Ubiquity

Clearly

2011-06-07T23:31:00.000-07:00

Today, I went to the dentist. I go to the dentist a lot. I have a very positive attitude about the dentist, despite a few bad experiences and an overwhelming number of visits. This summer marks the beginning of the end of all my dental work, and it's looking to be a year-long tooth-a-thon.

So far this summer, I've had:

- 2 teeth drilled into

- 1 temporary cap placed (permanent will come in a week)

- 2 holes drilled into my jaws

- 2 posts driven into those holes

- 2 instances of numbing

- 4 stitches removed from my gums

- 4 prescriptions related to dental work

- 8 X-rays

- 7 different people stick their hands in my mouth

- 4 nightmares related to my teeth

- Around 8 hours sitting in a dentist's chair

It's been a month, but a lot had to happen all at once. After next week, it's all going to get chill until about August, when I have a final round of appointments to confirm scheduling and make sure my teeth aren't rotting from being in such a middling state of repair. And then it looks like this will all happen again this winter, and finish forever next spring.

My appointment today left me a bit traumatized. It was going to be a consult, but I ended up getting two of my molars drilled into for about three hours. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. More like 2.5 hours of solid drilling. My teeth were chattering by the end of it. Normally I'm super lax about dental work. But I went from thinking I had a nice empty day to having two different procedures done at once. No chance to mentally prepare myself combined with the weird emotional state I've been in apparently leads to me getting shaken. I'm not feeling so hot at this moment.

I'll get over it and move on, but man. It was rough. I hope it never goes this way again.

Digitized

2011-05-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

Things. I've got 'em. And now, you're going to feel weird reading this list of things that I've got. Because it's probably not the sort of thing you're thinking of.

I've got a thing for men in fine suits.

I've got a thing for men with slender, but strong hands. Like you'd find on the cellist for a string quartet.

(I guess this means I've got a thing for cellists in string quartets that wear fine suits.)

I've got a thing for the bandaged invisible man look. Complete it with a nice hat and a fine suit, and I'm happy.

I've got a thing for nice hats.

I've got a thing for books bound in leather.

I've got a thing for maps and globes. The older, the better.

I've got a thing for masks. Every mask, every time.

I've got a thing for dice. Every number of sides, every possible color and size.

I've got a thing for sleek ties.

I've got a thing for heavy pieces of paper.

I've got a thing for playing cards.

I've got a thing for magic tricks.

I've got a thing for things that have faces on them, but normally shouldn't.

I've got a thing for plush animals. Or plush anything, really.

I've got a thing for knick-knacks.

I've got a thing for pinstripes, and demand they be in style.

I've got a thing for leather shoes.

I've got a thing for feathers in bright colors, especially red, yellow, and blue.

I've got a thing for the color combination of green and black, but I try to use it sparingly.

I've got a thing for drawing supplies.

I've got a thing for writing utensils.

I've got a thing for Batman.

I've got a thing for fish and birds.

I don't know what I'm doing anymore, I'm just listing things I really like. I was going somewhere with this, but I've forgotten.

Insomnabulist

2011-05-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

I've never been very good at sleeping. I can't get a full rest in eight hours a night. I'll either take a long time trying to fall asleep, or I'll sleep the solid eight hours and feel like I've been up all night. On weekends, I'll sleep for a good 14 hours, and the only reason I get up is because I don't want to waste an entire day. I've even been known to do weird things, like hold conversations in my sleep, or fall asleep with my eyes open.

Once a year or so, I begin to wonder what is wrong with me. I'll do a bunch of internet research, decide that I have ____, and then continue on with life. I won't see a doctor because they'll prescribe pills, and I don't like pills. Sleeping pills only make me tired, so none of that.

I've always thought insomnia was my thing. I mean, I'm awake late into the night whether or not I am tired, so it makes sense. When my dad was diagnosed with a bad case of sleep apnea, I wondered if I had it, too. Quite a few times I've been falling asleep, and I've caught myself not breathing. Sometimes I wonder if Americans just have a poor understanding of how sleep should work, and it's actually super normal to be unable to sleep for eight solid hours. I even read an article once that said everything we know about good sleeping habits is wrong.

Ever since my senior year in highschool, I've been wondering if I'm narcoleptic. I don't suddenly fall asleep at inappropriate moments, but I will feel incredibly sleepy at intervals during the day. All I'll want to do is lie down, and it lasts for one to four hours before I'm okay again. It's usually during this time that I fall asleep with my eyes open. Doing research on it tonight, I realized that I have a lot of the symptoms associated with narcolepsy. But something in me doubts that I'm actually narcoleptic.

I'm finding out a lot of neat stuff about sleep disorders, though. Apparently it's weird to dream before you fall asleep? I always thought that you knew you were about to sleep because you were having a half-awake dream. And carrying on conversation in your sleep is entirely possible, so I'm not mistaken when I say I talk to people in my sleep sometimes. I can't find anything about how I'll fall asleep, but still look fully awake. I must just be weird.

Sounday

2011-04-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

Ahahaha, it's one of those weeks where I don't know where I'll find the time to do everything, so I hardly do anything.

I may or may not be going crazy from stress ffffffffff I probably just need more sleep and a better diet. Actually, less sleep and a better diet. I didn't get out of bed until 1pm today.

If I can get one big thing done tomorrow, I'll feel a little better. If I can get two big things mostly done, I will feel back on track! Too bad I have three big things to do! Four big things to do? Six, if you count the next two weeks!

Bah! Pah! Bah! This is going to be the most incoherent Ubiquity post I've made yet, I think.

This is the most upbeat cartoon character I've ever seen. I don't know how he does it! Maybe he's been hit on the head too many times?

No worries, daughter Eliza! So you ran off into the Andes mountains by yourself shortly after tricking me, and then climbed too high and fainted from lack of oxygen! During a snow storm! And I had to build a snow house out of my own two hands and save you from a certain death! I probably would have done the same thing as a boy! Don't tell your mother. Good show.

Oh my! We seem to be sinking in quicksand! On our anniversary! In complete isolation from the rest of the world! No worries, it's still romantic!

Would you look at that! My oldest daughter drove our home off of a cliff and into a riverbed during a flood! Welp, I'm just gonna build a silly little boat! Nobody's in trouble at all! And while I sleep that night, all of my children will disappear! Smashing!

But his spirit breaks when he has trouble tracking an incredibly rare animal that is hardly ever seen by humans. This man is my hero.

Lid it Up

2011-04-13T22:22:00.000-07:00

I have this really big pad of old newsprint that my mother bought when I was little. It's like two and a half feet long, the pages are huge. And then I have a smaller pad that's only a foot and a half long--But that's still pretty big. Whenever I do a project that might be messy, like painting something, I lay down a piece of this newsprint paper. I'd rather lay down regular ol' newspaper, but that stuff is hard to find. So yellowed newsprint it is!

I taped a sheet down onto my desk the other day because I wanted to paint some felt. I haven't bothered to take it off, because I love having paper on my desk like this to write and take notes on.

Anyways, I drew a bird on the paper:

That's the whole point of this story. I wanted to show somebody this bird I drew, before I inevitably rip it off my desk by accident. I love this bird, it looks great in real life. It's also sideways, and about six inches long.

I don't know why I drew it sideways on the paper.

I also drew it all in pen. Colored it with colored pencils.

This is how I spend my time.

I wish I had a better camera.

Yams

2011-03-27T22:11:00.000-07:00

I can't seem to stop laying in bed. I went to bed at eight last night, and then woke up around noon today. I then spent a better part of the day laying in bed with my laptop. I finally got up when a friend wanted me to come visit. I am so tired lately. My blood doesn't seem to be flowing the way it should. Maybe I'm depressed? Let's hope I snap out of it soon.

I've been having trouble drawing things. What is this, an eight year artblock? I think that lately it's less been an artblock, and more been a loss of skills due to lack of practice. I've been doing what I can to overcome it, but without much luck. Every so often I seem to be in the zone to make something, and I treasure those few times. But I've had to cut corners each time. I haven't drawn a complete face in a very long time.

I wish I could say that I've had a lack of ideas of interesting things to draw, but that just is not true. I've actually been posting ideas of interesting things to draw on my cork board. There's some good stuff up there. But I can't seem to get any of it out. Maybe because they're all different people?

I'm just bitter because I tried to draw some clouds the other day, and they turned out terribly. They used to be the one thing I was good at, and I totally failed it. Total stab to the ego.

The Perfect Perfect

2011-03-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

It is Saturday.

Saturday means a few things for me:

- I won't do any homework

- I probably won't eat a proper meal

- I won't get out of bed until well past noon

- I won't get dressed until about 4pm

- I won't shower unless I am literally leaking grossness

- I won't accomplish anything, not even fun stuff

That is, until about 5 or 6 pm, at which point I suddenly clean up, polish my mind, and go play DnD with some friends. But yeah, except for that, I like to waste my Saturdays doing nothing at all. Sometimes I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for hours. Often times, the only things I eat are a cup of tea and a few handful of almonds. I've heard of people going on eating binges on the weekends, but I pretty much do the exact opposite. I'm just not hungry on the weekends.

Anyways, last night I had a dream about DnD, pirates, and hugs. We were playing an epic game of DnD and it was great. Then I lost a special dice mean for a special someone (just a d8, actually), and I felt awful about it. It had fallen overboard off the pirate ship we were on. I required hugs to feel better. Then another friend of mine found it, and I required hugs to thank her. Then I gave the missing die back, and required hugs to apologize. Then a large tsunami wave came to kill us all, and I required hugs for protection. We all survived, but out pirate ship crashed. We had a group hug.

For some reason, after waking up, I felt like I could really use a hug.

3229

2011-03-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

That terrible feeling you get when you completely disagree with somebody's actions, but for some reason or another you can't let them know about your feelings on the topic, eventually you end up helping them because they can't do it without you, and at the end of it all they thank you for everything you've done and you feel sick.

I think the word for this one might be regret, but that seems far too vague.

I think sometimes that I'm in the wrong major. I have a lot of hobbies and interests that I enjoy doing, and I could turn them into legit jobs if I wanted to. It would be an absolute dream to go to school and study material sciences, and then go on to become a prop maker for big-budget Hollywood movies. I would thoroughly enjoy studying anatomy and art, and becoming an illustrator for medical books and diagrams and whatnot. How neat would it be to study psychology in school, and then become an expert on the subconscious mind and dreams? I could become a novelist, or a computer programmer, or even a musician.

But I treat all of these things as hobbies. I can always make things in my spare time. I draw whenever I feel like it. I dream every night. I can write, code, or play music any day of the week.

So why don't I feel like it's worth my time to make any of these things more than a hobby? I've picked a major that is pretty much none of these things. My major is something I would never do in my free time. I mean, I find what I'm studying to be interesting. But wouldn't it make more sense to study something I have a passion in? Something that I'll take home and work on, whether or not it's been assigned? I'd like to rewind a few years and pick a school better suited to my tastes. I thought I knew what I wanted, but it seems I've changed my mind.

Granted, though, I'm a terrible musician. I don't think I could actually turn that one into a job.

Unbegrudged

2011-03-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

That feeling of picking up a new craft with cumbersome tools, and thinking that there must be a better way of doing things, and as you work you can think of only improvements that can be made to these tools, but after years of work there is a general complacency as you learn how to use to tools effectively, and eventually you forget any and all innovations and just use the tools the only way you know how.

I feel that way about web browsers, keyboards, carving wood, acrylic paints, the US government, web forums, IM clients, clay sculpting, video games, and silverware.

I can't even begin to think of a word to describe this feeling.

All Of The

2011-03-21T11:10:00.001-07:00

There is a very important thing that I need to get done this afternoon, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with how my mother's birthday is tomorrow. All I know is, because of the importance of this thing, I am procrastinating like crazy. I'm putting it off and I don't even know what it is.

I just got back from spring break. Kayla and I went on a road trip. We saw Mount Rushmore, shopped at mall of America, checked out Lake Superior, and drove a lot. Lots and lots of driving.

Mount Rushmore is creepy during the off season. Entire towns pretty much shut down. Closed For The Season signs on every door.

People in South Dakota have no idea how to drive.

Minnesota has the worst laid-out highways I have ever seen. Especially near cities.

Lake Superior is actually pretty nice, but I got the feeling I wasn't supposed to be there and someone was going to kill me in my sleep.

North Dakota... North Dakota. What the fuck is up with your highways?! What were you thinking?! Were you trying to break the suspension in every car that drives through?!

A while ago, I was thinking about how well I can hear my neighbor through the wall when she's on the phone. Either she speaks super loud on the phone, or she stands and talks at my wall while she does it. And then I thought about how she must be able to hear me equally well. Now, I make weird noises and say odd stuff just to confuse her. Today, I'm watching some Let's Play of scary games on my TV, with the volume turned up loud enough to sound like the person is totally in my room. Lots of screaming and cursing. Must be confusing for her.

The other day, I played some foreign talk radios. Some language I couldn't even recognize. I would pause them and talk back at them sometimes.

I decided to make her think I was an alien, and would go around my room making beeping noises. "MISSION--ACCOMPLISHED COMMANDER. BIP."

And sometimes I just say weird things to myself, but now I make a point of saying them at her wall. "I'm sorry, theater makes me violent." "No, the owl does not belong in my boot." "Why am I making myself look like myself?" "There are no words on it! Fix that!"

Klacxion Traction

2011-02-24T22:36:00.000-08:00

I'm supposed to be doing this easy homework assignment right now, but I keep putting it off. I was having some sort of creative rush, and I thought I'd do something related to that NaNovel I was writing back in November. I never finished it, but I'm not done with it. I haven't planned an ending for it yet, but it's headed somewhere and I'd like to get there someday. Today, I thought I'd just turn some of my favorite scenes so far into comics. Thing is, I don't really remember the scenes I wrote. So I've been wasting time reading it through. I'm at one of my favorite parts, and I seriously can't stop reading it. It's hilarious. It's interesting. The pacing is awful. I am definitely the target audience for this book.

Here, let me share some parts with you:

In this part, the main character is lying on the floor (out of boredom) while the captain, Jackson the dog, tries to clue him in on some things.

“So, those Klacxions are pretty weird, huh?” Jackson remarked. I guess small talk is allowed when Jackson does it, because the last time I tried to comment on something trivial he called me a snot face.

“Klacxions? What?” I’m not an alien, I don’t pretend to know this stuff.

“Baxter and Ethel. They’re Klacxions.”

“Oh, Klacxions.” Sometimes I do pretend to know this stuff. “Yeah, they’re a bunch of weirdos.”

Here, the main character, ol' Whatshisface, tries to avoid doing work.

Of course, there is nowhere to go if I’m not in the main room. So I walked circles around the hallway. I tried to think of it as getting some exercise. It was about as boring as walking on a treadmill, but I didn’t want to go back into the main room and have Jackson talk some more about his kitchen. I also didn’t want to go do anything resembling work.

Yes, this is by far the most exciting space adventure I have ever been on.

“Tommie, stop being an idiot.” Oh, look, it’s Baxter. He’s standing in the hallway, just like me. Yay, hallway buddies.

“I do what I want.” I said as I squeezed past him and continued walking. Why is he just standing in the hallway?

“Shouldn’t you be making beds?”

“There’s no rush—Augh what?!” During that last lap around the hallway, Baxter managed to take off all of his clothes. “Why are you naked?!”

Baxter frowned. “I’m about to check out the engine room, and I don’t want these clothes to burn.” Baxter placed his neatly folded clothes next to the door to the engine room. “You should stand back, it’s really hot in there and you might melt.”

I did more than just stand back, I went through the nearest door and got the Hell out of there. I don’t think I’ll ever take a stroll around the hallway again. If I ever feel like doing some exercise to avoid work again, I’ll just do sit-ups in my bunk room. I feel like I’m less likely to walk into a naked alien in there.

And then, this part here, the main character daydreams while standing around in a room he shouldn't be in at all.

I really want to know more about this computer. Do you think it gets some sort of galactic internet? I wonder if Baxter has ever used it to have video conversations with other people. I can totally imagine receiving a message from some Gorblaxian space commander on an enemy ship about to attack, telling us to surrender. And then Jackson would be all like “No way, fire the lasers!” And the entire ship would start to shake as the enemy fired back, and Jackson goes like “All energy to the shields! We will never surrender!” Pew pew pew! And Ethel, wearing a miniskirt, is all “Oh, save me, first mate Tommie!” and I’m all “You can count on me,” only I say something way cooler than that. And then Baxter and I grab our huge freaking laser guns, set our phasers to kill, and teleport over to the enemy ship to kick some evil alien ass. I totally save the day when I burst into the captain’s room and shoot his face off, and then rescue the hot alien slave princess—

“What the Hell are you doing in here?!” Oh, shit, Baxter is back.

And then, shortly after Baxter walks in on MC:

I scrambled back to my feet and grabbed the nearest things to me, while Baxter calmly stood up and moved toward me. “Stand back!” I warned. “Or I’ll… I’ll lick this book! I’ll slobber all over it!” Baxter grimaced.

“Put those down. Get out.” He looks so angry, but his voice is so level. I wish he wouldn’t move so slowly, it’s freaking me out.

“I’ll pee on this doll!”

“Leave.”

“Don’t hurt me!” I couldn’t bring myself to move. I think this is one of those fight or flight reaction things. Either my reaction would be to run away in complete terror, or stand there and try to fight. I can’t move, so I must be trying to fight. It’s sad to think that my idea of fighting is threatening to pee on dolls.

This one here is best without any context.

Oh God, Baxter is totally naked and on the floor right now. Everything is really awful in this room.

Okay, that's enough of that. All these scenes are from the same part of the book. Pretty much, all of this happened in less than an hour in-story.

Right, let's do that homework assignment.

Twelve Delegations

2011-01-28T14:45:00.000-08:00

In every Sociology and Anthropology class I have ever taken, there is always this one person that sticks out. They're always a full-grown woman, of at least forty, who has obviously Returned To School. Probably to Finally Earn Her Degree. She always sits right up front, and she is never afraid to share her opinion of something with the whole class. Even though whatever she has to say is a huge waste of time. She will always ask about why whatever we're learning differs so much from her personal experiences growing up, and the answer is always that personal experiences don't always match results from large-scale studies. And then she will assert that her experiences are more correct, and probably tell us an anecdote about her son or daughter that is more or less irrelevant. After a few weeks, nobody sits by her anymore.

I only bring this up because there is a lady like that in my Sociology class right now, and it seems like my professor knows her type and doesn't like it. I find that hilarious. I could tell that my professor had her pegged after the second long-winded and ultimately useless question she asked, and stopped calling on her. But that doesn't stop this lady, she'll interrupt the lecture if she has to. When this happens, my professor gives off very strong (and very practiced) body language that says to hurry the fuck up and stop talking.

It's incredibly entertaining.

Best Western Europe

2011-01-25T14:42:00.000-08:00

I'm supposed to be doing reading for a class (I am very far behind in reading in that class because I only just bought my books, despite this being the third week of school), but this current reading is boring to me. It is also 50 dense pages long. So instead I thought I'd read the professor's notes on it. Right at the top there, she wrote that this is a radical piece, and she really hopes that it sparks debate and discussion. I may not be very far into it, but I think I understand the main theme: Europe is not the center of the world, and most of the world is nothing like Europe.

Whaaaaaaaat?

I never would have thought...!

It probably does have a few radical ideas in it, but the ones outlined in the intro are pretty common ideas to anyone that has spent time talking to a foreigner. It's also annoying to read about how Europe is considered to be "The West" and everything is else everything else, and we're not sure exactly were Western Europe ends and oh, I guess America is sort of apart of Europe I mean it has to be apart of something. It confuses me that a power as big as America is barely even considered to be a Western culture by this guy.

But then again, I'm still not very far into it. Maybe he discusses other large powers, such as Japan and America, later on.

Do you think the radical idea my professor was talking about was that America doesn't matter to Europeans? I do wonder.

