Whew. I feel like today has been the climax of our Deadline Death Gauntlet, and the rest will be the denouement. Like it's all downhill from here. At least we hope it is. We still have three things to turn in, though, so we'll see. I don't know what it is, though, that all these "plans" (as in "plans for Monday night") keep popping up when we're busiest. Like seeing Batman and home teachers coming over.

It was really crazy today, too, because it was our Gakuen Alice Check Day. That means we finished translating it yesterday, and today we went over the entire script to fix all the stuff that sounded funny, as well as translate all the stuff that was too hard for us the first time because we were in such a hurry to move on with the story (which really just means we had to do a Google search and sometimes a little detective work to find out what it really meant instead of just using our handy dictionaries). With the easier titles, that usually only takes about a couple of hours, but it was taking longer so we were kind of stressed out. Why? Because we knew our home teachers would be coming over, and earlier than usual, thus cutting into our work time more. I didn't know it would take so long to check Gakuen Alice when we made the plans (though I suspected). Also, we kept getting phone calls from people wanting us to pay them to make a website for us and visits from Jehovah's Witnesses. And I don't mind listening to people, but when I say I'm busy I do hope they'll make things quicker. Ah well. It really felt like it was taking more time than it actually did.

Fortunately, we managed to get everything done, and still have a very nice visit with our home teachers. But it's very likely that we won't be working on Big Project today.

But! We did finally get Ashvin's ending last night! I haven't decided if I want to talk about it or not, because normally I figure why not, but we've been feeling very pressed for time lately, so I don't want to take the time to remember everything. So maybe another day.

Today I'm thankful for finishing Gakuen Alice, a nice visit with our home teachers, getting to have chocolate dunkers last night (so sad that they're gone...), having finally gotten Ashvin's ending, and the X button.

I should not still be awake. I should not stay up this late.
Especially not playing Wii Fit.
But hey! At least I'm exercising, yes?

I actually beat the crazy balancy balls-into-holes game. By the end my balls were the four of us (me, ladyofthegate, starlit_dragon, and ashitara) and then Niou, Masako, Chitose and Aiba. This made me rediculously happy.
Also, Yoga is awesome, but I should probably do two sets of each thing that I do.

Ultimate balance test is IMPOSSIBLE.
That is all. Now shower, then sleepies.

So we saw The Dark Knight last night. It feels like so long ago now. (We've had a long day.) It was a pretty awesome movie, but kind of weird in that it simultaneously inspires hope and despair for mankind. But mostly hope, I think, so overall we liked it. I'm not sure we can watch it over and over again, though, because we were reminded once again that the Joker is a scary scary villain. I knew he was, because we've seen him in Batman the Animated Series and everything, and we figured this version of him would be especially so based on the speculations about Heath Ledger's death, and also because dipping someone in a vat of acid (taking an example from the animated series) doesn't seem as evil and psychotic when animated as it does when liveactionated.

But it didn't really hit me that, oh yeah the Joker's psycho and scary, until right before the movie started when I remembered that, to me, one of the scariest movies I've ever seen was Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. And this wasn't just because I saw it as a little kid and it gave me nightmares, because we saw it when we were eighteen. Explaining why it scared me so much would pretty much give away the entire movie, so I won't do that here, but it is pretty good, so if you want to see it and haven't, you can try Netflix? Anyway, chibidrunksanzo was really excited later when she got a copy of the director's cut of Return of the Joker, and we were worried about how much scarier could this movie get? But the only major difference was that apparently there were more guns in this version, and a certain violent scene was violenter. Well who cares about that stuff? I mean, we're already watching Batman, and it wasn't that much more violent, either.

So that leads me to the question I've had for a long time now. Obviously the part of Return of the Joker that we thought was really scary, and therefore probably inappropriate for children, was something the producers and network censors didn't think would be that big a deal. In other words, they felt it was kiddie enough. Sort of.

My point is, one of the things we commonly hear when people explain what they didn't like about a certain book or anime is, "It was just too kiddie for me," or, "It's fine for a younger audience, but I tend to like things that are more mature." But based on our experience with Batman Beyond, obviously opinions as to what's more appropriate for a younger audience can be pretty varied. Batman was kind of a scary show for us when we were like nine and ten (but we watched it anyway; "Like a toned down version of Higurashi, I guess," Athena says), but on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart talks like it's only natural that his four-year-old would be watching it. And on the other hand, things that seem to us to be aimed at younger audiences manage to get super popular among people our age.

