MILES to GO || before I sleep

ceruleansan, I hope you know this is ALL YOUR FAULT. YOU STARTED IT!
And if I get plotbunnied and start writing Fullmetal Alchemist fanfiction, I KNOW WHO I'M COMING AFTER TO BETA MY FICS! *angry stare*

Yeah, so I've kind of gotten, er... well, let's use a light form of "obsessed," shall we? Interested in the FMA series. CeruleanSan had me downloading scanlations from StopTazmo, and I've managed to get up to Chapter 20 or thereabouts. She wanted a new convert to the whole Ed x Winry pairing, and I'm so far inclined to agree with her-- a bit. There really isn't a whole ton of romance or innuendo, or backstory beyond how Ed and Al got to where they are.

I admit- parts of the manga are extremely funny, but I don't think ANY manga has ever had me crying so much within a few chapters. Yu-Gi-Oh only brought me to tears when I realized IT WAS OVER, not at any point during the first arc. Even Sailormoon, with the DEATH! and the TRAGIC!OMG etc... even in the live-action, it was always toward the END that I was sobbing like a baby. And okay, FMA didn't have me sobbing like a baby, but the sad parts (people getting murdered, kittens being dead, etc.) had me sniffling and wishing I could click away-- but I couldn't. :P

So I download about 3 chapters at a time while doing something else online. I read them all once they've finished downloading, and once I get 700 MB worth (which may take awhile; I've got something like 97 MB now, and that's *20* chapters!), I'll burn it to CD.

Sucky thing is that the quality really went down around Ch. 18. I don't mean the manga or even the scans- just the translating. All of a sudden, words were horribly misspelled, apostrophes and commas were left out, and chapter titles weren't translated at all anymore. Some omake bits and cover scans were left out altogether! It was kinda sad. If anyone knows where the HQ scans are, I'll wait longer-- just so I can read scanlations in REAL English, not that kindergarten crap that passes for English these days. (I like "Engrish," but there's no humor in stuff that's halfway between Engrish and English. It's called LAZINESS.)

UGH! One more week until I get paid, two more weeks until "finals" (I actually don't have finals for all of my classes. I do have tons of WORK to get done, especially by the end of this week, so I better get cracking.), and three weeks until FANIME! I still haven't reserved a shuttle to the airport and back again though, and Mom hasn't paid me or covered any portion of the hotel room yet. I should call her about that (well, she DID offer! It'll shave some off the money she still owes me, at any rate). At least I'll have April's paycheck (or will it be May's?) to cover Fanime and the like, and I'll be making MORE money in the summer, assuming I get more hours (which I hope I do).

Ooh, and for Mother's Day weekend, I'm going to San Diego on the choo-choo! :D I'm going to make Scott's mom a card, because even if I don't see her, she's been way nice to me. I know I'm going to see Scott at least on Friday night/Saturday morning, so he can pass the card on. I think I'll be at Joyce's for Sunday, but I don't know what exactly we're doing. (I hope Joyce wins her court case today against the insurance guys, because it'd be sucky for her and Baba to try and celebrate Mother's Day if she DIDN'T win.)

( More FFX-2 and Da Vinci Code Quest schtuff )

( Meme ga aru! )

Ugh, still need a new LJ layout (got sick of the Lisa Frank kitties). DAMN YOU MUSE! Where ARE you!?

Baba says I'm supposed to have a "five-check day" (meaning the best day the horoscope doles out) today, and be inspired. The school horoscope told me to watch my finances and consider more education. The horoscope.com horoscope told me that I'll get a romantic proposition that I just can turn down.

I think I'm placing too much stock in horoscopes. I love them to death, but yeesh! Is it bad when I wake up in the morning feeling like I'm going to be busy, stressed, and generally batty, and my horoscopes are BETTER than what I'm expecting?

( Also, a rant. )

The whole FFX universe still confuses me. When I first joined fanthropology, I posted what I thought was the history of the FFX universe. It didn't really belong there, but Fanthropology is a mixed-bag sort of fan community. In any case, no one really corrected me on much, and now I find out new things all the time. new_spira was advertising today, and I went to their journal and the Wikipedia entry on Yevon, and I was like... wha? I think I need to replay FFX (well, actually, BEAT it. I never did, even though I know what happens at the end) and finish FFX-2 again.

I feel kind of stupid for thinking that Yevon was affiliated with Bevelle originally, not Zanarkand. But I'm pretty sure I'm right in that Bevelle and Zanarkand didn't have their final standoff in the Calm Lands; that was Sin and the Summoners.