Clippers

2011-01-19T16:12:00.000-08:00

Things I am missing:
- iPod
- Nail clippers
- Tapestry needles (3)
- Blue Scissors
- iPod connector
- Rechargeable batteries (2)
- Special pencil leads (3)
- Digital camera
- Thumb drive (4)
- Japanese-English dictionary
- Scotch tape
- Sharpie (2)
- Computer files (hundreds)
- Photoshop disk
- Flash MX disk
- Guitar picks (15+)
- Red bandanna

Where the heck are all of my possessions?

Weight Grounding

2010-12-15T18:37:00.000-08:00

I have so much to do! I move out of this dorm tomorrow. Completely out! I still need to find my RA and tell her about a few things, namely that I need to use the school storage. That girl is impossible to find when I actually need her. Tonight, my plans were mostly to study for an exam I have tomorrow afternoon. I'm not studying very efficiently, but I'm glad that I've done what I've done. I still have a really intense part to do to prepare for that final, but I'm trying not to stress about it too much. I don't need to add to the pile of stress.

I really don't like my roommate. Like, a lot. I'm considering giving her an exit interview, because she is truly awful. Well, I guess it's possible for her to be a lot worse. But as she is right now, she is no good, and I feel sorry for whoever has to live with her next semester. I still haven't told her I'm moving out. And I don't think she really knows it yet, either. She's supposed to have gotten a note in the mail, but I know that she is pretty bad at checking the mail.

I'm going to wake up early tomorrow and start packing. I'm confident I can get it all done tomorrow, if only because I've been planning it and visualizing how to move the fuck out of here for the past month. My roommate will probably try to sleep in late. I'm going to avoid unnecessarily loud noises, like a blow dryer or the microwave, but any loud shuffling noises or accidental crashes will not be stifled. And if at any point she complains about loud noises while she is sleeping, I flip her off. Fuck you, roomie, you have been noisy all semester while I try to sleep. But I'll at least take the high horse, and not have people over while she is sleeping.

I should stop complaining. I'm leaving tomorrow, it doesn't matter much anymore. But I just don't like her.

I can't wait to be at home. I really want to see the cat, and sleep in a quiet place on a soft bed. Being at home means all of these things are over and done with and there's nothing more I can do, so I can just sit back and relax. And then like a day after I get home, Griffin shows up. It's a recipe for fun and relaxation. It will be great. Even if things go wrong somehow, they will still be great and fun. Yay, life!

Wholly

2010-12-08T12:16:00.000-08:00

I am having a lot of problems getting this presentation translated. I'm trying to figure out how to make a sentence with the format "A is replaced by B." We haven't learned anything like that yet in class, and I can't find anything in the book. So I googled it. The only examples I can find of the verb and how to use it say things like "Ah, well I've bandaged it for the meantime but if that's awkward then it's fine to replace it with a plaster when you get home." I don't even get how that's a good example of that dratted verb.

Also, I've been munching on gummy bears all day, and now my tea tastes bitter and under sweetened.

I just want everything to be done so that I can slack off and do something really fun.

All For None

2010-12-07T14:42:00.000-08:00

Next week is finals week, this week is final projects week. I am so busy! I just got to a good stopping point in my final project for Japanese, so I thought I'd make an entry. It's been kind of a long time, and updates have been sparse. I guess I've been easily distracted lately.

So I'm moving! It's just more added onto my plate. I'm moving into my own room on the other side of campus. Back into the same building I was in last year. It isn't such a lovely building, but the people are much nicer and it is much closer to my friends. Also, the whole having my own room thing will be really nice. I also applied for a job in that building. My interview is this Thursday, I hope it goes well! It'll be nice to have a regularly paying job with a paycheck and all of that fun stuff. And then I can use it to pay off this new, and more expensive room.

There is so much to do this week! I didn't realize that the presentation I have in Japanese has to actually be in Japanese. I've been working on it slowly because I don't really sweat presentations, but now it's going to be a hurried mess. That'll teach me to read instructions poorly. The same day my presentation is due, I have an exam in Sociology. I always end up cramming for that class, so tomorrow is going to be so busy. I then have that interview the same day. Then a final project due in Stats that I haven't really started yet. But I'm not worried about the stats project at all; Once I figure out what he means with his weird terminology, I can do all of the math very easily. I can definitely get that done Thursday night.

I slipped and fell on the ice Sunday night. I'm pretty upset about it, I was hoping I could go the entire semester without falling. So close! I hurt myself kinda bad. I landed on my tailbone, and apparently my right hip. I could hardly sit down for most of Monday, and doing things like stepping up was out of the question. I had to skip most of my classes because I just couldn't get out of the building. At least I got some good work done. I'm feeling much better today. It hurts when I have to stand on my right leg to climb stairs or step over a pile of snow, but I can actually get around. My right leg is also kind of lame, and I can't raise it very high. But I'm sure I'll be back to normal in a day or two, no worries.

Okay, back to Japanese.

Whargharble

2010-11-14T00:25:00.000-08:00

It is late, and I am the sleepiest, but I cannot go to sleep yet. I was about to go to bed, I was brushing my teeth and everything, when a random girl that I have not met before keyed into my room. And then some other girls carried my roommate in, who was passed out drunk, and placed her on my bed. After a bit of a shuffle as things got moved around and water was placed and trash cans were prepared, they left me to watch her. She passed out in the hallway, or something like that.

So now, here I sit, incredibly sleepy, tasked with the job of watching my roommate sleep. I can't go to sleep until I am certain that she will be fine through the night. I'm not sure how to keep myself awake for the next couple of hours. I'm too tired to do anything productive, so homework is out, as is working on my NaNoWriMo. I don't think I'll be able to focus long enough to draw something, and I don't want to watch a movie because I'm trying to listen to her breathing and make sure it is still happening. I might play some Minecraft, but I get the feeling I am just going to do something stupid in that game, too.

Or maybe I'll just stare at the computer screen blankly for a couple hours. Yeah, that seems good, too.

Bastion

2010-10-30T12:02:00.000-07:00

My 20th birthday is next week. I normally get all excited about my birthday, but this year I'm having a hard time rallying up some energy. Maybe it'll come to me when the actual day is nearer. My birthday falls on daylight savings this year. I think that means it will be an extra hour longer! I like the idea of having a 25-hour birthday. Even though I have no plans to celebrate it at all yet.

I have no idea what I want for my birthday. I never do. I've been slowly putting together an Amazon Wishlist to prepare for such an occasion, but it seems like all I want are books and sewing machines. I am the most boring person on the planet. My parents already bought me my birthday present, this new computer, and for some reason I doubt that I will be getting many from other family or friends. Ah~ It sucks to grow up.

I really want to make another mask. I am already sort of planning out my next mask. I want to create the kitsune-type mask seen in the Noppera-Bo arc of Mononoke. (That one in the picture up there.) It may be way out of my league, though. Everything about that mask is a challenge, from the shape, to the multiple sections, to the eyes, even the little hairs sticking out. I don't even have a clue how to get the teeth in there, but one of the paper mache sculptors I watch on youtube uses a lot of teeth like that in his work, so I might just buy his book and apply his technique. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I just follow what's in his book, I'll have all of these difficult parts handled pretty well. Hmm...

I don't know when I am going to make this mask. I would like to make it over winter break when I am at home, but if I run out of time it might become a problem for my parents. But at the same time I think it would be really cool to work with Griffin on the mask. My next option is to make it next semester, but only if I move into a double-as-a-single room in the dorms. I'll have a spare desk I can make it on, and even the option to loft my bed and turn the area underneath into a work area. But then it's also a tiny room with virtually no ventilation (unless I want to freeze to death) so I can't use anything smelly, I won't have a dremel tool so I'll super need to plan ahead, and I have school all semester so I might not have much time to actually work on it. My final option is to wait and make it over summer break. It's the best option because I will have plenty of free time at home, even if I get a job and go through all that dental work. But it's my least favorite option because summer break is so far away.

But no matter what, I am excited at the idea of making another mask.

Puttin

2010-10-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about moving out of this dorm room. I've been thinking about it all semester, but these last 24 hours have put the idea in the front of my head.

It started around 2am, when my roommate thought she'd eat the noisiest bag of chips in the world for about an hour. She does that every weekend morning, and it always wakes me up, but I never said anything because hey, the weekend is the weekend, and she does it at like 8am anyways. But two in the freaking morning? On a school night? Not even a little bit okay.

Then there's the fact that the room has stunk all week. Today, I decided to go looking for the stench. Underneath my roommate's old pizza boxes that had moldy pizza in them, I found the thing that had been stinking up the room: A takeout container of old (and moldy) lasagna, heavy on the garlic. There's also a Tupperware container of moldy nachos rotting by the sink. She obviously doesn't know how to deal with food, or understand that it goes bad after a week and it turns into poison and starts to smell and should have gone in the fridge in the first place and stuff like that.

There are also two things I asked her not to do; I explicitly stated them when we put together the roommate contract. The first was to never touch my pens or pencils without asking. That's just because I'm crazy and those things are my breaking point. The second was to never have friends over while I am sleeping, and especially not to bring them around in the mornings when I am still in bed. I had a roommate that did that last year, and it turns out that it is an awful thing to do and I hate it. And I don't know why, but my current roommate keeps doing it. Sometimes I bring it up, and she says it'll never happen again, and other times I don't and I just seethe away into my pillow. This didn't happen today, but it still pisses me off.

I'm in the state of mind right now where if she is noisy and wakes me up again, or brings someone into the room again while I'm asleep, I'll just flip out and jump out of bed and tackle her. She can definitely take me down, but I've got crazy on my side.

Come to think of it, I don't have a problem with this room exactly, I just have a problem with the person living in it... And also I have a problem with its location. I would like it to not be on the other side of campus from the three friends I hang out with the most and the one parking lot that always has parking.

Either way, I got a letter in the mail today from housing asking me to verify that I am going to be in this same room this spring. So now is my chance to meet up with the lady behind the desk and arrange a new living situation. I already know of an open double-as-single room in South Hedges, and I have heard from a good source that there are going to be more open soon. And it just so happens that South Hedges is on the side of campus I want to live. I'll have to pay a lot more for housing, but I will be so much happier. I think this is going to work out well.

Cactus

2010-10-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

To dearest Greg, who commented on my last entry,

I feel for you man, I really do. Also, who are you and how did you find my blog? You're blowing my mind over here.

Sincerely, Me!

My pathetic Halloween costume could be doing better at this point in time. It's never been much, but just now I've decided to ditch the outer sweater in the name of fashion, and I'm not entirely sure how to get the sword to attach to my back. It's also gone from being a knife in my back to being a sword in my back. I'm also running out of time to put the entire thing together, since Anime Club decided to bump out Halloween event from Sunday to Friday. I object to that because of the costume thing, and because it nows means I have no plans for Halloween, and no backup plans at all. How very sad.

So there is this drawing I've been working on. It involves a guy with his head completely tilted back. It's a difficult angle to draw, and it's impossible to find any references of a head at such an extreme angle. It's also been really hard trying to take a picture of myself with my head so far tilted back with only the camera on my phone. It's not like I can see what I'm doing. But I will persevere, because I really like how this image is turning out and I am having fun with all of the fiddly detailing that takes hours and hours to do. I'll consider showing you if I can ever find a way to get it onto my computer.

Anosmia

2010-10-26T10:48:00.001-07:00

I tell people a lot that I don't have a sense of smell, but that is a lie. I do have a sense of smell, it is just really messed up. I know what things are supposed to smell like. Nine times out of ten, they smell completely wrong. I mean, my sense of smell used to be just fine, I haven't forgotten what things smell like. So it's not like I'm just confused about what things should smell like...

Here, let me give you an example.

I was melting some chocolate in a microwave with a friend. She went "Mmm, melted chocolate always smells so good," and then I held my nose because I thought it smelled horribly like burning rotten meat. Once the chocolate had cooled down, I took a sniff and it smelled like chocolate again.

There are some things that I can no longer smell: Cheddar cheese, certain flowers, and really random food items. Their scent is just completely gone to me. There are some things that I can smell correctly all of the time: Citrus, engine exhaust, poop, garlic. Everything else it seems like complete chance what will happen when I smell it. Usually it comes out really weird, "Your soap smells like duct tape," other times it smells completely normal, and sometimes I just can't smell it at all.

I don't know what caused my sense of smell to be like this. I don't know when it happened, but I do know it used to be just fine. I don't know what triggers it, and I don't know why some days it seems to be back to normal. I can taste everything just perfectly no matter what my sense of smell is doing. It is only a hindrance on days when everything smells extremely awful. And because of those days, I travel with a perfume stick and some spray that I can always smell that seems to covers up other bad smells just fine.

Anyways, I bring this up because I plugged in a cucumber melon scented thing, and it smells like peanuts and Chinese food to me.

Live Yesterday

2010-10-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

I'm considering taking up a religion. We've been discussing Buddhism a lot in my Japanese Literature class. One basic idea of Buddhism, it seems, is that life is suffering, and suffering is caused by desire. Therefore, one should try to live life without desire. I like the way that works out--It encourages you to live simply and within your means. It causes you to take on a different view of life. It does not tell you what is right or wrong about another person, it just tells you how you should govern yourself. That is what I want in a religion, a way of thinking that will make me see the world in a different light, and will cause me to strive for something greater. In Buddhism's case, the something greater is enlightenment.

Unfortunately, I completely disagree with the idea that suffering is caused by desire. Desiring things is fun and healthy, there is no way I'm going to cut it out of my life. So Buddhism is not for me.

... But I might limit what I desire. Material things are pretty worthless in the end, so maybe I'll just desire more fulfilling things. Like earning my degree.

I was considering just sticking to Christianity, since that is what I was raised with and a lot of its values are just common sense to me. Plus, I already own a copy of the Bible. But there is so much stigma with that religion, and there are too many disagreements about how it should be practiced. I do not want to be associated with the people that have taken the religion too far. I just want to follow the ideas like "Turn the other cheek," and "Love thy neighbor." I feel like the actual stories and words are irrelevant, and the morals and ideas behind them are what I should listen to. But I don't know of any flavor of Christianity that thinks like I do.

I don't know enough about other religions to form any sort of idea about them. I'm thinking I'll just go out and buy some Dummies' Guides to a few popular religions, and see what they teach. I want to research old and possibly dead religions, and see what sorts of values they had as well. I'm probably not going to do any of this, though. I'm pretty lazy about these things.

My biggest problem with finding a religion that suits me will probably be that I pretty much reject the idea of a God. (I hope I don't accidentally offend people in this paragraph.) I have never been much into idol worship. Yeah, Jesus was a great guy and he did good things, and I'll do what I can to be like him, but I am not going to devote my life to worshiping and loving him. Or his dad. I find the whole idea of his dad to be absolutely baffling, but that is something for a later day. I just can't get into a religion where the whole point is to worship some being that may or may not exist. It's cool to admire strong figures in a religion, but worshiping them shouldn't be necessary.

In that same vein, stories of a supernatural being strike me as more of a bedtime story. The story where Jesus turns one fish and one loaf of bread into many fish and many loaves of bread is a good example of this. It's impossible, and I don't think it happened, and there is no reason why I should go about life as if it actually happened in the past. But it is a great story, that shows how Jesus was a good person that cared for others and did whatever was in his power to help. The story should be used to teach people what they should be like, as another example of how Jesus is a model Christian and you should try to be like him. The morals behind it all are just great, but asking me to firmly believe in it is akin to telling me Superman is real and he's saving people as we speak.

I think I will just stick with being agnostic for the next few years. It seems like the least offensive thing I can be. The popular religions have huge wars and crazies making the news, a lot of people find atheists to be morally offensive (But I do not understand why), and smaller religions tend to have to explain themselves to every person that is unfamiliar with them. So I am agnostic, with a chance of starting my own religion. (I'd really love to start a religion.)

Cafickle

2010-10-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

My life has been reduced to sitting around and doing homework. When I'm not doing homework, I'm thinking about homework. Usually thoughts about which homeworks I don't absolutely need to do, and how I can get out of the ones that are required. That game I was programming last month? Dropped it. My knitting hobbies? Ignored for months. Video games? I allow myself to play for maybe 30 minutes at a time a few nights a week before I go to bed. If I want to play more, I risk getting less sleep than I need to feel alive. My life is so two dimensional right now that it horrifies me. I also haven't been eating so well lately, because my schedule has become so erratic. Even though I'm eating dramatically less than normal, I think I might have put on some weight. I can't really tell, though, I'm so skinny that any weight I put on just makes me appear more normal. My skin has been breaking out horribly, though, probably from poor nutrition.

Anyways, despite this sudden turn of stressful events, I believe that I am still a very interesting person. I'm getting all jazzed up about my Halloween costume, for example. It's really nothing special, but putting it together will be a lot of fun for me.

The idea for the costume is just me, but with a knife sticking out of my back. I want there to be blood stained all around the wound, and well as blood dripping form my darkened eyes and mouth. There are going to be three parts to this costume: The clothes, the makeup, and the knife.

The clothes:

Halloween here is notoriously cold. I can't simply attach a knife to my shirt and be done with it, I need a jacket if I want to survive outside. Even a kinda thick sweater will work. As it just so happens, I don't have a single jacket or sweater that I am willing to ruin, so a trip to GoodWill is required. I'm going to cut a slot in the jacket for the knife to fit through, and possibly a slot in the shirt too, depending on how I decide to attach the knife. The idea is that I will be able to remove my jacket (albeit with some difficulty) and still have the knife in my back. Both the jacket and the shirt will have blood stains around the knife. I want this to be gruesome.

The makeup:

I want to have super pale skin, so I'm gonna need to find some really ridiculously pale makeup to dust onto my face and hands. White face paint will be too stark and too messy and too difficult to apply evenly, so hopefully I'll find something. Maybe a pale creamy base makeup with talcum powder patted into it. I don't know, that sort of thing is not what I do well. But I also want to darken my eyes and make them look all sunken in. I'm going to mix up a tiny batch of fake blood and have some dripping from the corner of my mouth and one of my eyes. Because, c'mon, I was stabbed, I am bleeding internally.

The knife!:

I am excited about the knife because I want to make it out of my favorite clay. You know, for durability. I'm going to start out with a thin cardboard base, wrap up the handle part with some masking tape, and just go at it. I haven't decided on what type of knife or how big I want it to be yet. I might go for your average kitchen knife, or I might try a dagger with a pretty handle. I'm thinking I'm going to either paint it with metallic paint or use a glossy top coat, or both, to get it to look kinda like metal.

I also haven't decided on how I'm going to get the knife to attach to me. I'm thinking about wrapping bandages around my chest, and something from that knife is going to be held in place by those bandages. If I do that, then I will absolutely need to cut holes in the shirt and jacket. I'm also looking at really strong magnets embedded in the knife (unlikely, but it would be awesome if it worked), or wires from the knife that can poke through my shirt and then be secured to me by the bandages. The best solution would be the magnets, but the likelihood of finding magnets strong enough and in time is very low.

All I know is, the knife needs to be connected to me, not the shirt. Otherwise it'll sag and flop about.

Putting this costume together at home would be simple and easy, but trying to put it together here in the dorms is going to be where the fun and challenge comes in at. I don't have any of the supplies I need at all. I don't even have a workspace. Just trying to make the clay will be exciting. How many of the materials can I check out at the front desk, and how many materials can I borrow from friends? Will I have to buy all of it? I hope the front desk has drywall compound back there that I can borrow. Otherwise I don't know what I'm going to do with the leftovers. Probably donate it to them. Will they also have a clear finishing spray that I can use? Or... flour?

I can't sculpt the knife here in the dorms. It will take a long time for it to dry, and there isn't enough room in my room for it. I could use one of the little kitchens in the lounge, but I won't be able to sit there for a few days straight to make sure nobody messes with it while it dries. I think I will have to make it in my friend's apartment on her counter. I super hope she lets me.

Then there will also be spraying the outer coating on it. I might skip that part to save space, time, and money. But if I put expensive and strong magnet in it, then I want it to last, so I will have to spray it, and find a place to spray it. There are a lot of fields to use, but which one am I less likely to get yelled at for spraying stuff at?

Anyways, this entry is turning out really long because finishing it means going back to homework. Which, I guess, I'm gonna have to go back to now.

