Mad at MuggleCast, MC Hotline off the hook?, facing the music about the webcam, French in Action, my "karaoke performances"

I am rather mad at the MuggleCast hosts. On their April 1 show (which I finally listened to the rest of today, having started to listen to it last night), the main host (Andrew Sims) said that he had managed to obtain a copy of the Deathly Hallows manuscript from Scholastic and had photocopied it and sent it to all the other hosts. They then proceeded to talk about the plot (issuing a spoiler warning beforehand, which I ignored cause I was suspicious that the whole thing was a joke). Things mentioned included that Snape and McGonagall make out, Harry defeats Voldemort by putting some inflatable heart over his head to suffocate him (and the heart is thrown to him from the other side of the Veil by none other than Ginny, his supposedly fated love -- despite what people say about the lack of evidence for Harry x Hermione, I still support them, and apparently some other people do too...you can read an excellent article on their relationship here), Harry uses FaceBook to find the Horcruxes, and that when it all ends, Harry loses his magic and becomes a basketball coach.

As funny and utterly outrageous as these things (and the others I didn't mention) all sounded, the hosts acted as if they were being totally serious. Me, I was waiting and waiting for them to announce that it was an April Fools' Day joke, but they did not. I was pretty mad, so mad that I decided to call their U.S. hotline (1-218-20-MAGIC) to tell them I thought the whole thing was baloney. I tried calling and got a busy signal. Later, I was listening to episode 85 (this week's episode and the first regular episode after the episode with this incident -- they did a special mid-week episode in between), and they started off the show reading a couple e-mails from people who were as furious as I was about their little spoiler-filled book 7 (pseudo-)discussion. Then Laura (one of my fave hosts) said, "You know, a lot of people thought it was an April Fools' Day joke" and somebody (I think Andrew) said, "But I'm sorry to say it's not," or something like that (I was having lunch at Popeye's so it was kinda hard to hear the podcast on my mp3 player). I was SOOO mad. Not only did they spring the worst April Fools' Day joke I've ever seen or heard on the net (except for the infamous "Sailor Stars dub" April Fools' Day joke, which I actually believed, sadly, until I found out it was a joke) but then they refuse to admit that it is a joke. Seriously, people are starting to not listen to MuggleCast anymore because of this! Just admit already that it was a joke!!!

I think I am going to check the episodes for PotterCast for the same timeframe and see if they have any mention of this stuff. If MuggleCast is the only podcast mentioning these ridiculous things, then I'll know more or less that it's a hoax. (I will know for sure if they come out and confess, but it doesn't look like that might happen any time soon).

Just checked PotterCast's website, only to find out two things: I'm way behind on listening to it (more than I am on MuggleCast), and there is no mention of these supposed Deathly Hallows revelations (now, granted, they likely did not get a copy of this "manuscript," but since PotterCast's trio of hosts -- Sue, Melissa, and John -- are good friends with and friendly rivals of the MuggleCast crew, I'm sure they listen to MuggleCast and would've said something if the info was true. Plus, the news would've covered it, as the mother of this 8-year-old from Glasglow, whose e-mail on the subject was one of the two featured at the beginning of episode 85, said).

Anyway, I tried to call MuggleCast's US hotline four or five times throughout the afternoon and evening today, only to get a busy signal every time. So either the line (which is probably at Laura's house in Georgia, since she handles voicemails...the message has Andrew's voice though, which I know cause I've called the line before, even though none of my voicemails have appeared on air yet) was off the hook or something, or it was flooded with people voicemailing their angry complaints about this book 7 thing along with the usual people who call in with DH theories and what-not. This second option seems more likely -- I've gotten busy signals on the American Idol voting phone lines sometimes, especially right after the show ends when most people vote.

As for my webcam, I felt sooo bad about it, particularly after I opened the box at the encouragement of my friend Gilbert, who thought it was dumb that I was letting my mom dictate whether or not I could have one or not. So last Sunday (as in 2 days ago), I told my mom straight up that I'd bought it. She said she was thankful that I'd told her and that she was serious about not wanting me to have one. So the next day I took it back (fortunately I still had the receipt, since I'd bought a DVD on the same trip that I wanted to return also). I don't regret it. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to use it for anyway, except for a stupid comedy thing involving a plush Sailor Mercury doll I bought a few years ago for $10 at ComicCon and a youma represented by the large geisha doll I have that was my grandma's till she died, when it came to me. A later version I'd come up with for this had Strawberry Shortcake come and save the day, along with PGSM Sailor Jupiter (who was to be played by me, since I physically resemble Jupiter more than any of the other senshi). Un-transformed Mercury was to be represented by my "Monaco doll" (another doll that used to belong to my grandma). I even bought a Strawberry Shortcake doll for the express purpose of using it in this comedy. (I couldn't decide between Strawberry Shortcake and Blueberry Muffin for a while...I think they had a doll there of Crepes Suzette also). Now that I look back at the thing, which was to be called "Mercury and Jupiter vs. Super Geisha," it seems dumb. (I'm keeping the Strawberry Shortcake doll though...it looks cute, and plus I'm not sure if I still have the receipt for that purchase...since I don't usually buy things I think I'll end up returning, I don't usually save receipts; the one exception is of course with clothes -- sometimes I don't try things on cause I tried on a thing but it was the wrong size, so I just exchange it for the right size without trying it on).

I was just thinking about "French in Action" for some reason. This is a video series I started watching on learner.org a while back (having learned about learner.org from my Human Development teacher, who pointed us to the "Seasons in Life" series) that is an immersion-style French course. I also borrowed some of the episodes on VHS from my school's library. I haven't watched it in a while. I may watch it again soon...I've missed Robert, Mireille, and Marie-Laure (Mireille's little sister).

To end this post, since there's nothing to really talk about besides that (my life is basically the same as it was), I'd like to present some "karaoke performances" I recorded tonight in Audacity using the lovely headset mike I bought a little while back. They are really just two songs, but there are three versions of one of them.

• W.I.T.C.H. U.S. Theme Karaoke Performance -- using a instrumental version of the U.S. "W.I.T.C.H." theme from the witch-united.net forums, I sing the song from memory. Go here to download: http://www.sendspace.com/file/g0ko20
• Mezase Pokemon Master: This is the theme to the first season of "Pocket Monsters," the original Japanese version of "Pokémon." I got the music from a site called the Pocket Monsters Repository. It's the officially released "karaoke" (instrumental) version of the song from the "Mezase Pokemon Master" single. I found lyrics in both Japanese and English on animelyrics.com and just sang from those. There are three versions:
• Dual Audio: This version has me singing in English and Japanese at the same time. This was accomplished by mixing the English audio track and the Japanese audio track, along with the music, in Audacity. It may sound a bit confusing (a lot of the time the English version overpowers the Japanese version...I had the mike a little farther away from my mouth when doing the Japanese version so as to prevent it from being really loud and also to avoid having my breath from getting picked up in an obvious fashion -- I have a habit of breathing through my mouth, so I have big breathiness issues when recording stuff). Download here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/k94yjc
• English Version: Just single audio this time, and in English. If you have translated lyrics for this song and they sound different from the ones I sing here (which are from Naoko of animelyrics.com), don't freak -- different people translate things differently (for instance, I noticed that the subtitles for the songs in Kirari Super Live seemed to be worded differently than the translated lyrics I'd seen on Sailormusic.net). You'll notice if you compare the English and Japanese versions that I make less pacing mistakes with the lines in the English version...in the Japanese version the first line of the first verse I mess up on cause it's supposed to be sung really fast. Download here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/6u3n29
• Japanese Version: Single audio like the English version, but this time it's in Japanese. My pacing with the lines is a little off here and there in this version cause for some reason I can't sing at quite the same speed that Rica Matsumoto sings this song. Download here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/6zjxt

Hope you enjoy these files! I'm gonna go now cause I have to get up early tomorrow to get to work at 11am.

Transferred, Gina's gone (no!!!!), Keepsake, Deathly Hallows cover, and other updates

Lots has happened since my last post, so much that I am still processing the biggest of the things.

First of all, I found out last Saturday that I was being transferred to another Stater Bros., this one in Encinitas. It is not the greatest situation for me transportation-wise. I've gone within a few days from a workplace I could walk to to one that it takes me 1 1/2 hours by bus to get to. Erika (the store manager at the store I was at) had told me last Wednesday she'd have me working at the Encinitas store the following week, but I did not realize that this would be permanent. I thought maybe they were just having me help out over there (they have people help out at other stores sometimes for a few days). No such luck. No reason given, no asking me if I wanted to transfer, a brushoff statement of "it's a reasonable distance" when I expressed concern about it being a long way for me to go.

My mom was saying I should look for another job since this transfer isn't very good transportation-wise, and so I'm going to look, keeping my current job for now. I hate to just quit now, even if there was another job opening, because it seems humiliating, after a little less than 3 months, to give up. Maybe it's just my pride or something, but I am the kind of person who will stick it through in tough classes and work environments even if they grate on me. I try to make things work until I can't do so anymore or I get through it.

I told Gilbert about it on IM not long after learning of the permanent nature of the situation, and he was saying the transfer was unfair and that I should just quit. I agreed that it was an unfair situation but was reluctant to just quit, for the reasons I already said.

