Neko Ewen

So, Christmas is more or less over, or at least it's getting into its bittersweet denouement. Last week I had a celebration with friends, which consisted of seeing Tron: Legacy (which was a lot of fun) and having dinner at Harry's Hofbrau (which was very tasty). Family Christmas consisted of dinner and gift exchange and such at Debbie and TJ's place. It was all very nice and low-key.

As for the loot:

• Earth (the book) (Mike B.)
• Muramasa (Mike S.)
• Recettear (Grant)
• Manga Tarot Deck (Nick)
• Red vs. Blue: The Recollection (parents)
• Heavenly Tea green tea sampler (Debbie & TJ)
• Peet's Ancient Trees Pu-erh Tea (Rachel)

Shockingly, I managed to finish two short stories as gifts (Fairy Summoning 102 and Otaku vs. Zombies) in time for Christmas, and then I wrote a sentimental holiday-themed piece (UFO Girl: Christmas Memory) on Christmas Eve.

Having gotten five different kinds of tea for Christmas, I think I'm going to have to put a moratorium on buying more tea until I get through quite a bit more of what I already have. And what I have is pretty considerable, even for someone who drinks a pot of tea almost every day...

It seems like not many people I know actually use LiveJournal these days, but whatever. I post here as much to blather for my own benefit as anything.

The old Taurus I was going to start driving whenever I get my license spectacularly failed its smog check, and would cost something like $1,000, and if I had that much (which I totally don't) I'd be better off spending it on another used car that's not so decrepit. I'm still going to try to get my license (the test is on Thursday), but I'm not sure what I'll do about getting a car to drive, or even what I can do given the state of my finances.

Thanksgiving was not terribly eventful, but I definitely needed the little vacation, such as it was. We had a proper Thanksgiving dinner at Debbie's place the week before, so on Thursday my parents wanted to go to Boston Market, which it turns out isn't something you really do on Thanksgiving, and we wound up going to Denny's instead. On Friday I actually went to the Great Mall. I bought a new jacket--a rather nice pleather motorcycle style one in black with gray stripes down the sleeves--at Anchor Blue, but I was pretty exhausted by the time I was done. On Sunday I went and saw Harry Potter (really good), and the rest of the time I slept and tried to get writing done with limited success.

Since we're a few hours away from December I feel okay about posting some Christmas music:



"White Wine in the Sun" sums up how I feel about Christmas pretty well, actually. I've also been listening to Babelfishmas and Pink Christmas a bunch for added silliness.

I have a new driving learner's permit, and hopefully this time I'll actually get my license. At this exact moment I'm just glad not to have to force myself to read the driver handbook, especially when I have so much neat stuff to read. I kinda want to record a podcast/audiobook of the handbook (with some snarky comments and random observations), but if I bother I'll do it after the 2011 handbook comes out, even it's looking like it won't have an introduction from the Governator. Really, really looking forward to being able to cut my commute time to less than half and do errands after work without tacking an extra hour or more onto the time it takes to get home. I'm thinking I'll start on cleaning the ancient Taurus (which will be my ride for the time being) some time this weekend.

My neck hurts, I think because of sleeping in weird positions or something.

Although it's kind of vapid, I'm enjoying watching Asobi ni Iku yo!. Of course, the fact that it heavily involves catgirls may have something to do with it. It's a fanservice harem anime, but it manages to be fun, zany, and interesting. I especially liked the cult of nekomimi worshipers.

I had a pretty laid-back birthday today (though the real celebration--seeing Scott Pilgrim and having a BBQ--is coming up on Sunday). I took the day off of work and slept in, watched the Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff (which features Pam Anderson, Seth McFarlane, and Hulk Hogan and is all kinds of amazing), then went to Chevy's to claim a free lunch with a coupon I'd gotten (and wound up buying a weird game thingy at Toys R Us on sale), went home and took a nap, and finally went to Shaburi (the relatively new shabu shabu restaurant in Japantown) with my parents for dinner. There were many birthday wishes (especially via Facebook) throughout the day, and when it comes down to it I'm really grateful to have the friends I have.

