Yeaah....

Had some internet problems on my laptop, but now it's fixed!

So... I heard back from Facebook about my resume. They had me answer some questions and rate my language proficiency. My answers were decent, but I fear an honest assessment of my Japanese skills is where I don't get the job. We'll see! Meanwhile, I submitted my resume to a company called Digital Manga, which is a licenser, publisher, and distributer of manga. I'd probably like the Digital Manga job more, but since their website hasn't been updated for awhile, I have my doubts about hearing back from them. *crosses fingers*

Turning back the clock a little, I had a great birthday! Jon, Josh and I met Julie at Koreana (a Korean karaoke place), which hadn't opened yet. To kill some time, we checked out the Westport Sheraton Lakeside Chalet as a possible location for AnimeStL. Beautiful location! After we looked at the hotel, we went back to Koreana, rocked out for a steep price, and then went to Sansui for dinner, during which it poured down rain so hard Heather got stuck on the highway and Nick had to get in his own car and guide her to the restaurant. Dinner was great, and in the thick of it, I got a call from Audry. This was a huge relief to me since we planned on going to Otakon together, but she changed phone numbers and rarely answers internet correspondence. After dinner we killed sometime before Hellboy, which was a great movie!

Con business has been... meh... things look good, but there's a few people I'm sorely tempted to set on fire...

I finally unlocked all the characters in the Bleach Wii game :3 Why Grimmjow is the hardest character to get is beyond me, but I'm loving how powerful him, Ulquiorra, and Aizen are. Oh, and Urahara too. Ridiculously strong.

Audry's coming to town! She'll stay at my house starting from tomorrow to Sunday so she doesn't have to pay for a hotel while she's back in St. Louis. This gives me a chance to force her to watch Baccano!, which I know she'll enjoy. Sunday is Jon's bday, so I should hurry up and get him something >.>

Otakon is just around the corner! While talking on the phone with Sarah, we basically talked each other into coming up with new costumes. I was once again in doubt about doing Naruto costumes, and thanks to our conversation about the new season of an old favorite we finally said "Let's do Slayers costumes!" We swapped ideas back and forth. Obviously Adrienne would redo her Xellos costume, but my and Sarah's previous Slayers costumes were in no shape to be worn again. So we thought long and hard about heights, sizes, and the feasibility of outfits. After finding a *very* helpful guide to making pauldrons, Sarah decide she could actually pull off Lina Inverse. Figuring Bradwen would do Gourry again, it was then a matter of figuring out who I would be. For the sake of some height accuracy, I couldn't be Amelia. I thought about Filia, but the complication of the outfit and find a wig for her would be a bit more than I could handle in a month (though I would probably enjoy trying to make the mace). So with her out, very few female characters of my height remained. Well, ones with costumes that I would actually do. Let's face it, I don't have the guts to dress as Martina or Naga =_= So we decided, it would have to be Luna. Yes, Luna Inverse, a character who never even enters the series. Luna is the mysterious and terrifyingly powerful elder sister of Lina. She's mentioned several times throughout the series, but it only seen (and very briefly at that) in opening songs and one eyecatch. That's it! I think only three pictures of her actually exist! There's only one full picture of her, and it's a chibi shot that's inconsistent with the other two pics. So my mom (who's helping me with the sewing) and I are kind of making up the bottom of the outfit (though we're pretty heavily influenced by a cosplayer I found online). I talked to Audry about cosplaying from the series, and she seems interested in trying her hand at it. I suggested Sylphiel or Filia. Audry has more of the body type for Sylphiel, and a wig for Filia, and more free time than me (for now), so I think she could pull off either of them. Either way it would shape into a very nice Slayers group. Too bad we don't have a Zelgadiss, but that's one of the hardest costumes I can think of >.<

