May 31 2002

On the Path of Life, coming to the Fork in the Road doesn’t always mean You must go either Right or Left…

It was a hit or miss kind of day for me. I didn’t get all of my errands done, due to complications at two places. The Sprint PCS store was useless, I had to pay by debit card over the phone to pre-pay due to a tiny fee that was past due. So going to the store was completely unnecessary. With my phone turned on, I went to the DMV, and being in line over there was a major pain in the ass again. I had to do my work meeting over my recently reactivated phone, which saved me a little time. The meeting was pretty useless, too. Why I even bother to attend just escapes me. But at least I got my address changed and the DMV knows now where I live and won’t send mail bombs to the old place.

Unfortunately, because of the DMV, the AAA office was closed by the time I made it over there, and then I was late for my aunt’s birthday dinner, which ran over and I couldn’t drop anything off at storage because they closed at 1900. Ugh! Which means now I get to drive around another weekend with crap in my trunk. Yay!

The silver lining in today’s dark cloud was a change in schedule to go visit Karen and ditch laundry for the night. Though, I’m doing a load of laundry as I type this. Anyway, she and I talked at length with one another, and as usual, we cover a grand variety of issues until about 0100 this morning. Among them was recent events in her life, but most importantly, about going to Japan next year. I had mentioned that Dave and I talked about going with Ben and Mark during the akemashite festival in December and January. But she was talking about going there to live for a year and a half, going to a full time language school. Apparently, in Tokyo, they have these Japanese language schools that charge roughly 5 grand for a year’s worth of instruction. The year is divided up into four quarters, and the school’s year is from April to April. Each quarter is equivalent to a full year of American instruction in the language. So in theory a full year of this school in Japan is equal to four full years of studying the language. The added benefit of which would be to actually live in a country where you must speak it in order to survive. This is an aspect to my schooling that has been woefully deficient. I’m learning the language, but I don’t use it enough for it to stick. If I were in Japan, using the language while studying it, I would pick it up a hell of a lot better/faster than in the United States.

I would absolutely love to do this. But in order for me to do it, I would need to clear off my debts (doable), and then save up for living expenses. Also add to the fact that in August, I will be a quarter-vested with PayPal, giving me a couple of thousand shares to either hold onto or sell or just sell the options and put into some other holding account to not be touched for the rest of the year. If I quit PayPal, then my income would simply be from the sale of the stock and I would be in the lowest income bracket. Again, this is doable. I’ve actually already spoken to a financial advisor about plans post-vesting, so I have good information about this.

So, my dream of living in Japan and learning the language might actually come true! If I stick to a spending plan (which so far, I’ve been doing really well), and do what I need to do, come January, I might be moving there to live. There’s a certain amount of promise to the future, now, that I’ve not felt in a really long time.

Here’s hoping.

May 30 2002

Today’s Word? BUSY

I woke up this afternoon after trying to sleep in the sauna. Something needs to be done about the mean temperature of my room. I think I may have to start sleeping with the door open, but since I sleep with my DVD player going on repeat, I don’t think the other occupants of the house would be too thrilled with that.

The day’s events have me a little concerned with how I’m going to get everywhere and everything done. Today, I must go get a much-needed haircut, because I’ve got this fro thing going on with my hair. Then somehow get to the DMV and wait in line to change my address on my drivers’ license, then go to the AAA office in Los Gatos to reinstate my membership (since I declined towing and other miscellaneous insurance with Farmer’s)… the AAA membership is kind of a big necessity since I’m planning on driving down to Long Beach for AX, and I want a little peace of mind. Following that, it’s time to go to the Sprint PCS office to prepay for June’s cell phone bill, and then go to storage and drop off all the boxes I’m still toting around in my trunk (even though I moved in March). Grandma wants food, so I need to go to Nob Hill and get groceries. The immobile portions of my schedule include a work meeting at 1400, and dinner with my aunt, because she turned 46 on Monday and we scheduled her celebration for tonight (hence the need for a haircut). I guess laundry will have to wait until after I get back, and then that will mean staying up until its finished and then collapsing.

I didn’t get much sleep, only four hours, and I feel exhausted just thinking about running around today.

