boinsie

Putting up a different side image for the holidays~ More on it below XD;


wooo all the fun html you can do on LJ (and still can't do even with a paid account on devart *pouts*)

The Masters of Public Administration program at Western is getting me back into the political groove I started getting into a bit during my freshmen year at University of Michigan, what with the 2004 election being the first election I could vote in. I voted for the 2008 election overseas, while in China from August to late November, and... yeah I pretty much missed basically the most important months of the political campaigning back at home. XD I admit I didn't keep up very well while I was overseas, and so a lot of issues lost me coming back to the US... except the official announcement of the recession. Then I caught up. After that, well... here I am now.

One of the little Christmas presents I got myself was Jon Stewart's America (The Book) for only $8.50 including shipping. xD Been watching the Daily Show a lot too. This goofball is my intellectual savior~

Sent Christmas cards out for the year~
Really sorry if more people wanted to exchange cards this year with me :< ~ So tight on time this year. Hope the next one is better. T_T!
I'll shower people with fansub presents instead? XD Not just at ryuu_rogue but with the other commissions I've got running as well... Mm, even skipped a week at the baito to catch up on things and now I'm in all the darashinai mood and don't want to go out into the coldddd for the rest of the yearrrrr. xD I know I'll need to for some volunteering and checking out my class location in Lansing next semester though.

I'll be busy as hell next semester, so I'll probably be posting even less than I do these days. REALLY NEED TO SEARCH FOR SUMMER 2010 INTERNSHIP FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION. But I still need to take one class in the summer too so the internship needs to be somewhat local. Mmmmmth dammit that's what happens when I need to finish this program in 2 years. :\ tasuketeeeeeeeeeeee

mochaholic I'll be sending you the original sketch for this piece if that's okay with you :3~
onkei_kun hahahaha I donated to WWF as your Christmas gift. peachy? XD

Hey onkei_kun what say I start donating to WWF this year as your "Christmas present" that you asked for XD CAN YOU GUESS WHO I ADOPTED. (tricky question) I'll give two clues-- One, I don't want to adopt the ones that offer the giantttt plushies (OF LOVE) unless/until I AM FINANCIALLY STABLE ENOUGH to do so. The other clue is in this LJ entry itself.

[music]
Mm, Tegami Bacchi's op/ed single are lovely <3 ~

The coupling for the ed was composed/arranged by Elements Garden, no wonder ♥~ These guys compose so much nice music, including Messiah's OST~

Uhhh I was supposed to get another music CD coming in, but I don't think petshopmistress shipped it out yet orz. Where is she~

First of all: my mother and I are trying to decide on an e-book reader to get for my stepfather. His main problem is visibility--we hit on this as an alternative to large-print books, in that any book can become "large print" if you can adjust the font size. Portability is less of a factor, therefore--if one reader is larger than the other, that might actually be a bonus for us. I hear the Nook is sold out and kind of got crappy reviews along the lines of "Wait for the 2.0 version," but Mom thinks she might be able to get one anyway (she has Ways). On the other hand, the Kindle has a lot of advantages that I am vaguely aware of, but it's also got screwy DRM issues where it won't let you do things with, you know, the files you bought and paid for. So she says it would be nice to be able to have the e-books on the reader and the computer, DRM issues would be really frustrating, etc. So 1) ease of use and visibility for someone who is not a tech-head and 2) minimal DRM foolery, those are our main criteria. I know nothing about e-readers, except that I have the Stanza app on the iBella and don't ever use it. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Second: padawansguide needs a new host for her site, the movie-focused The Costumer's Guide (where I had tons of fun a couple of years ago trying to help identify all 60+ Marie Antoinette costumes. Good times); in particular, she says, "I would like at least 5-10 GB of disk space and at least 150 or more GB of bandwidth a month. With no weird [usage] caps they don't tell you about!" We discuss a couple of options at that first link, if you have any ideas.

Third, and not a question: New trailer for Iron Man 2.


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

So, those little Dole fruit cups?
The pears: awesome.
The mandarins: not so much.

Mom just sent me a text asking if I'd called my dad to wish him a happy birthday. I did call him this morning before work but it went straight to his voicemail, so I'm going to call him again later and hope I get through. Since he's always on the road he hits a lot of dead space with cell phone reception.

