Random Celestial Thoughts

So she sayeth...

Sunday, August 25, 2002 06:28 p.m.
I'm lazy, but busy. :P Yeesh, I have to start updating more often so I don't have to begin with apologies every time I blog. Nyah.

Well, I'm back again. My stuff finally came a week ago Weds. Thank god. Nothing was damaged either, so I feel much better. I still would discourage people from using Allied at all costs, however. So my absence was due to much unpacking and cleaning and putting away stuff. It was amusing that the day my stuff came, two other people moved into our building so our dumpster was full within the day. ^_^; Unfortunately it had been just cleaned the day before. Ooops. Anyway, after a bunch of that interspersed with periods of lounging, walking about lairs of mountain lions (we went hiking ^^), and whupping on Seymour (you bastard!) for awhile--that is playing FFX, orientation began.

First about FFX. Possible spoilers ahead! XO I really like the game. It's fun. The characters amuse me, and I like their company. Tidus needs a new VA, but hey. Certain comics would badmouth this game--even after never playing it and only watching various parts from time to time whilst I was playing XP, but I would refute his points. I don't really feel like typing too much about this, but I'd like to make a few points. Yes, I noticed that the female characters were basically stereotypes, but they do have their own personalities. Lulu is my personal fav. Goth black mage who is still enough of a human being to have had a fiance and guard Yuna. Rikka is a cloned Yuffie and Selphie, but I like Rikka so much more than those other two. Sure, the game may be like a long hall, but how much of RPGs, even from old school contained dungeons that led you around by the nose anyway? There are long hallways, but I didn't have a problem with the [lack] exploration. There are still areas to explore, and once you get into the "end game" mode--that is right before you fight the final bosses and have the airship--you can explore more and get more stuff.

He also claims that the excuse for the villiany of the game is "people suffer so let's kill them." Baloney. That's only one or two person's opinion in the game, and while they maybe your opponents, the Real Villian of the game is Sin--a giant monster thing that's been around for 1000 years. Perhaps he would have realized this if he had played the whole game. Seymour is not THE villian, he's like Ultros only bitchy and actually evil. He doesn't really appear very often except to battle you and generally be an ass. The Real Villian aka Final Boss is Sin, and all it does is go around and destroy stuff--it really doesn't have an opinion. The "escape suffering through death" reasoning is actually valid, in my opinion, judging by the way the world of the game is set up. It is actually the ONLY option that the people have (until we plucky heroes came along of course--maybe! I haven't beaten the game yet!) to be happy, that is, free of suffering. Basically, life in Spira is an endless spiral of death. Sin comes and destroys everything whenever it wants and no one can stop it except the summoners. However, with the way the summoners defeat Sin, once it's defeated, it comes back EVERY time. The player is eventually told this, and so you understand that there's really no escape from the suffering that Sin causes except for death. What the summoners and other people are offering is false hope of escaping Sin's wrath. Sure, you can go on living, but you'll keep right on suffering. The heros, of course, see and understand this, so they want to keep living and fighting to relieve themselves of suffering. So, the point of said webcomic artist is moot. The "villiany" is not the Real Villian, and it's actually valid if you play the game. Maybe it's just me and I've heard about this jumping off the spiral of death in so many Asian-thought related courses, that it doesn't not make sense to me. O_o;

Anyhoo. So I had orientation this week too. Met all the people in the department--cool beans. I can be a happy Nihongo Geek again. ^^ I can speak Japanese and people understand me, and we can have interesting conversations not only about J-E and E-J but Chinese too. For example, the word for panda in Japanese is "panda" in katakana, but in Chinese it's written "cat-bear" or something like that. ^^; Can't remember exactly. So classes start tomorrow. I'm taking Teaching Methods, Research Methods, 4th year Japanese, and TAing East Asian Civ. It should be an interesting semester. Teaching Methods class is being conducted in Japanese. >_> I'm scared to go. Our book, thankfully, is in English. I don't mind the being spoken to in Japanese, but I really don't want to be learning about a subject in a language I'm still shaky with. My vocabulary is still fairly small for my level. Ah well. Luckily there's a native Japanese in our class, so the group of us will be helping each other through the class and the readings. ^^ I'm slowing adjusting to University life (as opposed to small liberal arts college life.) See, it's the little things. My classes are all like Knox's classes since they're grad classes--small. My TA class on the other hand is a 100 level class, and has over 100 students in it. ^_^; Wha... luckily I only have to grade about 1/8th of the student papers!

Anyhoo. I've taken up enough space here. later.

