Well, tonight was interesting...

Once 5th period was over (and gawd, I hate Mrs. Thompson... she keeps bringing up that horseshit that the assholes in my class started about me being a "chronic cutter." And now with Collen spouting that -though we did apologize as I was leaving to lunch, which made me feel better- it makes me feel really outnumbered. Eva didn't do anything to stop that rumor from being considered truth -despite Mrs. Thompson having a soft spot for me for helping her with her computer a year ago- and Colleen... well, she just doesn't know what she's talking about. I'm absent when I'm sick. I don't cut.) I headed to RTA... and Will called me when I was less than a block from his school. But he didn't get on the 47 with me, because he wasn't walking on North Point... so I got there about 5 minutes before him, and was watching Johnny play initial D for a while before he showed up. We played a few games of Initial D -I got more experience getting my muffler handed to me by the brat Itsuki- and one of DDR-- and damnit, I have to practice more and more and more until I get Break Down pat, I refuse to cheat by turning the Freeze off, though it seems that those are the only things that get me. Feh. David was so cool though, and gave us a buncha free tokens. The twister, baseball, and a few other games sucked my tokens when I shoulda gotten tokens, but he was nice enough to give me 15 tix to add to our collection. Will and I had won a few with Skee-ball (well, I won about 6; Will played the Solar Spin and kept getting the jackpot because he knew the timing...) and will add that to our current count of 818 sometime soon. ^_^ YAY! DVD player ahoy!

( i'm a cosmogirl! )

After about an hour and a half (I think) we left with Johnny; Will and I talked on the bus for a while, which was cool, in a sense, because I didn't feel so terrible anymore for not talking to him yesterday. All in all, I was glad when I left, and I'm glad now... just sorta... hm, awkward I suppose is the right word. But it's not a bad thing! It's a normal thing. @_o; Yeah, so I got home after taking the 5 -I had to transfer again at Masonic... stupid MUNI- and had to leave almost immediately... I wanted to find my sketchbook and nearly-full Book of Inspiration, as talking to Will got me thinking, and being at a bus stop got me musing, and everyone knows by now that my muse is the Goddess of Transportation... ergo, I get all my best ideas at/near bus stops. My latest ideas? Two songs, one that I originally concieved the beat to on 1/31/03, the other that just popped into my head on my way home. Check 'em out... they're "tracks 13 and 14" on my "CD." One day I'll record it. Maybe if Will and Amber can do instrumentals and backup. @_@; Har.

( inside track )

And, the latest...

( hardly anymore )

Yay, I have three reasons to celebrate tonight! Elaboration:

1) I beat Itsuki! I think it was less tries than with Iketani, but I'm not sure. I think I beat Iketani after 7 tries... maybe Itsuki was 6? ^^;; Who knows, I BEAT HIM! Now I'll be happy to chug cash into iD, because I know Shingo's a bastard and he's hard. But what I wonder is why those names aren't changed, but much sexier Japanese names... like Keisuke and Ryousuke and Takumi-- DID get changed. Blargh. Ooh, and I saw Gina and Jemmy BOTH play Bunta tonight-- I'm thinking, wtf is such an old man doing with such a damn sporty-ass car (it's a Subaru something-or-other) ... and even though Gina maintained a 40+ m advantage over him for the first two laps, Bunta dusted her at one of the turns, and she was -250 down by the end of the race, pulling averages shameful compared to the race with Takumi-- on the exact same track! @_@ What is it about Bunta that gets people performing below their par? Meeeh...

2) I got another person to buy a ticket for my concert next Thursday! YATTA! Oniichan, aka Vince is coming to my concert, and he hasn't come to one before, so I am very happy... who knows, maybe he can convince others to join him! ^_^ For those just joining us on the concert update, it is next Thursday (3/13) at 7:30 pm, doors close at 7:45. Only $5! And I'm in it! All the reason to go!