Today I'm going over to Mom's house to stealthily see if the laptop skin I got her will fit her laptop and tomorrow I'm going over to Sheila's to wrap Christmas presents with her. I've only got Mom's and Sheila's right now (I feel kind of bad about Sheila's since it's just my old external drive, but her computers have pitifully little HD space so I know she'll appreciate it at least). Rachelle's present is in the mail and I think I'm going to try to get Damian a gift at least, if he will ever tell me what he wants. And then yesterday Mom picked up the dollhouse that everyone went in on for the nieces. I probably would have killed for a dollhouse this awesome when I was young. xD

When I get home I'm going to have to start helping Shari clean the apartment. Eric is coming back for like two weeks and he'll be here on December 22nd. Erghhhh I don't want to have to go through that again. Can I go live with someone until January 6th? Please? D:

Oh, I also found out yesterday that once I reach 35 hours I'll be eligible for insurance through my work. Cool! So once again things are dependent upon us getting that large format printer lol. Brian brought me forms to fill out for it but when I told him how many hours I work he sort of sucked air in through his teeth and went "ohhhh" and then told me to just hang onto them for now. ^^; Well, at least it's something to look forward to. I really wish they'd hurry and get the printer, though. Everyone is saying they're going to, they're going to, they just have to actually spend the money. Matt at least seems really confident about it and figures we'll have it before the next trade show because of the money we'd save printing the stuff for our booth on our own instead of paying someone else to do it.

Ugh, man, I had really been looking forward to those mandarins, too.

Bear with me as I lead into this, because I have some philosophical ramblings about beauty products that guys (i.e., people who do not wear makeup and may not understand the appeal of cosmetics) may find interesting.

So. I have gift cards to Sephora, and also a promotional code from their newsletter that expires today, and then three free mini lip glosses as a birthday promotion, therefore: it's economy-boosting time. My on-and-off obsession with makeup, as previously documented here, is somewhat peculiar, given that I wear very little of it. I mean, number one: I don't leave the house much. I have sensitive problem skin, so there doesn't seem to be any point in irritating it with the constant application and removal of makeup that no one's going to see, you know? What I really love is trying out different colors, because if I wear anything, it tends to be eyeshadow and lip gloss--I really need to wear foundation and concealer, but honestly, when I do, all I look like is someone very obviously wearing foundation and concealer, so I figure the flawed natural look is preferable at that point, and I'll just have fun with my favorite eyeshadow palettes (Hard Candy's Suede and Star). Hence the recent fixation on Aromaleigh, because the samples are so cheap that I can play all I want, and I'm hearing from other patrons that their face powders do a really good job of blending and disappearing, so I'm going to get samples of those and see if I can finally achieve the no-makeup makeup look ("Like you, only better!").

As for why girls--some girls--get so obsessed with makeup, even someone like me who rarely wears it, I can tell you very simply: ( Yes, but it's a badass lavender )


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

ahahah so inconsistent!

day 4 [12.12.09]

. pretty nice quick day at work
. awesome time spending with coworkers
. laughing so hard i stabbed my hand
. my boss called me a hussy... yet wanted to make a cute doll of me to put on her shelf...wut /random
. awesome food, awesome friends/coworkers

day 5 [13.12.09]

. fff you guys. thank you. please keep it on a low next time xD ♥
. dad cooked awesome fish for dinner!!
. got slippers and chocolate from sister
. got *cough*nerd*cough*england*cough* scarf from mom :>
. got to catch chicky on msn before she went away all night >w< ♥

day 6 [14.12.09]

. work at night wasn't so bad!
. got to talk with chicky ♥ cheers me up so much
. cleaning up jewelery stuff for mom and got to keep two necklaces!
. mmm humus
. TEA. oh gosh I had tea at the right time :9 uhoo
. RECEIVING AN AWESOME DRAWING FROM eokani ♥♥♥

So. Today. Thirty-one. I was depressed (not about the number itself) and that was stupid but there it is.

(Also, the day started out really crappy. "PUT HIS ASS ON THE PHONE!")