Waikiki

2010-09-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

The next person that refuses to go to a dance with me because they think they can't dance will be forced to watch me dance for a solid ten minutes. If they still think they can't dance after that, then they must either be blind or have terrible judgement.

(I'm saying I can't dance, but I still enjoy doing it.)

I have been so busy lately. Dad says it's because I'm starting Real College, no more of this Freshman introductory stuff. The only reason I've had so much work lately is because I've been trying to get ahead in all of my classes. I want my grades to go up, so that my GPA can get better. I have no reason for wanting a higher GPA, so I'm ultimately driven by nothing. Also, I'm noticing that all of my classes above the 100-levels are much more interesting, and I'm doing way better in those classes than my only 100-level course. I kind of hate my 100-level class. Sociology 150, you remind me of all of my Freshman classes, therefore I think you are boring as all get out.

I've decided that I want to write a text adventure! Do you like how I revealed that as if it were an exciting fact? I had Griffin come up with the premise for a short game, and now I am trying to make it happen. It's slow going, because I can only work on it when I'm not doing homework, playing video games, hanging out with friends, keeping up with my club duties, or goofing off on the internet. I also don't really know how to work the programming language, so I'm figuring it all out as I go. I've been referring to the in-program documentation a ton, and I recently downloaded a sort of handbook that has been super helpful. I'm hoping to have it done in about a month, and the game should take about 5-10 minutes to play if you don't get distracted doing things like hiding in the closet or checking your phone for the time every few moves.

I want the game to be very modern. It's set in Now, inside of a house built Recently. It's all contained in a house, with maybe a front yard or a backyard if I can find a use for them. The house has the world's wonkiest floor plan because I have no idea how to design a house. I think Griffin will appreciate that, though, because the premise of the game is inspired by Slenderman and House of Leaves. A house with an unusual floor plan makes sense in the context of those things. The player carries around a phone that he can use to check the time (current time is important in the game), and I'm hoping I can figure out how to make it possible for him to receive texts. I want there to be random electronics in the house he can interact with, like a digital camera, a TV, a laptop, all with optional things that will help to further the story. I'm putting a lot of emphasis on the time, windows, lighting, and the stupid floor plan. I hope it all works out well.

I gotta stop writing this entry and continue with my homework. But I really don't want to.

Account Approval

2010-08-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

Have you ever asked somebody if they have ever done a thing that is so weird and so oddly specific that you must have done it yourself, and then when they say they have not done it you respond with "Yeah, me neither," even though it is a complete lie?

Yeah, me neither.

I am back at school! Living on campus again. My friend was supposed to move over from Washington with me and be my roommate, but she backed out at the very last second. So I'm living with Mystery Roommate X. She seems pretty chill. She's spent a lot of time this weekend out of the room hanging with her friends, which is fine. She says she will probably be spending a lot more time in the room once school starts up. I'm hoping we'll get to be good enough buddies that we can go and grab dinner together and and watch movies and talk in general. She's not into geeky things like I am, and she is certainly more active than me. But so long as she doesn't mind my homebody habits, I think we'll be fine.

I also got a new computer! I am back to using a PC, and I am pretty jazzed about it. I still have my Mac with me so that I can get everything moved over. Dad wants me to bring it home and give it to him, but I don't know if I am ready to give it up yet. I was really excited about using Scrivener again this November for NaNoWriMo, and it's only available for Mac. But we will see what happens.

What I'm really excited about it that I've got my full version of Photoshop CS2 on here now. This means I won't have to fight with the program anymore to do simple things, like resize. I also have MSPaint again for really simple picture edits, like resizing. As you can see, I'm really excited about resizing my pictures. I can also finally go back to using all of the programs I learned to rely on all of those years ago. I put Noteworthy Composer on here almost immediately. Before iTunes, even! Every time I've complained about how a Mac can't run all of the programs a Windows machine can, that is the program I was thinking of. I'm so very, very happy to have it again.

Class starts tomorrow. Mondays and Fridays are my busiest days, with four of my five classes happening. I think I will be fine, so long as Philosophy doesn't prove to be too boring. It's my last class of the day, and it's a lecture. That is a recipe for disaster. But it's in a very small room (The same room anime club was held in), so I will probably be forced to pay attention and participate.

Okay!

Editing Papers

2010-08-20T22:34:00.001-07:00

I decided I don't want to talk about my drawings today, so I guess I lied in my last post. Oh well!

Instead I want to talk about college. I move back to MSU next week and I'm pretty excited. I keep having dreams where I move in and things are all wrong, but I try to fix them anyhow. Last night's was a lot of fun in particular, because after deciding I wasn't going to fix the room, I went wandering around the dorm halls. I kept finding people I know and interesting things that I remembered, and I'd bust out laughing every five second or high-fiving some person. All the while Amber followed behind me completely bewildered. I was totally in my element, and she was being left behind.

I'm excited just to move into my dorm and get everything set up. I've sort of got it figured out in my head, but I don't know if it will really work. I want the desks facing the window, the beds on the wall with the door, and the TV against the big open wall. I don't know if there's enough room for the desks, though. Amber will figure something out, she moves in first. And then I'll show up, put my stuff everywhere, and go to class like a day later. It will be great.

While I was spazzing out and trying to find some solid evidence of the underground tunnels at MSU, I looked up some stuff about University of Hawaii. The plan is to go there the fall of 2011. It sounds like the suckiest things about UH are the costs of living and the price of their meal plans. Hawaii is expensive to live in general, so apartments near campus aren't such a great deal. I'm having a hard time figuring out their dorms. It looks like in Frear you can get a pretty good rate and even have completely your own room if you do the four-room, four-people thing. But all the other dorms are one room with either one or two people in them, like at MSU. But even the cheapest rates at UH are more expensive that the most expensive rates at MSU. And Montana has much better options for off-campus housing, too, with large neighborhoods of tiny houses right next to the school.

The sad part is that I'm comparing the cheapest rooms at UH minus meal plans to the most expensive rooms at MSU with meal plans.

It feels like I'm only just getting started in Montana, and I'm already planning on leaving to go to Hawaii. Over this summer I've realized that I really like MSU, and I'm excited to go back again. But it will be cool to be able to fully experience a different university. I'm a little worried about getting into UH, if only because I don't think I'll have enough credits transferred over for them to look at my college performance when considering me. They'll have to look at my high school performance, which really isn't so great. But there's nothing I can do about it now, and I have a pretty good feeling about this. My GPA may be a bit low, but my last few years of school my grades were pretty good, and my test scores were high. This past summer I've caught up with a few friends from high school and found out who went to college and who did not. The kids that did go are the ones that seemed like they had any chance at all to make it into a school. The kids that didn't get into a school were the ones that made you question what the purpose of education was if it was only going to fail so miserably. So I think I have a good chance, because I know how to write a five-part essay and when to use its and it's.

I can also spell definitely.

Chandelier

2010-08-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

I will forever be interested in the way an artist prioritizes their techniques.

... Wait, that sentence made no sense. Let me explain.

When I was little and still mastering the art of holding things, the only thing I cared about when drawing was making things look like things. If I drew a cat, it needed to be easily recognized as a cat. If anybody thought I drew a koala or maybe a mouse, then I had failed.

After I had learned how to read and write, drawing things consistently mattered. Especially since I was into drawing comic strips. It has to be obvious that the person in all three panels was the same person, and they they weren't randomly shrinking or growing.

In ninth grade, when I thought I knew everything there was to know about art and drawing, I got really persnickety about my process. It went like this:
- 0.7 Papermate Clearpoint Mechanical Pencil with 0.7 Ain H pencil lead and Pentel Hi-Polymer Eraser (With the plastic still on below the red line)
- 100lb paper desirable, but anything will do that isn't lined
- Sketch basic shapes for the body very lightly
- Add wire framing, also lightly
- Check proportions and make sure everything is perfect
- Body outline, slightly darker but still very light
- Guidelines on head for the face and hair
- Face and hair detail
- Draw hand skeletons about 5 times until it looks like a hand
- Draw hand blob because my style is to cut that corner
- Clothing with "perfect" folds
- Other details, like clothing accessories and shoelaces
- Pilot Precise Grip Extra Fine in black for fine lines and Uni-Ball Vision Elite Bold in black (Something like 0.8 thickness) for thicker lines
- Ink thin lines first using fast, fluid, and accurate movements (Use arm and shoulder, not wrist and fingers)
- Ink thick lines next to add variability (Wrist and fingers, since these were usually small lines)
- Wait for ink to dry, and then erase all evidence of pencil
At that point I would either add shading in a persnickety way, or scan it into the computer which starts off a whole new list of things that needed to be done. I never strayed from my process, and having perfect details and lines was only possible to me if I did the process right.

Now days I'm obsessed with making big areas of black look completely solid, and not like I tried to fill it in with my tiny pen. Everything else is optional.

You see, the thing was, back in 9th grade I thought that what I strove for was what every artist strove for. I thought everyone was insane and touchy about what materials they used, and that perfectly proportioned people were key, and that you had to do everything a certain way Or Else. I thought I could achieve any sort of art style perfectly so long as I followed a similar process. I guess I've grown out of thinking that way, because now I don't even want to draw people. In fact, I'd be happy if I never had to draw another person again.

Enough about me. What I was getting at is that different artists strive for different things in their art, and I find it fascinating. I was just reading the blog of an artist that goes to great lengths to make his drawings look like they were dashed together in a minute. He spends hours sketching and planning and practicing how to draw his lines slowly but still make them look haphazard. It goes against everything I believed in back in the 9th grade, and it's really really neat. And then I was just reading about how another artist thinks it is incredibly important to use as many different materials as possible in his artwork, and there was this other artist who thought the most important thing was to have a generic style that could get her a job working in the manga industry.

I like knowing what is important to an artist in their works, especially since most don't see it as something that they want to do, they see it as what they are supposed to do. It makes me wonder what caused them to think that there is a wrong way and a right way to make a pretty picture.

I've drawn four new pictures in my sketchbook. They are different from how I used to draw, and I like that. I think my next entry I will upload a bunch of art I have made, and maybe talk about why I stopped drawing for a few years. Mostly I just want to show off these new pictures because I had fun making them.

Lid It Up

2010-07-24T23:52:00.000-07:00

Every time I glance passively in the mirror, I give myself the most flirtatious look completely by accident. I don't know what it is, but everything about my expression will be so perfectly balanced and brimming with such joy and confidence that I... Well, I think I may have fallen in love with my reflection.

I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I can sing, but only when nobody else is there. I mean, I think I can sing really well, but as soon as there is somebody within earshot my breathing messes up and all of the lovely stops coming out. Which is a shame, because I think I could come out with an album and make money. I'd just never be able to do live shows... Or record with anyone listening.

My register must be low for a girl, or something, because I find myself singing low notes the best. But I can still sing high, don't get me wrong. I'm a lady, it's what I do. I can't sing very many pop or rock songs, though. I'd be pretty useless in a band unless it was a jazzy sort of band. Because that's what I can sing the best, jazzy sorts of music. Jazzy and lounge stuff and things that are usually better suited to a man. But I sound great singin' it anyways.

Man, it's hard to believe I have about a month of summer break left. Hard to believe because it feels like school got out forever ago! Holy cow, this is a long break! I'm used to two and a half piddly months of summer break that start the week it rains the most. I still haven't finished cleaning my room, though. I pretty much took July off. But I am starting to get the urge to get rid of everything I own again. What I want to do is get rid of all of the things underneath and next to my bed, and then I can push my bed against the wall. And finally, I will have something to rest my back against when I watch TV! It will be great. It's also more or less the last big place I have to clean before I deal with the small piles.

Product Facts

2010-07-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

Last night, around midnight, I had this sudden urge to draw in pen until my hand fell off. But I didn't want to draw in my tiny sketchbook, or on a loose piece of paper like I have been for the past few years. So I broke out the last sketchpad I ever used, wrote in the date and went at it. The night ended when I drew on my leg and I guess my skin oils blocked up my pens.

I then had a dream that I drew a picture, and someone else sent it off to an Automatic Inker, which turned out to be a computer that guesses where your lines are and tries to ink your drawings for you. It was horribly inaccurate and ruined my lovely picture. I woke up angry.

Today I went out and bought a couple new sketchpads. I'm horribly picky about these things. I want heavy paper, spiral binding on the top, perforated pages, and a lot of pages. It also has to be around 9x11 inches, but I'm a bit loose with the numbers there. I got mostly what I wanted, except medium heavy pages and there are only 24 of them. The best sketchpad I ever had I bought at a Kinokuniya's. It had pages as thick as bristol board, and there were at least 50 of them. So lovely!

I'm stressing paper thickness because I want to use a lot of pens and ink, and I don't want them leaking through. I decided that I'm too fiddly with pencils, and I need to just belch it out with pens. Then I can't take back anything I draw. This made everything I drew last night look completely horrible. But the sharp contrast between paper and ink is too delicious for me to stop trying.

I want to draw full page comics again, but that's not going to happen until I can get my art style under control. You need to be able to plan if you're going to draw a comic, and as it is right now, I don't know what I'm drawing until an hour after I've finished it.

Stars On Your Toes

2010-07-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

I have rodents on the brain.

My parents have two girl cats that love to hunt. When I lock them in at night (which is prime time hunting) so that they don't become coyote food, they verbally abuse me. Being yelled at for a solid hour by the tiniest and angriest cat you've ever seen is a lot less adorable than you'd think it would be.

They're also very good hunters. On average, I'd say they catch 1.5 critters a day. Some days we get no animals at all, other days there will be three or four little rodents awaiting our approval. They always bring their catch inside, but I haven't figured out why yet. At first we thought they were bringing us presents, but they've stopped announcing it every time they bring something in. Then we thought they might be bringing them into an enclosed space so that they don't escape, but there are so many places for the little animals to hide. All a mouse has to do to be free is hide behind the piano for an our or two, and the cat will forget they even brought it inside.

Live mice and shrews are fun but tedious, because they need to be caught and released before they poop anywhere. Live birds are exciting and terrifying because they fly all over the place, but they don't last long because they fly into windows. Live moles are pure horror, unless they're just babies. Dead everythings are probably my favorite, because I can just pick them up and throw them out, and sometimes the cat will even take them out themselves because they want to play with it still. Dead birds are a pain because they leave feathers all over the place, and the cats will fight over them like dogs playing tug of war. Half-dead everythings are sad, because they are too alive to throw out and too dead to release outside. Either I or the cat has to kill it all the way.

The worst so far, though, are live field mice and rats. They're too big and scary for me to catch in a little box. And rats are really smart, so they escape very easily (and they can also jump at you!).

One of the cats brought a rat in yesterday. I thought at first it was just another field mouse, which meant it would be a pain and poop and eat, but it would be too afraid to confront us. But then I saw it in all of its glory today, eating the cat food. Definitely a rat. And it lives under the fridge, which currently reeks because of what is probably a dead field mouse. It's not afraid of me, and it pokes its head out a lot to watch me, and isn't afraid to come out even if I'm only 15 feet away.

I put Stormy by the fridge and then started waving a yard stick underneath to try to flush it out and have the cat catch it, but the smell was so horrible that I could only crouch there for a minute or two. It doesn't smell like dead things or even animal droppings, but it is still very putrid.

I refuse to go downstairs unless I put on my heavy winter boots. I don't want it biting me or running up my pant leg.

I hate rats.

Bliff

2010-07-17T23:25:00.000-07:00

Here are some finished pictures of that mask I toiled over for so long.

I actually didn't notice how much the details on the mask were crooked until I look at this picture. But it's waaay too late to fix anything.

I ended up gluing the strap down with white glue to the inside of the mask, and then taping it down to the extreme. I also drilled holes into the sides to pull the straps through. They only just fit through the holes. In fact, before I glued everything down, I was pulling on the straps to see how much force it would take to get them to loosen, and the mask flexed before the strings slipped even a little bit.

I used a glossy waterproof coat, on request of Griffin. He says the mask is shiny in the art, so it should be shiny in real life. I kind of like the glossy coat, it makes it look a bit more professional.

If I were to do this again, I would cut the edges and the eyes out while it was still wet, but dry enough to not be tacky anymore. Then I'd be able to get nice and smooth edges with minimal trouble.

I glued the felt in with watered down white glue. At that point I didn't even care if it stuck in well. So long as nobody pulled on it, it stayed in well enough.

You can also see that I didn't put very much effort into making the thickness consistent. Around the ears it must have been over an inch thick, but some places around the snout were so thin you could see the light shine through them. It was still absurdly strong.

I like how the eyes turned out. They're far from perfect, but I expected them to be absolutely terrible and ruin everything. They were a success, and perfectly functional. You can kinda see the black cloth I used behind the eyes in this picture. Even close up, it blended in very well. I have a lot of that stuff left, maybe I'll make about a hundred more masks like this to try to use it up.

Here we are, two attractive people dressed up as two attractive yet conservative people. The mask photographed well, I don't know what I was so worried about. He was able to tie the mask on without problem, but it would take forever and then he would put his hand on it anyways for photos, so he started to just hold it on.

I also want to point out that the vest and skirt I am wearing are the first two things I have ever sewn by myself. Everyone says they turned out well. Hooray!

It took on some damage after traveling to the other side of the country and being carried around a crowded convention, but it still looks lovely. There is a small paint chip on the very tip of one of the ears, and a mysterious dark fingerprint on the other ear. Griffin and I were using a lot of dark fabric paint on his costume, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was that paint that stained the mask. It's hardly noticeable, though.

I don't know if I've even mentioned this yet! The recipe I used for the clay for the mask is based off the one on Ultimate Paper Mache, for Paper Mache Clay. I say "based off" because I am really bad at following recipes, and I ended up with something similar but very very different.

I'm playing Assassin's Creed 2. In case you didn't know that already. I'm doing a mission right now where I have to deliver a letter. I pressed select to look at the map, but instead got to read the letter. It's telling the receiver that he is in trouble and should turn himself in. At one part in the letter, it says "If you are not aware of the charges against you, read Leviticus 18:23." So I thought I would break out my trusty Bible and find out what this guy did wrong! (Other than attack people with his sword.) Leviticus 18:23 says:

Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

Oh, AC2!

And on that bombshell, I leave you.

Right Now

2010-07-16T00:59:00.000-07:00

Man, I have been so busy doing nothing all day that I have completely forgotten to update Ubiquity! But that is mostly because I update Ubiquity at night, and my nights have been so busy. It's like I sit around all day, waiting for nothing, and then all of a sudden it gets dark outside and I go "Yeah! Let's get to work!" and then start doing things.

I finished that mask. Forever ago. I'll post final pictures of it next time, I promise, along with a picture of Griffin wearing it in costume.

I have decided that I will start up an Etsy shop. I am always making things, but there have been a lot of projects I put off because I don't know what I'd do with them once I finish them. But now, I think I will sell them! I will sell them for real money to (hopefully) real people. So I have been spending a lot of time making things to sell in the shop. I have nothing listed yet. I want three to five items finished before I list anything, so that my shop doesn't look super sad. Right now, I have one item 100% completed, one in the works, and about fifty other ideas of things to make that people might like to buy.

The item I'm making right now are, essentially, fingerless gloves. I am putting a lot of stress into the way these gloves feel. They have to be super soft. I could crochet them in a day or two, but crocheted fabric is bumpy and kinda rough. So I thought I would try my hand at knitting again. It would take one or two weeks just for me to knit two gloves, but they would be smooth and soft and wonderful. I even bought a special yarn that is particularly soft, and also thinner than my usual yarn, just for this project. Knitting was going very well, much better than last time by far, until it came time to increase stitches. I couldn't remember how, so I Googled it. The technique I used did not work at all. It left huge holes in the fabric and made the stitches all loose or tangled--It was a terrible mess!

So I tried to undo it back to the part that was nice, but... Well, that is why I don't knit. I'm very slow, and I make a lot of mistakes. When I try to fix a mistake I end up tearing the whole piece apart. All these hours of gorgeous work, gone! Now I'm attempting to crochet them. I'm using a very tiny hook in the hopes that a tighter knit will produce a smoother fabric. But I suppose to get a truly smooth fabric, I have to find the right balance between tightness and thickness of yarn (there's a That's What She Said in there). I wonder if anybody has done research on that.

