and too lazy to get up off the couch, so I actually stuck around and watched the gameplay.
What have I been missing out on all these years? I don't know if it's the fact that one of the teams had shimmery yellow pants, but the butts were mesmerizing! This was the first superbowl I watched all the way through...didn't care who won, but I couldn't tear my eyes away.
Oh yeah, the food was good too. I wasn't impressed by the commercials this year though.

Random Youtube Tuesday!

2009-02-03T07:53:00.002-06:00

Since we had the Super Bowl just a couple days ago (and I will have about that, you can be sure), I decided that the unofficial theme of today's youtubes could be football!

First up is a video showing a bunch of clips of football bloopers.

As for Super Bowl commercials (which I will expound upon in my upcoming blog post about it), my favorites have always been the Budweiser Clydesdale ones. Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that I love Clydesdale almost as much as I do wolves, could it?
Anyways, I was surfing through old Super Bowl commercials on youtube, and found this one rather funny.

That's it for today!

I actually made something!

2009-02-03T07:49:00.001-06:00

Woah! After like three weeks of listening to the teacher blather on and on, I finally got to make something in my baking class!
Before I continue my happy rambles, let me rant for just a moment.
When I decided to take fundamentals of baking, I assumed that we would…well…bake. The first three weeks or so we sat…and listened to the teacher meander through the book, reading stuff at random (often reading it wrong!), attempting calculations, and just plain boring us all to death. The worst class was the one where we sat for three hours watching a set of movies about some guy making French bread where they kept reusing the video clips. Snore!
Finally, though, we got to DO something last week. We made pizza dough! It was a variation on Italian bread. Of course my dough ball has problems…first it was too dry, then too wet…it was a comedy of errors. First we’d add flour, then water, then flour again. Finally it formed into a nice puffy little ball…just in time for the class to be over.
We wrap our happy little dough balls in saran wrap (smearing them with vegetable oil first…to keep them from sticking) and leave them to rise over the weekend.
Then last night we all wandered into class, waiting impatiently for it to start so we could get on with the pizza making.
I hung around like a useless lump as people prepared the sauce – from cooking the Italian sausage and the bacon to cutting onions, green peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini. (Yes…somebody brought their own zucchini to put on their pizza. I, being sane, refrained.) At first my only contribution was to find that container of parsley that was hiding among the 30 other bottles of spices, but eventually somebody set me up sautéing onions. Maybe I should take a cooking class next year so I don’t look so lost in a kitchen!
It took us forever, but eventually we got the sauce and all the toppings done.
Then we pulled our happy not-so-little-anymore dough balls out and rolled them into happy large flat pizza crusts! Mine was less flat than most…I hate thin crust. My pizza has to be thick and slightly chewy…mmm. *wakes from daydream*
Anyways, I rolled mine out and loaded it up. (On an aside…when I was waiting in the topping line, somebody said my vaguely triangle-shaped dough looked like a heart…and after poking and pulling and prodding it into shape, I agreed. ^^) It had a medium amount of sauce (I don’t like either dry or soggy pizzas), a few of the sautéed onions, lots of sausage, bacon and pepperoni, and tons of cheese. Finally, a bunch of us dabbed a bit of the leftover bacon grease onto the crust (that is…I dabbed. Other people soaked theirs.) then popped them in the oven. After an interminable amount of cleaning – for we’d made a huge mess – our pizzas were done.
I took mine home whole and shared with the family. Mom said that “she thought something tasted off about it…I’d better make some more to figure out what.” Hm….really? Couldn’t be that it was really good and you want more, could it? *laughs*
My brother was a magician with his – it disappeared faster than doves in a Lance Burton act. Even my nibbling sister chomped hers down in record time.
Sounds like my first baking attempt was a success!

Arrrgh! Or, Test week.

2009-02-03T07:24:00.001-06:00

For weeks now, I’ve been scraping the bottom of the idea barrel to come up with things to write about. But all of a sudden it’s like the sky has opened and is raining inspiration on my head. It’s been a veritable downpour of events that have occurred and ideas of what to write. This is the first of many blog posts over the next couple of weeks (I hope!). Y’all will be glad to see something in this blog other than youtube videos, ne? *laughs*

The first three posts in this new series of rambling (may it be long-running) are all event-based blogs. I write them first, before the events become ancient history…like the geology field trip I haven’t written about yet. Maybe I’ll just wait until later this month and write about the physical geology trip at the same time as I do the historical one. *grimace*

Anyways. Back on topic.

I was massively busy this past weekend as I madly studied for 4 tests this week. Yes, four. They popped up out of nowhere!

To begin with, yesterday we had the first *real* map test in geography. The map of Europe…160 different places and things to memorize, and I did it in two days. *die*

It was a good thing I got it all memorized in time to take the test (instead of taking advantage of the no-points-off late regulation the teacher has). We knew we were getting one bonus point for taking this (very hard) test in class, but then the professor told us to add two bonus points to our page. Very nice. I missed a place on the first map test, so that’ll definitely help make up for that. Now I must move on to the Russia map, for next Monday. *sigh*

Today there are no tests…merely studying for upcoming tests.

Tomorrow is the first test in my baking class. I have no clue how I’ll do because I have no clue what is on the test. The teacher went through the test with us yesterday, but after three-fourths of she said we needed to know is stuff she’s never mentioned. *shrug*

Thursday has the next really worrisome test – the minerals test. In physical geology we’ve been studying minerals and the properties of minerals. Thursday we get to demonstrate what we’ve learned. *yuck*

We do get to use one resource on the test, however, so that will be a big help. Last week I’d been getting pretty good at recognizing minerals. We’ll see how I do this week with a couple days left to study.

Finally, on Friday is my last test. Before we go to Waco I need to run over to the test center at the college and take the first test of my online western civilization class. I don’t know how I’ll do…I’m terrible at remembering dates and stuff, but about half the unit focuses on cultures I’ve actually studied on my own (such as Greece), so we’ll see.

And those are this week’s tests. Next week there’s even more fun to come!

*gag*

I love to go to class and learn stuff…it’s the throwing it back up onto a test paper I don’t like.

Edit: Results!

I got a 41/40 on the map test. *yayhappydance*

I got 86 out of a possible 108 points. *silentgrimace*

I got a 82 on the baking test. I think it was the highest grade in the class, though. [Everyong else got 60s and 40s. One person got a 70.] Part of the problem was that ten of the questions were on chapter 7...when the test was chapters 1-6! Teacher says, "Well...you should've studied that, too." *snort* I'm not enjoying the lecture/test part of this class...and we don't get to do as much baking as one would think. *sigh*

Finally, I got an 82.5 out of 110 points on the Western Civ test. Not great. I'll have to make it up in the other tests and the paper.

End of results show. *grins*

Random Youtube Tuesday!

2009-01-27T06:24:00.001-06:00

Today's theme is...cute baby animals!

Of course I will start with my favorite animal, the wolf.
This video is a clip from a longer documentary. The last minute or so is the cutest part, if you want to skip the talking at the beginning and just watch the wolf cub howl.

Cute little fuzzy cheetah cubs.

