MILES to GO || before I sleep

I don't want to jinx things, but my computer problems might somehow have been mysteriously solved.

I did the security update from Apple earlier, along with a whole host of updates from Adobe. I've been going through all my apps to see which ones produce the infamously aggravating SIGTRAP error (or variations of it), but NOTHING has been crashing.

Not even Firefox, which used to take 3-4 tries just to boot, and it never said a peep when it crashed! Photoshop is staying open, with files open. I've had no problems with any other CS4 product (except Acrobat, because Acrobat is a whiny brat that doesn't like my serial number even though I got it from Adobe!), and other programs that crashed or acted weird are now being...fine.

There's Big Fish/Play First Games' "Gotcha! Celebrity Secrets" game that I wanted to try out. It previously tried to load but then crashed without a word. All of a sudden, it worked! I enjoyed 60 horribly bad-in-a-good-way minutes of playing "Where's Waldo" in a cartoon celebrity world, pretending I was a paparazzi blogger.

There's TextWrangler, which updated but then refused to let me update the command keys. Then I did, and...it works fine! No insta-crash like before!

Even Corel Painter 11, which would occasionally crash and occasionally work, now seems to be working fine, even displaying a start-up dialog box that I've never seen before!

I want to do a battery of tests on my most-frequently used apps and ditch apps I don't really use that often while I'm at it. If the errors still come up, I might want to stick to the Erase & Install option just for the sake of having a "fresh" start on the laptop, but if not, I can always cancel my appointment.... Of course, I should probably do this tomorrow and sleep now, because being awake at this hour is really quite bad for my internal clock. Or so people tell me. *flaps her bat wings*

*fingers crossed* I'd much rather go to In-N-Out Burger tomorrow than a crowded Apple Store to get my precious laptop wiped (for no reason???).

So, I'm chilling here at SFO (San Francisco International Airport, for those that don't speak airport code). I shelled out $7.99 for a T-Mobile Hotspot Day Pass, because even though I don't visit airports (or Starbucks, or even Borders) quite often enough to get a Hotspot account/shell out $40 a month, sitting here for 3 hours nursing a Coca-Cola and reading the August issue of Wired just doesn't cut it for me. I need to be connected, which is kind of sad. I sort of miss my childhood. :P

( Tech jargon )

( More win and OSM )

I'm actually somewhat looking forward to going home, if just to sleep on my own bed (though the AeroBed Mom got was pretty damn comfortable, no matter what Eva said about it being too soft) and have steady Wi-Fi in all my usual haunts. Also, MAIL! And money. And work for a week, until I have to get my butt to DC. And in-between all that, family visits and the Orange County Fair. Should be fun.

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson's "Beat It" is stuck in my head, along with a plotbunny for a multichapter Sailor Moon fic I meant to write for sm_monthly and never got around to. I mean really, ANOTHER multichapter? I wish I could churn stuff out as fast as moodwriter, with her "Hate, Prejudice and Secret Intentions" (I think I got that title right) Dramione fic that I've been reading lately. Good stuff! I've also got to catch up on Stargirl's "Tsuki no Namida," an AR of the Silver Millennium, since the latest chapter is up for critiquing on one of the_circlet communities. I'm not a big fan of walking into a long-ish multi-chapter fic blind, so I'll start with the beginning and go from there. So far, it's got an interesting premise but some grammar issues that irk me. But hey, SAILOR MOON FIC. I ought to get writing!

So, I haven't updated in what seems like ages (that HSM post doesn't count, because I'd written that more than a week ago and just saved it, hoping for a time when I COULD post it) because The Powers That Be were conspiring against me or something, and Murphy's law was in full effect-- all that jazz. So I decided to start doing something about it.

( Keyboard Mayhem! )

( Michael Moore is hard to find )

( A little lost memory card and some movies )

( Noconnectlink )

( An HTC Dream G1 deferred )

( MELTING, MELTING! and other problems )

( Fics that like to f*ck with your brain )

And that, as they say, is that. For now, anyway.