I started at Encinitas yesterday, after a day off and the next day spent at another Stater Bros. for the General Merchandise Clerk class, which I must admit was ridiculously boring, filled with information I pretty much knew anyway from job experience, training videos from Wendy's that talked about food prep, and the county Food Handler's class I took, and 3 absurdly simple true/false tests, which you could ace no problem if you paid attention to the info being presented, since it gave you all the answers. I missed 2 on the first test cause I was tricked by the wording and put "false" when they were true, but the other two I perfect scores on. I had to be at work at FIVE A.M. Ouch. Not fun, especially since I'd gotten up the previous day at 4 a.m. to take the bus to the training, spent a whole hour getting ready, and then found out my dad was going to take me anyway, which left me with a couple hours to spare and no point in going back to sleep. Fortunately, getting in early means you get out early too, so I got off at 2:00. The strange thing was going to "lunch break" at around 9:30 AM, when pretty much no place that serves lunch and that is not a fast food place (or the almost-always-open Starbucks) is open.

Today was a slightly later day; I was scheduled to be in at 11 a.m. Unfortunately, I was 20 minutes late cause I missed one of my bus connections and thus had to wait half an hour for the next bus. So I asked the deli manager (that's where I am at Encinitas, btw...back in the service deli, after being in the bakery for about a month in the other store) if she wanted me to stay late to make up the time, and she said it was up to me whether to do so or not. I did stay the extra 20 minutes to make up the time, but I had to clock out right on time to avoid going overtime, which meant I had to hand off my task of putting fried chicken in the hotcase to Michelle, who I met today. The thing was though I was all hurrying over to the timeclock cause the clock in the deli said I had a minute before I was supposed to clock out, and I got there and the timeclock said 8:17 PM, which meant I had to now kill 3 minutes I could've spent doing something more productive than staring at the timeclock or looking at cigarettes (the timeclock's right by the cigarette/cigar/chewing tobacco case). This has happened at least once in the last two days -- the clock in the deli must be fast compared to the timeclock -- there's at least a 2-minute difference at all times, it seems.

The people in the deli are really nice. So far I have met only a small fraction of the half-page-worth-of-the-schedule amount of people who work in the service deli at this store. There are two guys I have met: Daniel, who usually opens (meaning he comes at 3am) and who is loud and obnoxious, and the more gentlemanly Alex, a CSR (Customer Service Representative; at the store I was at they act as checkers, but in a few stores like Encinitas, Alex told me, they are trying out having at least one CSR in each department). The rest of the deli crew are girls, as far as I have seen. Nely is the deli manager and doesn't look that much older than me, although I have often misjudged the ages of people I've worked with since I started at Stater Bros. (Michelle, the newest person in the bakery at my now old store, is around 40 but looks like she's 20). Since I am used to working for managers who were more obviously older than me, this is a new experience for me. Then there are Myrisha (not sure if I spelled that right...she's a talkative woman with a foreign-sounding accent), Clara (who transferred from the same store as me at the same time I did), Alicia (who doesn't understand much English), Diana (who is talkative and fun), the aforesaid Michelle, Celia (a nice lady who is very helpful), and a quiet but sweet Cambodian girl named Lang. There may be others that I forgot, but it's tough to remember them all.

As the title says, Gina Glocksen, my favorite girl in this season of American Idol, is gone. She, the "resident rocker" of this season's American Idol, was voted off last night, after landing in the bottom 3 with Phil Stacey and Haley Scarnato, both of whom could've been eliminated a whole lot easier this week if people actually paid attention to the contestants' singing rather than more shallow things -- Phil wasn't so hot this week with the song "Night and Day," and Haley is the model beauty pageant contestant but she honestly cannot sing at all and she shouldn't have even made it this far. Gina, on the other hand, sang a song called "Smile" that was written by Charlie Chaplin for his 1936 movie Modern Times (famous for being the last film to feature Chaplin's "Tramp" character and being the first Chaplin movie with sound, although it was not an official "talkie"), and she did it very well. She received good comments from the judges also. But even this did not help Gina when she was in the bottom 2 with Haley, who has somehow managed to get this far although her singing's not that great (Mum thinks it's cause she wears short skirts and such all the time, which I assume means Haley attracts a lot of votes from men who care about that stuff). And once again, surprise surprise, Sanjaya was safe. That kid is just weird, and his singing's not really that great, plus he picks very strange outfits (and hairdos, like his slicked-back hair this week and the faux mohawk last week). This week he wore a white suit, which looked sooooo wrong on him (his outfit last week was ok but the faux mohawk threw everyone off, including the judges -- Simon said "There must not have been a mirror in your dressing room"). It's a shame cause he sang a great song ("Cheek to Cheek") but that suit kept bothering me. But anyway, he is so darn popular that he keeps surviving on the show, even though he doesn't deserve it.

It's getting late, so I'll be quick on the other stuff.

• Keepsake: Keepsake is a computer game I bought a few weeks ago which I have finally started playing recently. It's an action-adventure sort of game with lots of exploring, though the story is more fantasy RPG.
  
• Deathly Hallows cover: Yes, ladies and gents, it's here -- the covers for the U.S. and UK versions of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were revealed last week. You can see the U.S. front cover below, and more cover art here.

• I got a webcam the weekend my parents were gone. I finally opened it at Gilbert's encouragement, but I don't know what I'll use it for yet.
• I've got a big list of videos to do, which I hope to make soon.

That's all. Good night!

Weekend alone

This is the second version of this post...my computer got unplugged.

My weekend alone is almost over. I am a little sad...the independence is nice. And yet, I'm looking forward to not having to not always be downstairs all the time.

I was going to type more but now I'm too tired. Good night.

Weary but ok 5 days after the Ides of March

I know, the subject line is a little weird but I couldn't think of anything else (the Ides of March, by the way, is March 15...the date is famous as the date Julius Caesar was murdered and through a line from Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar that reads "Beware the ides of March"...also happens to be my old English teacher Mrs. Palmer's birthday, I think...which was funny cause it was in her class that we read Julius Caesar).

I have been closing a lot lately, so I have been tired a lot more than usual. I actually worked 8 days in a row (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday of one week and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of the following week) before getting a day off. Actually I was supposed to get all of last weekend off, but I had to go in on Saturday for 4 hours cause Gail (the bakery manager -- oh yeah I'm in bakery now I'll explain that in a minute) forgot to schedule someone to close. (I checked the schedule for this week, when I'm also supposed to have the weekend off, and she has people scheduled to close all those days so I shouldn't have to go in, which is good especially since my parents and brother are going out of town, so I won't have a ride home, since the buses don't run that late in my neighborhood).

In news since the 1st...I have changed departments at work. Erika (the store manager) thought I might do better in the bakery, plus this girl from the bakery named Samera wasn't getting along with the bakery manager and I wasn't getting along with Lily from my department, so Erika switched us. Samera really likes it in the service deli, at least from what I have heard from her. I do like the bakery, but I have finally worked with my boss, Gail, and well...she is somewhat strict and no-nonsense, which is a little intimidating for me to say the least. The weird thing is, when I was working in the service deli, I thought Gail was really nice, not strict at all. I guess things change when you actually work for a person. She reminds me of my high school French and 11th and 12th grade English teacher, Mrs. Burnworth.

Warton, Gilbert, and I are making progress on our "project." I still can't say anything cause this blog is linked on not only my websites but on the two forums I frequent as well, so I'm afraid if I say something the word will get out prematurely, which wouldn't be good.

This weekend I get to myself since Mum, Papa, and Andrew will be out of town (they actually leave tomorrow). Mum is meeting her friend from Oklahoma and they are going to Sedona (a city in Arizona) together, and Papa and Andrew are making their annual trip to Phoenix to see our local baseball team in spring training. Knowing this was coming, I made sure to ask for early shifts on the days they're gone, so I don't need a ride home. I put it on the deli calendar far in advance, but then I had to rewrite it on the bakery calendar (each department has some kind of calendar, as far as I know, for employees to write when they need to switch shifts or get days off) cause of my department switch. I wrote it on there first thing on my first day there, so Gail would have plenty of notice. She did give me early hours on Thursday (11am-3pm) and gave me Fri-Sun. off (which wasn't necessary but is nice...actually I expected to get Sunday off cause I had put on my application that I didn't want to work in the morning on Sundays cause of church, and so they couldn't give me an early shift). Tomorrow is still in limbo though. Gail apparently forgot about me needing an early shift that day and scheduled me to close. I called her yesterday morning and asked (politely -- she is big on politeness) if it was possible that I could switch shifts so I got off earlier. She said she would change it, but as of tonight, I saw no change on the schedule. Plus, she wasn't there when I came into work today (which is odd cause she was there when I came in at the same time yesterday...maybe she was off?) so I couldn't ask her about it. I'm going to have to call her early in the morning to see when I should come in. I'm guessing it's not super early, or she would've given me more notice. It might be as early as 9 though cause she said she was going to try to get me a shift where I got off at 6, and 9-6 is not an unusual shift to work (at least in the deli...don't know about bakery).

I guess I should go to bed soon so I can get up early to call her. Some brief notes on other stuff:

• Wizard rock: Still checking it out. I figured out how to download songs off of the bands' Myspace pages (yay) so I got a bunch of songs from bands I'd looked up. I like Philosopherock (their song "The Real Mad-Eye Moody" is pretty good...I think in general they must do parodies, cause one of their other songs, "Eulogy, Book IV," is clearly a parody of "Skater Boy" by Avril Lavigne, at least in the tune. The same goes for "Eulogy, Book V," which is clearly a parody music-wise of "Fallin'" by Alicia Keys). I also like Dumbledore's Army (their song "Voldemort's Return" is funny cause it parodies "I Will Survive") and a one-woman band called The Half-Blood Princess (I really like her song "Please Remus," which is unique in that it is from Tonks's point of view, a POV you don't really see in wizard rock songs). I still listen to The Hermione Crookshanks Experience (I finally got a few of that band's songs from its "supplemental" Myspace page), Harry and the Potters, and Hollow Godric (actually them not so much lately cause I've heard all the songs they have available for download on their site). I also checked out some other bands, like The Weasleys and The Wands. The band I really wanted music from was The Weird Sisters/Switchblade Kittens, but they didn't have anything to download.