Bleh.

May 30 2002

Boy, am I glad I wore the Big Belt tonight!

I finally got myself out of the house again this week, after being something of a homebody yesterday and just hanging out in the heat. Unlike the last couple of weeks, the weather around here has risen significantly to turn my bedroom into a sauna. I leave the window open and the fan on, but that just exchanges the heat wave air with the sauna air. That decision lasted all of five minutes. My grandmother is actually considering buying one of those central air conditioning units you plug into the wall and put in the center of the room. It’ll set her back about five hundred bucks, but if she wants to spend that kind of money, then who am I to stop her?

Dave dropped by from Redwood City at a little after 1730 today, and after I ran a few errands for Grandma, we went over to Saratoga to visit the Kinokuniya store off of Saratoga Avenue. Now, for the uninitiated, one of the benefits of living in Campbell is the very close proximity of Kinokuniya Bookstore. There are only two other places in California that I know of that have a Kinokuniya: San Francisco, and Los Angeles. I could be wrong about this, but I have no idea why this famous chain chose Saratoga to have a store in, but I am very glad of their decision to bring Japanese books to this little slice of Silicon Valley. It saves me a forty-five minute drive up north. Anyway, this particular Kinokuniya, like its San Franciscan cousin, is within a Japanese mall. So not only is there this awesome bookstore, but there’s also a toy shop, a grocery store, a ramen stand, a sushi stand, and… the music shop! All of the J-Pop and Anime CDs I can shake a stick at. Mind you, I’m paying at the Yen rate as well as extra for import costs, but that’s all right. Every time I go to the music shop, I know I’m not walking out empty-handed, unless I’m dead-ass broke and can’t afford it no matter how hard I tried to suck some money out of the ATM. Today, I picked up the fourth album for Morning Musume, entitled 4th Ikimashoui. It has some of the tracks they’ve produced between the last album and now, but not all of them. Not to mention, none of the Mini-Moni or Puchi Moni or Tanpopo releases. All of those groups are like mini-groups within Morning Musume. After making my purchase and getting my little membership card stamped to reflect the purchase, we went into the bookstore itself. I was going to pick up the fifth installment of the Video Girl Ai manga translation, but they seem to no longer carry any translations. Dave picked up the first volume of the Angelic Layer manga (I think). Then I went over to the grocery store and bought me a sports bottle of Gatorade, as afterward, we would be heading over to Milpitas to go play DDR. I specifically did not play DDR at the usual place to go to Milpitas and play. Why? Milpitas offers me DDRMAX2 (7th mix), which has many of the songs I’ve been tormenting myself with. I bought twenty bucks worth of tokens and I played about eight times. Four on 7th mix, and four on 4th mix plus, since they have both. I did not take any kind of break, and Dave managed to get in a game himself. By the time I was done, I had to walk around the arcade, with my hands on my hips in fear of the fact that if I stopped walking, the jelly-like nature of my thighs would send me to my knees. I don’t think I’ve ever played eight straight. By the third game, my Gatorade was gone already. I think I’ll stick with water, it seems to last longer and it’s not quite as expensive.

I think we left Milpitas at a little before eight, and since I had quite a few tokens left, I thought I would head down to Oakridge Mall and drop them off with my buddy Todd. Todd hits Golfland more often than I do, and I think he would appreciate the leftovers. I usually collect nickels to use at the nickel arcade near my house. But unfortunately, he was not working, and so while I was there, I picked up Princess Nine volume four. Karen and I made plans for Thursday night. I’m to bring over all the Princess Nine I have, so we can watch it together. I have yet to see my third or fourth volumes, so I won’t be completely bored, but the first and second volumes were kind of slow. Once you get to the end of the second volume, the story really starts to pick up. Since Todd wasn’t at work, we drove over to his house, and I figured if he wasn’t there, then his little sister Teriann would love to have those tokens. She’s a much better DDR player than I am, and just as she is Todd’s only sister, I’ve sort of adopted her as my little sister, too. She always gives me a hug whenever I see her, and we go out and have fun at the arcade, too, sometimes. But no one was home! I think fate was trying to tell me to hang onto those tokens for later, so I guess I will do that. This means more 7th mix later, so I’m not complaining.

