It is too hot, and I have proof.
That is not shattered chocolate; it’s melted chocolate. This was sitting on my kitchen counter. When I came back, it was in this state. I put all my Easter chocolate in the fridge =___=
My apartment complex send an e-mail in response to my building’s outcry for AC. See, my complex can only have heat or AC at one time, and right now it’s still on heat, even though it’s been about 87 degrees today and yesterday. They basically said “it’s gonna cool down over the weekend, so tough shit.”
And so my chocolate Easter kitty is a casualty.
~Jen
So, the two K-on! dollfie dream fullsets have been officially valued at just under $700. As much as I ADORE the Yui one, I just can’t spend that much on her. I hope to own a fullset dollfie dream some day, but I guess I’ll just have to like her more to get it. They’re gonna sell the uniform (sans the blazer) so I’ll probably get that when it comes out. I would actually like to make my own Mugi girl at some point, maybe. Even though she’s my third fav K-on girl, she’s my favorite in design. I love her peacefulness.
But enough about that. Oh, hey, look, we have a banner now *blinks* Huh, I guess Tony did that.
I’ve been going through my old drawings and practicing my traditional coloring because, frankly, I suck at it. I’m not improving very fast. It’s frustrating.
Last night I woke up feeling really sick, so I stumbled out of bed. Those of you who wrote my writing exercise know that my imagination is vivid when I’m between being asleep and awake, and I had this great inspiration and just starting drawing at like 3:00 AM. Basically I thought up a Borderlands inspired world and all of these costume designs floated around in my head, sort of like adventure gear meets steam punk. I’m leaning towards using my friends as characters, but I’d have to ask them/see if I can even draw them decently (I still have problems drawing Tony and I swear I’ve drawn him a bajillion times). I’d also probably have to contact them sometimes and be like “what would you say in this position” annnnd I dunno if they’d want to be bothered.
Oh, sorry, I totally didn’t explain that. I was thinking of doing an illustrated online novel/webcomic with it. Basically the idea is that I can either draw or write whenever I want, or do both in the same installment, so that I don’t get worn out with it as fast. I get tired of drawing really fast, but I can write for quite a while before it gets to me.
My last idea for this comic/writing project involved a zombie plot, but frankly, I don’t think I could draw zombies (although I did a hilarious group drawing of the L4D1 zoms). Plus as I sketched out the plot I realized that it was too heavy for my tastes, what with the death and the turning into the living dead and such. This plot is much lighter.
Unnnghhh I want to work on it right now, bye bye XD
~Jen
I spent about an hour and a half today, searching for jobs in zoology/ethology (animal behavior)/ecology located in Maryland. It was not fruitful. There were several managerial and coordination jobs, where you have to know how the science works in order to manage it, but that sounds truly awful. Those jobs, however, paid well, especially the ones for the government. However, any jobs dealing with hands-on animal stuff were severely low paying (~$20,000/year), at least for people with on a bachelor’s degree. Not only that, but these jobs were the ones for the grunts, the people who clean cages and make food. Why? Because the actual care jobs are either done for free by eager volunteers, or handled by people with PhDs.
I think I made a mistake; I’d rather be a starving artist than a starving pooper scooper. Seriously, can’t you get 20K for being, like… A librarian? Oh, no, I’m sorry, the internets tells me that they make an average of 55K (you know how that goes though). I guess I really had better get working on my novel… Annnnd then I checked that out, and it seems that that’s nearly impossible to do well with too.
Actually, maybe I WILL be a librarian. It seems you have to go to “librarian school,” probably for a year or two, then you’re in. And I can get my $40-70K. Not exactly a dream job, but not at all a bad one. I could write on the side.
I just don’t know, it’s really depressing me.
On a happier note, here’s a nice picture of the Yui Dollfie Dream!
She’s adorable, but somehow doesn’t quite capture all of her charm from the show… What do you think?
~Jen
PS: Can blogging be a job? I love to blog… XD
So, in case you don’t live on the East Coast, let me tell you something… My locality is expecting “areas in excess of 30 inches” of snow, with the flakes stopping sometime around Saturday night. I have NEVER seen that much snow before O____O
This means a few things:
1.) I was off of school today.
2.) I had better be off Monday, and maybe even Tuesday! Even if the roads are clear, how am I supposed to WALK to class in 30 inches of snow?!?! Haha, just the thought of it is hilarious. My typical walk is 25-30 minutes each way, with short walks from class to class between that.
3.) I didn’t get to see Tony and I am thoroughly depressed ;___;
I further frustrated myself by sewing for Himeka-chan for about four hours before realizing it was shitty and throwing the whole thing out. It actually looked fine in pieces… But just didn’t work when it got put together (ie, AFTER I had done ALL the work).