And now as a probably should be but not really guilty pleasure I think I'm gonna watch the latest K-On!! before going to bed. :3

Kurumi Artwork (always!)
Gold Brick V
Gold Digger Movie
Red Vs. Blue The First Five Seasons Box Set - Remastered
Dark Sun Campaign Setting
Apocalypse World Preorder

The other day I finally saw the doctor about my rather persistent cough, and it looks like allergies are the culprit. I got a prescription for heavy-duty cough medicine (the little gel-pills that limit the coughing reflex), generic Claritin, and antibiotics just in case, and with the allergy medicine I don't really need the cough medicine. Springtime has steadily gotten more difficult for me over the years, and this is about the worst it's ever been. It doesn't help at all that there's a certain flowering shrub (searching on Google I think it's called white star jasmine) that companies in the area love to put all over the place that I'm very allergic to. Even with the allergy medicine I've still got a sore throat and such. OTOH compared to some of the other things that can cause a persistent cough, allergies are pretty trivial, and at the very least it'll go away once the pollen count goes down.

I finished two audiobooks recently. A Canticle For Leibowitz is a very interesting post-apocalyptic tale put out in 1960. It reflects the nuclear fears of the time while incorporating a powerful religious element based on real-life monastic traditions. My only complaint is that in a sense it feels like the author had three interlinked stories and just wrote the bits of them he thought were interesting. It tells of wastelands with hideous mutant tribes, monks preserving technical documents as Memorabilia, and a new empire rising up from the ashes of a nuclear holocaust. Little Brother is a very different novel, but thought-provoking to say the least. A high school kid who does a little hacking here and there is in San Francisco when a terrorist attack puts the kind of paranoia we've been subjected to since the "War on Terror" began goes into overdrive and turns the city into a surveillance state. It's a very politically-charged story, strongly reflecting the matters that Cory Doctorow so passionately blogs and speaks about, but it's also full of fascinating real-life stuff (cryptography is a genuinely fascinating subject, to say nothing of the protest movements of the 60s and 70s) and more importantly a compelling coming-of-age story.

I had an altogether awesome weekend, if a long and tiring one. Saturday was Jenny's "Fanime Lite" party where we hung out and watched anime all day and well into the night. The party was very long, but on the whole it went really smoothly. No one got lost or was later than they'd planned on being, the food and such came together without incident, and so on. I finally got to see Ponyo, which isn't Miyazaki's best by any means, but was still very enjoyable and amazing visually.

I spent the night at Jenny's place in Hayward and porku and I took the Bart to San Francisco in the morning so we could go to Japantown to see The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. The movie was really long (163 minutes!) but it had everything that made me like the Haruhi series in the first place, and then some.

In Japantown I picked up 大阪万博 ("Osaka World Fair") a book put out to commemorate Azumanga Daioh's 10th anniversary. I'd been putting it off because of the price, but would up liking it a whole lot. It has a comprehensive guide to the merchandise and such surrounding the title, and 150 pages of comics by other manga artists, mostly 4-koma stuff. The Azumanga Daioh/Pani Poni Dash crossover is especially amazing. I also got a small tin of "Sakura Tea," which this time around is black tea with flowery flavors added. A little gimmicky and overpriced, but not bad.

On the way home I got a nostalgic reminder of the Muni Metro's phenomenal ability to arrive 5-10 minutes after the CalTrain I want has left the station, so although we made it in time for the first Haruhi showing, I didn't get home until around 9:30 p.m.

I'm especially glad that I got to spend time with Jenny and porku (and Eric and Angie!) after so many months. I got handed the original of this piece (for Neko Machi fliers), and you can't tell from the photo, but it was in fact done with actual physical screen tone, and thus looks even more amazing in person.

Now I just need to find time to see thechick before she flies back to Albuquerque... But I'm working today, so it'll be that much more challenging.