Wow, it's been a while, huh? I guess my excuse is just that I've been busy with work: pulling around 40 hours a week (though last week I had only 28, which SUCKS when it comes to paying the damn rent) and then dealing with slowness on the computer.

In fact, I finally shelled out a load of money to get my internal hard drive on my MacBook Pro upgraded to a 320 GB. Or maybe it's a 300 GB, because OS X can only see 297 GB of that as my drive's capacity. I know that you never really get the full usage out of any given HD, but 20+ GB seems a bit excessive to me. Anyone?

With my laptop out of commission due to an Apple Tune-Up (all the way in Newport Beach, because I'm very occasionally dumb and figure that it's better to make an appointment with a store many miles and 2 hours -by bus- away rather than use my ProCare card to go on stand-by at a store that's much closer) and then for the upgrade, I spent a ton of time playing Kingdom Hearts. I'm at the point where I have to defeat Maleficent's dragon-form, but she thrashed me pretty badly once already, so I want to level up a bit more (my characters are mostly in their mid-40s, level-wise), upgrade my Aero spell, and so on.

Problem? I can't seem to beat Herc in the Hercules Cup tournament. Sometimes I can't even get to him, because every now and again, Cloud's a bitch and I can't beat him, either. This does not bode well, as I need to beat Hercules to get the ability to use Yellow Trinity marks, so I can return to Neverland, upgrade my Aero spell to Aerora, free the poor little puppies, and possibly beat Phantom (assuming he appears prior to Hollow Bastion being sealed) to level up before kicking Maleficent's dragon rear. Anyone have any tips for beating Herc, other than the usual: throw barrels at him from close range to make him lose his invulnerability, jump/dodge roll/glide a lot to evade his attacks, and have a LOT of items on hand, since you have to fight him alone, without Donald or Goofy?

So, while I'm avoiding playing the game because "lather, rinse, repeat" is never fun when it comes to playing one boss/tournament over and over again, I've been trying to clean out my mailboxes. I made the switch from Thunderbird to Mail 3, since I want more integration with OS X, and I don't like the Lightning add-on. I've opted to switch from POP3 (downloading all my emails) to IMAP (leaving all my emails on the server, and having the same folder structure wherever I am; this also means that if I delete something, it's GONE FOR GOOD), but now I need to figure out how to sort out all those thousands of emails that are already on my computer. It seems as though the best case scenario is to sort through them, somehow, and then for whatever ones I really do want/need, move them to IMAP so I can access them from anywhere, whether or not I'm on my laptop.

And for those of you that know me in IRL, sorting computer junk is just as hard, if not harder, than sorting real-life junk. Having a messy room most certainly equates to having a messy mailbox, except I try and establish rules/filters to somewhat sort things out...

I might post an F'Locked entry a bit later about work and people-drama, but for right now, that's it. I'm alive, okay (well, broke, but that's not exactly surprising), and hopefully going to Northridge tonight. :}

OH, and I MIGHT BE GOING TO A SARAH BRIGHTMAN CONCERT IN DECEMBER. :D :D :D :D

Apple finally released the long-awaited and very-much-needed 10.5.2 update to Leopard, the newest "big kitty" in Apple's line of OS X operating systems.

The only problem is, there are STILL problems. Well, it's probably impossible for any given update, on any given OS, to solve ALL the reported problems with the previous version of said operating system, but I was hoping that at least supposedly-dinky things (especially those things that had been FINE in Tiger, 10.4.x) would get resolved in Leopard.

The problems I've been experiencing with my MacBook Pro (2.2 GHz, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB HD) include:

* Problems syncing my Motorola RAZR v3re using iSync. For some reason it keeps syncing OLD information that is not on my iCal (e.g. last semester's schedule). I'm not sure if iSync is interfering with something in the phone itself, and the phone is copying over old data (e.g. from last year), but it's really annoying not to have my alarms on my phone. I've already tried to do this, and it's STILL fucked up. In 10.5.1, I already tried deleting the device from iSync, but it's done no good. If there's a way to reset calendar data on the V3re, I don't know what it is... I don't have the manual(s) on me, and the on-phone browser help... DOESN'T help. Not surprising, frankly, but it pisses me off more because this is A NEW PHONE.

