Once again, it's finals time at school. For Japan 211, the final is tomorrow, so I'm desperately studying now, as I have to work tonight until ~12pm (Working in a mall during December sucks). (Thank you, U of V, for the very helpful kanji study guides) I should say, the written is tomorrow, the oral (which I'm incredibly frightened of) is on the 8th. Any Japanese speakers want to do an iChat audio chat and practice with me? ;) (Off-topic, why do I have such a fear of speaking Japanese to another person? I'm in my 2nd year of studies, and can write capably, yet have managed only to say "ni juu man en" to a person outside of my classmates.)

Edu 115 (Anti-Bias Strategies for the Classroom) has a 4 page paper due, um, this morning (love the sound of deadlines as they whoosh over my head), which I haven't quite started. The paper's topic is: Write a personal statement regarding the impact that anti-bias, culturally relevant and multicultural practices have on the developing child. Which would be great, except the book we're required to reference is written for K-5 educators, and I'm aiming toward teaching high school, so the paper will be of little use to my situation.

And First Aid/CPR would normally have a final tomorrow, except the instructor has been ill for 2 weeks now...what do you do if the teacher misses the final? Eesh.

Upcoming next quarter: Japanese 212, IASTU 102 (required multicultural class), CMU 282 (TV Studio Production) and Drama 282 (Advanced Video Editing, but yuk, they use Avid on PCs, I'm hoping what I learn will help with using FCE)

This comment made me laugh harder than I think I ever have from /.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, the /. trolls gave me:

12 hot grits gritting
11 grammar nazis
10 naughty swear words
9 late frist p0sts
8 rediclus speelings
In Soviet Russia you are 7
6 base belonging
5 goatse links
404 not founds
3 wide posts
2 new overlords
And a still-dying FreeBSD

I didn't know I could be so bored, I couldn't sleep. I'm halfway through the 2nd season of Scrubs. It's only Wednesday, and I'm here, with the cats, for 3 more nights. Come home soon...

So, I had spent a long time (3 years?) searching for a very old friend of mine from high school. Not a peep or a sighting of him for years. I'm usually very good at digging up info on people, and I couldn't find squat. After a fruitless, desperate search for him in my hometown *yesterday*, I had basically decided to give up. I figured he had died or moved to Wisconsin or something.

Of course, life loves to play tricks on you. I'm leaving work tonight, surprisingly, they had the 2nd floor doors locked at the mall, so I was forced to exit on the ground floor, which I did. As I was walking out, I hear someone calling my name, and see a familiar car (well, familiar dents in it, anyway)...and guess who it is? Yeah. Of course. What luck. So we talked for a while, and the sad thing is, after trying to find him for so long, he's so close to home, but moving to Spokane on Friday! What a bad deal. So we're going to hang out tomorrow (I'm going with him to sign his divorce papers, what a party...), and that's the last I'll see of him for a while. What a disappointment :( Oh well, at least I found him safe, sane, and leaving his evil wife who ruined his life.

I just got done making dinner. For most of you, this isn't so impressive, but man, I've never been able to cook anything. I used to joke that I could burn water. But after recieving some sage advice from my mother-in-law on the art of cooking, I decided to try it. I made crispy cheese sticks for an appetizer, which ended up tasting like Cheeze-Its, but very good. For the main course, I made Shepherds Pie, Bernie's favorite, and for dessert, No-Bake cookies and banana bread! Everything turned out surprisingly well (much to my surprise), and it was a hit with both of us :) I guess Bernie'll have to keep me around now, since that was his main complaint was that I never cook!

Yeah, haven't written in a while, been on the road. I must respectfully defer to Bernie's journal for updates, as I think it's too damn hot and humid here to write. So read his.

Today started out as normal, except we decided to get our babies their FeLV shots, since Asha goes outside, and can carry it to him even if she's immune. They both hate to go to the vet (of course), and when we got them home, they both were panting and breathing hard, but since it's so hot, we didn't think it was too strange. We went to go get some food, and came home to a *lot* of vomit and diarrhea sprinkled throughout the house, and Ari in serious distress, panting, breathing shallowly, and unable to walk normally. We decided to call the vet (she had described these symptoms and said to call if they happened), and brought him back in (poor kitty!!). It turns out that he's allergic to the vaccine (which is scary, since he could catch it now, because he can't get the required boosters), but the nice vet gave him a cortisone shot, and after a few hours, he seemed to be back to normal. He gave me quite a scare, though.

-Perfect- You're the perfect girlfriend. Which
means you're rare or that you cheated :P You're
the kind of chick that can hang out with your
boyfriend's friends and be silly. You don't
care about presents or about going to fancy
placed. Hell, just hang out. You're just happy
being around your boyfriend.
What kind of Girlfriend are you?

Just thought this deserved a post, and a comment from the Peanut Gallery, perhaps.

