Random Youtube Tuesday!

Sorry guys, I usually try to have at least one *normal* post in between the RYTs, but I just didn't get to it this time.
I'll be doing Christmas posts this week, but if you wanna see right now what happened Christmas-wise at our house, you can go to my mom's blog.

Anyways, onto what you came here for.

Today's theme is...nintendo!
I actually came across these Nintendo-related videos at the same time I found the beatboxing flutist a couple of weeks ago.
First off is the tetris theme...played on a euphonium and an electric guitar.



In our house, acapella groups are one of our favorite things to listen to...as you may have noticed in previous RYT posts. (And next week's post, also!)
However, I must admit that this is one of the cooler ones I've heard.
I love the acting that goes along with...it's hilarious!



That's all I've got this week! See you next week with more random youtubes!

Moment of Panic is Past Now...

Little moment of amusement for you all.
I got done on the computer early today, so I thought I'd play on our Wii.
I went over, turned it on, put the disc in...and it wouldn't work. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to work.
I went online and looked it up, and a lot of the Wiis bought around the same time as ours were having major disc-reading problems, so I started to panic. Today would be a bad day for the Wii to go down.
I tried to call Nintendo, but they weren't open yet, so I sat and hyper-ventilated for a half hour.
I finally get through...go through all the basics.
"Is the Wii turning on?" "Yes." "Is the disc clean?" "Yes." "Which way is the Wii, vertical or horizantal?" "Vertical." "Which way does the game label face when you put it in?" "To the left." "...is your Wii on?" "Yes." "Is there a disc in?" "Yes." "Press eject for me." "Ok." "Try flipping it over." ".......oh. Oops."

I had the dang things backwards.
The technician said it's a common mistake, though...when you look at it, it looks as though you're putting the disc in upside down if you're putting it in right side up.

I had me and Stevie in just a panicked state, since I couldn't figure out what was wrong.

We've got our crisis over with, now we shouldn't have any more this Christmas, right?

*laughs*
Have a Merry Christmas, everyone.

Random Christmas Youtube Tuesday!

That's right! Today I'm bringing to you a couple of random youtubes that are Christmas-related!
First off, we have a lovely Christmas carol sung to you by some guineas pigs! (No, not ours...my camera skills are in the lacking.)


It's remarkable how often guinea pigs come up in the RYTs...must be because I spend more time clicking from one subject to the next if piggies are the subject.

Anyways.
Next is a trio of singers, revamping a favorite Christmas carol.



It's almost as fun to watch the guys in the background as it is to listen to the singers. *grins*

Finally, to get in a more serious mood for Christmas, one should always hear the Christmas story...
Though I've never seen it quite like this.



That's it for today. See you next week!
Have a very Merry Christmas!

I'da thunk...

That military intelligence would be smart enough to come up with their own expressions?

Gather round, children, to hear tell a story that begins in the not so distant past...
A father must leave, and decides to pass on his most cherished wisdoms to his eldest child...so that this child might carry on his most important work...
It is a worthy goal...or would be, if it didn't have to do with raw meat.
Let me fill in some specifics. The father mentioned above? My dad. The "eldest child" would be me. And the wisdoms and the work...are the fine art of barbecue.
Yes, my father optimistically tried to teach me how to use his huge, fire-spitting, monster from hell (also known as a grill) before he left. I listened, nodded, watched...then me and my hair skedaddled out of there.
I love fire...I have to say that. I like to watch it, throw stuff in it, and poke it with a stick. When you take this fire and bring it up to hair level, however, I have problems. I can just see klutzy me catching my hair aflame...and so the beast and I have an agreement - I let it sleep while Dad is away, and it doesn't eat my head.
However, a year without barbecue is a long time when hot dogs are one of your favorite foods. Boiled doesn't cut it, nor does microwaved. You hafta have that blackened, sooty taste for the real sensation.
Or something close to it, anyway.
So we started "grilling" hotdogs for family barbecues. Inside. On the stove. Where no wind will send flames licking hungrily at my head.
Since it wasn't "real" grilling, I came up with a name for our cheater's meal. The "faux"becue.
Here we have a picture of one such event done recently. Note that even loose, my hair never comes near to danger.


And yet we still get the beautiful grill marks sought after by chefs everywhere.

With the backstory done, I return to the subject that inspired this post...
My dad is currently stationed at a forward operating base (FOB) in Iraq (the name escapes me so early in the morning), and they recently had a barbecue of their own.
Though they used *shiver* a real grill to do their cooking, my dad decided to be a copycat...and call it a "FOB"ecue.
[I'd put a picture, but I cannot find one at this moment. Apologies.]

Final School Update

I realized that I never did a final update on the end of the semester.
English: A in the class, don't know what I got on the final. Never got it back.
Religions: A in the class, don't know what I got on the final. Could've found out, but I would've had to stick around for 15 minutes after the LAST person finished their test, and just wanted to get home.
Spanish: A in the class, 80-something on the final.
Geology: A in the class, exempt from the final. *happy dance of happiness*
Algebra: B in the class, 80-something on the final.

