Appa's Thoughts

My sister was helping think of a research proposal. It started by trying to think of a way to combine different suggestions my teachers have had, and it ended with a proposal to find the Jusenkyou springs in China, locate the spring-of-drowned-boy, drop a rat in and pull out Yuki Sohma.

*dies*

My dear Oneechan... hahaha.

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I got two suckers--I mean, new students into FY. ^^; We had fun last night watching about ten episodes or so from the first season while attempting some ancient-china hairstyles. It's so amusing to listen to their reactions to jokes I've heard over and over but are still funny each time. And man, that episode when Yui takes Miaka into the shrine of Seiryuu? Still one of my favorite drama scenes ever!

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I met someone today in an unusual way. We were both running away from the same wasp.

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If I disappear sometime soon, it's probably because one of these freshman guys has kidnapped me. o_o;;

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I still wish I could just drop everything and go become a mangaka or a seiyuu. Both ideas have been suggested to me in the last week, without my even having to mention how much I'd love either one. There's a part of me that is both overjoyed and full of grief when ever someone suggests either of the two. That's six or seven years of my youthful daydreams, after all.

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We finally figured out how to make Asian style karaoke bars a hit in America: ADD ROCK BAND!

A page of one of my thesis drafts must have been on my bed, because I woke up with a big block of my abstract imprinted on my leg.

What really makes me a dork is that the first thing out of my mouth when I notice text all over my leg was "Well, that's certainly not a mark of Suzaku."

Alright, yes, I'm still avoiding my papers. I wrote eight pages on one of them since posting yesterday, at least I've got something to show for the last 24 hours. I just can't get myself to go edit that one which is due on Monday. >__<; It'll work out. And I took an exam this morning, that was productive, too. And I read 42 chapters of "Yankee-kun to Megane-chan", which was enjoyable but not so productive.

As for tomorrow, I have some scheduled procrastination. As some of you may have seen the advertisements for, the L movie (as in, a live action Death Note movie about L's adventures prior to Kira) will be showing for two nights in American theaters, once in Japanese with English subtitles and once in dub. A friend in invited me well over a month ago to go see it, so that's what I'm doing.

I'm looking forward to it because I enjoyed the first two Death Note movies a lot (and, admittedly, I'm a big fan of L (but not necessarily in a traditional fangirl sense)). I'm just a little afraid that they might try to overdevelop him, which would ruin the mysterious aspect of his character. *frowns* Plus, I heard something about Near having black hair. This makes me sad.

My other concern is that depending on how full the theater is, I might have my brother's experience. He got to go to Anime Expo last summer when they were showing the movie dubbed, but he didn't pick up anything of what was going on because he couldn't hear anything over the fangirls squealing behind him. ^^;

I just wanna have this paper edit itself... ;____; I just wanna fast forward a couple weeks and be home. ;________; Though there is a brief east coast trip I'm looking forward to first except that ohnoesitincreasingmypotentialswinefluexposure... whatever.

*sulks*

Lady Muse, come baaaaaaaack to meeeeeee........

The Stolen Meme: Write down 20 things that your f-list (probably) doesn't know about you.

1. I feel odd wearing skirts, but I love doing pretty things with my hair and keeping long nails.

2. If no one is watching, I dance while sitting at my computer. Not that anyone would want to see my poor dancing skills even while standing up.

3. A friend got mad about me two months ago and called me an anime elitist. I'm not as much of one as I used to think I was, but she made me feel so bad that I still feel guilty for maybe having sounded mean towards anyone.

4. I can sing along to songs I have not heard since I was 13 or 14.

5. I still daydream almost every day of going to Japan to write manga under a Japanese pen name. I debate between whether it should be "Takada Ruri" or "Taka Ruri".

6. My first Japanese pen pal was an artist who I looked up to on Oekaki Central. We have lost contact, but it's thanks to her that I got interested in Please Save My Earth.

7. I've talked with a driving instructor about Please Save My Earth, which surprised us both.

8. I can identify a lot of flowers in both English and Japanese because of Please Save My Earth.

9. I used to auction my art off for Pocky.

10. I love dark chocolate with pretzels, orange flavoring, mint flavoring, lime flavoring, green tea flavoring, white chocolate bark, strawberries, certain cereals, fancy cookies, other candies, almonds...

11. My older sister still calls me "Tohru" years after it's lost its Fruits Basket ties for us.

12. I've had an EEG scan, an MRI scan, an EKG, blood tests, and biofeedback therapy to try to help me with my migraines. I quit with the treatment four years ago when a neurologist tried to give Botox injections. Crazy man.

13. I used to get teased for my poor sense of direction. That made me so embarrassed that I decided to have a better sense of direction. It worked.

14. My mom didn't let me watch Sailor Moon when I was kid.

15. I have better vision than 20/20, but on a recent test I took, I had surprisingly poor depth perception.

16. When I was a baby, I learned to walk by clinging to the family dog. She was a patient dog.

17. I love sitting in trees!

18. I currently work as a telemarketer. Well, that's only half true. A true telemarketer would try to sell you something and then get your money. I only do half of that.

19. I used to work as a secretary. I hated that job and only found out several months later that a coworker actually had been sabotaging some of the things that went wrong.

20. I can swim, but I dislike swimming because I dislike being wet.

*procrastinating on a couple theses, even though the samurai one is almost done~~~*
*is going to make a night of rewatching Arjuna for the first time in five years instead~~~*
*is very happy about that~~~!!*

I am very tired. It's been a tiring week and this promises to be a tiring weekend. I think I'm crazy, thinking "I have so much homework and have too many club obligations. I just want to do some more art for the art auction or translate Haruka. Heck, I just want to sit here and watch Zenmai Zamurai on YouTube. ...I think I'll find myself job!" Money minded as usual. XD As long as my GPA stays high, I can get as wiped out as I want, so long I'm not stressing about money on top of everything else!

