Stopping the furious packing for a bit of TiLTing. Here we go!

-Shadow of the Colossus music. Aaah, I love it so dang much.
-Mei and the Kittenbus. KITTENBUS. (Only seats one passenger!)
-Headcrab cuisine.
-Finding long-forgotten (or simply pushed the the back of my head) but neat things. Today I found a hieroglyphics stamp set, my Senior Girl Scout book, helicopter fairies, two boxes of drawings from highschool, and a pile of Zoobooks. (I had a subscription, man.)
-10 fantastic futuristic materials that actually exist.
-This Hellsing remix drabble and the (linked within) fic that it is remixing. Aaaah, excellence.
-Mongolian Grill. I have been there a couple of times this last week, and both occasions were marvelous. Mm, customized food.
-Flickr's A Year of Mornings pool.
-Chloe. Here's her flickr photostream.
-Transformers talk, in different flavors.
-The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies. Hee.
-abandonedtheaters.com, which is just that - photos of abandoned theaters. Oh man, this is so cool.
-The Autoshoujo generator! telophase has launched a contest involving making up covers for series based on titles given by the generator. (She has also been posting extremely amusing results under this tag. The rules for the contest are in a post under that tag as well.)
-Penitence. She has been showing up in my sketchbook of late.
-geekerypokery's P4 fst, So Much Depends On The Weather.
-ETA: fresh raspberries from the back yard! Mmmmmmm. They are still warm from the sun. ♥
-Spatzen (cooked in chicken broth) with cream sauce, salads, this crocheted moogle, Cardcaptor Sakura cake, pesto, this lovely saturated photo set, googly eyes, coming up with ways to use the formal dresses that have been sitting around in my room, angelpires, ankle boots, fwooshing around in my pink poofy dress, Reese's, Queer Eye Candy, waistcoats with skirts, 365 reasons to party, Frankenswine, interesting perspective, Doe Deere's cyber unicorn outfit, tophats, precision mosquito slaying, awesome accounts of Pride parades, Mohammad Yazid's art, Texture Lovers (free textures!), Ozymandias, Lament of Innocence (I don't care what anybody says, I really like LoI), awesome AU and character memes, oracle fish.

How about you?

Today was a break
from the endless packing up
much-needed, well-spent.

Spent a while reading
drawing fun things, reading more -
vampires on the brain.

The prompt this week for
Illofriday is 'worn' - I
think I'll draw something.

We finally convinced Grandma to give us through the end of July. Thank goodness.

Among the interesting things found today by myself and my mother (my brothers are being totally useless): Megatron (Transmetal 2; very dusty, cranky about it), a boxed set of Samantha American Girl books, a taped interview with my great-grandmother two years before I was born, a tape of the songs from a play I was in in elementary school, my Eskimo yo-yo and silver unicorn pendant with an opal set in it (both given to me by my late maternal grandfather on his return from a trip to Alaska), a lead bar, a VHS tape recorder, a Jar Jar Binks action figure, a pink Slinky.

Acquired from the fruit stand: apples, bread, fresh strawberries, pestoooo.

I'm gonna need more boxes.

Pausing from packing for late lunch and an art post!

( small pile of fanart: Avatar cyberpunk AU, Slayers, Castlevania, Kingdom Hearts, Vocaloid, Princess Tutu )

Dreamed of being interrogated by Haruhara Haruko about my swearing habits so that I could attend school. It was kind of terrifying. (Awesome in retrospect, though.)

Well! Badness or no badness, there are things to be thankful for. So. Things I am digging this Thursday.