I also gave Isolde’s default wig, which pooled to the floor when she stood, a severe trim. Now it’s the approximate (relative) length of my own hair, with the same cut. Now I will actually use it from time to time; it was just too cumbersome before.
It’s all very sad. To be honest, being snowed in with Tony, possibly gaining some extra days off in the process, would have been a day dream sort of scenario. Being snowed in without him is just depressing ;___;
~Jen
But hey, that’s every post, yeah? XD
It’s official. Somewhere along the line, I have become obsessed with Dollfie Dream. I just love my Himeka-chan, and she doesn’t even have a face or personality yet (it’s a bit difficult to develop her personality when she has no facial expression painted on, although it’s clear that she’s smiling). She somehow seems more alive than my other girls, which makes no sense because she is the most cartoonish. Maybe it has to do with her body… She’s vinyl and soft, and her inner skeleton holds poses better than the elastic skeletons of resin dolls. However, her body type limits the poses she can make.
I really want to sew for her, and paint her face. I’ll chronicle any attempts I make (can chronicle be used as a verb? Ah well, I just did, so there XD).
I got a big order of doll clothes today and was disappointed… It’s all over-sized (unless the item in question is designed to be worn over-sized, I prefer form fitting clothing). I think I’ll keep most of it, but I have one item that definitely can’t be used. Hmmm. I was dressing my girls today, and it was just so exhausting, I pulled up Squishy the giant octopus, grabbed a blanket, and fell asleep with the dolls and their clothes tossed everywhere. I think I worked too hard this week XD
Got some links for you!
1.) I’ve been looking around for blogs of dollfie dream owners (I’m obsessed! What is this?! Seriously?! Blog stalking?!?!) and I found this person with Rin and Yoko. He also has an EXTREMELY impressive collection of Anime figures. I used to be kind of confused with Tony’s love of Anime figures; I thought they were cool but not all that interesting. You can’t dress them or change their eyes and hair after all ;) But I am a changed woman. You HAVE to see this guy’s set up, it’s so professional and extensive!
His blog How do You Figure?
His collection of awesomeness
2.) I adore this webcomic. The art and layout is so fresh, and it’s just… Just awesome, please read it! Hanna Is Not A Boy’s Name
Uh, that’s all for now! :D
~Jen
You know, I just remembered that my high school, Mount de Sales Academy, is considered one of the most haunted places in Maryland. I was there a lot, obviously, and I never saw anything. Although I did almost get severely injured once.
It had snowed recently, and there was a layer of it frozen on the roof of the five-story building. I was walking along the side of the school in the morning. A chunk of the icy snow, probably a foot in diameter (it obviously wasn’t circular, but I can’t think of a better way to say it) and two or three inches thick, broke off from the roof and fell, missing my shoulder by a whisper. I remember looking down at the sizable pile of shattered ice and taking off in a frenzied run for the door, stopping to pant in the cafeteria like I had traveled a mile instead of five yards. I don’t know if it would have been fatal or caused heavy injury, but I imagine it wouldn’t have tickled. I never realized snow could coalesce into a frozen lump like that; it seems so fluffy.
But back to being haunted. Nothing supernatural ever happened to me. Aww man, wait, it did. This wasn’t ghostly though… This priest came to school who was said to be a healer. He would do this thing called laying hands on you; I can’t remember if he put his hands a centimeter away from the sides of my head or if he actually touched me. Anyway, I walked up to him, handed him a card where I had written prayer intentions (this was to keep things moving; people apparently go on and on when they say them verbally), he started to pray, and his hands came close… And suddenly there was this immense pressure on me. It penetrated my skull, and suddenly I couldn’t hear or see. A strong tingling overtook my body, as if every bit of me was asleep. Then I blacked out.
I don’t remember it, but apparently my body started falling backwards. Two men were behind me; they each supported one of my shoulders and lowered me to the floor. My reaction to the laying of hands was common; it seems that when someone passes out from it, their body falls, but is weightless to anyone who touches them. I watched it happen to probably a hundred other girls. The men lowered them effortlessly, as if setting down a feather rather than a person. The explanation is that the priest is channeling the Holy Spirit into you, and that the human body is overwhelmed in the face of it. I wonder what that means if you didn’t fall? I remember seeing a lot of girls start to tilt backwards, but fight against it and remain standing. Maybe it’s an acceptance thing? Who knows.
At any rate, I wasn’t like that for more than a minute. My vision swam back into focus, and I could hear again. I shakily got to my feet; my body wasn’t responding well, and I didn’t regain full control for about five more minutes.