I was gonna add more, but I really have to use the W.C., and plus it's getting late. Good night.

Laptop internet works once more, runny nose, work incident, wizard rock, back on YouTube!!!, and other stuff

Yeah you read that title right. The internet on my laptop works once more!! What happened was last night I got an IM from a friend of mine from Tech Links who knew I was having problems with the net and that I'd just done a full system restore on my laptop. He said, "Let's get on TeamSpeak [a voice chat program] and I'll try to help you fix it." And so I grabbed my laptop, some earphones and my mike and logged onto TeamSpeak. And we tried different stuff. Or rather I tried different stuff on my end suggested by my friend (I'll call him by his TeamSpeak nickname, Kakeru). Finally, he asked me to open up the wireless networks window and have it search for networks. I tried connecting on the first network available, and this stalled in "acquiring a network address." So he asked me if there were any networks I could get onto without needing a WEP key and such. I said yes and tried one. It connected, and I opened Internet Explorer. It worked! Then Kakeru, who thinks IE is a pretty bad browser, insisted I download Firefox. So I did that. I tried a few other sites, and found the internet worked fine. Yay!!!!!

I am worried cause I have had a constant runny nose today. I hope I'm not getting sick -- I have been sneezing some too. Well, spring is coming up, so it is probably the pollen in the air (I'm allergic to pollen). Plus the weather here has been funny as usual.

I had a stressful work incident today. To make a long story short, I ended up getting to work 1 hour and 45 minutes late because I misread my calendar and didn't realize when I needed to be in. I also ended up working like 10 minutes overtime in order to try to finish cleaning the cheese slicer, and right now they don't want us to work any overtime. It was only 10 minutes though so I don't think they'll be too mad. Since I came in close to noon (11:45), they'll probably be ok with me being clocked out by 9. The good thing is, I finished the tasks assigned to me for closing (cleaning windows, breading chicken and prepping quarter legs, and cleaning the two deep fryers). So I'm happy.

I am investigating the fascinating world of a genre of music known as wizard rock. Basically these are bands who sing about nothing but Harry Potter. I've gotten songs by 2 bands so far: Harry and the Potters, the sort of granddaddy of all wizard rock bands (I wasn't totally thrilled by their song "Platform 9 3/4," but I like their song "Save Ginny Weasley" -- it has a really catchy chorus) and a folk/Celtic wizard rock band called Hollow Godric (who I haven't listened to much yet). I went to wizrocklopedia.com and looked at the band profiles there, and then checked out a few of the bands listed in their complete band list. Not all the bands in the complete band list had profiles, unfortunately, so I mostly had to resort to listening to songs on the bands' Myspace pages. I only listened to one full song ("Song for Sue" by Sue and the Hufflepuffs) -- the rest I'm going to check out later (I'm too tired now). I did find a music video though on wizrocklopedia.com for a band called The Hermione Crookshanks Experience, which was recommended on some other wizard rock band's Myspace (I forget which one). The song was called "Float Away" and was done really well. The girl on there (who appears to be the only member of the band -- lots of wizard rock bands are like this, I found from my research) has the cutest little stuffed cat, which looks just like Crookshanks, and which even has a little Gryffindor scarf! Kawaii!!!! (You can visit The Hermione Crookshanks Experience's Myspace page, where you can hear some of the band's music, here).

Speaking of videos, one of the first things I did after getting the internet again on my laptop was to re-signup for YouTube. I had to create an account, delete it, and create a new one because I couldn't remember how to get into the Hotmail account I'd set up for YouTube. So I linked it to my new Gmail address, created for something Kakeru, Wartonchan from Tech Links, and myself are doing (we're trying to keep it hush-hush right now, so I won't elaborate, sorry). And now I'm in. You can find me at: http://www.youtube.com/AleraofRavenclaw

Well I said other stuff, but I'm too tired. I haven't been doing much. I downloaded some stuff from sailormoonfansubs.com tonight while waiting for YouTube to finish its scheduled maintenance, but so far I haven't done much else tonight except eat dinner. I just finished uploading all the videos I had ready to upload, now that YouTube's out of its maintenance period. This is aside from my videos that are on Putfile, which I am downloading one by one from there so I can upload them to YouTube. I also need to get the MovieShaker ones from our family computer. Then I'll be up to date. Plus I have some new vids planned, mainly "Code Lyoko" ones. I just have to get the CL eps again cause I lost them in the system restore.

Plans for tomorrow (or today, rather, since it's past midnight) are mainly to go to work on time (I'm working 2-7). I may go out before that and get my brother's birthday present. I'm going to get him some Xbox game. I don't know which yet. I may go to the mall so I can check to see if I can find a couple books I want. One is a book that is either out or is coming out called Brainiac. The book is about trivia and is written by Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings. I read a review of it in some magazine (Time I think). The other one is one I've been hearing about on MuggleCast a lot called Mugglenet.com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love, and How the Adventure Finally Ends. It's written by staff people from Mugglenet, including MuggleCast's own Ben Schoen.

Speaking of MuggleCast, Jamie the Brit is back...yay. He was out sick for several weeks, I guess. I missed him, since he's one of my 2 favorite hosts (Laura Thompson, the sole girl on the show, is the other).

On a related note, I have found a fellow Harry Potter fan among my coworkers. It's Matthew, a 40-year-old homosexual guy that works in my department. (He doesn't call himself "homosexual" though...he says he prefers the term "queer"). It's nice that we have something in common to talk about...it takes my mind off my uncomfortable feelings about his sexual orientation. (For the record, I've never worked with any homosexuals before...at least none that admitted it). I just feel uncomfortable because, from my Christian point of view, I view homosexuality as a sin. I don't want to act like I accept his behavior, and yet I don't want to insult him by saying I don't. So I just say nothing.

Ok I'm tired. G'night.

Finally back on here

I haven't been able to post on here for awhile because I was having problems logging in, since the Blogger people wanted me to update my blog to have new features and stuff. To do so I had to make a Google account. Today I decided to just go to Google and create an account there, and it turned out I already had one, cause I'd made a Froogle wishlist. So now things are set up.

Anyway, not much happening here. I took my laptop into Staples today to get a diagnostic done, so depending on how long it takes them to do the diagnostic, I won't have my laptop with me. I am happy I finally got around to it, cause of something I'm working on that I'd rather not talk about quite yet.

I pre-ordered the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, from Barnes & Noble the other day. I am excited about getting it.

Speaking of Harry Potter, you'll notice that when I played around with the page elements for my new blog page, I added a Harry Potter countdown to the footer. This countdown is courtesy of mugglenet.com and counts down the days until the release of Deathly Hallows and the Order of the Phoenix movie, which premiers a week before DH comes out.

I also changed the blog description, since with my new format the description ended up in the header. It now says "Because even gym leaders (and college students) need a place to sort out their thoughts...". I think it's clever.

I am very tired tonight, maybe cause I stayed up really late last night (till around 1), probably cause I knew I could sleep in cause I had the day off. I was mainly trying to type up as much of this one thing I'm doing as I could, since I knew I would likely not have my laptop for a few days.

American Idol is coming on now but I don't think I'll watch it. Although I do need to stay downstairs to watch the dogs...well, either way I'll see it, cause it's recording for my parents and brother, who are gone (bro at work, parents at the gym). There isn't anyone who immediately catches my fancy at the moment. I may know better once it's down to the top 12. But last season I had faves as early as before the top 24 (Kat McPhee for girls, and Will Makar -- who narrowly missed the top 12, being one of the last pre-top 12 guys to be eliminated, along with Gedeon McKinney--for guys).

Speaking of reality shows, The Amazing Race has started again, and it's All-Stars this time around, bringing back teams from previous seasons. A few of them are pre-season 5 (when I started to watch the show) so I don't know much about them. But my fave team from season 5, Charla & Mirna, are back, which I'm really excited about. (You can see video of them here). I hope they win, cause a girl-girl team has never won the race before. Also, they got eliminated along the way in season 5, so for them to win would be great. I was just watching a video on cbs.com and there Charla says if they win she will spend her share on financing her and her husband's attempts to have a baby via in vitro. That's interesting. Mirna wants to use her share to help her and her new husband finance their new life together (she just got back from her honeymoon right before starting this season!).

Anyway, I hope they win. Basically anybody except Dustin & Kandace (the "beauty queens" from last season) and Rob & Amber (the "engaged couple" from season 7 who met each other on Survivor: All-Stars...they're married now though).

I'm tired, and Mum and Papa are home now, which means I can go upstairs if I want...I don't have to be at work till 5pm tomorrow, so I may stay up later tonight too. Not too late though.

Harry Potter, weekend off, long days at work, video making addiction?, got Kat McPhee CD...and other stuff

Yesterday, I finally got up the nerve to rent Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the only currently available Harry Potter movie I hadn't seen yet. I rented it at this little video store called Videos for You that is located near my work, along with Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns and an Olsen Twins movie called Getting There. I set up an account there last week and so far I've rented movies there twice now (including yesterday) on Fridays because those have been my early days (7-4) and I've had Saturdays off the last couple weeks.