3) Joe finally talked to me tonight. I mean, it was more of a wave, and then I turned and was all, "So now you're talking to me, after how many months?" but in a friendly, happy, "it's about damn time" kind of voice. I think. I hope. Whatever. So he had to leave and go to his class, but after I came back from RnC, he came in again, sat next to me while we watched this strange old-school styled anime about a girl named Jane and her Bruce Wayne-lookalike stepbrother and Samurai Deeper Kyo (I'm in love with Benitora. He's SO DAMN HOT! BISHOUNEN BISHOUNEN BISHOUNEN!). Once again, SdK ended on a friggin' cliffhanger. Just like initial D... hmm, anyway, back to the topic. So yeah, we talked a little... moreso when we were leaving, because he offerred to give me a ride home; you know me and MUNI, I'd never turn down a free ride. Hmm, so we dropped off Cheuk, then me... next Monday we're supposed to go out for dinner downtown (me and Joe, not me and Cheuk! Gah, but both of them are about 1,000,000x more likely than Gilbert, who is getting SO annoying now!! Touching my knee and asking me what my dinner is... *shudder*) So I'm feeling kind of awkward about it, but a GLAD kind of awkward, because now I don't have anything like that HAUNTING me anymore. I was probably thinking about it more in the last few days, since I read that TAFFy SM (HONESTLY TAFFy!) story of mine on FFnet... uhm, "All Good Things." But... yeah.

I got sort of sick later on in the meeting, just before I thrashed Itsuki (okay, when I was beat by him the first time, I'd had a 200+ advantage; when I actually WON, it was with a 56+ m advantage). It lasted just before I got home; maybe 12 nuggets was too much? Blaah. But Mom had given me money before I left, so I could afford it, even though I'd gotten those free tokens at RTA and had a cheap lunch (cookie was free! people mooched!). I gave Mitch $4 for the library member fee, spent $1.50 on iD, dinner was $7.82... hmm... yeah, so I have about $8 left for tomorrow and Friday, when I go to Cala to get water for the Playathon. Whee, sleeping at school. -.- Fun. I just hope Rochelle's there so she can do my hair and such on Saturday afternoon before I go to the dance. *giddy* Whee~

Okay, freaky thing Helen sort of told me about... this game called "Cho Aniki." She brought it up while using a homonym of the Japanese pronunciation of Joe's name-- and then the three of them (including Cheuk) burst out in conversation, while I was pleading to be let in on the circle. Turns out it's an SNES game that takes a whole new look at fighting characters and their... personas, shall we say. But why let me spoil the fun? Go see for yourself.

Tomorrow I have school at 12:40pm, and it's only 3rd period (gah) and 6th period (TAing...) Koski might even let me go early, but what's the point in that, when I have my Media Academy at 3:30-- we're probably doing more Flash. *yawn* Sorry, not that interesting to me. I want to get back to work on the webpage, and figure out what the heck is wrong with my floating frameset! I don't know why the main page's scrollbar is still there; I don't know why there's that dinky little finger-sized piece of space at the bottom of the floating frame preventing it from being only ONE scrollbar on the whole page! GAH!!! Tasukete!!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention-- when I was on my way to the 28 stop today, I caught sight of this Toyota MR2... it was white and kinda beat up looking, but what fascinated me was that it was part of a TEAM-- Team Assassinato. Who knows, maybe it's just a dorky decal, but that'd still be cool if there was an honest to god team in my neighborhood. ^_^

Well, my stomach still kinda hurts... but hey, I can actually sleep in tomorrow, wake up, and STILL have two hours before needing to go to school. While I may not make French Toast (too much effort for just myself. Besides, I'm outta table syrup), I probably will work on some fics more. I was working on "A Christmas to Remember," my Inuyasha holiday fic, but I need help with Part 3... I don't know where to go. Blah. Okay, but I'm going now, becuase the icky feeling has come back.

The end of a long week

How sad, the HSEE schedule ends today. It's 2:30 and I still have another hour before my class (Media Academy) starts. I don't know when I get out of 6th (it can't be 3:15... can it?) but I think I'll go to Subway or something for lunch to go and bring it here for my class. Better than waiting another two hours, getting tired, and then not being in the mood to eat out when I need to go home. If anything, money would be better spent on laundry... but I'm hungry, and Mom still hasn't replaced the wheels on the cart. I need a car. A working one that isn't the size of a yacht. Does anyone need Buick 86 parts?