By this time, it was getting to be close to eight-thirty, and we were both getting a little hungry. After stopping to drop off my DVD at my place, and checking the local area for ideas to go eat, I remembered that there was this new Japanese restaurant right there on Campbell Avenue, across from the Nob Hill Store. I couldn’t remember the name of it, but it looked inviting, so I suggested we head there to try it out. It’s called Furu-Sato, and the restaurant (which used to be a Happi House teriyaki fast food place) was quite impressive. I mean, they must’ve had some serious startup capital, because the chairs, the tables, everything was very nice-looking and very expensive-looking. I felt a little underdressed in a t-shirt and shorts, but they didn’t turn us away, so we sat down and ordered. The last Japanese restaurant, and I mean real Japanese, not Benihana’s or knockoff Hibachi steakhouses, was Minato’s over by Nikaku’s in downtown San Jose. I love their chicken-katsu and tonkatsu, with a bowl of steamed rice. They’re pretty good. But Furu-Sato just kicks Minato’s ass right off the fucking planet. Dave and I were completed astounded at how good this food was. He leaned over to me near the end of our feast and said, “I’m actually very upset by the fact that I’m full.” He and I were both forcing food down, because we didn’t want to surrender to the amount of food they laid out before us. I had chicken-katsu and he had chicken donburi with unagi maki. The platter of chicken-katsu was HUGE. I think it was meant for like two people, not one. But I managed to finish it all, though I had to loosen my belt and they needed handtrucks to wheel us out of the place. I’m going back soon, because it’s not too expensive and the people there were really nice. This is a place I would go to eat by myself, if I have to. And I hate eating alone.

When we got into the car, though, neither of us really wanted to get up, so we drove around chatting until we felt we had digested enough food to move. Yes, I’m definitely going back there today, for sure!

May 29 2002

Japanese Subtitles vs. English Dubbing

Note: This was intended as a reply to ‘s journal entry about watching anime. It got so huge that I decided to enter it as my entry, instead of clogging up his comment area.

With this subject line, I may have inadvertently opened up a rather lengthy discussion about the subtitles versus English dubbing of Japanese animation. This is the kind of subject that’ll end up causing a large series of opinions and all-out flame wars between fans and Otaku. Though the more mature Otaku tend to sit back with arms stretched behind their head with a small little smile on their face. Getting everyone to agree on this topic is kind of like getting all linux enthusiasts to agree on a distribution. You just can’t.

I agree with you for the most part. I don’t mind English dubs if they’re well-acted, and don’t deviate from the plot. In watching some Anime, I notice that there are almost complete plot changes or rewrites. One of them in question was Shin Seiki Evangelion (Neon Genesis Evangelion), where some of the dialogue failed to accurately or even remotely represent the Japanese script. I’m not talking about single lines, either. This was whole scenes. Having watched Evangelion in Japanese first, through fansubs, I was rather disappointed to see that AD Vision would take such an awesome series and then turn around and ‘punch it up’ to what American audiences might like. A similar thing happened with Disney and Majou no Takkyubin (A witch’s delivery service/Kiki’s Delivery Service), where not only was the dialogue not accurate, but also there were more lines added to scenes where it was silent on the Japanese track. It was obvious that this outstanding film was ‘dumbed down’ for the short-attention spans of our youth (another theory I don’t buy in to). Of course, after the outcry of fans, Disney vowed never to do that again. Watch Mononoke Hime sometime, and you’ll understand what I mean.