Overall, pretty dang good.
Did about how I figured in Algebra (math is the bane of my existence), got the Geology A by the skin of my teeth...I still don't know how the Spanish teacher calculates his grades - I went in once to find out what I needed on the final, and he was all "Well...I guess I'll give you 90 in participation, because you don't really say anything, but you don't get in trouble, and I think that you've got about a 90 in homework...I think."
Anyways.
That semester is over for now...sold back most of my books (I tend to keep a couple each semester...this time I kept the Literature books because they were awesome, and the Geology book. At least temporarily. I need to see if the physical geology book is better than the historical one.)

Random Youtube Tuesday!

I managed to get a couple of posts into between youtube tuesdays this time. *grins*

A couple of weeks ago I caught a show on Discovery Channel that was really cool. It's called Time Warp. Basically, they take interesting situations and film them with a hi-speed camera to catch the details that would be missed with a regular camera or with the human eye.
That's what today's RYT is...a couple of clips from the show!
I hunted down some of the coolest-looking things to show y'all.

This first one is someone shooting arrows through various items filled with liquid.


Very cool looking.

The other video for today is kind of a compilation of the coolest moments on the show: from getting hit in the face with a water balloon to getting punched.



So that's it for today's Random Youtube Tuesday!
Come back next week for more cool, random clips to watch!

Isn't it cute?

A couple months ago, while I was going to my geology class, I had to pass through the science building. (Obviously) There was a crowd of people in the main lobby, and I wondered what everyone was doing. So I went over.
Plants. There was table on table of plants of all kinds, from tiny to huge. I finally figured out that it was probably the plant biology people selling their projects.
I knew that we were thinking of redoing our flower beds, so I wandered around looking. I didn't find anything at that time, so I went to class.
When I came out a couple hours later, they were still selling stuff (though their inventory had gone down considerably). I poked around again, and found the cutest little cactus. For a dollar. I shelled over the dollar and brought the thing home.
It was in one of those little plastic pots with holes in the bottom to let water drain, so I put it into another container so water wouldn't go all over my windowsill.
Then (aside from watering it every so often) I forgot about it.
Christmas rolls around, and we find a bunch of tiny ornaments in an advent. They didn't go to the advent, so I laid claim to them. The little nativity sits on my bookshelf while the little rocking horses...

Kind of a cutely pathetic little thing, no?

Last night I repotted it in a beautiful green pot. It's too big for it right now, but I think it will grow into it.
I've taken off the ornaments until it's settled into the dirt. I'll put them back on for Christmas.

It's an awesome little plant...it's lasted about two weeks longer than anything I've had before!

Recent Obsessions

So, I've been busy lately working on things...and obsessing about others.
I'll tell you about a couple of them. *grins*

First off, I've recently come across a few new websites.
Sort of.
The first site was actually found by my mom. I'd heard about it, but I'd never had interest in it.
Facebook. I'm on myspace (though not active), so I figured it would be much the same, but my mom poked me into joining. I've only been a member for a short while, but it seems to be interesting.
You know what's keeping me active on that site though? My penguin. There's a little game there where you can adopt little animals and take care of them. It's very cute.
Here's an image of somebody else's. I don't have a picture of mine yet. ^^"

The second site on my list I found a couple months ago, but it only recently opened up to new people, and it's going to close again soon.
It's called Waja Madness. It's an animal sim, for those familiar with the genre, where you get an animal of some sort and (depending on the site) breed it, take care of it, or show it in shows. Wajas focuses on the breeding aspect. It's breeding system is quite complex, letting you create thousands if not millions of different-looking creatures.
For example, The waja below is mine. Her name is Chocolate, and she's one of the most beautiful wajas to come out of my breedings so far. Her sire is Nightwind (a waja that I custom-designed. It's the middle image) and her dam is Carmella (a waja that was given to me for free. It's the last image). Their colors mixed to create a beautiful waja that people are already trying to get to to sell to them. *grins*
The site has wonderful artwork and extremely nice people. You ought to go join while they're still open. If you do join, look me up (ID: 82733 ) I'll give ya a free wajas to get started.


Finally, I've been obsessing over a new game I got for my DS last week.
It's called Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and it's all about this defense attorney and the cases he tries.
Okay, already very cool to my Law and Order fanself.
The gameplay is awesome, and I never guess what's going to happen next. It's a big change for me, who can always figure out the plot and end of movies and books five minutes in.
The artwork is amazing, the story interesting. It's difficult enough that I have to think about what I'm doing, but it's not so difficult that I throw my DS against the wall in frustration.
Today I'm gonna try and finish it. *grins*

That's it for this week's obsessions. I'm sure I'll find some new ones soon. *laughs*

I couldn't resist

I know, I know...when I started youtube Tuesday, I intended it to stay on Tuesday.
But while I was posting yesterday, I came across something very, very cool which I couldn't get out of my mind all day. I wasn't going to post this for several weeks, but I thought it was so cool that I have to put it up now.

