Really need an FF9 and a Folklore icon...
(WARNING! This entry is REALLY FUCKING LONG.)
What's new in the life of Liz -
-Started my senior year of college
-Apartment-living
-Having all manner of weird crap going on in the health and safety departments
-Got addicted to the Gangster application on Facebook (EVERYONE JOIN MY MAFIA FAMILY I NEED MONEY OMG DO IT OR I'LL SHANK YOU!)
-Writing 100 fics for madain_sari, where I've claimed Amarant
So I'm taking World Politics, My Body My Health, Classical Japanese I, and Advanced Modern Japanese I. I was going to take another PoliSci class but A. I am a lazy bitch, and B. I couldn't talk to an adviser about it until a week into classes and by then the thought of adding anything more to my schedule made me feel like dying.
World Politics is by far my favorite class so far. This is ironic, as I fucking hate politics. But the class isn't (yet) really like, "Rar, Democrats vs. Republicans, rar, propaganda, rar, lies and deceit, rar!" It's more like a combination history lessons and the origins of modern political thought (i.e. post-WWII). I could basically spend the entire day listening to the professor talk and not be bored, which is pretty friggin' sweet. We'll see how I feel later in the semester when I have actual work to start doing. He won me over on the first day when he said, "There is no textbook for this class because publishing houses are parasites," which was followed by applause from all 200+ students. It only got better when he added, "And discussion is canceled for this Friday," and told us we could call him, "Professor Ferraro, Vinnie, or MeatHead, depending on your level of respect for me."
My Body, My Health is a cool class in that the subject matter is nifty, but it requires eight hours of community service and I'm sorry, I'm an asshole - I have NO desire to do that. I will find whatever way I can to make sure that my community service requires as little interaction with humans as possible. @__@ Other awkward things include the fact that today was our first discussion section, and after doing one of those toss-the-ball-and-introduce-yourselves-and-memorize-people's-names! icebreaker things, the TA told us to form pairs so we could introduce our partner to the class. I, naturally, because I'm me, was the only one left partner-less, so I ended up paired with the TA. Always good for the ol' self-esteem, these sorts of activities. I think I'm going to fail at the Social Health part of this class.
Classical Japanese is surprisingly awesome. I was not expecting it to be so, considering the person who recommended it to me's track record god, that was so grammatically poor, but Professor Miller is awesome, and therefore the class is, too. It is amazingly refreshing to be in a Japanese class in which, when you say something correctly, the professor says you did a great job, or that your recitation was perfect. And, even more amazing, when you get something wrong, he finds humorous ways to correct us. I feel like whatever self-esteem I lose in the Health class is going to be regained in Classical, just because Professor Miller is such a nice guy. As for the work, it's pretty difficult and time-consuming, but I feel like I'm going to take a lot out of this course in terms of getting the parts of speech down pat, learning how to form translations without it sounding like Babelfish spat it out, and learning kanji.
Advanced Modern Japanese filled me with fear and self-loathing up until today. Today I sucked it up and talked to Sono-sensei about how terrified I am that I'm not good enough to be in it. She said she thought I would do fine and, "ganbatte mite ne!" I've been concerned because my kanji and my listening comprehension are currently abysmal. There is no melodrama here - I seriously can't understand anything she says or writes in class, which is... not good. I've been studying this shit for three years. I don't know how I can be so bad at it and keep getting A's in the classes.
For all intents and purposes, living in the apartment is awesome. I love our kitchen like whoa, and having my own bedroom is a godsend. There are a couple of downsides, all of them minor. One being the paper-thin walls - just now a parade of drunken idiots went stomping down the hall outside our suite chanting, "Alcohol! Alcohol!" which was less than amazing. Thank god I wasn't trying to sleep; I might have gone out there like a zombie and started swearing at them.