I have to admit the movie was good and followed the book well. They cut out a lot, like the entire Quidditch World Cup match. But at least the events went all in order, whereas in Prisoner of Azkaban they had Harry get his Firebolt at the end rather than the beginning, for instance. However, it takes its time to get to things, not getting to the first Triwizard task until about an hour into the movie (since the movie is 2 hours long, this is like halfway into the movie). Also the beginning of the movie is a bit different. It starts with the scene of Voldemort and Wormtail in the old Riddle house where they are discovered by Frank Bryce, who is subsequently Avada Kedavra'd by Voldemort. This is from chapter 1 of the book. Then the movie cuts to Harry waking up from a bad dream and he, Hermione, and the Weasleys leaving for the Quidditch World Cup. They don't leave for the Cup until chapter 6 in the book, and Harry is shown in chapter 2 waking up from the dream that is the chapter 1 scene at the Dursleys', not the Weasleys'. In other words, they cut the Dursleys out entirely, as well as chapters 2-5 of the book. Chapter 8, which details the events of the Cup match (including the Weasley twins' bet with Ludo Bagman) is cut. In the book, Harry tells Ron and Hermione about his dream while they're heading back from the Cup to the Burrow via the Portkey. But the movie makes it seems as though he told them on the Hogwarts Express, since it cuts to the train right after Crouch and the other Ministry people run off to investigate who conjured the Dark Mark. Parts of chapters 10 and 11 seem to have been cut. The scene of Moody turning Malfoy into a ferret is moved to after the scene where he tells them in class about the Unforgivable Curses, whereas in the book the ferret scene happened before the Unforgivable Curses class. A bunch of the stuff leading up to the revealing of the champions (parts of chapter 14 and 16 and pretty much all of chapter 15) are cut, except that the arrival of the students from Beauxbatons (who are of both sexes in the book, not just girls) and Durmstrang, which doesn't happen till chapter 15 in the book, is moved in the movie to the opening feast scene, which makes sense anyway. Parts of chapters 17-19, like the Weighing of the Wands, are cut. Chapter 20, which covers the first task, is pretty much intact, except that the part where Hermione helps Harry practice the Summoning Charm is cut (her appearing in the champions' tent to try to help Harry right before the first task is probably their attempt to show her trying to help him). Pretty much everything leading from there to the Yule Ball (chapters 21-22 and part of 23) aside from Ron and Harry trying to get dates is cut, probably because it is not viewed as important. Chapter 24, where Rita Skeeter writes a defaming article about Hagrid, does not appear, although they kept the idea of Bagman talking to Harry because he wants to help him with the tournament, although Harry refuses the help, moving the scene to right after the 2nd task (instead of before the task). Chapter 25, where Harry tries to solve the egg clue in the prefects' bathroom, is pretty much intact, except the Marauder's Map parts don't appear. The 2nd task chapter (26) is basically intact, except that Harry gets the gillyweed from Neville rather than Dobby (since they cut Dobby from the film), which actually kinda works because part of the fake Moody's plan was to get Harry to learn about the gillyweed by planting (no pun intended) the plant book Harry could've found info on it in on Neville. Chapters 27-29 are cut, except for the brief part where Harry finds Barty Crouch and then reports to Dumbledore's office (supposedly to tell him about Crouch, rather than about his dream about Voldemort as in the book). Chapter 30, with the Pensieve scene and Harry and Dumbledore's discussion afterward, is intact, as is most of Chapter 31 (the chapter dealing with the Third Task) except for the stuff about Skeeter being an animagus, Mrs. Weasley and Bill arriving to watch the third task, and the part with Harry and the Sphinx and the spider. Chapters 32-35 (the graveyard scene and the immediate aftermath with the fake Moody and the Veritaserum) is pretty much exactly the same, just made faster-paced with less of Voldemort's monologue. Chapter 36, where Dumbledore and Sirius (who only appears in the movie when he and Harry talk via the fire) hear Harry's story and Dumbledore and Fudge disagree about Voldemort's return, is cut. Chapter 37, the final chapter, is basically the same -- it has Dumbledore telling the school the truth about Cedric's death and everybody leaving. The parts where Hermione shows off the captured animagus Skeeter, where Malfoy and company try to taunt the trio, and where Harry gives his winnings to Fred and George is all cut.

(Thanks to the Goblet of Fire Chapter-by-Chapter Guide @ The Harry Potter Lexicon for summaries of the book chapters that I used for info in the above paragraph).

Overall, though, it was pretty good but not really worth buying. So far, I have figured that the only Potter film currently available I would feel like buying is Prisoner of Azkaban, which I actually already own cause I bought it on VHS while Christmas shopping soon after it came out.

In other Harry Potter stuff, the release date for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the 7th and final book) was announced this week, which I just found out last night when I went to mugglenet.com to download the latest MuggleCast. It is July 21, 2007. I am just excited that the book is coming out soon. Some people, according to MuggleCast, aren't happy and think the date is too soon. I think it's a decent date. Why wait till 2008, especially since it was just released that J.K. Rowling finished Deathly Hallows in an Edinburgh hotel about a month ago?

After working 6 days straight, 5 of them closing, I have today and tomorrow off, which is very nice. I watched the other two movies I rented this morning (the Mewtwo Returns one was interesting, but Domino--see picture below--is kind of annoying) since I had to return the movies by 6 p.m. today.



The days have been long at work though - 8 hours a day for so many days is pretty tiring.

I was thinking today that I am getting addicted to making videos. I think this because I have trouble when listening to music. When I hear a song, I find myself thinking what kind of video I could make to it. I find myself doing that on my laptop more than anything else. I haven't been working on updating my sites like I planned, working on planning what my University Studies A.A. will be in, stuff like that.

Today I went to Wal-Mart to get a couple extra work shirts, after Papa told me I should after seeing me going to work on Friday with a shirt with stains on the sleeves (from cleaning the oven). I bought the shirts, a $25 pair of pants, shampoo and conditioner, and...drumroll...KATHARINE MCPHEE'S DEBUT CD!!! I heard that it was coming out, and Mum and Papa were planning to get it for me for Christmas but it wasn't out yet. I got it for $13.88, a pretty good price.

Here's a pic of the album:



Other than that there's not really anything to tell, except that I've been making "mixes" of music on CD-R's I've been buying from Big Lots (there's one in the same shopping center as Stater Bros). I have 9 now, and they are basically made up of songs that were on my computer and songs from CD's that I had ripped onto my computer. Now that I have my Kat McPhee CD, I am going to listen to that too.

Good night. I'm tired. I stayed up really late last night.

First day at a new job

Well, I got the job at Stater Bros. and today was my first day. I am working in the service deli, as I said. Papa gave me a ride to work, where I was to report at 8 a.m., which isn't that bad except that for the last couple months I haven't been waking up till then.

I started out the day receiving my apron, name badge, and cravat (sort of like a tie) from the manager who hired me, Erika. Then I waited for the other person who was going to be trained to show up, after having gone to the bathroom to put my cravat and apron. Once the other person, a guy named Chris (who I think is the 6'7'' guy I met at my orientation), showed up, Erika took us up to a room and told us about safety stuff and some other things and had us sign off on that stuff. Then she took us to our departments. She left me in the service deli and went on with Chris to the bakery, which is located next to the service deli. I was then entrusted to the tutelage of Tami, the service deli manager, for the rest of the day. She gave me a second apron made of plastic to wear, and later while with her I got a visor from Erika.

The day was mainly spent following Tami around to learn stuff. Tami took me on a tour of all the back area. It's pretty cool and sort of like a secret passage. It goes from behind the service deli counter through the area behind the bakery into a big storage area with some freezers and the trash compactor and stuff that empties out onto the other side of the store.

The time went surprisingly fast, mainly cause there were a lot of customers. The oven-roasted turkey was particularly popular, probably cause it's healthy and on sale. I made a few mistakes -- accidentially not selling the roast beef and oven-roasted turkey for the sale price because I pressed the wrong button on the scale, and cutting too much roast beef for a guy who wanted a pound of thickly sliced roast beef. (I cut 1.96 lbs).

They asked me if I wanted to stay later (I think cause some guy called in sick) but after some thought, I said no, since I had developed a headache mid-morning that wasn't going away. So they let me go.

So the first day went ok. I work 7-4 tomorrow. Yeah, that's right -- I have to be at work at SEVEN A.M. Since I plan to walk, that means I have to get up at the crack of dawn basically, since it takes about an hour to walk there.

After getting off work and waiting for some manager so I could get my stuff out of the office (since I didn't have a lock I couldn't put my stuff in a locker in the breakroom) , I sat down somewhere to eat the lunch I'd brought (a sandwich and apple slices) and then headed home.

At least I'll be working a lot of hours tomorrow. 7-4 is 9 hours I think. Do I get overtime for that? No, probably not cause it would be technically 8 hours cause I will most definitely get a lunch break, which is an hour. I will have to figure out what to do with all that time, because I'm used to having half-hour lunch breaks, so I have trained myself to eat lunch in like 20 minutes. If I had the money I would get something from the deli. The chicken looks really good. The chicken includes quarter legs which are huge legs that look like the kind you see people brandishing in paintings of medieval scenes.

The breakroom is kinda nice. You approach it via a flight of stairs from the sales floor, and it's a big wide room with lockers down the hall and a couple big tables pushed together in the center with chairs. There is a microwave, a bulletin board with all the things businesses have to display in the breakroom, like OSHA laws, minimum wage info, and so on, possibly a small fridge (the microwave was sitting on something that I assumed was a fridge) and two very outdated-looking vending machines. I mean, they are like '70's-style. One of the people I met while up there on my break, Meg (who works in the bakery), said they don't get much use since people usually buy stuff for their break out in the store. At least this way I don't have to make sure to attach the receipt to stuff (something they require when you buy something, even a magazine). Plus the soda machine sells cans of soda for 50¢, a real bargain. The other machine is a coffee machine that charges I know not what. It probably doesn't get used much because you can get a cup of coffee at the store for 69¢, and plus there's a Starbucks next door. I don't care about the coffee though. I'm fine with 50¢ soda cans (or 80¢ if I go to the donut store on the other side of the shopping center), and if I want a bottle, they sell them there, and there's also a soda machine over by Big Lots.