When I was searching for random youtubes yesterday, I got started looking at various musical oddities. You've already seen one yesterday, the hand-fart musician. However, that was not the coolest thing I came across.
This is.



He makes flutes look cool. (Which is saying a lot, coming from me. I hate flutes. Clarinet players of the world unite! *cough* Anyways...)

While the one above is my favorite, I also had to put this one. It's remarkable.



I wouldn't be able to play Flight of the Bumblebee normally, let alone beatboxing at the same time.

He's got a bunch of others...like Sesame Street, which is really cool.
I just couldn't resist putting his videos up, 'cause they're awesome.

He's got a cd out, though it's not in stock right now, and its only original pieces (I think). Still cool. *grins*

And, to end on a Christmasy note, the Nutcracker!

Random Youtube Tuesday!

Yep, here we are with another edition of youtube tuesday!
Today's viewing pleasure is for all you people who don't have time to sit and read my longwinded posts...both videos are jampacked into three minutes or less!

First up we have 50 jokes told in under three minutes! (Many of them nerd jokes, no less...and I laughed at all of them. Marvel at my nerdness. My favorite was the square root of -1 talking to pi. *grins*)



And staying with the same concept, here is "Momsense" by Anita Refroe. It's a condensing of all the things moms say over the course of one day into a song sung to the William Tell Overture.



Lyrics can be found if you go to the original site.

So that's it for another Youtube Tuesday.
I did have next week's found, but I forgot to write it down and thus...forgot it.
I'll have to find something different, I guess. *grins*

[Edit] I try to keep the number of videos down to 2, but I found this one when randomly browsing from the Momsense song.




You have got to go to the original site and look at some of the others - he's got 114 videos. He does everything from Flight of the Bumblebees to Bohemian Rhapsody. He's even got video game songs, like Zelda and Mario.
Stevie, I've found something for you to aspire to!

Blooooooggggginggg

All righty then...
I realized the other day that I need to do at least one real blog a week, or it will look bad that all I do is youtube tuesdays. (Speaking of, I had them planned out for like three weeks, but I forgot what I was going to do. I'll try to remember. *sigh*) I'm also behind in blogs (still need to write about Thanksgiving, field trip, and much more). Today I thought I'd do a general update blog. Well, I'm currently coughing up my lungs. There's an illness going around the house that has knocked down me and Mom. If I don't post again, it's because it has killed me. (However, I think I may have lost a pound. *grins*) School is almost over - I have three finals next week, then I'm done 'til January 12th. I've got Math and Literature finals on Monday, and the Religions final on Wednesday. But wait! You're wondering why I didn't mention my Spanish and geology finals, right? Well, I took the Spanish one last week (he offered it early and I wanted to just get done), and I'm exempt from the Geology final for getting straight As on the tests this semester. (Except for the one last Thursday, but everyone failed that one...we get one test grade dropped, and that was mine. ^^") *happy dance of exemptness* Of the finals left, the only that will be any possible problem is the Math one...but I calculated it, and as long as I don't get below a 70, I'll get a B. Though Math is my worst subject, I should be able to get at least a 70. What else? I've been trying to sneak in more art-stuffs. This weekend I continued work on a project I've been meaning to do. It's kind of an experiment. When we went to Build-A-Bear a couple months ago and got animals, the animals were sent home in little box houses. I've kept mine all this time, 'cause I'm going to colour each of the four outsides with a different medium, then decorate the inside. I probably won't keep it for very long afterwards, but it will be an interesting experiment. I've already done three sides (marker, coloured pencil, and oil pastel). The fourth will be watercolour paints. I'm also a bit behind in requests from people online, and I'm working to catch up on that. There'll be some human pictures, an animal or two of various species. There's a foxlike canine I'm working on that I'm quite happy with so far. He's got a lot of expression in his face, which is something I usually have problems with in animal pictures. I've also tried my hand at making treats a couple different times this week, with varying amounts of success. First, since we had old bananas, I thought I'd make banana sludge...I mean bread. Unfortunately, the flour container was empty, and I mistook the powdered sugar for the flour. Yuck. It was bad. My later attempt at making Muddy Buddies turned out better. There was a girl in my Spanish class who had them a couple weeks ago, and I wanted to try them. They're pretty good. Better than the banana bread, that's for sure. What else have I been spending my time doing? Well, I reorganized my bookmarks the other day. I'd given up on some sites and joined others and it was getting to be a mess. One of the sites I joined is facebook. Mom joined a couple weeks ago, and her comments on the strange pointlessness of it made me curious, so I joined. I like it better than myspace, at least.
The other interesting site I recently joined is Wajas. It's an animal sim, for those who know the type, but the main thing to do is breed the canines together. It's a very complex breeding system, actually. Rather addicting. ^^ The art is beautiful, too.
If you join, I'll give you a free pup.
There's several other new sites I've joined, but none thrilling enough to talk about right now. *grins* Maybe another post.

Sooooo...I think I've run out of things I want to talk about for now. Gotta save some ideas for next time. *grins*
Hope I think of those youtubes I was going to link before tuesday. *frowns*

Random Youtube Tuesday!