The next video is an adorable one of a baby giraffe, but embedding is removed...not surprising, as it's an official animalplanet clip. *grins*
Here's the link, you should go look: Giraffe

As chance works out, the three clips I chose are my and my siblings' favorite animals. *laughs*

Happy Dance of Yayness

2009-01-26T07:38:00.002-06:00

Over the years, my family has accumulated a number of games for the computer. Several binders' worth of games.
This year, mom decided to start going through the games, weeding out the games that are just too easy, the ones noone would play, and the ones that don't even work anymore.
I've decided that I don't like computer games. Unlike video games that will work as long as you have the game system, it takes very little for a computer game to not work on a different computer.
There's a pile of games that gave error messages that's like 2 inches thick now.

Anyways, onto the yayness.
Yesterday Mom was testing games, and she came across several that weren't working on the computer. My Petz games for one - Catz didn't work at all, Dogz did but we no longer had the game code. *sigh*
Two of my favorite games ever, that I used to play for hours, weren't working on the computer: Museum Madness and Ecoquest: Search for Cetus. (It was really no surprise that DOS-based games wouldn't work real great on a Vista OS. *laughs*)
I took them up to my laptop, to see if they'd happen to work on it. To my shock and awe and happyness, BOTH of the games worked! So now I can play my favoritest games in the world in my own room. *grins*

My brother now wants to borrow my laptop, though. Museum Madness is one of his favorite games, too. *laughs*

Mandatory School Blog

2009-01-26T06:14:00.003-06:00

So, college has been going for two weeks now, which is time enough for me to make an assessment of how my classes are, so it's time for a life update: school edition.

I'm taking only 4 classes - a light load for me, but necessary since I'm running out of classes I can take and have to stretch it out another semester.

First off, Mondays and Wednesdays at 9AM, I've got Physical Geography. The teacher is the same guy who taught my Geology class last semester (and the one I'm taking this semester). That's the main reason I'm taking the class. *laughs*
It's good so far...if it weren't for the map quizzes, it would be an easy class, in fact. Unfortunately, we've got lots of countries and stuff to memorize, so that bumps it up to the medium hard category.
Love the textbook. It's by National Geographic, so it's full of beautiful pictures.

Then in the evening on the same days, I'm taking Fundamentals of Baking. No, I'm not a culinary student - I'm just taking it because it sounded interesting.
We're taking a long time to get anywhere, though. The last couple classes have been spent wandering through the first chapters of the text. Rather boring, and the teacher doesn't know her information. She's using someone else's notes.
We're supposed to be making rolls today, though. We'll see. If nothing else, I'll get food out of the class. *laughs*

On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:30 AM, I have Physical Geology. So far it seems easier than Historical Geology was...maybe it's just because I'm familiar with some of the concepts already. There's about half a dozen of us students from last semester's Geology class, but they're all taking the later lab, so I'm all by my lonesome in the 12PM lab.
We're currently studying minerals, preparing for the mineral exam coming up in a few weeks. I hope its easier than the fossil one. I only got a 95 on that one. *sigh*
The textbook for this class is wonderful, too. I'll probably keep it instead of the Historical Geology book.

I'm taking Western Civilization online. I never got to take a world history class in high school because we moved. In Idaho, where I had my freshman year, American history was taught in 9th grade and world history was 11th. In Florida, where I graduated, world history was 9th and American history was 11th. I ended up taking American history twice - it wasn't until the middle of the year, when the teacher started teaching manifest destiny, that I realized that I'd heard all this information before. *laughs*
Anyways. Western Civ online...it's okay so far. Got a test in a couple weeks.
I have to write a paper on Isaac Newton. Could be worse - the student a couple higher on the list than me got Machiavelli.

Finally, I have a kind of unofficial class. I took Spanish last semester and learned nothing. I need to take Spanish 2 before we leave, so I don't have to buy a different book up at ISU. The Spanish 2 class that has the good teacher is ahead of where the bad teacher left off. Therefore, in order to take Spanish 2, I have to learn enough Spanish not to fail.
Dad very kindly set up the Rosetta Stone program he gets free through the military for me so I can use that to learn. It's really very good...I think I'm going to go down the list. Start with Spanish, move on to Japanese, Italian...*grins*

So, those are my classes this semester.
A mix of easy and hard.
We'll have to see how it all turns out. ^^

Random Youtube Tuesday!

2009-01-20T08:51:00.002-06:00

Meant to get a blog post in about school before today, but I just never got around to it.
I'll do it sometime this week.

Didn't have anything ready for today, so I just put in random phrases until something caught my eye...so today is red panda video day!

Random Youtube Tuesday

2009-01-13T08:00:00.001-06:00

Today's youtube videos...are just weird.
Don't ask, I don't even know how I found them.

Birthday Blog!

2009-01-12T06:54:00.002-06:00

My birthday was on the 3rd - I turned 21.
No, we didn't have big wild parties, but it was still great. ^^

It was a birthday that kinda streeeeetched out over a week or so. First, a couple days before my birthday, we all went down (up?) near the Austin area. (At least, I seem to remember that's where it was. ^^") We met up with my aunt Margaret, who was in the area, and wandered around doing cool stuff. We hit up a used bookstore that had some neat books...I found about half a dozen books that looked good. We ate at a little restaurant for lunch. (I had a bacon cheeseburger...which is like my favorite food. ^^) We went to the outlet mall...but really only the Disney store that's there. *laughs* I got an Eeyore shirt that's really cute. We went to a couple other places before heading home. Margaret spent the night, which was kind of fun - we all watched Wall-E (which is one of the cutest movies I've ever seen).

On my birthday (which was a Saturday) we went out and hit a bunch of Goodwills and pawn shops. We had Taco Bell for lunch, and the casserole I really like for dinner. I got a couple of movies at the pawn shops.

I got nifty cool presents, too. I got a lot of gifts throughout the week: for example, I got J.K. Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard at the used bookstore and Nintendos for my DS before Saturday. They were gifts, we just didn't see the need to hold onto them. ^^ I got a cool crochet book, though. We also went to Barnes and Noble and I got a couple of manga and a how to draw manga book.

All in all, a pretty good birthday. ^^

Mandatory Christmas Blog

2009-01-12T06:31:00.002-06:00

Yah, I know, I'm slow.
Before I sit and blather about my viewpoint of Christmas, first I think I'll link you to some of my Mom's Christmas blogposts. Hers are nifty special, 'cause she adds pictures. *oooh*
Cookies, traditions, family gifts, Santa gifts (and slideshow), making Gingerbread house, and Dad's Christmas pictures.

Alright.
Christmas was good...I already posted about my Christmas cactus, which the main decoration in my room. ^^
I actually brought it downstairs and put it on a little table so we could put our gifts under it (which I thought was a cute idea).
Got a bunch of awesome gifts. Just a few of the things I got were candy (including my favorite Reese's Trees), DS games (Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Animal Crossing), an Elfen figure, several cool books, and a pretty necklace. Also cool were some of the gifts to the family - two very cool Wii games and an awesome board game.

Mom gave me an odd look when I said we needed to get the guinea pigs a gift too. They're part of the family, aren't they?
We all laughed when they ignored the gift in favor of the wrapping paper. *sigh*

One of the main things we did to celebrate this year was make a gingerbread house kit Mom had picked up last year.
Let me tell you, gingerbread house frosting is nasty. I kept getting it on my hands...and I'd lick it off, so as to not get it on the table. Sugar high of the year, man.
It turned out cute, though. Mah siblings each decorated one side, and I decorated the front. Didn't spend much time on it, since I got tired of the thing while icing the sides for the kids. ><

Hm...anything else?
Not that I can recall...next time I need to not wait so long - I've forgotten a bunch! *laughs*

Random Youtube Tuesday!