So, I got my flight to Baltimore all booked. I'll be leaving Baltimore and going straight to Spokane for my second vacation. Well, it's not so much a vacation as a semi-mandatory visiting of relatives that I never see. I don't know my dad's side of the family very well, and at least one of his sister's family is dysfunctional, so I don't particularly look forward to going there and getting bombarded with things like "So, when do you plan on getting a job? Car? Boyfriend?" I seriously foresee some "good advice" coming my way. Like I don't know all this kind of crap already. *sigh*

I really need to save up my money. Asuka, Mie, and Wakana are coming to New York in September, and I want to go with. This will take lots of money, which could be spent on a new laptop. So that's my choice, New York or laptop. I'm very much hoping that I'll have a job by then. If it's Digital Manga, then that's great, hopefully I'll make some money. If it's Facebook, then I'll have all sorts of crazy problems with moving to California, but at least they'll provide me with a laptop, so that's pretty sweet.

Last night I had a crazy dream. Now, I've had some crazy dreams in my time, and sometimes I enjoy them. Most of the time I'm on the run from scary people and I'm fighting for my life. This time was different. This time I was fighting for someone else's life. I'm not sure what the setting was, but I was a royal guard to some kind of Asian princess (Chinese or Japanese, I'm not sure). Though I was technically the princess' guardian, I spent of lot of time protecting her boyfriend, who was some kind of king. There was lots of sword-fighting to be had. So far, not too abnormal a dream for me. Until we started fighting DINOSAURS! Friggin' dinosaurs! How awesome is that?! I love dinosaurs quite a lot, but these were bad bad dinosaurs, so me and the other guards in my dream had to cut them down while trying to keep track of our royal charges. It was a very cool dream!

Went to Kohls today and picked up a few shirts and pants that were on sale. I can't wait to wear my new jeans. I really didn't like jeans for a few years. Most jeans in stores were either pre-distressed or suffocatingly tight (slutty). Pre-distressed clothing is a concept I don't understand. How did dressing like a hobo become fashionable? (Jon should be able to tell us) I got teased in high school for having torn jeans, and now it's the look? Anyway, I've been able to find slightly less ridiculous jeans; some comfy stretchy ones that I can distress naturally. So I've enjoyed wearing jeans again. People who knew me in middle school and high school would never imagine me in some of the clothes I wear nowadays. It's not so much that I wanna look good, but I've always just worn what I was comfortable in, and I've gotten comfortable with different clothing. Let's face it though, I'll never be anything close to preppy. Ever. EVER.

I know it's not nice to stereotype, but having a roommate like Brooke back at the apartments at Webster, that really diminishes my respect for preppy people. Two of Webster roommates were the exact kind of people who would have teased me in high school. Brooke wanted to get a job at Coach so she could get a discount on those $500 purses. She went out and bought a several hundred dollar dress and several hundred dollar matching shoes and purse for her wedding rehearsal dinner. She broke up with her boyfriend two months later and I know she didn't return the dress.

It makes me sick to know that such materialism exists. I respect that how each person finds happiness is unique to them, and if $400 shoes make you happy, then that's your thing. I'm happy watching dramatic Japanese cartoons, and no one can tell me that's not my happiness. What bothers me is that society tells us that wearing certain clothing, doing our hair a certain way, engaging in certain hobbies, and having certain priorities is the correct way to be happy. Then they go around and tell us that our core American value is individuality. Blah.

Heather asked me to tutor her a little in Japanese, and we decided to meet at Starbucks on Saturday. I called her Friday night to ask her when she wanted to meet, and she revealed that she had been called into work on Saturday, and could we reschedule for Sunday?

No problem. Totally understandable. Sunday rolls around, she finally calls me to tell me that she's going to a friend's house to go swimming for a few hours, and that I was welcome to come. Well, that's just too awkward for me, so I tell her that I'd rather not. She says she'll call me later and we'll head over to Starbucks. Hours go by. I pass the time by gathering up some materials, flipping through some old textbook, watching the new Die Hard movie. By 8 pm I'm figuring she'll call me at any minute. By 8:30 pm I'm pretty frustrated. I give her a call. Apparently her parents are mad at her for staying out so late so often, and they don't want her going out. Okay, it's not her fault that her parents don't care that it's a tutoring session, but she could call me! I know she felt bad because it was her who asked me to tutor her, but she could at least call me! I felt like such an ass, preparing all this stuff, waiting by my phone.