For another example, in sixth grade we were mocked for being so childish as to like a show like Animaniacs by the same girls who carried Rugrats and Teletubbie keychains on their backpacks in high school. Not that it's wrong to like those two shows, but they seem "younger" to us than Animaniacs does.

So my question is this: What makes a show, book, anime, etc. "kiddie"? If you've ever thought something was clearly aimed at a younger (including teenage, since I think most of the people reading this (at least, I hope there are people reading this...) are adults), what is it that makes it seem that way? Inquiring minds sincerely want to know!

And changing the subject, I just wanted to mention that the first guy we (both of us; we have similar taste) ever saw and thought, "Ooh, he's cute!" was Thomas from Pocahontas, who was played by Christian Bale. We are very happy with the current Batman.

Today I'm thankful for baranoneko being kind enough to hold of on getting the Ashvin ending for our sake (we're almost there! we're trying, we promise!), having the Voice music video to watch when we got home from The Dark Knight so we could end the day on a brighter note, Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, getting ever closer to the end of the Deadline Death Gauntlet, and having an order of stuffed crust pizza on its way here.

I keep attempting to make a post about the last few days and completely failing. I finally watched the first DVD of Veronica Mars and Veronica didn't make me want to smack her nearly as much as the she did in the episodes of season 3 I watched, so I'll continue on with at least the next couple of discs. Also, Godspell is weird.
But it's fantastic when said weirdness is interrupted by fangirls wanting to watch Haruka Matsuri. Natsukashii ne~. *starry eyes* Man, I've forgotten a lot about that event. Fangirling long-distance is awesome. And sometimes new verbs get invented.
Yesterday was Suzaku Combi day for Haruka4. Went through the rest of Sazaki's path and got most of the way through Nagi's path. Snarky boy is snarky. I should probably look into getting some of those sub-character endings at some point.
Last night during my usual "lay awake until the wee hours of the morning" ritual I actually thought about *gaspies* PLOT for Trinity. Filled in a couple of the larger gaps. Killed off another character (oops), though nobody too important.
It appears that they are re-releasing the limited edition of Takahashi Naozumi's A to Z concert. It's the "Encore release" so I don't know if there's anything special involved with it. At any rate, if there are any fangirls out there who don't yet own this, I'd check it out. It's still one of my favorites (if not my outright favorite for nostalgia reasons).

Today was.... special.

I thought I'd slept enough. I really really did.
I felt awful at work, just drained and not good. Nikki let me go home early, and I promptly passed out for about 4 hours.
Jess says that I'm getting old. Either way, my body's never done /this/ to me before, and I'm kinda scared.
I've stayed awake this long, but now it's back to bed for me.

I watched the first half of the Avatar Finale. OMG so amazing.
ORDER OF THE WHITE LOTUS. That is all.

As a final thing before bed, I watched the Shounen Club Premium performance of "One Love". I just fills my heart with sparkles and hearts. In a pleasant way. ^_^
I can't wait to see a DVD with performances of "Truth" on it. *__*

I remember a long time ago I decided to stop treating things like they were a conspiracy in an attempt to make them stop, but they seem to have come back. It's like the universe likes to toy with our video game time.

See, on Friday, we were convinced, because that's usually how things happen, that if we played Haruka 4 at all, Celeste would call during the most... I guess the word I'm looking for is "emotional"... scene with Ashvin (whose name I still insist on spelling with an H, regardless of what's "official"), and when Athena still didn't know if she'd made the right choice or not to proceed with his ending properly. That ended up not happening (whether because of different timing or because we decided not to play at all before the movie, I can't remember), and, since we ended up not seeing the Dark Knight, we had time to play anyway, and uninterruptedly.

On Saturday, as some of you may recall, we were making plans with Mom about stuff. As it turned out, we weren't close enough to any fancy scenes with Ashvin to have a call from Celeste cause that many problems, but since we'd been playing for a while, the exact circumstances we had predicted for a call from Celeste were what we were in when Mom called to let us know she was on her way. It was a very sweet scene with Ashvin, and they still hadn't shown us if we'd made the right choice. Fortunately, we were more amused than annoyed, and we just went through the scene again before Mom got here.