* Problems creating PDFs from Word documents (and presumably other programs); the Adobe 8.0 PDF printer simply "couldn't be located" and the only work-around I found was something that spit out the PDF but kept the PDF printer in a perpetual "paused" state.

* I have an HP 1210xi PSC (All-in-One) that I bought with my original MacBook Pro two years ago. Two years isn't that old for a printer (I feel), but HP seems to think it is, and has "no plans to release a fully-featured driver for Leopard." Fully-featured meaning I can actually DO what I paid for the printer-- printing, scanning and copying! Supposedly I can print, but from my experience, it's only with the printer directly connected into USB, not via Bonjour (using my AirPort Extreme Base Station). I can't test whether or not 10.5.2 fixed this problems; Apple says they released more drivers for compatibility with this very issue, though; they just didn't specify which drivers.

* Firefox would "hang" (not respond, crash, whatever you like to call it) a lot more in Leopard than in Tiger. Of course, Firefox has its own updates, and recently updated to 2.0.0.12, so it's entirely possible that the hangs are program-specific and not related to 10.5.x at all... but I doubt it, because I've had no such problems on any PC I've used (and I use Firefox all the time at work), and not on older Macs (like the iMac at work which uses 10.4 or 10.3 or something. In any case, it still has Sherlock). Plus, forum threads I found about the issue mention something about Leopard incompatibility with certain DNS servers...? It sounds bizarre to me.

* Dashboard has been a right BITCH since I updated-- sometimes I have widgets that won't go away, even when I click the X in the corner in Manage Widgets mode, and sometimes I have widgets that never "update" (e.g. weather, Apple Store updates, etc.) Very annoying. Sometimes a good ol' fashioned restart helps... but I'm always afraid it'll happen again during a period when I really need my widgets. People came up with odd solutions, like using the Leopard install disc to "Archive & Install," while others did some sort of Terminal command. A restart did the trick for me, so I hope 10.5.2 means I won't have to worry about those other potential solutions-- I don't want the problem to be an issue anymore. So far, so good... I've gone into Dashboard a few times and not had any issues.

* Finally, since I couldn't get my phone to work with iSync, I tried my iPod-- I didn't know it had Calendar, Address Book, etc. capability until I started playing around with iTunes one day. But it seems to have the same problem as my phone, grabbing dates that frankly ARE NOT in iCal. To make matters worse, when the alarm goes off, the iPod will stay ON, which means my battery drains a lot sooner. I'd like ONE device or another to just WORK with iSync, PLEASE? I'll have to test this when I get home, since I don't have my iPod cable with me. Maybe iPods ought to be able to sync with Bluetooth?

But I guess in the long run, all of this is stuff I was never able to do with any PC I ever owned or use, and compared to the problems I see every day in the Walk-In Center with spyware, viruses, and other B.S., the Mac is still a godsend. So for all my bitching and ranting, I still love my Mac. :)

Well, my nose isn't so stuffy and/or runny anymore, but I do have a cough, which sucks. Nothing will make people avoid you more than you hacking everywhere. At least it's not phlegmy or anything...

Today I got to work a bit early and my "usual" desk was occupied, so I decided to switch-- this area isn't so bad. Still too brightly lit, but at least there's no super-cold air conditioner above my head. I had to spend a few minutes setting everything up the way I like (Quick Launch on my taskbar, certain extensions for Firefox 2.0.0.6), and it occurred to me I might never have shared my favorite extensions. I won't link to them, since they're so easy to find, but I'll give you the proper names, a brief run-through on what they do, and why I like them. Feel free to add your own suggestions!