Random Thought OTD: "HeeeeeeHA! Here we go!" -- Cid (FFX version)

Tuesday, August 13, 2002 11:04 a.m.
Funny, I can't recall the last time I was on the verge of hysteria, but I certainly was this morning. More of a destructive rage/hysteria. >_< Yuuup. Allied is still not delivering the goods. I really don't feel like typing about it but needless to say, they moved the date forward again. Then when they tried to fix things by directly shipping the stuff to Boulder, that did little to help other than to get it into the city. Supposedly it was supposed to arrive yesterday, but as of 10 a.m. this morning it was unlikely to arrive until at least tomorrow. >_< I'm about to go down there with our little compact car and haul all must stuff my damned self. I could prolly get everything in several trips except for the desk and the dresser.... It's been over two weeks now. I feel like crying again. >_______<

In other news I've gotten stuff accomplished. Been playing FFX like non-stop since I bought it last week. I'm making my way across the Calm Lands. I had a hell of a time beating Seymour for the second time. <_< So many of the boss battles in this game are SO hard. It's amazing. Although I like the fact that you have to employ stragety if you want the easy way through the game: ie, switching party members to slaughter the monsters they can easily hit like Wakka with flying things and Auron with armored beasts. I'm very much enjoying the game. It's pretty of course. ^_^ None of the characters annoy me greatly except for Tidus when he's whining like a little lost Cloud. Yeesh. His English VA is such a whiner. O_o; I heard a little of him in Japanese as my old roomie had the Japanese version of the game. The game play is fun and it's hard sometimes. There's a huge story, and you actually care about the characters--wah! Karen would probably hate Yuna though. ^_^; Personally, my favorite character is Lulu.

I also read Haruki Murakami's "Wind-up Bird Chronicle"-- (eigo de...mochiron) which is actually quite a feat considering it's a whopping 600+ pages (with smallish print!) It was o.o well. Good, I guess. I suppose it could have had more of an ending, but it was an ending nonetheless. I would recommend it. Well, off to get groceries and things. It didn't help that I had to stay at home all day yesterday waiting for the movers who never came...so now I have to do all my errands today. sigh.

Random Thought OTD: "Did you hurt them?" -- Lulu

Tuesday, August 6, 2002 01:28 p.m.
Am alive! O.O Got married! Went on honeymoon...er..."honeymoon!" We went to Minnesota and drove to Colorado. I got sick twice on the way (vomit and headache.) Oh, the romance. ^_^; Moved! Am now in lovely Colorado, although the mountains around here could be greener, in my opinion. The apartment is small but lovely. It was hot the first couple days here. We found out later (we have no cable or tv recpetion...) that it was like 100 degrees. O_O; Then it cooled off, and it's been ok ever since. Rained a lot yesterday.

Despite the lack of communication devices we have a phone! No internet though....which is horrible because I have to go over to campus or the library to do anything. Not that I have my computer... >_< Allied Van lines sucks. NEVER EVER move with them. If you can drive a van, take a U-Haul or Budget or something--anything. The problem is that while Matt's stuff got delivered, mine has not. See, we had two pick up places, naturally since Matt and I didn't live in the same state even. In this entire process, Allied has changed my pickup date twice (at very inconvient times), and when they finally DID come around to pick it up (FIVE hours late >_< at frickin' 9:30 p.m.) they couldn't even fit my stuff in the truck. It was full. >_< SO. The driver says we should call the Allied people and get them to take care of it. They came the next day to pick my stuff up after some hassling, but I haven't seen it since. Supposedly our promised delivery date was between 7/29 and 8/1, but that didn't happen. Then they said that it would get here by 8/9. That's almost TWO WEEKS after our move in date, and when Matt's stuff got here. Well, then the other day we heard soemthing different--that my stuff got bumped off the truck it was supposed to come on to get here on Friday (8/9). SO we had to fight with the office people, and now apparently it's going to get here sometime this weekend anyway. Not that I heard that from the movers. Heard it through my mom who has also been contacting them. ¬_¬ I feel like whipping out the lawyers, because they have ALL my stuff except for a weeks worth of clothes and some stuff I brought to keep me occupied on the trip. Grr. RAGE.

Other than that nothing else has been up. ^_^ As if that isn't enough. Oh, other than my new found addiction to Super Target. Mwaha. They have cheap groceries. ^^ *twitch* Anyhoo, my email contact is still the same, and hopefully I'll be updating my blog more regularly. ^^; Only a few weeks of summer vacation left. Better go make the most of it. Jya.