It probably isn't good that I am staying up this late, I have someplace to be tomorrow afternoon.

Shivering Blimps

2010-06-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

Today we have a very picture intensive post as I practically give a step-by-step how-to guide of this mask I am making. I've been taking lot of pictures along the way, pretty much because I live my life as if it were a how-to guide.

Here goes!
(It's cool because everything was uploaded in the opposite order I wanted.)

Light behind the mask to show the cut out eyes.

I took that dremel tool to the mask and cut out the eyes. It was hard work, and actually kind of scary. Almost right away I lost control of the tool a bit and nicked the side of the eye on the right. It seemed like after that, nothing would cut as smoothly as I wanted it to. The eyes turned out quite a bit shorter than I wanted them to, since the dremel couldn't make holes small enough to reach the very edges of the design. I think it still looks pretty great.

Close-up of my handy work, showing the nicked eye and mask thickness.

I decided that I wanted to paint the inside edges of the eye holes black to reduce any glare on the wearer. Doing that turned out to be an awesome idea aesthetically, because it made it seem like there was no edge to the eyes. They were just black shapes on the mask, but with an eery feeling of depth...

Tape around the front of the eyes, ready for painting.

I put tape on the front of the mask over the holes to make sure I wouldn't accidentally paint over the edge. It worked really well, but any little nicks or chips I caused with the dremel got filled in a little bit with black paint. It was nothing too serious, though.

Detail of the opposite side of the mask, with freshly painted eyes and tape still applied.

In that last picture there are a lot of deep crags in the mask. That's because I covered my mask form with plastic wrap to make sure it would pop out without problems. You can also clearly see the yellow spots that plague my mask. Next time I'll use the right kind of flour.

The otherworldly abyss of the keaton's gaze.

I hadn't marked where I would paint the ears yet, so I did that after I painted the eyes. I love this clay material because it is mostly just paper. I can use a pencil to draw on it no problem, and so long as the area is smooth it will erase pretty well. I just have to be careful not to touch the pencil markings, because it will smudge off.

First coating of yellow paint.

I put very little effort into staying inside the lines when I painted the very first layer of yellow. I knew it would go on thin enough that I could still see my pencil underneath, and that the black paint would easily cover its color. Unfortunately, the paint was also thin enough that you could still see the yellow spots underneath. I ended up with 2 and a half coatings of yellow paint. The third coat I just kind of put paint wherever I thought the spots still stood out without any regard as to whether the paint had dried there yet or not.

Black parts all painted.

The black was fun to paint with because it went on with such a solid color, but that also meant I had to be really careful to make nice edges. If there's one thing I learned from painting the garage however many summers ago, it's that a wet brush will make the sharpest lines. If there isn't enough paint on your brush, your edges will get thready, and your lines will be wobbly as a result. A steady hand was important to make good lines and edges on this mask, because I couldn't use painter's tape. The surface had far too many imperfections.

Black cloth stretched and taped over the eyes.

When you put the mask on and breath, all of the air comes rushing in through the eye holes and right into your eyes. I found that out shortly after cutting out the eyes and I sucked an nice big cloud of mask dust right into my eyes. I also didn't want the flashes of any cameras going off and illuminating the face behind the mask, ruining the illusion of painted-on eyes. So I put a black material behind the eye holes to catch most of the wind and block most of a camera's flash. The material is really opaque, but very stretchy. If you stretch it tightly both ways, you can see through it well enough to read the expression on a person's face, but text messages and digital clocks are a different matter.

Felt lining in place.

I spent a lot of time cutting out pieces of black felt and getting it to fit snugly inside the mask. Then I used a felting needle to make it one nice, big, form-fitted piece of felt. It fits pretty well, except I couldn't get it to go all the way into the deep nose. It'll be fine, so long as nobody tries to punch a finger through it. It won't be a big deal if they do, though. I'll just be irritated because it was a lot of work.. I also made sure to cut out eye-holes in the felt. Those were seriously last second, I forgot that sometimes people need to see.

I haven't glued the felt in yet, which is a really good thing because I have just now realized that I haven't sealed it yet. I'll want to do that soon, because the felt will collect moisture from your breath, and then hold it against the mask for a long period of time. That might make all of my handy work mushy and terrible. I'll have to take the black cloth out, though. What a pain, it was difficult to get in there, what with the stretching and the taping.

I need to figure out a way to attach the strap. I decided on this nice length of black suede I've got, which goes nicely with the theme of black I have going on inside the mask. What I want to do is glue it so that it runs as a band along the inside of the mask, just above the eyes, but I can't find a glue strong enough that will be safe to breath. What I don't want to do it drill holes, because that will mean that I have to make ugly knots on either side of the mask with the strap. There isn't enough room inside to hide the knots, so they would have to go on the outside.

What I think I will end up doing is taping the strap down nice and firmly where I want it along the inside, maybe with some white glue underneath, and then drill holes and thread it through there. I'll loop the strap through the holes a second time, to give reinforcement and prevent it from getting so tight that the tape lifts out. If that gives me trouble, then I can just pull the strap out and do the big ugly knot thing.

Alright! I am almost done. Just a little bit left to go!

Strange Settings

2010-06-06T00:11:00.000-07:00

You can see how much the ears have improved in this picture, compared to the last one. That's from all the "filling" I did. Unfortunately, I think I might have ruined the perfection of the face part a bit trying to fill it all. Oh, well, I am done fussing so much over smoothness. I'll just have to apply a thick layer of paint, I guess.

I can safely say that the clay has completely dried by now. I thought it was dry a couple days ago, when I took the form out of the back. But I have since learned and grown as a person. Back then, I was afraid to lift it by the ears. Now, I think I could swing it around by the ears and use it to kill zombies and it won't so much as chip. This clay has dried to be really, ridiculously hard. I talked to my dad about it a bit today, after using a really pathetic and weak grinding tool I have to determine some eye holes. All he could do was say "Drywall is really hard. Drywall is hard." and then pull out his proper grinding tools and show me how to use them, so my work might go a little easier.

I think they are called dremel tools, actually. Not grinding tools.

Griffin more or less requested that I make it possible to see through the mask, and I told him I'd see what I could do, but no promises. And that's exactly how I went about determining eye holes--No promises. I first made a sort of bad attempt and figuring out where my eye are on the back of the mask. I marked it with X's, and then drilled part way through the mask on top of those X's. This way I could shine a light through the holes in the back of the mask, and the front would glow in those spots, but there would be no actual markings on the front. Then I marked on the front of the mask where I wanted the eye holes to go, using the glowing spots as guides. You see, earlier I wasn't sure if my eyes would in any way line up with the eyes on the front of the mask. I thought the mask sat too high on the face to do that. But the spots I marked are at just about the thickest part of the mask's eyes, so everything worked out perfectly. It just won't offer a very wide field of vision, or a very clear one for that matter. So I wouldn't suggest wearing this while driving, or crossing traffic, or while standing in a place crowded with people whose eyes are at the same level as the tips of the ears.

Tomorrow I want to even out the design of the eyes a little more, and then use the dremel to cut them. Then I will use the dremel to smooth and even out the edges of the mask, to give it a really nice and professional (and not absolutely shoddy) look to it. Sand it, paint it, waterproof it, line it, strap it, done. Oh, I guess I'll also have to drill holes for the strap. I guess it's time to get that part figured out.

I'll tie a strap around it tomorrow and see if I can whip my face about without it sliding off. Your face goes really deep into it, so I'm not too worried about balance and things like that. Just a way to make the strap nice and tight and still be comfortable. Maybe a ribbon. Maybe elastic attached to a leather belt-like thing, like my monogoggle. Maybe just a thin leather strap that you tie, because I have a lot of that lying around. Maybe Velcro. So many choices!

Okay, maybe not Velcro.

Peridontiphobia

2010-06-04T21:46:00.001-07:00

I didn't get to work on the mask at all today because it was raining (boo). All I want to do right now is sand it with the fine sand paper, and then decide where to cut it and stuff. Then sand it more. Paint it. Finish it. Love it. Cuddle it. You know the drill. I need to go out and buy some thin black fabric to put on the opposite side of the eyes. I don't really know what sort of fabric to use, so I hope that whatever I choose works out well. And then dad wanted me to get a gift card for a friend of his, so I guess I will go do that tomorrow. Especially if it is rainy.

You know what? Google is my worst enemy when looking up mask making technique things. Unless I want to make a mask out of a paper plate, that is. I feel like there is a lot of information out there that just isn't accessible unless you are willing to spend a lot of money or apprentice or are just super serious about it in some way.

I went to the dentist today. I don't think a trip to the dentist has ever taken so long for me. It was over two hours long. To be fair, it was a new dentist for me, so I guess there was a lot of stuff they had to do as first time patient things. But looking back, most of it seemed really routine. I hope it doesn't take that long every time. Anyways, I went in because of a pain in my tooth. It's been there for a really long time, but I haven't been thinking about it because for the past few years I've associated all dental pain with my braces. But my braces are off now, and the pain is still there. As it turns out, the root of one of my teeth has deteriorated and broken, and I will probably need a root canal. She referred me to another doctor who is better at this sort of stuff.

It makes me a little sad that there are even more problems with my teeth. Most people just have to worry bout keeping them clean to avoid cavities. Me? Pfft, keeping them clean is the easy part. In fact, the dentist wouldn't stop talking about how rare it is for her to see patients that actually take care of their teeth as well as I do. No, my worries come from expensive surgeries and rare problems. I just have to endure some serious pain and drugs, everyone else just has to remember to floss and maybe get braces. Uncool, universe, way to screw me over like that.

Today has been full of a lot of emotional ups and downs, and thinking about my teeth has put me in another down. I think I will go eat some ice cream and curl up with a happy TV show. Let's see if I can't get myself out of this funk before I go to bed tonight.

Duvet

2010-06-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

No new images of the mask today. But that's because there has been no significant visual improvement on it. I sanded it down, kinda, and found out that it sands down to be so smooth you almost think that it is made of silk. It's pretty neat. But the surface of the mask is a little bit lumpy, so there are a lot of divots that are rough and horrible and keep the mask from looking like perfection. I tried to fill them in today, but not with much success. I sanded it down a little bit, but there is a lot more to go. After I finish sanding I will cut holes in it for eyes and for tying on the strings that hold it to your face. And then I will paint it, and then I will line it. And then it will be done.

I foresee a lot of problems happening when I try to line it.

I also haven't put any thought into how it will be attached to a head. Hmm...

I just went ahead and searched up the definition for "divot." I realized that I had never heard the term used by anybody other than me, and I wasn't even sure that I was using it right. I was not. It is what you call the bits of ground that are torn up by a golf club when you swing too low. Now I know. And now I should stop saying divots to describe small impressions in things, because divots are actually dirt.

Driven Sane

2010-06-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

Oh man, those ears look so crappy in that picture, how have I not noticed before.

It's dry enough now that I can pick it up and hold it, and that is just plain lovely. The reinforcements I've added to the ears seemed to have worked very well. They stay up without any problems, and I think you could even hold the mask by them if you really wanted to. I wouldn't suggest it, though. Not until it is completely dry, at least.

The clay was taking forever to dry, and I was getting to get a bit worried it would take me a month just to finish it. But then I had a brain wave (the kind that makes you slap your head and go "OH DURR") and started pointing a fan at it. Within just a couple hours the surface was dry enough that I could touch the mask and not stick to it. It is a very tacky clay. I let the fan run for a few hours, but I turned it off when I went to bed. Might as well save energy, y'know?

I was going to put it outside this morning and let it dry in the sun and the wind, but I got very paranoid about the weather. Google says it is supposed to rain a lot today. And there are wet spots outside everywhere. And then I started to notice just how humid it was outside... Yeah. It was outside for maybe 20 minutes before I freaked out and brought it back in.

I just spent some time adding clay to the edges of the mask to smooth them out a little bit. I can't decide if those are going to be the actual borders of the mask, or if I am going to cut into it a whole bunch. I think it'll all come down to how close I want the ears to be to the edges of the mask. Because really, I could go either way right now. The fresh clay has been drying long enough that I can touch it now and not get stuck, but it's still very pliable. I think I will take it all outside in a couple hours once the fresh stuff is ready, and try sanding it a bit. I hope that part works out well, I have never been good at sanding things.

Yellow Coffee

2010-06-01T15:57:00.000-07:00

Masks! I tried to make one today. It's drying right now. I'm pretty sure it will take a couple days for it to dry completely so I can paint it. It turned out pretty big! Here, let me show you a picture of it.

This new paper mache clay material is very interesting to work with. I messed up the recipe a little bit, so there are all of these really big yellow and orange dots in the clay, but I'm planning to paint it all yellow anyways, so it's not a problem. I hope it sands down smooth enough, because even in its 'smooth' state it looks pretty rough. The ears look like they're going to be too heavy for the dried clay to hold... I just went back to add some more support to the base of the ears (Which has also made their shape a bit nicer), but I worry that won't be enough. And resting the ears on bowls like that is causing some major indents to show up on their backs. I'm thinking that once everything is completely dry, I will flip it over and work more on the ears. And then wait another day or two for it all to dry. And then finish it. And then maybe do something productive for once.

If this material isn't to my liking, then I want to try plaster strips. It will be very interesting. But I like how I don't have to worry about little bumps or wrinkles in my mask form, or if I decide that the shape just isn't up to snuff, I can change it right then and there. So long as it isn't too dramatic of a change.

Whee! I hope this mask turns out well.

In Agreement

2010-05-20T14:36:00.000-07:00

I'm making an entry because I know nobody is watching. I think that entitles me to say whatever I want about whomever I want. But then, I've always been able to do that. It is my own blog, after all. So I'll just go ahead and talk about myself and ignore everyone else.

I don't feel like talking about you. I feel like talking about me.

It must be summer because I want to make masks again. I found this exciting recipe for what is essentially a paper mache clay. I've never really put effort into making something out of clay, but I don't think I'm very good at working with it. But it has got to be easier to deal with than ripping paper into strips and smoothing it and watching it dry for hours before adding more of it... Yes. I am excited to try this cheap clay made out of paper. I am also able to sand this paper down once it has dried, which makes me really excited. I really hated the ridges caused by the edges of paper strips, but there was no way to deal with them. Now I'll at least be able to sand down any small globs or bits that I don't like on the mask.

Anyways, to get me into the mood (and because I am overly excited to get started again on this) I made another mask base. It's a lot like the mask base I made last summer that I still actually have, except better. It starts with one of those white masks from JoAnn's, but this time I used masking tape instead of paper mache to cover up all of the features on the face. This is an obviously better idea. I don't have to deal with drying and waiting and fussing about moisture. I can also pick it up and add more tape to it whenever I please. I'm not afraid to poke holes in it or modify it or ruin it. It's just a pile of tape on top of a plastic mask. I could make another one in less than an hour, if I needed, and I'll bet the next one would be better.

When I don't feel like I am shirking off a bunch of responsibilities, I am going to make my first batch of that clay and my first mask out of the new materials. I'm excited for it, but I really feel like I should wait. I'm supposed to get a job this summer, but I haven't been trying very hard. (I'm so nervous about applying for jobs it isn't even funny.) I'm trying to remain productive during the day and not just lie around all the time to make up for my lack of a job. Maybe I should set a goal for myself--No hobbies until I have done so many hours of productive things in the day. To maintain a balance.

I suppose that means I should stop cuddling the cat and writing Ubiquity entries, and start cleaning my room.

Lotion

2010-04-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

I have to make a bunch of graphs for this science paper I am writing (as we speak!), and I think this one is my favorite. It's so clear, obvious, and redundant. It just screams "Average Temperature Over Time!" It is even very literal; the points of average temperature are actually over the time line! How cool is that?!

On a more serious note, I've locked myself in my room all day to write this paper and I may be going a bit odd. Also, why does the temperature go up so steadily? That is really weird. Maybe that's why the experiment failed every single week, the temperature couldn't even remain constant.

Anyways, I am really angry at the world right now, including this assignment, so I think I will go and be angry somewhere else.

Absorb and Abort

2010-04-05T22:42:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I just spent like 30 minutes trying to stop a nosebleed. Today has not been a good day for my health.

I don't know what the Hell is wrong with me today. I seriously woke up to blood all over my face, because my nose decided it had too much blood in it and thought it would let it all out. I got up to fix it and more or less fell over because of a splitting pain in my head. I really hope the headache and nosebleed aren't connected. After 15 minutes of stopping the nosebleed (longer than normal, but fairly effortless), I take some Tylenol for the head ache, but it doesn't help at all. The aching persists, but now my head is all stuffy from the medicine.

I ate breakfast and got nauseous. So on top of it all, my stomach hurt, too. I skipped my first class to sit on my floor and make 'euuugh'' and bluuaarhgble' sounds and drink some mint tea for my stomach. I was feeling better after the tea and funny sound making, so I went to the rest of my classes for the day.

But then my stomach started doing that thing again where it hurts wicked bad when I stand, medium bad when I sit, and perfectly fine when I lie down. I have no idea what caused it last time, and I still don't know about it this time. I can't even symptom check that one on WebMD because you can't select the area that hurts on their checker thinger.

The rest of the day went by and I more or less started to feel better. I drank a lot of tea and water and pretty much took it easy.

Then, not even five minutes after I lie down to sleep for the night, I notice a warm dripping/trickling in the back of my throat. I get up to see and yep! My nose is bleeding. And it doesn't stop with my normal means. It takes me a good half hour to get to a point where I don't need to hold a tissue to my face. I got blood all over the floor and I freaked out a girl in the bathroom pretty bad when I went to swap tissues above the sink. Everything's all cleaned up now, but holy cow that was a ton of blood.

I'm a bit dizzy now, but I'm not too worried since I'll be going to bed soon. I don't have anything to eat other than candy in the room, so I don't really know what do to restore my iron or whatever. Maybe I'll just go ahead and eat sugar. And drink water. Gotta be better than nothing right now.

I also shouldn't lie down so soon after a bad nosebleed, but I am really tired and I have an exam tomorrow. So I'm gonna risk it. Wish me luck.

Evil Clowns

2010-03-16T22:05:00.000-07:00

I got my braces off yesterday! It was such a momentous occasion. I took a bunch of pictures of myself eating foods that I haven't been able to eat in forever. It was pretty great. I have been eating so many things these past couple of days that I'm pretty sure I will pop in my sleep tonight. I'm not completely done with dental appliances, though. They glued this small wire onto the backs of my two front teeth because they started to split apart a bit at the very end. It's really frustrating that those two teeth were having absolutely no problems keeping together until the very end. So now I'm stuck with this wire for forever, they said. I'm not okay with that, though, because I technically still have the same limitations on the foods I can bite down on with this thing, and it's really cutting up my tongue and it's giving me a lisp. They said they can tke it off in a year if I really hate it, and I think I will take them up on that offer. I haven't had an appliance-free mouth with all of its teeth since like, third grade, and I would really like to get back to that point soon.

I also have my invisalign retainer. It's a bit of a pain and I lisp really bad with it, but it's not so bad. I hate the way it feels, and it's a lot more intrusive than that little wire, but it doesn't annoy me so much for some reason. Probably because I can take it out whenever I want.

It's my spring break! Whee. I'm at home for a week, and I have very few plans to do anything. So I'm doing a lot of vegging out and lazing about. I have a few things that I need to get done this week, but I kinda doubt that I will have the will to do any of it. I'm excited for the few plans I have, and I guess I enjoy the fact that I don't have to fuss with homework or exams. But I left all of my entertainment things in Montana, so there isn't anything fun to do. Just some knitting and a couple boring books for class. At least I have my piano for a week, I can try to learn that one song I've been wanting to learn for forever. Too bad this week is already like, half over. Eugh.

I ate a lot and now I am feeling lazy. I guess I will go to bed now.

Stratigraphy

2010-03-08T08:26:00.000-08:00

Yikes, I have an exam in a few hours. I don't feel all that ready for it. I don't want to go you can't make me go!