Another bit of a downer is the distance between North and the rest of campus. There's a bus stop nearby but we've only determined two buses that stop at it and they only go away from here; they don't seem to come back. So at the end of my long, arduous Monday-Wednesday-Fridays, I have a lovely walk to look forward to, which most people wouldn't mind all that much, but I fucking HATE walking, all right? It's not even laziness so much as I have just never enjoyed walking/running. My lungs don't really appreciate either activity - god damn it, there're the alcoholics again.
One thing that's vaguely related that I'd like to share is that Melissa and I decided to rename the four apartments. UMass, in a bout of neglect, copped out and called them A, B, C, and D. Those are incredibly boring names, I'm sure you'll agree. -- SHUT UP, DRUNKS. God, I hate people... -- Anyway, we live in "A".
Melissa suggested renaming it Beetlejuice, because she'd just recently watched the movie. I said that, while an awesome name, it would be more appropriate for building B, for alliteration reasons, and demanded that it be spelled Betelgeuse because it looks more suave.
Yes.
So I then decided that A should be henceforth called "Arthur Fonzarelli," aka "The Fonz". When we realized that Fonzie's catchphrase perfectly captures the spirit of the place, that cinched it. Aaaaaaay! (Fun Fact: The Fonz is the best goddamn college dormitory in the history of dormitories EVER. Don't lie.)
After much debate, C was renamed Candyland, after the board game, mostly because C has just about nothing to do with Pretty Pretty Princess, the number two contender.
D is, as yet, unnamed, although Megan is pressing for something Disney-related (Disneyland got shot down because we didn't want two names with "land" in them).
So I have this rash on my arms. It's been around for a little less than a week (two more days and that'll stand corrected), and it goes from my knuckles to my elbows, and abruptly stops. It's only on the left side of the top half of my arms. It itches like a mo-fo. Benadryl does nothing.
I have three suspicions:
1. I'm allergic to whatever our dish-washing gloves are made of. Have stopped wearing them just to be safe.
2. It's some sort of sunburn gone horribly wrong. This speculation is based on the fact that my arms are the only part of me besides my face (which barely ever burns) and the top of my head (which is currently burnt to a crisp) that is ever exposed to the sun for extended periods. Since most of my shirts have sleeves that end at my elbows, that'd also explain why the upper part of my arms isn't affected.
3. It's some sort of fucked-up side effect of my being off my antibiotics coupled with the horrendous stress I've been feeling over the past week. It makes little sense in terms of where it's located, but it goes along great with the two-week headache I've had (on and off) and the massive canker-sore on my upper lip. Oh, stress-related illness. *sob*hate*seethe*
I'm sure the fact that I was PMSing when we started school back up again didn't help AT ALL, since my immune system is always fried during my period. Nor did the fact that during that time I was taking steroids and massive horse-pill antibiotics for that fucking four-month sinus infection that I've had since before I left Osaka. My body wanted to drop dead from the steroids, especially. I, who am ALWAYS cold, was actually complaining for six days of being hotter than hell. It was incredibly weird. Glad that's over.
I really don't want to have to take the rash issue up with a doctor. Cuz I fucking hate doctors and I don't trust them at all. It's a terrible attitude to have, so I've been repeatedly told, but if my internship has taught me anything, it's that just because you have a fucking degree, it does not necessarily make you qualified for your job. I assume that a PhD is no different. Especially when people on Post Secret send in cards saying they cheated their way through medical school.
Oh, life.
JOIN IT OR I'LL SHANK YOU. SERIOUSLY. LADY MEDUSA DEMANDS YOU TO BOW TO HER LEVEL 12 MOB-PERSONA.
...Yes, I totally did make Lady Medusa my gangster name. DON'T MAKE ME TAKE OUT A CONTRACT ON YOU!
AKA Holy shit! Liz has something nice to say about something!
I joined another one of these claim communities. After having failed horribly at 30screams, much to my dismay, I had a lot of misgivings about trying to join another one, since... well yeah, I only wrote one out of thirty fics for it. Not for lack of interest, for sure, but because the words just wouldn't come.
