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So apparently Than is now one of eleven species of extinct wingless bird endemic to New Zealand. College is going really well so far. Among many other things, I have gone to a sort of bar with some lovely people, stayed up way too late getting introduced to Psych by some other lovely people, and spent ridiculously long periods of time having frank and wide-ranging conversations over the lunch period with yet more lovely people. There has also been a trip to the local donut store at two a.m. (where I purchased the absolute best donuts I have ever had), adventures with a disembodied gorilla head, and cawing. Lots and lots of cawing. :3
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Monday, Wednesday, Friday: American Literature After the Civil War from 8-8:50 Latin American Civilisation and Culture from 11-11:50 (I might drop this in favor of something actually related to my majors, but then again I might add a Spanish minor because I would like to continue with the Spanishes) Logic and Nature from 1-1:50 Tuesday, Thursday: Creative Writing from 8-9:15 Intro to Theology from 10:50-12:15 Whenever: Production Arts Totes looking forward to those 8:00 classes. Totes. >_< But things are going really splendidly here! I have only just recently had the time to sit down and blag, for I have hitherto been busy making new friends, reconnecting with old ones, and coexisting surprisingly well with my roommate. Soon come the beanies and the classes, though, which will add a whole new dynamic to everything. Also, our fight song is stuck in my head in a very real and repetitive sort of way, and I don't even know all of it. Waugh!
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I'm in a hotel room in Atchison, adamantly insisting on sticking to Pacific Standard Time even though it's past one over here. The Mountain Dew Slurpee I had recently is probably helping me in this regard. Fairly vague spoilers ahead? As one of my last acts before leaving home, I went to see Inception, mainly on Ben's insistence, but I'm glad I went. It probably lived up to its hype better than Avatar, although I did feel that the dreams were for the most part entirely too lucid and structured and logical. I've had lucid dreams, and while I have been able to change my environment, there is still a huge amount of fuzziness and uncertainty lurking in the periphery. Of course, films aren't dreams in the literal sense, but I still think they could have done something to make the dream bits closer to real-life dreams. Plus which, in my dreams I myself have been able to do things I never could in real life, such as bouncing really high into the air or surviving really high falls. Where was the defiance of the laws of physics, aside from the architectural bits? And for all their talk about making mazes in which to lose projections, I think that that theme could have been brought into play more than the one instance when Arthur was fighting that guy in the hotel. But that's just me being nitpicky; it was still a really good film. Toy Story 3 had it beat for emotional resonance (for me, anyway, (though I think being sick subdues my emotions somewhat (well, and I was unsure whether I should be rooting for Cobb, because what if he was insane and his kids didn't exist?))), but it was well-scripted, well-acted, etc. And Eames was bloody brilliant, especially in the third level. But then, I'm a sucker for that kind of accent. Also! The best thing ever happened earlier tonight: Just as we were entering Atchison, “Point of Know Return” by Kansas came on the radio, which was just so appropriate in so many ways.
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Or one of them, at any rate. First, the "tl;dr" version, for those of you whose attention spans have been ruined by the Internet: (Photos by ChocoFrogs) Now for the processed lunch meat of the entry, in excruciatingly pedantic detail: The journey over went pretty well. I left my house Thursday morning, drove to my aunt and uncle's house where I parked the car, then got dropped off at the Sea-Tac airport and hopped on a flight down to Long Beach, where I met Jason. We managed to fill most of the next few hours with conversation and in fact continued well into the night flight. Some people sitting around us got rather peeved that we were having such lively conversations and not doing normal sorts of things such as, oh, sleeping, so I tried that for a while, and got a grand total of one hour of sleep to show for it while xccj mostly played Chip's Challenge. Then I was awakened by the thunderstorms. I had never seen lightning strikes from above and at night before, and it was really quite awesome. I mean that in the old sense of actually instilling awe. The scattered flashes lit up the darkened clouds with a light that was at some points pure white and at others a reddish color reminiscent of fire and brimstone. So that kept me entertained for a little while, then I think I reread most of Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman (cosplaying as Richard and Door strikes me as a splendid idea, and I would do it for Halloween this year, but I think we are doing Firefly, so it will have to wait) and just watched the little map on the TV screen in front of me that gave our speed, altitude, and general location. It was the only thing worth watching on those TVs, I swear to Bob. We arrived at IAD in short order, and as I stood around the baggage claim waiting for Jason's stuff, I contrived an ingenious ambush plan