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wStuff You Don't Wanna Know But Are Reading Anyway |
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I dunno how you found this, but alas, here you are. So enjoy the frightening fruits of my troubled little brain.
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wFriday, June 20, 2003 |
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feeling: bluh
listening to: nothing
My nephew has been with us ALL day today, and will be with us ALL day tomorrow, and possibly most of Sunday as well. And as it turns out, since I came home for the summer, I am his favorite person in this household. When he wants something he can't get himself, he runs to me first. When I'm not in the same room as him, he yells my name until I come see him and play with him. This is nice and all, yes... but it has its downsides. Like, tonight around 10:30 he realized that he was tired (as in bedtime tired), but he wasn't in his own home, so he didn't want to go to sleep. Finally he got to where he could barely stand up under his own power, so Mom gave him his binky and tried to rock/read/sing him to sleep like she does when he takes naps. But he would have NOTHING to do with it. He would have even less to do with Dad, who used to be the only one who could get him to sleep no matter how cranky he was. Anyway, so he kept whining and screeching and reaching for me when they held him, but Mom didn't want to give him to me because I refuse to sing to him when anyone else is around. She just about bit my head off because I wouldn't sing; apparently she thinks he will NOT go to sleep unless he's sung to. Finally, though, she couldn't stand his screeching anymore and handed him to me, essentially ordering me to sing or something. But I didn't - I sat there in the rocking chair, rocked a little, rubbed his back a little... and within minutes he was out cold on my shoulder. Lullaby-less. I think Mom was seething inside. :P
My stomach's been a pain in the neck tonight. Well... a pain in the... stomach, I guess. Actually, it's not really 'pain'. Leave me alone. I'm tired. *zonk*
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 6/20/2003 11:48:00 PM
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feeling: tired
listening to: Gackt - Papa Lapped a Pap Lopped
Who else noticed I forgot to include my usual 'feeling' and 'listening to' crap in my last post? :P Speaking of which, Blogger seems to have changed yet again since then. It's closer to how it was before, but... I dunno, I like this interface. It's pretty.
Anyway... tonight during the 11:00 hour I was reminded yet again of why I don't regularly watch the news.
News story that makes me want to give up on humankind #1:
This one's the less retarded of the two, but it still riled me the heck up for a few minutes. So, this little kid in Florida was swimming in some lake when suddenly he was dragged underwater and met a gruesome fate between the jaws of an 8-10 foot alligator. This is a sad thing, yes... but it's what the authorities did following the tragedy that was REALLY sad. From that general area, they captured and killed about eight alligators who... get this... fit the description of the one that killed the kid. Description?? It's a freaking ALLIGATOR, people! They don't come in different colors and heights and job types and muzzle shapes and fur varietes like dogs do, for Bob's sake. They all look pretty bloody well identical. But no... one adult alligator kills a kid who trespassed on HIS long-established property even though he probably knew full well that the lake was likely to be teeming with giant deadly lizards, and in retaliation, the authorities capture and kill EIGHT very endangered alligators because they FIT THE DESCRIPTION??
And if that's not enough to make you want to cry...
News story that makes me want to give up on humankind #2:
So, this kid is an active player of some massive multiplayer online roleplaying game, not unlike Everquest, the Diablo games, and even Ragnarok Online. But, one day some jerk comes along and hacks said kid's account, stealing a bunch of his cool in-game stuff. And what does said kid do? Report the hacker to the game's creators in hopes of getting the jerk banned or in some other way appropriately punished, and perhaps get his lost stuff back? No. The kid CALLS THE POLICE and reports the whole event like a common burglary. And expects them to actually DO something about it. He even gave the cops a list of the stuff that was stolen from him, which was posted on the screen of this local news program just like real stolen merchandise from a robbed chain department store or something would be. Among the stolen items...
1 16x16 house
1 brown bear rug, facing east
1 hooded shroud
...and a bunch of other stupid crap that would only make sense to people who play this MMORPG.