So now we're left with one (or possibly two, since we don't yet know entirely how this game likes to work) chapter left in Ashvin's path, and we were very satisfied that we would have time for at least a chapter tonight, and a chapter tomorrow if we needed it, and then be all done with at least one ending for Haruka 4, so we wouldn't be itching to play it when the DVD we need to watch for work research comes from Netflix on Wednesday (at least, we hope Wednesday).

Re-enter Celeste. She and her boyfriend decided tonight would be a good night to try again to see The Dark Knight. We do like Batman a lot, and they're our best bet for seeing it, so we went along with the idea, and I'm excited about it. But because of her boyfriend's work schedule, we're going to the nine o'clock show, which not only means no time for Haruka 4, but also means we'll miss the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, which means if we want to watch them, since we have work to do still, our best bet will be to watch it tomorrow night, giving us even less time for Haruka 4 then. Ah well. We'll get to Ashvin's ending eventually.

In the meantime, I've been having a really hard time typing the word "Flashback" today. For some reason it always ends up as "Flashbacl." I started being more careful and I think I'm getting better. We'll see if it comes up tomorrow.

Today I'm thankful for having tickets to see The Dark Knight (this time we bought them online ahead of time!), having remembered to add that DVD we need to our Netflix queue when we still had enough time to get it before working on the thing we need to see it for, the relatively cool weather today, having had lots of time to read manga yesterday, and getting some extra work done on Gakuen Alice today.

And what it /can't/ fix can be helped along by food, painkillers, Arashi and Neoroma.
Why yes, work /did/ suck today.

( Arashi Quiz Meme )

I'm Jealous of ashitara's result. But then, Leader /was/ only a percentage point or two behind, and /she/ probably really wanted her second place to win too.

Everyone on my flist has seen the Avatar Finale except me. It's finally downloading at a descent rate though and supposed to be done in an hour or so. I'll probably be stupid and watch it tonight, because waiting until 5 pm tomorrow sounds so annoying.
More annoying in fact, than only getting 6 hours of sleep.

Until then... we're watching Haruka Matsuri while in group chat with baranoneko. More long-distance fangirling needs to be done this way methinks. ^__^

The original plan was to spend a little time prepping pictures (Japan, AX) to post here for today's entry, but since we weren't really chatting with anybody and we decided that we should spend smaller chunks of time at the computer (because for some reason being at the computer is very tiring), that didn't happen. But I'm mentioning it anyway, because hopefully that will help me remember it for next weekend, because it probably won't be until then that we feel like we have enough free time for it again.

The only problem being now I don't know what to write about. Athena said, "Maybe we can post like, five pictures or something," but... Wow, I guess I'm just super lazy. But I promise we will post pictures! Eventually!

We did get to read some manga today, which was nice. Hana to Yume released all of the pre-"I Hate You♥" Akiyoshi Family Serieseseses in two huge books called the Akiyoshi Brothers Special Editions 1 and 2, so we each took one and are taking turns reading them. But Athena got to start hers first, so I'm not sure how the timing will work on that. But if we hadn't done it that way, we would have spent practically forever deciding who got to read what first, so it's really for the best. I don't know how many American Akiyoshi fans have noticed, but all the siblings' names have a different place value. Kazuha's ten thousand (literally, her name means "ten thousand leaves"), Chizuru's a thousand (one thousand cranes), Momoka's a hundred (one hundred flowers), Tonami's ten (ten waves), Ichihisa is one (one... long... time? I guess (we looked it up, and "hisa" can mean "long time" or "old story," so maybe it's a tale as old as time?), and Rei is zero (zero). So on the title page for the stories about each sibling, there's a bar that has all the numbers (like this: 0 1 10 100 1000) (Kazuha's story isn't in it, so it only goes up to 1000), and there's a heart around the number of whoever's story it's about. We think it's neat♥

And the paper is super fancy. It reminds me of Doujin Work, when Najimi is showing her first doujinshi to all her doujin artist friends, and the only nice thing they can think of to say about it is, "This is really nice paper. You don't see paper this nice on most doujinshi." Only this time, the stories are really good! Or at least we think so. Besides, high school Ichihisa? All I can say is ♥

I wonder if more than one person will understand this entry...

Right! I think we were going to mention Dr. Horrible. What were we going to say about him again? The master plan. We read the page about it, but we couldn't tell what it was exactly. All I got was Joss Whedon wants to change show business by having everybody watch Dr. Horrible, but I seem to have missed the details on how that's supposed to do anything. Athena thinks the idea is that it's possible to distribute something for free on the internet and still have people support it financially when things go on sale? But we also heard it had something to do with the writers' strike and I'm not sure how that would tie in. Athena can make sense of it, but me not so much.