for Ben when he arrived to pick us up. Basically, it involved standing here (right around the corner from the walkway to outside) and sneaking up on him when he came in and noticed Jason (strategically placed in plain sight). Unfortunately, he called me on my phone and made us come outside, so our fiendish plan was for naught. So then we went to Ben's house and I sang along horribly to some songs in the car and tried not to cringe upon removing some of my MOCs from their suitcase. We got some of the mosaic pieces together and they looked pretty good, and then we went outside and Ben cut off my big toe with a power saw. No, just kidding, but we did chop up some pieces of plywood to use as backing for the mosaics. It was absurdly humid out there, and despite the fact that I only noticed two mosquitos trying to bite me, this session of about thirty minutes was, I believe, solely responsible for the twenty-some bug bites I had to deal with for the rest of the weekend. West Coast weather is much more better. After wood shop, it was time to pick Joehaku and James up from the Greyhound bus terminal in DC. Now, Ben is a great guy, don't get me wrong. But you'd think that someone who's spent much or most or all of his life in the general vicinity of that area would know his way around the place, right? Wrong. So he, Jason, and I tried to find our way to the bus station with perhaps six hours of sleep between us, some directions given to us by the internet, which lost all relevance as soon as we made a wrong turn, and a map of DC, which was slightly more useful. We got trapped in a government compound, made several u-turns, and had a heck of a time getting on what we thought were the right roads (I swear DC has two Third Streets), but we did eventually find them. Then we had to get out of DC and back to Ben's place, during which time we not only found a street with a friend's last name on it, but also an old lady walking in the middle of a residential road. Thinking myself safe behind the windshield of Ben's minivan, I said "old ladies are worth fifty points!" and then I kid you not, she turned and looked right at us. Finally, after time spent printing out other peoples' MOC cards, driving through a seriously frightening thunderstorm, and waiting for ages while Joe and James checked into their hotel (their revenge for us taking so long to pick them up, no doubt), we arrived at Brickfair! At first glance, the Dulles Expo center resembled a run-down Costco with all the shelves and stuff taken out. Same cement floor, same lights and metal bits in the ceiling, just a bit more disheveled. Anyway, we brought our stuff in and I busied myself unpacking my MOCs, which I set up on one end of the table, and I have to say that Primus and I made pretty good bookends to DV and ToM's stuff in the middle. I also busied myself getting acquainted with people, and I was by this point quite ridiculously deprived of sleep, so I was actually pretty subdued for a lot of the time. Sisen gave me a stuffed moose, which was very nice of him. It amuses me that we did not play Duck Duck Goose for fear of being disruptive, and yet nobody raised a fuss when we were running around, swordfighting, and nearly collapsing the moon bounce during "Adult" Swim... During a futile quest which I should quite like to forget about, we came across the weirdest thing at one of our many, many U-turns: A street sign with my surname on it. The next day we got to the expo center bright and early, or at least before most of the other BZPeoples showed up. You could tell when the Brickarms table opened because it was immediately surrounded by a cluster of pre/teen boys that did not diminish until the fair was over. Despite some hitches with the mosaics, we did get them together eventually. It's quite impressive that we actually managed it, and I'm glad to have been a part (2/9, to be precise) of it. Here are our lovely coordinators with Onua. As I recall, most of Friday was spent just hanging out with people and having a good time. I went to Chik-Fil-A for the very first time ever and enjoyed it greatly, sat in on an impromptu seminar by Rob on What Went Wrong With Bionicle and Why It Now Sucks (apparently Kiina was named after Greg's wife?), and played Bingo but did not win anything. I think the opening ceremony might have happened sometime that day, but the mike was really screwy so I couldn't hear most of it. Running of the Bulls was really well-organized. Props to those people. I think I already mentioned the sets I got. Saturday we drove to the fair and decided to order some engraved bricks. Unfortunately, the machine broke after some people got their BZP bricks done, so I'm going to have to wait for my Not Geek Orthodox brick. Speaking of purchasing things, somebody apparently had the bright idea to let the public in early to check out the vendors, and so some of us were shanghaied into holding chains up to stop the public from sneaking by, which worked really well. So well, in fact, that I don't think they even bothered with it the next day. It was more or less around this time that I remembered that we were kind of supposed to be running a BBC contest and voiced this possibility to Andrew. I got promoted to Acting Forum Leader in order to handle the Brickfair-side voting, which was all very nice and splendid. During the public hours, many BZPeople hung out behind the table. There was much in the way of awesome headgear, but Rob in particular looked absolutely dashing in his princess crown. One person annotated her program, others