Yeah... enough depressing things.
Actually, I thought I had something else to blog about, but I can't remember what it is, so I'm gonna go to bed. Night.
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 6/20/2003 02:13:00 AM
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wThursday, June 12, 2003 |
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What the frick? Blogger's all fudgified now... it was cooler before... ><
Anyhow... hey, it seems a pair of summer tanagers have made our backyard a home for the summer. They're pretty. ^^ I saw the male last weekend for the first time, and thought he was a cardinal for a second... about the same size, bright red all over. But he doesn't have a crest or that black face mask that cardinals have, and his bill was long and white as opposed to stubby and orange, so I had to go look him up. He was listed in the 'uncommon species' section of my little old Birds of America field guide. Then this morning I saw him again with his cute little yellow female... she seems to have a little tinge of red to her forehead, which is purty :3... and looked up some stuff online about them. Seems only a few have ever been seen in Ohio, and all south of the county I live in. I feel kinda privileged. :P They really are pretty though... mom and I told Dad to keep a camera ready in case they ever get together so we can get a picture. :3~
My nephew is hilarious. He's getting really good at the "What does a _____ say?" thing...
"What does a dog say?"
-"*short grunts resembling barking*"
"What does a cat say?"
-"Meaaa!"
"What does a horse say?"
-"Ree-e-e-eeee!"
"What does a cow say?"
-"Mbuuuu!"
"What does a donkey say?"
-"HE-haaa!"
"What does an elephant say?"
-"*raise arm to face, as a trunk* EEEeEEeeeEEe!"
"What does a snake say?"
-"Thssssstthsss!"
"What does a piggy say?"
-"Oeeoeeoeeoeeoee!" (compare: wee wee wee :P)
"What does a bird say?"
-"Cheep cheep!"
"What does an owl say?"
-"Huuu huuu!"
"What does a lion/tiger/dinosaur say?"
-"GRRAAARRR!"
"What does Steen (big brother) say?"
-"MOMMYYY!!"
"What does Becky say?"
-"*shakes head*" (because I'm always shaking my hair around... har :P)
"What does mommy say?"
-"*snore*" OR "Byebye!" (they're working on this one LOL)
"What does daddy say?"
-"*makes fists* GRRAAARRR!"
His daddy impression is everyone's favorite. XD
So yesterday I came home for the summer. *initiate slug mode* And... heh, this is interesting... yesterday after my geology final, the prof told me I got the highest grade in the class on our lab final last week - a whopping 89.4%. Go class. 9_9 I really hope I did decent on the final... if I did, I have a good chance of getting an A in that class, and if I manage that I will have a perfect 4.0 average for this whole year. That hasn't happened since I started college. *crosses fingers*
I created my fourth Ragnarok Online character today. Her name is Maelstra. Don't ask me why, I don't know. And I thought of it BEFORE I realized that it was the name of a dark faerie on Neopets, thank you very much. 9-9; Anyhow... she will be a mage someday. Yep. But right now she's a wuss. *sigh*
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 6/12/2003 07:21:00 PM
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wFriday, June 06, 2003 |
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feeling: ^^
listening to: Cowboy Bebop - Pushing the Sky
~completed ca. 12:50 a.m.~
Today was a good day.