But that also wasn’t the kind of ghost story I was originally hinting at. My school is more than 150 years old. It was always an all girl’s school, although back then it was a boarding one. The girls lived on one side, and nuns lived in the other. The fourth floor, or the fifth if you count the basement, which I always did because it has classrooms, is in disuse. This is where the girls slept (the nuns, I believe, had individual rooms, whereas the girls slept in one huge common room on the fourth floor). The fourth floor is creepy. There are holes in the floor, exposed pipes, and, most mysteriously, relics of the school. Anything that was originally in the school that proved too cumbersome to move, such as two HUGE and very old pianos that would be worth a fortune if we could figure out a way to fit them through the doors (how did they even get there?!?!) was shoved to the fourth floor. There is a definite air of creepiness, of ancientness, and of sadness there. I confess that if I were there alone I would be uncomfortable, but I was fine in a group. The hauntings are usually described as occurring there.
There were many stories on the origin of the ghosts. One maintained that scarlet fever hit the school, and the girls who died there remain. Another said that a girl once opened a door to no where on the fourth floor. There IS a door to no where up there. It has been sealed shut; if you could open it, you would be staring outside, and if you stepped through, you would fall to the ground. This story impressed me as a freshman; however, upon further inspection I realized that every floor has a handsome balcony along that side of the building, except for the fourth floor. I asked, and it turns out it was removed due to rot in the wood. So there goes that story; that door just opened out to the balcony in the old days. Another story holds that a girl was talking to her love interest by leaning out the window from the fourth floor (hope they each had a good set of lungs, and a way to shout without being overheard). A nun’s boy radar went off, and she came up behind the girl to punish her for having a boy around. The girl was so startled by her sudden appearance that she fell out the window. The most famous story is that a ghost of a nun hangs around (for some reason, people say she’s transparent and…blue).
So what kind of haunting goes on? Supposedly doors on the fourth floor that were open will be locked, and doors that were locked will open without anyone doing it. Door knobs rattle. Apparently the blue nun likes to pace, and people have reported hearing it from the third floor. The most common occurrence is flashes of blue light, seen from the fourth floor windows from the outside the building. That’s all I ever heard of; the ghosts seem to be benign, and unable to use stairs.
Creepy things have happened there, but they were ordinary enough. A teacher had a heart attack during class, but he was ancient. Once a bit of ceiling fell on a girl’s head in the stairwell.
So, I’m curious. Does anyone here believe in ghosts? I don’t think about it much. They may be out there; I don’t see why not. But I have no personal experience with them, and I’m not vehement about their existence or lack thereof.
This turned out WAY longer than I had anticipated. I hope no one minds O___O Sorry if it was random.
~Jen
I want my dollfie dream to come already!!! AUuuuUUUGGgggGGGHhhhHHhhH!!!!!
For thr curious, I ordered a dollfie dream with an NS type II body, M bust, and the DD04 head. I also got her a brown bob wig, a wig cap, blue F type animetic eyes, a school uniform type outfit (western style, not a sailor fuku), and a-get this- little sheer body thing to keep her clothes from staining her vinyl. It’s basically like having skin toned nylons on her whole body… Or like a dollfie condom. Teehee.
My doll will look something like that picture above. This hair, eyes, and sculpt are the same! Woah! We have some similar tastes! I nabbed this pic from a post on figure.fm (See?
The bad news is that she won’t have a faceup. However, I didn’t want to spend about $650 to get a dollfie dream fullset, nor did I want to wait about six months to receive the doll after I ordered it. I saved about $200 this way, and also got a head cap and body slip, which aren’t included in the fullsets. I’m hoping my experience drawing anime peoples will come in handy and I’ll give her a super cute faceup :D
Hmm? What’s the difference between this doll and the rest of my crew, you ask? More on that when she comes. Look forward to it! ;) She should be here tomorrow or the next day.
…I also want to NOT have to “write an outline of everything you learned in physics last semester.” Worth two points. Yeah. Thanks.
~Jen
So, I counted up my birthday and Christmas monies and made a decision to buy clothes,eyes, and wigs for my beauties instead of buying a new one. It was kind of tough, but needed to be done. I’m just waiting to find out if I can do a group order to lower the shipping costs before I go ahead and order the last outfits. Unfortunately, even if you order just one dress, the shipping from overseas costs $20-$50, so doll people pull together and make big orders and split this cost. I just need to find people who want the same companies as me.
In other news, I decided to get a bit more serious about my goal of becoming a fantasy novelist. To that end, I’ve decided to read a bunch of random fantasy novels (for research in my genre) and classics (because those are the best books there are, and can best teach me how to be a great writer). The idea is to take notes as I go along, either to mark a passage I liked, or a passage I disliked, and why. Also to copy quotes, because I horde quotes from literature and songs for some reason. I also want to go back and reread the literature I own, which is no small task in itself.