As usual I've been having one of my lovely bouts of several-months-without-writing-ANYTHING, which are generally pretty depressing, since I really do love writing, even though my ff.net page kind of implies otherwise. (haha, six-month gaps between posts... haha... ugh.) I did write an eighteen page Folklore fanfic during my last few weeks at work this summer, which is currently in the editing process (aka limbo) because I noticed two glaring plot holes which, while I know how I want to fix them, I haven't gotten around to it yet because of school and this other thing, which is taking over my brain right now:
madain_sari
This is slightly ironic given the previous topic, because I found the community via a series of link-clicks that started from the Folklore LJ (bridge_house), then the maintainer's personal journal (was in search of fanfic), where I found a link to a contest she'd set up for FF9 fanworks, which led me to the ffix community (which I am an idiot for not looking for it before, by-the-by), where one of the recent posts was an entry for madain_sari.
A convoluted tale, to be certain.
So I read the rules. And the themes. And checked the claims list. And I knew without even having to think about it that the second I saw that nobody'd claimed Amarant, he was MINE, DAMN IT, ALL MINE, because god, I fucking love the guy. Not like fandomsecrets "I'D HIT IT" love the guy (lol, yes, I read F!S; this is the sadness that is my life *woe*), but I find him friggin' intriguing.
For EIGHT YEARS I have loved Final Fantasy IX. I remember exactly how I ended up coming across it - I had a Playstation. The old old old one, pre-cats-chewing-through-the-wires-thus-forcing-me-to-buy-a-PS2-which-wasn't-out-yet-anyway. In my short time of being familiar with video games (parents wouldn't let me own anything bigger than a GameBoy until I was in middle school), I had heard much about this "Final Fantasy" series. I went to Blockbuster. I rented the most recent game in the series, that had just come out. That, folks, was FFIX.
AND SO MY LOVE WAS BORN. I rented the game SIX CONSECUTIVE TIMES. I got wicked horrible amounts of stuck at Gizamaluke's Grotto (didn't have Quina; was totally unfamiliar with the concept of leveling; was playing without a guide). When I finally killed the fucker, it was straight on through to Memoria, where I got painfully stuck again. My characters were all in their 30s, and I hadn't really figured out the abilities thing because I was new to RPGs and kind of a flake - I had no idea you could perma-learn them. I just kept every single piece of equipment I ever got and when I got stuck on things, I cast Scan to figure out something's weakness and then restarted the game, equipped whatever had the skill I needed, and went at the boss again.
I tried to fight the Earth boss in Memoria with a party in their 30s and no fucking skills. I think that's why I got stuck.
It was at that point that I decided to shell out my allowance to actually BUY the game, and I've replayed it about a hundred billion times.
LONG STORY. Anyway, that was a good eight years ago. And in eight years I have not ONCE made even so much as an ATTEMPT to write fic for it. Part of that is probably because when I first played the game back in 2000, I had only just learned of fanfiction (THANKS, GUNDAM WING. I miss you, Aishiteru Holy shit, according to Wiki, GW came to America on my birthday; I watched it from the very beginning; cool. XD Also WTF Peter Cullen was the narrator for the commercials! I always wondered why the hell he sounded so familiar. *obviously very new to TF*) The other part is that... I had no ideas. I mean, I knew I wanted to write for it, and I knew I wanted to write deleted scenes, especially... but the well was dry.
FUCKING DRUNKS, GET OUT OF MY HOME!!!!!!!!! I hope they choke on their vomit and die. :D
And then I found madain_sari. And I claimed Amarant. And I now have a plethora of ideas, two of which are posted (on there and on the claims community; I linked there because they're both on the same page). There are two more just about finished on my computer (Cards, and Water), and I have a good seven or so in various states of progress.
You can use up to five themes per fic, but I'd rather just go all-out and write 100 fics. That'd make my life REALLY AWESOME.
And now I am going to go scream at the people in the hall, I think. Oh my FUCKING god... it's 3:00 in the goddamn morning.