As I was on the phone with my parents tonight and just generally sounding tired and telling them about the other job I picked up, my dad said sympathetically, "well, I hope you have a nice, relaxing weekend."

I burst out laughing.

For a good thirty seconds or so, I just laughed and laughed at the notion of a relaxing weekend. I felt like laughing longer, but I got myself under control and thanked him for the chuckles.

Okay. Now to crank out a three page essay and then maybe edit chapter two of the Keisuke & Tetsuya story to put up on FF.net tomorrow. The thing has already been written and edited before. Plus, a little creative activity sounds nice while it looks like I won't have much art time or translating time for the next two weeks.

Oh! Oh oh oh oh oh but I'm having so much fun translating! :D It's written by such a Neo-Roma fangirl, I love how it feels like reading fanfiction. XDDD I've barely gotten into the Tenma/Yasuaki interaction, but I'm already enjoying her careful descriptions she puts into everything. X3 Stuff any follower of the series would probably already know well but it still needs to be said, you know? Ah ha ha. I'm still wondering how I'll translate a few phrases to sound better, such as "To the Akane who had been made to have an appetite by (the smell of) the ginger, Shimon passed the wooden bowl." Hahaha! I'm such a dork for being so amused by how well that works in Japanese but not in English. Most of the lines don't sound so literal, it's just that one I'm thinking about.

EDIT: Hahahaha! After hours of procrastination, I just took less than an hour to write the paper which is actually too long and needs to be edited down a bit. But I still feel its a great paper. Geez... 'once begun is half done' sure is right.

*frowns* Ah. So that's how it works. I don't pay anything to the Japanese school, I just pay my college exactly what I would get charged there.

Which means having to purchase:
-a meal plan several hundred dollars more than the one there costs
-a few thousand dollars extra in tuition
-international plane tickets on top it, rather than my cheaper domestic flights very semester
-all my day-to-day items at a much higher price with a not-so-favorable exchange rate

The only place I'm saving any money in this equation is the residency, but that won't really make up for the difference in costs between paying my school and the Japanese school. At least, on the bright side, the international studies office was very quick to get back to my inquiry and this is how my financial aid will get overseas with me. Now I just have to figure out exactly how much more I need to find in loans.

Stupid private school education!! Why did my inner-Yukino Miyazawa have to come out when I made my college choices?

...in so many more ways than shall be written here, I am a Yukino Miyazawa. I need an icon for this or something.

....but then again, I also have a major inner-Tamahome. u___u


......XDD Would that imply that I'd someday fall for some strange mix of Miaka and Arima!?! How the heck would that work!?!?! Now that's what I'd need an amusing icon for.

Brief Rant: Apparently honor's students don't know biology. We have very interesting conversations in interpretation class, but today I wanted to yell "chrysalis" every time some said "cocoon" and shout "populations evolve, not individuals" when ever anyone threw the term around as we were answering whether or not a caterpillar and a butterfly are the same thing. I'm not even planning to study any more biology and yet this really bugs me.

I was also the one in my honor's course last semester explaining how certain traits are linked to the X and Y chromosomes and why men can only get some traits from their mothers. Am I in the right major?

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I already did a bit of a cost analysis on my other journal, and the conclusion I came to was that if I wanted to, I could afford going to Anime Central after finals this May, though it might be wiser of me not to because I'm a miser and I even regret spending money on a new pair of shoes (even while the old ones are barely intact).

Has anyone ever been to ACen, and can you say anything in one way or the other to twist my arm?

A few quick fandom related stuff. Today I discovered the library... and it was the librarian who pointed out the Fushigi Yuugi Gaidens to me before I even mentioned liking it. XD We talked about a lot of anime and manga today, actually... I had a whole period to hang out in the library, after all. I read a little of the Yukiyashaden (Nuriko one) as best as I could at about the middle of the book. The conversation and the way Nuriko/Kourin treated Byakuren was like... exactly what I was thinking for Concomitant when I started. XD (Speaking of, the official last chapter of that is up and I'll probably post the omake after I get a few more reviews on the last chapter.)

Flipped through some Juuni Kokki novels, too. I read the part when Youko tells Suzu and Shoukei that she's the Queen of Kei, and it seems EXACTLY like I remember the conversion being from the anime. The characters in the occasional illustrations are also totally recognizable. I borrowed a later volume I didn't recognize the character on, and we'll see how well I can manage to read it.

I've been showing everybody pictures of my family and friends and home and stuff, and there's also some pictures of my future (next month!) college in there. Today there was a group of students who saw the dorm and were saying that it looked like it was from Harry Potter... and then when they saw pictures from inside they got even more excited with how much it looked like Harry Potter. Then they were joking that I'd learn magic there. *sweatbead* Of course, I don't read Harry Potter, sooooo....

One last fandom thing. Today was my last day at the high school (*SOB!!*), so a lot of people gave me things. Madoka, however, is my soul sister in fandom. She likes Haruka, but more than that, she's my sister in Fruits Baskets fandom. Today she gave me a little Furuba rat wind chime (so adorable!!!) and drew a picture of Yuki for me (as well as some little rats). Eeeee!!! They are so adorable!!! YUUUUUKIIIIII!!!!!

( And now what you've all been waiting for... more photos. )

Well, tomorrow I'm headed to Tokyo. Bye!

( Just a couple pictures to whet your appetite... )

Oh, and I was only asked 4 times today if I have a boyfriend. That's almost the equivalent of "how are you?" here.
I only have two more days at the high school... *sniffle* But after that I'm going to Tokyo, so I'm okay. Well, that being said, I DO need to get up early, so I should go to bed now. I'll make sure you get to see plenty of pictures by the end of the month.