Yubsie's Yammerings

The Bleach musical? Is kinda awesome. Somehow I don't think the anime goes quite like that? Also, why does everyone hate Orihime, she's cute! I also loved at the end when they were all "Let's sing the songs from the FIRST musical! Ooh, I want to sing! Can I sing?"

I, umm, kinda REALLY want that "DEATH!" song. :p

Working with lithium is also awesome. It involves a HAMMER. You take it out, weigh it into hexanes, pound it flat with a hammer, cut it up with scissors back into hexanes and then get it the HELL under argon. Because this whole time you're also hoping it doesn't CATCH FIRE. (Lithium's not too bad though. At least it's not sodium or potassium. Or those cesium vials we have on a shelf... :p)

Yesterday we had fun melting pipettes with a bunsen burner and stretching them out. Because we needed spotters. Yes. This is why. :p Today I played matchmaker in the broken glassware drawer since we decided we should take the new guys to see the glassblower tomorrow. (This may have started with an incident involving an entire apparatus falling and breaking) We have drawers upon drawers of broken glassware that has been there for years, so I was sitting there going "Okay, we can fix THIS one with THIS piece..." :p

It's been a pretty fun weekend. Friday was a "SIMS D*MMIT" day, which I greatly enjoyed. Simon, amusingly, has been playing piano at his son's house for three solid days. I'm starting to wonder if he's just planning to sit there until Amos and Helen GRADUATE. :p I played Luke's house a bit, he's boring right now, he just skills and goes to work as a Jedi. :p (I don't think I mentioned it, but Han and Leia wound up having a shotgun wedding because they refused to roll a marriage want. And then I cheated so they would have twins. :p) And then I played Daniel and Susan's house. Zoe and Wash now have their first grandchild, Derrial Washburne.

I had to get up early on Saturday because the Honours students were getting together to practice our presentations. Only the Toads and Metalheads showed up, which was somewhat upsetting, since we'd wanted to see what sort of questions people from other areas of chemistry would ask. Still, it was good to get that practice in for next week.

We took a break in the middle to all go down to the Farmer's Market. In four years, I'd never actually gone. I picked up some earrings because it's been ages since I last bought earrings. I also tried a rice dish.

I had a bit of time to kill after that, so I tried to work on my computational assignment. The computers were being ridiculously laggy in the Cragg, so I tried going over to the Avard Dixon computer lab, but it didn't help. I ran into someone from my Japanese class, so we had an awkward conversation in Japanese. (Mostly about coffee and plans for the night :p) Awkward, but still fun.

I gave up on productivity and headed over to the grocery store to pick up some bread. Never made it to the grocery store though, because I wound up hanging out on a roof with Maria, Lily and McGeek. :p

After that, I went to sing karaoke with the con staff, which was an absolute silly blast. Then it was the club meeting, with crazy anime purchase voting. We watched Nurse Witch Komugi (?), which was... strange. The incredible Gatchaman parody made it totally worth it. After that, we watched Castle in the Sky, because you really can't go wrong with a Miyazaki film. :p Even if we did have a field day with the thing about "With our primitive technology, we don't even know what this is made of, metal or ceramics." :p

After the meeting, I found a Firefly/Fiddler on the Roof crossover fic. This led to me wondering who looks at Fiddler on the Roof and decided "you know, that really needs to be crossed over with that space western...".

And then I decided I wanted to make Fiddler on the Roof sims. :p Poor Tevye's brain will so BREAK though. :p

Today was just karate and trying to work on this infernal computational assignment. Oh, and Japanese homework. We decided Wessa did that part, because my kanji look like a six year old wrote them. :p

I have the greatest boyfriend EVER.

Two years ago today (well, yesterday now that midnight's passed), Vicki and I decided that if Ryan was going to eat lunch with us on a regular basis, he should see Pretear so he could understand our conversations. Vicki eventually had to leave for class, but he stuck around my room a little while longer to watch some more. And, well, this turned out to be one of the better decisions I made in my life, since he randomly kissed me and we've been together since then.