Today's random youtubes come from this youtube profile.

I came across it a long time ago when I was looking for ASL songs people have put up.

This guy is an ASL comedian. He's a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) who signs skits that are just hilarious.
Even if you don't know sign language, you'll laugh.

This one was the first one I came across. I was searching random songs and found this.



A little bit of explanation, for anyone who has no clue of ASL. When he fisrt starts interpreting, his signs are literal translations of the words. For example, "the party is jumpin'" he signs "party jumping" as in, this party is literally jumping up and down. When he rolls up his pant leg, he switches to ASL order and signing. It translates using the concepts of the words, not a literal one. Instead of signing that the rapper is driving, he becomes the rapper and shows what he's singing of doing. Finally, when he changes again, its in correct english word order...fingerspelled. It's impressive.

My other favorite video that he does is a story about his mom driving. It's kind of about deaf drivers in general, exaggerated. It's really funny.



So, that's it today. If you want to see more, check out his profile that I linked to earlier. ^^

School Registration

Registered for classes today. (Actually, registered for classes at 12:30 this morning. AM, not PM. In my next post I will blog about illnesses.)
Got some kinda cool ones coming up in the Spring semester. Took forever to find a schedule that would work, though.
Mondays and Wednesdays I have two classes, one in the morning, on in the afternoon. I've got Physical Geography (which I'm taking because it's the same teacher as in my Geology class, and I really like him.) at like 9, then Fundamentals of Baking at like 5. Yes, baking as in pies and cookies. (My brother keeps telling me that I need lots of homework for that class.)
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have Physical Geology at 10:30. It should be lotsa fun.
Then I have one online class, Western Civilization. I never got to take this kind of class in high school because I accidentally doubled my American History class. ><

All in all, it looks like a fun semester.
I've managed to bug a couple of my friends into maybe taking Geology with me, so that'd be cool, too.

Abracadabra

Last night we watched a dvd of Lance Burton magic shows.
I love magic...used to watch every special I could catch.
After looking up some of Burton's other tricks on youtube, my Mom said I ought to do a special not-so-random youtube friday.
I thought not. Instead I'll do a whole blog about magic, with lots of links to videos. *grins*

When I think magic, my first thought is David Copperfield. He'll probably always be my favorite famous magician.



[If you go to the url, and don't just watch the embedded video, there's three more parts to the this video linked. ^^)

My second thought is the "Masked Magician" He did a couple of shows several years back where he showed how some of the best magic tricks are done.
Now, his tricks are actually hard to find, but I found a guy who had several...this was one of the coolest.



[After some more hunting, I found this site, which has more videos.]

I was reminiscing as I searched, lamenting the lack of famous magicians today when I came across this interesting video.



Guess I'll have to look for it. *grins*

And now, this post has come full circle, to end where it began...with Lance Burton.

I believe this to be an actual clip from the show we watched...and if I recall correctly, one similar to it is what netted him the Grande Prix prize at the international Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques (FISM) competition - first American to do so, plus he got it at the age of 22.



This was also on the dvd, and we nearly died laughing.



Finally, Lance Burton's roller coaster escape.

Random Youtube Tuesday!

It's that time again!
Welcome to this week's Youtube Tuesday!
Made even more special by the fact that it is actually happening on Tuesday this time!

Today is AMV day!
AMV is an acronym that means "anime music video" It's one of my favorite things to search for.
Basically what happens is that anime fans pick a song, then choose scenes from the anime to fit the music. There are good AMVs...and really bad ones.
The ones I have today are some of the better ones I've seen.

This is a Sailor Moon AMV...I thought it was beautiful, and it's done to one of my favorite Evanescence songs: "Bring Me to Life"



Sadly, I cannot embed this AMV (or should I say GMV?)...it does not allow embedding. However, it is a very beautiful Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess AMV set to the music of Nickelback's "Savin' Me."

See you next week with more random Youtube videos!

New Pictures!

Well, not really new...more like pictures that I finally got around to scanning in.
The edges are a tad blurry - the scanner hates me. I need to learn to draw further away from the edges of the sketchbook.

Click the pictures to see a bigger, better version.

First up is a (late) set of Halloween doodles.



There's four pictures, in varying angles and completedness.
The coloured one is my (evil) muse Lanyia, dressed as an angel.
Directly beneath her is Rama, a demon from the story I was co-writing with a friend of mine a few years back. He is stuffed into a poofy pumpkin outfit, and not happy about it.
Upper right has my roleplaying character Irian, who is dressed as what he is - a snow leopard. (He's a were)
The last picture is an image of my internet persona, Ari, "testing" the Halloween candy.

The next two pictures are only the most recent in a very long line of pictures I have drawn for a friend of mine on the 'net.
I spend much time on a website called GaiaOnline...and several years back, when I joined, I set up a thread wherein I gave away free art (which was nice, for it made me practice drawing. ^^ It's my experiment thread...I play with mediums and poses and such in the freebies I give away).
In the first few pages entered a user by the name of Dominique del Mer...and she hasn't left yet. *grins*
Of the 600 or so arts I've done for Gaia in the past four years, she's gotten about half of them.
Just kidding. (Mostly) She does have her own folder in my art files, though.
You'd think she'd get tired of my art style after a while. >>

Anyways. Onto the pictures.