We've only seen the first episode so far, and for some reason I feel bad downloading it on a Sunday, but I also kind of like the idea of paying for the episodes when they're available that way, so I think we can wait. Oh, and I guess I better provide a link for the people who don't know about it yet. From what everyone else says I think the important thing you need to know is that it's a supervillain musical. But today is the last day it's available for free.

And hopefully all that was at least a little coherent.

Today I'm thankful for Akiyoshis, fancy paper, getting rain today (in July! and there wasn't even any thunder! (that we heard)), Dr. Horrible, and having a Freschetta pizza for dinner tonight.

Avatar Finale = Epic

( Actually only a few notes )

Avatar is over. Sadness and kittens. But at least it ended well.

Today ended up being more... something... plan-ful? than expected. We didn't get to see The Dark Knight last night, because, though the thought did occur to me and Celeste as we made plans that it might be sold out if we didn't buy tickets online ahead of time, we decided to just go to the theater and see what happened anyway.

Our plan was to see the movie at nine (originally the plan was eight, but Celeste had to call back and change it because that didn't quite fit in her boyfriend's schedule; why she tried to make the plans with us, the ones with the super-flexible schedules, first instead of him, we'll never know), but when we got there, we found out they were sold out until eleven-fifteen. Since that would require us to be out until two in the morning, Celeste and her boyfriend decided they didn't like that idea because they're babies (or because they "had plans" to leave for the beach early this morning), but we were actually glad because not only did it give us an opportunity to come home and play Haruka 4, but after work work work work work work work all week, we noticed we were each coming down with the symptoms of our pet "you're not doing whatever it is you need to do to stay healthy" diseases. Very mild symptoms, but we decided it would be best not to do things like stay out until two in the morning. I'm sure Batman would be worth it, but since we do have work, we need to make sure we can do it without passing out.

Also, I apologize for calling Celeste and her boyfriend babies.

So the idea was that we'd stay home this weekend, and if Mom called or otherwise invited us over for Sunday dinner, we would politely refuse (unless hamburger biscuits were involved) because going over there is not as restful as staying home. Especially recently; I think that while we've learned to deal with the different way they do things over there, the clashing personalities are starting to, well, clash again. Also, since we've been working so hard, we have less time to ourselves, and over there, even less.

Mom called this morning at nine forty-five and told me that Scott had requested we bring Hercules tomorrow. This created a dilemma, because Hercules is one of our favoritests, and we love to share our favoritests. I explained to Mom that we were thinking of saying no because we've both been getting sick, and she believed me because, what with the overwork, I have a hard time making my voice sound normal right when I'm out of bed. But since she'd asked us to bring Hercules, I didn't know anymore, so she said she'd call back later and told me to go back to bed. When she called later, she informed me that they'd been invited somewhere else for dinner tomorrow, so why not go over there for dinner and Hercules tonight? And that's what we did. We figured this time it would only take away our evening, and not our whole day.

Dinner was nice, and then they wanted to watch the Bryan Regan DVD they had bought over the Independence Day weekend before watching Hercules. Sarah told us a little about him before we watched, so we were actually looking forward to it, but he started his act by being what we considered to be unnecessarily rude and condescending. It was weird, because he's talking about the not-so-bright things he himself does, but in a way that makes it seem like the other people are the idiots. The big problem was that we couldn't keep our annoyance in all that well. Athena was better at it, and even reminded me to cut it out at first, but as it went on it got harder and harder. And so we're pretty sure that's what Steve was talking to Mom about when Hercules got interrupted by a phone call, and the interruption lasted longer than the phone call should have, because afterward Mom told us not to talk so much next time.

But at least there was Hercules. That ended up being frustrating, too, but I think I should stop complaining in public. But the movie was still as good as ever.

Today I'm thankful for being really close to finally getting an ending in Haruka 4, having tomorrow to ourselves, Mom making chocolate chip cookies, getting to watch Hercules, and animators.

Went out for a friend's birthday tonight and had really good wine (and spent too much money *sweatdrop*). I want the Avatar finale, but since I no can has right now...it's time to browse through NicoNico again. Last night I was up too late doing this, but I was just too highly amused by all the hand-drawn Haruka parodies. Since I know some of you fangirls have NicoNico accounts, it's time for linkspam. I've posted some of these before, but it's good to have my favorites in one spot.