I may not have much money for soda though. Mom says once I get my first paycheck I am going on a budget. Hopefully, though, I will have some spending money. With my first check, combined with a $25 check from my grandpa (from Christmas) that I still need to deposit, I am going to get a bus pass for February (it's too late to get one for January), a nice jacket I can wear when walking to or from work, and some other clothes item my mom told me to get that I forget now. I may buy a spare pair of black pants and a spare white shirt for work also.

I found out today I have to go to a class to get my Food Handler's Card. There's one this Sunday, so I was told to go to that. The nice thing about this is that I get Sunday totally off because of it, which will be good after four days straight of work, three of which are full workdays (8 hours). The bad news is that the class is at 8am and lasts three hours, which means I'm going to have to miss church to go to it. I was thinking it was after church, but apparently not. Shoot.

Well that's basically everything. Bye for now.

Team Rocket origins, 2 job ops, fanlisting craze, I'm thirsty...

I have sort of liked Team Rocket since I first got into Pokémon...in fact Jessie (one of the members) was my favorite character at first. The cool thing is that more and more about their origins (how they met, etc) has been coming out over the years. One episode that really does that is "Training Daze," an episode of the Pokémon spin-off Pokémon Chronicles. I just watched it online via Toonami's online cartoon viewing spot, Toonami Jetstream. It's a great little ep which shows how Jessie couldn't keep a partner, and then when she got James as a partner things finally worked out.

You can watch the ep here: http://www.toonamijetstream.com/dlink/index.html?episodeID=8a25c3920f629d31010f6458c77700fa

Speaking of Toonami Jetstream, I don't know if I already mentioned this, but I've been getting into an anime called The Prince of Tennis. It was originally only available legally in the U.S. via Toonami Jetstream, but just before Christmas 2006 it made its debut on the Cartoon Network's Saturday night Toonami lineup. The show is basically about this 7th grade kid named Echizen Ryoma who is really good at tennis. That's the best I can figure out at this point. It's an interesting anime to bring to the U.S., since sports anime like Prince of Tennis, while very popular in Japan, don't usually get legally brought stateside. But I guess the Japanese animation companies have decided to take a chance on us and bring it over.

More than likely it has been brought over because of a trend. There has been a recent trend of success with shounen (young boy-targeted; animes like Outlaw Star that are targeted for teenage boys and older are called seinen) anime, like Naruto, Inuyasha and Fullmetal Alchemist, in the U.S. Hence the market is ripe for more shounen anime, and The Prince of Tennis, being shounen, fits the demand. Plus, since it is a sports anime, the likes of which haven't really been seen in the U.S. before (the Slam Dunk manga, which, like the title suggests, is about basketball, is the only other example I can think of), that makes things even better. To please both genders, Toonami paired The Prince of Tennis, which is sports and action (the kind of things boys like) with another shounen anime of the fantasy variety called MÄR in the same hour block.

I think the anime appeals to both boys and girls though because both boys and girls watch tennis, and tennis is a sport played by both men and women, unlike baseball or football. The action and great use of animation effects like slow-motion, use of greyscale frames, stills of characters with voice-overs of their thoughts, and the like are enough to attract someone of any gender, even if they can say, as Sakuno does in episode 1, "I don't know much about tennis, but I love it!" You could not even like tennis or know a thing about it and still like this show.

Now, in my case, I do like tennis and have had for a long time a basic idea of how the game works. Now, thanks to having done a speech about tennis, I know far more about types of shots, scoring, positions, and other tennis stuff than I really need to to understand the game from poring over about 8 books on tennis for research. Having knowledge of the game helps me appreciate The Prince of Tennis even more.

Personally, I think the animators make it relatively easy for even the tennis novice to understand the show; after all, although Japan has many good pro tennis players (mainly women) and even hosts its own pro tournament (the AIG Japan Open Tennis Championships, held in Tokyo), tennis is still a imported sport in Japan. It's not like sumo, for instance, which is distinctly Japanese.

Anyway, I have 2 job opportunities that have gone as far as the interview stage and beyond. I am just waiting for a drug test result on one, a job as a General Merchandise Clerk at Stater Bros., working in the Service Deli department. The other I had an interview for and am supposed to hear back from early this week. That's as an employee at Babies R Us.

I have gotten back into the craze of joining fanlistings, having joined enough to fill about 3 or so Microsoft Word pages just in the last 2-3 days! (I keep a list in a Word file of the fanlistings I've joined, so I know when it comes time to put the link button on my site what to link to, and also so I don't try to join one I've already joined). There are so many fanlistings listed at thefanlistings.com that it's almost overwhelming. Most of them are rather random, like the ones for the program Notepad, for breakfast, or for DVD commentaries. Some are really specific, being for certain characters from books, movies, or TV, or certain relationships (platonic and romantic) from the same. There are even ones for items, from Nausicaä's Mehve (flying contraption) from the movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind to the Ginzuishou (Silver Crystal) from Sailor Moon to Zakuro's Cross Whip from Tokyo Mew Mew.

I may create a fanlisting for the Sailor Moon live-action show Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, since there doesn't seem to be one though there are many Sailor Moon senshi-related fanlistings that include the senshi's PGSM incarnations under their subjects, and fanlistings for some of the actors of PGSM (I joined the ones for Kitagawa Keiko, Komatsu Ayaka, and Chieco Kawabe, who play Rei/Sailor Mars, Minako/Sailor Venus, and Osaka Naru respectively). The only problem is that fanlistings are tough to keep up, and I've got two sites, a blog, and a video hosting account to attend to. Plus making one requires at least one page with a form, the script for which (JavaScript I think) is not exactly easy to do.

I'm thirsty and jittery from sitting so much at the computer. I'm going to go for a walk. More later.

Job stuff, website updates not going so well, podcasts, boredom, etc.

I actually got going on some job stuff today, writing several cover letters for newspaper ads and filling out one of the two applications I decided to keep. (I threw out Submarina and Domino's because the first is a sub sandwich place, which I've already done bad at -- getting fired from Subway after 3 days -- and the other is only hiring drivers right now). I've not been in much of a good mood though, after having a discussion with Mom (well, not really a discussion so much) about my overweight condition hurting my chances of getting a job. Uh, hello, I've had three jobs since my senior year of high school and I was overweight all that time too. She mentioned that when my dad came up to me when I was going to Wal-Mart the other day to get my cell phone (since he was changing out our phones) that I was barely moving. I said this was because my feet hurt a lot, which is true. My mom thought it was because of my weight though. She brought up (once again) the fact that I lost so much weight when I was walking to school during the time after I'd lost my bus pass until I got a job at Wendy's. I should mention that this walk took TWO AND A HALF HOURS each way and required that I wake up at the crack of dawn to get to school on time for my 8am class.

Ok so I am overweight by about 40-50 pounds. Yes, I am at risk for cancer and diabetes from family history. Heck, maybe Tay-Sachs too given my Eastern European Jewish history on my dad's side, coupled with cystic fibrosis from the other Caucasian relatives and the chance of passing on to one of my kids whatever this weird social disease I have (still not sure if it's Asperger's). But I do not think that will prevent me from getting a job. Yeah, employers can be discriminatory if they want to. But if they can't discriminate you if you're a woman, a homosexual, of a race other than white, disabled, over age 40, or a wealth of other things, and can't automatically deny you employment if you say on your application that you've committed a felony, you'd think they can't discriminate against you because you're overweight, right?

Granted, I probably should exercise more and stuff. I know it may better my chances of getting a job since this world is so appearance-conscious as to prefer thin people over heavy people. But that shouldn't stop me. It's the inside that really counts. A guy applying to be an accountant might be the best qualified candidate around and get hired, but then slack off at work or be a crook and get the company into major debt or tax fraud or something (kinda like the Enron scandal).

In other news, updates on my personal website, Silvanmare, aren't going well. I tried to make a new drop-down menu for the side menu, but when I typed in the code (which involves unordered lists and CSS) it didn't show up right. I am thinking of trying a different method. The new site will have "mini-sites" on various subjects. Although maybe I will limit the amount of them, cause I went a bit crazy on making mini-sites -- making 35 in all.

Sorry there was a bit of time delay...I went on a site called Into the Pensieve to find some Harry Potter video clips (I discovered when making my "Dance to Me" video that that site is a great place to find those) and ended up creating a My Pensieve account. You get a blog and the ability to add content from the site to your "media gallery" and control over what kind of news appears on your page (called your "pensieve"), which you control by checking what "subscriptions" you want, etc. Sorta like MySpace I guess, but not. (I'm still resisting the urge to get on the Myspace bandwagon).

Anyway about the site...I'm going to continue playing with the drop-down thing, and see if my HTML books have anything about them.

As for the podcasts part of the subject line, I'm still into MuggleCast, and I decided to give PotterCast -- another Harry Potter podcast for the site The Leaky Cauldron -- another chance and I actually like it.

I found three travel podcasts on a site called Podcast Alley (which I heard about from MuggleCast, since they're always telling you to vote for them there) and got eps. One is the podcast for Rick Steves, who does a travel show on PBS. Hard to hear (I couldn't hear it over the water when doing dishes last night) but good. Another is one on Athens that I haven't listened to yet. The last one was called Josh in Japan and promised to be interesting, but episode 1 was just the guy griping about how much Western fast food there is in Japan and about how he hates seafood and swearing quite a bit. So I decided not to listen to that one anymore.

As for boredom, well, with lots of time and nothing to do, life has been boring. I did manage to do some new videos over winter break so far to try to rebuild my video collection after the YouTube fiasco. I also created an alternate e-mail account with Hotmail so that hopefully I can get back on YouTube. Not that Putfile isn't bad but it's not as nice as YouTube and plus I have friends at YouTube. The only good thing about losing my YouTube account is losing the abstinence video. I'm not saying I regret making the video, but I got sick of all the flaming comments I got on it from people who prefer safe sex to abstinence. I just stopped answering the comments after a while.