( Extend! )

I didn't get my laptop yesterday per se... they didn't have any 15" anti-glare MBP's in stock, so I ordered it online. I figured it was a better solution than waiting for an unknown number of days for their next shipment. I got the standard MBP, but I got suckered into getting .Mac (dqbunny, didn't you used to have that? Was it any good? Can I return it if it ends up being a bad idea...?) I got iLife and iWorks, too, of course, and when I actually GET the thing I'll buy a shell and possibly One-to-One and/or ProCare.

Oh, and I got a black 30GB iPod engraved. I could have gotten the 80GB, but... it hit too close to my max budget, what with the tax. Besides, even if I do start to download movies or TV episodes, I'd rather watch them on a widescreen TV or something-- not on a mini iPod. Music videos, sure... full-length anything? Not so much.

Anywho, got more of my PCH packages (honey roasted mixed nuts and collapsible leather photo boxes!), expecting all of my textbooks (gotta check Half!), and have to run to the walk-in center now. Buh-bye!

Hmm, some quick updates:

-Working steadfastly on WikiFic. Thanks to Platonides over at the wikimedia-l, I got the Infoboxes working, but I still need to grab a BOATLOAD of templates from Wikipedia to get everything looking nice-- for example, a lot of flag-related graphics and templates. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated-- it's really just a lot of C&Ping. You do need to have a WikiFic account though, but it takes all of 5 minutes to sign up and get started.

-Working on creating "Ultimate Armor" for my party in FFX, and I'm discovering few people think Break HP or MP limits are useful at all-- which means the armor I already created for Auron and I think Rikku is fairly useless. I've never gotten to the point where I actually fight SIN (I keep dying whenever I fight those Behemoth-type monsters inside Sin, as I recall from the last time I got this far, on my old memory card which is now lost to the ages), so I hope that by capturing more monsters and leveling up (to get the items I need for the Ultimate Armor), I'll be able to survive Sin.

-iWork and iLife have both been updated to '08! That better mean when I get my new laptop, those are installed... since I don't know what I'm going to do with my old laptop (this one), I'm not sure if I should get the family pack ($20 more) of either version yet. I know 5 Macs, but the question is, should I really give "free" iLife and iWorks '08 if I do spend the extra $40 on the two Family versions of the pack?
Here are the nominees:
(1) Mine
(2) Mine 2, possibly to be given to Grandpa, sold to Mom, or sold for parts
(3) Erin's
(4) the iMac at work in the Walk-In Center (which is a bit old)
(5) Shawn's

Speaking of the boyfriend, he's fabulous- complimentary, has a wonderful sense of humor, doesn't mind games (I got him to play both Bubble Bobble and Scrabble tonight-- hah!), and we both vented about work to each other without any awkwardness or hard feelings. He's also super-thoughtful, though I can't really say how. ^_~

I really ought to be getting to sleep now though... for one, my tooth has been hurting pretty bad since this morning or so (I somehow doubt it's mental, no matter how much I wish it were), and the Orajel I got at Rite Aid earlier is totally numbing the right side of my face. I also have to walk to school tomorrow since Baba & Grandpa have a doctor's appointment (I hope it's not too hot or too gloomy tomorrow morning). Two more weeks and three days till my first surgery... school starting, and who knows what other mayhem!

Damn, almost jinxed myself today. In Japanese class, we had to use the structure for "Even if ~ I won't get mad." I used the sentence "Even if my computer broke, I wouldn't get mad." That's probably a lie, though, as evidenced by what happened about an hour or so ago... I had just finished my spaghetti with mushroom Neapolitan sauce (fresh mushrooms! Mer can kinda-sorta cook!) and was guzzling some water to wash off the pepper that one particular mushroom had all over it. And my hand went this-a-way, and the glass went that-a-way, and before I knew it, water was all over my laptop.