Turns out I got a 21/30 on my math test-- I flubbed up on that 2nd problem (like I said I did) but I don't know just WHAT I did wrong, since someone still has to take the test tomorrow... and then on Monday we'll probably get our results back. I'm not looking forward to waking up at 7:30 in the morning tomorrow, and doubtless NOT getting any sleep because of the Playathon. I hope Rochelle's in it, because a) I need someone to help me with my hair and makeup for Saturday; b) I'd be awfully lonely otherwise... I'm not THAT great friends with Alicia or Eddie, and those are about the only other two people in the Advanced Choirs that I know that I actually talk to from time to time. @_@; I don't even know if THEY'RE going!

I'm catching up on NBoR, reading all the Riptide threads and such. I was trying to find a thread Will had about 'the perfect arcade' and suggestions for games and the like, but I can't find it for the life of me. Usually, when I check NBoR, I usually only visit a few categories, and maybe post in about 3/4 of them, if that. By the time I find something to reply to, it's been locked, said already, or has pages after pages of replies to it already. Blah, this is what I get for not being a morning-surfer like Will.

In any case, here's my thoughts on the whole matter:

PRICE INCREASE - yeah, I'm all for a price increase, and admittedly, Metreon's prices do turn me off from playing there... I rarely play Initial D or DDR there, not just because of the prices-- but because THEIR high prices don't do squat for improving the quality of the games. Truthfully, I have no reason to go to Metreon aside from it being an easily-accessible spot for a lot of people. Having an RTA price increase -if even a quarter- is actually a good idea. As many people have said, tourists probably won't care-- they'll pump coin after coin into the machines to have fun, regardless of whether they fail or not. This brings me to my next topic...

DIFFICULTY - I am one of those notorious "not as good as everyone else" people. I'm not "new" to DDR, but I would be highly discouraged if the difficulty on my favorite songs was upped by so much that I'd be tripping over my own two feet (moreso than I already do, that is). For tourists, they'll pick beginner mode if they've never played DDR before, but most -as I've noticed it- don't understand that concept, and pick Standard, thinking it's normal, and thinking 'Normal' is easy... when it's not. Upping the difficulty could do one of two things to the tourist industry:
1) cause less people to play because they find it more difficult to "win," and therefore less fun, a waste of their money
2) cause people to become MORE determined to play and kick the damn machine's ass, as they've seen the "really good people" do.

The problem with all this becomes-- who plays more -us or tourists? Be honest, even on slow days, pier 39 and RTA is open to tourists-- people we don't see flooding the arcade when we show up afterschool or on Friday nights. Just yesterday I saw two teenage tourists pumping 12 tokens into the machine, thinking that was the cost for two players. Just think what adults "fascinated" by watching teenagers -good players- would do. So keep the difficulty the same, is what I say. It pleases everyone:
1) beginners and those who aren't "as good" don't lose faith
2) experts don't have to worry about failing songs they previously could AA
3) tourists, whether confused or not, still end up pumping money into the machine

And so we're all happy. I know some people might want the difficulty up because it speeds the lines up or because they're bored of DDR... but how many people have played EVERY SINGLE SONG on DDR? That's what I'd call a true challenge. Not to mention the fact that not everyone observes a card line, so even if someone fails, that doesn't mean they're going to be getting off the stage anytime soon. Even people with cramps and sweat turning their shirts into wet rags keep playing. So... yeah.

CARD/COIN SYSTEM - I *hate* the card system at the Metreon. The only reason I tolerate it for initial D is because it saves my data, but, like Met cards, there's still the chance of credits being sucked off it, of the card getting demagnetized and therefore wasted, or confused with dead cards that people use as placeholders. Cards get stolen, fall through cracks... even with Initial D, it's an unsafe system. If anything, I like the idea of using quarters. Tourists often get angry when they can't redeem their extra tokens for cash, so by having change-only machines, they can keep pumping those dollars in, and not complain about having leftover coins... because they can spend them elsewhere. Doing this will also solve the issue of MGL, SVGL, and other golfland tokens, because, due to their thickness and diameter, such tokens would be rejected. It would also make playing $1+ games easier, especially if we had dollar-readers. =D

One thing I miss though, is the whole raffle thing we used to have on Bemani Nights, where we could win tokens. That always brightened someone's night, and it gave people a reason to keep coming back and either spending tokens or trying to win the raffle. At first, I didn't enter because I thought it was like a DDR tourney and you had to play-to-win, but I actually won 3rd place once, and that made me very happy! I've noticed that many of the golflands have special daily offers, and sometimes for birthday parties too. I think the idea of an RTA birthday is fantastic... and while my birthday is the first day of Spring Break (and therefore I can't ask for a private party, sniff sniff... I also haven't been around as long as Will and prolly don't deserve it half as much...) I'd do it too if I had that kind of option.

