azurite | The Days Before The Even (Reply)

I'm almost done with His Dark Materials, the trilogy by Philip Pullman including "The Golden Compass," "The Subtle Knife," and "The Amber Spyglass." I do think they read together better as an omnibus-- or at least 2 and 3 do, because the ending of 1 was "okay," while 2 just sort of... well, "cut off," pun not intended.

I've got a ton of other books to read at some point, many of them purchases from when I was in San Francisco, including Candace Bushnell's Lipstick Jungle, The Thirteenth Tale, the second In Death book, "Glory In Death," "The Historian," the rest of the "Book of the Dead," Susan Issac's "Long Time No See" (at Baba's recommendation), and "Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her," which I'm finding is a very fun, informative read on one of my favorite childhood heroines.

Today at Borders, I also picked up a bunch of manga (another one of those 5-for-4 sales), though I'm still holding off on Fullmetal Alchemist and its associated novels, since I want to wait for the whole series to be finished. Besides, I technically don't have enough bookshelf space for what I have... it's kind of embarrassing (but cool! Because who doesn't want to have their own personal library? Mine is killer! :D). I also picked up "Codebreaker," about -what else?- codes and ciphers and their history. That purchase was, of course, inspired by seeing "National Treasure: Book of Secrets." I actually love puzzles (logic puzzles are my favorite-- I'm not much one for crosswords, though I am a little good at Sudoku), and I think that's sort of come out in WDKY's Téa, because I've had her solve her father's riddles in order to unravel a family mystery (and save Seto on the side, of course). In thinking about the future of WDKY, I'm thinking, if Téa didn't become a dancer, what would she be? There could be any number of reasons why she might not dance, and I thought she might end up as a cryptanalyst or similar. It'd be a fun way of having her one-up Kaiba in many ways-- genius of one area vs. genius of... well, Kaiba's sort of an all-around guy, but hey! :D

Speaking of fanfiction, I've started revisions on an old Sailor Moon fic of mine, "Hogosha no Kokoro," or HnK for short. Originally, the title was SUPPOSED to translate to "Guardian of the Heart," but that was back before I fully understood Japanese and the function (and positioning) of noun modifiers. So technically, it translates to "Guardian's Heart," or "Heart of [the] Guardian," but I guess that's okay, too, even though the meaning is a bit different from what I intended. In any case, I explain the mixup in my Author's Notes, and add "Guardian of the Heart," as the story's subtitle. I figure I could change it to what it was meant to be (Kokoro no Hogosha), but that doesn't have quite the same ring to it, and besides, if I were to abbreviate it the way I do for my other fics (like WDKY), it would be GotH. o_o Yeah, I have a "Goth" story. Great.

Anyway, I'm not sure why I picked this one over any of my other SM fics-- heck knows they all need revising, but HnK has great possibilities as an AR Silver Millennium Fic. No, I'm not going to try and make it fit with the current theme of

sm_monthly (which I've almost consistently had ideas for, but never gotten around to actually writing/posting).

Today I went shopping with Baba and Joyce, who came with Neal to visit for the day. I still didn't find my dream pea-coat (I hate being petite sometimes; it makes stylish clothing impossible to find in my size; what is in my size tends to be hideous... though those are just my standards), but I did get a suede-ish jacket with a fuzzy collar, two new turtlenecks in crimson and beige, and a new pair of black slacks, which I can never have enough of. I didn't use my Macy*s gift cards because of some lame exception with using my Macy*s card alongside the coupons I got from Dad... so I'll probably save the gift cards for some Clinique goodness.

There's still more to get (ack, shopaholic!), but it's not NECESSARY... I mean, there's no rush for a turbo PS2 controller, a USB controller for my Mac, Mac games, etc.... Besides, I have to pay bills-- "upgrading" my phone costs me more than I like. And I might end up killing my T-Mobile hotspot usage, because really, how often am I at Borders (with my laptop), Starbucks, or an airport with coverage? It's a waste of $20/month, it seems.

It'd be great if all the money-making schemes that come in the mail were legit. I got one today about another Mystery Shopping program. It's always sounded pretty cool to me, but I've never actually done it, mainly because all the offers I get are nowhere near where I live (like, seriously? How the hell am I going to go shopping in COLORADO!?). And I'm predisposed to thinking any program that makes you pay upfront for some sort of "kit" or "set" are scams. And I've already gotten scammed enough for one lifetime, thanks. According to the Federal Trade Commission, real mystery shopping never costs you any money in application fees! I wonder if that includes things like kits to join or whatnot. It seems like it should.

As for Washington... Chase (where I applied for the student loan to pay for the WII) did email me saying they had to get some sort of certification (probably of my legit student status) from CSUN. They asked for it on 12/18. Depending on the time of day, I can understand it not being faxed (or whatever) back the same day... but the campus was open for 3 days AFTER that. If there was some sort of miscommunication between Chase and CSUN, I feel I should have been contacted by one or the other of them... and if there was something else, like a different disbursement date or whatever, I should still have been notified. As it stands, I haven't gotten any check yet, and January is only getting closer. Chris from Take XX (the New Student Orientation leaders group) called earlier this week and was supposed to call me back yesterday, but he might have been busy. Even if he doesn't call me back until after New Year's (the final FINAL deadline), I think I've made up my mind-- I'm probably not going to Washington. If he gets back to me, I want to make clear I'm still interested in being part of Take XX. It sucks that WII didn't work out (as of right now), but... it's like I said with the mystery shopping, it really shouldn't have to cost (that much) money. Maybe some other time.

The visit with Scott was nice, too-- he had a bit of a cold, but he didn't let it get him down too badly. We saw NT2, which was fun, and had lunch at TGI Fridays (their Zen Chicken Potstickers are yummy). He also gave me those "Maid In Tokyo" cookies I saw back at Comiket ages ago, along with a cute yawning-cat pin and an Akio Watanabe calendar. I think I have... er, 4, maybe 5 calendars now? Eheh. One of them is the "Egyptology" calendar (part of that Candlewick series that also includes "Dragonology" and "Wizardology), which I finally succumbed to and bought today-- I wonder what happened to the fictional Emily Sands!? *grin* You know me, I don't like leaving questions unanswered... but of course, with me, the answers may not see the light of ~~day~~ the Internet for a very long time...

I'm also finally going to get a bunch of OTHER things done, like:
* Get Epiphany live, even if it only has old fics on there
* Make some more skins for the holidays for Dragonfayth
* Make a manga wishlist, which might include novelizations or series fiction, like SB Fiction
* Make an icon wishlist, because even with 230+ slots, there's still a few fandoms that I enjoy from time to time which are sorely under-represented, like the currently-playing-on-my-playlist Fushigi Yuugi.

Anyway, back to reading!