-Awesome ridiculous crossovers. YES.
-The tea shop in town. I really adore the couple that owns it, the atmosphere, the tea itself...it's marvelous.
-Finding interesting things while cleaning. I foresee finding a lot more; I shall document the most interesting for wider perusal and hopefully amusement.
-The Big Picture's dance set.
-The Golden Compass.
-My amazing supportive friends. Thank you all, seriously.
-Adapting recipes from things people have posted.
-The pasta dish I made the other day. (Pasta cooked al dente; pine nuts toasted in olive oil and butter, whatever herbs are on hand. Simple and subtle, but tasty.)
-Sketchbook spreads like this Mirrormask-inspired one.
-Small geese! Small SYNCHRONIZED geese! They are down by the pond. Eee.
-Sixthandelm's amazing woodburned boxes. (Found through etsy.)
-Epic ridiculous text conversations with my brother.
-Benn loxo du taccu, which is a really cool music blog.
-The airbending effects in the Avatar movie teaser trailer. Much of it may make me go WTF (that logo argh), but the airbending effects sure are neat. (Kid's got some moves, too, dang.)
-ugly_crap, which is about "the ugliest products in the universe." Totally hilarious and horrifying. This is the most amazing toilet on the face of the planet.
-Keri Smith's blog.
-Bag memes. Oh god, I love bag memes. I have found some really interesting ones this week.
-YGOTAS 41.
-This Russian children's book about different kinds of love. It is utterly charming. Not wholly worksafe for drawings of genitalia?
-No Time Wasters, which is completely brilliant.
-This knitted transforming Wolf. (10th Kingdom) Omg holy crap this is amazing.
-This post.
-Peanut butter and banana toast, Ovaltine, small birds, watercolor juxtaposed with sharp ink lines, sudden Toph, IHOP, olive oil, having a nice clean stove, my stripy brown dress, viera, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell art, dresses on Modcloth, jasmine tea, intricately detailed ink work, folds, this FLCL poster, license plate acronyms, finding awesome things on Tegaki, this kickin' Speed Racer piece, excessively awesome things on DA, steampunk Batman, these horoscope pieces, new-to-me music, Rewind Coffee's packaging, the scary washing machine.

What about you? What's making you happy this week?

-On Friday, a bird flew down the chimney into the fireplace. I heard the flutter of birds flying past the house, and then a loud series of sounds that sounded suspiciously like birds flying around and crashing into the chimney (the outside bit). I kept hearing fluttery, flappy, scrabbly noises for a while afterward.

Curious, I watched the fireplace for a minute or two. There was another flappy scramble, and a FOOF of ash around the edges of the door.

Holy shit, I thought, there's something in the fireplace.

Quietly, I crept over and eased the door open. There was an explosion of wings, and a little bird darted past me and flew around the edge of the curtain, smack into the window. Frantic, it flapped around behind the curtain, trying to escape.

I crossed the room and opened the door, then went back to the window, opened the curtain, and tried to shoo the bird out. It flapped around for a bit, then zoomed across the room and landed on the screen. It stayed there for a moment, then swished around it and was gone.

-Synchronized small geese by the pond! EEEE. They are so cute.

-I went to the tea shop in town yesterday and bought the last of their jasmine. (It is quite tasty.) I love the couple that owns the shop; they are completely awesome.

-I've been watching news of the situation in Iran on and off - not a lot I can do, but it really pays to keep informed.

-Stormy today. I think I may stay in the rest of the afternoon with tea, a light blanket, and The Golden Compass.

-I saw a man in town yesterday with AMAZING style. He was wearing a red suit, red shoes, a red hat tipped back a little on his head, and a crisp white shirt, all of which offset his (dark) skin beautifully. He was strolling down the sidewalk, and I could tell that he was totally confident that he looked awesome. He did.

-I'm not entirely sure what to do with myself now that the quarter's over. I need some concrete goals, I think. Some good projects.

-Happy happy Solstice.

Stuff I am digging this week!