Tuesday, June 18, 2002 02:24 p.m.
Yes I am a lazy girl with regards to blogging. I tried to the other day, but the computer ate the entry...Grr... Anyway, I'm done with my life as an undergrad. After a week filled with Senior Week exploits, I finally got to graduate a week ago last Saturday and then came right home. Ever since I've been generally hanging out, trying to look better for my wedding pictures (ie: riding that exercise machine in the basement, attempting somesort of tan so I don't look, well, let's just say in some places I'm so white that I'm almost clear O_o;). I've been doing other wedding stuff which I'll discuss after a momentary blog response.

Karen, I'm so jaded that this article about Ohio State and Bush's speech doesn't surprise me. It's pretty damn sad that a school can [threaten to] expel a student over something like that. I mean, it's common courtousy not to heckle and interrupt someone's public speech, but it shouldn't be an arrestable offense unless you're totally interfering with the proceedings. However, I don't think we can sit here and chalk this one up to Bush and the federal government. I personally think it's silly to do so, and for many it's just a knee jerk reaction of those who hate Bush anyway. I'm 99% sure this policy was the university's doing. It sounds exactly like what a university would do, and they certainly don't want to look bad in front of the President. Hate him, love him, he's still the President of the United States. I think someone in the comments mentioned that it was likely the university. Somehow I remember being dictated to at high school graduation that we couldn't do X, Y, and Z and if we did we were in big trouble. Although, I don't think anyone mentioned that we couldn't do certain things at Knox's graduation. Personally I've never seen such outspoken hatred for a President before in my life. o_o It's somewhere between fascinating and outrageous. Even when Clinton was in office and so many people were anti-Clinton, I don't remember this outright hatred and name-calling that goes on with anti-Bush people. I just don't get it. (I, btw, voted for John McCain. Yeah, I know. :P)

Anyway, I've been quite busy although I've been quite lazy too. Been looking over Japanese and such to prepare for that placement test that's going to becoming in the fall. I bought a bunch of new clothes, the Evangelion boxset, Excel Saga 1, and to my joy, the new David Bowie CD. I saw the Live by Request Saturday night. *_* wai. It was really great. They played a slew of songs from the new album, plus a lot of the old ones. I was proud to say I knew all of the one's he played except for the one Moby requested. Speaking of these two, I'm going to have to attend their concert in Denver in August. *_* No job? Pshaw! I can scrap together the cash...I hope... Oh, and to anyone who missed the concert, they're going to play it again Sunday, Thursday, and Friday of next week.

Ack. I have to dash off for my dress-fitting. >_> I'll have more complaining about the dryness of the temp worker market later. Bai now.

Thought OTD: "Angels have gone..." -- Bowie

Monday, June 3, 2002 03:38 p.m.
Wow. Do you realize exactly how much oxygen is around here? Well, a lot, let me tell you. If you don't believe me, run around Colorado for a few days then come back and try and breathe again. O_o; Like, wow, man. Anyhoo, yes, I'm back from Colorado. We had a lovely time. Surprisingly, it WAS a vacation. Thursday was mostly travel time and Matt took his last final in the morning. I sat around packing and working on my translation. I finished the night before--all that is left is to make it sound like actual English. ^^; The flights were fairly short, but the intransit part was long since we had to drive from Denver International to get to Boulder (about an hour) and the same getting to the Moline aiprort from good ol' Knox. We sat in the aiports for awhile too. I hate that.

We scored our rental car once we were in Denver and I drove to Boulder in the dead of night on roads that are designed to trick all newcomers into thinking they're going to crash because they keep adding lanes and changing direction and ARGH! O_O; It was a time. I hate driving on the highway at night in unfamiliar territory. Bu. But we got to the hotel just fine, and I didn't crash or anything. We got up bright and early the next day at 8. Lucky for us we had that extra hour. oh ho! We saw the shoebox of an apartment the university offered us. Indeed, it was a shoebox--perfect for one person to live in, but not two. We told them "no." From there we found our way to my department. Unfortunatly no one was there except for a couple people. I didn't get to meet any professors, but we wandered around the building and the campus some. All while it was 90 degrees outside and we were dehydrated from the extreme (well, compared to the Midwest in the summer) lack of humidity. Amazingly enough, when there's no humidity, 90 is NOTHING. ^_^ Anyhoo, we saw some stuff and scurried off for lunch and our apartment appointments. The first few ones we saw were not what we wanted--too small and not particularly nice. It only took a half hour to look at three apartments, so we went over to the next place we were going to look at on Saturday.