I've had a cold since last Sunday, though I'm definitely on the mend now. I missed most of a week of work, though I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually missed my work. I still have lingering symptoms, but I've at least reached a point where I'm not needing to constantly be on cold medicine (did I mention that Alka-Seltzer Cold is awesome?) to function. I'm well enough to do stuff with friends at least, but I'd rather be at 100% before Saturday (when we're having a party that promises to be awesome, and not just because I'll finally get to see porku in person after too many months). Unfortunately I don't think I'll have the time or energy to make it to any of the conventions going on this weekend, least of all when I'm working on Monday and flying out for A-Kon on Thursday. It'll be the first time I've missed FanimeCon, ever, though I'd been hoping to go to BayCon at least for one day.

I finished the audiobook of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. I liked the part of it that was a story about a boy raised by aliens trying to figure Earth out, but I wasn't nearly as impressed or engaged by the part where he founded a religion to teach people how to take down their AT Fields and use superpowers. The story has interesting, vivid characters, but an abject lack of moral uncertainty more befitting an Indian epic poem (in the Ramayana the narrator profusely apologizes for the one and only apparent kinda sorta screwup that Rama makes) than a novel written in the 20th Century. In the book Michael is Right and absolutely everyone who disagrees with him is Wrong, period.

I also started on And Another Thing, the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book written by Eoin Coifer. I won't even try to be objective about it, but I'm definitely enjoying it so far, and I refuse to worry much about whether or not it lives up to Douglas Adams' legacy. At its worst it's like an incredibly good H2G2 fanfic, and I can live with that for 10 hours and 22 minutes. (And I did enjoy the scene where Cthulhu flubs a job interview, though admittedly it was an extremely nerdy kind of enjoyment.)

On the other hand, my iPhone is awesome for listening to audiobooks. My iPod, although otherwise excellent, always had trouble properly handling m4b files.

I'm really liking Trent Reznor's new project, How to Destroy Angels (with his wife doing the singing). Their first video, The Space Between, is wonderfully disturbing.

So, I kinda jumped the gun a bit and went ahead and bought an iPhone 3GS. On the whole it is a beautiful little piece of hardware, and I expect to legitimately get a lot of use out of its features. I was looking up restaurant options and bus schedules and such before I'd even got it home, and I can see myself getting a lot of utility out of that kind of thing while traveling around. Which is not to say that the available apps are all legitimately useful. It's got a wide selection of games, and lots of ways to do stuff you'd do on a full-size computer while on the go for no good reason. I can order pizza, order stuff from Amazon, and yes, update my LiveJournal (and any other social site you'd care to name).

Of course, it's not perfect, though those imperfections mainly stem from Apple being either paranoid or just plain not wanting to treat users like adults. If you do everything through iTunes and the iTunes Store, it works smoothly, but the moment you want to do something yourself it either doesn't work or requires some kind or workaround to trick iTunes into doing it for you. Apple's staunch refusal to allow Flash (or to allow users the option) means that flash-dependent sites either don't work or require a separate app (the YouTube app comes pre-installed).

OTOH, it has wi-fi capabilities, so I can mess around with it to my heart's content at home without racking up an astronomical cell phone bill. That makes it awesome for Internet amusements while in bed. I really wish we could do a Neko Machi app, but as far as I know I don't know anyone who could program one, and we definitely don't have the funds anyway.

My iPod isn't quite dead per se, but it's acquired a habit of interpreting most button presses as pressing the select button, which means that it's a great portable hard drive, but it's nigh-impossible to persuade it to let you navigate the menus. I bought my iPod in around 2004 if I remember right, while I was still at SJSU, which means it's lasted me through more use and abuse than any personal electronic device I've ever owned. It has a 20 gig hard drive and a monochrome LCD display. Hell, I don't think anyone else I know has ever had something last through the same, even with other iPods.