I think this was a birthday gift. I don't know anymore, I drew it a couple weeks ago.
It's cute because on my avatar (the image that represents me on the site, for those who don't know) I have the little black kitty, and she has the little white kitty. The hat (of eternal drawing damnation) is also part of her avatar...and I've fought the thing for years now. It's not easy to draw, therefore to get revenge, I had my kitty rip the feather off. ^______^

Final picture.



This is one of Dominique's roleplaying characters. (She has as many as I do. *grins*)
She's a drow (I think) who makes magical toys. So all the little critters are broken toys coming to her for help. My favorite's the bunny whose tail has come off. And the ball with a band-aid.

Random Youtube of the Week.

Next week I'll do on Tuesday, for "Random Youtube Tuesday"
This time I decided to do it, but it was after Tuesday, so I'm doing it today...Thursday. >>



Actually, I'll put two up.
Mom found this clip yesterday and I don't wanna forget it.



Some guy lipsynching Moosebutter's song "Star Wars"...it's cool (and...somewhat nerdy) that he listened to the song enough to find the 4 distinct voices to lip synch, then recorded himself 4 times. In different shirts.

Playlist

Just yanked a bunch of songs off my mom's playlist.
So it's like...doubled in size. *laughs*

School Results Page

Here is where I'll put the results of my many tests these couple weeks. I'll update it as necessary.

Spanish test: Got an 86.5. Better than I'd thought, not as good as I'd hoped.
Geology test 1: Got a 94 after the curve, yay.
Literature paper: Turned it in, waiting for it to be graded.
Geology test 2: Also a 94, surprisingly. Yayness. ^^
Geology test 3: A 95.
Religions test: An 88.

Have you ever...

Been driving along, somebody in another car does something stupid and illegal, and you say "If only a cop had been here"?

Well, yesterday I was driving to school, and there's a road where the speed is 20...it's on a hill, so it's hard to keep to the speed limit, but I was driving down, going maybe 22...and there's this guy behind me who's just right up my tail, glaring daggers at the back of my head. Finally, he cuts around me (illegal), and zooms down the road (too quickly)...right in front of the cop sitting in front of the school who goes out after him.

It totally made my day. ^_^

Rindercella

[Today's post definitely counts as a ramble..make sure you have lots of time to read. ^__^]
Yesterday I was telling Mom about how I used an mp3 upload site to get the anime songs on my playlist onto my playlist and I realized that I could use the same process to upload songs from our cds.
I asked Mom what song she would like me to try it on, and it happens to not really be a song.
You see, up in Wyoming there's this place called the Bar J Ranch, where they have a supper and western show, with the Bar J Wranglers singing and making jokes while you eat (really good) old style western meal.
I've gone a couple times, and I've always enjoyed it. The food is great, the songs are good (though I'm more a rocker chick than an old-style western one), but what I enjoy most are the short skits.
If they had all songs, I'd die, 'cause though they're good singers, I'm still not fond of the style of music. They mix it up, however, with jokes and stories and short skits.
One of their skits has one of the singers (can't remember who) dressing up as "Grandma," coming out on stage, and telling "Tairy Fales." Full of spoonerisms, gags, and jokes of all kinds, the stories tend to have the audience breathless from laughter.

All right. Backstory done.
The real reason this Rindercella is on my playlist is because I've performed it myself. Lots.
I took drama in high school my first year (and acting the next three years running, but that's neither here nor there). Time came around to do monologues, and I've always enjoyed comedy more than drama when it comes to performances. It's actually what I ended up getting known for in my acting class later. (When I finally tried to do drama, I had to do monologues because noone knew I could do it and didn't want to chance it with me. ><) I asked Mom's suggestion on what I should do, she whipped out this cd, and I fell in love with it. It took me almost an hour to transcribe the darn thing, though only about 15 minutes to memorize it. I haven't forgotten it since...mostly because SOMETHING comes up at least once a year that lets me pull it out again and use it. I've performed the monologue for school, for family events, for performances, for talent shows - I almost took first place in a school talent show with it a couple years back. I became known as "Wimberly Keatherston" in high school...>>

Second backstory aside, let me shush up now and let you enjoy the incredibly entertaining original performance. ^^

[What to expect over the next couple days: geology field trip report/s (as many as necessary...may take more than one, and pictures will be added at a later date.), school updates (I will post my paper when I have finished with it and will also record test scores as I get them), a rantle (ramble/rant) about my friend Dominique on Gaia (don't worry Dom, I'll be nice. *grins*)....that's all I can think of at the moment. See ya!]