Here is where our jaws fell off and we fell together in a mass of giggling goodness. This place we were looking at was an apartment complex about a mile from the campus and even our hotel (which was right across the street from campus). The apartments were nice and big with ample storage space, there was a pool, a clubhouse, a workout room, they pay for water and related water stuff, etc. The complex seems pretty new and everthing was just great so we decided right then to get our apartment there. We got applications and stuff which we'll be filling out very soon.

After that we set out to eat at one of the Japanese restaurants in downtown Boulder. There's a place in Boulder called Pearl St. Mall, a pedestrian mall. Basically, it looks exactly like the pedestrian mall in Iowa City complete with people playing instruments on the sidewalks, variety of college student-related stuffs, lots of restaurants, and the like. The restaurant we found was mostly sushi and a tad expensive for our little budget so we left for a place we happened to spot on our way to the other restaurant. This place was the Moshi Moshi Bowl--a cheap little restaurant complete with varieties of [slightly Americanized] donburi, udon, and some other stuff I can't remember. I scarfed down my enitre bowl of the chicken and veggies and Matt managed to eat half of the beef udon bowl. Apparently the bowls were very large or something. :P *shrug* Anyway, I didn't realize that you could get the chicken in different flavors, so I ended up being given teriyaki when I could have had curry. Bu. After that we toured the mall and found another sushi shop. There must be 10 of them in Boulder. o_o;

On Saturday we saw our last apartment and finally went back to the lovely complex and picked the one we wanted. So, if we get that one, we're moving in on July 29. After that we were free to do what we wished, so we did some more wandering, ate dinner, wandered some more, and saw The Sum of All Fears. Pretty good movie. Confused the hell out of me that Jack Ryan is now like 29 and it's 2002. >_>; Continuity anyone? Sunday we had to head back home. We did a lot more wandering and in the process found a used game shop. They sell everything from Nintendo and Sega Saturn to PS1 and 2, Xbox, etc. They also buy games, to which something like the following conversation occured:

M: Hey, look, *points to Chrono Trigger and SNES FF games* they buy used games too. Maybe we can sell our duplicate copies once we're living here. ^_^
R: o.o; Not MY copies!
M: ^_^ That's ok. We can sell mine.
R: O_O; But...but...but what if mine break? What are we left with then?! Precious Chrono Trigger! X_x
M: o.o;

FYI they were selling a copy of CT with all the documentation plus box for 0. Niiiice. Damned if I'm selling mine though. XO

So then we came home. The End. I guess that's it for my little tale. Boulder isn't as pretty as everyone says it is. Well, this from the girl who spent 2 months in the Kansai region. Now *that* is pretty. Boulder was nice too. I'm not saying it wasn't pretty--just that it wasn't the gem that everyone was saying it was. o.o Maybe it's just that everyone got my hopes up. Um, I have more to say about this, but this entry is long enough, and I must be going to the senior dinner at the college president's house soon, so I'll just leave you with these nuggets of joy.

Random TOTD: "How do you grow more seedless grapes?"

Wednesday, May 29, 2002 02:15 a.m.
No, I'm not dead. I *did* almost did have a psychotic episode earlier in the evening. I swear, if anyone brings the kanji for "kirei" near me again....grr... Well, the short of the story is that I found this word in the story I'm translating and it's written in these kanji I've a) never seen before b) are really complicated c) aren't in ANY of my dictionaries. I finally had to go crawling over to one of my roommates who has an electronic dictionary, and I fiddled around with it long enough to get the readings for the kanji, stuck them in the online dictionary, and found out that for the last twenty minutes I'd been trying to read "kirei" of all the damn possible words. O_o; BLARGH.

Ahem. Anyhoo, it's been awhile since I've updated. Many things have occurred. I finished the paper, printed and bound the paper, and then had my honors defense. I got my outside examiner from the Peoria airport without incident. She's a very nice person and we had a nice chat about a bunch of things. I rewarded myself for this venture with dinner at Dairy Queen. ^^ And messed around watching theater the rest of the night, and went to bed early. The defense went very smoothly, and I answered all their questions pretty well. Class one--completed.

From there I had a week to begin editting my portfolio and introduction to the portfolio again, and then finish it. The portfolio was basically a compilation of all the creative writing I've done in college, edited with my new and improved senior knowledge. Then on top of that we had to write a critical intro to it where we expounded upon our lives as writers among other things. The words "ruddy" and "sultry" appeared in said intro. Nyaha. It took me the full week and me staying up late the night before to finish it, but I did. It's done, turned in and all is right in the writing world. Woot. Instead of having class as we should have, we instead did the English major thing to do and went to a bar. ^^ So we sat around drinking and eating *really* salty popcorn--saltier than the cashews I consumed later that evening. It was quite fun. I discovered a new drink I like, but unfortunatly it was something made up by the bartender. O_o So I can't order it again... bu. Class two--completed.

