Zen Crib Notes

I had my birthday on the 9th, :3. I'm now 23 and I feel that pressure in getting that degree >_<. My family and I went to the Elephant Bar to eat, but the wait was ridiculous even though the food was good.

I also just had the whole weekend parents-free, so my brother and I lived it up by staying up late with loud tv and video gaming.

I also got an on-campus job! \(^o^)/

This job includes an earlier move-in date at Sept. 17 instead of the 18th, which is the usual date for transfer students. So I can potentially move-in before all my other roommates. This is exciting, because I definitely feel a bit uncertain without having a kind of job or some sort of steady-money flow, and this time I'm going to promise myself to just save the money and use it for the next quarter to buy books and such.

Waahhh this is gonna be less than a month for me to mooove.

Feeling pretty miserable about...one thing really, and it's affecting me and my parents' stress levels and all I really wanna do is vegetate and play some games to de-compress while also planning how to unfuck things.

Also, go die in a fire collegeboard.org, or make everything paperless and give forever access to past scores or whatever.

 But this time I'm getting three AA degrees out of this! English, Philosophy, and Liberal Arts-Humanities. 

Doing lots of stuff that requires the whole transfer shebang, but today is the first day of school- super late, like woah man it's February already?- and I just had an early class with Comparative World Religions and an afternoon class with History of Art- Renaissance to Modern.

My biggest worry was that the World Religions teacher is some bigoted prat, but thankfully he's a swell guy who seems too easily amused with jokes made by other people and by himself. Kinda like a big kid, but his lecture made himself seem broadminded so I felt put at ease. But still, we'll be doing SEVEN RELIGIONS in that class! Starting with the big three Western religions and the final four are the Asian division- he laments the fact that it's basically two classes compiled into one thing in a whole semester so it'll be truncated. Oh well. Still, 8 am classes are a drag. 

Renaissance to Modern art was something that I was prepared to be excited for- because I had in my mind that it'd be like doing film studies only for a non-moving visual media- and it's something that I really like to study on, especially when it's going from Renaissance up to the Modern so it'll cover all those things that made my heart all a-flutter like Romantic period and Impressionistic and Art Deco and so on. But then there will be times when the classes has to do some art? Oh man, I feel unprepared for that. Also, lots of mini field trips around the campus and to things at the art museum- and also one to the Getty museum?? On any other semester I'd be stoked, but I'm doing a class on Friday which is where the Getty museum and other field trips fall on. I get the feeling that Art History would be one of my throwaway classes, but I was hoping for a reason to stay on that would supercede it possibly interfering with another class and also being more work than I was prepared for.

And what the hell, the Art history textbooks would rake me over $200 as used, and also more supplementary stuff for it?? Man, it's looking more unappealing than I want it to be. 

 

So this is Lucy the Corgi, whom my family and I have taken care of for my Aunt and Uncle a week ago. 

Last night she choked on food, which my Aunt successfully got out of its throat, which triggered a seizure and had to be rushed to animal hospital. The seizure caused heart problems, which included a heart murmur, and the surgery that would be required for Lucy would be too much for her body to handle. 

So today was her last day on earth, in which up until now had been peaceful and surrounded by caring and loving family members who made sure that in her old age that she was well-taken care of, illnesses and crippled legs and all. 

She smiled a lot, had smelly breath, and was very comforting to hold. 

Sunday. A whole of week of non-school activity is gone. Normally it would have been spent agonizing over textbooks and then giving up and then consoling myself over the internet or on games. Now that deadlines are out the window, the possibilities are endless. Will I actually start doing my Super Big Ultra Important Fandom-Shattering Fanfic? Or wallop around in Dragon Age? Actually play the games I bought over the year with money I sort of have? Hook up with friends? Restore old friendships?

Oh vacation time. It was so much more simpler when I was in another country where I don't speak the language. Actually no. It sucks to be mistaken for being some local who knows the language and then flummoxing people when you don't and then hear them berate you for it.

Today I saw my little brother play Vivaldi on the cello with the Youth Virtuosi in the Music and Arts Conservatory, and the talent pool in the strings department there is really impressive considering the age group. I invited my highschool friend to see it with me, and given that he plays violin he was also very impressed over how well the kids played. He says there was no scratchiness at all, and in retrospect I guess that's what I was looking for in young musicians and to hear that there really wasn't showed how they exceeded expectations.

Unlike other times in the past, I haven't really been that excited over meeting up with my old friends in high school. Maybe I grew out of it. Most likely, it's because I don't like to talk about what I've been doing while I know that they're doing Big Things in their colleges and getting ready to get their degrees. It's hard to talk about that when I know that all I've been doing is flailing around. 

I should use this holiday time to prep myself up for the spring.

Yesterday was my 21st birthday!