What's new in the life of Liz -
-Started my senior year of college
-Apartment-living
-Having all manner of weird crap going on in the health and safety departments
-Got addicted to the Gangster application on Facebook (EVERYONE JOIN MY MAFIA FAMILY I NEED MONEY OMG DO IT OR I'LL SHANK YOU!)
-Writing 100 fics for madain_sari, where I've claimed Amarant
So I'm taking World Politics, My Body My Health, Classical Japanese I, and Advanced Modern Japanese I. I was going to take another PoliSci class but A. I am a lazy bitch, and B. I couldn't talk to an adviser about it until a week into classes and by then the thought of adding anything more to my schedule made me feel like dying.
World Politics is by far my favorite class so far. This is ironic, as I fucking hate politics. But the class isn't (yet) really like, "Rar, Democrats vs. Republicans, rar, propaganda, rar, lies and deceit, rar!" It's more like a combination history lessons and the origins of modern political thought (i.e. post-WWII). I could basically spend the entire day listening to the professor talk and not be bored, which is pretty friggin' sweet. We'll see how I feel later in the semester when I have actual work to start doing. He won me over on the first day when he said, "There is no textbook for this class because publishing houses are parasites," which was followed by applause from all 200+ students. It only got better when he added, "And discussion is canceled for this Friday," and told us we could call him, "Professor Ferraro, Vinnie, or MeatHead, depending on your level of respect for me."
My Body, My Health is a cool class in that the subject matter is nifty, but it requires eight hours of community service and I'm sorry, I'm an asshole - I have NO desire to do that. I will find whatever way I can to make sure that my community service requires as little interaction with humans as possible. @__@ Other awkward things include the fact that today was our first discussion section, and after doing one of those toss-the-ball-and-introduce-yourselves-and-memorize-people's-names! icebreaker things, the TA told us to form pairs so we could introduce our partner to the class. I, naturally, because I'm me, was the only one left partner-less, so I ended up paired with the TA. Always good for the ol' self-esteem, these sorts of activities. I think I'm going to fail at the Social Health part of this class.
Classical Japanese is surprisingly awesome. I was not expecting it to be so, considering the person who recommended it to me's track record god, that was so grammatically poor, but Professor Miller is awesome, and therefore the class is, too. It is amazingly refreshing to be in a Japanese class in which, when you say something correctly, the professor says you did a great job, or that your recitation was perfect. And, even more amazing, when you get something wrong, he finds humorous ways to correct us. I feel like whatever self-esteem I lose in the Health class is going to be regained in Classical, just because Professor Miller is such a nice guy. As for the work, it's pretty difficult and time-consuming, but I feel like I'm going to take a lot out of this course in terms of getting the parts of speech down pat, learning how to form translations without it sounding like Babelfish spat it out, and learning kanji.
Advanced Modern Japanese filled me with fear and self-loathing up until today. Today I sucked it up and talked to Sono-sensei about how terrified I am that I'm not good enough to be in it. She said she thought I would do fine and, "ganbatte mite ne!" I've been concerned because my kanji and my listening comprehension are currently abysmal. There is no melodrama here - I seriously can't understand anything she says or writes in class, which is... not good. I've been studying this shit for three years. I don't know how I can be so bad at it and keep getting A's in the classes.
For all intents and purposes, living in the apartment is awesome. I love our kitchen like whoa, and having my own bedroom is a godsend. There are a couple of downsides, all of them minor. One being the paper-thin walls - just now a parade of drunken idiots went stomping down the hall outside our suite chanting, "Alcohol! Alcohol!" which was less than amazing. Thank god I wasn't trying to sleep; I might have gone out there like a zombie and started swearing at them.