Anyway, the point is that for our anniversary, he gave me a rose, nerds, smarties, a giant pixie stick and dinosaurs. DINOSAURS! My computer monitor is now This Land. :p

I have the greatest boyfriend EVER. :p

I gave him homemade cookies (a new recipe experiment, chocolate chocolate chip :p), the first two episodes of Doctor Who, a mix CD and two hours of my time. Considering what time of year it is, that's the most precious thing in the UNIVERSE. :p We sandwiched dinner in between my day of hammering out Spectroscopy lab reports and the Animaritime staff meeting. There's something vaguely amusing about changing into a little black dress in the bathroom of the chemistry building. :p

Campus security is STUPID, so we had our meeting in the hall outside of the locked classroom. This meant we also had to have the party in the hall, so it didn't go long. But I did start learning the Munchkin dances, so yay! I think I will be able to learn them in time to be a Munchkin, so yay!

I got home and Sam was watching Moulin Rouge to try to figure out her paper, so I joined her while working on my Quantum paper. I got to help with the paper by finding elements that parallel other musicals. I like helping her with papers for that class. :p

Karate grading tomorrow.

We're making slow progress on the spec labs of doom. We keep having sessions to chip away at the questions, but ACK the end of semester is looming. We shall overcome though!

Stupid people on the ANimaritime forum posting about how there are less than a hundred days left until the convention. Don't remind us! It makes us panic! :p Actually, stupid people on the Animaritime forums in general. :p

We had live action night at anime on Saturday, which was fun. We watched My Boss, My Hero which is CRACKTASTICALLY awesome. It's about a Yakuza guy who, in order to prove that he isn't too stupid to become the boss, has to graduate from high school. Needless to say, crack ensues. No wonder the poor guy is confused in his math class though. We're convinced they were making that stuff up because a bunch of people who have taken math at a university level SHOULD be able to understand what's being said in a high school math class. Still, hilariously awesome.

After that, we watched Moonchild. It had Gackt and vampires and a lot of guns. Yeah, that's about all I got out of it. I appreciated the pretty boys, but REALLY not my thing. It was really long too, I was starting to fall asleep by the end. On the plus side, I wrote the ENTIRE draft of my "My Parents Gave Me a STUPID NAME" support group crackfic. Crack is so much faster to write than other things. :p (Like the fic Tess and I finally finished the first scene of :p)

On Sunday, I discovered that if you wear a Mount A sweatshirt to church, random church ladies will ask how your schoolwork is going and offer to pray for your week of DOOM. Quite frankly, I probably need it. After church, I made serious progress on the dishes and managed to clean the disgusting microwave, which makes everything happier.

After my cleaning spree, it was off to quite possibly the most boring karate class ever. Basics weren't so bad, but then it was katta, which made it clear just how SHORT my current katta is. We did discover that parts of the bunkai are NOT particularly effective if you're significantly smaller than your attacker. Try as I might, I couldn't pull off the trip. I suppose the purse smack is still effective though. (No, purse smack isn't the OFFICIAL explanation of what's going on, but it's TOTALLY the best application.)

There was a one hour break in between karate and rehearsal, so I decided that the most effective use of my time would be going to the Cragg to work on my spec assignment. Which I am totally declaring done, incidently. :p Then we had Winkie practice. We learned the choreography for the reprise of "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead". I love this dance, it's so ridiculously easy. I NEVER get the dance at the first rehearsal, but this one was well within my capabilities. It's more than a little cheesy, but that just makes it fun to dance. We're liking this whole "not being enslaved to the WIcked Witch of the West anymore" thing. :p We also reworked our marching formation for the "oh ee yoh" song so that it now actually WORKS and looks really cool. :D

After that, I went home and did schoolwork. Just need to get through this week. I'll do it somehow. :p

Also, Chiron Beta Prime is the only Christmas song I am ready to hear right now. I've started Christmas shopping, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not really Christmassy until after finals are over. However, Chiron Beta Prime kinda fits that mood. "Merry Christmas, from Chiron Beta Prime. Where we're working in a mine. For our robot overlords. Did I say overlords? I mean protectors! Merry Chriiiiiiiiiiistmas, from Chiron Beta Prime!"

We got quite the sampler of weather today. On my way home from the grocery store, I experienced wind, sunshine, rainbow, downpour and HAIL. And it's only a fifteen-twenty minute walk!