However, the dub casts I do like and even sort of call myself a fan of are the folks over at the Ocean Group, who do Ranma. I did stop listening to the English tracks when they replaced Ranma’s male voice with an actual male actor. Sarah Strange was the first male voice and I just got used to her. After that, it’s hard to listen to this new guy and think of Ranma that same way. I’ll be a little heartbroken if Miryam Sorois (Akane) leaves the cast to do Babylon 5 full-time, because I just couldn’t ever think of Akane as being anyone else. Her “honestly”s are just way too cool. The other casts include the group of actors who did Taiho Shichauzo! (You’re Under Arrest) and Aa! Megami-sama! (Oh My Goddess!) for AnimEigo. I fell in love with Natsumi and Miyuki’s English actor right off the bat. Too bad Robert Woodhead fired Natsumi’s voice after Goddess was completed. She played Megumi, Keiichi’s little sister.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, one of the worst dub casts ever? Tenchi Muyo. I just cannot spit and hiss enough about how horrible this group is. Tenchi comes across as a nerd, Ryoko sounds about 80 years old, and Washu just gets more irritating every time I think about it. I just miss Orikasa Ai too much to think of Ryoko as being anything but her. Case in point, during Anime Expo 1996, the entire American cast for Tenchi Muyo, along with the Japanese seiyuu for Ryoko and Aeka were in a panel,and no one wanted to talk to the American cast members at all.

The question to ask now is, are there any horrible Japanese casts? I can’t find a one. Mostly because Japanese voice actors tend to really throw themselves into their work. I think someone wrote a huge analysis about the differences between the two, but I guess as not being a native speaker of the language, it’s difficult to determine whether or not a Japanese actor could be considered “bad.”

May 28 2002

Remembering Memorial Day

The Memorial Day weekend is over. I worked for all of it, with the exception of the holiday itself. I spent Monday in Manteca with my sister, Anna, and my nephew, Timmy. He’s a good kid, but I can’t enjoy movies with him, I’m beginning to figure out. At least, not movies where you sit down and watch them in the living room. He was begging me to take him to go see Episode II, but Anna didn’t want to go because she doesn’t like Star Wars. Instead, I promised him that I would look after him next week and during that week we would go see a couple of movies together so he could catch up on all the big hits before he goes to live with his dad for the summer and I won’t see him until school starts in August. Timmy is starting to get into Anime a great deal, at this age of eleven years old. I’ve already given him a whole bunch of tapes that I have DVDs of, like most of the Tenchi series. He absorbed those tapes and apparently watches the shit out of them on a weekly basis in his room. Ah, I remember how obsessive I was over anime over ten years ago… I was watching anime all the time back then. Not that I don’t watch a fair share of anime right now, just the opposite, but there are other things to watch, too.

I arrived at their place at four in the morning, coming straight from work (after a brief stopover at my house to pick up a change of clothes and other necessities), and listening to the ass-end of the Giants/Rockies disappointment during the midnight rebroadcast of the game on KNBR. After it was over, I listened to the crappy banter of ESPN Radio. Anyway, when I got there, both of them were still up, waiting for me. And I sort of sent them both to bed, feeling rather bad that they would do that. Timmy’s hyperactive as it is, but Anna was not feeling very well and had a bad cough. So we all went to sleep, or so I thought. I couldn’t get comfortable enough on the couch, so I stayed up watching TV. They left it on Cartoon Network, so I ended up watching old WB cartoons, Max Steele, Powerpuff Girls… and then they started broadcasting an all-day marathon of Ed, Edd, and Eddy. Now, I’m usually not given to stupid humor, but this cartoon was hilarious. Anna hates it, but Timmy loves it. Of course, he ONLY watches Cartoon Network, for Toonami. But I was dying of laughter, because some of this humor is actually adult-level, though Timmy didn’t get some of it, I’m sure. Rated Y7, it was just funny. So I watched that until about a quarter to noon, when I decided it was time to go play DDR. We took off for Camelot’s, and played for almost three hours! My legs were like jelly, but there was a nice crowd over there, and the guys and girls playing DDR were pretty cool. We were all sharing the platforms and having a lot of fun. Timmy usually goes off by himself, because he likes the single player games or winning tickets. I just give him ten bucks and he has a blast by himself. And since there were two DDR machines, I was in heaven, so we both had a good time. I was concerned at first that Timmy wanted me to hang out and follow him all over the arcade, but he got tired of that last time, so we just split up and when it’s time for me to go soak my legs in Epsom salts (jk), I go find him and we play Virtua Cop or House of the Dead 2, where we can both shoot and kill things together for a while. And any tokens left over go to him, anyway, so if he wants to go back with his mom, he’ll have some ammunition for having fun without bugging Anna for money. We left, drove around Manteca talking, got some gas for the car, and then we went to go eat. Brought home some food, and by that time it was already around five, and Anna decided to go rent movies. She got The Last Castle, Someone Like You, and The Others. I hadn’t seen The Last Castle, and I like Robert Redford and James Gandolfini. It was a good movie, made me cry. By this time, I was like on my fourth wind, and I couldn’t believe how energized I was feeling despite not having any sleep since Sunday morning. We watched a couple more hours of TV, and then I decided to take off after Timmy went to sleep. I didn’t get home until almost 2am, even though I left at midnight.