As for new videos, what did I do? Well I have a Yumi-Ulrich-William love triangle video (called "Somebody to Love: Ulrich or William?") to Anne Hathaway's rendition of Queen's "Somebody to Love." I have an Outlaw Star video (called "A Space Free-for-all") done to the song "Rodéo" from the Code Lyoko Subdigitals album that I mentioned before. I have a Sailor Saturn video called "Soldier of Destruction" set to a song by Saturn's voice actress.

I gotta go. More later.

Edit: The song sung by Saturn's voice actress, Minaguchi Yuko, is called "A DIEU." The other videos are a Code Lyoko-PGSM battle vid (called, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot," set to Pat Benatar's song of that name) and yesterday I did one about Usagi's struggle with the power from the Silver Crystal and the destructive desires of Princess Sailor Moon called "Addicted" (set to the song "Addicted" by Kelly Clarkson, which I got from the Kelly Clarkson CD my dad got for Christmas, which I borrowed).

Today I went and returned the socks and the shirt to Wal-Mart and got two pairs of trouser socks and a new hat (a denim baseball cap) as well as some foot spray and shampoo and conditioner. I also got several applications for places in that area.

That's basically all I've done today. As for other videos, I think I'll do a Harry Potter video. I had done one but I lost it in losing my account.

That's all I really have to say. Bye.

Post-New Year blues with some good parts

Christmas and New Year's have come and gone. Christmas was all right. I got mostly clothes from my parents, which I knew I was getting cause I went with to buy them. I also got some underwear, which I knew I was getting, plus a 6-pack of glass-bottled Coke. My brother got me a new GameCube (which is great cause my other one has having problem) with one controller, and four 12-pack boxes of soda cans, a Life Savers Sweet Storybook, and I think some other stuff. My parents gave my brother and I a Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner with a couple refill bottles. I got a little box of candy and a $25 Wal-Mart gift card from my aunt and a $25 check from my grandpa.

New Year's was uneventful. I spent New Year's Eve day applying for a couple jobs online, and using the computer mostly, getting some video files to make a Sailor Moon video. I also downloaded the New Year's show for MuggleCast, a Harry Potter podcast I've recently gotten into, which I listened to late on New Year's Eve night so I could stay awake late enough to watch the ball drop on Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve. Fortunately the podcast ended at 11:52 (probably cause it was almost 2 hours long, but also cause I paused it a lot), so after that I watched the program till the ball dropped. Then I went upstairs, wished my parents Happy New Year and took a shower and went to bed.

Today Mum wanted me to get out of the house and not just sit around. So I walked to Wal-Mart to use my gift card. Unfortunately, I wore one of my new pairs of shoes which I hadn't broken into yet, so walking was a rather painful experience.

I got two packs of socks, a plastic box to store the CD's that don't have cases, a nice cotton shirt, and the book The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. My mom said I should've gotten nicer socks to wear with new clothes and that the shirt could be worn under a blouse, which means it's not nice enough to just wear by itself. So I am going to return the shirt and the socks and get nicer stuff, if I can. I'm keeping the box and the book.

The 2-year agreement on our cell phones ended today so my dad changed out our phones. We got Motorola W315 phones. Here's what one looks like:



My brother pointed out it doesn't have a camera like our old phones did, which means my dad can't take pictures of our dogs all the time like he usually did. I like the phone though, even without the camera. Since it's Motorola, it'll be easier to get custom ringtones.

Speaking of Motorola, I saw a really funny Chinese Motorola commercial on this show called Funniest Commercials of the Year 2006. Here's a link where you can see it:

http://veryfunnyads.com/ads/25096.html

I'm pretty tired so I'm going to end here.

A little update

Hi there. How are things?

A lot has happened since Nov. 16. Still no job yet, but I have made steps. I went in and did an application and interview with a place called AppleOne, a job services place. I am also still waiting for definitive word back from Walgreen's. (I had an interview with them like 2 weeks ago and I still haven't heard anything conclusive). So things are looking up.

School is officially over for me for the fall semester. I took my last final yesterday. I am so happy that's over. That's one big load off my back. It's been a tough semester.

Right now, I am focusing on getting a job, planning for next semester schoolwise, and getting my Christmas shopping done. I thankfully am going to be able to buy presents as I hoped -- my parents agreed to give me money from my savings with them like I asked, and I got $68.75 from selling some of my books back, so a bunch of that went to Christmas presents. Plus I bought some stocking stuffers before my last Loaves & Fishes check ran out. So now I am almost done. I just need to finish buying the presents I've planned to buy for the family (my parents and my brother) as well as maybe something for my Aunt Jane, who I found out is coming for Christmas. Plus I need to buy a couple 4-square balls to bring for the church tree. (It's one of those things where you pick an ornament that has a certain needed item on it from some relief place in the area -- the balls I'm getting are for some shelter for boys). Then I need to make the little bag I'm making to hold this one present I got for my mom, and then wrap everything. With a little over a week until Christmas (10 days to be exact), I think I have plenty of time.

As for school prep, I wrote down a list of all the University Studies majors offered, and then chose the ones I was most interested in. I then took these and looked them up on Assist (a website for transfer students in CA) and typed up what CSU schools offered the majors I was interested in getting a University Studies A.A. in. I then narrowed these down more by circling the schools and subdegrees, etc I wanted to pursue further. Then I got info on the majors from the websites of the schools. Now I just need to look over that stuff.

I am still doing videos, although I got quite a shock on Tuesday -- my YouTube account got "permanently disabled." This is due to three videos they labeled as copyright-infringing. Now I would never deliberately infringe copyright. That's illegal and wrong. I even put copyright notices in the credits of my videos to avoid this. Yet they blocked my Katharine McPhee and Inuyasha vids (which had clips from fansites) and my video about May from Pokémon which had a few opening sequence clips and a bunch of still pics. And because there were multiple occurrances of this, they disabled my account. I do not understand how I violated copyright (I suppose with the Katharine McPhee one I can sort of understand, since American Idol is a network show -- but the facts that use of the clips was infringing would be the fansite makers' fault, not mine, right?).

I am now back where I originally was with hosting videos: on Putfile. Not as fancy but also less strict. Right now I only have a few videos on there that I put up this week when at school (since our family computer blocks Putfile as well as YouTube) -- I won't be able to put up any more until the internet on my laptop gets fixed or I go back to school, whichever comes first. I may try to get back on YouTube by creating a different e-mail account and going under that. I am still thinking about all that.

So anyway you can view my videos now at Starlight Starbright, my Putfile page (same account as in the pre-YouTube days, different page name).

Speaking of videos, I have progressed some with the fansub I was doing of the first episode of season 3 of Code Lyoko. I don't think I mentioned the fansub on here, just on Tech Links, the CL forum I was doing it for. Anyway, I got raw footage of the first episode of CL season 3 in French and proceeded to get a script, translate it, and do a fansub. You can download it in parts via Sendspace if you're interested. Here are the links:

Part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/4p1p0y
Part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/9z3mpj
Part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/2ovesq
Part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/sl1fa2

I've been on Sendspace since I started doing the fansub back in September. It's a great file sharing site AND our family comp doesn't block it like it does Rapidshare and Megaupload. I first learned of its existence back when doing that infamous Katharine McPhee video (which, now that I'm on Putfile, I may remake -- I'll have to read their Terms of Service first, since I already got a warning for putting a link in a comment...sheesh, why is that so bad? I'm not spamming!).

I have also been busy translating lyrics from the new CD Code Lyoko featuring The Subdigitals for the Tech Links people. This CD was recently released in France and features songs by a fictional band the characters in CL like (in the English version the band is called The Subsonics), as well as the show's French theme song as a "bonus track." You can see the lyrics, with my translations, if you like, by downloading them from the links below (listed in the order the songs appear on the CD):

-Ouvre Les Yeux (Open Your Eyes): http://www.sendspace.com/file/y1dbt4
-Technoïde (no real English translation for that word): http://www.sendspace.com/file/od26iu
-D'ici et d'ailleurs (From Here and Elsewhere): http://www.sendspace.com/file/43ixwr
-Ensemble (Together): http://www.sendspace.com/file/15c616
-Sauver Le Monde (To Save the World): http://www.sendspace.com/file/15c616
-La Tribu (The Tribe): http://www.sendspace.com/file/cw2c67
-Bienvenue (Welcome): http://www.sendspace.com/file/06rveb
-S'envoler (To Fly Away): http://www.sendspace.com/file/malych

They're all ZIP files; I made them that way so I could attach them to posts at Tech Links. I zipped the files using WinRAR archives, but saved the files as ZIP so they could be downloaded and opened by people who didn't have WinRAR.

These are not all the songs: Tracks 7 and 9, called "Rodéo" and "S'en Aller," and the first track, "Planet Net," are not listed. Another forum member translated "Planet Net" before me, getting the lyrics from a karaoke video posted on the net (which you can see at my Putfile page), so I didn't translate it right away (I have now though and I'll post it here) and the lyrics for the other two I just was able to get this morning from the French CL forum I've been getting lyrics from, so I haven't translated those yet.

Not much else to say. I was really tired when I got home yesterday, and mostly sat at the computer half-asleep. I went upstairs, showered, and did the Sailor Saturn video I'd planned to make (to "A DIEU," a song sung by Saturn's seiyuu, Minaguchi Yuko), saved the Movie Maker file, and then closed down my laptop and went to bed. This morning, I got up, did my morning stuff, saved the video to the computer, did some dishes, watched The Price is Right, and went on the family comp again over lunch, which is where I am now.