School

I don't see why people always complain about finals week.
It's my experience that about the 12th-14th week of school is the busiest time period.
I mean, last week I had a paper due for Geology, I've got another one due tomorrow, and I'd have a Literature paper due Monday if the teacher hadn't bumped it forward a week.
Next week I've got a Spanish test Monday, Geology tests Tuesday and Thursday. The week after I've got a Religions test Wednesday and another Geology test Tuesday.
We had an oral report due today in Literature (went fairly well).
I've got a Geology field trip this Saturday (whoo-hoo!) (Note to self: ask about taking camera. Swear upon life not to let it come to harm and beg profusely.)

Bunches'o'stuff, ne? All within the span of like, three weeks.
This has proven true in the past as well.
Ah, well...back to work on my Geology paper.
[Edit] To add to this loveliness, my paper got eaten the other night when I was almost done with it, so I had to retype it. ><

Playlists

Soooo. Playlists.
Mom spent a couple hours last night setting up one for her blog, and I thought it looked fun, so I'm going to put one here too.
It will be...interesting, to say the least. Mom's songs all have some sort of meaning for Dad, whether it's injokes or just songs he likes.
Mine has no restrictions. It's gonna have whatever catches my interest. *grins*
If I put it up today, it won't have many songs on it, but I will sporadically add to it in the coming weeks.

[Edit]
Playlist is up.
It will be an interesting mix of Broadway, rock, anime, and game music, with a few (very few) various other types thrown in.

Brief Life Update

I warned you when I started, I tend to be a rather sporadic updater. ^^

Brief update on my life, then I'll try to post more regularly. Like, once a week or so.
School sucks, except for my Geology teacher who is awesome.
I'll save my Spanish rantings for a whole post all of its own.
My other classes are okay, just not real thrilling.
Got a tablet couple weeks ago, haven't started playing with it yet much. It works on my laptop, I just have to wrestle some good art software onto my laptop to go with.
Also, Tegaki. Very cool.
My dad left for Iraq this week. Missing him already.
And...my mom messed with my blog a bit, adding in a nifty cool background. Maybe it will distract from my text...or lack of it. *laughs*

I'll be adding in a playlist sometime this week, so y'all can enjoy my...varied tastes in music.
That's it fer now, I guess.

Save the Earth!

For lazy people.
Captain Planet I'm not...no uber-nifty superpowers for me.

Until now!

I recently came across a cool site that lets even people like me (lazy, with no money, and stuck in the middle of nowhere) do a little to help the planet.

Care2.com is a free site you can make an account at. It has all sorts of cool things, from petitions to recipes, blogs to groups. My favorite part of the site is called the daily click...every day you can go in and click on a number of different groups and each click will go to support a cause!
Care2 also gives you a free email account, and you can set up your preferences so that any mail from the site will go to that account and not to your main email - a lifesaver if you go on a petition-signing binge and end up with 50 thank you notes in your inbox!

In a similar vein is a site I found a few months ago. FreeRice.com is an awesome website - it both teaches you something and helps others at the same time! You answer vocabulary questions one after the other...every right answer is a donation of 20 grains of rice! It's not just vocabulary, either...at the very top of the site is a tab called "Subjects". Clicking it brings you to a page full of possible subjects to be tested on! From grammar to vocabulary, math to science, art to foreign languages, with more subjects yet to come.
If you want to keep track of how many grains you've gotten, you can change your preferences to keep track from visit to visit, letting you see the rice pile up.

I'm always keeping an eye out for more things like this, where I can visit for a few minutes every day while I'm on the computer to try and do something good for the world.
Let me know if you find any more and I'll keep an eye out and update if I come across any more. ^^

Life Updates

Ohmigosh, I have found a dessert that is like instant death for diabetics.It's called hommade candy bars, and it's alternating layers of crackers and what I called sludge (because when I was cooking it, that's what it looked like) - 2 whole sticks of butter or margarine, some brown sugar, graham cracker crumbs, and milks - with a topping of peanut butter, chocolate chips and butterscotch chips melted together. I've had five today and I'm on a serious sugar rush.

About two weeks ago I got several new games for mah DS (two I bought, one mah mom got for me). I got Code Lyoko and Deep Labyrinth for about $12 (both together) and a used copy of The World Ends With You. I tell ya, I normally hate ARPGs (I STILL haven't beaten Kingdom Hearts:Chain of Memories), but I am totally obsessed with this game. I intended to play it for several weeks, leveling up and such...but ended up playing all the way to the final boss in three days. Because I played so fast I couldn't beat the bugger, so I restarted and watched the ending on youtube. But I'm obsessed to the point that I'm drawing pins on my hand in class and want some empty button pins to make some for me to wear. *laughs*
Totally recommend it for anyone looking for a good game, even if you have to pay new price -- I got mine for about 30-ish, but that was with 20% off at GameStop [10% discount for buying at the PX, 10% more having the card and buying the game used].
The other two are also cool...but it's TWEWY that I'm obsessed with.