I wanted to take Anna and Timmy to go see the Giants at Pacific Bell Park yesterday, and since they defeated the Diamondbacks to come within a game and a half of taking the lead in the NL West division, it’s going to make for a really good series this week. I am trying to convince my buddy Todd to go with me one of these nights to go see the Giants play Arizona and hopefully, if they sweep them, they’ll be on top the division with a couple of games between them and the Dbacks. I am pretty excited to see Bonds climb the all-time home run list. He already topped McGwire, and now he’s going after Robinson for the fourth place spot. With as many more seasons he’s got to his career, I wouldn’t be surprised if he started chasing after Hank Aaron. I’m sure Hank Aaron wouldn’t mind at all at having his record broken.

May 26 2002

Taking Care of the Elderly

Another week gone, and yet another week to sleep through. As I get closer and closer to my birthday, I keep wondering what the hell I’m going to do for it. Should I go ahead and throw the huge bash, or just keep it simple and do some sort of dinner thing with some people. I guess I could always take a drive up to the City and do a little karaoke. That would make for a good party, though I doubt I could get Todd to sing in the booth. I imagine, though, if I could get him to sing, it would be pretty amazing. It’s worth the effort.

WNOHGB is still without routes, and I’m kind of without the energy to care at this point. I think my energy could be better spent on something that doesn’t frustrate the shit out of me. Something like upgrading the ruribox to RedHat 7.3 or maybe even trying to figure out where the hell I want to go with Untitled #16. Every night’s been spent writing or playing pool with , , or . I seem to be on a winning streak right now, though Grei and I are pretty evenly matched. Of course, right now, there’s nothing much to do but play pool or that scrabble game with and the aforementioned group. However, lately, it seems as though I’m getting more and more short-tempered than usual with people in chat. I think it’s because I hate chats over long periods of time, without a creative outlet like a MOO to distract me from the fact that all I’m doing is sitting on a stupid channel waiting for someone to fucking say something. Yeah, I’m definitely just getting irritated far too easily. I’m going to have to take a little break from the online world sometime this week.

My sister Anna called me last night. We had intended to go to the Giants’ game tomorrow, but the Memorial Day game was sold out weeks ago. I still want to go to a game this week though. Maybe I can browbeat someone into going with me. Anyway, so I’m expected to go and see her tomorrow, and watch the game with her on the TV. But I’m going to decline this week and beg off until next week, because then Tim (my nephew) and I can spend some time together. I think this is his last week of school, so if I were to go over there tomorrow, it would only be for a little while and then driving all the way back home for only a couple of hours of visitation just doesn’t appeal to me at all. Besides, I still need to go into storage and fish out my old anime tapes so I can give them to him to watch and have. The last box I gave him, he watched all 20 tapes in one sitting. I need to throw him my huge box o’ Ranma and Urusei Yatsura, and see how long it’ll take him to get through all of that. Another reason not to go is that Anna is sick. She was coughing loudly over the phone as we spoke, and I’m not in any hurry to expose myself to the common cold at the beginning of summer. I hate being sick in the summer. It sucks.