( Ouran, Sugoi yo!! Masaru-san, Pretty Cure, Azumanga Daioh...and others )

I should sleep, shouldn't I.
((Gyah the Haruka fandom is so awesome))

Batman = awesome. So many twists. It's a bit too long, and geez there was a lot of plot, but great movie.

I was wrong about chem. It's not getting easier, and it's not going to get easier. Orbitals and hybridization and bond angles...etc are kicking my ass. I don't get that shit, which is bad cause my test is on Monday :(

My car is gone. They're gonna mark it off as a total loss. I have to buy a new car now =/ I'm so stupid.

I haven't ranted about Avatar here, because I watched it all synced with Kat and had my commentary in yahoo chats.
But now...
( The last two episodes before... )

Sorry, that got random.
Now I'm off to be distracted by Yasuka's DVD. It arrived from dilettantka today and I'm so very very excited. ^__^

A detailed summary of Maoh 3.
I may keep doing these, I rather enjoy it.
( I try to keep these focuses, but still they ramble )

Will inevitably add more to that when I get time to watch the episode again. Mmyep.

Wow, I've been posting a lot lately...

Random Ethics Question:
When a friend A helps their friend, person B for a favor, such as lending them a book, or driving them somewhere, is it right for friend A to charge Person B? :x Or is it just a weird thing for Friend A always making situations where you owe them money?

This has happened several times with my friend "Joy". :x The first couple times, I wasn't sure if it was a slip of tongue, or a fluke or what but it is mind boggling to me if it is a standard ethics issue or if it is a quirk. 

Case 1:
Last September, I was to take a class that required me to buy an expensive textbook. Being the resourceful person I am and not wanting to spend so much money, I found that "Joy" has already taken the class and still had the textbook. I ask them if I could borrow the book and as a thank you I will treat them to dinner or something. While we were talking about the book lending, they casually mention to me that they will 'charge me lol'. I took this as a thought that they meant that they rather just have $10 or as a joke and thought nothing of it. The next day, Joy brought the book and started calculating "my fee to rent". Not only was I disgusted and offended, Joy even calculated tax in my bill. "You know it's Seattle and all, so I'll charge you 9% tax" So, by the end of that,  the book costed $60 to rent and the new book was $80. And another stipulation was that sometimes she would need the textbook herself, so I can't have it on certain nights (she's taking the next level up of my class) because she needs to use it.  Needless to say, I "politely" turned down her offer, much to her surprise (but it's such a deal!) and bought my own book.

Case 2:
Beginning of Winter Break. I wanted to utilize my gift card at the Old Navy in downtown Seattle because they were having a huge sale. I originally was going to go by myself because it's better for me if I shop by myself (I take forever lookign for sales lol) Joy tagged along just for fun, "you know just to hang out" and she brought her car along. So we go to Old Navy, shop around and do stuff. When we were leaving the parking garage, she told me "you know, I kind of had stuff to do today but I came out with you to shop because I was nice and I don't really want to pay the full fare" The fare was $5, we were next to the window and the attendant was waiting for us to pay. Joy pulled out two dollars looked to me to pay the rest. On the ride home, I spent the entire time wondering what the heck happened  with three dollars less in my wallet. 

Case 3:
Valentines Day. The dorm cafeteria was serving chocolate covered strawberries. I was already sick of eating them because another friend received a bushel from her boyfriend and shared. I brought a box for my roommate because she was stuck in the room studying for her midterm the next day and I already owed her money so we would have been even.  After dinner when we were getting ready to leave, Joy noticed the strawberries and saw that I had a box (which I told her earlier that I was getting for my roommate).  Along the way back she kept on talking about the strawberries and how they look good, and how she has a craving for them ever since our friend shared with us (she took about half herself, wtf). Finally, I told her "if you want the strawberries so badly, you can always go back and get a box, I'll go with you" She looked at me and said "Well since you already got a box for your roommate, wanna get me a box too? You have plenty of money on your food account and it's not like you'll be able to use it all and they are pretty expensive" I kind of stared at her and told her "Don't you have a lot of money on your dining plan as well? Use yours up and when you're starving, I'll buy food for you. But until then, don't mooch" and walked away. She sulked and later after my shower, I saw my roommate share some strawberries with her. 