I toweled it off as best I could, shaking all the water out of the keyboard, but within a few minutes, the screen died on me. For some reason that I have yet to figure out, the computer occasionally turns the display off. The computer is still on, and it's not in sleep mode or display off mode; I can still see the faintest of programs on the screen when I tilt the monitor REALLY far back underneath a light. But I can't close anything, or get the screen to light up again. I always have to do a cold-reboot. Luckily this has never happened when I had anything important unsaved-- I make it a point to save often, anyway.

Well, long story short, I freaked out, and the headaches that have been plaguing me for the past few days came back full... which sucked, because I'd had a stomachache earlier too, and I was sort of hoping for the problems to be ENDING. And I've still got a bit of a headache, so I'm considering just turning the heat off (even though it gets FUCKING COLD here in the morning without it on) and then just going to bed after I brush my teeth. I'm becoming more willing to wake up early to do my homework (even though that made me late to class today) rather than do it at night, when feel like it.

There are certain letters I can't type right now, so I'm going to log and hope that the rest of the keys dry and fix themselves by morning.

God, I love my roommates Midori and Kacchin. I've been sick for about two days now, and they've been totally concerned and caring. Kacchin tried to give me some "popular" medicine called Pavolon Gold-- a powdered medicine that tastes terrible, but supposedly kicks whatever cold you have really fast. I've never had a powdered medicine before-- usually I think you mix powders with water to make a hot drink (like TheraFlu), or you mix them in cold water (like AlkaSeltzer). Well this one, you chase with cold water... and even though I'd never done it before, I tried it-- and promptly threw up. I don't even know WHAT I threw up, just that it was bright yellow and vaguely chunky. I felt so sick that I could hardly see.

It doesn't help that my left eye is now puffy if you look close enough, and Visine eyedrops and a hot compress haven't done much. I've not only taken all my regular medications for asthma and allergies (the usual suspects for this sort of thing), but a Claritin from Holly, too. It made me feel better for the few hours I was asleep-- but now I'm sort of hovering between really nauseated and a whole lot better than I was. (Part of me wishes I could say it was pregnancy, but it's totally not. I have no idea why the hell I'm sick, but I know for a fact that it's NOT that.)

And no, I still haven't heard from Skype, so I don't have my number... yet. I did manage to figure out which setting the Network Adapter in Parallels needs to be set up to in order for Windows XP to leech off my Network connection, but I think it's wired in Windows, rather than Wireless (hence the Local Area Connection icon in Network Connections, rather than a wireless one). In any case, I got Windows Updates, but I don't think that helped with the whole USB Composite Device thing. Just googling "USB Composite Device" doesn't seem to help- I need to get the specifics of what's missing or unable to run and what's not. If anyone can help... please do, otherwise I'm going to end up buying Office for the Mac and the iWork suite. (already bought for 53 measly bucks).

Long story short, Tsuchiura for the fireworks competition is out-- which is a right shame, but I'd rather not be out late in a crowded place with no Western toilets when I'm feeling nauseated, puffy-eyed, sleepy, and all around sick and lethargic. Oh well. :P

After another long weekend (and another typhoon), both my face and my sanity are slightly less worse for the wear. However, I should be getting my own personal wireless Internet access in my room by the end of the week, so thank goodness for that. I can only hope that all the firewalls I keep running into are Tokiwa University firewalls, and not Japanese government firewalls (though I doubt it).

I somehow mangled my FFX-2 ILM game file (beyond getting the Enterprise accessory, which I already knew would prevent me from getting a Perfect Game) by getting all the way to Chapter 3 in a matter of hours, and I just recently passed the Sphere Break tournament in Luca. I tried to use my Ultimate Guide to Sphere Break to help me beat Shinra, but it was running incredibly slow on my Windows VM, and I don't know why. I wanted to see if there was a Mac version available, but the original page that the FAQ came from is firewalled, and the Colorado University page where J Covey (or whatever his online alias was) hosted the files (DOS-based scripts) appears to be gone. If anyone can point me in the right direction -for either a Mac-based version of a similar script or a way to fix the slowness of DOS-based scripts in my Windows VM, I'd appreciate it.