As for a Giants game, I think I’m going to go on Tuesday night. I’m going to see if I can’t ask Todd to go with me. I’m sure he’d love it. But the really cool thing about his birthday is that I’ve managed to get my hands on Bill Cosby tickets for like late July. They weren’t exactly cheap, but I don’t care. Every year I always give him $100 to spend at AX, so this was pretty close. And hey, you have to take care of the elderly. *duck!*

May 24 2002

I’m in the Mood for Dancing…

Well, I dislike subjectless posts, and since that was the part of the nonstop mix that was playing, it seems to fit my mood right now. I wake up to DDR music, and it just makes me want to start dancing! Yeah! But, lately I’ve been pretty much regulated over to 4th mix plus, which is my current favorite, but I’m finding so many awesome songs on the 6th and 7th mixes that I’m itching to go over there and try out. I think I’m pretty much obsessed with playing DDR these days, but as with all things, oh well, who gives a fuck? It’s fun and I’ve dropped an inch and half off my waist already.

I hung out with Todd last night, it’s the only day off he and I had in common over the last couple of weeks. With my work and school schedule, it’s making it a little difficult to get together with friends, not to mention just relaxing. I’ll be very glad when this quarter ends and I have the summer to relax. I have a lot of plans this summer. The house will be empty in late July, so I might throw an all-out bash, like back in the olden days. I wonder how much it would cost me to rent a DDR machine for a weekend? Put that sucker up for free play and just go nuts. I’d probably piss the neighbors off, but I doubt it. I forgot how nice it is to live in a house and not an apartment.

Anyway, I talked with Todd yesterday about the whole housing situation. It turns out that he was going to go move out with one of his co-workers into some apartment east of Oakridge Mall, but they didn’t get the apartment, so he’s stuck at his mom’s house still, until they can find something in their price range. I was thinking about his arrangement, and I told him that if they still hadn’t found anything by August, that I’d offer to be his roommate. I know his co-worker and he seems like a nice guy, but Todd would have to share with this guy and his girlfriend, and knowing Todd… that would make him pretty damn uncomfortable. And as nice and easygoing a guy Todd is, he’d eventually get irritated and not say anything and just be miserable about it. Why not just live with his best bud and know that it’s all good? He can be himself and not have to worry about being judged. I’ve known him for nine years, we’ve lived together before, so it’s no big deal.

But, the most important thing to note is that today is Todd’s birthday! He turns 26 today, and that makes him older than me! Muhaha! Of course, this means that I can’t hang with him today or tonight because I have to go to work and slave away for fifteen hours. But that’s okay, because come next week, I’ll definitely be making it up to him.

The Otaking.org network is still not working. I imagine we’re still waiting for NAS to get off their asses to give us our new block of IP addresses. Now as soon as they do that, I have a shitload of zone files to redo with the new addresses. Damn all those domains! At least NSI isn’t reliant upon email authentication anymore, which is good. After the first couple of times of having to pay them to reset our authentication, I just learned my lesson. PGP-Encrypt rules.

With WNOHGB down, though, I’ve been missing everyone I usually talk to. We’ve all sort of migrated over to Yahoo chat rooms for the time being, it would seem, but it’s not the same as the game itself. I just couldn’t possibly make any attempts to see anyone role–play within those stark chat rooms and get away with it as being believable. Oh well. I am missing someone in particular, whose friendship has been pretty nice to have and our conversations have pretty much dropped to non-existent. We all have our responsibilities, though. I can understand that. Understanding doesn’t necessarily ease the absence that I definitely feel. As with all things, though, I’ll deal with it and will eventually shrug it off. Kind of scary, that I’m capable of being that easily dismissive, but after the kind of shit I’ve had to put up with, I guess I’ve developed that kind of attitude. Shit happens, what’re you going to do?

Finally, but not any less important, I’d like to thank for sending me a birthday present off my Amazon.com Wish List. I won’t open my presents until my birthday, so it’s sitting on top of my DVD case (since everything on my list is a DVD) waiting to be opened. But thanks so much!

May 21 2002

On Untitled #16, Gemini Birthdays, and Withdrawals

Where No One seems to be suffering some sort of long-term net problem, and unfortunately (or fortunately), I’m not really aware of the nature of the problem. It kind of sucks, not living in the same place as all the servers, but by the same token, it’s kind of nice because I’m also not suffering from no net access. It kind of puts a little kink in some of the projects I had intended to work on for tonight, but there’s always tomorrow, and since I still have net access, movies and anime to watch, and feeling somewhat creative, it’s pretty easy to just find something else to do. For others, it might not be as easy, but hey, there’s more to life than WNOHGB. Trust me.

