Everything but the kitchen sink!
Jan. 22nd, 2008 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofthethreadHmm… It’s been about 2 weeks since I last updated because I’ve been lazy. >_>; So, this is going to be a huge collection of random stuff… Update for the Anime Boston PSOH group next time.
Toselphie84 and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ngmaster: Thanks for the call yesterday. It was a nice little unexpected surprise. :-D Sorry I didn’t actually make it into the city to meet up with you guys.
Next, it seems I need to note a correction to something I posted after NYAF. Shortly before Christmas, I wrote to Peter Tatara for clarification about the awards and got a reply a couple of weeks ago. The only award he has me listed for is 1st Place Craftsman and he says there wasn’t a Best of Show for the hall contest, only Best Craftsmanship. I’m not really upset about it or anything but it makes me wonder a bit if I’m losing my mind since I could have sworn they announced a Best of Show tie between me and one of the novice winners at the end, after I went up to the stage. ._.;
On to a more serious matter, I’m kind of questioning how well Chase handles their statements. The other week, they sent a letter saying that they mistakenly listed $0 balances for some accounts on statements they sent out in December (of course, I caught it when the statement first arrived). This is the second time they’ve messed up on one of my parents’ statements within the past half year. -_- And their statements already annoy me because they don’t seem that user friendly. I don’t claim to be a financial genius but I did take finance as one of my majors at NYU and graduated with honors; yet, their statements still don’t make complete sense to me at times! >_<
Since it’s the beginning of the year, my family’s mailbox is being crammed with tax return documents and it’s my job to keep track of them all; it adds up to a lot of mail with 6 of us here. I found it pretty silly that my bank sent me a separate mail for the $1.02 of interest that I had from my checking account instead of just tacking it onto the one from my savings account!
I recently finished watching Le Chevalier D’Eon. Boy, so many crazy twists near the end. And so much backstabbing and death; nearly all the French characters died in the last two volumes of the series. X_X; So, supposedly, Louis XV is a fake who was switched with Robespierre and he had been trying to hide that secret by concealing the contents of the Royal Psalms and killing those who knew. And not only did Robespierre turn out to be of royal blood, he was also revealed to be Lia’s brother, which makes me wonder if he’s also supposed to be related to D’Eon. I think I need to rewatch the whole series to completely get everything. I had thoughts about possibly cosplaying Lia since I’ve always wanted to do a period gown type costume but I’m not sure. I do like the series but I’d probably have liked it more if not so much awful stuff had happened at the end.
I do want to cosplay Ekaterina though. I dislike wimpy female characters so I really like that she didn’t just stand for her husband slapping her around and trying to implicate her in his conspiracy against the Russian empress and went to warn the French knights of the plot against them. Plus, she probably had the best ending out of any character in the series, too. She became an empress and had her jerk of a husband executed for plotting against the previous empress! (And I’ve probably just scared away any guys that might have been reading this… >_>;)
And I got the 5th volume of the Petshop of Horrors sequel the other week. Not completely sure what’s going on at times since I don’t know any Japanese but a couple of parts were pretty darn weird. O_o;
Darwinism: In the first story, it looks like Taizu has his henchmen buy up all the sweets at the local bakeries to annoy and/or weaken Count D. D still manages to find a run-down little bakery that they missed though! Later on, Taizu gets a bunch of doctors and nurses who force D into a bunch of medical tests and D looks rather scary afterwards (has dots for pupils and looks half dead for a while o_O;). Taizu seems to learn something shocking from the test results although I’m not sure what and he’s attempting to drag D off to somewhere at the end of the chapter. Meanwhile, the rundown bakery has become successful and there’s some storyline with the people there but I’m not as clear on what’s happening.
Dawn: This one involves an attempt on Taizu’s life but the woman he was with is wounded in the arm instead. Taizu’s assistant goes to D alone to beg the Count for something; not sure exactly what. Taizu and the woman are at a hotel or apartment building when D goes to visit them with a box of pastries and a fruit basket. D runs into Taizu’s assistant again afterwards and he seems frantic about something although D is unconcerned. Later, Taizu is having some flashbacks to when he was young and the woman seems connected to his past somehow. She gets mad and tries to strangle him when they’re interrupted by a knock from the assistant, who she shoots. Then, some weird stuff happens with her suddenly looking like a rotting corpse and D coming back. O_o; Taizu wakes up in the hospital and it turns out to be a dream. The woman was actually a cat and pushed him out of the way during the shooting and was killed instead.