swapped glasses (Maddison, I think yours are maybe a bit crooked), and there were also camera wars to be had. Also, some guy wandered over to our table dressed as a garden gnome. After the public hours came a truly epic event: The Combo Build. This in and of itself was not particularly epic, but Rob (still with the pink crown) built a ROFLcopter that was destroyed by Ray to save Waffles and all the children of the world from a fate worse than death. At least I think that's how it went. It probably lost something in the telling, anyhow. A key component of community bonding at Brickfair was the trust exercises, which basically consisted of me closing my eyes while Pat stamped my forehead (Hi Disky). I think I am maybe a bit too trusting. :/ Other fun things Saturday night included going for pizza with mostly the younger crowd, just chilling in Ray and Pat's hotel room, reminiscing about the good old days, having a nonexistent pool party, and being in the expo center during the "Adult Swim" time doing things I mentioned here previously and yet not getting kicked out. Sunday morning I went around snapping pics of whatever caught my fancy. As I was eying a gingerbread house, this guy was all like "no pictures!" He may have been joking, but I took a picture of him and his beard instead. Then the public came again, this time including Randall Munroe, which was totally awesome even if nobody met him. Also, Disky let me wear her awesome chick hat, which was rather nice of her. Sunday night was, as anyone who was there can tell you, the crowning crown-thing of Brickfair. The great and magnanimous Steve Witt (here pictured to the right) treated us to most of dinner at the Outback Steakhouse. It was actually all of dinner for the people who subsisted on appetizers and dessert, which was how it seemed to go down at my end of the table. Almost everyone was in fancy clothes, as evidenced by this photo of Yannick in Disky's shades. I can't speak for Joe or Steve, but I was literally unable to pack anything besides a tie with all the MOCs and sets and coconut shells I was transporting unless I wanted to *shudder* check my baggage, which I was not going to do, even for one enchanted evening. Next time, however, I will likely be bringing fewer MOCs and buying fewer sets, so I will absolutely bring my Slytherin-green suit. And may I say that Josh the Elder and I looked absolutely dashing in Felicia's earrings? At least, I assume this is the case. I haven't any seen pictures of that yet. Outside, where the lighting was better, we took shots of the various staff groups. Here are the Library Staff (except Takuta-Nui (I am in that pose because both Andrew and Yannick were using my shoulders for support (just look at Andrew's elbow))), every single one of the incredibly awesome and schway Voting Booth people. Other people have pictures of other staff groups, including this great one of me and Andrew representing the BBC. It turned out that Steve Witt, being a classy guy and all, knows how to dance. So he took most of the FFOLS out for a spin or two (literally (incidentally, all the female staff who were there have glasses, which is totally cool)). Here are Becca and Maddison, who are the only two of whom I was able to get remotely decent photos, and here is Rob being a total ladies' man. It is also worth mentioning that Yannick and Mari (Deb's sister) were fabulously and unintentionally coordinated, but alas, I did not get any pictures of them. Irrelevant tangent: I remember noticing, in my blissed-out, sleep-deprived haze, that the streetlights were, like, really bright. So I took a photo for some reason. Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and we said and hugged our goodbyes, some of us through a car window. After people started to leave, things became rather less wonderful and more mundane and are really not worth mentioning, so I shall end my reminiscences here. So now I'm sitting on my bed, looking at pictures from the event (these ones here aren't even the best, just mostly the ones I took), suffering from PBSD, and yet also enjoying a post-Brickfair high, because hey, it was a most excellent event. Part of the sadness is because it's just over (), and part of it is because I didn't hang with half of you half as much as I should have liked, and I hung with less than half of you twice as much as you deserved (kidding, but I had to run with the LotR paraphrasing because my book-nerd honor demands it). Staying at Ben's house meant that I did not get to participate in many of the shenanigans that went on, but I'm just grateful for the ones I was around for. If we can make this fit-more-people-at-Andrew's-guest-apartment thing a reality, the good times will be multiplied by a very large number indeed. And if you are wondering if you should come to Brickfair, the answer is yes. Photos and words can only convey so much, and you really have to try it to truly understand. Before going to Brickfair, I had only been to BrickCon a couple of times and I thought it was a pretty great con, so I was kind of ticked at the Brickfair people who were all like "our con is better than yours." But you know what? They were right. I maintain that the venue and organization (and MOC quality, in some areas) at BrickCon are still better, but so many of the people here were just completely lovely and awesome in so many ways, and that is a huge part of what these gatherings are about. I had a great time, even if it wasn't the great time I was expecting, and so did lots of other vibrant youthful sorts. To Steak!
