Hey folks!

Hello all. How's it going? Originally, I planned on writing my next blog about my entry to the ED contest. But I realized that was going to take more time than I thought. It seems I might have a rambling problem. haha. And I had some other random unrelated stuff I was going to throw in to the post too, but have since decided that I'd split the random stuff from the entry and make two posts. So... the blog entirely about my entry will come soon.

In my last post, I put up a bunch of silly quick pics I drew of various EDs. Annina tried to guess a couple:

doll 2: Necrophilia? doll 5: Yren? doll 6: Nastoya doll 8: gah i know her but i can't get it... doll 10: Mermaid? doll 11: Edie?

So, let's see... of these guesses, doll 5, doll 6, and doll 10 are right. hehe. And while I'm at it, the answers are:

Doll 1: Scarlett
Doll 2: Clymenestra
Doll 3: The redhead
Doll 4: Lily
Doll 5: Yren
Doll 6: Nastoya
Doll 7: Cixi
Doll 8: Cinderella
Doll 9: Fern
Doll 10: Mermaid Song
Doll 11: Noire

Ha he hahaha. Moving on...

So I can barely see. I often forget just how blind I am without contacts. LOL. I'm deep cleaning my contacts at the moment, which means I can't put them in for at least 6 hours, or else it will severely hurt - cuz the solution I use for deep cleaning has hydrogen peroxide in it. Imagine getting that stuff in your eye. Ouch. Ha. But, I guess after 6 hours or so, it loses its potency or well, painfulness, so I can use my contacts again. Until then though, I'm driving myself nuts trying to see the keyboard and the screen. I'm all hunched over, cuz the keyboard sits in my lap now, and I never learned how to type properly, so I have to see the keys I'm hitting. Oy, awkward. Oh but yeah, if I end up with typos, I apologize.


So firefox has themes now. When they first came out, they didn't have a search feature, and I was too lazy to look through the thousands of themes just for one I loved. And being too lazy for that, there was no way I was going to make my own theme. HA. So I quickly chose a pretty rainbow theme, even though I didn't actually really like it much. A couple days later, firefox had to update itself again, and it took away my chosen theme! I was like HEY! NO FAIR! So I went back to the themes and saw... a search button! Hee hee haha! Hooray! I searched various things, and came up with happy results quite often, so now I think it's safe to say I'll be changing my theme like... weekly. lol. This is my current theme:
NCIS! Weeeeeeee! I think that was my favorite NCIS themed theme. Heh heh. I've decided I must share the prettiness, so I'll most likely be sharing with you whatever theme I choose in the ffuture. I'm thinking I might try making an ED one sometime too, and a There one, to remember it by. lol.

On a topic not too far from firefox themes, I decided to finally change my background on my puter too. It had been waaaaaaaay too long. Up until yesterday, it was:

I love this picture. lol. It's actually a part of a comic by shinga, who writes her own comic strip.

Dunno if you can read it here, since it automatically resizes and all, but it can be read here too. *see below*After reading the first and second panels, I laughed hysterically, HYSTERICALLY, at the third. In my opinion, the comic could have skipped the fourth panel completely. lol. But hey, asking a holy person to exorcise a burning book is fun anyhow. The background made me happy for a while, but it's time for change.


Isn't it LOVELY!? Oh the lovelyness. LOVELYNESS! *May or may not be floating on a sugar high*
These are shoes by Marina, which I've shown in a previous blog entry. I loved the picture so much upon first seeing it that I immediately wanted it as a background. When Chad finally put it up on his flickr, I hit all sizes and took a copy of the biggest size, as well as mentioned it in a comment, and he responded with a link to an even BIGGER resolution of it! Oh the joy that is me! So I'm quite happy at the moment with my background. Dunno when I'll change it. I was looking in my BGs folder and saw that I have quite a few pictures I've yet to use, so maybe this background won't be up for as long. Eh.

Allow me to now brag about my dad for a bit. He's a unix person (I am obviously not a unix person, and therefore I have no idea what his official title is) at his work and from what I can see, really loves his job. A few years ago, he worked at Fermi Lab, and seemed to enjoy working there as well, but he was let go when Fermi Lab had to cut down on employees. He'd been working there for almost ten years. From there, he moved to another place, where he made a mistake maybe... a month? From being hired, and so was let go. And if I remember right, he moved to this place. He works in Chicago, so he takes the train every morning at 6am. And I've never seen him so happy with a job. I always thought he enjoyed Fermi Lab, but looking back... I think he may have been more... content, rather than enjoying. Here, you can tell he loves what he's doing, he doesn't mind the workload, and he actually goes out to lunch with his coworkers every day - something I don't think he ever did in past jobs. (aside from his weekend job as a DJ) Anyway... I know I've mentioned the next part before, but rather than trying to find the post I talk about it in, (since I forget to add tags/labels, "search" does a whole lot of nothing) I'll just repeat.

At Fermi Lab, my dad made himself a stick. A LART, or Loser Attitude Readjustment Tool. When he moved to this new place, he brought it with him, and his manager loved it. So... he made his manager one for Christmas in '08. Since then, he's been making sticks for everyone on his team at work. He's also deviated from the original design to create various other styles of "sticks".