I don't currently have the money to spring for a new iPod (though the standard "iPod Classic" now holds 160 gigs...), so I've made the Zen Vision M I bought a while ago (to watch videos on the train without a laptop) my main music player. It does pretty much everything an iPod does (and a little extra, having an FM radio and a recorder built in), but manages to be at least a little clunkier in everything it does. The interface for creating playlists in particular is just plain bad, and needlessly time-consuming (especially since it's apparently completely incapable of showing you folders or titles in alphabetical order). On the plus side, it can play AVI and WMV files (depending on the codecs) without any conversion, so it's easy to stick the Daily Show and Colbert Report (or "The Colbaily Showport" with a silent T on the end, as I never call them aloud when I watch them together) on to watch on the go.

I had to find a special program (iDump) to pull mp3 files off of my iPod, but I now have that library on my Zen, though it's going to take some time to recreate the rest of my playlists.

My work schedule has been making it hard to get much writing done, but I have been managing a little of late, notably working on a couple of UFO Girl short stories. I need to work on the actual novel more though. And I realized that I want the third novel to deal with death, because I have some stuff I need to work through.

I think I'm finally properly settled in at my new job, and I'm finally getting used to actually doing stuff 5 days a week and being in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, though I do need to work on packing lunches and making time outside of work to get other stuff done. (A lot of my other creative stuff has ground to a halt since I started...)

My thing with tea is holding strong despite the weather starting to warm up, so I went and got a Bodum Ceylon iced tea jug thingy and a tin of Peet's Mango Iced Tea tea leaves. The results are awesome. :3

I saw Kick-Ass yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, and my nickname for Hit-Girl is "Jason Statham-tan" (after the star of The Transporter). Also Nicholas Cage was one of the best things in the movie, and you don't often have cause to say that.

A little while ago a clip called "How to Report the News" was being passed around the internet a bunch:



As it turns out, this is from a BBC show called Newswipe. It's by a guy named Charlie Brooker, who also does a similar show about television called Screenwipe, plus a special about video games called Gameswipe. All of these are pretty amazing. He has the analysis and historical perspective of James Rolfe's Cinemassacre videos, a bit of the biting satire of South Part, and some of the sarcastic zaniness of a Graham Lineham (The IT Crowd, Black Books) series.

One of the more striking things about the series it how it exposes just how much utter bullshit goes into television. They demonstrate how the enticing steam rising from a slice of pie on a commercial is actually from a microwaved tampon, and how reality shows put an astonishing amount of effort into manipulating footage to craft a narrative. To some extent TV can't avoid a certain amount of "trickery" just to get things done, but I think it pays to look behind the curtain and understand just how much stuff gets manipulated. When he wanted to do a scene of himself falling off a log, it took days and countless permits and permissions, and ultimately didn't actually happen.

Sometimes I wonder if when things start going well the world naturally starts having crappy stuff happen to return things to a baseline of overall mediocrity. Regardless, some people I care about (porku and ashi) are dealing with some really difficult stuff right now, and I just wanted to say I'm thinking about all of you guys.

I really need to get back into writing actual stories, especially since they're not a few that I do actually want to work on, but haven't quite gotten up the motivation to really sit down and start typing. But, my carpal tunnel syndrome is acting up again, and once again I have to use voice recognition software for a while. Which is nice in some ways, actually. There is a certain effortlessness to typing this way, though it's not terribly good for my voice, and the software sometimes have a hard time understanding certain things.

The other day an idea popped into my head for a story about two characters with the power to freely and precisely travel through time. In my head what happened was both of them got so much into the habit of setting things up in the past to give them an advantage in the present that the first day they met became an epic confrontation with each of them bringing a dozen or more instances of themselves from different points in time. The stress of all this on the fabric of the space-time continuum started to tear the universe apart, until the heroine of the story went back in time to her own childhood and arrange things so that she and her rival had been longtime friends. ("You changed my past! You changed who I am!" "You didn't give me much choice. And I made you a better person." "That's the worst part!") And that's why time travel stories usually have more limitations built into the method of time travel. I may have to write that as a short story though...