-Flux capacitors.
-SHOELUST. Oshi-
-Flipping through Joy and finding neat recipes.
-My new dress.
-Forever 21 and the screamingly pink bag in which I brought home my new dress.
-Science Scout Badges!
-45 Unusual/Stylish Super Mario Brothers Artworks.
-Excellent dinosaur-related epiphanies.
-Fanny the Fairy on flickr - holy shit, there is so much food porn in this person's flickr stream. I stared and stared and stared while I perused the photos. Keep clicking. No, really.
-Which student are you? Ahaha. This one has been making the rounds of the ell jay. It certainly made me laugh.
-The fiber burn test chart, or: improving fiber arts with fire.
-Acquiring interesting things to use in art pieces. I now have possession of an enormous misprint of my friend's dad driving a red sports car. I foresee the acquisition of some matte acrylic medium.
-Finding amazing-looking recipes. Caramel sea salt tart (link within the link for extra food porn), nutella ice cream, peanut butter cups, olive oil almond cake, mango lassi (which I adore), matcha shortbread (holy shit).
-Speed Racer, series, movie, and tie-in game. I know, tie-in games are for the most part shit, but this one is really fun. YOU USE CAR-FU.
-I love Typography. :D
-The Xelloss Theatrical Company. "Xelloss, if you put on another production of "The Phantom of the Xelloss" I swear I will kick you into the stratosphere."
-Magnetic katamari. At times, I really wish I remembered how to crochet.
-Re-finding artists that I had lost track of.
-The Uniform Project. The woman who runs the site is wearing one style of dress (she has seven identical ones) for a year, and posting photos of the ways she styles it. I like seeing the different ways a given garment can be styled.
-Reconnecting with people. ♥
-Another Green World, which I have been listening to a lot.
-8 foot squid pillow!!
-YGOTAS episode 40. "Come forth Slifer, the executive producer!"
-GRILLED CHEESE PARTY AND SOCK PUPPET PARTY
-These amazing rainbow bangs clip-on hair extensions.
-This pair of posts: Open letter to recent college graduates and Graduate school for unemployed college students.
-Pleasant days in the studio, chisel pens, dabbing on color, visual history of the credit card, Wan Shi Tong, almond French toast, knitted companion cube, ceiling cat papercraft, oddball ice cream sundaes, SHARK KNIFE, silly drawings, paper popups :D, flask hard drives, masklike makeup, these retro Ritz and Oreo packages (I dig the clean lines), moogle cupcakes!, origami cherry blossoms, ridiculous crossover art, sidequests truth, talking shop, Princess Tutu figures, Book Covers Anonymous, '.jpg' as a tattoo, pictures of the contents of packages, flowery teas, barrel rolling gummi ships.

Phew. A lot of links in that one! What's rocking your world this week?

Almond extract is really good in French toast!

As incentive for fraulein_karma to finish her homework, I offered to draw her something which I would then hold hostage until she finished.

A: What would you like?
S: ...Sexy sexy Sukka.
S: Bonus points for Sokka in a Kyoshi warrior outfit.
A: kay.

( pretty worksafe )

Hello Thursday!

-Ridiculous squee about cyberpunk. I smell an AU coming on.
-Battle Royale. (Larxene and Mitsuko should fight. (Larxene would win.) Mitsuko and Amber Sweet should be backstabby BFF.)
-The joy of finding old awesome FSTs still active.
-Finding amazing cosplay. (I squeaked embarrassingly loud over this Winnowill.)
-Spending hours checking out awesome art and writing.
-117days, which is an incredible Akuroku-themed countdown comm. The artist and writer are posting each day until 358/2 is released stateside.
-When stories immediately unfold in my head following some small prompting. It's a marvelous feeling.
-Mirrormask. I really dig its aesthetics.
-Having earned a kickin' grade in math. Seriously, I'm so pleased about this.
-The art project outlined at the end of the post here.
-Markus Zusak's The Book Thief.
-I have you now. (photo. just click it, man.)
-This table of the evolution in design of certain items.
-Orange Crows. Review forthcoming.
-The FML McCoy Twitter. (Star Trek geeking, ahoy!) It's funny because it's true.
-Leisurely days. They are amazingly relaxing when indulged in following massive IRL drama.
-Word games with fun groups of people. I love me some word games, and in the right company they become even better.
-Up. A number of enjoyable movies this week!
-Awesome belts, Patrick Wolf, noodle dishes, beans, color-coded notes, these vintage Coke can designs, unusual ties, straw hats, intriguing colors of nail polish, these old coupons, buttercups, style noodling, forest gods, Samuel Aang Jackson, stark design, The Big Gay ice Cream Truck, olive oil and pepper, backseamed fishnets, Dorothy Parker poetry, Paint A Picture, poetry postcards, this xkcd strip (Voynich manuscript), dictionaries, this collection of alphabet keychains (N is so cute XD), the notion of The 3/50 Project (which is about supporting local businesses), nylon flowers, playing with type (I keep coming up with ideas for typographically-enhanced art pieces), Kill Bill Roxas, finding unexpected interesting foods in the cupboards, this mirror, white board shenanigans, this Lolita-esque photoshoot, the newest stuff on Villainess (unf unf want), composing questions and statements to phrase things just so, having my analyses complimented by my lit prof ('always insightful' she said), live poetry readings, Stop - Camel Time.

How about you? What marvelous things are you loving this week?

Oh, design and typography, I like fiddling with you.

( Vocaloidy black and blue )

I am getting a 99% in my math class, which means that I have gotten a 4.0 out of it. My math prof says that she probably wouldn't even bother grading my final if I took it. (She also congratulated me on how well I did.) This quarter and last have been fairly illuminating - all through high school and much of middle school, I thought I was really bad at higher math, but it turns out that I'm actually pretty darn good at it.