Other stuff. Why is it that I can feel tired, tell myself "I'll go to bed soon" and then five minutes turn into two hours, and I'm still awake at 2am? It's bad, bad, bad I say! I never did watch my new purchase (the Indiana Jones trilogy) yesterday; I spent most of the night finishing up my translations of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles new songs, "IT'S" by Kinya, and "Kazemachi Jet" by Maaya Sakamoto. I transliterated AND translated the lyrics, listened to the songs OVER AND OVER to pull the kanji pronunciations from the lyrics... and I finally got it done. They're up for review at AnimeLyrics.com, and will hopefully be used by #yugioh! for their subs of the series.

People are visiting-- actually Dan (uncle) visited yesterday, and my aunt Joyce is here with her husband today; hopefully they're going to settle the ongoing dispute with their insurance company re: the San Diego fires that destroyed their home a few years back. I don't mind Joyce and her husband so much; I don't even mind the annoyance that is their dog, Mokie. But Dan kind of got on my nerves when he insisted that Grandpa didn't need a laptop, that he WOULDN'T carry it around from room to room, and that
a) laptops break more often (not true)
b) they're more expensive (true)
c) there isn't really a necessity for it (not true... necessarily)

Regardless of what, I'm planning on getting a laptop before I leave for Japan. Grandpa can get the computer I'm on refurbished with a new monitor or whatever, or he can get a new computer altogether. Whatever he wants. All I know is, I need enough time to clear my stuff off, because I refuse to be away from my email/fanfics/websites for 6 months. :P

Ooh, and guess what? I came up with a new name for my multi-fandom archive. I can start working on it tomorrow (or tonight, if we miraculously get out early and I don't haul myself to bed early like I should). The name... pure irony, right there.

Epiphany. Hee!

Okay, so I'm pretty exhausted, as I usually am on Monday nights, and I've neglected to workout for at least 3 days straight now... bad Mer! But all the looking up of Via Infinito strategies had me playing FFX-2 as soon as I got home. I wanted to test out the Berserker combo mklutz told me about, but alas! None of my girls had Berserker mastered, so now I've got Paine with an AP Egg and Invincible trying to get the 400 AP needed to learn Evade & Counter. I've gotten up to Level 40 in Via Infinitio, and tried the following strategies against the Black Elemental, to no avail:
* Yuna's Floral Fallal; Great Whirl + Mirror Petals
* Dark Knight's Charon
What I really need to do is level everyone up more... which means skipping the Great Cloister transport and just going back through the Cloisters, ONE BY ONE. Everyone's around Level 60-62 at the moment, and I need everyone to master their Dresspheres so they can have the abilities (or Auto-Abilities) to stand up to all the insanity. I wish there was a GG or DS with the Auto-Reflect ability, but alas, the only thing that does that is the Star Bracer. If I have that equipped on a girl using the Supreme Light GG, she can use White Magic to cast Reflect on others, to try and rebound Flare. It doesn't work against Ultima (unfortunately), and so far, the Black Elemental has cast Ultima TWICE in the very beginning of the battle. ;_; I'm not sure how to better equip everyone DS/GG/Accessory-wise, because I have many choices... there's the tried-and-true Catnip+Speed Bracer strategy. There's the possibility for a Mascot or an Alchemist boosting a Dark Knight or Berserker into Break HP/Damage Limit areas... if only Paine (equipped with Invincible) could stay alive long enough to attack!

In any case, I can't remember how I leveled up to 99 before. I should probably level up A LOT MORE before trying to beat the rest of Via Infinitio, but if I don't level up in the dungeon itself, where should I level up? I should probably find out where all the remaining monsters to be oversouled can be found, and do it that way. Plus I can always send Chocobos out and try to get more treasure/that special GG.

I mentioned Scott, Baba, and Grandpa got me a new digital camera, right? Well, so I took some pictures today, and I was going to take one of my friend (?) Adrianna, who always gives me a ride home on Mondays, but it said "Out of memory!" I was all O_O; But I bought a 512 MB chip! I worried that maybe I'd had too many pictures set on 16:9 HDTV mode, and they were taking up a ginormous amount of space. So I waited to get home to try and clear them off the machine when I figured out that the reason why it said my Memory was full was NOT because the PSP chip wasn't compatible, but that it wasn't inserted all the way! :D I also just managed to clear the images off (FINALLY) after importing them about 3 times, because they were read-only for some reason, and changing the attributes in Windows didn't work. So I had to do it through the camera itself, connecting and disconnecting it until I deleted them all.

But now everything works, so yay! :D Later on, I'll resize and post some of the pictures. ^^

Well, what a weekend. Short, but nice.