This morning we had 'fun day' in Japanese class, which we do pretty much every quarter when the last day rolls around... for the first hour we played Pictionary but substituted the regular categories and stuff with things we've learned throughout the quarter, and after that Terashima-sensei gave us all Japanese goodies. :3 First she had a can of Pocari Sweat, a Japanese energy-type drink that's renowned even in America for its weird name... and she had a little packet of Pocari Sweat powder mix, which I ended up with first, but I gave it to a guy who'd had the stuff many times before and was very fond of it... I'd have liked to keep it, but hey, I'm nice. :P She also had Chocolate Mousse Pocky, LOOK candy (little chocolates with nifty fluffy/jelly-ey fruity fillings), and a candy called Collon which reaffirmed to all who tried it that when it comes to Japanese candy, weird name = AWESOME taste. Collon is very, very, very good. *want* Anyhow... um, then we watched a couple episodes of some old family-oriented animes, Chibi Maruko-chan and Sazae-san. Also this morning Sensei was presented with the flower bouquet everyone in our class pitched in for since she's been our teacher ALL year (which is rare in college) and everyone loves her (even rarer). She was all surprised and such... it was cute. x)
Now, some of you may remember when I posted here this time last year about the East Asian Language Fest, where I was in the interpretation shootout and won, and hung out with Kashiwagi-sensei, the most adorable person I've ever met and one of my all-time favorite teachers, etc etc. If you don't remember and want to have some idea of what the rest of this blog is talking about, click here and scroll down to find the post.
Ok... so I got there and sat down, then talked to Niimi-sensei, one of my TAs from winter quarter, for a bit. Then Kashiwagi-sensei found me and said hi to me and stuff... then I watched as the first-year and second-year students of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean did the interpretation shootout... it was so funny watching the first-year folks stumble around and have no clue what they were doing >:3 Then I joined the other third-year Jappie students for our turn at the shootout... which, by the way, we won. We're still undefeated~ :D So, then I stood along the wall with Kashiwagi-sensei to watch the fourth-year students do the shootout, then another guy from my class, Evan, decided to do the same (he was the one I gave the Pocari Sweat mix too, by the way.) I haven't really talked to him much before, but we talked and hung out a lot at the fest... first with Kashiwagi sensei, talking and laughing with her and squeeing behind her back about how adorable she is... I'm serious! Oh, man, at one point one of her students was bringing a photo to show her, and I swear she was bouncing up and down like she'd just won the lottery X3 And shortly after that, Evan noticed her watch, poked it, and said "Kirei!" ("Pretty!"), to which she replied by giving him this goofy look, doing some kind of goofy bringing-attention-to-her-face hand gesture, and saying in this almost mischievous little voice, "Watashi? Watashi?" ("Me? Me?") We were just... rolling :P Yeah... so me and Evan were talking about how we wished we were really fluent in Japanese just so we could hang around and talk with her without feeling like idiots. *lol*
So, then they finally announced that they were ready for the pizza party to begin, and Kashiwagi-sensei told me and Evan to go on ahead of her for pizza... so we did, then we talked with Terashima-sensei a bit, then to Iwami-sensei, our main instructor all last year. It was funny... last year a lot of her students didn't care much for her, and I never really understood why. Evan thought the same thing. But talking to her today... I dunno, she was just so easy to converse with. She was saying how she always ended up teaching first-year students even though she didn't really like it. For one, she not only has to teach Japanese, but she also has to teach people how to learn Japanese, which is a whole different animal... and for two, there are always a vast number of first-year students who don't take the class seriously at all, which is a pain. I really came to understand a lot about her as a teacher today, and I think she'll be a lot more... I dunno, approachable to me from now on. Which is cool.
After a while Iwami-sensei excused herself to get more beverageness, and then Evan decided to do the same - and this is interesting - before just taking off he looked at me and said "I don't want to leave you" (in the sense of leaving one behind, for example, in the middle of a conversation... don't read too much into that :p). Heh, I dunno... that just sort of amused me, since we hadn't really talked much before at all. He's a nice guy. I'll miss him too when he goes to Japan this fall and won't come back til after I graduate.