Another bit of a downer is the distance between North and the rest of campus. There's a bus stop nearby but we've only determined two buses that stop at it and they only go away from here; they don't seem to come back. So at the end of my long, arduous Monday-Wednesday-Fridays, I have a lovely walk to look forward to, which most people wouldn't mind all that much, but I fucking HATE walking, all right? It's not even laziness so much as I have just never enjoyed walking/running. My lungs don't really appreciate either activity - god damn it, there're the alcoholics again.
One thing that's vaguely related that I'd like to share is that Melissa and I decided to rename the four apartments. UMass, in a bout of neglect, copped out and called them A, B, C, and D. Those are incredibly boring names, I'm sure you'll agree. -- SHUT UP, DRUNKS. God, I hate people... -- Anyway, we live in "A".
Melissa suggested renaming it Beetlejuice, because she'd just recently watched the movie. I said that, while an awesome name, it would be more appropriate for building B, for alliteration reasons, and demanded that it be spelled Betelgeuse because it looks more suave.
Yes.
So I then decided that A should be henceforth called "Arthur Fonzarelli," aka "The Fonz". When we realized that Fonzie's catchphrase perfectly captures the spirit of the place, that cinched it. Aaaaaaay! (Fun Fact: The Fonz is the best goddamn college dormitory in the history of dormitories EVER. Don't lie.)
After much debate, C was renamed Candyland, after the board game, mostly because C has just about nothing to do with Pretty Pretty Princess, the number two contender.
D is, as yet, unnamed, although Megan is pressing for something Disney-related (Disneyland got shot down because we didn't want two names with "land" in them).
So I have this rash on my arms. It's been around for a little less than a week (two more days and that'll stand corrected), and it goes from my knuckles to my elbows, and abruptly stops. It's only on the left side of the top half of my arms. It itches like a mo-fo. Benadryl does nothing.
I have three suspicions:
1. I'm allergic to whatever our dish-washing gloves are made of. Have stopped wearing them just to be safe.
2. It's some sort of sunburn gone horribly wrong. This speculation is based on the fact that my arms are the only part of me besides my face (which barely ever burns) and the top of my head (which is currently burnt to a crisp) that is ever exposed to the sun for extended periods. Since most of my shirts have sleeves that end at my elbows, that'd also explain why the upper part of my arms isn't affected.
3. It's some sort of fucked-up side effect of my being off my antibiotics coupled with the horrendous stress I've been feeling over the past week. It makes little sense in terms of where it's located, but it goes along great with the two-week headache I've had (on and off) and the massive canker-sore on my upper lip. Oh, stress-related illness. *sob*hate*seethe*
I'm sure the fact that I was PMSing when we started school back up again didn't help AT ALL, since my immune system is always fried during my period. Nor did the fact that during that time I was taking steroids and massive horse-pill antibiotics for that fucking four-month sinus infection that I've had since before I left Osaka. My body wanted to drop dead from the steroids, especially. I, who am ALWAYS cold, was actually complaining for six days of being hotter than hell. It was incredibly weird. Glad that's over.
I really don't want to have to take the rash issue up with a doctor. Cuz I fucking hate doctors and I don't trust them at all. It's a terrible attitude to have, so I've been repeatedly told, but if my internship has taught me anything, it's that just because you have a fucking degree, it does not necessarily make you qualified for your job. I assume that a PhD is no different. Especially when people on Post Secret send in cards saying they cheated their way through medical school.
Oh, life.
JOIN IT OR I'LL SHANK YOU. SERIOUSLY. LADY MEDUSA DEMANDS YOU TO BOW TO HER LEVEL 12 MOB-PERSONA.
...Yes, I totally did make Lady Medusa my gangster name. DON'T MAKE ME TAKE OUT A CONTRACT ON YOU!
AKA Holy shit! Liz has something nice to say about something!
I joined another one of these claim communities. After having failed horribly at 30screams, much to my dismay, I had a lot of misgivings about trying to join another one, since... well yeah, I only wrote one out of thirty fics for it. Not for lack of interest, for sure, but because the words just wouldn't come.
