I finally decided what I want to do for a living. After 3 years of barely passing classes at CSU Hayward because I didn't know what I wanted to major in, I'm going to try to talk my mum into letting me drop out of university. I've been thinking about getting certified to be a pharmacy technician for a while now, but I wasn't sure about it. Last night I decided that my environmental science degree wasn't going to get me very far since cities here are having to cut pay and positions so much, so I started looking up pharmacy tech schools and salaries. Pharmacy techs here in California make between $25,000 and $30,000 a year. Not much, but that's actually pretty good for a program that only takes 6 months, and it pays a hell of a lot better than what I'm doing now - living at home, where I can't get a job, either because I have no previous experience or don't speak Spanish.

Once I get the pharmacy tech certification, I can work full-time while I go to school online or at night for a Doctor of Pharmacy degree (4-6 years, unless I do an accelerated course). The average pharmacist in California makes over $85,000 a year, which is pretty damn sweet and would definitely make all my panic attacks about money disappear. I could be comfortable and worry-free for the first time, and just the thought that I can have this makes me so relieved. I didn't realize how much I was stressing about my future until now. I could support myself alone on this - I won't need to rely on Mike, and with the two of us, we'll have enough disposable income to buy a nice house and save the rest.

I feel like a door is opening in the wall between me and my dreams. I can't wait.

Seriously though, I really do love this song. In fact, I love the whole soundtrack.
You can listen to the song here on my box.net account:
Coffee Prince OST - Mocha.
If you like it, let me know! I might upload the whole OST. I'm probably going to end up watching the show online, since the online summaries make it sound adorable, and I already love the soundtrack.

I think I need this.

For our second project in my art class, we had to take 2 pictures from our last project and turn them into drawings done in Illustrator using the pen tool. I've never used the pen tool before, so I feel really good about these. :D Our first project was just to take 3 pictures and a scan of things with curves in them, so I did 2 photos of my kitten, 1 of the back logo of my car, and a scan of my keychain.

This is the scan of my keychain with the lines layered over it...


...and this is the final product - the contour line drawing:




For the other drawing, we had to do a solid shape interpretation. Since trying to trace individual cat hairs is suicide when you only have 2 days to do the project in, I used the picture of the back of my car...




and turned it into this:





I am absurdly proud of these.

So! Lots of things.

Patricia! I got your present and literally ran around the house squeeing. Mike thought I was nuts but I didn't care. THAAAANK YOUUUUU <3 <3 I'm almost done with your present.

Graham, you said you were sending me something? I don't know if/when you sent it, but if you sent it near when you left me the myspace comment, I think it may have gotten lost in the post, since nothing ever arrived here. If you haven't sent it, don't worry, I'm not being impatient; I just didn't want you to think I'd gotten it and hadn't said anything.

I think I'm going to sell almost all of my lolita stuff. I'm keeping at least my window print dress and stained glass skirt, but the rest will probably be up for sale whenever I get around to taking pictures. By that, I mean when the light in my house isn't spectacularly crappy. As much as I like the fashion, it's just not something I'll ever be comfortable wearing except in a casual style. I'm leaning more toward the older, more deconstructed h.Naoto stuff, and I finally caved and bought not one, but two pairs of skinny jeans and am now looking for an awesome pair of flat boots to wear with them.

School started last week and oh my god there's so much work in my art class. It's really fun, though, so I don't mind the printmaking and stuff - it's just the writing assignments I'm not too fond of.

I haven't been knitting much lately, but hopefully having 15 hours of lecture a week will help with that, lol.

I finally bought The Orange Box for PS3, so now I can play Portal. I also bought Bioshock, a nifty-lookin' game called Eternal Poison, and finally found a copy of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Still haven't read an actual book in ages, but I'm slowly working my way through my pdf file of The Complete Works of Maya. So far, I'm on page 2128 of 2600. Almost done! Then I shall have to find more fanfiction. :D

And this one, too.