End tangent... yeah, so many cool people are leaving, it's sad. Kashiwagi-sensei told us she's graduating at the end of summer *whimper*, Evan's off to Japan for most of a year, Niimi-sensei and Katagiri-sensei (another one from last year) are both graduating before next year too...dah, so sad~ I wanted to find Kashiwagi-sensei again after we talked to everyone else for a while, but somewhere in finding pizza and our chats with Iwami-sensei she took off... T_T I was gonna ask her to come back to the Lang Fest again next year if she has time, since she said she hopes to find a job in Columbus... *sigh*
So... that was pretty much it. Me and Evan left when we were done talking to teachers and walked toward home together for a bit, since he lives not far from my dorm. I'll miss him too. I wish we'd gotten to know each other better before today... we seemed to have quite a bit in common. Our taste in Japanese teachers is the same, anyway. :P
(And I know a certain reader of mine is now conjuring up certain little images in her head relating to the concept of my... sentiments... toward Evan as expressed above. Stoppit, you. You're reading into things too much again XP)
That's about it. Happy and sad. I'm dead tired now. Off to bed with me.
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 6/06/2003 09:16:00 PM
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wSunday, June 01, 2003 |
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feeling: full
listening to: nothing
Raelin grunted a bit as she adjusted the cross-straps of her backpack. Within moments all that she had worked and trained for since she was a child would culminate into reality, and before her loomed the ancient, weathered sandstone pyramid within which her fate was waiting. Here, she would be accepted into the Guild of Thieves - the first step toward her goal of becoming Rune-Midgard's most successful assassin in history.
The road to Morroc had not been an easy one, but the events that led to her decision to travel there had been far more grueling. Her hometown... her family... even her precious little pet Coco - they hadn't deserved to die. They hadn't deserved to be looted and razed to the ground and wiped from the face of history forever. Only Raelin had survived, and every moment of the carnage was still fresh in her mind. When the image of those disgusting Orcs crossed her mind, and that disgusting excuse for a human who had led them in battle, Raelin's blood ran cold. They would not get away with this. She would train herself in the art of death, and she would avenge her mother, her father, her elder sister, and her village. Even her Coco.
"But before I do that, I should probably hang out here and rest," Raelin muttered to herself, taking a seat some paces away from a large pack of merchants that had set up shop outside the pyramid entrance, showing off their carts full of potions and fruits vegetables and other rejuvenating wares. I wonder how many of the sweet potatoes in those carts were grown in my own village, she thought to herself, remembering the seemingly endless, wonderfully scented fertile fields and gardens of her former hometown with fondness, sadness, and rage all at once. Momentarily she pushed her emotions aside, noting that a few more experienced male wanderers - training in the art of swordsmanship, from the looks of their armor - were watching her very carefully. When she caught the eye of the one who appeared to be the ringleader, he smirked at her, winking and balancing a half-wilted flower between his middle and index fingers. Glaring daggers at him, she stood to search for another place to sit, but decided instead that her energy had replenished itself from her previous battles. Nothing was holding her back now. It was time to enter the pyramid.
Steeling herself, gazing with contempt at the dark halls just beyond the entrance, Raelin walked forward. The air in the pyramid was heavy with dampness and the mingling odors of human blood, beasts' blood, and something far more foul that she didn't want to think about. She wrinkled her nose as she peered into the first hall, where a young boy who looked no more mature than herself was wildly swinging his dagger at an enormous batlike beast, which was clearly getting the better of him. His body was soaked with sweat, blood trickled down his face and neck, and gradually the bat was pushing him back into a slimy wall. She watched with horror as the boy eventually ceased his attacks and fell against the wall, slumping down further and further as the bat assaulted him with furious aerial attacks and speed. Finally, the boy lie motionless on the ground. The bat, satisfied, fluttered in another direction in search of its next victim.
Raelin shivered. Something told her bats weren't the only creatures in this pyramid, that something far more deadly lurked in the shadows. But she couldn't go back now. She had to find the Guild of Thieves. She had come this far, had narrowly survived countless battles in the desert of Morroc, and nothing would stop her from reaching her goal now. Her family and friends were waiting, somewhere, for her to avenge them. Ignoring the stench of battle and death that hung all around her, Raelin breathed as deeply as she dared and stepped into the first dark corridor.