My first book will be Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, followed by a random fantasy book I picked up (more details when I get into it). Well, actually, I’ll probably finish the book I’m rereading for the bajillionth time first.
I may also start doing writing exercises, but I’ll stop/not post them if they’re boring :/
In other other news, I’ve recently picked up my old Oblivion file. I gave up the game in frustration when it pwned me in my first trip to Oblivion years ago. I have matured since then, and learned to swallow my pride, which I did in no small way by turning the game to easy mode. Oh well! At least I can play it now.
If anyone has any favorite fantasy novels and/or classics, let me know and I’ll read them!
~Jen
I saw Holmes today! I wanted to do a quick review.
Let me just throw out my general assessment: this was a fun movie, but nothing amazing. It’s worth seeing if you like action movies or are a big fan of Holmes, as I am. Even if you are, it’s not going to rock your world, but it will entertain you.
I’ve read most of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work (quite recently in fact, I went through a “complete collection” thing during my breaks at my job this summer) and I really enjoy it. My only complaint with Sherlock Holmes is the fact that you can rarely solve the mystery alongside him, as his powers of deduction are so strong that they are superhuman. He also doesn’t clue you in on things as he goes along, because he never discusses things until the end, and Watson is not as good at providing vital information to the reader as Sherlock would be if the stories were told from his perspective. Sadly, this carried into the movie, so I didn’t even think of it as a mystery.
In fact, the movie is presented as an action flick. There are even explosions, which I didn’t expect from a movie about Holmes. These sequences are visually entertaining, especially when Holmes plans things out ahead of time in his mind and then carries it out. On one hand, I was tempted to be discouraged by the fact that the Holmes story turned into an action one, but meh, it was fun.
I didn’t like the fact that the characters presented the case in the movie as a “Holmes, you must save the world!” kind of situation. Of course, the matter turned out to be much smaller than originally presented, but the whole time I was thinking “he’s an investigator, not a super hero.” Anyone who has read The Hound of the Baskervilles knows what will happen as soon as magic is brought up as being involved in the case.
Let’s see, Dr. Watson was a lot of fun, I enjoyed his presentation a lot. I don’t know if he would have really argued with Holmes as much as he did in the movie, but it was funny.
One last comment is that the movie added a romance between Irene (from A Scandal in Bohemia) and Holmes. In the case, Holmes does seem to be attracted to Irene, but insists that emotions get in the way of rational thought, so he never pursues her. However, the relationship was portrayed in a way befitting of Holmes- no trust, lots of comical give and take, and no real sense of permanence- so it wasn’t too unpalatable.
The acting was good and I really enjoyed the interactions between the characters. I did have trouble understanding Holmes when he spoke though. You had to sort of…adjust to his accent. After a while I got it, but I missed a lot of his dialogue in the beginning.
So yeah, it was a fun ride, but wasn’t the kind of movie you’ll remember forever. Go see it if you like Holmes though! Dr. Watson was just adorable <3
~Jen
Tony and I both had an awful semester, and both of us finished today! So…hoorayz for us! I was actually supposed to be done tomorrow, but it is supposedly snowing about a foot tonight into tomorrow night, and so they canceled school tomorrow. Thankfully my professor is giving us the option of taking the final on January 30th or just taking your grade as it is now. I’m probably gonna do the latter, but I guess I have to figure out what the average of my two tests is. I mean, I got a high B on one and an low B on the other…. So the average should be a B, right? :/ It’s confusing because each test had its own range of what a B was. I don’t really know what to think.
My happiness would be complete except for one thing. Those of you who have hung out with me probably know that I’m paranoid. Very paranoid. So I got a message saying that RAs will come “inspect” our rooms on Sunday, during which I will not be here, having fled the supposed blizzard. Then it had this huge list of things to do, because there might be water damage or a fire or maybe a Godzilla attack over break when I’m not here. So now I’m all like, “I can’t leave my Xbox and games here, what if the RAs steal it/forget to lock my door behind them/the room floods/etc.” I don’t trust people just freely going into my room like that. The problem is that just about everything I have in this room is valuable. The TV, the Xbox, the games, the Ipod, the dolls, the external hard drive, the DS lite, etc. Am I totally paranoid?
I cannot wait to start working on my dolls, but I have no nail polish remover/acetone/some other old faceup remover :/ Maybe the store below Tony’s apartment will have some nail polish remover?
I really need to go Christmas shopping, but I have no idea how I’m gonna get to the mall if it snows a foot. Uh oh.
Jen