Dining: This was the one I understand least out of the volume; It was weird and I couldn’t make much sense of it without knowing what any of the text says. Some girl leaves a bird with D (looks like she doesn’t want it anymore) and another girl comes and takes it away. The new owner takes it to a woman dressed like a miko and the miko makes TV and press appearances for some reason. Then, they’re out in the country, growing vegetables. It looks like the produce was poisonous though since a bunch of people are sprawled on the floor, looking dead, after a meal. O_o;
Dispatch: The fourth story starts with an injured woman crying as a car is fished out of the ocean; she lost her husband in the accident. A friend of the woman brings her to D’s shop and D gives her a fancy incense burner which she takes home. She falls asleep with the incense burning and wakes up in the middle of the night to find her husband on the balcony. They seem pretty happy as the days go by until a bull shows up on the balcony one night. I don’t completely follow what that was about although D had a horse dressed in similar trappings at the shop. Anyway, it seems that the woman’s friend liked the husband, too. And it’s revealed that the woman had caused the car to go off a cliff after getting into an argument and grabbing the wheel from her husband. At this point, she seems to go nuts, grabbing a knife and attacking both the bull and her husband. The friend goes to see D again and both of them go by the woman’s apartment, where she’s found with a bloody knife and the husband’s skeleton.
I’m finally getting back to working on cosplay stuff now and have been sewing the underskirt for Sarah’s Cinderella costume. I made it with some leftover white cotton and attached a few layers of netting near the hem to make the bottom poofy. Still need to put faux fur over the netting but I’m thinking I should get new material because the fur I have now has a rather short pile and doesn’t look fluffy enough. I’d bought it because I was having trouble finding anything else in white other than fun fur (the stuff I used for my T-Chan plushie) and I thought the backing on that might be too stiff. Don’t know what I’d do with the yard and a half that I already have though since nothing else I want to cosplay calls for fake fur.
And the other night, my siblings and I randomly got onto the subject of old computer games at dinner. The 7th Guest, Myst, Monkey Island, Laura Bow, lots of lesser known stuff and even text games! My favorites from those days had to be the adventure games which didn’t require much combat (if any) and mostly involved collecting items and using them to solve puzzles and advance the storyline. Never got too much into games that involved lots of combat since my coordination is terrible. Like I remember we had a PC version of Street Fighter and I never used the special moves because of my awful coordination with such things. ^_^;; And I think I usually failed miserably when trying to kill the monsters in Alone in the Dark. XD; I wonder if there are still any good adventure games released these days… I don’t play games as often now and I don’t think I’ve played any as involved as the ones from the ‘90s for a long time.
Okay, I’m done. I did say this post was going to be random, didn’t I? :-P
To
selphie84 and ngmaster: Thanks for the call yesterday. It was a nice little unexpected surprise. :-D Sorry I didn’t actually make it into the city to meet up with you guys. Next, it seems I need to note a correction to something I posted after NYAF. Shortly before Christmas, I wrote to Peter Tatara for clarification about the awards and got a reply a couple of weeks ago. The only award he has me listed for is 1st Place Craftsman and he says there wasn’t a Best of Show for the hall contest, only Best Craftsmanship. I’m not really upset about it or anything but it makes me wonder a bit if I’m losing my mind since I could have sworn they announced a Best of Show tie between me and one of the novice winners at the end, after I went up to the stage. ._.;
On to a more serious matter, I’m kind of questioning how well Chase handles their statements. The other week, they sent a letter saying that they mistakenly listed $0 balances for some accounts on statements they sent out in December (of course, I caught it when the statement first arrived). This is the second time they’ve messed up on one of my parents’ statements within the past half year. -_- And their statements already annoy me because they don’t seem that user friendly. I don’t claim to be a financial genius but I did take finance as one of my majors at NYU and graduated with honors; yet, their statements still don’t make complete sense to me at times! >_<
Since it’s the beginning of the year, my family’s mailbox is being crammed with tax return documents and it’s my job to keep track of them all; it adds up to a lot of mail with 6 of us here. I found it pretty silly that my bank sent me a separate mail for the $1.02 of interest that I had from my checking account instead of just tacking it onto the one from my savings account!
I recently finished watching Le Chevalier D’Eon. Boy, so many crazy twists near the end. And so much backstabbing and death; nearly all the French characters died in the last two volumes of the series. X_X; So, supposedly, Louis XV is a fake who was switched with Robespierre and he had been trying to hide that secret by concealing the contents of the Royal Psalms and killing those who knew. And not only did Robespierre turn out to be of royal blood, he was also revealed to be Lia’s brother, which makes me wonder if he’s also supposed to be related to D’Eon. I think I need to rewatch the whole series to completely get everything. I had thoughts about possibly cosplaying Lia since I’ve always wanted to do a period gown type costume but I’m not sure. I do like the series but I’d probably have liked it more if not so much awful stuff had happened at the end.