His newest variation however, takes the cake. The last pic there is my dad, with his newest stick. (not the newest creation) He decided he needed a new stick because his previous one was an old model. lol. He finished making a stick for everyone at his team, including the ones who've left for various reasons, when his boss requested that he make a stick for someone outside his team. This fellow is an exceptional worker and has major patience when working with, well, to refrain from swearing, losers. So dad's boss requested that this person's stick should be able to "rip the flesh from someone's bones." Ouch. Ha. So my dad and I brainstormed, though my suggestion of just pounding a long rusty nail in to the end of the stick was probably not what he was going for as far as ideas. (LOL) My dad came up with:
We had been calling it a "mace," but apparently, the technical term is a "flail," or something like that. My dad sanded down blocks of wood glued together to make a ball, then glued spikes to it. (the nose on the smiley face is a spike, his normal smileys don't have noses) Now now, don't worry, while the stick could probably do some damage, - technically, all sticks could do damage - the spikes aren't sharp, they're carved out of corks. lol. I love this stick. It's so neat. My dad's boss saw it and immediately asked if he could be the one to give it to the person. My dad was like "sure," but got suspicious when, by the end of the day, the person still did not have his new stick. Turns out his boss took it home first to show his wife and kids. ROFL. So yeah, the person has his stick now, and now it makes me wonder who else my dad could make a stick for. lol.

So I said I wouldn't talk about my entry on today's blog, and I won't. This doesn't count, because it wasn't a part of the entry. Last year, when Marina had her first solo show at the Villa Terrace, I didn't want to go to meet her empty handed. So, I made her a Kyootee.

I'm pretty sure I've shared a pic of this before. Hehe. She was the only other person, aside from my family, that had a Kyootee. When I posted a pic of it on my flickr, Chad left a reply that said: "You need to put a warning on the box, I nearly choked on the cat already."
I DID put a warning on the box!
That is cut from the graphic I printed out for the back of the packaging. So, I told Chad, that next time, I would be sure to include "Chad" specifically, along with children under 3 and idiots. And so I did:
Again, cut right from the graphic I used for the back of Chad's Kyootee. Yeah, I made him a Kyootee. I felt Chad needed a little love too, even though it was Marina's birthday, and Marina's contest. lol.

Behold, clean shaven Chad. My kyootees (with two exceptions) normally come with an extra something. A mini yoda, a slot machine, a cat... etc. And I could not, for the life of me, think of what else to give Chad. I put the camera around his neck, and used various pictures of him as reference. My original idea was to paint on his handlebar mustache... but I was looking at his pictures, and realized he changes his facial hair quite a bit. So I changed my idea. Left Chad clean shaven, and made facial hair attachments. LOL. I forgot to take a picture of them before I sent them away, but I gave him a normal mustache, a "horseshoe mustache," a full beard, and a handlebar mustache, which is what Chad has chosen for the Kyootee at the moment:

I actually thought I gave him a goatee thinger too, but when Chad put the Kyootee up on his flickr, he didn't mention it, which makes me think I may have accidentally lost it. Oops. lol
So yeah, he has removeable facial hair. I sent along some cheapo elmers glue, along with instructions on how to keep the facial hair removeable. Elmers glue is washable, and when applied very sparingly, is not very strong for bonds. (Hence why I rarely use elmers glue - it sucks. lol) So the idea is, as long as he uses a tiny bit of elmers glue when applying his hair, he should be able to remove them with ease if he wants to change it out. Of course, I didn't actually test it, I left Kyootee Chad without hair here. I just figured it would work that way. lol.


Onward, I finished the three John Green books. I liked An Abundance of Katherines a LOT better than Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns was pretty cool too. Of the three, I think I liked the Katherines book best, but all in all, the pros outnumber the cons, and I've decided I will be attending the event to see John Green in person. Actually really excited about it, less than two weeks away now. Hee. I actually have no idea if the event is a book signing, even though I said it was. I thought it was, but looking further in to the event, I found it's going to be held at a high school, and not a bookstore... so maybe he's doing a question and answer thing instead? Yeah no idea. But I'll be sure to take lots of pictures. Or at least will try to remember to take at least one picture. Haha.

*this is below* I should point out before I forget, that I like Twilight. I honestly can't remember if I've talked about it in previous posts, but I do. However, I'm not a huge Twihard fangirl, who screams bloody murder if I find out someone else hates Twilight. I acknowledge the book isn't for everyone, and I can't even truly explain why I like the series so much. I just do. Call it a guilty pleasure. Heh heh. So really, I don't mind if folks don't like the book. In fact, some of the comics/prose/things-said by anti Twilight folks are HILARIOUS. From what I've seen, it seems anti Twilight folks have a way bigger sense of humor than Twihard fangirls. lol.

That being said, it does bother me when some folks get too far in to their explanations of why they hate the book - when they haven't even read it. I mean, no, you don't have to read it. In that case, a simple "I have absolutely no interest in sparkly vampires" will do. Don't go in to a 5+ minute speech about how horrid the book is - (sadly happens way too often to me) I won't take it seriously. Because, you haven't read the book. Basically, that means you've taken what you've heard from other complainers, and have manufactured your own complaint from it. Blah blah blah. I'm not against opinions though. If you have read the book and hated it to the lowest circle of hell, then heck yeah, go right ahead and rant! You can talk all night to me about the various reasons you hate it for all I care, I might even agree with some of the statements. But if you haven't read the book, and don't like Twilight, keep it short. lol.


And with that, I think I'm done with today's blog post. I'm feeling a lot better illness wise, not feeling 100% yet, but still, a LOT better. I find rambling extremely fun, so a warning, my entry blog may contain lots of useless information. Hahahaha. :) *hugs!*