But what I really need to do is get back into working on my three unfinished novels (Nekomimi Land, UFO Girl, and Slime Story), not to mention scripts for Neko Machi.

As research for UFO Girl vs. Vampire Boy I've kept going through the audiobooks of the Twilight Saga. I'm partway into the last one, but I've about reached my saturation point, and I decided I need to read something by someone who knows how to put words together. (Hence I borrowed a collection of Kelly Link stories from the library.) Over the course of the Twilight Saga, Bella (who started out kind of amusing) became progressively more and more unlikable, and more and more of a bad self-insertion fanfic character. Edward is bizarrely prudish and at once ridiculously perfect and overly domineering, yet in New Moon he has a display of spectacular stupidity and nearly kills himself over a misunderstanding. Jacob is about the most likable character in the whole thing to me (I'd say Alice, but she can be pretty obnoxious at times), but he's ridiculously whipped, and it's frustrating to see him get the short end of the stick time after time.

Anyway, people relentlessly complain about sparkly vampires (though there is something brilliant about the RiffTones' "Sparkly Vampires" song), when there are much more serious issues with the book than that. However, the series does have some really interesting ideas, even if Meyer often isn't talented enough to put them to good use.

• Many vampires possess unique special powers (Edward is telepathic, Alice is precognitive, etc.), and they may have shown some sign of this potential in their human lives, as though becoming vampires amplified their abilities.
• Vampires have trouble working together and forming relationships (the Cullen coven is very unusual for its size), but mated pairs are exceedingly loyal to each other. If you kill one member of a mated pair, the other will likely hunt you to the ends of the earth.
• The potential to become a werewolf is inherited, but doesn't activate unless there's a threat (like vampires) in the area. They form tightly-bound packs. Members of a pack that are in wolf form have a telepathic link with one another, whether they want to or not. The alpha of a pack of werewolves can use a special "alpha voice" in their link that pack members absolutely cannot disobey so long as they are part of the pack. (I'd mention the imprinting thing, but it winds up being really creepy.)
• Vampires and werewolves instinctively dislike one another. In particular, each finds the other's scent all but unbearable.
• The Volturi are a group of vampires that are, in essence, the royalty of their kind. They control a great city in Italy, where they are worshiped by a subservient human population, many of whom serve in the hope of being granted immortality rather than becoming food. The Volturi suppress human knowledge of vampires all over the world, and harshly punish vampires who break their rules.
• Newly created vampires are extra-strong because they're completely full of human blood, but inexperienced and overly beholden to their thirst. In Mexico and South America, vampire warlords would raise armies of disposable newborn vampires. The Volturi have largely brought an end to this practice, but there are still those willing to risk trying it.
• No one is sure why, but at one point ancient vampires took it into their heads to turn very small children into vampires. These children were frozen in whatever stage of development they'd been in at the time, but granted the demonic strength and terrible thirst of a vampire, and the cumulative appeal of a beautiful child and a vampire's aura of attraction. A two-year-old vampire could throw a tantrum that would wipe out a village. The Volturi hunted down the Immortal Children, and it has become a powerful taboo among vampires.

I've been thinking way too much about plotting, and especially the very bad plotting in the Star Wars prequels. Without getting too much into that, I give you, something that should have happened in Star Wars Episode III:

Palpatine: Amidala, where is the child?

Amidala: [looking away] Somewhere safe.

Palpatine: [a little irritation showing through] Yes, but where?

Amidala: I think... the less people know the better. He'll be safer that way.

Palpatine: [showing some anger] Do you have any idea what the son of Anakin Skywalker could become? The potential he has?

Amidala: Yes. That's why he needs to be away from all of this.

Palpatine: [Jedi mind trick] You trust me. You should tell me where you've senｔ the boy.

Amidala: [steeling herself, taking a step away] I know what you are.

Palpatine: [taking a step forward, grinning ominously] And what, exactly, am I?

Amidala: You're Darth Sidious. You've been behind all of this.

