inquiry and bloodlust

Hope everyone had a good day yesterday, celebrating Christmas or no. I, for one, am a huge fan of secular Christmas - forget the Jesus stuff, let's all give each other gifts and eat like pigs and make merry! In that spirit, here're some neat things I've stumbled across on the web recently.

- I'm not a big fanvid person; mostly I enjoy (warning: P4 spoilers in these three) weird Japanese AMVs and genre-altering trailers and I stay away from anything too shippy. Well, I had to make an exception - this Puck/Kurt fake trailer. It's so well done. Want.
- CROCHET FAIR ISLE. Seriously. I need to start doing this.
- Penny Arcade got into the seasonal spirit in the most logical of ways.
- Tom and Lorenzo reposted their fantastic White Christmas Musical Monday. Go rejoice in the ambiguously oriented glory of old musicals.
- If anyone's interested, here are some recipes we used. Granted, we changed pretty much all of them, but they're all good starting places nonetheless. Season's eatings!

Today was all things that are good. Well, today and yesterday, actually.

- Working towards making a fairly big change that will be so much better for me. It's been progressing in little jolts for a while now, but today marked the first really big step in the process. Don't want to say too much about it, just in case, but... I'm really excited at the possibilities.
- Saw my psychologist, and we actually came to the conclusion that I don't need any more help right now. I didn't have to schedule another appointment with him. He's there for me if/when I need him, of course, but... I'm actually doing good. I'm healing. And I haven't taken a Xanax in over a month now. I was having issues going a day without one for a while, and now it's been a month. I love my life.
- Apparently, courtesy of my mom and her friend, this little book o' cute will be winging its way towards me shortly. That's just bitchin'.
- The cell bio midterm was, to borrow a phrase from Steve, super happy fun time!* Really, I spent about three days straight studying and went to the early morning review, and while it was probably overkill, it did pay off pretty big. Absolute worst case scenario, if everything I wasn't 100% confident on I got wrong and I earn no partial credit, I'll get a 75. Not a bad score to build off of.

And finally, poll time!

[Poll #1471839]
Next year, I'm totally going as Princess Peach.

*I've come up with a technical definition for Super Happy Fun Time: when you are at least able to understand what every question on an exam is asking you, regardless of your ability to correctly answer it, and you have enough time to put down something for every question. Branola Hovse members, do you concur?

I finished Disgaea (the main game, at least), and I gotta say, I'm a little angry at it. You see, I was aiming for the Good Ending. I got the Normal Ending. I was very, very, VERY careful about not killing any of my allies, and so I'm kind of baffled. Throwing prinnies doesn't count as an ally kill, does it? I read online that prinnies are meant to explode, so that doesn't count. How about killing clones of your party members in the Item World? Those are the only transgressions I can think of. I was wary about taking out the clones, too, but Laharl counterattacked and took one out, and I figured since they were enemies and not the actual allies, it would be okay. Rrrgh. Guess this just means I'll have to be even more careful on my second cycle, yeah?

I am so going to crochet myself my own version of this. As much as I love the yellow scarf I wear to feel P3-ish sometimes, that's just uncharted levels of awesome. Must do it.

Is it bad that my newest fandom is pretty much a fanon AU that's taken on a life of its own in fic? I feel a little pathetic, I gotta say. It's so entertaining, though!

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Pictures for Sad Children continues to put my crazy into words. Actually, the anxiety's been getting better lately. Of course, now that I've said that, it'll probably slide right back up to flailing levels, but oh well. It'll come down again. I can wait it out.

Jaime's a normal dude, my friends. No more restrictions, no more implants, no more meds. Normal. Well, as normal as he was before, at least, which may not be saying much. But. How cool is that?

My internet has been going up and down like a hyper hypo on a pogo stick the past couple of days. It's a bit frustrating. Seems to be leveling out now, thankfully.

Grad school set-up's going well. Lease - check; utilities - check; funding - mostly check, though a few details are still being discussed; registration - immunization record transfer is underway and should be done well before my registration date. All according to plan, at the moment. Coasting is fun.

The Persona 4 love is strong in me once more. I've been reading a bunch of fic, and I gotta say, the P4 fandom is awesome. There's a fair amount of awful fic, but there's also a decent spattering of truly excellent stuff all around. A lot of it is either pairing-free or Souji/Yosuke as well, which is a great bonus for my shipper sensibilities. I'm gearing up to start my third playthrough of the game (or maybe my sixth of FFVIII, depending on how I feel), as well as slowly working on an interactive fic-ish P4 thing. And once I have money? I'm totally going to get this poster set. I'll hang them up in a line, right by my FFVIII wall hangings - two bamboo scrolls, fabric world map, and giant Squall wallscroll. My desk space will be a place of fanjoy.