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Monday and yesterday marked the end of the two part-time jobs I've held for the last one and two years, respectively. One was as a lifeguard at the local pool, and the other was as a waiter at an assisted living facility. Lifeguarding paid better and was more convenient in a lot of ways, but you know what? I liked serving meals to the elderly better. I've rarely blogged about it, probably because it was usually fairly routine, but all the same, there is something extraordinary that goes on there: Good old-fashioned sacrificial love. There have been some singular examples of this throughout history, but at my job it happened in smaller amounts every day: People putting the good of others above their own desires and working against the selfish tendencies present in us all. Husbands visiting wives who don't even remember that they are married. Children and grandchildren regularly making time out of their days to come and help feed their parents and grandparents. Co-workers pausing what they are doing to listen to rambling narratives from residents. That is real love, and I have been inspired by being around so many people who honestly love their jobs. You're not in this type of job for the money, or if you are, you don't stay long. If you want to start at minimum wage, you can cook fries at McDonald's or something. So now I've given Sherwood the shout-out it deserves, and now my room is bare of all my personal effects save for what I am taking with me on the airplane (Fun fact: my Lego collection is taking up more space than all the other things I'm leaving behind). Tomorrow I leave for Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, most likely to pursue a double major in English and Theatre Arts. As my time here has drawn to a close I have found myself growing steadily less excited to be leaving almost everything and everyone I have ever known (Being sick probably isn't helping this, either), but I am resolved to do away with such fears and anxieties and make sure that these are some of the best years of my life. Also, the audio program that made Justin Bieber sound incredible is amazing and I am now using it to make Weird Al, 8-bit Dr. Horrible music, and the trolololo guy sound incredible as well. That last one would not be out of place in a haunted house.
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I: Am leaving for college in a scant few days and am consequently scurrying frantically to pack up and put away my belongings. Finally threw away almost all of my Bionicle canisters because I wasn't using them. Was going to say I have too many books, but that is impossible, so let me instead qualify that statement by saying that I have too many books to be lifted by someone who is not the Thing or the Incredible Hulk or somebody. It is possible that smaller bins might have been better, but I think I shall like not having them scattered about. Have a mother with a warped (dare I say cruel?) sense of humor who just bought me Old Spice deodorant and some kind of shampoo with, and I quote, an "anti-frizz agent." Thanks, Mom. Found part of a story I wrote ages ago, while going through some old papers. I had thought all extant copies lost or else on an inaccessible hard drive, so that was quite a nice surprise. Am suddenly sick with aches, chills, and a fever that I really hope go away before my plane flight out Thursday. If they go away by tomorrow that would be even better, because I still have some friends that need saying goodbye to. Hopefully this'll be easy come, easy go and I will stop feeling like my brain is two sizes too large and trying to budge my eyes from their sockets. >_< Woke up this morning with a strong desire to go to Iceland, probably thanks to the dream I had about a sort of Victorian Gothic version of Reykjavik with narrow cobblestone streets and dark, buttressed buildings contrasted against stark, bright landscapes and the buildings crowded into each other, their almost Escherian staircases and passageways turning into small shops and doors and arches. Am oddly pleased that my flight stops over in Albuquerque (where the towels are oh so fluffy!) and am looking forward to meeting cool people and, in a couple cases, seeing such people again. :3 Grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change The courage to change the things I can And the wisdom to know the difference.
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I am sad because BrickFair is over. And because I have to leave tomorrow. And because college is starting soon. And because of other stuff. But there are hope and happiness mixed with the sadness, as is so often the case, and those make all the difference.
