Greetings from San Francisco... again!

( Ganked from the Scribbler )

Tomollo: museum-hopping. de Young and Asian Art. Meet with staplerx and Onii-chan :D
Wednesday: Wash house!
Thursday (possibly thing with the guys + IHOP?), Friday (Mom-day), Saturday (Forgot, Semester at Sea! All day-ish), Sunday (see Dad? *shrug* Dunno. Need to call him.): no plans! Call me.

Should I still go to LJ's headquarters, or do you think they'll all be busy cleaning up after ST07 that they'll be running around like chickens goats with their heads cut off?

Also, got CS3 Design Premium from Erin yesterday-- I went to her classmate's house in Westwood and helped them with Sim City 4 (for an Urban Planning class, how crazy cool is that?) which was tougher than any of us thought. Fun, but tiring after 12 hours, sitting on wooden chairs with no cushions.

Anyway, CS3 is FABULOUS! I have had NO rendering problems with my longest chapters of WDKY, and there are TONS of great tutorials on the bonus disc that came with it. Plus, all kinds of plug-ins and stock photos on the content disc, and because I was a good girl and bought + registered it, I can get MORE goodies from Adobe. Like fonts. Ooh, fonts. Maybe even the elusive Myriad Pro that was SUPPOSED to come with CS2? Also, it looks like ImageReady has been combined into Photoshop... it looks that way even for the regular Photoshop, not just Photoshop Extended. Ah, ImageReady... RIP!

The only thing that's bothering me so far is how my old extensions aren't compatible; I had the Calendar Maker, Quick Link generator, and Quick Gallery maker for Dreamweaver. For Photoshop, I don't think I had many filters or whatnot (and if I did, they're gone now... I keep all my brushes, gradients, textures, and patterns in other folders, though). And because CS3 is so NEW, there aren't a ton of freeware extensions out yet. Blaaah. Anyone know where to find any, besides the good old Adobe Exchange?

Then again, maybe not

Ah, what a day. I met up with staplerx and ohsupervinchan at the latter's house (I was a surprise guest star! Hehe) and we hung around a bit before heading to the Asian Art Museum for the Osamu Tezuka exhibit. Admittedly, I learned a lot about him when I was in Japan (in my Pop Culture class), but you really get an appreciation for the contributions he made to Japanese anime and manga (and society as a whole, if you think about the stories behind his manga, and the ways he chose to animate them) by going to the exhibit. We easily spent more hours than I would have thought there, but it was fun. Viz even sponsored a Manga Lounge full of all kinds of manga and drawing materials-- though one girl caught my ire because not only did she hog up the two easels, but she seemed to miss the point behind "sharing your manga" and "contributing to the world of manga" by doing a crappy elf with mainly her pimped website/mySpace, etc. addresses filling up half the side. It wasn't even that good, and she didn't even bother to take the pictures off the easels when she was done, to give other people a chance. Hello, this isn't your museum! Plus she was writing ~Aishiteru <3~ all over her posters like it was some sort of signature phrase. HELLO, people, "Aishiteru" is not some cutesy little phrase that you just toss around. Japanese people take that very seriously, much like people at airports don't take jokes about bombs lightly.

Anyway. Since it was already 4pm by the time we got out, I decided to nix the Vivienne Westwood/de Young museum idea (seeing a fashion book of her stuff at J-town also helped me of that... of all the pics, only 2 were ones I recognized from Nana, and even though there might be more at the exhibit, maybe VW's clothes aren't as "all that" as I thought). Vince dropped Jimbo and I off at J-town; we went to the bookstore (managed to get the June issue of Shonen Jump-- teh yay! But can anyone REALLY explain to me why Priest Seto had the change of heart re: Kisara? In the first act when she appeared, he seemed to be pretty ruthless in getting her spirit, even if it would mean her death. Akunadin/Akhenaden was the one who (before Zork possessed him) seemed shocked by that. But when Zork possessed Akunadin, all of a sudden Seto's the one who wants her to run! WTF, mates?). We then went to a tasty corner sushi shop beginning with an S, across the street from the Peace Plaza. San... something or other? Sapp... I don't know. It wasn't Sanpopo and it wasn't Sapporo, though.

It was all surprisingly good (especially the beef!) and I even had myself some Kappa rolls! :D Mm, cucumbers. And avocado too, I think. After that, Jimbo and I (for lack of a better idea) headed downtown to check out the new mall; we stopped at this boutique-type eatery in the new mall segment called Cocola that had crappy crème brûlée (well, the crust was crappy and thick/harder than it should have been, and WAY too sweet), and Jimbo got a mango mousse that he said was nasty. So, word to the wise, whether you be S.F. natives, nearby-ers, or visitors-- don't go there! They suck.

We lounged around for a bit more; I tried up some overpriced hair clips at a kiosk in the middle somewhere, in a vain attempt to replace the nice green one I'd gotten at H&M ages ago (which I lost at Narita Airport when I was going from Japan to Hong Kong). Turns out the Discovery Store (all across the country) is closing, so I grabbed a lavender-and-rice aromatherapy massage pack, which I plan to use before I go to bed tonight. I think I was able to resist so many of the "nice" things I saw in that segment of the new mall (which I'd been looking forward to exploring for some time) because it's so snotty and overpriced. All those stores I love to hate, like on Santa Monica's 3rd St. Promenade-- places like Zara, Swarovski, jewelry retailers I've never heard of, etc. etc. Bleh! The only stores I like in there are Borders (duh) and H&M. :(

We finally left after 9pm, and I got back home here at 10ish... my dinner was Lucky Charms, because Mom and Gary have yet to go shopping, and Mom asked me to get milk. So Jimbo and I went to Walgreens before getting on the bus, and we saw a guy get nailed for shoplifting! Oooh, bad bad! And I think we saw the same guy a bit later waiting at the same bus stop as us! WTF?!

Maybe tomorrow I'll go to Stonestown with Jimbo again to see Christal... perhaps after I hit up Wash and the ROTC. *smirk* Thursday I might return to the AAM for a Hip Hop and manga event/lecture (I think?) and a late-night IHOP run, like the good ol' days. :D Jimbo owes me $7 anyway, might as well spend it on pancakes. At some point, I have to get together with the girls and hopefully Dad; on Saturday I'll be going to the Semester at Sea boat with mom... and Friday Mom took off, and she wants me to work on the computers all that day. Busy, busy, busy... but at least I have CS3! :D

ETA: Yesterday when I got here, I finally got a call back from the people at Kaiser Dermatology in Woodland Hills... results of the biopsy: negative. Benign mole. I should be relieved, but after all that drama, it was kind of anti-climactic. And with all the other odd spots on me, is it worth it getting them biopsied (read: carved off) just to have them tested and have to do all that call-tagging again? The weird one on my side (the results I got were from that one) now looks 5x bigger and uglier because of the scar... to have that on my back, my thigh, and who knows where else is not very appealing. But I guess it paid to at least be concerned.