Started college Monday...I have 5 classes, three that meet on Mon/Wed, 1 on Tue/Thu, and 1 online. I'm taking World Literature, World Religions, and Spanish on M/W, Historical Geology (and accompanying Lab) on T/T, and College Algebra online. Love most of my classes so far...the texts for Lit are awesome, I might end up keeping them. There's some great Egyptian love poems I had to read for class this week that I'll probably type up later, and a beautiful different translation of a Psalm. Teacher is a bit hard to understand sometimes - she had a 'murky' voice. The Religion teacher is also difficult to understand sometimes, and he teaches more like a 'high school' teacher...not stopping for much discussion or questions. Maybe he'll warm up a little as we go. The Spanish teacher is...interesting. But then, I've never wanted to take Spanish, so maybe I'm a littled biased against liking him much. (The $120 textbook isn't making me like the course much, either. Stupid thing is 'binder-ready', meaning it's a bunch of loose-leaf pages I won't be able to sell back later. *gag*) Again, a bit difficult to understand.
I love the Geology teacher, though. He's been teaching at this college for 28 years...he is (in his own words) "an old crusty curmudgeon whose entitled to all the opinions I want...and you'll probably hear every one of them this semester." I also like any class that lets me play with rocks during the lecture...I'm not an aural learner. *laughs*
Algebra....eeeeehhh. I don't like math, and I'm not real fond of online classes, but I didn't have space in my schedule to have it anywhere else. At least algebra is the one math that I'm good at -- geometry killed me in high school.

I've made some friends, too...of all sorts. From a dorm-liver who loves comic books and partying to a mother who loves learning languages and her kids and dogs, I'm finding out that, oddly, people seem a little bit friendlier than those in Idaho State did...or maybe the classes are a little more relaxed and people are more willing to talk, who knows.
I even think maybe a guy in one of my classes was flirting with me. >>

One bad thing, though, is that the parking situation at this school is INSANE. The campus is set up with two lines of buildings, basically, with roads and parking lots on both outside sides...the academics building, with all the of the math, english, and social studies classes is at one end of the line, and the parking lots on the other. >>
Insane. It's a ten-minute walk...in the hot sun. There's NO shade. ><

Anyways...just a brief update. ^^
Hopefully I'll have more later.
Maybe even some drawings. *grins*

Haiku

I'd post something new
But ideas I haven't got
And time I'm lacking.

Aaaarrrrrttttttt.

So...I draw. A lot. Like, obsessively fill up nine notebooks obsessed. And own another ten or so.
I guess you could call it my main craft. [I also dabble in knitting, crocheting, cross-stitch, friendship bracelets, origami, quilling, and several other things, but that's not the topic.]
Y'all may or may not have noticed the link to my DeviantArt site, off to the right.
It contains most of the best pictures I've drawn over the last couple years.
I haven't been drawing a whole lot the past couple of weeks (though I should because I've several commissions, a couple gifts, and a bunch of freebies to draw for people), mostly because I've been working on other things and haven't had the inclination. I used to do most of my drawing in class, because I was bored and there was nothing else to do. Now, even when I am in class, they actually teach stuff and I actually need to listen. Go figure.
I am an traditional artist, mostly because I have no tablet with which to draw on the computer (computer graphics, or cging) nor the necessary art program in which to do it. Even if I did, though, I'd still do a bunch of traditional stuff - nothing like getting up from an hour's worth of drawing and having your hand black from graphite.
For the most part, I draw in an anime style, colouring with coloured pencils, rarely inking my lines (because they always seem to turn out bad). I've markers I use sometimes, but it's usually the pencils.

Anyways. On to some pictures.
I'm just going to pick two or three of my recent pictures to show off.This is my most recent picture I've got on the web...it's a commission I did for someone on GaiaOnline. I actually inked it...did most of the details in ink, because I was having trouble with the poses, and was getting too much graphite on the page...almost all of the small details were drawn straight out in pen. Colour is coloured pencil (mostly Prismacolors).

This picture was done for a good friend on GaiaOnline. There's several hour of work in this one. First I drew the central figure...inked and coloured it (Coloured pencils, as above). Then on a seperate piece of paper I did the background, in watercolour paints, then chalk pastels after the paint had dried to add definition. I scanned them in seperately, then melded them together on the computer.

[Sorry about the differing sizes...if you want a closer look at any of them, the pictures are all found in my DeviantArt account.]
This is also a picture done for GaiaOnline, but for me this time. ^^ I was actually very happy with how this turned out. No inks, just coloured pencils this time. I love to draw wings, so I tend to spend more time on them in a picture than anything else.

Finally, this is another picture for my friend from GaiaOnline (she scrounges a lot of them from me...she even has her own folder in my art folders, where I keep everything I've finished). This time it was a freebie picture I made for her...her avatar had all these wings and, well, I've a fondness for wings. A wing fetish? Whatever...all the wings made me draw it for her. It was a really quick sketch - no more than 5-10 minutes for the lines, and maybe 10 minutes more for the colours.

Anyways, that's enough pictures for you for now.
I don't want to overload the posts. *grins*
Again, all of these pictures can be found at my DeviantArt account, the link to which can be found in the link list to the right.

Online Games

Just being bored this morning, so I thought I'd take some time and ramble about a few of the things I spend my time on online.