I know that a lot of people make a huge fuss over it; I know this through many parties back when I used to work at the Sushi House. Many Sapporo bottles were opened on those occasions.

I didn't make it that big of a deal. At first I thought it would be great to invite people to either lunch or dinner at the local Elephant Bar. My family celebrated birthdays there, and they have awesome Asian food on their menu. But I decided not to do that, since it means a lot of money has to be spent. So what I did instead was that I bought Funfetti cake mix (YAY, FUNFETTI! SO MUCH NOSTALGIA), strawberry frosting, and learned how to use the brand new oven for the first time since the kitchen got renovated.

My family also unearthed an old, unused mixer that was probably a decade old. It's really, really new, and after watching a lot of food channels, I became a bit inspired as I mixed the cake.

I also managed to use up these mango and almond pudding mixes that were sitting in the pantry for a couple of months, and I bought some soda and chips from the 7/11 down the street. I also ordered some pizza online from a local store instead of something general like a Dominoes' Pizza parlor. Though if the choices were available, I would have been all over Pizza Hut.

So most of the people I invited came and then some: my awesome ex-coworkers were there, my college friends who were still in town were there. The people that didn't make it, I'll eventually see them over the weekend. We bonded over food, fanfiction, video games and Netflix. I got food for my birthday, which is great, and my ex-coworkers bought me beer. Blue Moon and Smirnoff Ice, to be specific. For Netflix, we watched Batman/Superman: Apocalypse, which was all about Supergirl, annnnnnnd..... the film didn't make me like Supergirl any more than I did before in the "Justice League: Unlimited" episodes. I didn't watch enough "Superman: TAS" to have more of an opinion, but oh well. I did like the Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman dynamic, though; Everybody's commentary made watching the whole film hilarious.

The only drama that happened was HOLY CUSTOMER SERVICE-FAIL, BATMAN, where's our pizza?? I called the pizza place, whose front desk sheepishly told me that their fax machine taking care of the online orders was on the fritz, and I confirmed that I still wanted the pizza. Half an hour later, during an intense discussion over Elena of the Turks and the natures of Shin-ra Electric, my friend Krisee noticed that a van was moving back and forth for about 3 minutes. Poor guy, I had to go out of the house to wave him over. I didn't feel too guilty, though, since I already tipped over the online order.

But inside, my friends were discussing over how in the past if a pizza would be more than twenty minutes late, the pie would be free of charge. Since mine was over three hours late (well I also busted out some frozen pizza to bake in the oven earlier, so it wasn't a big deal), a couple of my friends said I should call them to see if I couldn't be charged for it. Krisee, bless her heart, offered to make the call, which I let her without thinking. Her tirade was incredible; one of those passive-aggressive "I didn't want to say this, but...." kind of conversations. Hearing it actually reminded me of my days being at the cash register in the Sushi House.... Ohhhhh, I felt so guilty as she berated the pizza parlor.

But I scored a future free pizza :)

Overall, it was a fun and relaxing party. I got money from my parents and I baked my first cake. Sometime next week, one of my friends will take me to what in IV is called "The Loop" which is to get one glass of booze from each bar along that route. I'll make sure I'm safe when that happens. Also, I'll be seeing more people later before they go to college.

Celebrating with friends was my favorite part of the party.

I obtained a Twitter account just lurk around for relevant stuff.

Obtained Google + without much desire to use it to its limits, but probably will gradually.

Obtained discounted 8GB of Memory Duo Pro at half price- makes for a happy, tech-y girl :D

Had a test today and a Final tomorrow.... Gotta hit the books.

Will eventually post AX news and photos. And videos.

• Signed up for FF Megaflare. Yay for fiction challenge! And my first one, at that.
• ...Studying REALLY HARD FOR PHYSICS CLASS. YEP, MM-HMM, THAT'S WHAT I'M DOING.
• Playing Star Ocean: The Last Hope International on the PS3. Finally got the battle system pretty good. Dislike realistic rendering of very obvious anime anatomy and occasional blurbs of somewhat sexist behaviorism despite being in the far future and REALLY GUYS, EVEN IN THE 22ND OR 23RD CENTURY EMBARRASSING GENDER STEREOTYPES? Whatever, Japan.... Moe still goes strong, sadly.
• Playing through final dungeon of Final Fantasy IV. Then rage-quit after dying without saving.
• Got a ton of fanart and hung them on my walls. Stood back and watched my handiwork only to become thoroughly creeped out by my room. The eyes... Every time.
• Will practice for Driver's License test on the 12th. Must have independence in mobility.
• Reading Skip Beat. Extremely funny. Not often I laugh out loud from manga anymore.

Also, I've watched:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica. So awesome.

Ao no Exorcist, or Blue Exorcist on Crunchyroll. Also another anime that has me laughing in real life.

( Work Hell and Cosplay-Fail )


That was doomsday for me.