The craftitude is also rather strong, though my productivity is effectively nil at the moment. I've got ideas, damnit! I'm hoping the timing of both cashflow and required activities will work out so that Jaime and I can go to this. I already know which projects I'd take! Oh, and I spotted a nifty soft circuit merit badge tutorial on Craft recently. I'm typically not a fan of soft circuit stuff, but that's because most projects I run into use Arduinos, and... well... Jaime and I tend to call the Arduino "The Tard Weiner". Immature, yes, but I think it gets our shared feelings on the matter across effectively. Anyway, that badge project is rather cute and put together smartly, so I approve. If I ever get back into badges, I may have to try that tutorial out.

As far as non-fandom, non-craft stuff goes, I'm gradually working my way through a few textbooks to be extra-prepared for going back to school, researching apartment options in Gainesville, and kicking around some ideas for my poor neglected comic and novel. Oh, and I'm trying to get into bike riding. I mean, I've loved my cruiser for quite a while now, and tooling around on it is pretty neat, but I'm looking into getting a road bike at some point and training up with Jaime so we can do a century for charity next year. I did just over 2.5 miles today. Baby steps. I've got a whole year to train. Baby. Steps.

This makes me want to practice knitting. It's just so adorable! I covet! It seems like it wouldn't be TOO difficult of a project, either. A little cabling, a little shaping, but not too much else that's complicated. It is knitting, though, which turns me off a bit. Once I get some little magnets, I plan on starting an amigurumi project I've been planning for a while. Crocheting sounds pretty good right about now.

As much as I like the free time, I really want to go back to school. There's only so long I can read textbooks on my own before the monotony gets to me. I need classes again, and labwork OOO LABWORK. I wouldn't object to shopwork either. I miss the machine shop. Once I'm back in school, I'm sure I'll be posting here about how I wish I could just ignore my obligations and play video games. Isn't that the way it always works?

I've been trying to write lately (The Anglerfish isn't sure whether it wants to be a standard short story or something more freeform; either way, it craves attention), but I'm just not satisfied with what's coming out. I'm sticking to fanwork at the moment, since that carries with it the motivation of being able to post it online, but the prose... Ugh. Work with me, Yosuke! Work with me!

Anyone have any light-hearted prompts? I'd love to have a go at some fluff tonight.

I'm sure nobody gets the joke in my userpic except me, but I find it funny, so... phbt!

We were at the hospital from 5pm on Monday until 5:30 in the morning yesterday for Jaime to get blood. He has a low grade fever now. I've got my fingers crossed that it'll drop before it gets high enough to worry about.

I just found out that Johan from Monster and Mello from Death Note have the same voice actor. This amuses me greatly.

Crocheting and packing up gifts now. Will update adoptions, respond to comments, and maybe even finish up my Harvard app later. And then sleep.

Sami!!! *tacklehug* Oh my gosh, you are insane! The the the yarn! And the Dream Cream! And the kabuki brush, oh man, the kabuki brush! Thank you!!!

Allow me a moment to compose myself. Ahem. Moving on. I've been chilling with Jaime all day, working on and off on little amigurumis for the other inhabitants of this household. Yes, that includes Jaime, but he's been warned that once I start his, he's not allowed to look. I'm oh so subtle. The crocheting's a lot easier than I remember it being. Jaime figures it's because I've made a lot of other things since my last amigurumi, and I think he's probably right. I keep having to remind myself to not do a yarn over before pulling a loop through the stitch. That's a pretty good sign I've been away from single crochet for too long.

I want to make some other little gifts for people outside of Florida, but my current yarn stash is a bit lacking for the projects I have in mind - no wool, no purple (WTF, how do I have Super Saver in every standard color except purple?), no glow-in-the-dark, no giant skein of something soft... None of those would be too spendy, though, so I think I'll be able to fill in the gaps after the holidays. For now, I'm just focusing on finishing the Mary and Jaime gifts before Christmas and plotting what to do with the delicious boucle Sami sent me.

... And hoping that Mom was able to talk Erik out of buying a ring for his girlfriend. Aiyiyi.

Just found out Brawl save files are copy-protected. After unlocking all but two characters and completing SSE and a bunch of events (including that fucking safety capsule on Norfair one that took me foreeeeeeever earlier) on Mary's Wii in the living room instead of my own.

Goddamnit.

Not to mention that my thumb hurts from crocheting worsted yarn tightly with an F hook, but that's really my own damn fault.