Case 4:
Late February. My RA decided to have a floor dinner and a bunch of us ate out that night. It was also Joy's birthday a day earlier, but we were not able to celebrate it due to it was midterms week. So while the RA's were running to different doors to invite others to go with us, my friends and I were waiting down in the common area. We were there for approximately 10 minutes. When our group of 15+ people arrived at the restaurant (the look on the poor employee's faces was pricelessly sad lol) and were ordering, Joy turned to me and said "Oh I forgot my wallet, and since you said that you still need to get me a present, will you pay for me? I want a soda too".  So I paid for her meal as well as mine because I did owe her a present (because she took me out for my birthday). But if she just wanted me to pay for her in the first place, she could have just told me, instead of pretending to forget her wallet when she had more than enough time to fetch it. 

Case 5
Winter Quarter After Finals. A bunch of us decided to go out and eat sushi. To give the waitress an easier time we decided to combine our checks into twos. By luck and going to the bathroom at the wrong time, I got paired up with Joy. Joy takes the bill and says "Okay, I'll pay the tab with my debit card so you can owe me money in the future. By the way, our total bill was 33 and I'm going to pay $7  tip, double the tax!" I take the tab and told her "I'll pay the tab this time, You did it last time so you can pay me approximately twenty". She agreed, and I only left four dollars tip. The service wasn't that great to deserve $7 according to me. Next week, instead of paying me back like she said, she bought a bunch of useless things for me (a notebook, a nice ball point pen, and cute sticky notes. 'These are all high quality so consider yourself lucky). I have a penchant for cute stationary but was still annoyed by the lack of paper money. I spent the rest of spring quarter being very cautious and thus didn't run into any problems.

Case 6:
Today was my day off at the Gap, and I planned to obtain a Washington permit (it's a part of residency and my oregon one was expiring anyways. Joy decided to visit me at the Gap and I mentioned to her my plans for today. She offers me a ride because the bus doesn't come often and "she's free the entire day because she doesn't want to study". So we agree to meet at nine and have lunch afterwards (I was craving pancakes ^~^) and she left. Today I woke up at 8, showered and got ready by 8:55. I receive a text by 9:10 from Joy telling me that she just woke up and will pick me up in a hour. An hour passes, she picks me up and we head to the licensing office. I forgot a major documentation and we rush back to pick it up. By the time we headed back, I was about 12 something away from being called up and waited. Joy waited in the car and took a nap. I arrived for the second time around noon. I finished my test around 1:30 because of the lines. And after all that, I was still unable to renew my permit. I brought several examples of proof of address (a letter from the university with my address, two different pay stubs, my transcript, checks with my address, my ww2, my voter registration card and a printed bank document with my address) and I was still denied. The letter from my university doesn't count, the bank paperk wasn't official enough, one of the paystubs needs a billing address, my transcript wasn't an official one (which they themselves didn't specify if they wanted official or not), my ww2 and voter card had my dorm addrsss on there. I already had the woman change my address for the card but she refused to use that as proof "I want a physical card. You telling me isn't enough" "But ma'am, you helped me change it, you are a witness" "Doesn't matter, I still need a piece of paper" 

Anyways, back to Joy. When I finished, Joy was waiting for me outside. (Oh, you're finally done). She was trying to call her father about something and I waited while she finished her call, thinking of pancakes and IHOP. When she was done, I cheerfully told her "yay lets go to IHOP :DD" Her response "If you still want to go, I'll go with you, but I promised my dad that I will be back around two to go flying with him and I still have some errands that I need to get done today and, I still need to head back to study. But I'm waiting for my dad to call me back and maybe I can drop you off and get my stuff done before 2:30, then go flying with him if he's willing to wait. But what do you want to do?."  I was bewildered and a bit angry already at the licensing lady being a jerk so this did wonders for my mood. I have this philosophy that when one is asking for a favor, they are in no position to demand for anything. The person who is helping you can decide how they do things like get to the place or what to buy because that is the least I could give them for helping me out. So I stiffly reply, "Well, you're the driver. Do whatever you want to do, I'm up for food if you are, but I am starving. I haven't had time to fix anything of substance this morning while waiting for you. If you don't have the time I can ride the bus back save you the time to drive me" and she said "Oh it's really not about time, if my dad goes without me it's okay but right now it's mostly about gas and I don't want to spend money on gas today because it's my mom's car, and it's on empty.  