I wasn't that mad at Heather, I just wish she would have called so I didn't waste a whole day thinking we were going to hang out. I watched Hellboy to curb my disappoint. Hellboy was okay. The special effects were very pretty, but I don't think the characters were very fleshed out except for Hellboy himself. I started reading up on the comic, as I do whenever a nerd movie comes out. It actually seems like something I would read if I had the access. I'm definitely looking forward to Hellboy II.

Con work is going slow. I'm trying to reprice our ad rates. This is especially difficult since I don't know what good prices are.

I've discovered an amazing show! I've tried a few new shows lately, but haven't been really happy with any of them except Ghost Hunt. I really wanted to like Mononoke, since I really think the Medicine Seller is the coolest character design of any anime ever. But the crazy style of the show and the choppy, confusing plot is just too weird for me. I think it's one of those things that you either need to be an overly-artistic person or on drugs to understand. I really had no idea what was going on the whole time. So I picked another show that I thought looked interesting.

Remember watching Heroes? Remember how confusing but incredibly interesting it was to watch a series of events involving unrelated people and watch them slowly relate and come together. That was neat. Now remember Lost? Remember how they flashback to everyone's pasts and the audience gets to see how all these unrelated people all end up in the same place, oftentimes by interacting with one another without knowing it? Okay, so keep those things in mind as I try to explain the awesomeness of this show.

The settings are multiple and the cast is pretty large. In 1711, a group of alchemists aboard the ship Advena Avis summon a demon, who provides them with the Elixir of Life (which grants immortality to anyone who drinks it), but only the summoner will have the knowledge to make more.

It's the 1930's in America. Several mafia families are looking for a juvenile delinquent called Dallas Genoard. Dallas' sister Eve goes to Daily Days, an information selling group, to get information on her brother, only to end up getting involved with the mafia families trying to find her brother.

A young man named Firo has just become a member of a camorra. His mentor is Maiza, who was the immortal to summon the demon two hundred years prior. Firo is old friends with Luck Gandor of the Gandor family mafia. Luck and Firo weren't of the original alchemists, but somehow became immortal in 1930.

A crybaby gang leader named Jacuzzi Splots is hunted down by rival gangsters, who are pissed that he appears to be such a coward. Jacuzzi warns them to leave before things get ugly, they laugh, and then they're made to bleed.

A young boy is shot in the head, and remarks to himself shortly after how useless certain people are.

Two idiot thieves in California receive a letter from a friend, and decide to visit her in New York. They decide pull a train robbery to buy their friend a souvenir. These two thieves, Isaac and Miria often employ idiotic disguises in their crimes.

Bits and pieces of how characters met are strewn together in between the action of when they all come together on a great train, the Flying Pussyfoot. Two groups have come aboard the Flying Pussyfoot, and they're about to collide. A black-suited group called the Lemures plan to take hostages in order to have a certain person released from prison. This directly conflicts with the plans of Ladd Russo, a hitman for the Russo family. He and his white-suited gang board the train are looking to kill, and don't like it when people interfere with their fun. Meanwhile, people on the Flying Pussyfoot begin disappearing, apparently the act of train-devouring monster called Rail Tracer.

It's crazy and spastic without being trivial and stupid. And there's a lot more blood than I would have expected. I wasn't sure at first if I was going to like it because of how scattered things are. It's kind of hard to follow since it constantly switches from one story to another, but it does so in a way that keeps you begging for more. It also makes the show go by very fast. Action, adventure, humor, and lots and lots of guns. It's a brilliant 13- episode show that I recommend everyone to watch <3