I just finished chapter 6 of Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness on Schnoogle and when I got to the end I actually yelled "yes!" and did a double fist pump. Twice. Seriously, this fic is awesome. The characters are all realistic, the Golden Trio isn't even around so the other characters get the spotlight, and it's just so well-written I can't stop reading. The main characters are Neville, Luna, and Ginny, and right now all I can say is "hoshit, Neville is such a pimp. ilu Neville." If you like HP, go read this. Like, right now.

Rules:

1. Next to each number, write only the name of the person who fits.
2. Answer one question with one name.
3. Don't tell the questions to anyone who isn't doing the meme.


1. mint_cake
2. renalcul
3. cupanoodle
4. mcgooglykins
5. renalcul
6. etherealdark
7. sherridea
8. mcgooglykins
9. syw
10. ?
11. renalcul
12. glass_bubblegum
13. swdpunk
14. dykestar
15. ?
16. miffytoki
17. lil_pandi
18. pinafore
19. frozenemotion9
20. etherealdark
21. etherealdark
22. renalcul
23. ?
24. ?
25. not answering
26. not answering
27. etherealdark
28. syw
29. uhh...
30. How long can you hold out before you have to know what the questions are?

Yesssssss he'll be home by midnight on Tuesday <333333333

Damn, I didn't realize it was International Loli Day until this afternoon when I saw all the posts, and since I'm at my dad's house this weekend I couldn't even belatedly dress up. Oh well, I get to wear loli on Monday for the meet and Wednesday for my finals, so that's good.

I can't stop playing Okami. I've already beaten it once, but I'm playing through again and whenever I get a chance to play, it's all I do. I've been playing since I woke up this morning and I'm at the endgame now, I'm just going back to get a couple stray beads before I go into the Ark of Yamato. I'm trying to race Kai through the forest but she keeps beating me. DDD: ARGH.
Edit: After like, 7 tries, I finally beat her and got the stray bead!

School is good, though. English was successfully dropped with no penalties a few weeks ago, so the only finals I have to prepare for are Japanese and Geology, which are both on Wednesday. I have a lot of outlining to do, but I'm not really worried.
I need to sign up for summer classes.

MEME TIME!
1. REPLY TO THIS POST, AND I WILL PICK THREE OF YOUR ICONS AND SEVEN OF YOUR INTERESTS.
2. MAKE A POST (INCLUDING THE MEME INFO) AND TALK ABOUT THE ICONS/INTERESTS I CHOSE.
3. OTHER PEOPLE CAN THEN COMMENT TO YOU AND MAKE THEIR OWN POSTS.
4. THIS WILL CREATE A NEVER-ENDING CYCLE OF SQUEE. WHOO!

mcgooglykins to the rescue, giving me something to do instead of going to bed like I should be doing.


Tea and old letters conjure up images of romance the way it used to be, and the bits of greenery suggest that the person reading the letters is sitting on a porch somewhere, enjoying the breeze on a warm day.



The Morrigan is an ancient Celtic goddess associated with war and death, often seen on the battlefield in the form of a great crow. Her name translates as Great Queen or Phantom Queen.



This icon makes me grin every time I see it. The text is pure genius. I love HP, but I also love making fun of HP.


decoder ring: Decoder Ring and The Gin Club each had a track on a Jack/Elizabeth fanmix that I downloaded during the brief time I was heavy into the PotC fandom. This particular mix was full of songs and artists I'd never heard of before, and I still love everything on it. This song is the only one of theirs I have.
Carillon


the gin club: You Don't See.
Acoustic guitar and strings. There's just something about melancholic music that I love instantly.