The very first things I open when I get on are several online, browser-based games. (I don't really do any MMORPGs anymore...too much time. I did MapleStory for a time, got my archer to level 30, but then I started having troubles with lag. It wasn't fun anymore. And for some reason, I can't pull up PuzzlePirates. It's weird.)

The first game I pull up is a recent one for me. I found it a couple weeks ago. It's called Legend, and it's one of those ever-so-common time-based fighting sites. Yaknow, you can fight a person, but can't fight a second one for fifteen minutes, so while you wait you run off and have an adventure for 10-30 minutes, fight someone else, adventure...and when you're done, you can 'work' for up to eight hours at a time. Most of the other ones I've tried (whether normal fighter or vampire vs. werewolf) I've quickly grown bored of and given up on, but I've stuck with this one for a while now.

The second site I pull up is another time-based site, but of a very different nature. It's called Travian, and is a different kind of fighting game, where you build up your villages and attack other players' villages. Every upgrade 'costs' in resources and time, and resources build up slowly over the day. I play in server three, name of Irian (for now...it may change, since we're currently in the endgame. I already changed mah name once when I deleted mah account - mah guild pissed off a pretty big guild and they were systematically destroying us, so we all relocated. *laughs*)

The next site is a little bit different kind of fighting game...'tis called DinoParc, and as the name might have told you, it's based on fighting Dinos. You get to pick a Dino (and you can buy more later), and you have him travel around, fighting other dinos while exploring the land. Right my Dino is dying every other day, so not as much fun. *laughs*

Finally, and among my favorites, is AlphaBounce. (All but Tanoth are done by the same company.) I have never come across another website where the mode of progression is through breakout. Yes, breakout, with the paddle and the ball breaking bricks and all. You get three free plays a day, and are a prisoner, set loose in space to mine through the dark vastness. You complete missions, earning money and powerups, some temporary, some permanent. I love this game and play it every single day. I actually have two accounts, Arianna and Fadorien.

Anyways, those are the games I play right now...not very many, but the number tends to fluctuate as I come across new sites and get tired of old ones. I also play some flash games on Gaia and a number of other message board sites, but not very much.

Guinea Pigs

We've got 2 guinea pigs, had 'em for a little while now. [Both male - one's mostly black except for a stripe up his nose kinda like a skunk, so he's Flower, like the skunk from Bambi, while the other is brown and white and black, all messy-like, so he's Bambi.]
Noisy little critters, but we love 'em.

The other day, I was watching the piggies, and they were running around, flinching, jumping...for a while I was wondering if ants had crawled into the cage, or if they were having seizures, yaknow? Then I remembered reading something once about how guinea pigs 'popcorn' when they're happy, so I meandered onto youtube and hunted down some videos of other people's happy, spoiled piggies popcorning to see if that's what ours were doing.
There are some adorable videos on there. I spent nearly an hour watching other people's guinea pigs running around.
Here's an example of the popcorning.
However, I soon started coming upon funnier and funnier videos. This was one of my absolute favourites. The person who created it got some adorable shots that work really well with the footage...and it's an awesome idea. I'm thinking of trying it with ours, too.
Unfortunately, not all the videos were so good. One of the worst that I came across was where someone fed a guinea pig to their snake. Yuck!
However, for the most part, the videos are of adorable guinea pigs getting food instead of being food. Like this one, that I found while hunting down the previous ones to post. [Watch for the black piggy getting thwacked in the butt at the 9 second mark! *laughs*] Our two piggies do the same kind of thing alot when we give them carrots. *grins*

Finally, every once in a while...you also come across something...insanely odd. [Since the audio is a bit off, here also are the lyrics.]

Enjoy!

Sooooo...

Alrighty then.
I've done enough messing around with the layout, I ought to finally post something on this blog, ne?

This is just a short entry to say, "Yay, blogness."
I will be rambling in here whenever I feel like it, about things of all sorts. Nothing of any real importance, though. *laughs*
I made this blog at the behest of my mother...I don't know how long I'll post in it, or if it will go the way of my deadjournal (dead), my live journal (despite the name, also dead), my Gaia/DeviantArt/all other site journals (dead, dead, dead...well, you get the idea), but I'll write for a bit, at least.

To start it off, I just got back from the library an hour or so ago. We've got this awesome children's library down here, with tons of great books, and I go over and volunteer for a couple hours every Monday, shelving books.
It's a lot of fun, but I also come across a ton of books that I want to check out, which considering the 10-book limit, is a very bad thing indeed. *grins*
Today I mostly found Young Adult (YA) books that looked interesting, but I also checked out a nifty book on angels (should have awesome pictures of wings), a cd, and a dvd set.
I also took a bit of a cheater's way getting home...coming back from the library, I have to turn left, crossing traffic, to get back on the road - not a problem unless it's during rush hour. If it's at the wrong time, I can be stuck there for several minutes. Today, I got finished at the library around 12, so I didn't even try the road...I looped around back and found a light and turned on there, and got on the road before the other cars sitting and waiting did!
Hee.

Anyways, that's probably a good first post.
Next time I'll ramble about DS games, probably. *laughs*