As I have thus negated the need for one of my finals, there are only two remaining - lit on Friday, which shall take the form of a large discussion seminar, and Japanese on Monday. I'm feeling pretty good about this. (Since we finished early in Japanese class today, the handful of us left drew on the whiteboards and wrote kanji and the like. I drew Toph bending some rocks - and a sandworm, which Toph may or may not be bending. I think that would be a super cool art piece, now that I think about it.)

On my way to the bus stop, I ran into a lady with whom I've been acquainted for a couple of quarters, who reminded me of the Espial (the campus art and literary journal) poetry readying/release party, which I had quite forgotten about but had meant to attend. I scooted off to that, and on the way found something awesome in the student center. People come in and sell things in there sometimes - this guy had been in several times before, but I'd never noticed him having this rack of belts before. As I rounded the other side of it, I spied a white belt and a black belt that each had RAINBOW STUDS ON THEM. They were six bucks a pop, and I just about squeaked in delight. I didn't have cash on me and I was running to the reading, and when I emerged he was packing up to leave. My sadface, let me show you it.

I was smacked in the face with the idea for a story while I was chatting with one of the poets. Something may come of it.

Drama in my personal life has been building and smashing away at the rocks of circumstance, but I'm working on riding the wave and going with it. I think everyone needs some snorkel equipment, and now this metaphor has died (drowned, if you will), but that's okay.

This weekend was fun! I was feeling eeeeehhh at the start of it, but I did not allow that to dampen my excursion to Seattle. Friday evening's dinner was a hurried affair at a Thai restaurant we like (chicken with a chili sauce, a peanut sauced noodle dish with cubes of tofu and copious amounts of broccoli), which we finished with just in time to catch the showing of Up we were bound for. That was an excellent movie! It was very tragic, I will add - much more so than the trailers would lead you to believe. People were crying twenty minutes in - hell, people were tearing up over the opening short.

A birthday party was slated for Saturday afternoon, so we spent some time beforehand making chocolate chip pie (Sarah) and chicken curry salad (me). The party was great fun - we played Assassin (I have a great deal of patience with that game, as evidenced by my finally getting Sarah just as we were leaving, hours later) and Apples to Apples ("AIDS has changed the face of the way people have sex!" "So has Japan!"), watched stupid videos, and ate tasty foods. When we finally skedaddled with our leftovers, it was some time in the evening. Driven by inspiration that I don't recall the specifics of, Sarah downloaded Battle Royale and we watched it. Mmm, Japanese school kids killing the crap out of each other. (She called a couple of the characters I would like most right off the bat, and she was totally right. Mitsuko and Chigusa, for the curious, and those for entirely different reasons.)

I crashed early, and slept well.

Sunday was largely very lazy, though we did watch Mirrormask. (It was a movietastic weekend!) I quite enjoyed that movie; the art style is delicious eye candy. And the Really Useful Book! Eee. ♥ Masks and keys and darkness and drawing and alternate worlds and a delightful Black Queen.

This week is finals week, but I shan't let that stop me from having a good time of it.

A touch late this evening due to my catching a nap, but! Here we go.

-Air conditioned buildings. They are a blessing, even if my house does not number among them.
-Extensions on assignments I forgot to do! Ahahaha, what an unanticipated delight.
-Japanese pictionary, which we played in class today. It was HILARIOUS. I have a bit of pictorial evidence.
-Stars in fifties-style pinup pictures. Hot.
-My Axel Play Arts figure. XD
-Retarded drawing memes. Working on retarded drawing memes. Checking out other people's retarded drawing memes.
-Little swishy dresses, on myself and others.
-This incredibly hot genderfucky post. U-unf.
-Great queer things that have gone on this last week. ♥
-The mere existence of Gotham Girls.
-Playing with water effects in art. And fabric effects.
-Kingdom Hearts ridiculousness, which has largely had to do with 358/2 this last week. On that note, neat 358/2 art.
-Discovering excellent meta. ♥
-Feeling like I am equipped at least a little to sketch out some of the skeezy race stuff in things like the liveaction Avatar movie and the DBZ movie.
-Kinokuniya and practically everything in it.
-Everything in this post. I-it's so beautiful.
-Wearing my hair up, cute bento boxes, brush pens, sleeveless tops, Dessert Time is a banana, handmade manjuu, polka dot dresses, wearing feathers, fans, hairpins, this photo, my thermos' insulating capabilities, great Penguin sci fi book covers, Eavan Boland poetry, naked time, sleeping through the hot part of the day, these rollerskates, stones that shimmer and glow, background music in real life, plotting packages, the rot13 cipher, cottonwood drifts, keeping an eye on E3 announcements, Very Definitely Not Dinner & a Movie (a list of entertaining date ideas), delicious satire, Hyuugacest, kiln gods, the revealing qualities of the contents of people's bags, the smell of fresh nectarines, laughing so hard I can't stand or walk.