I will say, there is one thing I feel very strongly about on birthdays, and that is: it is very important that you blow out all your candles in one breath, for thus shall you have good luck all the next year! Which is why I get UTTERLY CHAGRINED when people put the same number of candles on the cake as you are years old, because when you're seven that's awesome, but when you're thirty-one, that's just basically a giant NO LUCK FOR YOU. I just don't have the lung capacity to deal with those kind of numbers, people. "Can we just get two candles in the shape of a 3 and a 1?" I asked desperately. So after I explained why I wanted fewer candles, we compromised and just put them on my piece:

( I'M A REBEL )

So it was a quiet day; we had just my grandmother over for lunch rather than any kind of Entire Family thing. I don't know. I'm just getting to be a huge baby about not wanting to do anything for my birthday--what I want to figure out is what I feel so bad about. What is it that I actually want that I'm not getting? I'm throwing myself a giant pity party, but what's the occasion? Because you can't go about fixing a problem, about getting what you want, if you don't know what that is. And I just don't know.

Anyway. I'm still slowly replacing my music collection--I might be able to recover it when I'm sure I can afford to take Betsy into the shop after Christmas shopping is done, but I'm not counting on it--so I went and bought my two favorite Pretenders songs, "Night in My Veins" and "Love Colours." Coincidentally, I got that CD for my--16th birthday? I think that's the one it was. I wore that CD to pieces, which is why I can't rip it to Lizzie now. So, fifteen years later, here we are on iTunes.

Something else I bought on a whim off eBay just happened to arrive today, and I am counting it as a birthday present to myself because it is pretty much the best thing ever. Seriously, I think opening the packet and taking it out was the only thing that made me laugh all day. I paid the princely sum of $13.13 for it, and it will be a long time before I am able to work it into The Secret Life of Dolls, but you will die, all of you will absolutely die when you see it.


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

The Nielson TV ratings people sent me two bucks in the mail to fill out a survey. xD Why they felt compelled to send $2 (yes, two one dollar bills right in the envelope) is beyond me but it sure has made my day hahaha. I love filling out surveys anyway so when they sent an advanced notice that they'd be sending one I was like, "Yay!"

And now I have two dollars. I could buy a Kit Kat bar or something.

In other less delightful news, I threw up last night. I woke up about an hour after I went to bed with my lower abdomen screaming in pain and a very intense sense of nausea sweeping over me, so I rushed to the bathroom . . . where nothing happened. I sat there for awhile waiting for something but the pain went away, leaving me with only a very frustrating "almost want to throw up" feeling. It was a horrible sensation, so after a few minutes of internal deliberation I knelt down and triggered my gag reflex to just get it over with. Besides hurting and being generally terrible and awful in every way that puking is, as soon as it was all over my stomach felt as happy as a clam. Or at least as happy as a stomach can be. All sense of nausea or pain or sickness was completely gone and I went to bed much happier (after washing and brushing my teeth, eck).

I kind of wonder what triggered that, though. It was so intense and so out of the blue.

Stepping away from random, brief illness, though, I got to hang out with Elysia on Saturday. :) Yaaaay! She messaged me asking to go with her to finish her Christmas shopping and have a pretzel at Pretzel Time, so I agreed and we hung out at the mall for a few hours together. I had a great time. ^^ Even if there was shopping involved. :P I had yummy awesome delicious overpriced pretzels and bought amazing taffies from the new candy store in the mall, Sweet Temptations. I also picked up some small gifts for my nieces (Life Saver "OrnOMints" since they're always asking me for a mint when they see me) and I bought my mom a Beatles "Abbey Road" skin for her laptop. At least I can get her something for Christmas. ^^; Hopefully it will fit.

And Sunday was our game! :D It was the winter session for Mouse Guard which turned out to be a lot of fun. There was no combat or encounters of any kind for the winter session; it's basically just our characters getting in-character things done with while there are no 'missions' to do, and then of course deciding on leveling up certain skills and working with traits. Sheila's character Covan retired from the Guard and Katrina's character Adall was promoted as the new patrol leader while Sarah's character Alessia was promoted from tenderpaw to full-fledged guard mouse. My character Maggabrion (Maggie) was elected to take on a new tenderpaw once winter ends, who will of course be Sheila's new character. :) There was brief issue when Sheila announced her mouse would have black fur and red eyes and we had to explain that red eyes = albinism. She acquiesced pretty easily at least. :P
I'm excited, though! I think the spring session is going to be a lot of fun and I'm eager to work on my character more. He got a girlfriend during yesterday's session, too, which was a hilarious ordeal in and of itself. XD We went with an in-game speed dating tactic and Sheila, Sarah and Katrina took turns playing the female mice Maggie sat down with lol.