2009-01-06T08:12:00.002-06:00

Since I'm running late this morning, this is gonna go quick.
As any of you who have faithfully been watching my RYTs may have noticed, I really like the song "Flight of the Bumblebees." I've put up videos of it several times before.
Well, a couple weeks ago, I came across several really interesting versions...and decided to do a Flight of the Bumblebee RYT, and hopefully get it out of my systen so I can bring you other random things! *laughs*
Without any further ado, let the flight commence!

Apparently I can't do a RYT without acapella videos anymore.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra, whoo! (Best quality I could find)

Finally, I keep coming across euphonium pieces. I couldn't play this song on the piano, let along a brass instrument.

That's it for today! See you next week!

Life Updates!

2009-01-06T07:36:00.002-06:00

Before I put up this week's videos, I thought I'd do a life update post.
It's what I do when I'm too lazy to do a real post, but still want something between RYTs. *laughs*

Christmas was recently...I'll have lots to say about it soon. Also my birthday was the 3rd - it was great. I'm now 21.
School starts next week, so you'll probably get a post about it.
I've got a bunch of new games...I'll probably write something about them in the coming weeks. I'm also doing good on old games - I recently got past a part in Zelda: Twilight Princess that my video game-talented brother was stuck on, so I'm ahead of him. *grins*
I haven't been drawing as much as I'd like, but I've getting through some of my books at a pretty good pace. Today I'll be finishing off the Black Stallion series and get rid of about half of them. Then I can get back to my normal cycle of books. [For those who don't yet know how I work, I have around 8 books I read at a time. I read ten pages in one, switch to another and read ten pages, switch to another, etc.]
I've got a number of long, 350+ page books to read. *sigh*
When school starts again, I'll be getting through the very long (500+ pages) books faster, because I keep one in my bag and read it when I've got breaks.
Um...that's everything I can think of at the moment.
Stick around, because RYT is coming up next!

Random Youtube Tuesday!

2008-12-30T07:26:00.002-06:00

Sorry guys, I usually try to have at least one *normal* post in between the RYTs, but I just didn't get to it this time.
I'll be doing Christmas posts this week, but if you wanna see right now what happened Christmas-wise at our house, you can go to my mom's blog.

Anyways, onto what you came here for.

Today's theme is...nintendo!
I actually came across these Nintendo-related videos at the same time I found the beatboxing flutist a couple of weeks ago.
First off is the tetris theme...played on a euphonium and an electric guitar.

In our house, acapella groups are one of our favorite things to listen to...as you may have noticed in previous RYT posts. (And next week's post, also!)
However, I must admit that this is one of the cooler ones I've heard.
I love the acting that goes along with...it's hilarious!

That's all I've got this week! See you next week with more random youtubes!

Moment of Panic is Past Now...

2008-12-24T08:08:00.002-06:00

Little moment of amusement for you all.
I got done on the computer early today, so I thought I'd play on our Wii.
I went over, turned it on, put the disc in...and it wouldn't work. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to work.
I went online and looked it up, and a lot of the Wiis bought around the same time as ours were having major disc-reading problems, so I started to panic. Today would be a bad day for the Wii to go down.
I tried to call Nintendo, but they weren't open yet, so I sat and hyper-ventilated for a half hour.
I finally get through...go through all the basics.
"Is the Wii turning on?" "Yes." "Is the disc clean?" "Yes." "Which way is the Wii, vertical or horizantal?" "Vertical." "Which way does the game label face when you put it in?" "To the left." "...is your Wii on?" "Yes." "Is there a disc in?" "Yes." "Press eject for me." "Ok." "Try flipping it over." ".......oh. Oops."

I had the dang things backwards.
The technician said it's a common mistake, though...when you look at it, it looks as though you're putting the disc in upside down if you're putting it in right side up.

I had me and Stevie in just a panicked state, since I couldn't figure out what was wrong.

We've got our crisis over with, now we shouldn't have any more this Christmas, right?

*laughs*
Have a Merry Christmas, everyone.

Random Christmas Youtube Tuesday!

2008-12-23T08:14:00.003-06:00

That's right! Today I'm bringing to you a couple of random youtubes that are Christmas-related!
First off, we have a lovely Christmas carol sung to you by some guineas pigs! (No, not ours...my camera skills are in the lacking.)

It's remarkable how often guinea pigs come up in the RYTs...must be because I spend more time clicking from one subject to the next if piggies are the subject.

Anyways.
Next is a trio of singers, revamping a favorite Christmas carol.

It's almost as fun to watch the guys in the background as it is to listen to the singers. *grins*

Finally, to get in a more serious mood for Christmas, one should always hear the Christmas story...
Though I've never seen it quite like this.

That's it for today. See you next week!
Have a very Merry Christmas!

I'da thunk...

2008-12-23T07:39:00.003-06:00

That military intelligence would be smart enough to come up with their own expressions?

Gather round, children, to hear tell a story that begins in the not so distant past...
A father must leave, and decides to pass on his most cherished wisdoms to his eldest child...so that this child might carry on his most important work...
It is a worthy goal...or would be, if it didn't have to do with raw meat.
Let me fill in some specifics. The father mentioned above? My dad. The "eldest child" would be me. And the wisdoms and the work...are the fine art of barbecue.
Yes, my father optimistically tried to teach me how to use his huge, fire-spitting, monster from hell (also known as a grill) before he left. I listened, nodded, watched...then me and my hair skedaddled out of there.
I love fire...I have to say that. I like to watch it, throw stuff in it, and poke it with a stick. When you take this fire and bring it up to hair level, however, I have problems. I can just see klutzy me catching my hair aflame...and so the beast and I have an agreement - I let it sleep while Dad is away, and it doesn't eat my head.
However, a year without barbecue is a long time when hot dogs are one of your favorite foods. Boiled doesn't cut it, nor does microwaved. You hafta have that blackened, sooty taste for the real sensation.
Or something close to it, anyway.
So we started "grilling" hotdogs for family barbecues. Inside. On the stove. Where no wind will send flames licking hungrily at my head.
Since it wasn't "real" grilling, I came up with a name for our cheater's meal. The "faux"becue.
Here we have a picture of one such event done recently. Note that even loose, my hair never comes near to danger.

And yet we still get the beautiful grill marks sought after by chefs everywhere.

With the backstory done, I return to the subject that inspired this post...
My dad is currently stationed at a forward operating base (FOB) in Iraq (the name escapes me so early in the morning), and they recently had a barbecue of their own.
Though they used *shiver* a real grill to do their cooking, my dad decided to be a copycat...and call it a "FOB"ecue.
[I'd put a picture, but I cannot find one at this moment. Apologies.]

Final School Update

2008-12-23T07:26:00.002-06:00

I realized that I never did a final update on the end of the semester.
English: A in the class, don't know what I got on the final. Never got it back.
Religions: A in the class, don't know what I got on the final. Could've found out, but I would've had to stick around for 15 minutes after the LAST person finished their test, and just wanted to get home.
Spanish: A in the class, 80-something on the final.
Geology: A in the class, exempt from the final. *happy dance of happiness*
Algebra: B in the class, 80-something on the final.