From here, it's the mad dash to get my translation done. The rough translation WILL be done tomorrow since I'm leaving for Boulder (for a visit, mind you) on Thursday. I won't be back until late Sunday. Finals officially end Monday. So...I should at least get it done by then. I only have five or so pages left, but that's still about five hours of work depending on how long it takes me to look up all the kanji I don't know. That's a lot. My kindom for an electronic dictionary. I'm so getting one of those before fall. Grar.

So, yes, I'm heading for Boulder with Matt on Thursday to search for apartments and inspect the on-campus apartment we were offered this week. I squealed for joy when I got the email, but then we slowly realized the apartment may be the size of a shoe box, er, two shoe boxes (roughly twice the size of a dorm in Knox's quads O_o), so we might have to decline their offer. We'll see though. I'm happy to say since Boulder offers a wide variety of Japanese restaurants--about 8 total--we'll be eating there one night. Ah, it's been so long. *_* My taste buds are leaping for joy. I want some donburi, dammit. My friend (who is not among the crowd of my Japan-savy friends) thought that maybe I could find a nice buffet there. To which I went: "O_O;;;;" and thought just how disgusting that would probably be. Oh, the snob I am, but it's probably true. Sushi buffet? Dear lord. The very idea.

So yes, I've been misusing the power of the internet by looking up businesses in Boulder through the Yahoo yellow pages. ^_^; How geeky is that. Anyway, I've found many good places there without having been there yet. I made sure to locate any and all comic shops, bookstores, used bookstores, software places, Japanese restuarants, okay all the restaurants, fun and interesting stores, etc. etc. Can ya tell how my mind works? :D But of course. It's been so long since I've played anything other than Cvs.SNK2--which is the only thing I've had time to do. I have the biggest to-do list for this summer. It's crazy.

Anyhoo. There's more to say, I guess, but I'm going to fall over from sleepiness and that half-heart attack I had when my roommate snuck up on me just now... O_o; And your little dog too... Oyasumi.

Thought OTD: "Then the rain sets it...it's the angel man!" -- I'm Deranged, David Bowie

Thursday, May 16, 2002 03:16 p.m.
Oh, it's been a hell of a day. On top of the million things I have to deal with this weekend, I woke up to find an email from my future mother-in-law saying that her friend tried to check our gift registry at Target only to find 1) nothing and 2) registry under someone else's name! O_o; So I had a heart attack (let's just say I'm pretty stressed out as it is. My honors project is culminating on Saturday. I fear I'm developing some anxiety disorder or something... >_<) Anyway, so I figure her friend probably put in the wrong name or state. Especially the state. I can just see someone on the Matt-side doing that. So Matt and I drove out to Target after lunch to--lo and behold--find our reigstry existing and intact. Well, so much for that crisis. I knew it wasn't Target's fault, but, man. Don't DO that...

I also had to go rebind some of the copies of my honors paper today too since the glue didn't stick right. Fortunatly they're done now, but it was annoying trying to get that done. Oh, and what's more, I get to drive to Peoria tomorrow to pick up my outside examiner. By myself. On the highway. In a car I've never driven before. And I don't know how to get to Peoria OR the airport. O_o; Now, I'm somewhat timid as it is, but I'm not only pretty wary about driving on the highway, but I I'm not happy about going alone in an unfamiliar vehicle on an unfamiliar road to an unknown destination. O_o; I can just see myself getting lost. But I won't, dammit. I have to have her back here and safe so I can give my presentation and get this overwith. RAR. Hopefully I will stop being stressed out on Saturday afternoon. My exam is at 11 a.m. Then it's just translating and editing for the rest of the term. Shouldn't be so bad. ^_^;;

In less stressful news I get to go to Caxton Club tonight--twice--to see people read and find out who won the Davenport Fiction and Poetry prizes. Maybe me? Nah. But it's money, so here's hoping. I know I don't stand a chance for the fiction prize, but maybe MAYBE the poetry one. *shrug* ^_^ oh well. Uh, that's about all. I'm going to go put the finishing touches on my presentation and then go off to Caxton. Hopefully my comments button works, so leave me some pithy thoughts every once in awhile. :D Maybe I'll stop complaining about my life then.

Thought OTD: "Little rooms and iron bars do not a prison make. But they sure help." -- Bugs Bunny