Palpatine: And what if I am?

[Amidala clutches at her throat as Palpatine uses the force to choke the life out of her.]

Palpatine: [losing his patience] Tell me!

Amidala: [choking, crying] Never!

[Palpatine lets out a growl of frustration, and Amidala collapses to the floor, dead. Palpatine looks down at her and sneers.]

Palpatine: I will have that child.

See? Amidala dies for an actual reason that makes sense (and she has some actual agency), and the Emperor actually does something distinctly, viscerally evil. And hey, dialogue with actual subtext!

The other day porku posted a link to a blog called 1000 Awesome Things. I decided to write up my own list in a similar vein, of 100 Awesome Things. Some of mine are specific to me, but that's kind of the point. If you're so inclined, go ahead and write up your own list; I'll let you decide how many to do.
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Things have reached the point where I really need to go and find a regular job. Any suggestions?

I know Japanese (I've have translated a ton of video games and such, but I'm definitely not an interpreter), I can write, edit, use computers (MS Office minus Access, basic graphic design stuff, internets, etc.), answer phones, I know social media web 2.0 stuff reasonably well, etc. I haven't done it in a long time, but I used to be really good at soldering. Also, I've worked entirely too many years as a security guard.

My new musical obsession is "I'm on a Boat" by The Lonely Island, the same guys who did a lot of SNL's best stuff over the past couple of years (Chronicles of Narnia and such). Here's the video (which has some swearing and thus may be NSFW). It's amazing as a great piece of music and for its over the top enthusiasm. There's also this great One Piece AMV, where the song fits incredibly well.

Picked up Dragon Quest Swords for Wii for cheap. Haven't played it just yet.

I'm getting close to having a real playtest draft of Slime Story ready. The playtesting process is going to be long and painful, but I'm definitely looking forward to giving it a try.

The last day of my stay in Albuquerque was in some ways the best. Rachel and I had breakfast at a coffee shop near UNM, then met up for lunch after she got out of class. In the evening Christine and Mzy came over and we all had dinner at a nice New Mexican place, and just before we went to the airport we stopped at a pet store. Although I've had a bunny girl mascot character for over a decade now, I've never really had any contact with actual rabbits. While I'm not planning to get one as a pet any time soon, good god they were adorable.

The trip back went mostly smoothly, though the first flight from ABQ to Salt Lake City was delayed just long enough to cut my layover down to about 15 minutes. The only problem was that the flight from there to San Jose was from a terminal nearly on the other side of the airport. With the help of the slidewalks and the fact that both terminals were right by the main corridor, I made it with a mere 5 minutes to spare before takeoff. That flight was totally on time, though the baggage carousels took a good 15 minutes to start up. Thanks to _thiefofhearts_ for coming to pick me up so late at night.

Anyway, I went to ABQ to get away from things for a little while and relax, and the trip was a resounding success. I got to spend a week and a half without having to worry about what might happen, without being obligated to do stuff. After 10 days away, I really miss home, a lot more than I thought I would. San Jose isn't perfect, but it's home, and it would take a long time to make somewhere else feel like home, even somewhere are welcoming as Albuquerque has been to me. I've missed my friends, my family, my house, my cats, and so on.

I can't thank Rachel and Chuck enough for letting me stay at their place, providing many, many tasty meals, and generally being awesome hosts. Their other friends likewise helped make my trip awesome, especially Christine, Mzy and Daniel, but also Carol, Aaron, Serena, and entirely too many folks whose names I can't remember.

There's no telling what'll happen next, but once I've recovered from traveling, I need to focus on career stuff. I've gotten some encouraging sounds on the freelance front, but I need some kind of regular job, and I need to keep working on learning to drive.

My stay in Albuquerque continues to be pleasant, though not terribly eventful. We had sushi with some of Rachel's friends, went to board game night at Active Imagination (a very nice FLGS; played a local's prototype and played The Big Idea), and Rachel and I wandered around ABQ a bunch on the bus, visiting Old Town and the malls and whatnot. Not having three more people and a car staying at the house has made things a lot quieter this time around, which is both good and bad. My feet have been hurting a lot when I walk around, to the point where I wound up buying a new pair of shoes (my Merell Mocs practically have no soles left, so I replaced them with new ones, of the gray color I'd originally wanted).