By then, I was not in the mood for her and her "splitting the costs of the trip calculations" so I just told her to drive me back so she can go back home and go flying with her father. She drives me back and on the way talks about me owing her money for gas. I have gotten a bit better at hiding my annoyance for these kinds of things and quickly refute her reply because she currently owes me money "and consider us square"

Joy is really a nice person really. We have a lot of interests and we generally have a blast hanging out together. She was one of my first friends up here and really helped me learn about the city. But really, her money hoarding ways are getting out of hand. I understand if she wants to charge me money for gas if say, we were going somewhere far. But today she only drove...about 20 minutes away from my house. If I took a bus that would translate to approximately an hour. I also kind of understood (kind of) of her charging me in winter quarter. We didn't know each other well enough to fully trust another with a book. But really, she has more than enough money to cover her expenses (her parents are rich, her father drives a bloody Lexus) and she works as well. It's just that she doesn't spend it wisely (who spends $200 a month hanging out with friends, and buying manga wtf). And I guess she compensates by mooching off of others (yes I'm not the only one) such as getting someone else to buy her food (one of my other friends actually got into a fight with her about this, but she didn't do it in the most elegant way out there "You know,  hate it when the rich steal from the poor. Your family is rich, get your own food, stop stealing!" 

but yeah, I don't want to lose her as a friend, but I will be careful about her. I've managed to prevent a lot of these kinds of situations..

( Avatar - 3x17 - The Ember Island Players )

Series finale tomorrow! Squee!
I also watched Slayers and Xam'd today. I want Slayers to get licensed so that I can have pretty DVDs. The filler continues to amuse me, and there is still no sign of Xellos. Sadness and kittens.
Xam'd.........I have mixed feelings about. Absolutely GORGEOUS show. Seriously, I can't imagine the production budget of this thing. It rocks so hard. The fact that the US gets it a full 2 months before (literally) the rest of the world? Amazing. And the price wouldn't even be that bad...if it were to own, and not just to rent. As it is, I'll definitely rent the next episode to finish out the two-parter, and then we'll see from there. I only get the SD episodes, obviously, as I do not have an HD TV, and I'm wondering how much more prettier it looks on HD.

BIG TIME EDIT: I know I've caught a lot of you over AIM, but for those of you I haven't - if you /haven't/ yet watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, what have you been doing with your lives? And to give you a bigger hook: Supervillain Musical.

I think I'm going to write a short entry today. Man, we're so exhausted, and we reeeeeeeally need to go do something not at the computer. Last night we were actually really scared about work today, since we're on Gakuen Alice, and we were afraid we'd have to work super overtime to get our quota in, and we couldn't just say, "Oh, it's best not to push ourselves too hard," and stop, either, because we've got two deadlines right after it. But fortunately, things are going pretty well, and we even beat our quota! Take that!

But it was a strenuous battle, so I'm very very glad for the weekend. Also very glad for getting enough work done that we don't have to work tomorrow. This has been a really intense week and a half.

Today I'm thankful for beating our quota today, getting to see The Dark Knight tonight, tomorrow being Saturday, flour mills, and having time to watch some anime before Jeopardy!.

Sleep had.
Work survived.
Played some WiiFit (not enough) and some Brawl.
Downloads of Avatar 3x16 and Himitsu no Arashi-chan 15 are done.
Very excited for new Maoh tomorrow.

Now to sleep.
Damn work in 6.5 hours.

( Avatar - Episode 3x16 - The Southern Raiders )

Can't wait for tomorrow!!

Also, I've had the song from the trailer for White Knight Chronicles stuck in my head ALL DAY. Wouldn't make me as irritated if I had access to the song or the game was close to being released. WANT.

We thought really hard about getting more work done today, since we finished a little early. But we actually finished a lot early and used the time to get even more work done, and the thought of doing any more work is kind of brain-hurty, so we decided we should give ourselves a break. We have been working really hard all week, after all.

We've pretty much gotten to a point where I don't usually feel the need to report about Disneyland, since when we're by ourselves, not a whole lot of new and exciting stuff happens, but this time we had some surprises in store, so report I shall!

( Return to Disneyland )

Today I'm thankful for having time to get extra work done and still stop early, getting to see the perfect Tinkerbell, good timing with shows and buses, the Summer of Indiana Jones (I think that's what they're calling it), and the awesome awesome Toy Story ride.