Today's my day off (I guess it's more accurate to say almost every day is my day off, since I only work 2 days a week), but it was actually productive today. I managed to vacuum the rest of the house, including my room, in which you can see the floor for the first time in months. One of my beautiful babies has a bad habit of peeing on anything padded, including clothing, pillows, and other things that humans don't appreciate smelling like piss. I also spent today excavating my closet (which hasn't seen the light of day in a loooong time), because it smells like a litter box :(. Bernie and I just got done washing our cars, as well.

In other news, I got a copy of SimCity 4, and have been playing that and The Sims on and off for the past few days. SimCity is pretty damn cool, but hard! I am awful at managing money, and it requires a lot more of it than 2k or 3k did.

I'm also nervous and excited as hell, Bernie and I leave for our road trip to Connecticut (3100 miles one way!) in about a week and a half. Not only am I nervous about the driving (as much as I love driving, 6-8 hours a day for just me is a little harsh), but seeing his family again...phew. They're certainly nothing like mine (and that's putting it mildly). They are very...east coast. I hate to stereotype, but wow, things really are different out there. I had never left the Pacific Northwest until I met Bernie, and I had just imagined that all the things I had heard about the other coast were just not real, or honestly, had never even thought about it. Was I ever wrong! I'm also nervous about my appearance to them as well. It's so silly, I've rarely worried about what anyone would think about me and my piercings, but with family (especially his family), it's so different. I honestly don't know what I would do if they rejected me because of metal in my head. At least we're not flying this time, I hate flying so much. Obviously, Bernie likes flying much more than me. But this will be fun, we're going to hit like, 10 Apple Stores along the way, and on the way back, going to visit Mt. Rushmore, and Wall Drug, and...Sturgis!! What excellent timing. I'm sure we'll get a warm welcome driving our VW there!

Song of the moment: Semisonic - Made to Last

Wow! So, I bit the bullet last night, and went to my Apple Store, and bought an iSight camera. Now, I'm available for video chat on iChat (un: acetonewaterfall, if anyone's interested) or when I'm not iChatting at my website (refreshes every 5-10 seconds).

Now that that's out, ugh, I've got a migraine this morning, and I have to go to work at 6pm. I hope I can get over it. I slept in really late, but had some seriously messed dreams, like, I got mugged in one, got fired in one...eesh.

So, I'm watching COPS tonight. (Yeah, I know.... it's part of my redneck upbringing...hehe, COPS in King County rules). There's one common theme in every single bust, and one that makes me yell at my TV every time.

Cops: "Do you mind if we take a look at your car for, you know, bombs and guns?"
Dumb Person: "Yeah, go ahead".

Fucking hell! I know, your instinct says to go along with the nice person, you're a good person too, right? Listen closely.

JUST SAY NO.

I know it feels weird, but practice. Please. Even if you truly feel you have nothing to hide. Only you can uphold the 4th Amendment. Use it while we still can! Don't willingly give up your rights!

What a perfect time for my car to break. My first day of finals was today, so I decided to go out and have some fun last night, and drove up to Camano Island to see some family. Headed home around 10:30, noticed that my headlights/dash lights were *really* dim. Figured, ehh, I'll make it...made it about halfway to the freeway, the radio died, and the radar detector started freaking out, saying there was a W alert. Unplugged it, started chanting "you can make it, you can make it" (no radio, nothing else to do, heh). Kept driving southbound on I-5, passed Marysville, where my cousin who I had planned on seeing lives, but the car was being really weird (sputtering, sort of), so I decided to press on and try and make it home.

About a mile past the Marysville exit, car begins to slow down, I push on the gas pedal, it speeds up, then slows down, I floor it, it doesn't move. The 'Check Engine' light comes on. Damn. I coast to the side of the road and curse. I try and call Bernie, but he's already asleep (by now, it's 11pm). Try and call my insurance company (I have a little towing insurance), wait on hold for 20 minutes, curse and hang up. Try and call 911, it's busy?!!?! Good thing I wasn't being raped/murdered. Finally resign myself to figuring a way home without the car, call my cousin, beg a ride back to her house. Made it home around 3am (She had an errand to run, and we tried to take a look at the car in the dark), had to be up at 8 to catch the bus on time for school *grumble*. Get woken up at 4:45 by a panicked Bernie that my car is not out front. Mumble out an explanation. Sleep another 3 hours, get up, study for final, take bus to school, fail Japanese final (probably, I'm really bad with the ta/tai/te grammar forms, especially on so little sleep), take bus home.

The good stuff happened after the final. Bernie and I came up with the plan concerning his AAA membership (which he's never had to use), which comes with 5 miles of towing, and we could at least tow the car to my cousin's house and off the freeway. While I was waiting for the bus, I thought, well, why don't we just add me to the AAA plan and upgrade it to the plan with 100 miles of towing? I told Bernie all of this thinking, and he had already done it all. :) We're on the same wavelength.