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This is Arpy reporting from BrickFair, where I got a field promotion to Forum Leader so I could handle the BrickFair voting on this end after it was mostly forgotten due to Smeag's car troubles. I am imagining my name in darker blue and it looks all right. I was considering writing a chilling exposé on the corruption and violence inherent in the system, but I am most likely complicit in some of that so I decided against it. Today has been quite good so far and has involved coconuts and Von Combula and a Vakama Hordika costume and many other things besides. I guess since the Lego Store visit spilled over into today I could add that to the list. I bought the big Space Police base, a smooth Technic motorbike, a Lego game, and Natalie Breez, who has an awesome helmet. There has been a lot of awesome headgear over the last couple days: My lumberjacky hat, HH's boxhat, Maddison's safari helmet, Janus's princess crown, and various hats possessed by various others. My Astral Bunny Orb Robot Suit seemed unusually popular with the public. I might have more scattered impressions, but I am leaving for dinner soon. Squee!
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I am typing this having had approximately one hour of sleep in the last thirty-eight hours, in spite of which I am doing remarkably well. I have met many splendid people today and look forward to spending the rest of the weekend with them, but I am somewhat saddened that certain of us were unable to find the California Pizza Kitchen and so missed out on some of that time-spending. And if we spend as much time in the car later today as we did yesterday, I shall go insane. But forsooth! BrickFair continues! I shall keep you posted?
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Oh my gosh you guys I am leaving for BrickFair in about fifteen hours and I still have two major MOCs to finish and possibly some others, especially since I just picked up Jimi Stringer (<3) and Meltdown and am now getting inspired by their parts, plus I have a ton of packing to do, so um yeah things are getting pretty crazy around here! Good thing I have my store of terrifyingly inspirational songs and cinnamon jelly bears to keep me going! Bump: I finished one of the major MOCs but not the other because the torso was giving me trouble, plus I procrastinate. I considered tacking the limbs and head onto a Galidor body, but my suitcases were getting entirely too full (fun fact: 48x48 baseplates are too large for carry-on suitcases. I had to kind of turn it diagonally) and so I left it behind. I did finish a small spaceship and whipped up a MOC from some table scrap ideas in like twenty minutes, so there's that. Now I'm sitting in the A concourse of Sea-Tac airport waiting for xccj to show up and lamenting the ridiculous prices they charge for Mountain Dew here. Ooh, a pretty stewardess. Anyway, aside from the vending-machine-daylight-robbery thing, this is a pretty nice concourse. I don't think I've been in this one before. Now it's just a flight down to California, a rather longer one from there to DC, trying not to think about what is happening to my MOCs, and very probably no sleep of which to speak, then BRICKFAIR!
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The dust motes in the spotlight's stream were dancing stars set free from their orbits by the light of the Sun. This was a while after some of us jumped ten feet into the Spokane River with a couple of homeless guys and some college students.
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Tonight I found myself lugging huge CRT TVs up and down multiple flights of stairs and hunting rogue earwigs to the tune of Queen's “Don't Stop Me Now.” Tomorrow I am hosting a Firefly/Serenity marathon. :3
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I present to you, loyal readers, and you, the rest of the internet (I know you're out there. Don't make me use my book-fu), an undoubtedly trivial and banal exercise in mundanity, otherwise known as What I Did On Holiday in Seattle Today! This is the abridged version, mind. All the personal bits and anything approaching real emotion has been carefully excised because...it's personal. Yeah. This is basically a journal entry without the juicy bits and is not remotely polished. Have fun trying to fill in the blanks; your ideas will probably be better than the reality of what happened. Today, I did something that I had been meaning to do for a long time: I went to spend the whole day in Seattle, ostensibly to read through their selection of comic books (or, perhaps more accurately, trade paperbacks of said comics), though as we shall see, “the whole day” was really only part of it. I did not spend a 24-hour period, or even the diurnal period from sunrise to sunset in one place! Ha ha! In any event, I had an adventure (though it could have benefited from more impulsivity on my part and less time spent worrying about being socially normative) with emotional ups and downs (puncutated by pablum at times)! Hurrah! Of course, it could be argued that the surprise dentist's appointment of which I was reminded the night before my miniature road trip put a bit of a damper on things, but then I might not have had the opportunity to That scene, along with the fact that I only had thirty minutes to get up, dressed, and out the door meant that I was unconscionably late to the dentist's. Still, I passed through the chair largely unscathed, though