I'm tired. I'm just trying to kill time while my laundry finishes. I want to wait for it to finish before I go out and Christmas shop.

Trying to think things out

I'm planning to leave school soon, but I just wanted to get some things off my chest.

With spring semester coming up, and my plans changing to involve getting my A.A. in University Studies at that time (because I lost my job and may need to work full time), I have to think about classes to take toward my major, since after this semester I won't have any IGETC or Cal State G.E. requirements left. That is a big deal, because I would most likely be taking classes toward a major at a certain school, and I have to decide what school that will be.

I am pretty certain I will go to a Cal State if I go to a university -- I've been preparing for that anyway. The only Cal State schools in the county are Cal State San Marcos (CSUSM) and San Diego State University. Though CSUSM is closer to where I live, and the campus is lovely-looking, I don't really want to go there, for whatever reason. Maybe cause that's what my mom wants, and I'm not fully in agreement with that. I just recently started considering San Diego State, since it's considered part of the Cal State system. I can still commute there from home via public transit if I had to, but it's not too close for comfort.

I am considering History for a major, once again. For CSUSM's History B.A., I have most if not all of the requirements. The requirements are: 12 units of history in 2 different areas (which I can have in Western Civ and History of the Americas if I take the other Western Civ class), two classes in lit, religion, poli sci, econ, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, the arts, or a single discplinary field (I had to take 3 arts courses for the IGETC anyway, so that should count - I can ask), 3 units in a "separate and distinct area" (I've taken so many electives that I'm sure I have this covered), and English 100 (which I had to take for the IGETC anyway).

For SDSU's history B.A., I have met most of the requirements too. I have gotten 2 classes from the history classes you have to take 2 of (History of the Americas and Western Civ). I'd just have to take both sections of World History. I also have met the language requirement.

As for other Cal States, I'm only missing three classes toward the history major at CSU Long Beach, & 4 classes toward the history major at CSU San Bernadino -- the two closest campuses I could find info about.

I'm going to try to figure that out, possibly this weekend, although I do have a big anthro essay to write. Plus job-hunting since I still don't have a job and my final speech to do. *sigh*

At least Thanksgiving is coming up -- the holiday will give me time to think.

I'm gonna go so I can look for pics for my final speech boards before leaving school. If I can get my boards done today, it's one less thing.

A quick post

This'll be quick cause I'm supposed to mainly be using the internet on our computer downstairs for job hunting or school.

I tried to post on Sunday but the computer kinda froze up so it didn't work out. Wah.

Updates:

School: I started school at the end of August (I point this out cause the last post is from July, but I edited it Sunday which is why it has an October date). I am now at mid-semester, with the work piling up fast. I am taking Biological Anthropology, Principles of Oral Communication, Asian Philosophy & Religion, and History of the Americas, as I believe I said before. Right now I have an anthro essay due soon, a speech for my Oral Comm class coming up (and we just did another), a "microtheme" (mini-essay) for Philosophy due next week, and a research paper for History that I'm doing on Dutch expansion in the Americas. Plus we have our triterm in Philo on China in a few weeks.

As for what I'm studying...right now we're still in the early colonial age in History; we're studying Daoism right now in Philo, particularly the Tao Te Ching, which Professor Scott-James had us buy and read; we just started our Human Evolution unit in anthro, and we just finished our informative speeches in speech class, and now go on to the final lecture days of the whole semester, which are on how to do persuasive speeches. The rest of the class is going to be taken up by our two other speeches, our persuasive speech and our final speech. I already know my topics, since Mr. Moura contracted us on certain topics for all our speeches for the whole semester early on. My persuasive speech is on why we need fairy tales, which has been rather hard to come up with good arguments on...so much the stuff on fairy tales affect us is rather speculative or involves complex psychological stuff. My final speech is an informative one on tennis, and I have so much info I need to sit down and sift through it. I know I will definitely need a visual aid or two for that one, though it's not required; with my persuasive speech, there is not really anything that requires extra visual illustration, so I can do without a visual aid.

The main issue with my persuasive speech was that it was tough to figure out where all the info from my notes would fit in. So I scripted it, writing out more or less what I was going to say. I need one more source since I eliminated one of the fairy tale books I was going to use, but this is ok cause I need some statistic or scientific fact anyway to back up my assertion that you can get far in life by planning ahead and using your brain. I also may need to cut some stuff out cause it looks long. But this is mainly cause I use actual fairy tales as examples and thus have to give plot summaries of them all as briefly but as completely as possible.

Work: Bad. I found out I am going to be let go as of November 1. So I have to find a new job and fast. I am looking primarily for work involving computers that doesn't involve customer service (since I haven't been doing too good with customer service at Loaves & Fishes). There are some of these -- mainly receptionist and clerical jobs, as well as secretarial/admin assistant jobs -- but a bunch of them didn't work, because I didn't have prior experience, or they were too far away, or because I didn't know some programs, like Outlook or Quickbooks (an accounting program), or because I'm not bilingual (which around here means you speak English and Spanish fluently).

IVCF Fall Retreat: I just got back from this (well, not just, on Sunday). It was awesome. I felt like I was really touched by God while there, plus it was fun. We stayed in a nice hotel in Newport Beach and had big group sessions and seminars at nearby UC Irvine. Some parts of it were tiring, like the late nights (the evening session, with small groups afterwards, often did not get out till around 10:30) and walking up the long, steep ramp to the lecture hall where our main sessions were in my not-good-for-walking shoes (most of us wisely decided to park across the street by a shopping/food area called University Centre rather than pay $7/day to park in UCI's parking structure). We also had to pay for all our food, even breakfast. And pretty much everyone ate out -- I don't think anyone ate at the hotel restaurant or got room service that I know of. Some people were smart and bought groceries somewhere so they'd have snacks and stuff. I ate at La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill with my carmates Elizabeth and Raquel for dinner the first night, had pita chips from Jamba Juice and a peanut butter bagel sandwich from Breugger's Bagels for breakfast with Cassandra and Yvette on Saturday morning (they put WAYY too much peanut butter on my bagel though), ate lunch Saturday afternoon at California Pizza Kitchen with a bunch of other people from my school who decided to make an excursion to South Coast Plaza, ate dinner to go Saturday night from In-n-Out with Cassandra and a couple other girls, found my own breakfast Sunday morning at a place just down the street from our hotel called Panini Garden Bistro (I got toast with butter, a scrambled egg, and a can of Coke all for $5.30 with tax), which I brought back to my hotel room to eat (I've never had toast and a scrambled egg to go from a restaurant before...it was interesting), and then ate lunch with a bunch of other people from school at a place in University Centre called Lee's Sandwiches. Lee's Sandwiches is great cause it serves simple stuff, like sandwiches, ice cream, and smoothies, with a bit of an ethnic twist, and it's really, really cheap. (I got a medium drink and a garlic baguette and only spent a little over $2!). It obviously caters to UCI students, cause we saw a lot of them there. Actually, all of University Centre basically caters to UCI students.

Other Stuff: I'll make this quick cause I gotta go get dressed soon.

- My birthday's tomorrow! I turn 22 this year. I'm not getting many presents; I'm getting my hair styled today and Mum wants to buy me an interview outfit. In other words, getting a job is top priority right now.

- I managed to download all of Code Lyoko season 3, which finally aired this month. I am very happy about this cause I have new clips for vids. Granted, Movie Maker is still not saving right, but I'm trying to figure out how to get around that. I have made some movies with a program on our family computer called Sony MovieShaker, but it's only good for non-clip movies.

-I have not been able to get online on my laptop for about a month now. It is driving me crazy. My antenna and the router card I've been using both only pick up a "limited or no connection" signal.

-I lost my mp3 player (*sob!*) somewhere at school. So I have been having to rely on my portable CD player, which uses up the battery really quickly. I'm hoping to get a new one soon.

Ok I'm gonna go.

Vocational schools and stuff

School starts on the 21st, a little less than 2 weeks from now. Well, for me, it actually starts on the 22nd, since my classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I may not have all my books by then though. It depends. I have to pay back Mum $75.94 for the two books she ordered for me. Then I have some other book that used is $64.25, and which I sorta need to buy at the school bookstore cause even the used books had the CD's and stuff with them, so I figure I'll need them. That's a pretty hefty price to pay for that though. Sheesh.

So after that $140.19 expenditure (ouch!), I don't know how much money I will have left from my next paycheck, since I haven't been working very much. My next paycheck may not even cover all that. I may have to combine paychecks or something.

I know what I'll do. I'll use my next paycheck to pay off Mum and get my cheaper books (a "annual edition" book for Anthropology that is $20.50 used, my other History of the Americas book, which is $16.50 used, and a $6 used copy of Tao Te Ching for my Asian Philosophy and Religion class). There's also some "reader" I need for my philosophy class that I more than likely can only get at school, since it's written by my teacher. But when I last checked the store, it was on backorder. So I don't know if they have it in yet or not. I saved myself some money on the history front because I am taking the other half of History of the Americas (one half of which I took in the spring), and from the same teacher, so I saved the textbook from last semester, and thankfully, the teacher is using that same book again. What a relief. (I also kept the novel he had us read--In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez--because it was very fascinating).

Then, when I don't have my debt to Mum to worry about, I'll use my paycheck on the 29th to buy my other book. Granted, I'll need to buy a bus pass from that too, unless I put aside money from my next check (they don't start selling the passes until the 25th of the month for the next month).

I checked out a couple nearby vocational schools, as I said before -- Maric College and ITT Tech. I had an appointment on Monday with Charlie, an admissions rep at Maric. That went ok. We talked, he gave me a tour of the place, and then he gave me a brochure to read, and I left.