Overall, pretty dang good.
Did about how I figured in Algebra (math is the bane of my existence), got the Geology A by the skin of my teeth...I still don't know how the Spanish teacher calculates his grades - I went in once to find out what I needed on the final, and he was all "Well...I guess I'll give you 90 in participation, because you don't really say anything, but you don't get in trouble, and I think that you've got about a 90 in homework...I think."
Anyways.
That semester is over for now...sold back most of my books (I tend to keep a couple each semester...this time I kept the Literature books because they were awesome, and the Geology book. At least temporarily. I need to see if the physical geology book is better than the historical one.)

Random Youtube Tuesday!

2008-12-16T08:27:00.002-06:00

I managed to get a couple of posts into between youtube tuesdays this time. *grins*

A couple of weeks ago I caught a show on Discovery Channel that was really cool. It's called Time Warp. Basically, they take interesting situations and film them with a hi-speed camera to catch the details that would be missed with a regular camera or with the human eye.
That's what today's RYT is...a couple of clips from the show!
I hunted down some of the coolest-looking things to show y'all.

This first one is someone shooting arrows through various items filled with liquid.

Very cool looking.

The other video for today is kind of a compilation of the coolest moments on the show: from getting hit in the face with a water balloon to getting punched.

So that's it for today's Random Youtube Tuesday!
Come back next week for more cool, random clips to watch!

Isn't it cute?

2008-12-16T08:04:00.004-06:00

A couple months ago, while I was going to my geology class, I had to pass through the science building. (Obviously) There was a crowd of people in the main lobby, and I wondered what everyone was doing. So I went over.
Plants. There was table on table of plants of all kinds, from tiny to huge. I finally figured out that it was probably the plant biology people selling their projects.
I knew that we were thinking of redoing our flower beds, so I wandered around looking. I didn't find anything at that time, so I went to class.
When I came out a couple hours later, they were still selling stuff (though their inventory had gone down considerably). I poked around again, and found the cutest little cactus. For a dollar. I shelled over the dollar and brought the thing home.
It was in one of those little plastic pots with holes in the bottom to let water drain, so I put it into another container so water wouldn't go all over my windowsill.
Then (aside from watering it every so often) I forgot about it.
Christmas rolls around, and we find a bunch of tiny ornaments in an advent. They didn't go to the advent, so I laid claim to them. The little nativity sits on my bookshelf while the little rocking horses...

Kind of a cutely pathetic little thing, no?

Last night I repotted it in a beautiful green pot. It's too big for it right now, but I think it will grow into it.
I've taken off the ornaments until it's settled into the dirt. I'll put them back on for Christmas.

It's an awesome little plant...it's lasted about two weeks longer than anything I've had before!

Recent Obsessions

2008-12-16T07:26:00.002-06:00

So, I've been busy lately working on things...and obsessing about others.
I'll tell you about a couple of them. *grins*

First off, I've recently come across a few new websites.
Sort of.
The first site was actually found by my mom. I'd heard about it, but I'd never had interest in it.
Facebook. I'm on myspace (though not active), so I figured it would be much the same, but my mom poked me into joining. I've only been a member for a short while, but it seems to be interesting.
You know what's keeping me active on that site though? My penguin. There's a little game there where you can adopt little animals and take care of them. It's very cute.
Here's an image of somebody else's. I don't have a picture of mine yet. ^^"

The second site on my list I found a couple months ago, but it only recently opened up to new people, and it's going to close again soon.
It's called Waja Madness. It's an animal sim, for those familiar with the genre, where you get an animal of some sort and (depending on the site) breed it, take care of it, or show it in shows. Wajas focuses on the breeding aspect. It's breeding system is quite complex, letting you create thousands if not millions of different-looking creatures.
For example, The waja below is mine. Her name is Chocolate, and she's one of the most beautiful wajas to come out of my breedings so far. Her sire is Nightwind (a waja that I custom-designed. It's the middle image) and her dam is Carmella (a waja that was given to me for free. It's the last image). Their colors mixed to create a beautiful waja that people are already trying to get to to sell to them. *grins*
The site has wonderful artwork and extremely nice people. You ought to go join while they're still open. If you do join, look me up (ID: 82733 ) I'll give ya a free wajas to get started.

Finally, I've been obsessing over a new game I got for my DS last week.
It's called Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and it's all about this defense attorney and the cases he tries.
Okay, already very cool to my Law and Order fanself.
The gameplay is awesome, and I never guess what's going to happen next. It's a big change for me, who can always figure out the plot and end of movies and books five minutes in.
The artwork is amazing, the story interesting. It's difficult enough that I have to think about what I'm doing, but it's not so difficult that I throw my DS against the wall in frustration.
Today I'm gonna try and finish it. *grins*

That's it for this week's obsessions. I'm sure I'll find some new ones soon. *laughs*

I couldn't resist

2008-12-11T08:29:00.002-06:00

I know, I know...when I started youtube Tuesday, I intended it to stay on Tuesday.
But while I was posting yesterday, I came across something very, very cool which I couldn't get out of my mind all day. I wasn't going to post this for several weeks, but I thought it was so cool that I have to put it up now.

When I was searching for random youtubes yesterday, I got started looking at various musical oddities. You've already seen one yesterday, the hand-fart musician. However, that was not the coolest thing I came across.
This is.

He makes flutes look cool. (Which is saying a lot, coming from me. I hate flutes. Clarinet players of the world unite! *cough* Anyways...)

While the one above is my favorite, I also had to put this one. It's remarkable.

I wouldn't be able to play Flight of the Bumblebee normally, let alone beatboxing at the same time.

He's got a bunch of others...like Sesame Street, which is really cool.
I just couldn't resist putting his videos up, 'cause they're awesome.

He's got a cd out, though it's not in stock right now, and its only original pieces (I think). Still cool. *grins*

And, to end on a Christmasy note, the Nutcracker!

Random Youtube Tuesday!

2008-12-09T07:12:00.003-06:00

Yep, here we are with another edition of youtube tuesday!
Today's viewing pleasure is for all you people who don't have time to sit and read my longwinded posts...both videos are jampacked into three minutes or less!

First up we have 50 jokes told in under three minutes! (Many of them nerd jokes, no less...and I laughed at all of them. Marvel at my nerdness. My favorite was the square root of -1 talking to pi. *grins*)

And staying with the same concept, here is "Momsense" by Anita Refroe. It's a condensing of all the things moms say over the course of one day into a song sung to the William Tell Overture.

Lyrics can be found if you go to the original site.

So that's it for another Youtube Tuesday.
I did have next week's found, but I forgot to write it down and thus...forgot it.
I'll have to find something different, I guess. *grins*

[Edit] I try to keep the number of videos down to 2, but I found this one when randomly browsing from the Momsense song.

You have got to go to the original site and look at some of the others - he's got 114 videos. He does everything from Flight of the Bumblebees to Bohemian Rhapsody. He's even got video game songs, like Zelda and Mario.
Stevie, I've found something for you to aspire to!