I get back the exam I took on Friday. I think I did pretty well on it, so I'm not so worried to see my grade. But there's still that niggling feeling that I might have completely bombed and just not realized it. That has happened to me so many times before, but usually only in math classes.

I get my braces off in a week! Woohoo! I am so excited. I can hardly wait! I think my braces know it's going to happen, too, because I've like four brackets that have broken off. I don't even know how they came off, I think they just sort of unattached themselves overnight or something. I don't mind very much, since most of them are on my lower jaw, and my lower jaw hasn't had any changes made to it in over half a year. Maybe even closer to an actual year. The only thing I worry about is them moving about while I'm eating and scratching up my teeth. I'll be so angry if my teeth are all scratched up.

Speaking of one week, I am excited to go home for spring break. I'll finally have a chance to go to Seattle for a day, and I plan to buy all the chewy candies in Uwajimaya that I haven't had since my braces got put on. I'm also excited just to have copious amounts of free time that do not involve homework and writing papers and whatnot.

Oh, shoot! I forgot to do my Japanese homework! It's all due tomorrow. What a pain.

Tails

2010-03-04T01:25:00.000-08:00

Oh, hey there, Ubiquity. I was actually going to go write my midterm paper for a class that I don't give two shits about--Hm? What's that? You say you miss my entries, and would like me to stay and talk for a while? Well, alright then, Ubiquity, I'll put off this paper for you (and probably stay up all night because of it), because you've been such a good friend.

So I'm in this class, right? It's called CLS. It has no direction and no real curriculum, but it does involve a lot of reading, writing, and really tense discussion. The discussions are tense because we are being graded on them, and it's really important that we all pass this class. It's a US credit (whatever that means), so it's required to graduate, and it can only be taken as a Freshman. Once you're done being a Freshman, I don't really think you can get a US credit anymore. I don't understand why they did that, but whatever.

Okay, so this CLS class. It's a bullshit class, and I'm pretty angry that I have to pay to go to it twice a week. My patience with this class is really beginning to run out. Today I had an interview with the professor of that class, to see what I think of the class and if I have any ideas to improve it. I told him that this class was my lowest priority class, and I am upset with its obvious lack of direction. I tried to avoid the term "Bullshit Class," which was really difficult for me. I tried to tell him that the discussions are too narrow to warrant any real participation, and none of the reading can be connected together without serious stretching. Even if you do find threads to connect them with, none of them tie into what might be the greater theme of the class itself. And then I told him that the reading schedule is whacked out, requiring us to read 111 pages within five days, and then 111 more pages from the same book in only two days. He told me he would look that over and probably adjust the reading schedule for the rest of the semester. So I know at least one complaint I had about the class made it through alright.

Anyways, I have to write a mid-term paper for this class, and the rough draft is due tomorrow. I decided my paper would be on religion, morals, and ethics, because those are the only things that tie all of the readings together except the stupid one about Eureka moments. And I have to make a claim that a reasonable, sane person could argue against. My first claim was, essentially, that separation of church and state is a good thing, but I doubted that many people could argue against that. So now my claim is that separation of church and state is horrible. Any red-blooded American could easily argue against that. And it isn't hard to come up with good ideas for my argument. But it does take some true artistry to find support for it in the reading, especially since the reading better suits the opposing claim. I am pretty much making this more difficult for myself than I need to, but I hate this class enough that I really want to write something outrageous that will make at least one person in the class uncomfortable. Did I mention that I have to give a presentation on my paper? Yeah. I hope the word "intense" pops up again.

On Monday, we were supposed to put some Daphnia in a tank and poison them, right? Well, we all went in there to do just that, but there weren't any Daphnia in the stock tank. Actually, there were maybe five in this one corner, but we needed at least forty. We have no idea why there was a sudden extreme lack of Daphnia in the stock tank, but it kinda threw a wrench in our experiment. So we decided that we would start running the experiment on Wednesday, and cut the length from four days to three. Wednesday happened to be today. We didn't even have the lab in the lab today... Well, no, we had it in a lab. The computer lab. The Lab TA decided to teach us how to use Excel. So we had to go in after our lab to go run our lab. It was pretty ridiculous, and frustrating, and really boring.

Why are all of my classes suddenly stupid?

I am going to flip a coin. Heads, I turn this mid-term paper from an outline into a rough draft before going to sleep. Tails, I go right to bed because it is half-past one in the morning and I am sleepy. Here we go.

D. Pulex

2010-03-01T08:09:00.000-08:00

So this morning my roommate thought she would come in, open the windows all the way, remark about how beautiful a day it was, and then kick me out of bed so we could go eat breakfast. I'm still not really sure how I felt about all of that. I mean, sure, I was awake and contemplating getting up anyways, but I could have been in bed for a whole five minutes more. This roommate thing is just nonsense.

Last week was week seven of the semester. There's this superstition about week seven. Pretty much, it's a bad luck week. It has yet to fail to be a shitty week for me. Unfortunately, I think this week might also prove to be a shitty week for me. Already I've got some things lined up in my schedule that I'm not too excited about. But at least this Friday my roommate's parents will be coming over to buy her food at Costco. And when I say her, what I really mean is us, because I've gotten really good at muscling my way into things. I can't wait to have bulk Swedish fish again.

My seamonkeys had babies again. Last time they had about twenty, but they all died pretty fast. This time they had only four, and they're surviving. I really hope they grow up all the way this time. Scratch and Sniff have been going at it for like a week now, fertilizing eggs and such. I have never seen Sniff with such a full egg sack before. You can actually see all of the eggs in it! So I guess there are a lot more baby seamonkeys on the way.

We've been growing (and attempting to poison) live Daphnia in my biology lab. They're a lot like seamonkeys, I've noticed, except they look bloated and swim all creepy like. The experiment didn't run well at all the first time, and we don't know if it's really our fault or not. The Daphnia in the stock tank were really unhealthy, and there were almost no adult Daphnia we could catch. All of the jeuveniles had turned red, which meant that they were suffocating from lack of oxygen, and they would periodically go into these spinny death throes and freak me out. We put different levels of salt in the tanks to see how much it would take to effectively kill the Daphnia, btu instead of population decrease we experienced massive population increase in all of the tanks except the one with the lowest salt level. Something unexpected happened, and we don;t know how to deal with it.

We're setting up the experiment again today. Here's to hoping the Daphnia are full gown, and the salt actually kills them off.

Snorzel

2010-02-14T22:47:00.000-08:00

I'm supposed to wake up early tomorrow and go to the orthodontist. And then I come back, pack up my stuff, and sit around until about dinner time. And then I go to the airport and fly back to Montana. If I'm awake during the flight, I really need to read about 40 pages in this book for class. If not, then I'll be really fucked in class on Tuesday. I'll get back to my room sometime around 1 in the morning, so I won't have any time to read that book unless I read it during the day tomorrow or on the plane. I think I might hate that book a lot.

Today I decided I would mix up my already solved Rubik's Cube, and then solve it. It took a few hours, but I got it. And then I mixed it up again, and solved it again. I did that at least three more times, before I lost count of how many times I solved it. I'm pretty much an amazing person. I'm putting it down for good tonight, because I think it might be giving me a headache. But that last time I solved it was pretty awesome; I hadn't even made it to the really complicated part when I found it was finished.

Somewhere hiding in my bedroom is my Death Note knitting bag and my copy of Shadow of the Colossus. They aren't in my dorm, so I assume they got left here after Christmas break. But my inability to quickly glance around and find these items really worries me. What if I left them in my old dorm with Ali? Then I'll never see these items again, and these things are pretty important to me. Let's hope I remember to scour my room searching for them before I fly back to Montana tomorrow.

Compromisation

2010-02-12T21:14:00.000-08:00

I forgot to tell you, but I'm going back home this weekend. And by this weekend, I mean that I am currently sitting on a couch, watching Top Gear with my father. So I'm at home right now. I've got an orthodontist appointment on Monday, and I guess they thought they'd just fly me out for the entire weekend.

Boy, am I tired. I took three exams this week. I only got a C+ on that exam I took on Monday. I'm not happy with that at all. I took another exam on Wednesday, and I got a D+ on that. I'm pretty upset about that, considering the fact that I was pretty sure I got at least a high B on the exam. And looking at the answer key, I don't understand how my grade could possibly be so low. Did he take points off because I didn't have the right feelings while filling in my bubbles? And then I took one last exam this morning. I sure as heck hope there isn't a trend of some sort going on, because that would mean I got an F+ on that last exam. Not even funny.

Man, I had all of these insightful things I wanted to talk about here today, but I'm all tired from traveling and testing all day, and now frustrated by my bad grades. Bah humbug.

Tenki

2010-02-09T09:13:00.001-08:00

I have an exam in thirty minutes, but instead of doing something useful like studying, I think I'll type up an entry.

I have yarn all over my room, and it is getting silly. Especially since I never rolled them into balls after I bought them. They're just that weird oval shape the store sells them in. And since I've been pulling the yarn out the middle so that they don't go rolling everywhere as I knit, they're all deflating, with yarn coming loose and tangling everywhere. It's like a yarn spider came and shot lumpy web all over the place.

Okay, I have to go clean up this yarn, it's bothering me.

Sendimmerize

2010-02-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

I just went through the Buttercup Festival archives again. Every time I do, I end up getting all introspective. And then I find a comic that I'm pretty sure is an accurate representation of my life. Let me show you want I think describes me:
(Click here to full view)
The loneliness, the pure joy, the confusion, the desperation, the rocks--That must be me.

I really can't think of much else to say, other than point out the fact that I am tired. I also have to do laundry tomorrow morning, and I really don't want to. I'd much rather sleep in. But I have to get into the habit of doing two loads every Thursday and Tuesday... I can't tell if I'm leading a really boring life, or if I am leading a really awesome life.

Bo Kemian

2010-02-02T15:16:00.001-08:00

I had to give a short argument in front of the class today. Afterward, everyone pretty much looked like this:

O___________O

One student said, quietly under his breath, "Intense," and the professor said "Well, I think we're looking at a future public defender."

I really hate presenting stuff like that, but that was a pretty awesome reaction. Maybe I should give more arguments about why Socrates should have died. Or at least continue to talk loudly in small rooms. I think it was the loud talking that did it, actually, and not the intensity of my argument. I was speaking pretty loud.

I know it's weird, but I really want to get Muscle March on the Wii. And then the next time I have a bunch of people over in my room, I want them all to play it. And hopefully, general laughs will be had. But unfortunately, I do not want to spend the money on it. Even though it's actually only 500 Wii points. And I probably already have that amount sitting on my Wii account anyways.

Hey, wait, I should just go buy it right now. I mean, why not? It'll be more interesting than typing up more useless nothings while I procrastinate on studying.

Reliberation

2010-01-31T21:49:00.000-08:00

It seems I just don't have to time to make Ubiquity posts every day anymore. It's a shame, and it kinda makes me sad. I'm still going to try, though, because I love Ubiquity. It's my little pet, almost.

I moved into a new dorm room, so now I am rooming with a friend of mine. It's been really nice to live with someone I can actually talk to. And now I almost never have to worry about who I am gong to eat dinner with, since there is a person sitting right next to me who has the same eating schedule as me. Yep, a lot of pressure has been removed, all becuse I'm living with a friend.

I especially like the dedicated study sessions that happen pretty much every day with my roommate's friend group. I don't actually like the studying part, but I do like how my grades are positively affected. I am finally getting a good college experience.

I bought a new alarm clock and I am really excited for it. It's one of those old-fashioned ones, with the bells on top. In fact, here it is! It's from Hot Topic, but I really love the Chesire cat, and I think this clock is gorgeous. I'm especially fond of the second hand; it's a blue key. I don;t think I'll use it as my morning, alarm, though, because I'd probably forget to set it every night before I went to sleep. And I'd probably break it trying to turn it off every night.

Lot By Number

2010-01-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

So it looks like I will be switching dorm rooms. On purpose, not because anyone is forcing me or anything. I want to. I'll be moving in with a friend of mine, who I actually know and hang out with and get along with very well. It'll be exciting to live with her for the rest of the semester. It's kind of a shame that I have to leave this room behind, especially since I just got it the way I like it with the addition of a new bookcase. But I'll only be moving down the hall a little ways. Though... We do have to figure out how to bunk our beds. Neither of us own any power tools, and I'm the only one with previous experience building large things out of wood. (Hint: I used to build the sets for the school plays.) At least the things I built stood up well to things like actors jumping on them and flying walls bashing into them. So maybe we won't die accidentally at night sleeping on a home-made bunkbed.

I have been overcome by a very sudden desire to learn Russian. It is not a language offered at this school, though, so I'll have to pursue this interest all on my own. Thankfully, there is the internet here to help me satiate my every whim. I will learn enough basic Russian that I will feel it okay to sleep now. And then in the morning, I will likely wake to find that I no longer desire to learn this foreign language, and then brush my teeth and go to class. Because that is how it goes with the internet and whimsies.

Perfectation

2010-01-11T21:14:00.000-08:00

I have played about eight solid hours of Uncharted today, and it's starting to mess with me. I'm coming up with my own little inside jokes. I'm becoming prejudice against waterfalls. I'm coming up with hilariously wrong things for Sully to say. I also kind of really hate the mood the music sets. If I were able to draw things faster and to my satisfaction, I'd probably be making stupid comics about this game right now. And they'd probably only be hilarious to me, since they'd be based on my secret jokes.

I'm kind of in an Alice in Wonderland mood. I think I'll find some Alice movies online, maybe watch that SciFi miniseries. Those miniserieses can be so hit and miss, amd I'm a bit iffy about watching it in case it is a miss. But it's gotten strong recommendations by a friend of mine, so I might as well watch it. We tend do to like the same movies. Maybe we'll like the same TV shows as well.

Sorry for not having more to say. I seriously woke up and started playing Uncharted. It was half an hour before I realized I hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. It's not that I'm addicted to this game (though it is a great game), I just feel a lot of pressure to beat it and move on to the next one. And then beat that and play Infamous. And then beat that and play Persona. And then beat that and play Prince of Persia. I haven't planned anyhting beyond that, but there are at least eight more games waiting to be played after that. And one of them is a Final Fantasy. So I really only have so much time.

For Serious

2010-01-10T20:56:00.000-08:00

I feel like I've won a small victory because my noisy neighbor has moved out, so now there is a new girl living in the room next to me. Except so far, this new neighbor is much noisier than the last. She's been hammering away at a loft all day, even sawing wood at one point. Also: She plays her music constantly and is always talking to some guy that is in her room. Judging by the cadence of their speech and the fact that they are both asian, I think my new neighbor is Chinese. Either that, or Korean. Whatever, her taste in music is by far better than my previous neighbor.

I am doing my laundry as we speak (even though there is no speaking involved in this). Because one of the dryers is broken, it takes over an hour just to do one load. It looks like I'll be doing laundry until about midnight tonight. I'm not excited. Except, I am a little bit excited to have clean clothes, and it'll give me an excuse to play video games all night.

I have so many video games to play right now it's not even funny. It's bordering on stressful.

I forgot to mention in my last entry that I have some good new about my braces! It looks like they'll be coming off in either March or April. Hooray! That means I'll schedule to get them off at my next appointment, probably. Unless my teeth get really screwed up this month. But yeah! They're coming off! This year! For sure! Yay!

And then next year is when I do the bone grafts, post-drilling, and get teeth implants. Woo... Six months of a liquid diet...

I was pretty excited to come back to my dorm today and see that I have two teenaged seamonkeys in my seamonkey tank. Jimothy is long dead, but now is the age of Scratch and Sniff! May they live a long and healthy life. I've left up Jimothy's Christmas gift, and written on the inside the dates of his life and death, as well as a short epitaph. "As I Am Now, So Shall You Be." August 2009 - December 2009. He was a good seamonkey.

Hygienists

2010-01-07T22:30:00.000-08:00

I just noticed that this is my 307th Ubiquity entry. I made 360 Gaia Journal entries, so let's see if I can beat it!

I am sad that I haven't made an update since finals week. I am also sad that I didn't notice when my 300th entry came and went. So much has happened since my last entry. I took my last final, flew home, crammed a bunch of hangout time in with all of my friends, had Christmas, flew to Maine, crammed a bunch of hangout time in with Griffin, eventually flew home again, and now I'm at my grandparent's house as one of the stops on the way back to college. I hope I still have a seamonkey when I get there.

I have had very little time to myself this winter break. It's been pretty stressful for a vacation.
I worry about what it's doing to my health. All the junk food, the irregular sleeping pattern, traveling so far every week. Not to mention all this emotional strain of seeing loved ones and saying goodbye to them, often times within the same day. I hope the first few weeks of class won't be that stressful, because I really need to rest. Just... sleep...

I'm doing a lot of the driving to Montana, but it is hard because I'm tired all the time. Ever since I've flown home for winter break, I've been really tired. It's like I can't catch up on my sleeping. Even when I get 12+ hours, I'm still dead tired. I wish I knew why, and what I could do to remedy it.

Speaking of sleep, I think I'll go do that right now.

Post Examination

2009-12-17T00:00:00.000-08:00

I jinxed it. Jimothy the sea monkey died. I just now noticed it, after getting home tonight. He was alive this morning, but I went to say goodnight to him and noticed he was on the bottom of the tank. His little legs weren't moving, and he didn't respond to a slight jiggling. What a sad day. He shall be missed.

Though, I did notice a new baby sea monkey swimming around in there when I was looking for Jimothy. I doubt the baby will survive while I'm gone, but I'll be sure to give him extra food for the break. I suppose I will see when I get back in January whether it is time to dump the tank, or if I should contemplate buying more food.

Oh well. Jimothy pretty much lasted me my entire first semester of college. That's pretty special.

Oh, a new development! There are now two babies swimming around in the tank, with a possibility of a third. I guess today is Sea Monkey Birthday, or something. The conditions in the tank recently must be just right for hatchlings. I can't wait to see how many are in the tank when I wake up tomorrow.

Enough about sea monkeys. I need to go to sleep, I have a ton of laundry to do and I also have an exam tomorrow.

Shooting Star

2009-12-14T19:31:00.001-08:00

Entrepreneurial idea: An online store called "Task At Hand" that specializes in selling things to do while on the toilet. TheTaskAtHand.com is already taken, unfortunately, but I could still get TaskAtHand.com.

It is finals week! I have one final tomorrow, and then one more on Thursday. I took my math final on Friday, and I'm pretty sure I did perfect. I have a lot of confidence for my Japanese final tomorrow, but I'm wavering on my Anthropology final. I guess we'll see what happens.

Friday morning I fly back home, and I am pretty excited. I already have plans to do a movie madness, and plans for a long overdue sleepover. I am going to eat so much food and get such a good night's rest that it will be insane. I'm pretty sure the best part about college is visiting home. I'm also excited to see the cats. I know for a fact that they miss me, because I'm 99% certain that they spend their entire day sitting around wishing I was there to play with them.

Speaking of pets, I am getting really attached to my sea monkey. Back when there were twenty of them I didn't care so much, but now that there's only one left I find myself worrying about him a lot. (I found out that he's a boy sea monkey for sure.) Is his water too cold? Is he getting enough sunlight? Does he have enough food? Is he lonely in there? For Christmas I drew a picture of him on half of an index card, and I'm keeping it on top of his tank. I'm not sure, but I don't think he likes his gift. Maybe it isn't flattering enough? I did draw his head kind of odd. Or maybe it's just that it's not something useful for him? Perhaps I should have splurged and bought him a sea monkey toy, or maybe even some more sea monkey friends? I want only the best for my little Jimothy.

Hopefully he'll survive while I am away during break. I can't ask anybody to take care of him while I'm away because what he needs is a warm room to stay in, and I don't know anybody with an apartment. He'll have enough food and water and stuff, all he needs is heat. Poor Jimothy... I wish him well during the harsh weeks that are soon coming.

Jimothy (At the top-right of the water line) and his Christmas gift.