What about you?

Oof. The heat is oppressive, and my voice has been on the lam for most of the day, but it is okay because sheer dorkiness (and productivity) has left me in good spirits. Also in the category of 'awesome things' is Obama's proclamation making June LGBT Pride Month, which makes me so eeeful that I could just burst.

Fuckin' hells to the yeah, man. Hells to the yeah.

Also in that category is NEW HAMPSHIRE OH YEAH. (I suggest skipping the comments.)

Re: the Axel Play Arts figure: oh man, this is so awesome! I mean, I knew he'd be awesome, but...so awesome! His coat is soft! I knew he had a bunch of points of articulation, but eeeee. The chest/midsection one makes me glee ridiculously, as do the ankle and wrist ones. (His pelvic joints are stiff - har har, you can laugh, I sure did - but most of the others move fine. One knee seems to bend crooked, though that's probably just from the stiffness.) I didn't know his coat ties and beads moved separately! :D I haven't tried putting in his chakram hands yet, but I will. I tested out how they hold the weapons themselves, though and noted how they'll be great for groping Roxas when I get him, which is eeee.

New favorite dorky thing I've acquired this year? Possibly!

I realize that I am behind on comments, threads, and assorted other correspondence, for which I apologize. The last few days have been hectic, especially with grandma's fall. The heat has also been prohibitive in terms of sitting in my oven of a house to type long things. I am slowly but surely chipping away at it - please forgive me the extra time it takes.

(Interestingly, there's a very particular point where one can feel the temperature drop if one is driving out to my place - it's where the coolness of the river starts to be noticeable. It's neat.)

The cottonwoods are doing their thing, leaving piles of white fuzz in drifts all over the place. It doesn't strike me as unusual, but it's interesting to hear people not from this area comment on it.

I heard someone say BAMF in person, and it made me unreasonably happy.

ETA: I love that I can put in "[naruto character] sexy no jutsu" on DA and pull up a bunch of things. I think.

Reply to this meme with "Words" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. Alternatively, if you've done the meme before, just explain what the words mean to you in this post. :1

Words from kytha.

( talk talk talk )

No doubt everyone Saiyuki-ly inclined on my flist has heard about this already, but Gaiden will be ending as planned...to be replaced with THE ADVENTURES OF YOUNG KOUMYOU. YES.

This makes Koumyou in my head go ^____^ and Nii in my head go aisj;fahjdsdif.

Today, unpleasantly exciting morning aside, was rather nice. I went to Uwajimaya with some members of my Japanese class as planned (I didn't know they sold Giant Robot magazine there! desire for magazine, it is strong), though I didn't get a lot since we left half an hour earlier than I thought we would be. I did, however, finally break down and get Axel (aka the Play Arts figure) since I'd had such an unsettling morning. Mm, retail therapy.

(I was tempted by the Kairi figure (I'll get Ansem from Pink Godzilla, mwahaha), because ilu Kairi (man, I would kill for a Namine*), but I'd been considering the Axel** for a good long while. Then I came home and found 'Dia had written pretty pretty Kairific, and my Kairi-impulse was sated.)

Once home, I ate in order to stave off a headache, then snoozed in my overly warm living room. I'll be checking on Grandma before she goes to bed, though I believe I shall stay at home for the night. I've homework to do.

I have valiantly held myself back from looking at 358/2 spoilers. See me not spoiling myself? Not spoiling myself. I'll watch cutscenes, no doubt, but I'm not looking for story information beforehand.


*Also every other Organization member. oh shit a Larxene would destroy me
**He needs a Roxas, hmm.
***This will only make sense to Sarah, but - they only had the yellow one, which I was tempted by but forgot in my haste to get the incense I'd promised mom I'd look for. If you are inclined, we could go next weekend so I can look for the blue one for lunch or summat.