Blooooooggggginggg

2008-12-07T08:14:00.008-06:00

All righty then...
I realized the other day that I need to do at least one real blog a week, or it will look bad that all I do is youtube tuesdays. (Speaking of, I had them planned out for like three weeks, but I forgot what I was going to do. I'll try to remember. *sigh*) I'm also behind in blogs (still need to write about Thanksgiving, field trip, and much more). Today I thought I'd do a general update blog. Well, I'm currently coughing up my lungs. There's an illness going around the house that has knocked down me and Mom. If I don't post again, it's because it has killed me. (However, I think I may have lost a pound. *grins*) School is almost over - I have three finals next week, then I'm done 'til January 12th. I've got Math and Literature finals on Monday, and the Religions final on Wednesday. But wait! You're wondering why I didn't mention my Spanish and geology finals, right? Well, I took the Spanish one last week (he offered it early and I wanted to just get done), and I'm exempt from the Geology final for getting straight As on the tests this semester. (Except for the one last Thursday, but everyone failed that one...we get one test grade dropped, and that was mine. ^^") *happy dance of exemptness* Of the finals left, the only that will be any possible problem is the Math one...but I calculated it, and as long as I don't get below a 70, I'll get a B. Though Math is my worst subject, I should be able to get at least a 70. What else? I've been trying to sneak in more art-stuffs. This weekend I continued work on a project I've been meaning to do. It's kind of an experiment. When we went to Build-A-Bear a couple months ago and got animals, the animals were sent home in little box houses. I've kept mine all this time, 'cause I'm going to colour each of the four outsides with a different medium, then decorate the inside. I probably won't keep it for very long afterwards, but it will be an interesting experiment. I've already done three sides (marker, coloured pencil, and oil pastel). The fourth will be watercolour paints. I'm also a bit behind in requests from people online, and I'm working to catch up on that. There'll be some human pictures, an animal or two of various species. There's a foxlike canine I'm working on that I'm quite happy with so far. He's got a lot of expression in his face, which is something I usually have problems with in animal pictures. I've also tried my hand at making treats a couple different times this week, with varying amounts of success. First, since we had old bananas, I thought I'd make banana sludge...I mean bread. Unfortunately, the flour container was empty, and I mistook the powdered sugar for the flour. Yuck. It was bad. My later attempt at making Muddy Buddies turned out better. There was a girl in my Spanish class who had them a couple weeks ago, and I wanted to try them. They're pretty good. Better than the banana bread, that's for sure. What else have I been spending my time doing? Well, I reorganized my bookmarks the other day. I'd given up on some sites and joined others and it was getting to be a mess. One of the sites I joined is facebook. Mom joined a couple weeks ago, and her comments on the strange pointlessness of it made me curious, so I joined. I like it better than myspace, at least.
The other interesting site I recently joined is Wajas. It's an animal sim, for those who know the type, but the main thing to do is breed the canines together. It's a very complex breeding system, actually. Rather addicting. ^^ The art is beautiful, too.
If you join, I'll give you a free pup.
There's several other new sites I've joined, but none thrilling enough to talk about right now. *grins* Maybe another post.

Sooooo...I think I've run out of things I want to talk about for now. Gotta save some ideas for next time. *grins*
Hope I think of those youtubes I was going to link before tuesday. *frowns*

Random Youtube Tuesday!

2008-12-02T08:34:00.002-06:00

Today's random youtubes come from this youtube profile.

I came across it a long time ago when I was looking for ASL songs people have put up.

This guy is an ASL comedian. He's a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) who signs skits that are just hilarious.
Even if you don't know sign language, you'll laugh.

This one was the first one I came across. I was searching random songs and found this.

A little bit of explanation, for anyone who has no clue of ASL. When he fisrt starts interpreting, his signs are literal translations of the words. For example, "the party is jumpin'" he signs "party jumping" as in, this party is literally jumping up and down. When he rolls up his pant leg, he switches to ASL order and signing. It translates using the concepts of the words, not a literal one. Instead of signing that the rapper is driving, he becomes the rapper and shows what he's singing of doing. Finally, when he changes again, its in correct english word order...fingerspelled. It's impressive.

My other favorite video that he does is a story about his mom driving. It's kind of about deaf drivers in general, exaggerated. It's really funny.

So, that's it today. If you want to see more, check out his profile that I linked to earlier. ^^

School Registration

2008-12-01T17:22:00.002-06:00

Registered for classes today. (Actually, registered for classes at 12:30 this morning. AM, not PM. In my next post I will blog about illnesses.)
Got some kinda cool ones coming up in the Spring semester. Took forever to find a schedule that would work, though.
Mondays and Wednesdays I have two classes, one in the morning, on in the afternoon. I've got Physical Geography (which I'm taking because it's the same teacher as in my Geology class, and I really like him.) at like 9, then Fundamentals of Baking at like 5. Yes, baking as in pies and cookies. (My brother keeps telling me that I need lots of homework for that class.)
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have Physical Geology at 10:30. It should be lotsa fun.
Then I have one online class, Western Civilization. I never got to take this kind of class in high school because I accidentally doubled my American History class. ><

All in all, it looks like a fun semester.
I've managed to bug a couple of my friends into maybe taking Geology with me, so that'd be cool, too.

Abracadabra

2008-11-28T07:55:00.005-06:00

Last night we watched a dvd of Lance Burton magic shows.
I love magic...used to watch every special I could catch.
After looking up some of Burton's other tricks on youtube, my Mom said I ought to do a special not-so-random youtube friday.
I thought not. Instead I'll do a whole blog about magic, with lots of links to videos. *grins*

When I think magic, my first thought is David Copperfield. He'll probably always be my favorite famous magician.

[If you go to the url, and don't just watch the embedded video, there's three more parts to the this video linked. ^^)

My second thought is the "Masked Magician" He did a couple of shows several years back where he showed how some of the best magic tricks are done.
Now, his tricks are actually hard to find, but I found a guy who had several...this was one of the coolest.

[After some more hunting, I found this site, which has more videos.]

I was reminiscing as I searched, lamenting the lack of famous magicians today when I came across this interesting video.

Guess I'll have to look for it. *grins*

And now, this post has come full circle, to end where it began...with Lance Burton.

I believe this to be an actual clip from the show we watched...and if I recall correctly, one similar to it is what netted him the Grande Prix prize at the international Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques (FISM) competition - first American to do so, plus he got it at the age of 22.

This was also on the dvd, and we nearly died laughing.

Finally, Lance Burton's roller coaster escape.

Random Youtube Tuesday!

2008-11-25T14:13:00.003-06:00

It's that time again!
Welcome to this week's Youtube Tuesday!
Made even more special by the fact that it is actually happening on Tuesday this time!

Today is AMV day!
AMV is an acronym that means "anime music video" It's one of my favorite things to search for.
Basically what happens is that anime fans pick a song, then choose scenes from the anime to fit the music. There are good AMVs...and really bad ones.
The ones I have today are some of the better ones I've seen.

This is a Sailor Moon AMV...I thought it was beautiful, and it's done to one of my favorite Evanescence songs: "Bring Me to Life"

Sadly, I cannot embed this AMV (or should I say GMV?)...it does not allow embedding. However, it is a very beautiful Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess AMV set to the music of Nickelback's "Savin' Me."

See you next week with more random Youtube videos!

New Pictures!