As usual I've been having one of my lovely bouts of several-months-without-writing-ANYTHING, which are generally pretty depressing, since I really do love writing, even though my ff.net page kind of implies otherwise. (haha, six-month gaps between posts... haha... ugh.) I did write an eighteen page Folklore fanfic during my last few weeks at work this summer, which is currently in the editing process (aka limbo) because I noticed two glaring plot holes which, while I know how I want to fix them, I haven't gotten around to it yet because of school and this other thing, which is taking over my brain right now:
madain_sari
This is slightly ironic given the previous topic, because I found the community via a series of link-clicks that started from the Folklore LJ (bridge_house), then the maintainer's personal journal (was in search of fanfic), where I found a link to a contest she'd set up for FF9 fanworks, which led me to the ffix community (which I am an idiot for not looking for it before, by-the-by), where one of the recent posts was an entry for madain_sari.
A convoluted tale, to be certain.
So I read the rules. And the themes. And checked the claims list. And I knew without even having to think about it that the second I saw that nobody'd claimed Amarant, he was MINE, DAMN IT, ALL MINE, because god, I fucking love the guy. Not like fandomsecrets "I'D HIT IT" love the guy (lol, yes, I read F!S; this is the sadness that is my life *woe*), but I find him friggin' intriguing.
For EIGHT YEARS I have loved Final Fantasy IX. I remember exactly how I ended up coming across it - I had a Playstation. The old old old one, pre-cats-chewing-through-the-wires-thus-forcing-me-to-buy-a-PS2-which-wasn't-out-yet-anyway. In my short time of being familiar with video games (parents wouldn't let me own anything bigger than a GameBoy until I was in middle school), I had heard much about this "Final Fantasy" series. I went to Blockbuster. I rented the most recent game in the series, that had just come out. That, folks, was FFIX.
AND SO MY LOVE WAS BORN. I rented the game SIX CONSECUTIVE TIMES. I got wicked horrible amounts of stuck at Gizamaluke's Grotto (didn't have Quina; was totally unfamiliar with the concept of leveling; was playing without a guide). When I finally killed the fucker, it was straight on through to Memoria, where I got painfully stuck again. My characters were all in their 30s, and I hadn't really figured out the abilities thing because I was new to RPGs and kind of a flake - I had no idea you could perma-learn them. I just kept every single piece of equipment I ever got and when I got stuck on things, I cast Scan to figure out something's weakness and then restarted the game, equipped whatever had the skill I needed, and went at the boss again.
I tried to fight the Earth boss in Memoria with a party in their 30s and no fucking skills. I think that's why I got stuck.
It was at that point that I decided to shell out my allowance to actually BUY the game, and I've replayed it about a hundred billion times.
LONG STORY. Anyway, that was a good eight years ago. And in eight years I have not ONCE made even so much as an ATTEMPT to write fic for it. Part of that is probably because when I first played the game back in 2000, I had only just learned of fanfiction (THANKS, GUNDAM WING. I miss you, Aishiteru Holy shit, according to Wiki, GW came to America on my birthday; I watched it from the very beginning; cool. XD Also WTF Peter Cullen was the narrator for the commercials! I always wondered why the hell he sounded so familiar. *obviously very new to TF*) The other part is that... I had no ideas. I mean, I knew I wanted to write for it, and I knew I wanted to write deleted scenes, especially... but the well was dry.
FUCKING DRUNKS, GET OUT OF MY HOME!!!!!!!!! I hope they choke on their vomit and die. :D
And then I found madain_sari. And I claimed Amarant. And I now have a plethora of ideas, two of which are posted (on there and on the claims community; I linked there because they're both on the same page). There are two more just about finished on my computer (Cards, and Water), and I have a good seven or so in various states of progress.
You can use up to five themes per fic, but I'd rather just go all-out and write 100 fics. That'd make my life REALLY AWESOME.
And now I am going to go scream at the people in the hall, I think. Oh my FUCKING god... it's 3:00 in the goddamn morning.