Chunky

2009-12-10T16:11:00.000-08:00

I was going to draw an entire comic, but then I drew myself like that and I thought it looked too good. And the person I drew next to myself was ambiguous, cartoony, and just not up to par, so I dropped it and kept just this. I also lost my drive to draw myself again with such detail. So yeah. That's how I look in the winter. I am not very happy about the winter. Or the minus twelve weather that is happening. Or the way my hair doesn't agree with my hat and coat combo (which I didn't draw, because it simply looks too odd).

In case you are wondering, she is not looking at the person next to her. She is deliberately not looking at them. She is that annoyed by the thing they said.

So I had this homework assignment, but I also really wanted to play this video game. The natural flow of things dictates that I must not play that game until my homework is done. So I get started on my homework when BAM I have an idea for a comic. And I realize that I am simply not allowed to do my homework until this comic is done. But because I cheaped out on drawing the comic, I have to write this Ubiquity entry before I can do my homework. And I should also probably eat dinner before I do my homework. And maybe I shouldn't do my homework at all tonight...

This is seriously my last homework assignment this year, you'd think the least I could do is do it, especially since doing it means I won't have to get a 95% on the exam to pass the class. Auuugh, I hate getting poor grades.

Carry On

2009-12-09T22:14:00.001-08:00

So I'll be on the internet, right? And I'll be surfing along, doin' my thing, when all of a sudden I realize that there is something insanely important and really interesting on the internet that I should do right now, and the first step to doing it is clicking a button at the top of my browser. Now the real problem is that I have no idea what this thing is, and I usually click the home button, or my e-mail button. This keeps happening, and it has left me in a state of limbo. There is something interesting to do, I just don't know what it is.

Wait! Fuckdamnit. This is unrelated, but I forgot that I wanted today's entry to be a letter to poets. I was going to complain about how poets today suck mostly, and offer some constructive criticism that would greatly improve things. I guess I'll just do it tomorrow, then, if I can remember to turn on my computer before I go to sleep.

Ick, this is a horrible cup of tea. Why do I keep making bad tea?

Next week is finals week, and I am actually pretty jazzed about it. I'm taking one of my finals early this week, on Friday. I will ace that exam. That means I only have two tests next week, and I'm super confident about one of them. The other one I am actually a little nervous about, and I plan to attend the study session in an attempt to get a grade higher than a C. But even though that difficult exam is on the last day before I fly back home, I will probably spend a lot of next week playing video games and not studying. I suppose I am a bit of an idiot like that.

Wish me luck on my grades! I'm actually fairly certain that I've failed one class, will be getting an A in two others, and will get a D or a C on the last one. My grades are so inconsistent. Let's see how this plays out.

Kudos

2009-12-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

Only one week of classes left! That's five days of classes! That's twelve classes total! And then it's just one week of exams! And only two days of that week have exams! And I only have three exams! And then I get to fly home! And then it's only one week at home before I go to Maine! Oh my gosh! This is a good season. I can see why people enjoy this season.

It does not feel like Christmas time at all right now. And I think it might be because of the lack of decorations. So I was thinking I'd get Christmas lights for my dorm. I know it's super cliche to have Christmas lights in a dorm, but dammit I want some. If I gotta live in this Hell-Hole, then I might as well enjoy it.

I really can't wait for my classes to be over. I'm pretty sick of these classes. Even math class in high school wasn't as tedious as some of these classes I have to attend. So hopefully next semester things will be better. And next semester I'll have a car, so I can do things like not have to take the bus, and go places whenever I want despite when the buses are running. It'll be kind of a pain to take care of my car in all this snow, especially in these jam-packed parking lots. But I can't beat the convenience of being able to make a food run to WalMart at 1 am.

Amber and I have already started looking for apartments to live in when she comes to MSU in the fall. We found one that we have decided is our dream apartment. I doubt we'll be able to get it
Oh, would you look at that, I just wasted an hour looking at more apartments. I think I find shopping for apartments to be fun. I just... Anyhting would be better to live in than here. I'm not at all picky.

We want one or two bedrooms, and the option to have Amber's cat. And then the basics--A kitchen, a bathroom, a livingroom, and laundry. These things are all pretty easy to find, so I guess the deciding factors will be location and cost. Amber and I have discussed getting one bedroom and then bunkbeds, but I think I might start pushing for two bedrooms. I kinda miss having privacy before and after my showers. Or we could still consider both sleeping in the same room, but put our desks in the second room/make a craft and recreation room/ give her cat a room of its own.

Anyways, it's much too soon to be looking for a place to live, but I'm starting to get a feel for what I should look for. I'm excited to move in to someplace new this fall.

Feminminmin

2009-12-02T21:43:00.000-08:00

So my neighbor just picked up her phone and went "Hello?" and I answered back, because I seriously thought she was talking to me through the wall.

Today was a lazy day. And tomorrow will be another lazy day, because it will be Thursday. I love lazy days. But, actually, I should probably do some homework tomorrow, because I did not do any at all today. It was really nice to spend a day in my room, though, playing video games and vegging out. These past couple days I've had so little time to myself that when I leave for my first class in the morning, I make sure to take my extra-heavy coat in case I end up walking in the snow at three am, and I don't have time to come back and get it. And it's not like I'm doing college specific things, either. Yesterday I went and played black light mini golf, and the day before that I played Guitar Hero. These are things kids of all ages are doing, everywhere, all the time. Except for the black light mini golf part, that is kind of unique to this area, but the thought still stands.

So I can't believe that all of my twenty-something seamonkeys have died, except for one. I have named him Jimothy. I wrote a song about him, kind of. It's to the tune of Song of Storms from Zelda. Or maybe it's to the tune of that one song from Willie Wonka. They're both so similar. Anyways, I'm worried that little Jimothy will die soon because it is getting so cold here, and for some reason we keep our room very cold. (Holy shit it is -3˚ right now outside that is ungodly.) So I was thinking I should start keeping him on top of my laptop during the night, so that he'll have something underneath him generating a bit of heat. Seamonkeys like it a bit warm. I already did my part and moved him away from the window where it gets so unbearably cold even the radiator can't help to cut it, but I don't think it was enough.

Hah... Poor little Jimothy.

Fragurnation

2009-12-01T22:11:00.000-08:00

Why do I keep staying up so laaaate... This is really unhealthy for me. It's 11:15, but I'm pretty much in the mindset that it's much too early to be going to sleep. Also, there are some really noisy girls out in the hallway for some reason, so it's not like I could sleep if I wanted to.

Hey, I'm really hungry right now. Imagine that.

I can't wait until all of these classes are over for a bit and I can go home. I want to be someplace where the food is replenished at a reasonable rate, the beds are warm and soft, and the bathrooms are private. And I also don't want to stress about schoolwork anymore. It will be really nice to fly home in a couple weeks after this semester has ended.

... Ugh, I think I'm feeling homesick because I was just at home last week. Not even a week ago, just a few days ago. These last few days have been really long. I should really go out and get some sleep. Er, not out, off. I should go off to bed. Yeah. Sleep. Also: Food.

Ughh what is it about night that makes people yell so loud.

Distrgufuns

2009-11-29T21:23:00.000-08:00

I was struck by sudden inspiration to write a song today. I call it "My Noisy Neighbor." It's not done yet--I still need to write all the lyrics and maybe put a tune to them, but I have the chords. They are pretty melancholy for such a stupid song.

Let me show you what I have so far:

Noisy neighbor noisy neighbor
Living in the room next to me
Always up so bright and early
Why you gotta wake up early?

Noisy neighbor noisy neighbor
I have such a disdain for you
Making crashes playing music
How I wish these walls were padded

Noisy neighbor noisy neighbor
I am still in bed and sleeping
You've just had a fight with someone
You are crying before the sun's up

Noisy neighbor noisy neighbor
You talk real loud into your cell phone
Is yelling even necessary?
Please consider a different service

And um... Yeah. The song pretty much goes on in a similar fashion, until I get to the bridge, where I speed everything up and get really stressed because my neighbor is so noisy. And the ending is me apologizing to my neighbor and asking if I can borrow some stuff. Because I guess I'm kind of a jerk like that. And I guess I'm also not passive aggressive enough, because I am writing this song at 11 at night.

So Craig lent me the PS3 game Infamous. I like it so far. I've been playing for hours, but it seems like I've hardly put a notch in the storyline. I guess games nowadays are really long, or something. Or maybe I'm still just really slow. Either way, it's been a good game for keeping my mind off the gnawing hunger. I haven't had anything (decent) to eat since Friday. I've been surviving off tea and hot cocoa, because that is the only food I have, and I don't have the energy to walk all the way off campus to someplace that will serve me food. I got lightheaded just walking down the stairs. Tomorrow morning food service will serve real food, and I can eat and be full and have energy.

Okay, now I'm going to continue writing this song until I fall asleep, or until I pass out. Whichever comes first.

Hang Up

2009-11-22T19:40:00.000-08:00

NaNoWriMo word count, nooooo! Look at how far behind I am! I tried to write 10k words this weekend, but really only hit 4k. That wasn't even enough to fill my goal for one day! I'm starting to think I might not hit 50k words by the end of November.

So anime club had a big movie viewing night last night. There was a raffle, and I entered and won eight times. It's the luck of the Irish. I won five times in the first raffle, and got a Haruhi wall scoll. I then won three times in the second raffle, and got a Zatch Bell clock. Winning multiple times didn't make any difference, because you can really only win once per raffle. But I won the first time both times, and got to take the better of the prizes offered.

... I don't like Zatch Bell, but I really wanted to take the clock apart. I took it apart today, and put it back together again. It still works. I'm not that proud, actually.

This Wednesday I fly home for Thanksgivng, and I'm excited. I haven't been eating well lately. I don't know why, but food service has been putting out only really crappy food lately, and they haven't been putting out much of it. So my meals have been really poor, and I can only think about what food I'm going to eat when I get home.

In the movies last night, they always had people sitting around eating things. I pretty much started drooling at the screen. I really really badly need a good meal.

I fly back to Montana on Saturday, and I'm not excited for that. I don't know why dad decided I only get to stay a few days, but that's how it is. I just have to squeeze in all of my friend and family visitng into two days, is all.

Okay, now I'm gonna go try to write another 1k in my novel before I go to bed.

Deteration

2009-11-18T21:50:00.001-08:00

So I now have a movie-going buddy, who is also lacking in a car but is willing to wait for the bus with me. It's exciting. We went to go see Men Who Stare At Goats yesterday, but there was a problem with the film and it didn't play. To make up for it, they gave us each two free movie tickets, and then let us go ahead and sneak into any other movies that were playing. So we saw Paranormal activity. It was a pretty good movie, but it wasn't very scary. Just as a different friend told me would happen, we ended up laughing a lot. Still worthwhile.

Anyways, we're planning to take our four free movie tickets and get a group of four people together to go and see Twilight. We're planning to just ruin it for everybody. Maybe dress up as Harry Potter, or go in Guy Fawk's masks. But mostly stand up and yell a lot of things. It should be good fun. And if we get kicked out it doesn't matter, because we didn't pay for anything.

I sign up for my classes tomorrow morning. I'm fairly excited. I'm trying to sign up for this Biology class, which will have an actual lab. I like labs... A lot. So I think it will be good for me. And I'm now fulfilling all of the requirements to major in Anthropology. As much as I like science, I think I may go the Anth way, if only because I won't have to take an extra year of college just to complete my major. Not knowing what I want to do with my life is pretty sucky, but at least I have options.

So I have been really foul-mouthed lately. I'm not sure why, it might be the people I'm hanging out with. I just felt like mentioning that.

Intramural Ball Fields

2009-11-15T22:22:00.000-08:00

Oh, 'sup Ubiquity?
Me? Oh, you know, insanely busy. Which is why I haven't been updating.

Actually, I haven't been updating because I keep getting back to my dorm after my roommate has gone to sleep. And instead of flicking on all the lights and clacking away at the computer for hours on end, I've just been getting dressed in the dark and going to sleep as well. I suppose it's a bit healthier to get more than two hours of sleep each night, but I really miss updating. So maybe I'll change my update schedule to first thing in the morning, after eating something. And then we can have all of these posts with ridiculous spelling and grammar mistakes that wouldn't make any sense even after a spell check. And they'd all end with "Oh! Gotta run, I have class."

I am about to have a food baby. I don't know why, but I decided to drink half a gallon of chocolate milk in about an hour, as well as eat a cup o' noodles. I'm at this odd stage of full, where I know for a fact that there is no more room in my stomach because I filled it with liquids, but I'm not completely uncomfortable. I just really don't want to do anything that might squish my stomach a little bit, is all. Just in case.

So there was a black light dance in the basement last night. I went with a big group of my friend's old friends from her small hometown, so I was pretty much the outcast from the big city. I was trying really hard not to get my hopes up for the dance, because I have been craving a rave ever since I went swing dancing for the umpteenth time. I figured, you know, there'll be techno music, and people dancing a bit awkwardly, some glow sticks, and black lights. The bare minimum. But, there were no glow sticks, and there was no techno. It was all that odd hip hop type of music. You know, that stuff that you crunk to with idiot beats? So I danced awkwardly. They started a techno song, but stopped it halfway through because I guess it was too appropriate.

Anyways, I am sore from dancing into the wee hours of the morning. Hey, if I can solo dance to swing music, I can dance to anything.

So I have to start getting to bed at a decent hour more often. I keep staying up until like two or three in the morning with one person, and then heading back home to sleep, only to run into some other person in the hall or bathroom and staying up until six or seven with them. Some nights I don't sleep at all, because I'll be heading back home after going out for the third time in one night, and then I'll get invited to breakfast and a consequencial all-day hangfest. It's odd, though, because I'm not in a clique or a specific group of friends. It's like I'm back in the early days of junior high, where I have all of these great friends, but they've yet to meet and form a group. Except instead of a bunch of singular friends, I have a bunch of friend groups. Which is a bit awkward, because I often end up waiting around for somebody to invite me to something, as opposed to just knowing that I can go hang out with someone as per the usual.

I don't do anything during the day, though. Like, at all. I'm pretty sure 95% of my friends have never seen me in the daylight.

Okay, I'm gonna go to the bathroom now. I'll be back in time for class tomorrow.

Smart Heart

2009-11-08T20:34:00.000-08:00

I'm just going to set the record straight really quick.

N64 > PS1
PS2 > GC
Ukulele > XBox

That's a jumble of jargon to live by.

I feel like pointing this out, too:

Piano > Ukulele
Yarn > Ukulele
Piano > Yarn

Which I guess means that I like yarn more than I like the XBox. I don't know how I feel about the XBox 360, though, since I've never really played one.

Okay, I've spent way too long on this entry already. I think I'll just go ahead and stop now.

Happy Candy

2009-11-07T18:54:00.000-08:00

Rorschach's Journal, August 15th: Night Owl is so dreamy, but he doesn't care about me. He says mean things and he wouldn't even recognize me on the street. Oh diary, preventing nuclear war is basically the worst.

: (

(Real men keep diaries.)

So happy nineteenth birthday to me! It was a fairly happy one. First I played video games with a friend at midnight and hung out until about five in the morning, slept for a bit, and then hung out with different friends until about seven at night. We went on a hike, which did not work out so well for me and my asthma (it was rather embarassing; it wasn't a difficult hike). And then they drove me out to a special bakery with huge cinnamon buns, and bought me a cinnamon bun. And then we played video games.

So I've got a PS3 now, with Little Big Planet. That's a good game for me. I can play it by myself whenever I want to, but it's got a great multiplayer mode. So whenever I'm hanging with someone and we're bored, we can just play a game. That's all I really have to say about that.

Parking Kiosk

2009-11-03T21:10:00.001-08:00

I saw Where the Wild Things Are finally! A friend took me to see it today in celebration of my birthday. I was pretty excited. And yes, I enjoyed the movie. I just wish I had a car, or something, so I didn't have to awkwardly sit around waiting for the bus all the time.

There is so much leftover popcorn, hooray!

I didn't get back until about 8pm, so I didn't write any words for NaNoWriMo today. I am a bit disappointed at myself. To make up for this, I decided I would write twice as many words tomorrow... Despite the fact that I actually have some homework that needs doing. I figure that if I can stay focused inbetween classes, and maybe even jot down some notes of things to write during class, I'll be fine. Tomorrow morning is laundry day anyways, so I'll have plenty of free time.

Man, I really want to play some video games right now. Anything would be fine, so long as it isn't a sports game. Or a DS game. Okay, I think what I'm tyring to say is that I really want to play a consol game that is probably a classic. One that will take up hours of my time, and leave me feeling satisfied when I'm done. (And have me itching to play when I'm not.) Yes, I need a video game about like that right now.

I would also like to paint my fingernails, but that's not going to happen. I should just give up on these silly pipedreams of mine.

Find Bind Drag

2009-11-01T16:27:00.000-08:00

Achoo! Eugh. I just huffed a feather accidentally. It was actually kind of painful.

So I had a good Halloween. I went on a scavenger hunt with the anime club. My team won three packs of Magic the Gathering starter packs each. I honestly don't know what I'll do with them now, since I don't really play. But at least now I know other people with Magic cards, in case I do feel like playing. And it was the weekend, so I ended up staying out until about four in the morning. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

I got the first 1667 words of NaNoWriMo written today. I'm excited, but I found out that I can get distracted really easily if a bad song starts to play. Skip skip skip, and then I browse the internet, and I end up writing almost nothing in a very long space of time. Also, I kind of really hate how my NaNovel is starting out. But I guess I'll continue on, because I can always rewrite it after the month is over.

So my birthday is next week! I am excited. Though, I don't know how I feel about turning Nineteen. Nineteen is the jerkwad age, where everyone starts to act like a major dick. I really hope that doesn't happen to me, because I would like to be able to stay friends with all of the people I love.
Mostly, though, I'm excited for the giant poster that Tia is going to make for me. I hope a lot of people sign it. If they don't, I'll probably sign it a bunch myself, because I really love me. And then my poster will probably stay up for a long time, and I'll be able to gloat about it. Or something.

Followed Home

2009-10-27T19:42:00.001-07:00

Oh, hey Ubiquity. Sorry I haven't spoken to you in a while, guess I've been busy, or something. I think it might be midterms, since I've got all of these exams and homework assignments. Which reminds me that I have an assignment that I should definitely complete before I got to bed.

I am so excited for NaNoWriMo to start that I can't even put it into words. So I won't.

I spent $50 at the craft store today, and I can't decide if I should feel guilty or not. I plan to use everything I bought, and I even made sure to buy mostly things I will use again in the future. Like a hundred little black buttons that I can use for eyes on my dolls. (It was only 99¢!) I went in with a list, and I pretty much stuck to it. Eh, whatever, I've now got enough supplies to start this really big project I've been planning. So it's all good.

OH HEY, just now I finished making a Jirachi doll for a friend. Like, right just now. Here, let me show you a picture of it.
That doll is pretty much Frankenstein. Seriously, I stitched pretty much all of it together. I'm not even sure I crocheted any of it, I just pulled out a needle and started stitching into things until it came about. I also love how crap-tastic the semi-circle on its belly is. Also: He wanted red instead of blue. Makes it more special, or something.

In unrelated news, it snowed about four inches today. The snow really started to pick up just as I was making my way back from the craft store. It was not very fun to get whipped in the face with snow when I was wearing only a flimsy sweater. I swear, it wasn't even starting to snow when I left.

Hungry

2009-10-21T23:00:00.001-07:00

Oh my gosh I am so hungry right now. I am always hungry when I can't go get food. This is madness, I am telling you, this is a hunger that can't be satiated by mere water alone. I need a vending machine, or something.

That's really all I have to say, because I'm tired right now. 'Night!

Denomination

2009-10-20T21:08:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to do NaNoWriMo for years now, but whenever November rolls around I completely forget about it. This year, though, I had a friendly reminder. And now I'm all gung-ho and ready to go. Especially since I've got all of that pent-up creativity trying to burst from the seams, like I mentioned in my last post. I think I'm going to finally write Lucid Dreaming. I will probably hate myself for squeazing it out so fast and not putting the time into it that it deserves, but I'll finally have it down and done. I can always edit it later.