2008-11-22T07:06:00.006-06:00

Well, not really new...more like pictures that I finally got around to scanning in.
The edges are a tad blurry - the scanner hates me. I need to learn to draw further away from the edges of the sketchbook.

Click the pictures to see a bigger, better version.

First up is a (late) set of Halloween doodles.

There's four pictures, in varying angles and completedness.
The coloured one is my (evil) muse Lanyia, dressed as an angel.
Directly beneath her is Rama, a demon from the story I was co-writing with a friend of mine a few years back. He is stuffed into a poofy pumpkin outfit, and not happy about it.
Upper right has my roleplaying character Irian, who is dressed as what he is - a snow leopard. (He's a were)
The last picture is an image of my internet persona, Ari, "testing" the Halloween candy.

The next two pictures are only the most recent in a very long line of pictures I have drawn for a friend of mine on the 'net.
I spend much time on a website called GaiaOnline...and several years back, when I joined, I set up a thread wherein I gave away free art (which was nice, for it made me practice drawing. ^^ It's my experiment thread...I play with mediums and poses and such in the freebies I give away).
In the first few pages entered a user by the name of Dominique del Mer...and she hasn't left yet. *grins*
Of the 600 or so arts I've done for Gaia in the past four years, she's gotten about half of them.
Just kidding. (Mostly) She does have her own folder in my art files, though.
You'd think she'd get tired of my art style after a while. >>

Anyways. Onto the pictures.

I think this was a birthday gift. I don't know anymore, I drew it a couple weeks ago.
It's cute because on my avatar (the image that represents me on the site, for those who don't know) I have the little black kitty, and she has the little white kitty. The hat (of eternal drawing damnation) is also part of her avatar...and I've fought the thing for years now. It's not easy to draw, therefore to get revenge, I had my kitty rip the feather off. ^______^

Final picture.

This is one of Dominique's roleplaying characters. (She has as many as I do. *grins*)
She's a drow (I think) who makes magical toys. So all the little critters are broken toys coming to her for help. My favorite's the bunny whose tail has come off. And the ball with a band-aid.

Random Youtube of the Week.

2008-11-20T07:32:00.003-06:00

Next week I'll do on Tuesday, for "Random Youtube Tuesday"
This time I decided to do it, but it was after Tuesday, so I'm doing it today...Thursday. >>

Actually, I'll put two up.
Mom found this clip yesterday and I don't wanna forget it.

Some guy lipsynching Moosebutter's song "Star Wars"...it's cool (and...somewhat nerdy) that he listened to the song enough to find the 4 distinct voices to lip synch, then recorded himself 4 times. In different shirts.

Playlist

2008-11-19T08:05:00.000-06:00

Just yanked a bunch of songs off my mom's playlist.
So it's like...doubled in size. *laughs*

School Results Page

2008-11-19T07:53:00.005-06:00

Here is where I'll put the results of my many tests these couple weeks. I'll update it as necessary.

Spanish test: Got an 86.5. Better than I'd thought, not as good as I'd hoped.
Geology test 1: Got a 94 after the curve, yay.
Literature paper: Turned it in, waiting for it to be graded.
Geology test 2: Also a 94, surprisingly. Yayness. ^^
Geology test 3: A 95.
Religions test: An 88.

Have you ever...

2008-11-19T07:50:00.002-06:00

Been driving along, somebody in another car does something stupid and illegal, and you say "If only a cop had been here"?

Well, yesterday I was driving to school, and there's a road where the speed is 20...it's on a hill, so it's hard to keep to the speed limit, but I was driving down, going maybe 22...and there's this guy behind me who's just right up my tail, glaring daggers at the back of my head. Finally, he cuts around me (illegal), and zooms down the road (too quickly)...right in front of the cop sitting in front of the school who goes out after him.

It totally made my day. ^_^

Rindercella

2008-11-17T07:59:00.003-06:00

[Today's post definitely counts as a ramble..make sure you have lots of time to read. ^__^]
Yesterday I was telling Mom about how I used an mp3 upload site to get the anime songs on my playlist onto my playlist and I realized that I could use the same process to upload songs from our cds.
I asked Mom what song she would like me to try it on, and it happens to not really be a song.
You see, up in Wyoming there's this place called the Bar J Ranch, where they have a supper and western show, with the Bar J Wranglers singing and making jokes while you eat (really good) old style western meal.
I've gone a couple times, and I've always enjoyed it. The food is great, the songs are good (though I'm more a rocker chick than an old-style western one), but what I enjoy most are the short skits.
If they had all songs, I'd die, 'cause though they're good singers, I'm still not fond of the style of music. They mix it up, however, with jokes and stories and short skits.
One of their skits has one of the singers (can't remember who) dressing up as "Grandma," coming out on stage, and telling "Tairy Fales." Full of spoonerisms, gags, and jokes of all kinds, the stories tend to have the audience breathless from laughter.

All right. Backstory done.
The real reason this Rindercella is on my playlist is because I've performed it myself. Lots.
I took drama in high school my first year (and acting the next three years running, but that's neither here nor there). Time came around to do monologues, and I've always enjoyed comedy more than drama when it comes to performances. It's actually what I ended up getting known for in my acting class later. (When I finally tried to do drama, I had to do monologues because noone knew I could do it and didn't want to chance it with me. ><) I asked Mom's suggestion on what I should do, she whipped out this cd, and I fell in love with it. It took me almost an hour to transcribe the darn thing, though only about 15 minutes to memorize it. I haven't forgotten it since...mostly because SOMETHING comes up at least once a year that lets me pull it out again and use it. I've performed the monologue for school, for family events, for performances, for talent shows - I almost took first place in a school talent show with it a couple years back. I became known as "Wimberly Keatherston" in high school...>>

Second backstory aside, let me shush up now and let you enjoy the incredibly entertaining original performance. ^^

[What to expect over the next couple days: geology field trip report/s (as many as necessary...may take more than one, and pictures will be added at a later date.), school updates (I will post my paper when I have finished with it and will also record test scores as I get them), a rantle (ramble/rant) about my friend Dominique on Gaia (don't worry Dom, I'll be nice. *grins*)....that's all I can think of at the moment. See ya!]

School

2008-11-12T20:08:00.004-06:00

I don't see why people always complain about finals week.
It's my experience that about the 12th-14th week of school is the busiest time period.
I mean, last week I had a paper due for Geology, I've got another one due tomorrow, and I'd have a Literature paper due Monday if the teacher hadn't bumped it forward a week.
Next week I've got a Spanish test Monday, Geology tests Tuesday and Thursday. The week after I've got a Religions test Wednesday and another Geology test Tuesday.
We had an oral report due today in Literature (went fairly well).
I've got a Geology field trip this Saturday (whoo-hoo!) (Note to self: ask about taking camera. Swear upon life not to let it come to harm and beg profusely.)

Bunches'o'stuff, ne? All within the span of like, three weeks.
This has proven true in the past as well.
Ah, well...back to work on my Geology paper.
[Edit] To add to this loveliness, my paper got eaten the other night when I was almost done with it, so I had to retype it. ><

Playlists

2008-11-08T08:27:00.004-06:00

Soooo. Playlists.
Mom spent a couple hours last night setting up one for her blog, and I thought it looked fun, so I'm going to put one here too.
It will be...interesting, to say the least. Mom's songs all have some sort of meaning for Dad, whether it's injokes or just songs he likes.
Mine has no restrictions. It's gonna have whatever catches my interest. *grins*
If I put it up today, it won't have many songs on it, but I will sporadically add to it in the coming weeks.