We tried to do our spec lab today, but we didn't get far before realizing we needed Liz's notes and she's in Halifax. Oops. :p

At the party last night we watched Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust. I've seen it before, but I must have been paying attention to something else, because I never noticed the AWESOME SNARKY HAND CREATURE! Totally my favourite character. :p We also finally got the club to watch Live Action Sailor Moon, which was amusing. A lot of people were scared, but some of them were getting the oddly compelling vibe it has. :p

I broke poor Snippy by pointing out that Britney Spears named her baby the same thing she's planning to name her RP character's baby. Am I evil for taking great joy in this? Because it's funny! :p

I made Sim Saffron yesterday. She's married to Durran Haymer and they have Heinrich the security programmer living with them. I'm trying to get her to have an affair with Heinrich, but he keeps catching her with Durran and getting mad. Sooner or later the fury will pass and she can split up with Durran. :p My sister has begged me to make a millionaire to marry River, so he's going to be Saffron's next husband. Then Mal, of course. Tee hee. :D

At the Animaritime meeting last night, all the heads of various things were explaining to the new staffer what we do. This frequently involved "Wait, you mean I'm in charge of THAT too? Good to know." because we all do FAR too much.

We tried to watch Sailor Moon Live Action, but we weren't in our usual room, so we didn't have the computer we snuck DivX onto before they locked us out of downloadability. :p So we watched Howl's Moving Castle, which was good, as can be expected from a Miyazaki film. We watched S-Cry-ed, which I suppose was good for its genre, but not really my thing. I appreciated it in a vague detached manner. :p Then we watched His and Her Circumstances, which I am QUITE taken with. Okay, OMGLOVE. :p

Backtracking to Friday, there was lots of watching then too. Vicki and I watched episode 15 of Digimon 02 because the subbers finally put it out. Was it filler? Yep. Was it fun anyway? Of course. I love that Digmon's attack is "BIG CRACK!", because that's clearly what the writers were TAKING by the end. :p Then we watched the first two episodes of Welcome to NHK, which was nifty. Then we watched some more Sailor Moon CLassic. They're rather spoilerific episode titles, incidently. Guess what happens in "Naru's Tears! Nephrite Dies for Love!". :p If you guessed "Nephrite is sent to the SPecial Hell"... :p And Kunzite/Zoicite? Wow, their subtext is rapidly becoming TEXT. :p Zoicite also continues to have the most RIDICULOUSLY feminine body language. :p We finally got to Makoto's introduction and the realization that the reason no one can find the Silver Crystal is that it's in seven pieces that need collecting before they can be redeemed for the next advancement in the plot. :p

After that, Sam and I watched some Firefly happy shininess. We finally got to finish "Safe", which we had started to watch before and had to go do something else. I love ickle!River so much, she was ADORABLE. We also watched "Our Mrs. Reynolds" which is just SO much fun. Especially since I get to be all "Just watch, all shall be explained" when Saffron is making people go "What?"

I finished reading my Firefly geek book, which was great geeky fun. Most of the essays were really interesting to read. There were a couple things that were just fun silliness instead of analysis, which is also enjoyable. There was, of course, the essay to fill the requirement that every essay book must have one that demonstrates that if you try hard enough ANYTHING can be the tool of teh eb0l patriarchy. Yes, even the work of Joss Whedon, apparently.

The only essay I really didn't like was one going on about how political correctness was making Firefly untrue to its Western origins by not having an element of chivalry. Not just because I disagree rather adamantly with the essay, but because it showed a lack of knowledge of canon. I don't just mean where the author was clearly missing the POINT of some scenes, which was annoying in and of itself, I mean getting hard FACTS wrong. It talks about Jayne's recruitment scene as being in "Serenity" instead of "Out of Gas". It refers to Zoe as Zoe WARREN. NOw, I'm not sure her last name was used before the movie, but it was NEVER Warren. Finally, they talk about how we don't know if there's a prohibition against violence in Book's religion, but we can assume. Umm... "Doesn't the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing people?" "Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzy on the subject of kneecaps." I know this person SAW "War Stories", because they complain about how Wash going on the job and thus saving Zoe from being kidnapped and tortured is shown as a petulant action instead of heroic. (Which is a whole other rant, which I may go into when I don't have to dash out to karate.)