I did pass through the receptionist's with another surprise appointment for tomorrow to get the gaps in my teeth filled in. I don't quite remember assenting to this beforehand.. After that, I was off to Seattle. Somewhere around Discovery Bay, a Mustang with a vanity licence plate saying “CROWLEY” zoomed past me. I can only assume that he was on his way to Forks to check up on things and make sure they were still going smoothly. I got to the Bainbridge Island ferry's parking lot with only a few minutes to spare before the sailing, which was lucky. I had brought my laptop Hex along for the ride, but neglected to bring any sort of carrying case for him (or the beef jerky and pineapple soda which I had brought), so he stayed carefully tucked under the passenger seat in my car, which I have just realized may need a name as well. After an uneventful crossing, I arrived in Seattle and made a beeline for the library, pausing to note a small barbeque place with what I think was a pretty, redheaded waitress as a candidate for lunch, or whatever meal I would be having when I finished reading. Upon arrival at the library, I went to the third floor and had soon accumulated a two-foot-high stack of comic books, which I brought to one of the unfashionably uncomfortable chairs in the teen section and settled in to read. The best ones I read were probably Superman: True Brit, a parody-satire coauthored by John Cleese and exploring what would have happened if baby Supes had landed in Britain, Warren Ellis's The Authority, which was a fairly novel take on the superhero genre, and a collection of Astonishing X-Men comics by Joss Whedon. I apparently really like comics when they are somehow connected to previously existing fandoms (Monty Python, , and Firefly, respectively). For dinner (-ish), I had wanted to go to the barbecue place, but it had, for some strange reason, closed before 4:30, as had most of the restaurants in that area. I made it into a Taco Del Mar right before it too closed and escaped with a huge burrito which I was unable to finish on grounds of not wanting to pull a Mr. Creosote. The accompanying tortilla chips may have been wafer thin, but I wasn't interested. Walking down toward the ferry terminal, my attention was diverted by the sight of a used bookstore, and I promptly elected to take the sailing after the next one. Entering the store, I was delighted to see that it had a spiral staircase leading to a partial upper level (I am sadly deprived of such stairs where I come from). So I went in and went up and down the staircase for kicks, such as they are, but spent most of my time in a little room encompassing the science fiction section, among others. I immediately seized Don't Panic, a previously unknown-to-me companion to the Hitchhiker's books by (and this is the kicker) Neil Gaiman, of all people. This one took me a little bit longer, but I realized that after becoming so engrossed in it that I really ought to buy it, so I added a near-future sci-fi thriller called Dante's Equation to the first book, thus achieving a pile. So I bought the books, left the bookstore, went to the ferry terminal, and bought my ticket. Boring stuff, really, though I did have a bit of a conversation with the bookstore's employee about the plague that is Twilight (it turned out she was from the Olympic Peninsula as well, though not nearly as close to Forks as I am). So I had my bubble tea and ate it too. It was cantaloupe flavored. The end.
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Well, today was certainly emotionally stimulating, at the risk of sounding like a Vulcan who doesn't permit himself to experience emotions. I do, it's just that today was much more of a roller coaster than usual. I shan't get into all the details, but if you could spare some prayers for a local family whose 12-year-old son was killed by a car yesterday that would be great. Skipping over most of those details (I did see a whole roast pig for the first time in my life (Filipinos really know how to party)), to cap the day off, I went with my oldest little brother to see Toy Story 3, which was a nostalgia bomb and a tearjerker and a wonderfully scripted and humourous piece of digital filmography all in one. There were so many favorite characters, both old and new (I'm looking at you, Ken.), and favorite moments that I shan't list them all. A movie hasn't affected me that much in ages, if ever. Just seeing those familiar characters after years of absence struck a chord within me, and I got emotionally involved overall, a bit misty-eyed at points, and outright cried near the end. I'm sure previous events conspired to make me more emotionally volatile than usual, but it was still a bloody great film. Dare I say better than Up and possibly even Wall-E? Well, nostalgia was a powerful factor here, but still. It was a movie about endings and beginnings, and the bit about Andy going off to college especially resonated with me. Here are a couple of quotes from others with whom I wholeheartedly agree: So, go see Toy Story 3. And when you're done, go play with your toys. And I don't mean something like a video game or an iPad app, I mean something that requires you to use your imagination. Those are toys. Do yourself and them a favor. (Also, why does absolutely everyone and their mother want to know when I'm leaving for college? It's like there's some vast conspiracy to get rid of me, and my parents' responses to this question aren't helping mental matters any.)