There are a lot of birthdays within the astrological sign of Gemini. I’m a Gemini. My birthday is on the 19th. But I’m not the only Gemini within my circle. My friend is either the 20th or 21st of May, Todd’s is the 24th. My aunt Yvette is on the 27th. My cousin Andrew is June 3rd, and my one of my oldest pals Tom has his landing on June 9th. My sister Susie, who I pretty much never speak to, has her’s on June 20th. Mike and Abbie’s are somewhere in there on June, but I’m failing to recall them right now. Not that I’ve forgotten they exist, I’m just totally missing dates. Which is pretty unusual, because I don’t forget dates that often. Back at the old place, May and June were like whole birthday months, simply because of the close proximity of the dates. Linda always went first, though. So, in case it is today, I want to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to LINNA. We need to figure out when’s a good time for all of us to sit down and do everyone’s birthday, before Abbie leaves. It’ll be like Christmas, with all the presents.

Anyway, I’m writing again. This new one is called Untitled #16, and it’s a Trek story. I tend to like close quarters kind of settings, so I’m writing this one aboard a Defiant corvette, about the change of command and how the crew deals with the new captain. It’s slow-going so far, but at least I’m feeling creative enough to try this again. Lately, I’ve been feeling kind of blah, and not creative in the slightest. Lazy, lethargic, whatever you want to call it. So, I’m giving it another try. It’s already turning into a short story, with where I’m taking it, but you never know. I tend to think on a grander scale than short stories.

May 19 2002

Thirty Days: The Countdown Begins

May 19th marks thirty days until my twenty-sixth birthday. As with all birthdays, it’s a time for pause and reflection, a little introspective analysis and appraisal of oneself. The time of your birthday is really the big Happy New Year’s celebration. It marks a new year of your existence. My birthday is where I set the expectations for the coming year. However, I’m pretty lucky to remember those resolutions or expectations a month later. Usually, most of this time is just spent being somewhat melancholy about what accomplishments I’ve made while being twenty-five, and what accomplishments I want to achieve while I’m twenty-six.

So what do I want to accomplish? I would love to sit down and finish a novel. Not reading one, because I’ve been blazing a trail with those Alan Lewrie novels. I’m already down to my last Lewrie book and I’m going to have to go out and buy the next two. One of which is out of print, so I might actually break down and order from Powell’s. When I say finish, I would love to sit down and finish writing one. As I ranted earlier in my logbook, I have quite a few unfinished projects, but I think it would be a great accomplishment to sit down and just finish one of those projects. I’m not exactly looking to publish, but that would be nice, too. I could always self-publish, but that wouldn’t be as nice as having a well-known publishing company pick you up and take your book for a spin. What else do I want to accomplish? I would love to finish my AA in Japanese or History this coming school year. I have near enough units to get it, I just need 45 more to finish my sophomore year. I would especially love to get myself out of debt to a point where saving money is actually a possibility. Now, I’m pretty close right now, after having paid off a credit card and a personal loan. I just have one credit line and another credit card to go and I’ll be solid. I would love to drop a hundred pounds by this time next year. Hell, six months from now would be ever better, though I’m not sure exactly how realistic that might be.

So with thirty days, I guess I should start up a new wish list. Uhm, if any of you feel like getting me something for my birthday, click here. Thanks!

May 17 2002

Song of the Day: Fantasy

Dance Dance Revolution 6th Mix (DDRMAX): Fantasy

By Melissa

No don’t cry ’cause I’m running away
I believe in love are words too hard to say
Yes I know you could blame my mind
Let me live my time my heat is beating wild

I believe in fantasies oh baby
I don’t believe in love I’m crazy
Don’t wanna make you cry my darling
Leave me in my deep confusion

Fantasy you’ll set me free
I’m living in a wild conclusion
Melody sings to the beat
I need a romantic freedom

Fantasy across the sea
I’m sailing with no destination
Harmony speed up my heartbeat
Tonight I’ll reach my dreamland