^^ Scott, Baba and Grandpa all chipped in to get me a wonderful, simple-to-use digital camera for my birthday! It's a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S600. I had to buy a Targus camera case (a little big... but it was only $20. The sad part is, I can't fit any of the manuals in there!) and an additional 512MB memory card (Sony Memory Chip Pro Duo Or Duo Pro or something. Same thing that goes in PSPs), but other than that, TEH YAY! I already took some pictures, so later on, I'll upload them to my LJ Scrapbook.

I got the latter two things at Fry's-- my first adventure there. I was sorely tempted (for whatever bizarre reason) to buy Zack that gift certificate I "mentioned" (note: did not PROMISE) if he gave me a ride home every Friday for the rest of the semester. But you know what? Why should I? I mean, yeah, his birthday was March 6th or whatever, but I've hardly known him for 3 mos., and I'm a broke college student. He's making tons more money than me, and pulling more hours, too! And for all the times he's been nice/sweet/thoughtful/remotely attractive, he's also been teasing, rude, hurtful, and a general jerk. And he DID say that if I needed rides home on Fridays for the rest of the semester, I "don't even have to ask." He'll assume I do, unless I tell him otherwise. And he didn't insist or even mention that I might need to pay him back, or reimburse him for the gas somehow.

So that's that. (If he strangely gets ME a birthday present, I might consider getting him something later on. Call it fair play.)

I also got the movie "Maverick" (ah, the days when Mel Gibson ACTED!), some candy (all gone now. Note to self: never mix Skittles smoothie flavors), and a Netgear Wireless Adapter USB card... which I've already plugged in and is working fine. YAY! Soon, I'll be able to move/trash this desk downstairs in the rec room and move the computer up to my room... where it SHOULD be. :P I might have to do that with Scott after Passover though, just because everyone "needing" to use the computer (and considering I've paid for so much to fix/maintain this computer, it's just as much mine as Grandpa's. And if we switch to Roadrunner Broadband, I could pay Grandpa for Net access, and then it essentially WOULD be my computer) would whine about it.

What else? Skinny-dipped for the first time. *laughs* Don't tell, okay? Hey, I didn't have a swimsuit! I woke up early both yesterday and today, and today we walked Scott's parents' dog, Chica, around the hill where they live. They also have a blind-as-a-bat cat, Molly, a cancer kitty, who meowed plaintively this morning while Scott and I were in bed. ^^; For an old kitty, she sure manages to be loud!

I've also gotten a bit inspired for more of WDKY and its sequels (FINALLY!). I can't spoil anything for CO7 or ED, but for WDKY:
Implicit Promise: Life is change. Téa and Seto will somehow find romance despite all the obstacles that their complex lives throw in their path. They will both learn, live, love, and grow-- and change in the process, for better or for worse.
Protagonists: Téa, mainly, but also Seto, and occasionally Mokuba, Joey, and Yugi.
Point-of-View Character: Almost always Téa, even though the story is written from the 3rd-person omniscient perspective. This allows me to switch gears and get into other characters' heads, and reveal events that Téa and the the others wouldn't know about.
Climax: Coming soon. I mean it this time. :D (And you thought the PAST chapters were climatic! BWAHAHHA!)

Finally, I BEAT THE DEN OF WOE! I brought FFX-2 to work the other night, and just before we were supposed to leave, I managed to beat Nooj (pain in the ass that he is) with a team of Mascot, Gun Mage, and Alchemist. Yuna and Rikku both died several times, due to their low HP (around level 56 for everyone), but I had Rikku (once she was alive) mix up a Supreme Gem with a Blessed Gem, and BAAAAAAAAMMO! This nifty Mix called a Sunburst, which got Nooj for over 8100 damage! :D Fine, so I didn't get any of the cool Blue Bullets, but whatever. That's what New Game++ is for! Anyway, I'm FINALLY at 98%, so I go to look up 100% Completion Guides, just to make sure I don't screw anything up.

And then I stumble on this whole thing about FFVII and FFX being connected?! WHAR!? But the theories and evidence are actually quite cool. I feel kind of lame for not having seen it before, but then, I never did finish playing FFVII. I'll probably be more into it if/when they release the remake for PS2/PS3, with better graphics. I hated the so-called 3-D chunk graphics in FFVII. ;_;

So anyway, I got to have some more fun with the game later tonight. I took a nap earlier after I helped the guys (that is, Ryan, Scott, Jeff, and John) clean the house, so I'm kind of wired. I also had a Snapple on the too-too crowded train, and I'm glad to be able to bounce around and not bump into people or stumble off to the side.

Ah, to be home! And it's almost April/Spring Break/time to find out about Japan! EEEEEEK!