There might have been more I wanted to say... but now I'm back from my tardy run to Subway, and I'm distracted between eating and messing with Flash. I'll update later. =D

I'd take more quizzes, like I saw Judy do, but QuizDiva is "porn" here at school...

Ten Things I miss...

1] My sister- and my one chance at someday being "Auntie Mer"
2] Going to the library every weekend
3] Having money to spend on the people I care about
4] That outgoing part of myself that would allow me to talk to anyone, regardless of our past
5] Starting what I finish
6] Not having to worry about college or jobs or calgrants
7] Going to LA for Thanksgiving and Passover JUST because I could, as opposed to worrying about who'd be there, what'd they'd say to me, and what'd they'd think of me
8] Going on vacation with my mom (and my sister) and having a blast
9] Sizzler. Gawd, I love breaded shrimp.
10] Going ice skating every winter, checking out the hotel, and going shopping with my friends... singing carols and drinking cocoa at my house

Nine Things I hate...
1] Being alone
2] Dishonest people
3] People who don't know when to shut up, even though they're about to say something that will undoubtedly hurt your feelings
4] People that never say what they feel, and leave you hanging, feeling guilty and upset
5] Math
6] Show-offs
7] Peas, Fish, and Artichoke Hearts on pizza
8] Having asthma
9] Not passing my classes

Eight Things I love...
1] My friends
2] [Most of] my family
3] Shopping -for me or for others
4] Riptide Arcade
5] Anime and Manga
6] Having fun
7] Passing notes
8] Reading/Writing

Seven things I remember the most...
1] July 20th, 1996
2] Kingdom Hearts Fanday, 2K2
3] Getting physically abused by someone I thought loved me*
4] Friendships that I let fall through
5] Stupid things I held grudges over
6] A whole bunch of teachers just coming up to me in the hall and telling me how fantastic the paper was
7] My first review for my first fanfiction, "Only 16."

Six things I want to do eventually...
1] Graduate!!!!
2] Get my ass to SFSU, majoring in Journalism
3] Max Combo/PA "Break Down"
4] Get away from living with my mom... live with friends or something
5] Travel-- to NYC, to Tokyo...
6] Get a paycheck every month =)

Five songs I can hear over and over...
1] "My Will" - Name
2] "Destiny" - Akemi Satou
3] "Em More" - Kuwashima Houko
4] "18 Wheeler" - Pink
5] "Automatic" Johnny Vicious remix - Utada Hikaru

Four Words that describe me...
1] Creative
2] Independent
3] Strange
4] Loyal

Three things I want to change...
1] Where I get money from
2] My hair
3] My grades

Two people I want to disappear...
1] C.G. - even though I haven't seen him in hella long...
2] My dad

One thing I want...
1] To live happily ever after =)

*Probably not who you think. If you must know and think I can trust you, ask me when we're alone. If I don't want to tell you, accept it.


Don't you ever get tired of being right? You are
Lisa!


Which Resident of Springfield Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Ugh... QuizDiva, once again, is sick, but has good quizzes.

( this is so appropriate )

( now this was unexpected... )

( take that, pam lee! )

Okay, here's where I take a break from the fun quizzes to insert some "nice, depressing news." Last minute newsflash: Will doesn't want me to come to the dance; Amber thought it was next week, not to mention her principal's being an ass... so she's not coming. Damnit, I'm more sad than angry, because I was really looking forward to it. I got an outfit together, I asked my mom for money, I planned it as something fun to do after the Playathon (which I don't look forward to as being fun), and as something to remember doing, since I hate most of my own school's dances. Will's still going of course, but me? No... doesn't want me to come because I'd be the only non-Gal friend of his there. Just great. I'm going off to cry now, while pretending I'm still enjoying myself taking these stupid quizzes.

( and here i thought normal was a good thing )

( click if you feel like being exposed )

*sigh* I'm done with all this madness. Now I'm depressed and have nothing to look forward to. I might as well cross that goal on my board off: 'go to a high school dance and have fun!' fat chance. What a wonderful world this is. I hate it when my hopes ride on someone else. Pointless.