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Z'ohmygoshyouguys, BrickFair is in, like, six weeks. It will be beyawesome. In addition to myself and my Arpfro, I'll be bringing: The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of TraalSawnas CS/3 DroneFormic DroneN'Garai DemonAstral Bunny Orb RobosuitBlinkyZarking Space GunKametachi WarbugS.P.O.T.MicroscopiumNynrah LazerbarrowBBCC 59 EntryFly Guy (If I have time to rebuild him (which I probably will))Onua Prime (WIP)Starburst (WIP)Possibly a red armored battle suit (WIP?)sexy back ()And I'll be rebuilding one of my old personal favorites, which has never been seen at a convention before. You're welcome to guess its identity.I'll have my mosaic piece and perhaps some small System MOCs as well, but as I don't think I've built and kept together anything big or special or new out of System since before BrickCon, the focus will mainly be on Bionicle. Still, if there's a System MOC of mine you'd like to see, check out my Brickshelf and let me know; I may still have it together.
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Okay, so last night the power went off shortly after midnight, taking my clock, lamp, etc. with it. Not preferring to read my book by the light of Hex, my laptop, I went to sleep thinking that my lamp would wake me up when it came back on so I could reset my clock properly so the alarm would wake me up on time, all of which transpired according to plan. However, I had to set the clock from Hex, which had been hibernating for the last several hours...or so I thought. I took it out of its case to find that it was extremely hot to the touch. Apparently some driver or other responsible for the hibernation mode had failed to load, with the result that my laptop had been left on for ages in its presumably heat-trapping case. Moral: Tiny netbooks may lack adequate cooling. Buy more ice cubes. Also, power outages are silly. Then I had a dream where I successfully eluded a cop who didn't like my car's bumper sticker. I seem to be having a lot of that kind of dream lately.
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This is kind of important, because my old white socks were all too large for me and the grey bit on the heel would show above my shoe heels and for some reason I never really cared enough to do anything about it until now. So now I have new socks! Yey!* I mean, um, OH THE MUNDANITY. Well, actually, there have been deep and weighty things being wrestled with, but I'm not sure if I'll talk about them at some point, especially given the superficial relationships I have with the vast majority of the people here. Maybe an edited version for edificatory purposes. * Yey is an acceptable alternate spelling; cf. grey and gray.
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Posting an entry about life because that is what you do with blogs, and posting nothing but funny pictures has absolutely no basis whatsoever. So, school proceeds apace, with nothing terribly exciting going on. Unsurprisingly, I got into the annual festival of student-directed one-act plays, one of which I wrote, so that will be fun. Rather more surprisingly, my psychology professor recommended me as a tutor, which is apparently a paid position. It won't amount to too much money, but it's still money, and I need money. Besides, helping people is more important. NET is coming to our parish this Sunday. Should be a good do, I reckon. My last one before going off to college. I think I'll wear my Villainous Victorian Velociraptor shirt, which I would once again like to thank Maddison for bringing to my attention. I'm not sure if that clause is correct, but I'm really beginning to feel the four hours of sleep I had last night, so blame it on fatigue. 8-Bit Dr. Horrible is the best thing in the last week at least. Also, spelling Eyjafjallajokull is easy once you know how. And yes, I'm aware the o takes an umlaut. I've merely chosen not to do anything about it. Oh, and I've compiled some quotes and put them in a content block for posterity and suchlike. At least half of them are rather tongue-in-cheek, but there you are. Ta! Bumped in celebration of my half-birthday. Six more months and I'll have my first birthday away from home. It's rather daunting to think how much thinks will have changed by then.
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Here's to a father, teacher, and one of the best builders the Lego community has ever known. You will be missed.