[Edit]
Playlist is up.
It will be an interesting mix of Broadway, rock, anime, and game music, with a few (very few) various other types thrown in.

Brief Life Update

2008-11-08T07:41:00.005-06:00

I warned you when I started, I tend to be a rather sporadic updater. ^^

Brief update on my life, then I'll try to post more regularly. Like, once a week or so.
School sucks, except for my Geology teacher who is awesome.
I'll save my Spanish rantings for a whole post all of its own.
My other classes are okay, just not real thrilling.
Got a tablet couple weeks ago, haven't started playing with it yet much. It works on my laptop, I just have to wrestle some good art software onto my laptop to go with.
Also, Tegaki. Very cool.
My dad left for Iraq this week. Missing him already.
And...my mom messed with my blog a bit, adding in a nifty cool background. Maybe it will distract from my text...or lack of it. *laughs*

I'll be adding in a playlist sometime this week, so y'all can enjoy my...varied tastes in music.
That's it fer now, I guess.

Save the Earth!

2008-09-13T18:58:00.004-05:00

For lazy people.
Captain Planet I'm not...no uber-nifty superpowers for me.

Until now!

I recently came across a cool site that lets even people like me (lazy, with no money, and stuck in the middle of nowhere) do a little to help the planet.

Care2.com is a free site you can make an account at. It has all sorts of cool things, from petitions to recipes, blogs to groups. My favorite part of the site is called the daily click...every day you can go in and click on a number of different groups and each click will go to support a cause!
Care2 also gives you a free email account, and you can set up your preferences so that any mail from the site will go to that account and not to your main email - a lifesaver if you go on a petition-signing binge and end up with 50 thank you notes in your inbox!

In a similar vein is a site I found a few months ago. FreeRice.com is an awesome website - it both teaches you something and helps others at the same time! You answer vocabulary questions one after the other...every right answer is a donation of 20 grains of rice! It's not just vocabulary, either...at the very top of the site is a tab called "Subjects". Clicking it brings you to a page full of possible subjects to be tested on! From grammar to vocabulary, math to science, art to foreign languages, with more subjects yet to come.
If you want to keep track of how many grains you've gotten, you can change your preferences to keep track from visit to visit, letting you see the rice pile up.

I'm always keeping an eye out for more things like this, where I can visit for a few minutes every day while I'm on the computer to try and do something good for the world.
Let me know if you find any more and I'll keep an eye out and update if I come across any more. ^^

Life Updates

2008-08-28T21:18:00.003-05:00

Ohmigosh, I have found a dessert that is like instant death for diabetics.It's called hommade candy bars, and it's alternating layers of crackers and what I called sludge (because when I was cooking it, that's what it looked like) - 2 whole sticks of butter or margarine, some brown sugar, graham cracker crumbs, and milks - with a topping of peanut butter, chocolate chips and butterscotch chips melted together. I've had five today and I'm on a serious sugar rush.

About two weeks ago I got several new games for mah DS (two I bought, one mah mom got for me). I got Code Lyoko and Deep Labyrinth for about $12 (both together) and a used copy of The World Ends With You. I tell ya, I normally hate ARPGs (I STILL haven't beaten Kingdom Hearts:Chain of Memories), but I am totally obsessed with this game. I intended to play it for several weeks, leveling up and such...but ended up playing all the way to the final boss in three days. Because I played so fast I couldn't beat the bugger, so I restarted and watched the ending on youtube. But I'm obsessed to the point that I'm drawing pins on my hand in class and want some empty button pins to make some for me to wear. *laughs*
Totally recommend it for anyone looking for a good game, even if you have to pay new price -- I got mine for about 30-ish, but that was with 20% off at GameStop [10% discount for buying at the PX, 10% more having the card and buying the game used].
The other two are also cool...but it's TWEWY that I'm obsessed with.

Started college Monday...I have 5 classes, three that meet on Mon/Wed, 1 on Tue/Thu, and 1 online. I'm taking World Literature, World Religions, and Spanish on M/W, Historical Geology (and accompanying Lab) on T/T, and College Algebra online. Love most of my classes so far...the texts for Lit are awesome, I might end up keeping them. There's some great Egyptian love poems I had to read for class this week that I'll probably type up later, and a beautiful different translation of a Psalm. Teacher is a bit hard to understand sometimes - she had a 'murky' voice. The Religion teacher is also difficult to understand sometimes, and he teaches more like a 'high school' teacher...not stopping for much discussion or questions. Maybe he'll warm up a little as we go. The Spanish teacher is...interesting. But then, I've never wanted to take Spanish, so maybe I'm a littled biased against liking him much. (The $120 textbook isn't making me like the course much, either. Stupid thing is 'binder-ready', meaning it's a bunch of loose-leaf pages I won't be able to sell back later. *gag*) Again, a bit difficult to understand.
I love the Geology teacher, though. He's been teaching at this college for 28 years...he is (in his own words) "an old crusty curmudgeon whose entitled to all the opinions I want...and you'll probably hear every one of them this semester." I also like any class that lets me play with rocks during the lecture...I'm not an aural learner. *laughs*
Algebra....eeeeehhh. I don't like math, and I'm not real fond of online classes, but I didn't have space in my schedule to have it anywhere else. At least algebra is the one math that I'm good at -- geometry killed me in high school.

I've made some friends, too...of all sorts. From a dorm-liver who loves comic books and partying to a mother who loves learning languages and her kids and dogs, I'm finding out that, oddly, people seem a little bit friendlier than those in Idaho State did...or maybe the classes are a little more relaxed and people are more willing to talk, who knows.
I even think maybe a guy in one of my classes was flirting with me. >>

One bad thing, though, is that the parking situation at this school is INSANE. The campus is set up with two lines of buildings, basically, with roads and parking lots on both outside sides...the academics building, with all the of the math, english, and social studies classes is at one end of the line, and the parking lots on the other. >>
Insane. It's a ten-minute walk...in the hot sun. There's NO shade. ><

Anyways...just a brief update. ^^
Hopefully I'll have more later.
Maybe even some drawings. *grins*

Haiku

2008-07-18T08:03:00.002-05:00

I'd post something new
But ideas I haven't got
And time I'm lacking.

Aaaarrrrrttttttt.

2008-06-25T07:44:00.003-05:00

So...I draw. A lot. Like, obsessively fill up nine notebooks obsessed. And own another ten or so.
I guess you could call it my main craft. [I also dabble in knitting, crocheting, cross-stitch, friendship bracelets, origami, quilling, and several other things, but that's not the topic.]
Y'all may or may not have noticed the link to my DeviantArt site, off to the right.
It contains most of the best pictures I've drawn over the last couple years.
I haven't been drawing a whole lot the past couple of weeks (though I should because I've several commissions, a couple gifts, and a bunch of freebies to draw for people), mostly because I've been working on other things and haven't had the inclination. I used to do most of my drawing in class, because I was bored and there was nothing else to do. Now, even when I am in class, they actually teach stuff and I actually need to listen. Go figure.
I am an traditional artist, mostly because I have no tablet with which to draw on the computer (computer graphics, or cging) nor the necessary art program in which to do it. Even if I did, though, I'd still do a bunch of traditional stuff - nothing like getting up from an hour's worth of drawing and having your hand black from graphite.
For the most part, I draw in an anime style, colouring with coloured pencils, rarely inking my lines (because they always seem to turn out bad). I've markers I use sometimes, but it's usually the pencils.