One thing I've noticed in the character of Albuquerque is that there are lots of people who like to bother strangers for money or meandering conversations, many of them Native Americans. On the bus I had a guy offer to be a tour guide and take me fishing, to caves, to cockfights, and so on. At a gas station a guy with a fruity lisp told us about how on the reservation it "rains 24/7", and how he needed to go buy ingredients for frybread. We also saw a guy trading photocopies of his artwork for cigarettes. It's all very strange.

Unless something really jumps out at me, I'm all done shopping for souvenirs. Not many people expressed an interest in such (it's not too late!), but I did get a couple of nifty things. I did indeed get an Isotopes T-shirt, and got a rant about how the team should've kepts its old team (the Albuquerque Dukes) for my trouble. (Though Wikipedia tells me the Isotopes have sold a lot more merchandise than the Dukes.) I don't think I'll wear the shirt while I'm here though, lest I get quizzed about "the 'topes".

Anyway, today is slated to be another low-key day, and on Saturday we'll probably try for something more ambitious (Santa Fe or the mountains), and on Sunday we'll see about getting some RPG action in. Then on Monday evening I finally head back home, and hopefully all the crap I've bought (not too much this time) will fit into my bags without too much trouble.

Albuquerque has been fun. Flying out here was unusually quick and smooth, with a minimal layover and no hassle to speak of. On Saturday, Rachel and Chuck had a "Mad Science Luau" party, which was fun, though the house was very, very crowded, and it was generally exhausting. On Sunday I ran a session of Maid RPG, and their friend Christine showed up in a maid uniform, which was awesome but distracting. Today I tagged along with Rachel to UNM, and wound up walking around a bunch, which in turn left me really, really tired. I was originally planning to take the bus to Old Town tomorrow, but I may just laze around the house.

I wanted to do some research for both the second Slime Story novel (which takes place in Albuquerque) and a Yuuyake Koyake mod I want to do that takes place in a small town in the southwest. I had hoped to find a collection of short stories about life in contemporary Albuquerque and a book on southwestern Native American mythology, but at both Page 1 (an epic local bookstore) and the UNM I struck out looking for such things, hence I want to try heading to Old Town while I'm here. I did find a novel called "Coyote Morning", which looks promising in terms of giving a window into small town life in New Mexico at least.

Regardless, having a week with absolutely no obligations is definitely doing me a lot of good, and my carpal tunnel is starting to calm down (hence I'm able to type this) too.

I've been taking pictures of random things, and I will post them up when I feel like it.

A meme, copied from tundra_no_caps:

If there is one person (or more) on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist, and who you would not have met without the Internet, post this sentence in your journal.

So, I made cupcakes as planned. Here are some pictures. Baking bits of Pocky inside made the Pocky become soft, and actually kind of hard to distinguish from the texture of the cake. OTOH skewering the cupcakes with lengths of Pocky turned out to result in something that was still quite edible. The flavor of the chocolate frosting kind of overwhelms everything else though. Of course, now I have 24 weird cupcakes.

If a search on Flickr is any indication, the more typical way to add Pocky to a cupcake is to artfully use two Pocky sticks as an edible decoration. But, I'm not that great of an artist, with food or otherwise... ^_^; (OTOH I'm sorely tempted to try again with strawberry.)



Also, dinner tonight was homemade curry, which I haven't had in ages. I also got a 20-pound bag of Japanese rice today, something I've been meaning to do for a while. I won't be wanting for rice for curry or onigiri for a long time to come. :3

In other news: Meow.

I commissioned a plush of my D&D character. And now it's done. Happy dance!


Octavia by ~Squisherific on deviantART

And she arrived! Unveiling photos here!