I also need not a USB Host Controller (which is something that comes with your USB CHIP, not a particular device's software), but a USB Composite Device thingamabobber. My printer still refuses to run in Windows because of this. If I can't think of something within a few days of getting my own Internet, I'll just buy Office for Mac or iWork for Mac and be done with it. I can't be going to this much trouble just to type documents up on my own damn laptop.

( Yesterday I met up with Mike and his brother Dave in Akihabara. )

I suppose I should check the LJ Portal to see if anyone's got an upcoming birthday, because I might just be tempted to send a present...

I can laugh at the funny on GaijinSmash (thanks Jimbo for the link), but it hurts. As does eating, talking, and anything involving the slightest bit of jaw movement. And I probably shouldn't be here in the International Center right now; I should be heading to the Suzuki Hospital to get checked out and see if I'm going deaf or need my teeth removed. But Maeda-san took my laptop away again, claiming yesterday's technology dude misunderstood the system I have set up. The concept of Networked adapters confuses me too, but once I get NTT, ALL WILL BE WELL (or it damn well better be).

In the meantime, can someone be a saint and email me TTFs of Digital Strip, Wild Words, Anime Ace, and all them other comic-book style fonts? I know I could download them now, but I can't save them to the desktop here and email them to myself to smehow get on my laptop whenever it DOES get hooked up, but if someone emails them to me, I can save them to my Flash drive and transfer them that way. I do still need Matrix Book and Suburban (Bold and Light), but those are paid fonts on my computer back in LA, and I don't think Grandpa will have the slightest clue how to get them off and email them to me, even if I instruct him step by step. -_- If there were another way to get them, I would take advantage of it, but...

Also, does anyone know why ZSNES (my favorite emulator) does not want to work on my prettyful Intel-based Mac? SNES9x does, but I can't open up ROMs from the dialog menu, because the Network drive doesn't show up in the list of places to search, so to open games I have to drag them onto the 9x icon. What a pain in the ass.

And tomorrow I have to be up by 6am so I can go to Tokyo. Yay pictures.

Oh, and THERE IS A TOTAL AZURESHIPPING MOMENT IN YU-GI-OH R VOLUME 3 WHICH I BOUGHT NEW HERE IN JAPAN YAY YAY YAY I AM NOT TEH SHITTING YOU!!!!! Whee. It's short, but oh-so-very WUNDERBAR!

Ugh, who would have thought that a simple taifu (typhoon) could make everything go downhill? Even though my phone (Motorola V3x) is world compatible, in terms of both networks and power, something must have happened after the taifu, because it won't charge anymore. I thought it was just because it was almost fully charged and it didn't WANT to charge any more, but that wasn't it. I tried all the outlets in my room, on my "denki plug" and in the dining room, but to no avail. And my phone is just about dead- without internet, that means no way of contacting anyone, which means DEPRESSED MER!!!!!!!!!!!

I want to get Internet hooked up, but it's much more convoluted than I remembered, and I have to assemble all this paperwork, go to FAX (yuck!) things, and then wait. In the meantime, we have rotten access here at the International Center, and both wireless at the Internet Cafe and the ethernet here are so heavily secured, we don't have the slightest clue how to connect (then again, the other machines and the instructions are in Japanese, so...)

Oh, and *ARGH! HAPPY TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY!!!!* Yeah.

I hate being stressed.

I would have more to update with, but until I get net on MY DAMN LAPTOP, I don't particularly feel like locating the rearranged keyboard characters and trying to type out all that's been going on. It's been okay up until last night when all this electronic brou-ha-ha began. Right now, I just want a good dictionary and some sleep.

...And some Frosties.

Okay, I just woke up from what was probably the second weirdest dream of my life. The thing is, I know I've had other dreams this weekend, but for some lucky reason, I woke up remembering this one.