I did some quick math, and found that I'll need to write about 1,666 words a day if I'm going to hit the 50k mark. To get a feel for it, I Lorem Ipsum'd it, and it turned out to be about three and a half pages of solid text. That's kind of a lot to write in one day. So I looked up that short story I wrote for my English class last year. It's 3,679 words long. I wrote about half of that slowly over time, and the rest quickly in one night. Writing this story is going to be quite the challenge for me, especially since I'll be doing some traveling during Thanksgiving. I'll need to have most (if not all) of the novel written before the 24th if I want to relax during my holiday.

But even if I don't hit 50,000 words, I'll still have a lot done if I work dilligently. That'll be rewarding enough

Alright, I'm off to go make an outline. Otherwise I will, for certain, get lost.

Soul Squeaky

2009-10-19T21:41:00.001-07:00

I went swing dancing today. Except I didn't dance, because I don't know how to swing dance. But I knew somebody in the band, so I went to support him. That is the story of my Monday.

Wait, there is so much more, but it's all about this guy I keep seeing that reminds me of TKTWTSTE. He doesn't wear the same thing every day, but he does dress sloppily. And today I found out he is an amazing swing dancer. Wait, yeah, no, I guess that's all there is to say, because nobody can replace the original TKTWTSTE.

I am in the mood to make comics. I have no idea why, but I'm back to thinking in comic strips. It is such a terrible habit, because I'll get stuck trying to think up a punchline to ordinary everyday things. It's worse than zoning out. But I want to make these comics, and I want to make them fast. And I want to make that comic book type dealie I've got planned. And I want to play the piano again. I want to do something creative, and be really good at it. Mannnn, I just want to make things.

I also want my roommate to stop sleeping all the time. I have nothing against her needing her sleep, but I hate tip-toeing around my own room at two in the afternoon. Today I walked in, saw nobody was there, and started talking to myself in my usual frantic manner, (Whispering, actually. Shut up about it.) only to find that she was actually lying in bed the entire time. I did not know what to do, so I gathered up my books and left. And then I waited in the lobby until it was time to leave for class, because it was raining today. It was just a plethora of awkward happenings, all because she is sleeping so much.

Maybe she is sick again? Ugh, I hate it when people are sick all the time like this.

Earlier

2009-10-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

Man, the titles of these posts are getting kind of dumbed down.

I had a good weekend. Friday we stayed up until four in the morning coloring plastic spoons. Saturday night we had a wild adventure walking down college street past all of the parties. It started out with this guy that I was pretty sure was a zombie walking right towards us, and it freaked me out pretty bad. It turns out he was not a zombie, but it is still a mystery as to why he was walking like that. At one point we found a cell phone on the ground. I was all like "THAT. I WANT THAT." Even though it had been run over a few times and the battery was missing. I plan to take it apart. Inside there was a microSD card, and I stuck it inside my phone to see what was on it. There were some pretty amazing videos, as well as some odd pictures. One video had a legit fight, and you couldn't help but feel sorry for the guy that got the snot beat out of him. Another video had some guy going down the street on rocket skates, and you couldn't help but feel wonder and awe at the sight of it.

While I was farting around with the phone, some guy on a bike comes up and practically runs us over. He was shouting at us first in French, and then in Spanish, then back to French. So the one chick in our group that had taken French started shouting back at him "Ham. I want ham every fucking day," until the guy finally went away. It was pretty wacky. I'm pretty sure we've told the story about fifty times today. And then, to end the story, today we all ate brunch and watched one movie too many in our attempt to procrastinate at homework.

Anyways, yeah. I have a headache right now. But it's not from the severe lack of sleep this weekend, it's because I just now ate a chocolate bar. I think I will go sleep it off.

Treats You Like

2009-10-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

Yes! I got the character design for the most complicated character done and I am pretty satisfied with the result. Now I need to figure out the other character, and put a bit of effort into making a side character friend, and design a rope... Yep. And then I will have three characters and a rope finished.

Teaser! This was the hardest thing to figure out, because I am no good at designing things like kimonos.

Wow, all the flashy vibrancy is gone as soon as I take a digital photo. Either way, I'm pretty sure the next time I draw this kimono in full color it will be done on the computer. Actually, I really hate this kimono now. Fuck my life, I think I might start over.

So I did that thing for the film major girl where she took video of me brushing my hair. It was really... different. I brushed one side of my head for like, twenty minutes. And then I used a blow drier on it. She did a lot of trippy things, like having someone else hold a blow drier underneath to make my hair fly all over the place. Or angling the camera and having me tilt my head back to make it look like my hair was growing. I just... Man. I can only see this video becoming psychedelic.

I had a weird dream last night. Let me tell you about it. It started with me and a group of people exploring a house, looking for some creeper dude. While we were ogling a door, trying to figure out how to get past it, creeper dude grabbed me and dragged me underneath a bed. He held my mouth shut, and told me not to scream or he'd break my hips in half. To prove it, he grabbed both my hips and bent it slightly, and motherfucker did it hurt. So I nodded. I think he made me ask what time it was, or something. I did, and then I elbowed him, crawled out from underneath the bed, and dragged him out by his hair. A chubby police dude in my group beat the crap out of him, and then the house burned down. I don't understand why. And then I wrote a song on my ukulele. And then played a really huge guitar.

When I woke up, I decided to try playing the song I wrote, but it didn't work out well. In my defense, I had a hard time playing the song in my dream as well.

Today has been a very creative day.

EDIT: Haha, I'm editing my own post. Right at midnight.

Anyways, I made this because I was so upset with that poor photo:

My wrist is so cramped right now it's not even funny.

Mother Nature

2009-10-14T22:23:00.001-07:00

So while I was taking a shower, my roommate decided to leave and lock the door, effectively locking me out of my room. Our RA was not in her room, so I had to walk all the way down to the front desk and request a spare key. In a towel. It was not a fun experience. So I'm not much of a happy camper right now.

I really want to draw a manga. I woke up this morning, and decided I wanted to make a manga. Which is odd, because usually I wake up wanting to make comic strips in an american style. But whatever. I've got an interesting concept in my head, and I think I'll start dragging my sketchbook around with me so I can flesh out the character designs a bit. Maybe then I can get working on some plot, and maybe muster up the motivation it takes to draw an actual comic book type deal. I'm not very good at planning out pages. Usually I draw everything free floating on a page of paper, and then paste it all together in Photoshop. Sometimes I even use actual scissors and glue. But I don't think I'll ever master the ability to neatly place objects within a panel.

I'm excited, though. I'll get to break out the colored pencils when figuring out the characters for this one. And I'll finally have an excuse to get my scanner working with my computer. Even though all of my attempts at that before have just completely failed, I'll bet once I've got a page done I'll have some serious motivation to get it working.

The Next Part

2009-10-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

Man, Ubiq--Is it alright if I call you Ubiq? I'ma call you Ubiq.

Man, Ubiq. The weirdest thing happened to me today during math class. Some girl outta nowhere comes up to me and starts rattling off about how she's a film major and she has to do this film project. I'm all like, yeah so? Right? But she keeps talking and I keep nodding my head. Eventually she gets around to the fact that I have hair exactly like her sister's. Uhhh, what? Is what I'm thinking. But she wants me to like, be in a film she has to make for class. It's about her early childhood memories, or something. She wants me to sit in a seventies-looking outfit and brush my hair, facing away from her. It's awkward, but I totally agreed to do it. It took some serious guts to ask a perfect stranger to do a thing like that. And I figure, why not, hey? Help a girl out, why doncha.

Anyways, if I were in a sorority, that's probably what all of my entries would sound like.

I'm hungry, but I don't want to go down to the convenience store because the lady working there is starting to get to know me. It makes me feel a little pathetic, going down to buy food all the time. I'm thinking I should keep a calendar where I keep track of how often I do these mundane things. How often I go to the convenience store, how often I ride the bus, how often I sit at the duck pond. For some reason I am absolutely terrified at establishing myself as a regular at any of these places. It's an irrational fear, and there are places I can't avoid going to routinely. But I suppose if I ever end up with a bounty hunter after me it'll be harder to track me down this way.

Where The Wild Things Are comes out this weekend and I need to go see it. I missed 9, and I'll forever regret that. But I refuse to go see a movie by myself. So I either need to find somebody that has a car and some spending money, or somebody that'll be fun to hang at the mall with for an hour or so because we took the bus. I've got two people in mind right now... Annd, fuck. They're both sick. I need to go see this movie if it kills me.

Wash Jones

2009-10-12T20:18:00.001-07:00

Man, it is so nifty that the US president is winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, that guy is the role model. He not only became president despite people's prejudices against race (that actually isn't much of a problem anymore), he's winning the award that means you're a fantastic and nice person. Next, I'm pretty sure Obama is going to go into outer space, probably cure cancer, become a doctor, and turn into a rock star over night. And then mothers will be saying things like "If you drink your milk, Timmy, you'll become strong like the president!" and Timmy will gulp down his milk because the president is fucking awesome.

Okay, I should point out that none of that was sarcasm. I'm actually really happy to have a president that earns great things for doing great things. Especially since for most of my life we've had presidents that people absolutely hate for some reason or another; it's nice to have a guy running the place that we can look up to.

Alright, who the fuck is blaring Christmas music? That is inexcusable, especially since I'm pretty sure it is coming from the floor below me and the floor is really thick. Halloween hasn't happened yet, and I haven't even started planning for Thanksgiving. Blare some Monster Mash or something, will ya?

Ugh. I am so tired of the snow and the cold. I want it to be at least a tiny bit warm. Brisk, or chilly at the least. The kind of weather where all I need is a sweater to go outside. My face keeps going numb on the walk to my class. It's like, a five minute walk, and it is so painful for me. And some days I just can't bring myself to bundle up for the short walk to class, and all I pull on is a thick sweater. And it is on those days that I practically run to class, because after only one minute my ears start getting frostbitten. I swear to God the weather reports aren't telling the truth, and are saying it's about twenty degrees warmer than it really is.

Oh, remember how I was trying to do my laundry yesterday? I never fucking finished. Some girl kept ninjaing her way into the laundry room, taking up the only washing machine so I couldn't get another load done. I started at like, eleven in the morning, and finally gave up and hauled my dirty clothes out of the laundry room at about 5pm. Seriously, there is a bag of dirty clothes on top of the washer. That means that there is someone doing their clothes in there. It does not mean sneak in there, use their soap, and clean your own clothes. Motherfucker, I show some courtesy to someone and I get screwed over.

All of my clothes smell like wet dog.

Excuse me for a moment, I need to go kill my neighbor. They won't stop kicking the wall while coughing in a digusting manner. Maybe once she's dead I can get some sleep. At least then nobody would be hitting an oil drum with a crowbar, or whatever. Or, that's what it sounds like, at least.

Cat Carde

2009-10-11T13:40:00.000-07:00

Do you ever read a book of poetry, and then feel like writing a bunch of poetry yourself? And then you do, and realize it's awful, but you show your friends anyways to get their opinion of it and they all tell you it's great, so you think maybe you just don't get your own poetry or you're more humble than you thought, so you write a bunch more poetry and your friends are always telling you how much they look forward to your next poem, and eventually you decide to get yourself published but the publishers all just laugh in your face and tell you what you write is horrible crap, and you realize that your friends never actually liked your poetry but were just trying to be nice and encourage you to do what you loved, but you can't help but feel like they're all dicks for not giving you their actual opinion of your poetry in the first place, and you feel like you could have avoided a lot of embarrassment if your friends were just more honest people? Yeah, that happens to me like, all the time.

Oh my gosh, I have been waiting forever for this girl to finish up her two loads of laundry so I can do my five. I let her go ahead and do a load after I had finished only two, because I was being polite and I thought what we'd do was trade off using the washer so that we could both get things done in the most efficient manner. But instead she does her two loads one right after another, and then uses all of the dryers and leaves her clothes in the washer. It's been over an hour since all of the machines finished, and it's time for her to get her ass back in there and put her clothes where they belong. And it really pisses me off, because I have no pants to wear, they're all waiting in the laundry room to be cleaned. So I've just been wearing a really long shirt and really tall socks and hoping nobody will notice. I was absolutely positive I'd be wearing pants by now. Also, I don't think this girl lives on our floor, so she shouldn't be using the washer anyways.

I am bitchy today because I had all of these plans to hang with friends, but they all came down with the flu. So instead I've been doing cleaning chores in my chilly room. What I'd love to do is make chicken soup for all of them, but I'd probably catch the flu and I don't know where everyone lives to deliver it. Also, that'd be a ton of chicken soup to make, and I just don't have the things I need to do it. I also tried to scratch together enough change to buy some candy from the vending machine, but all I have is Canadian coins. Which is really odd. Who the fuck gave me change in Canadian money?

I ran out of things to clean so I scrubbed down the lightswitch, thermostat, and doorknob. There was a frightening amount of grime on all of it, probably decades worth of grime. Then I disinfected pretty much everything in the room. I doubt I'll be getting the flu now, but my neighbor keeps making these grizly coughing sounds, and I swear to god it sounds like she's trying to cough through the wall at me and make me sick. Just listening to her makes me want to wash my hands. Man, when did I turn into such a germophobe?

Upon You

2009-10-07T21:13:00.000-07:00

Man, I am so sick of rap and country. Those are the only two types of music I don't actually enjoy, and those are the only two types of music that play on the radio in the bathroom. Every so often I'll change it to something else--ANYthing else--and within the hour someone will have put it back to rap or country and turned the volume way up. It's ridiculous. It's upsetting. And I can understand why someone stole the power cord to the first radio within the first week. They gave it back... After someone stole a radio from a hotel to replace the first one.

I also can't stand rap songs that steal the beat from another well-established song. I was just listening to a rap to the beat from Inspector Gadget. It wasn't even about the Inspector; it was just another generic rap. This happens way too often to songs I love. I can't understand it. I mean, good artists copy and great artists steal, but these guys are just screwing with perfection. It's like displaying page from a coloring book in an art museum. It's not their art, even though they put something over it.

Also, it won't stop snowing. It hate it when it snows. When it's all done snowing and it's just snow on the ground it's fine, but snow falling through the air is really annoying. It whips in your face and sticks to your hair and flies up your nose. It makes to hard to even see when it's all blowing right at you.

Bah, I'm just angry at the world right now.

Airplanetastic

2009-10-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

I didn't put very much effort into this, but that is okay. By the way, room 424 is my room.

Anyways, I am back in Bozeman. I didn't really enjoy returning. But I do love that I have my ukulele. Playing it shall be my escape from all things I dislike about college, or something. Or, maybe I'll play relevant songs the next time my neighbor is being noisy. I'm looking forward to what I'll play next time she has noisy sex. She is being really noisy right now (fake crying) and there is a guy in her room, so I think my time will come soon.

It is snowing right now. It started snowing pretty much the moment I exited the airport. I'm really glad that mum bought me a bunch of winter clothes Saturday. Now I can look stylish while I keep warm. What I've been doing is wearing Christmas gifts I've crocheted for other people. They don't always match together well. I hope nobody minds that I've worn their gift. Hey, I still made it especially for them, so they should be appreciative.

Okay, I can't stop looking at that comic. I love the third panel. Her face is all like "Wtf is that baby doing on the sidewalk?"

Beanie

2009-10-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

I don't think I want to fly back to Bozeman on Sunday. I think I want to stay here at home, with the few friends that are left. It's just so much more comfortable here.

So I tried putting Bootcamp on my Mac again today. It took six separate install disks, two of which were Vista. I finally got XP on here, and it was not easy at all. I'm still having problems, though. I don't think it installed fully, and I'm having a lot of trouble trying to open the Mac OSX disk while in Windows. So a lot of my hardware isn't really working when I'm a PC. And I haven't figured out how to connect it to the internet, so I really just have a useless lump of computer that's probably only good for running programs that don't need right-clicking. I'm going to keep working on it, though. The only problem is that I can't restart the process anymore, since I don't have a Windows install disk that I can use. Ugh. I hate this Mac so much right now.

Road Again

2009-10-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

I am at home! Oh my gosh, I am home! It is really nice to be at home, and not at a dorm. Here are some things I love about home:

- The fridge doesn't move when I open the door
- Cats
- No shower shoes
- Soft toilet paper
- DVR
- Private room
- I know which room and which floor the spot cleaner is on
- There is no roommate around to accidentally steal my spot cleaner
- I have a car
- Lifelong friends live here
- I know where buildings are

I am about to go lie down in a bed that is not above or below anyone or anything. Tomorrow I am going to wake up and not shuffle around quietly trying not to wake my roommate. I will probably take a shower, and I will step out of the shower stall before donning a towel. I will then eat breakfast that I prepared only moments earlier. Being home is glorious.

I am also trying to put Bootcamp on my Mac. I am so sick of this Mac that it is getting ridiculous. Every day is a new disappointment with this computer. Today's disappointment was that I couldn't install Bootcamp with our Windows XP install disks, because they are something pack 1 and not something pack 2. There is no versatility. Yesterday's disappointment was that I could not run Lemmings on my computer. The day before that, the track pad decided not to work for a bit. The day before that was a reoccurance of an ongoing problem; I can not refresh by pressing F5. This last problem can be remedied, but it is more of an annoying workaround that needs to be constantly performed than it is a fix.

Fuck I hate Macs. But I really love being home.

Those Who Expect

2009-09-28T21:13:00.001-07:00

So I think tomorrow I will take the bus to the mall again. The month is nearly over, and I need more yarn (It's like I have some sort of addiction) and I really want to buy a videogame. But at the same time, I am going home this weekend. I'll be more than able to last another week without some yarn, and I can buy that same videogame at home. But it'll be more convenient at home, because I can drive myself there and not have to wait an hour for the bus to come back. It would be really nice to have the game for the plane trips I will be taking... But then, this is also why I bought that Sony Reader (which I use daily)... I guess I'll decide after my math class tomorrow. I might end up wanting to curl up in my room for a bit, or I might make plans with someone. We'll see.

Ugh. Ubiquity. I don't feel like talking to you tonight. So I think I'll just stop hereOH MY GOD I just realized I left my Pokemon game at home. That's a shame; I really wanted to play that tonight before bed. I guess I'll just have to read, or something, instead.

Stand So

2009-09-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you remember, but a few posts back I wondered if there'd be anyone interested in turning Ubiquity into a book. Well! No such thing has happened, but I noticed this Blogger Buzz post. So of course I looked into it, mostly to see how much it would cost me to print Ubiquity (it would certainly be a fun novelty).

$85.65 for a soft cover, $95.65 for a hardcover. This is much more than the usual $20. I can also get it in digital format for $7.95, but what's the point in that? It seems there would also be 19 pages of Table of Contents, which I think it pretty bad-ass. I don't think I'll actually turn Ubiquity into a printed book... But maybe I'll consider printing one book for every year sometime in the future.

Oh, and it seems it won't print any images associated with my posts, which upsets me a bit.

Ahh, yes... Only $52.25 for a hardcover of all of 2008... Yeah, no, that's still a lot of money. Maybe if I get a job, or something, I'll reconsider. (Thank God I've at least spell-checked every post.)

Parity Addition

2009-09-25T23:40:00.000-07:00

So grandma is doing alright after her surgery. Dad sent me a quick text about it, and then his phone died, so I don't know much about it. This first night is going to be the worst for her... And then hopefully things will start getting better. I'm hoping the best for her.

There must have been some sort of culture presentation today, because some Native Americans erected a tepee and started dancing on a stage on the main drag on campus. It was pretty cool; I've always liked the way they dress and dance. Their songs are a bit too harsh for me, but I can't argue with a strong beat. At the end, the guy with the most awesome outfit started rapping about Jesus and goodwill. It actually made me a little sad... I've never much appreciated colonialization.

Umm... Some other things happened, but it's all school related stuff and I don't care so much about it anymore. This seems to be a pretty shitty Friday. Everyone I know is having problems of some sort today. I guess I should be happy that it's over now, and it is Saturday.

Imagination Determination

2009-09-23T21:59:00.000-07:00

So dad came and bought me lots of food, hooray. He then gave me and Kyla a nice dinner, and it turned out to be a pretty nice evening. He only stayed for an hour or two, and then he went back to Great Falls to be with grandma.