I should note that these two essays are back to back... immediately after one about how if it came to a fight, the guys would totally lose to the women of Serenity. :p

Also, is it bad that my cracktastic Death/Death fic is, at 2785 words, the longest thing I've written in AGES? :p

So, umm, metafandom? "Cut for possible spoilers for the following fandoms: Anime"? Not so much with the useful. :p

Had an absolute BLAST with nukichan today. :D We watched bits and pieces of the Prince of Tennis musicals. I LOVE STYLIZED DANCE TENNIS! Then we watched Ouran School Host Club, which was very shiny. This was followed by Princess Princess, which is SO MUCH AWESOME CRACK! :p

My grandparents are here, yay! My sister is in New York. :p

So much animeness yesterday. I watched a random episode of Ranma with Ryan, which was amusing. Much as one would expect of a random episode of Ranma. Amusing, but I'm not dying for more or anything. :p

Nasty evil mean Bill played... disturbing THINGS at the beginning of the meeting. Evil mean nasty Bill! Then we actually watched anime and generally glared at Bill. :p

First up was Getbackers, which I'm still quite fond of. I'd already seen the episodes we were watching, so I wrote Death/Death while still half watching. Yay only half reading subtitles!

Then we watched Yami no Matsui. Ryan turned around and stubbornly read Sandman instead. :p Poor boy is really not a fan of shounen-ai. Even though we still TOTALLY caught him shipping Kei/Goh last time we watched Pretear! :p I enjoyed it, at any rate. :p It's very pretty. :p

After that, we were nice to Ryan and watched Love Hina. I half watched and wrote Death/Death. I still managed to follow everything that was going on. We made many jokes about the fact that Ryan's living arrangements for next year vaguely resemble a harem anime (except, of course, for the part where Ryan already HAS a girlfriend who ISN'T going to be living in that house... yes, I refer to myself in the generic third person! :p).

Finally, we watched... Gatchaman. It was so HILARIOUSLY awful. It had a team of superheroes in these HIDEOUS generic superhero costumes. There was a bird motif, which meant jagged capes and pointy helmets! :p The best part had to be that they were the SCIENCE NINJA TEAM though. How can you NOT love something that's terrible enough to have a SCIENCE NINJA TEAM? :p

Incidently, Goblins? Just switch the designated update date to Sunday and stop lying to us! :p

First off, I finally got around to that Han/Leia icon. Is there some sort of rule that shippy scenes can't take place in well lit rooms? :p

(And yes, Tess, that's "my" gradient in there again :p)

I played Quest for Glory today, which was fun. I'm getting really close to finishing the magic user's storyline. I'd be a lot CLOSER if the game would stop periodically trapping me in areas so I have to replay chunks. This is what I get for naming the character Neville.

Once I actually manage to finish my magic user, it's time for the fighter. I don't think that will take long to play through, since that character solves all his problems with violence. Less puzzle solving and more "KILL THEM ALL!" :p

Then I can go on to Quest for Glory 2. I love these games. :p

Vicki and I watched the rest of Hana Yori Dango today. Kim, you are EVIL for addicting us to that series. We were only going to watch two episodes, but that series is all about the cliffhangers of DOOM. IT was really cool. :D I'm wondering just how much they cut from the manga. Thirty seven volumes went squishy, yet the pacing doesn't feel rushed.

Another fun night of anime club. Because clearly after the Escaflowne marathon, we needed more animeness. :p

We watched Hana Yore Dongo (Something like that... live action, the English title of the manga is Boys Over Flowers) which was great fun as usual. :D After that, we watched Cowboy Bebop, which is fun. Not the GREATEST series in the world, but definitely worth watching. Then it was Gunslinger Girl, which I so utterly love. It's so cute... and disturbing. Of course, the cute is what MAKES it so disturbing in the first place. I'm also so utterly in love with the music and the art in it. Looooooooove! Then we watched episodes five and six of Pretear. I think, at this point, that it goes without saying that I love and adore that series. To itty bitty pieces. :p

Oh, and I finished my Fire Pretear skort! It turned out reall snazzy, I'm happy. :D Now I just need to make the blouse and the cape in the next two weeks. :p

We're having Pretear night on Friday. Much earlier than Escaflowne night so it's actually possible to make it to Toads on Saturday morning. Especially since I want to start working on my lab for Organometallics then.

Tomorrow, I need to do a pile of Organic and read the book for Soc. That's getting done while watching The Wizard of Oz. Then I need to hit the journals to figure out what I'm DOING for Organometallics. And find a paper to do my Kinetics project on, but I'm hoping it'll be something I come across while I'm designing my complex so I can do the project on an area of chemistry I find more interesting than Physchem.