Her first obstacle was the boy. It was difficult, but Raelin avoided looking at him, knowing that if she stalled now she would be the next victim of those disgusting bats. She just had to find that guild. That was the problem - finding it. Its members were thieves by trade, after all, and they couldn't very well set up their home base out in the open. She would just have to work her way through this terrible maze and find it as quickly as possible.
Left, right, left, left... every corner turned was another step closer to destiny. After some time Raelin caught sight of a bright light around the next corner. Torches. She was close - she had to be. One more deep breath, and she made her way around this last corner.
And found herself face to face with a gigantic bat.
Raelin gulped as the beast caught wind of her and began its attack. Its huge, blood-encrusted fangs raked her flesh again and again, draining her energy, and all she could do was swing her dagger blindly. She could feel a few hits land, but she knew the battle would end soon, and not in her favor. Slowly she was losing her footing, feeling the hall around her grow ever so slightly darker by the second. Soon she would meet the same fate as that boy in the first corridor.
"I won't... forgive you..." Raelin snarled to her assailant, as well as to the Orcs and their leader, wherever they were. She would find them in the next life, and she would make them pay.
That second, she heard a gruesome bashing sound, followed by a blood-curdling shriek. Then silence.
Weakly, Raelin lifted her head, peering through the unnatural darkness to see the bat lying motionless on the cold ground, its head thoroughly crushed. Wincing both at the sight and at the pain shooting through her wounded and poisoned limbs, she lifted her gaze further, searching for her savior. Sure enough, her bleary eyes fell upon a girl donning an ivory robe and carrying a vicious looking mace.
"Are you all right?" the girl, obviously a seasoned acolyte, inquired.
Raelin glanced down, observing her unsteady legs and shaky, bloody hands. "Looks like... everything's here," she croaked.
The acolyte smiled. "You're strong," she observed. "But obviously still a novice. You shouldn't be in this dungeon - Death itself lives here."
"Thanks for the concern," Raelin muttered. She didn't like being lectured to, but she couldn't deny that this girl had saved her life. Being civil was probably the wisest choice. "I'm looking for the Guild of Thieves," she told the acolyte.
"Oh, of course," she said, her expression gentle. "I should have known. Fortunately, you're very close to your goal."
Raelin staggered, straightening her body as best she could. "Yeah, well, thanks for the help and all," she said forcefully, turning to limp toward the guild's entrance. "I'd best be..." She hadn't taken but a step when she felt a warm breeze envelop her body, rejuvenating her muscles and soothing her bloody wounds. A heal spell, she realized, standing fully upright and examining the clean, unmarred flesh on her arms where jagged lacerations and bites had just been. She jerked her head around, searching for the acolyte, but was dismayed to find that her savior had vanished into the darkness.
"Thanks, Acolyte," Raelin said quietly, pausing for a moment before turning again and continuing toward the torch-lit room she's been heading toward before her battle. In the small room's center, she saw a stairway leading downward, further into the darkness.
This is it, she told herself, peering down the staircase. The Guild of Thieves is down there. My journey starts here.
Squaring her shoulders, Raelin slipped her right foot down onto the first step. Her destiny lay just ahead.
I will be Rune-Midgard's most renowned Assassin.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...My Ragnarok Online thief needed a background story. ^^; Threw this little quickie together in half an hour or so, no proofreading, nothin'. Seems like a pretty decent story for my Raelin-chan... and yeah, the pyramid/acolyte/bat thing really happened, except without all the dialog. Figured I'd stick this thing here now, kinda to commemorate the official end of RO's Open Beta period. Yes, RO is back to Closed Beta as of half an hour ago, meaning only those willing to fork over a couple weeks' worth of wages will be able to play from now on. Or, in my case, those who have a birthday coming up and parents with a Paypal account. X)
So Dumplin', I guess you'll just have to come over this summer if you want to do some ROing on my new paid account... what a cryin' shame, eh? XD
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 6/01/2003 08:46:00 PM
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