( Starring Eva, her roommates, a hot guy or two, and Pegasus from Yu-Gi-Oh! )

Yeah, so my weekend pretty much consisted of helping Scott with a photo shoot (being a model) for about 10-11 hours. I didn't go to anime club, and frankly, I DO NOT CARE. I have learned to navigate torrent sites and forums (and annoy people like baine) for the latest info on good dramas, animes, and the like. Ergo, I don't have a NEED for anime club. I should have just known from the get-go that no one will ever replace the SFSU gang, and when they're gone and dissolved, they will still have the best spot in my heart, over any and all anime clubs, just because of the GOOD memories I had there. Yes, I had lousy ones too, but overall, it was so worth it. Those people and those times meant so much to me. :) And I'm looking forward to coming home in December and seeing all the guys at JTAF again. And maybe even a girl from my Japanese class, because she said something about going to SF/this "anime con" in December.

Back to my weekend, I also watched some movies, tried to babysit the dogs across the way (somehow they manged to get ahold of the older girl dog's food bowl when I put it upstairs for her; when I got back the next afternoon, the rim had been completely chewed apart), tried my first bottle of Smirnoff Raspberry (yum! But I didn't even get a buzz...), and generally had a nice time. I didn't get the chance to go to King Tut as planned, because Grandpa was taken to the hospital. He's better now, but the scare was enough to keep me and Scott at the house until they got back. So we'll go on the 18th at 9pm. Weird, but hey! Spooky mummy night. Maybe it'll help for future chapters of WDKY (you didn't just read that).

Anyway, the laptop's being a bitch again. Scott and I tried to install Adobe CS on it, and it kept restarting the InDesign/Acrobat Reader/other thing install. I got Photoshop to install, but it took forever to "load fonts" even though I'm pretty sure I don't have that many on my laptop. I decided to try and get all the updates I could from Microsoft Updates before trying to use Photoshop again, so I haven't touched it yet. Hem hem. Well, I know what to do if it goes floopy on me again (heh heh heh).

What's left? Japanese listening comprehension, hopefully getting paid for the dogs (even though I was so busy yesterday that I didn't scoop any poop, and they came back early today), writing a short skit, memorizing a new dialogue, practicing for a new response drill, and trying to remember all that crap from my evil Driver's Ed lesson (I'm going to have to repeat Level 1, because though the teacher was nice, she made me VERY nervous during the mock exam, and I made some VERY stupid mistakes). I don't want to keep stressing, so I have to meditate for sure tonight, try to clean up my room, and give myself a facial. Yes. A FACIAL. :P

I neglected to mention the severe creep-factor that was Wednesday en route to Carmel-by-the-Sea. We saw no less than 4 car accidents. One was a motorcycle accident, one of them happened within five minutes of our driving past the intersection where it happened, and the other 2 were on the freeway as we headed out.

Considering Ben died in a car accident, this didn't leave me with a very settled feeling.

I hate myself for not bothering to "try" harder, since that's something that bothers me-- people not TRYING, not making an EFFORT, being COWARDLY. I mean, I've TRIED fish before. I don't like it, so it doesn't make me a coward if I don't try it when someone offers it to be. I TRIED. You can expect to succeed at everything you do in life, or like everyone you meet, or enjoy every food served to you. But the trying of something counts for so much in your own head, if not to the people around you.

Turns out Ben was on MySpace and TheFaceBook all along, and I could have kept up with him, I could have... ARGH! I'm not trying to put myself down. I'm not. But I hate myself for not trying.

Anyway, WDKY18 with its 3-bites-out (that is, 3 scenes that need prose-ifying) is up at betasquad. Help me, please?

I beat Bakura... now Yugi is all that's left of "Duelists of the Roses." ;D SQUEE NESS!

I decided to get the Dell Inspiron 6000: ( New compy for Mer Mer! )

I wish I could look forward to school starting now, but as of this moment, I'm just seeing it as another distraction, a thing to get done. I need to do a lot of that these days-- clean my room, move my room once Scott gets all his stuff out, send my PS2 to Dave (I need a box!), travel somewhere this winter... maybe Japan again.

...Gaaah.