Anyways. On to some pictures.
I'm just going to pick two or three of my recent pictures to show off.This is my most recent picture I've got on the web...it's a commission I did for someone on GaiaOnline. I actually inked it...did most of the details in ink, because I was having trouble with the poses, and was getting too much graphite on the page...almost all of the small details were drawn straight out in pen. Colour is coloured pencil (mostly Prismacolors).

This picture was done for a good friend on GaiaOnline. There's several hour of work in this one. First I drew the central figure...inked and coloured it (Coloured pencils, as above). Then on a seperate piece of paper I did the background, in watercolour paints, then chalk pastels after the paint had dried to add definition. I scanned them in seperately, then melded them together on the computer.

[Sorry about the differing sizes...if you want a closer look at any of them, the pictures are all found in my DeviantArt account.]
This is also a picture done for GaiaOnline, but for me this time. ^^ I was actually very happy with how this turned out. No inks, just coloured pencils this time. I love to draw wings, so I tend to spend more time on them in a picture than anything else.

Finally, this is another picture for my friend from GaiaOnline (she scrounges a lot of them from me...she even has her own folder in my art folders, where I keep everything I've finished). This time it was a freebie picture I made for her...her avatar had all these wings and, well, I've a fondness for wings. A wing fetish? Whatever...all the wings made me draw it for her. It was a really quick sketch - no more than 5-10 minutes for the lines, and maybe 10 minutes more for the colours.

Anyways, that's enough pictures for you for now.
I don't want to overload the posts. *grins*
Again, all of these pictures can be found at my DeviantArt account, the link to which can be found in the link list to the right.

Online Games

2008-06-12T06:52:00.003-05:00

Just being bored this morning, so I thought I'd take some time and ramble about a few of the things I spend my time on online.

The very first things I open when I get on are several online, browser-based games. (I don't really do any MMORPGs anymore...too much time. I did MapleStory for a time, got my archer to level 30, but then I started having troubles with lag. It wasn't fun anymore. And for some reason, I can't pull up PuzzlePirates. It's weird.)

The first game I pull up is a recent one for me. I found it a couple weeks ago. It's called Legend, and it's one of those ever-so-common time-based fighting sites. Yaknow, you can fight a person, but can't fight a second one for fifteen minutes, so while you wait you run off and have an adventure for 10-30 minutes, fight someone else, adventure...and when you're done, you can 'work' for up to eight hours at a time. Most of the other ones I've tried (whether normal fighter or vampire vs. werewolf) I've quickly grown bored of and given up on, but I've stuck with this one for a while now.

The second site I pull up is another time-based site, but of a very different nature. It's called Travian, and is a different kind of fighting game, where you build up your villages and attack other players' villages. Every upgrade 'costs' in resources and time, and resources build up slowly over the day. I play in server three, name of Irian (for now...it may change, since we're currently in the endgame. I already changed mah name once when I deleted mah account - mah guild pissed off a pretty big guild and they were systematically destroying us, so we all relocated. *laughs*)

The next site is a little bit different kind of fighting game...'tis called DinoParc, and as the name might have told you, it's based on fighting Dinos. You get to pick a Dino (and you can buy more later), and you have him travel around, fighting other dinos while exploring the land. Right my Dino is dying every other day, so not as much fun. *laughs*

Finally, and among my favorites, is AlphaBounce. (All but Tanoth are done by the same company.) I have never come across another website where the mode of progression is through breakout. Yes, breakout, with the paddle and the ball breaking bricks and all. You get three free plays a day, and are a prisoner, set loose in space to mine through the dark vastness. You complete missions, earning money and powerups, some temporary, some permanent. I love this game and play it every single day. I actually have two accounts, Arianna and Fadorien.

Anyways, those are the games I play right now...not very many, but the number tends to fluctuate as I come across new sites and get tired of old ones. I also play some flash games on Gaia and a number of other message board sites, but not very much.

Guinea Pigs

2008-06-10T14:09:00.014-05:00

We've got 2 guinea pigs, had 'em for a little while now. [Both male - one's mostly black except for a stripe up his nose kinda like a skunk, so he's Flower, like the skunk from Bambi, while the other is brown and white and black, all messy-like, so he's Bambi.]
Noisy little critters, but we love 'em.

The other day, I was watching the piggies, and they were running around, flinching, jumping...for a while I was wondering if ants had crawled into the cage, or if they were having seizures, yaknow? Then I remembered reading something once about how guinea pigs 'popcorn' when they're happy, so I meandered onto youtube and hunted down some videos of other people's happy, spoiled piggies popcorning to see if that's what ours were doing.
There are some adorable videos on there. I spent nearly an hour watching other people's guinea pigs running around.
Here's an example of the popcorning.
However, I soon started coming upon funnier and funnier videos. This was one of my absolute favourites. The person who created it got some adorable shots that work really well with the footage...and it's an awesome idea. I'm thinking of trying it with ours, too.
Unfortunately, not all the videos were so good. One of the worst that I came across was where someone fed a guinea pig to their snake. Yuck!
However, for the most part, the videos are of adorable guinea pigs getting food instead of being food. Like this one, that I found while hunting down the previous ones to post. [Watch for the black piggy getting thwacked in the butt at the 9 second mark! *laughs*] Our two piggies do the same kind of thing alot when we give them carrots. *grins*

Finally, every once in a while...you also come across something...insanely odd. [Since the audio is a bit off, here also are the lyrics.]

Enjoy!

Sooooo...

2008-06-09T13:59:00.011-05:00

Alrighty then.
I've done enough messing around with the layout, I ought to finally post something on this blog, ne?

This is just a short entry to say, "Yay, blogness."
I will be rambling in here whenever I feel like it, about things of all sorts. Nothing of any real importance, though. *laughs*
I made this blog at the behest of my mother...I don't know how long I'll post in it, or if it will go the way of my deadjournal (dead), my live journal (despite the name, also dead), my Gaia/DeviantArt/all other site journals (dead, dead, dead...well, you get the idea), but I'll write for a bit, at least.

To start it off, I just got back from the library an hour or so ago. We've got this awesome children's library down here, with tons of great books, and I go over and volunteer for a couple hours every Monday, shelving books.
It's a lot of fun, but I also come across a ton of books that I want to check out, which considering the 10-book limit, is a very bad thing indeed. *grins*
Today I mostly found Young Adult (YA) books that looked interesting, but I also checked out a nifty book on angels (should have awesome pictures of wings), a cd, and a dvd set.
I also took a bit of a cheater's way getting home...coming back from the library, I have to turn left, crossing traffic, to get back on the road - not a problem unless it's during rush hour. If it's at the wrong time, I can be stuck there for several minutes. Today, I got finished at the library around 12, so I didn't even try the road...I looped around back and found a light and turned on there, and got on the road before the other cars sitting and waiting did!
Hee.

Anyways, that's probably a good first post.
Next time I'll ramble about DS games, probably. *laughs*