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As your droves of raving comments show, everyone on bzp seems to love reading about my life. Well they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few pictures of my dorm. Holy cow, I think the smell is being transmitted though the internet! Get some air fresheners QUICK! But yah, my room's a mess, The worst part is the boxes, I should really do something abour those. Tahu and Rorshach vs a giant headcrab and a mini Sachiel Posters! Garrus poster! TF2 posters! Books are about as awesome as lego atlantis. My battlestation Eva units 0,1,and 2 vs a rock monster Gurren Lagann vs. Enkidu Space police sets (1 new 1 old) that I don't have room for. Anyone having issues when posting or creating a topic with firefox? quick reply works fine, but when I go into the page with all the posting options, I can't edit anything I've typed or move the cursor within the text box. "If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason." ~Jack Handey
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Well, it's been a long time coming, and some of you may have suspected it from your interactions with me, but I'm getting a little tired of answering all the questions and being the target of so many insinuations and, all things considered, I think the time has come for me to be completely open. To that end, I would like to officially announce that I am a gay American and proud of it. To my fellow gay people, don't be afraid of who you are. I was for a long time, and it caused me no end of pessimism and despair. But now that I've decided to make an active effort to be gay each day, my life is going much better. So, be gay and be proud! Let us all celebrate! Hugs and rainbows, Arpy P.S. I would also like to congratulate my good friends EW and Nukaya (<3 you both) on their impending nuptials and wish them the best of luck in their life together. Be sure to attend the wedding if you can; I'll be there in my copper fishnet stockings as the bridesmaidperson. It promises to be the social event of the decade!
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I had every intention of photographing your Rahkshi today, but circumstances conspired against me in a most conspiratorial fashion. To wit: I spent much of the morning trying to get some good honest work done on scholarship applications, with the afternoon devoted to (among other things) folding laundry, looking at Sandman fanart and photographing Rahkshi, but then my mom gets this call saying she was supposed to help at the homeschool band's nursery today, but she forgot and now she has somebody coming over to visit, so she makes me get in my car, drive to the next town over (getting there forty-five minutes after the time my mom was supposed to be there), all to find that they didn't really need my help. Now I'm at the library waiting for my sisters to get done with band so I can take them home since I'm out here anyway. So the Rahkshi might get photographed today, or it might not. Also, it really irks me when somebody calls somebody else 'sir' or 'friend' when the latter person is, in fact, neither a friend of the person exacerbating the erroneous nomenclature nor a Knight of the British Empire or any other sort of thing deserving the title 'sir.' After a suspicious lack of recent reports from the BBC, I went through the first three pages with a flamethrower and infrared goggles and found more than twenty spam posts. Yup. Does anyone know the best time to purchase tickets for BrickFair? Today's entry has been brought to you by the letter S and some of the more recent additions to my Majhost gallery. ¦3
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New subtitle, sig, and av. I've been rewatching Firefly and researching some astronomy stuff, which together account for all of that plus the fact that I decided to wear my cunning hat today despite the rather nice temperatures of late. I am becoming increasingly bored with and disillusioned by the Internet, which I take as a good thing. Maybe now I can actually do my homework in a timely fashion! Speaking of schooling, I've decided on Benedictine College in Kansas as my institution of choice. I didn't get any of the big fancy scholarships for which I competed last month (a friend, however, did, for which I congratulate her ^.^), but I'm all right on academic ones and I think I can garner enough other scholarships to get by. Despite this touch of grey, I will get by.
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Being a culinary maverick and making some explosive Chex Mix. Inspiring and uplifting music of various sorts. Reading a very moving and thought-provoking book. Spending time with wild and crazy little siblings. A girl smiling at you. Being reminded that you are loved. And of course, funny pictures on the Internet: That, against all the generic praise spam in the BBC, constant reminders that IE does not have Firefox's keyboard shortcuts, physical ailments, and the whole gamut of trivial and ultimately inconsequential things that happen every so often, make life worth living.
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The enemy's gate is down. And no, this is not unnecessarily cryptic. You know why? Because not only have I actually indicated that it is meant to be a cryptic reference, but if you don't recognise that line then IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY AND WILL REMAIN SO UNTIL YOU READ THOSE BOOKS. And then I get punched by Batman. One's sci-fi, the other's not. Oh yeah. So! Life! It is fairly busy! Not least of which because I have been and will be flying out to visit and compete for full-ride scholarships at a couple colleges. I went to Benedictine last weekend and had a great time, learned a lot more about the school, and reeeeally don't want to go anywhere else, but I guess I have to try for the others and not throw them because otherwise my mum will keell mee. But yeah, BC was most excellent. I met lots of cool people (including a fine young lady with whom I've been in correspondence for some time), helped lightly prank someone who was gone for the weekend (a birthday tradition, apparently?) by rearranging the keys on his keyboard, played some pool, and stayed up till three on Saturday watching Star Trek (this was after the competition). And it's just a really good place with some really good faith, community, and scholarship. Don't tell anyone, but I just lifted that from their mission. Oh yes.