After having all these songs already uploaded, I just now realized that you can only play the mp3 files in the browser - m4a files are download only. I love box.net less now.


striped scarves: OMGHARRYPOTTER. I don't think I've ever posted pictures of my Slytherin scarf, and Mike has my camera so I can't take any right now. I really, really love the HP house scarves, and I'm going to make a Ravenclaw one and a different Slytherin one when I get some more things done in my GIANT backlog of knitting projects. By giant, I mean that my queue on Ravelry (I think you can only see it if you're signed up and logged in) is almost 50 projects long, and that's not even complete. Here's a picture of the first part of my queue.


fake?: I really can't express how much I love this band. The singer is half Japanese and half British, so a lot of their music is in English. They're creative and complex, yet still catchy and not weird enough to be lumped in with "all that weird shit you listen to", as Mike puts it. >>; Thanks honey.
Drip
Snow - seriously one of my top songs of all time.


library books: I rarely read a book more than once, so the library saves me loads of money. :D I'm such a cheapass.


egl: FRILLS, YO. Manifesting my dark/girly personality split.
"elegant gothic lolita", aka Lolita or "loli", aka, where all my money goes when I'm supposed to be saving it for bills and such. Strangely enough, I seem to have no pictures of myself in loli. I know there are some on my camera...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think egl is one of the biggest lolita communities online. Loads of pictures and explanations there for those that are curious, though most of you are either into it already or have absorbed some of my random blabbering about strange fashions.


ega: "elegant gothic aristocrat", aka "this corset is so tight that my ribs will be sore for a week." Long skirts, ruffled shirts, dark/muted colors. Like this. And yes, this is really a man.

I never thought I'd be able to get the black stained glass print BtSSB skirt, but I found it on Mbok and had Celga get it for me!!! I'm a little annoyed that they paid the buy-it-now price instead of bidding since there was no one else bidding and I could've saved $50, but that is a rare skirt and at least no one else can BIN and get it >>
my preciousssssss....

So. Today is my first day back at uni after spring break. Thank God I wore my long wool coat today, otherwise I would've frozen to death already. It was supposed to rain today, but it hasn't yet. I'm slightly disappointed. I had Japanese class this morning at 9:20, got out at 10:30, and am currently on break. Geology runs from 12 to 1:10 (have to do my science requirement, and this class is only an hour 3 times a week, with no lab!) and then I have English from 2 to 3:50. Those are all Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes (except English, which is only Monday and Wednesday), so I have Tuesdays and Thursdays off. That will be very useful when I finally get around to getting a job. I picked up an application for Hot Topic last week, but they won't be hiring until May, and I don't know if I want to wait that long on the off chance I might get the job.

Things with Mike are going pretty well still. We argue a lot, but we always work it out and anyway that makes things more interesting.

I forgot I haven't told you guys that I got a new car! I'll try to remember to take pictures of it when I get home today. It's a red 1993 Nissan 240sx coupe, and it's gorgeous. And a stick shift, so I have to get used to driving it. XD My mum calls it the mini-Firebird. It really does look like a smaller version of my '91 Firebird - the paint is even the same color.

I want to bodykit my car now. Can you say pimptastic?

Stolen from asaphira_sachi





What type of Fae are you?

Finally getting back to being social on teh intarwebs again. Slowly. My PS3 is eating my soul; I spend all my time either out with Mike or home playing Folklore, so I'm never online. I'm trying to check my f-list more often, so bear with me.
I feel empty and frustrated. I need to create. I have half a scarf and about 2 inches of a crazily cabled sock done, but that just isn't enough. I need to move. I have all this energy stuffed down inside me but I can never let it out, so I'm just twitchy all the time.
Oh yeah, and I'm looking for a new car. Something pretty and fun to drive that's under $8,000... yeah good luck with that.

Music time! God Is An Astronaut is an instrumental (rock-ish) three-piece band from County Wicklow, Ireland.
If you click on the song title here, you can listen to the title track from their third album, Far From Refuge, which I've upped here on my Sendspace account.

Today is my 19th birthday. Hope it doesn't suck this year. Going out for dinner with a few people instead of having the entire family at my house all day is a good sign, though, but it also means I can't hide in my room while everyone argues.

The truck is finally fixed, so I have to pick that up Monday, and my mum says I have to drive it instead of the Firebird now. I'm looking for a new (used) car, so I can get rid of the truck, but I don't know what I want yet.

So I just got this: Weezer singing Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time" live to a small audience.
It's on my Box.net account, so you can listen to it without downloading it.


And even though it's a cover, and amusing, I think it's actually better than the original.