Get home, Bernie and I drive up to meet the car, WSP had already tagged/painted it, but luckily hadn't towed it (Surprisingly, as they will tow it immediately if it's abandoned during night hours with no lights on, but luckily they didn't mark it until 6am), and we called AAA, they answered the phone *immediately*, found out that the primary tow truck in the area was running about 2 and a half hours in the traffic (arggh!). She put me on hold, and came back and said someone else could come in about an hour. We waited...eventually, Bernie went and got some food/drink for us. While he was gone, I played on the side of the road, sat on top of a hornet's nest (eek), found a magnetic ad for a church, and nearly died from the heat.

While I was waiting, someone from AAA called and just wanted to make sure everything was OK! How sweet! I couldn't believe that. Finally, the tow truck showed up, and took my poor car away. We had it towed to our house, as the shop we usually go to is closed on the weekends (of course, arggh), and it's close enough that we can just push it there on Monday. Total cost to me: about 60$ for adding myself and upgrading to the plus membership. How much it would have been without AAA: astronomical. Last time I had the car towed, it was from the 85th exit on I-5 in Seattle, towing that ~10 miles was 200$. This time, it was about 40 miles. Now, I just have to wash that ugly 06 0547 off the back window. :{

I just ordered TV-J, a feed of NHK (the equiv of the BBC, the broadcasting authority in Japan) from Comcast, and have been watching it all morning. I'm hoping that exposure to natural Japanese speakers will improve my speaking ability, and trying to read all the kanji subtitles makes me realize just how far I still have to go!

My goal for the summer is to learn the 100 kanji and be ready to pass Level 4 (the level that native children reach in elementary school) of the Japanese Proficiency Test. I'm guessing I already know around 40 (counting the numbers and very basic words) from class, so I think it is an attainable goal. And it won't make me too sad to have to take a vacation to Honolulu to actually take the test ;)

I haven't written in a while, I don't have as much time now that I'm not riding the bus for 2 hours every day.

I was just listening to Something Corporate: Woke Up in a Car, thinking about homes that I've loved. My first home was on 15th and Viola in Yakima, I don't have too many memories of it (I moved out of there in 1988, when I was almost 6), just bits and pieces. It was in a bad part of town, and we had really creepy neighbors, and they did (literally) unspeakable things.

From there, I lived in the first house I really considered 'home', further west in Yakima until August 2000, after I graduated from high school. I have a million memories from that house, from first loves, first parties, first groundings (heh), everything that comes along with middle/high school.

After graduation, I moved to Kirkland, the Juanita area to be exact, and lived there in an apartment near the beach for one year, until August 2001. I didn't spend very much time in the actual apartment, preferring to spend time at my boyfriend's apartment, at work, or at my Grandma's house (where many of my aunts and uncles and cousins live).

I finally convinced my boyfriend that we should live together in 2001, packed most of my stuff into a storage unit, and moved to Interbay (between Magnolia, Ballard and Queen Anne in Seattle) to a tiny apartment with my boyfriend and his roommate. Living in such a cramped place strained our relationship, and I needed a change badly, so I decided to move back to Yakima to go to school, work for Microsoft, and live with my best friend.

I lived in our dirty apartment from January 2002 until August 2002, and it was a string of parties and fun the entire time, but something really was missing, I noticed that I spent, on average, 3 days out of the week back in Seattle at my boyfriend's house, doing over 300 miles a week on my car was taking a toll, and I realized how much I do love Seattle (not to mention my boyfriend) and despite having 'fun', was pretty depressed (and self-destructive) the whole time in Yakima, and moving back to Seattle was a breath of fresh air for me.

I was lucky enough to get a job at Speakeasy Network in Belltown, and we moved into a house up in North Seattle, and life was good (finally). It's progressed that way until recently, when I quit Speakeasy to get a job at The Apple Store in Bellevue Square. It was only natural for me to jump at a chance to work there, since I do have an Apple tattoo :-D

Wow, I didn't expect to write all *that* this morning, now Love Psychedelico: I Mean Love Me is playing...what should I think about next? (heh)

As my last few days working for my kick-ass ISP draw to a close, I'm stuck wondering; why is our society so quick to scream, 'I'll sue! I'll sue!'. What is the goddamned point?

Looking at it from a literal stance, would you be willing to go to court over something that you did wrong? Even with the burden of proof on the accuser, we can prove that we delivered hardware to you. You can't prove that you returned it. Would the court decide that it's your burden to show you did?

Looking at it from a 'I-will-say-anything-to-get-my-way' viewpoint, do you honestly think threatening the person on the other end of the line will get you *anything* except a shrug? You're not going to sue *me*, I'm following the rules, I couldn't care less. Absolutely nothing will happen to me, even if you say 'i'll have your job!' ROFL. For following the rules? That'll happen. Right after I have yours for throwing threats around, on your company's time.

People amaze me sometimes.