I didn't actually meet with LaMonte, the rep from ITT Tech who answered my info request but we talked on the phone and he sent me stuff.

I'm gonna stop now so I can leave to go to college group. More later.

Planning for the future

My parents and I had a heated talk tonight about my future. We were in the car after my mom picked me up from the bus stop I was at after I went to deposit my paycheck because since I was still waiting for the bus I knew I wasn't going to make the last FAST bus. It started when I mentioned about having gone to the dentist today. Then my mom said I needed to take care of my teeth so I wouldn't have to go to the dentist so much because soon their health insurance won't cover me. Then we started talking about careers and so on and so forth, and I told them I'd done research and all this crud.

My mom has been worried about money a lot lately because she and my dad had to spend a lot of money at the time of Grandpa's death on hotel expenses and so forth. She told me this morning we only have like $600 to cover us for the next 3 weeks.

My mom also said if I wanted to transfer, I was going to have to think about how to afford it. I do have a start because there is $1,000 from my Grandpa's CD (retirement account) which I can use toward college or a car, because of his trust or whatever. But that doesn't cover very much when the normal state university costs around $6,000-$7,000 a year for room and board. I don't think that includes tuition.

My parents dropped me off a little while ago and said they were going to Fry's so I am home alone right now. I figured I'd do some research while they were gone. And I did research on an educational option I'd disdained for some time, especially since commercials for them are on TV constantly: vocational schools. Specifically I looked at ones I knew were in this area (because of my transportation issues).

First, I looked at ITT Tech. It had sounded like a good school from the commercials, plus they train primarily in computers, which Mum keeps telling me I should go into. They have a campus down in San Diego, which isn't too far. I could live at home and commute, using the bus and the Coaster or bus and the San Diego Transit (based on what came up when I looked up the route on sdcommute.com...I'm surprised they didn't mention taking the Trolley...maybe you can't take the Trolley there). Or, if it's not too much out of the way, maybe I can ride up to town with Papa, since he works in La Jolla.

I also looked at Maric College, though their legal programs were the only ones that interested me.

I requested info from both places, so we'll see what happens.

That's all for now. Bye.

Lost with careers

I am still at a loss in terms of careers. I feel pressured to choose a major this summer cause I committed to that, for one, following the procedure in my decision-making paper, and because if I want to transfer by next fall I have to apply to universities this fall. I can't go to junior college forever. I know some people transfer not knowing what they want to do, but if you transfer as a junior, well...by junior year you're usually doing major work, right?

Mum seems to think I should do office work. But I don't want to just do office work. First of all, that's what she did, and I'd rather not do the same thing as her. Second, if that's what my career is going to be, then these last three years of college have been a total waste, since for most entry-level office jobs you don't need a degree.

I don't know who to turn to. I don't think a counselor would understand, my mom obviously wouldn't, I don't think my dad would, and I don't know how to approach God about it, seeing as 95% of the time I pray I feel like I am talking to the wall, or practicing a scene from a play. And those times I don't feel that way, I end up later feeling as if those experiences weren't genuine anyways cause my life doesn't change.

I have tried to vent this anger by writing in here, writing about it in the writers' forum (where I feel free to say stuff like this cause I know those people better than those at the other forum I belong to), and mashing buttons playing Tales of Symphonia, beating the crud out of the monsters in Niflheim or the Meltokio Coliseum. Those seem better than just talking to people, who just utter pleasantries to try to make me feel better. Either I vent or I just try to ignore it by doing other stuff.

I have tried looking up stuff on careers too to try to help my decision, but this only makes things more confusing.

The only hope I have is I know I still want to write, though I haven't written since May. But I know I need to be able to support myself till I can make money doing that, or instead of that if it doesn't work out.

Yet I have to balance what I want and my interests plus my mom's expectations while trying to include God in the decision. UGH....MENTAL OVERLOAD!!!!!

I looked into history but the only choices seem to be museum curator, historian, and teacher. And teaching, which seemed like a good idea at one time, now no longer really interests me. At least in history. English I might be able to teach, though I would probably never be a Mr. Keating (the teacher from Dead Poets' Society). Yet Mum says I should do something with computers. But I can't figure out what high-paying job you can do in that which doesn't require a computer science degree and high math. I've thought about being involved in the video game industry, but I don't know how to get there. And the main good school for that is UCLA, which the transfer counselor I went to said I couldn't get into with my GPA.

Well I'll look into it. For right now I'm gonna try to watch some more Tokyo Mew Mew before I have to leave for work (I've been watching it on YouTube and I really like it).

Back to life as usual

Well it has been a crazy week. I left town with Papa and Andrew on Thursday to go up to Lone Pine. We stayed till Sunday. During this time, Mum tried to work out funeral arrangements, with the help of Uncle Stan, who arrived last Friday, and these were finalized once my mom finally heard from Uncle Vernon and found out he was coming. The funeral was set for Wednesday the 12th.

We got home on Sunday night around 7 (minus Mom, who stayed behind to continue taking care of the last things that needed to be dealt with, like going through stuff, clearing things up with the bank, and so on) and then left for Lone Pine again around noon on Tuesday. Thus I worked Monday night, the first day I'd worked since Grandpa died. Fortunately, nobody treated me differently in a major way (they expressed their condolences and that was it) which was nice. Sometimes people go out of their way to be nice to you right after a death, I think, and I'd rather not have that. I just want life to go on.

Wednesday was the funeral, held in the burning mid-morning sun at the Mt. Whitney Cemetery just outside of Lone Pine, where Grandma is also buried. Fortunately, we family members got to sit under a canopy, so we had shade. The funeral was military-style, as Grandpa had asked for in his last wishes, and thus the pomp and ceremony was primarily handled by the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) post. Barbara (Grandpa's 2nd wife) was the only one really crying. Anissa (her daughter-in-law) looked like she was a little bit, but not much.

After the funeral, there was a luncheon at the VFW. All of us family, except Barbara, sat together: Mum, Dad, Andrew, me, Uncle Stan, Uncle Vernon, and Barbara's son Frank, his wife Anissa, and their kids Jereth and J Lin. (Barbara was sitting with friends in the bar area). The Auxiliary ladies and the local restaurant The Totem Cafe provided the food. It was very good. I had a piece of chicken, some cold pasta, a roll, and a piece of cake for dessert. I also had Diet Pepsi (since they had soda for those who didn't drink alcohol) which I had to order from the bar.

Our plans for after that were that Mum and Papa were going to go to Independence (the county seat, about 15 miles away) to get a copy of Grandpa's death certificate to give to his bank so they could deal with his CD (which I think is a retirement account). But they found out they couldn't get the certificate until the next day after 2 pm. So we tried to figure out what to do. We all went back to my Grandpa's house after a bit.

I left not long after though. This was because my Uncle Vernon, being equally without something to do, wanted to go see Manzanar, which is only a few miles away from Lone Pine. Manzanar is one of the 10 internment camps where Japanese and Japanese-Americans were taken during World War II. Uncle Stan was going to go with him (even though he'd already been there) and I decided I wanted to go too. After all, it beat sitting around with Barbara watching Hallmark Channel or "M*A*S*H."

So we went, and it was very interesting (and hot weather-wise). We looked around the visitors' center, and then watched a 20-minute film they show there called Remembering Manzanar (which you can buy on DVD at the gift shop, by the way). Then we looked around the gift shop, where I bought a $1 copy of the first edition of the Manzanar Free Press, the paper put out by people interned in Manzanar. Afterwards, we hopped back in the car and drove the auto route past the signs showing where certain places in Manzanar used to be. We stopped to look at what had been a Japanese-style garden at one point. Only some concrete, where the water would've flowed into the big pond, remains. Then we got back in the car and drove some more until we got to the marble monument in the cemetery, and there we got out and walked around some more. Then we left, and Uncle Stan dropped me off at the hotel (and then Uncle Vernon, who was staying at the same hotel), assuming my parents (who had gone off on some errand or something shortly before we left for Manzanar) would be there. Unfortunately, they were not there, so I called my mom on my cell and she told me to wait there and that my dad would come and let me in the hotel room, which he did shortly after. It felt good to feel A/C after walking around in the burning heat at Manzanar.

That night I spent partly by myself at the hotel, until my dad picked me up to go to my grandpa's house, since we were ordering pizza. Frank and his family came over too and we all sat around the living room having pizza (though my parents eventually sat out on the front step). J Lin, who had had a bit too much sugar at the funeral luncheon (soda plus 2 slices of cake) was very hyper, to the point of annoying nearly everyone she encountered. Jereth and I got a chance to talk, and I found out we like a lot of the same things, such as reading, Harry Potter, Teen Titans, etc. It was fun.

Thursday morning around 9:30 Andrew and I left, since Andrew wanted to be home for his passing league game. We only made one stop, at a truck stop near Adelanto, a town with very few houses but a rather large police station (it looks like they took a Motel 6 and converted it into a police station). The truck stop is one large black-painted stucco building with the words "Open 24 hours TACOCHAN" painted on it in white letters and some gas pumps out front. It houses a sit-down Mexican restaurant with vinyl-upholstered booths, a room with arcade games in it, a mini-mart, 2 somewhat out-of-place massage chairs (where you must pay $5 to get massaged for like 15 minutes), and 2 really nice bathrooms.

It was a nice place to stop. It beats Pearsonville. Pearsonville isn't even really a town. It's a few buildings, a water tank that says "Pearsonville: Hub Cap Capital of the World," and a truck stop/gas station with a Burger King. That's all.

We made good time, despite having to detour off Mapquest's directions due to construction on the offramp onto this one freeway we were supposed to get on. We got home right around 2 p.m.

I was gonna write more but I am too tired. More later.