Oh, and he also bought me a TV. So I guess it doesn't matter whether or not a PS3 will connect to my roomie's TV. And I guess it is nice to have a TV with a screen that is bigger than my laptop. I was wondering how I'd play multiplayer games on it. But what I'm really excited about is the fact that we have the remote for this TV, so I can do things like easily change channels or manipulate the volume. I can also buy this magic wand, now. And I think I will. I even reserved one, just in case.

And I'm living in a college town, so I should be able to find plenty of odd jobs I can do until I have the money to buy one. (I really want that magic wand.)

Man, I am five seconds away from doing my hair like Hermione, putting on wizard robes, and tapping the TV with a stick until it turns on. I mean, how cool would that be? And then maybe double-tap to put it into video mode. Oh my God, all of the possible scenarios are playing in my head right now. It would be so cool. I could just twirl it and the volume would go up! Jab at it to mute! Oh my God, I could get a remote for my PS2, and then program the wand to work with it as well. Tap the TV, it turns on. Double tap, video mode. Swish, and the PS2 turns on! It's like magic!

When While What

2009-09-22T22:50:00.001-07:00

Dad is coming to visit tomorrow. He is bringing me and whoever I want to take with me to dinner, and then he will be taking me shopping for food. I am excited... I do miss my dad. Sadly, he is here for some more serious business. Grandma has breast cancer, and she is going through surgery for it on Friday. It was supposed to be sooner, but they pushed it back a few days. Dad is here because she is his mother, and his last living parent. Grandma is 86 and isn't very strong, so we can only hope for the best this Friday.

Unfortunately, this also means that I am at a higher risk for breast cancer, which really sucks.

I need some rubber bands. I can't find any at the book store, which is ridiculous. I've got all these things flying around willy nilly because there aren't any rubber bands on campus. I can't very well staple 46 index cards together, and it's not like tying them together with yarn is effective. I never thought I'd get so frustrated over something as simple as rubber bands. If I can't fix this problem soon, I may have to stage a protest. Bring us rubber bands at the student store, or I swear to God I am picketing out front of it.

Some kid cut his finger and called an ambulance for it. One ambulance, two police cars, and a fire truck ended up outside the dorms, making a hideous noise. The kid doesn't even live here. It was possibly the most annoying thing to have happened this month. I'll bet everybody hates that guy now. I certainly do.

Independent Bottlers

2009-09-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

I can't tell if writing Ubiquity like this every day to almost no readers is really pretentious, down to earth, or just plain stupid. I might as well be writing in a private paper journal, or be saving all the entries in my hard drive. There is pretty much no reason to put this online. And yet I do. And I know that anybody at all could come along and read it. And sometimes I write things that I don't really want other people to see, but with absolute knowledge that all the world has access to it. I have never gone back and deleted an entry that I was ashamed of, and I have never failed to post an entry I've written. Did you know that there are over 200 posts? And at the rate I update, I'll probably reach 300 before the end of the year. And I'll probably still be writing entries this time next year.

Just felt like sayin'.

I really can't wait until I go home in a couple weeks. If only because there are a few key things I really want to bring back with me. The two most important things are my ukulele and my PS2. Along with all of the PS2 games that are in the house. And some clothes. I pretty much plan to stuff my duffel bag to the brim with clothes and video games. It's gonna be fantastic.

Mum mentioned that she might get me a PS3 for my birthday. We talked about how the price went down (she brought it up, I was amazed), so it seems like a good time to buy one. She then talked about how useful it would be in college, since it can play DVDs as well. But it was only just now that I thought to look for an HDMI input thinger on the TV in here. It does not have one. I feel a little sad now.

I should probably call mum and tell her about this. For all I know, she's already ordered me one. She works fast like that.

Master Chef

2009-09-20T20:58:00.000-07:00

So last night I went to a dance the all-boys dorm was holding. A lot of people showed up, and they had it outside so it wouldn't get too hot. It was pretty fun overall, but I can't swing dance. Every time they played a country song I either got stuck awkwardly raving solo by the bushes, or stomping on some poor guy's toes after he refused to believe I had no idea what was going on. At least they played some techno, and even a little bit of disco. I can dance to that. And I was able to fake my way through the hip hop.

I got to see a guy in a cowboy hat teach a guy with a backwards cap how to hoedown. I'm pretty sure that's the reason why I came to Montana.

I'm meeting people and it is lovely. I got to meet a buncha people at Anime Friday. After the anime, eight of us went to go play sardines. It took us one hour to play only one round, apparently our hidng spot was really good. This one girl stood five feet away, looked right at us for a few minutes, and then left. She seriously could not see us. Maybe somebody casted an ivisibility spell?

I also met a few people at the dance. Or, more accurately, I hung with Kayla who hung with a group of people that were going to the dance, all of which I met. Afterwards we went to the park to go star tripping. I had never heard of it before, but it is pretty fun. What you do is go out at night, look up into a starry sky, pick one star to look at, and then spin around a bunch looking at that same star. Then, once you've gotten a bit dizzy, somebody flashes a flashlight in your eyes. You then have no choice but to fall down. It's so disorienting, and I haven't figured out why the flashlight makes you fall down. But it's also fun to watch people spin around like idiots, and then just crumple.

A lighting storm started when we were in the park. At first you could only kinda see the lighting, but not hear it. Then, maybe an hour later, the thunder came at almost exactly the same time as the lighting. We were running for our lives through the rain. Then, all today, it has been extremely windy and a little chilly. It's a nice change from the obscene heat we've been getting. Almost feels like it might be September, and not July.

All in all I had a pretty good weekend. I decided to spend all of this Sunday just chilling in my room, though. I always need a day to recover after I go out dancing. I didn't get any of my homework done, but I did catch up on my television shows. Priorities.

The Things I Said

2009-09-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

Alright! I rode the bus! Woo, what an experience. It was actually unbearably hot today, though, so it wasn't that good of an experience. But I did get to go to the craft store, and I picked up enough yarn to keep me occupied until the end of the month. And then I had an orange julius, and it was nice to have something to drink that wasn't really crappy water.

Speaking of water, the water here is so terrible. It's really harsh on my skin--Not only am I breaking out all over the place, but this spot on my forehead looks like it's so irritated it might break out into a rash. I've been doing what I can to sooth it these past couple weeks, but lack of access to a drug store means all I can do is think good thoughts.

Speaking of drug stores, I really need to go to one. I have maybe one shower left of body wash, and then I'm all out. There are also a few other toiletry type things I need to get, and I need to find a pharmacy. I guess that will be my task for this Saturday.

Speaking of tasks, I need to call a taxi service and schedule a ride to the airport. From the 1st to the 4th I will be at home. But in order to get there, I need to take a plane. And to get to the plane, I need to take a taxi. (And to get to the taxi I'll need a front door, and to get to the front door I'll need to pull the blankets off my legs.) So I will call the only taxi service in the Bozeman that goes to the airport area and get a ride. I can't wait to go home. I've already told a bunch of my friends, and I'm planning to meet up with the few that still live there. It will be so nice to have the bathroom all to myself.

Speaking of... Wait, no, there's nothing. But anime club meets up tomorrow, and I'm a little excited. Japan club met yesterday, but that failed miserably, so I'm hoping anime club will pull through. And then our floor is having a meeting about where we are going to duct tape our RA. I had a dream last night about it, but it was a lot more nightmarey and a lot less dreamy. I hope we come up with something awesome.

Follow Instructions

2009-09-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

So I'm kinda sick of being stuck on campus. Even though I have a bike, I have no honest clue about bike laws for this area, so I'd prefer to leave it behind when I go places. But digging around in my backpack today, I noticed I had a bus schedule.

Dah-dahdah-dahhh!

The buses here are really funky looking but you don't have to pay to ride them. They all stop at the bookstore on campus, and most of them head to the mall. There is a craft store at the mall. I will be riding the bus to the craft store all the time now. Right now, though, my problem is that I've never taken the bus by myself before. It seems pretty simple, though, and I'll probably get it figured out before long.

My last class tomorrow is at two, so I think I will try out the buses not long after that.

So my roommate is sick. She caught it from her friend. She thinks it might be strep throat. Today I come in, not long after washing my sheets, to find the both of them sleeping on my bed. Now I'm worried that I'll wake up and be all sick, too. The rest of the day really only went downhill from there. I think I'll go shower and wash off the disappointment that turned out to be today (and also wash off the emo-ness that went into making that sentence).

Assistance Distance

2009-09-15T19:02:00.000-07:00

So every time I go to shave my legs, I notice this white scar on my knee. It isn't really noticeable or anything; it practically disappears when I stand up. I only really notice it when my knee is completely bent and my skin color is evened out from the hot shower water. A thin white scar, maybe two centimeters long, and for years I couldn't remember where the Hell it came from.

Seriously, it was a huge mystery. Because of it's size and intensity I always thought it was recent, maybe in the past five years or so. It's shaped liked all the other thin scars on my body, just maybe a little fatter, like a plumped worm. So its shape gave no clue as to where it came from. It looks like a cut, and it's kinda on the side, so there's no way it's one of the many scrapes I've had on my knee.

Then earlier today I remembered exactly where it came from. I can't believe I never connected my scar to that incident before. It's like the scar didn't show up for fifteen years or something.

See, my family was hanging out with Craig's family, and I was too young to be literate. This was during the time period that I decided that I wanted to live in my brother's room (while my brother was still there... I got bottom bunk). We were all at the beach. It was obviously a NorthWest beach, because of all the logs and because of the conifer trees. There was one log that we for some reason decided was a slide. Billy slid down it, Christina slid down it, Craig slid down it, and everyone had a great time with no trouble at all. I wanted to slide down it, too, even though I was "too little."

I couldn't get going like everyone else did. I'd scootch a little bit, but I wouldn't slide. I scootched a little more, and suddenly started screaming and crying and bleeding all over the place because there was this huge splinter sticking out of my knee. Mum and dad scooped me up, everyone got packed into the car, and our beach day was over. I remember taking a bath that night with Billy (because Billy was also too young to be literate), and mum pointed out that the splinter would need to come out soon as she shampoo'd my hair (I was also too young to wash myself). I looked down at my knee, which I was carefully keeping out of the water. It was dark blue and light green, and angry red where the peice of wood stuck out. It was a really big splinter. I said "No, it'll be fine."

Later that night, I was sitting on the bottom bunk of my brother's bed, and my dad had a pair of tweezers. He was going to pull splintzilla out of my knee. He gave it one tug, and I screamed as loud as I possibly could, crying all the way. Every time he'd give a little tug, I'd shreik. I don't remember it actually hurting, though, I just really didn't want to deal with it being pulled out of my knee. He got it out, and said that there might still be little splinters left in there. I cried and begged him not to do anythign about it, and he obliged. He put disinfectant on the wound, applied a bandage, and held me for a bit while I sniffled and sobbed. Then I went to bed.

Mystery of the scar: Solved.

I got hurt a lot in that time period of my life. That summer was particularly brutal. I think it was just because I was old enough to walk and talk, but not yet the master of my motor skills. But I also think there may have been something wrong with me, because I have very vivid memories of getting hurt and not feeling any pain. I essentially ripped all the skin off the front of my leg (with no scars, I might add) and I remember thinking, very clearly "It doesn't hurt, and I can't let anyone know about it." I tried to hide while my leg bled all over the place. What gave me the way was this uncontrollable urge to cry. I even tried not to cry, but it was a losing struggle. That same summer I sliced my thumb open with a metal knife. I didn't actually know I cut myself, but I had a feeling that I did. So I told myself that I was okay, took a deep breath, and looked at my hand. I remember the way the blood spiderwebbed across my hand made it hard for me to figure out where I had cut myself. I also had to taste the red stuff, because I thought it might have been ketchup. I didn't start crying until I confirmed I was actually hurt, and dad cleaned me up, put a bandage on it, and held me while I sniffled and sobbed. Then I ate dinner.

Nothing from back then left scars the way that splinter had, so it's really no wonder I had trouble connecting the scar to the splinter. But now I'm wondering if my pain receptors developed incorrectly, as it is a well-known fact that I have a high tolerance for pain.

Road Conditions

2009-09-14T21:43:00.001-07:00

Man, I am always smelling burning hair around me. Do I smell like burning hair, or is that just the way college smells? I don't think it's me, because right now I smell like oranges, but I still smell burning hair. Why, of all things, does it have to be burning hair?

The wall between mine and my neighbor's room is really thin. I can hear everything she says as if there was only a curtain between us. Apparently most rooms don't have a wall as thin as this. It's bothersome when she plays her music or watches TV. But when I can hear her talking it's like a soap opera. Earlier today she had a fight with her mom over the phone. Last week she had a fight with her boyfriend over the phone, cried for a few hours, then he came over and they fought and cried a lot. A few hours ago she threatened suicide, and right now she is having a jolly conversation on the phone. It's really very interesting, and I hope she can manage to keep this level of energy for the rest of the semester.

Um, what else was I going to say... There was a fire drill today in the dorms. I was eating dinner, so I didn't go outside and assemble. But it was funny; you could tell it was going to happen even though they are supposed to be a surprise. There were signs suddenly posted all over about what to do and where to evacuate to, and the dorm next to ours had a fire drill about an hour before we did. Which I guess was our biggest warning.

Alright then. I am going to finish off this bag of chips and read books. Goodnight, Ubiquity.

OH SHI

2009-09-12T20:08:00.000-07:00

Look at what I made. Look look look.

Have you looked yet? Go take a look. Because it took me all day to make it, and it wasn't nearly as easy as to should have been. I had everything sketched out in Devilshop Elements

Woah, major distraction. Out of nowhere I stood up to go buy icecream. And I did.

Anyways, I drew it in Devilshop, only to realize that it had no pen tool. How am I supposed to make comics with no pen tool? It's not like I can use a real pen. That would ruin my screen. So I downloaded Gimp, because I used it once and hated it, but it has some really devoted followers. I hated it this second time, but at least it had a pen tool. And once I figured out some of its quirks (The tool tray is a seperate window? Really?) I was able to at least ink everything. But then I realized I wasn't able to select and move parts of an image around, and I started throwing things. I shattered a really good pen against the brick wall, but thankfully I cleaned it up before the ink started leaking everywhere. I moved the image back into Devilshop, and got everything finished without too much problem after that. But I'm still angry about it.

Fucking... Gimp. Motherfucker. That's all I can say to describe my experience with it.

I wish I could say I did more with my day, but I didn't. There was even a big football game, but I didn't go for some reason. I avoided my homework pretty nicely, though. That'll come back to bite me in the butt during my first exam. Which will be on... MONDAY FUCK. I haven't started two of the books yet!

Enculturation

2009-09-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

Being a college student, I have to read a lot. Being an avid reader, I read a lot anyways. Add to this the fact that I love working with yarn, and you end up with me spending a lot of time being very quiet. Today I decided to couple these activities, reading and knitting, in an attempt to multitask two things that take up huge amounts of time.

Knitting with my Sony Reader is quite possibly one of the best experiences out there. I prop the Reader up on my laptop, using the grooves between keys to hold it open and the screen to prop it up (best thing this Mac has ever done). I just press a button to turn the pages, and there is pretty minimal fuss.

But knitting while reading a real book is an entirely different matter. And is also a problem I need to solve soon, because all of my school books are real books. I have to use weights of some sort to hold the book open, and even then the new books constantly resist the weights. Then I either have to hunch over and strain my back to read, or prop the book against something. Propping the book causes all of the weights to fall off, so it's not a feasible idea.

I have designed a little metal device that will likely hold my books open without too much problem, but I need some thick wire to do it. I think an old coat hanger would work best, but I'll settle for anything so long as it can resist being bent by the book. Even a really really long paperclip or the spiral from a spiral notebook would be good enough. And once I have this made, I have some cardboard I can cut up to fashion a little thing to prop up my books. Turning pages will still be an issue, but I'll be willing to overlook it so long as I can actually read the book in the first place.

I'm motherfucking MacGyver over here! All in the name of reading while knitting.

Reading Dough

2009-09-10T21:48:00.001-07:00

I just ate an icecream and it put me in a great mood. Just letting you know.

... Somebody should make iceream bars that are just pure vanilla on a stick.

Okay! So there is a serious problem with having the school book store so close to where I live. It is not only a book store, but it sells textbooks (that I want but don't need), and it is a stationary store. Stationary is possibly my biggest weakness. I love pens and pencils. And erasers. And scissors. And paper. Oh my God I love paper. Lined paper, blank paper, thick paper, thin paper. Paper with spirals down the side or along the top, perforated or pre-cut. I love it when highlighters come with two colors, or this one nifty highlighter I have that is also a pen and a little tab-note dispenser thinger. Most of my impulse buys happen when I am in the stationary section of a store, and I usually make a point to avoid it.

But I needed to go to the store and buy a folder. I told myself, "Just one folder. Just the one that is required." When I got close I was all "Maybe two folders. Because that one class has a lot of loose papers." I got there and found a rack with a big sign that said "FOLDERS" and I picked out an ugly red one and an ugly blue one. I was telling myself that I did good, that I just needed to go check out now, but then I turned around.

AN AISLE COMPLETELY FULL OF PENCILS AND PENS.

I spent like 20 minutes not doing anything except looking through them all. They sold my favorite type of pen (which is actually kinda rare), as well as many of my favorite types of pencils. They also sold the best seleciton of pencil lead I have ever seen. I thought I was gonna piss myself when I got to the aisle full of erasers. I bought a black eraser just because I've always wanted one. And then I bought a matching white one because I needed the set. I nearly bought out all of the erasers just because I had never seen such a great selection before, but I held off. There was also a lot of paper. I was actually overwhelmed. It wasn't as pretty as the paper being sold at Kinokuniya's, but the selection was still very vast. I bought a spiral notebook with the spiral on the top because it reminded me of RaeLynn.

Look at me, talking about stationary. This is such a boring topic (that I find completely fascinating). I'll just end this by saying that the damage today was minimal, and I can mostly justify everything I bought. But I may be broke by the end of the schoolyear because I bought all of their colored staples, or because I needed one of every type of lead they sold, including pencils that can hold them.

EDIT: Oh God I just looked through all of my pens and pencils and decided that I need more pens. That I don't have a fine enough selection of pens. I need blue pens, and more red pens, and some different types of black pens, apparently. And while I'm at it I could probably use more pencils. And I need a really really good pencil sharpener, because I lost my lovely metal one last year. Oh God it's a slippery slope...

Trans-Anthem

2009-09-09T21:14:00.000-07:00

Apparently Wednesday is laundry day for everybody! But I did mine first thing in the morning (before I eve ate) so I got it all done before the rush. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was the cause of the rush, since I was using all three working machines. But that is only a minor problem.

Today, in my Anthropology class, the girl sitting next to me had a seizure. According to Amber, it should have been more traumatizing to me, since she was seizing all over me, but I pretty much just didn't care and ate lunch afterward. What happened was she slumped onto my shoulder, and I thought she was sleeping. When she didn't respond to me, the girl sitting in front of us turned around and said that she was having a seizure (it turns out the girl in front was a nursing major). It was about then that I noticed that her eyes were open and darting around, and she was quivering a bit. She continues seizing for a minute or two. Teacher ran over to attend to things, and eventually announced that class might as well be over for today. I took off right away, because I was hungry for lunch. In hindsight, I probably should have stayed to find out if she was okay and whatnot.

I feel like I did something else of interest today, but now it's starting to seem like I didn't. I think I just holed up in my room and missed dinner... No wait!

Freshman Convocation was today. I didn't go, because the guest speaker was Lopez whatshisface who wrote the book The Soloist. I read that book over the summer (a few days before I moved) and I hated it. I hated the writer. If I had gone to convocation I'd have certainly stood up and started shouting things. There's nothing I hate more than a piss poor book, except maybe the person that wrote it in the first place. I especially hate it when these god awful books get turned into movies.

Oh my God I am about to go on a twelve hour rant about horrible books and how I hate them. I think I should just go lie down and read good books and not think about terrible things like this. I just get so steamed.