I do want to cosplay Ekaterina though. I dislike wimpy female characters so I really like that she didn’t just stand for her husband slapping her around and trying to implicate her in his conspiracy against the Russian empress and went to warn the French knights of the plot against them. Plus, she probably had the best ending out of any character in the series, too. She became an empress and had her jerk of a husband executed for plotting against the previous empress! (And I’ve probably just scared away any guys that might have been reading this… >_>;)
And I got the 5th volume of the Petshop of Horrors sequel the other week. Not completely sure what’s going on at times since I don’t know any Japanese but a couple of parts were pretty darn weird. O_o;
Darwinism: In the first story, it looks like Taizu has his henchmen buy up all the sweets at the local bakeries to annoy and/or weaken Count D. D still manages to find a run-down little bakery that they missed though! Later on, Taizu gets a bunch of doctors and nurses who force D into a bunch of medical tests and D looks rather scary afterwards (has dots for pupils and looks half dead for a while o_O;). Taizu seems to learn something shocking from the test results although I’m not sure what and he’s attempting to drag D off to somewhere at the end of the chapter. Meanwhile, the rundown bakery has become successful and there’s some storyline with the people there but I’m not as clear on what’s happening.
Dawn: This one involves an attempt on Taizu’s life but the woman he was with is wounded in the arm instead. Taizu’s assistant goes to D alone to beg the Count for something; not sure exactly what. Taizu and the woman are at a hotel or apartment building when D goes to visit them with a box of pastries and a fruit basket. D runs into Taizu’s assistant again afterwards and he seems frantic about something although D is unconcerned. Later, Taizu is having some flashbacks to when he was young and the woman seems connected to his past somehow. She gets mad and tries to strangle him when they’re interrupted by a knock from the assistant, who she shoots. Then, some weird stuff happens with her suddenly looking like a rotting corpse and D coming back. O_o; Taizu wakes up in the hospital and it turns out to be a dream. The woman was actually a cat and pushed him out of the way during the shooting and was killed instead.
Dining: This was the one I understand least out of the volume; It was weird and I couldn’t make much sense of it without knowing what any of the text says. Some girl leaves a bird with D (looks like she doesn’t want it anymore) and another girl comes and takes it away. The new owner takes it to a woman dressed like a miko and the miko makes TV and press appearances for some reason. Then, they’re out in the country, growing vegetables. It looks like the produce was poisonous though since a bunch of people are sprawled on the floor, looking dead, after a meal. O_o;
Dispatch: The fourth story starts with an injured woman crying as a car is fished out of the ocean; she lost her husband in the accident. A friend of the woman brings her to D’s shop and D gives her a fancy incense burner which she takes home. She falls asleep with the incense burning and wakes up in the middle of the night to find her husband on the balcony. They seem pretty happy as the days go by until a bull shows up on the balcony one night. I don’t completely follow what that was about although D had a horse dressed in similar trappings at the shop. Anyway, it seems that the woman’s friend liked the husband, too. And it’s revealed that the woman had caused the car to go off a cliff after getting into an argument and grabbing the wheel from her husband. At this point, she seems to go nuts, grabbing a knife and attacking both the bull and her husband. The friend goes to see D again and both of them go by the woman’s apartment, where she’s found with a bloody knife and the husband’s skeleton.
I’m finally getting back to working on cosplay stuff now and have been sewing the underskirt for Sarah’s Cinderella costume. I made it with some leftover white cotton and attached a few layers of netting near the hem to make the bottom poofy. Still need to put faux fur over the netting but I’m thinking I should get new material because the fur I have now has a rather short pile and doesn’t look fluffy enough. I’d bought it because I was having trouble finding anything else in white other than fun fur (the stuff I used for my T-Chan plushie) and I thought the backing on that might be too stiff. Don’t know what I’d do with the yard and a half that I already have though since nothing else I want to cosplay calls for fake fur.
And the other night, my siblings and I randomly got onto the subject of old computer games at dinner. The 7th Guest, Myst, Monkey Island, Laura Bow, lots of lesser known stuff and even text games! My favorites from those days had to be the adventure games which didn’t require much combat (if any) and mostly involved collecting items and using them to solve puzzles and advance the storyline. Never got too much into games that involved lots of combat since my coordination is terrible. Like I remember we had a PC version of Street Fighter and I never used the special moves because of my awful coordination with such things. ^_^;; And I think I usually failed miserably when trying to kill the monsters in Alone in the Dark. XD; I wonder if there are still any good adventure games released these days… I don’t play games as often now and I don’t think I’ve played any as involved as the ones from the ‘90s for a long time.
Okay, I’m done. I did say this post was going to be random, didn’t I? :-P
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-23 08:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-29 02:58 pm (UTC)That's weird about there apparently not being the category you were sure there was! @__@ I hate when that happens.
And wow! How annoying about the bank's statements! You'd think they'd be more careful than that!
Ah, a series where almost everyone dies by the end. XD; Sounds like a Victor Hugo novel.
Man. XD; That Petshop volume does sound bizarre. Like some of the X-Files' weirdest episodes.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-02 03:34 am (UTC)Well, not everyone was dead. Most of the characters they met in Russia and England lived through the series but most of the important French characters did die. x_x
Yeah, it's pretty bizarre and the previous volume had some rather weird stuff, too. I wish I could find some text translations or at least summaries in English by someone who actually knows how to read Japanese. I know I'm missing a lot of stuff in some of the chapters since I can't read the text.