During the winter we're going to be running a short D&D 4.0 campaign. :) It's going to be restricted to a city setting and our characters are in what's called the "slave class" I think it was. Basically second-class citizens who are servants of the city and forbidden from leaving it. They're beneath the upper class aristocracy that controls the wealth and all that. My character has a tragic past. :D She's a half elf from the slave class who fell in love with a human from the upper class. The two were engaged to be married, but the fiancé's bitter, hateful parents, who scorned the very idea of a slave class woman in their family (as did many who looked on their relationship) arranged a hit on the two. My character's fiancé was killed, her unborn child lost, and she was left for dead only to be rescued later by the paladins of an underground movement to end the tyranny of the upper class. Now she's a bitter cleric with a personal quest to get revenge on her beloved and slay his wicked parents. I'm very enamored by all of it haha. I hope it goes well. XD

( missing cores )

Thank you picocha and midnightbanshee for the LJ gifts!! ♥♥♥

* * *

Every year my work place goes out to have a Christmas dinner/party type of thing! This year we decided to visit L'Oratoire de Saint-Joseph followed by a dinner at O.NOIR



( dans l'obscurité )

English is the only language I know fluently. I know bits and pieces of both French (three years in high school) and Japanese (one year at college) and I would love to someday be fluent in both of them. If I were only able to choose one to be fluent in . . . I would probably choose Japanese. Je veux parler en français. 日本語も話したい。

Today went to L'Oratoire de Saint Joseph.
They have Frère André's heart in a crypt (4th floor)... but this body is in the first floor. It's kinda disturbing...

full update later.

Ok so, just today my dad set up a computer that can play my games, so now I can play The Sims 2 again. So I installed it and thought hey, I think I'll hop on over to modthesims.com and look for some custom content to replace the tons that I lost when previous computer decided to hate me. I try to log in and find that I cannot remember my password, or username. And then I see that they purge accounts that aren't active for six months, which, I dunno! maybe I've been simsless for over six months. So I go ahead and make a new account. It asks me for my username, password/confirmation, email/confirmation, birth date. I get it all done and it logs me in and everything. Apparently it's not one of those sites that makes you confirm your email address. Well, ok. I go to download something, and it brings me to a page that says I'm not logged in and can't access the server if I'm not logged in. But I am! I just made an account. I dunno what to do in this sort of situation, and usually (when it comes to computers) when something is messing up for no reason, a good first step is to try resetting it. So I log out and try to log back in. But my password is wrong!
The password and username I just registered with not five minutes ago is already wrong. So I ask to recover my password. It asks for my username, so I give it. And you know what it says to me? It says "you haven't even been a member for a day yet, how can you forget your password?"
WHAT? So really, just because your site messes up, you think I'm stupid for "forgetting" my password already? I feel insulted, honestly.
Anyway. If that doesn't work, it also has a link that says I can recover the password with my email address instead of my username if I want. So I go, and I put in my email, and then it asks me for my birth date. I put it in, and somehow, MY BIRTHDAY IS ALSO WRONG. I type it in like five times, but no dice. this whole thing could have been avoided if the stupid site would just send a confirmation email.
I am angry now. So I think, forget this. At least I can still play the game by itself. It's just that it only comes with like three pieces of furniture or something dumb like that, so it's sort of worthless without custom content. But oh well, I'll deal with that tomorrow somehow.
I start the game up and suddenly, for some reason, the universe decides to take a crap in my shoe and THE GAME DOES NOT EVEN START. The screen goes black, and all I hear is a stupid Microsoft DINK! noise before it resets to the desktop like nothing ever happened.
Then I fly into a fit of menstrual rage, swear at the computer, and almost cry. :/
Why can't I just play The Sims? I mean, please, it's all I really want. Is it too much to ask?

So last night we finally decorated the tree that we got last weekend--the first thing you have to understand is that Christmas is a BIG THING in my family. Not in a religious sense--in a We Are Going to Decorate the SHIT Out of This House sense, and I love it. Of course, I loved it double-plus verygood when my mother opened a bottle of wine ("@cleolinda: Bottle of wine WOOOOOOOO"). I sucked down two glasses before she'd even made a dent in one ("@cleolinda: Second glass of wine WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"). Y'all, I need to drink every night. For real.

But before we get to the picspam, I will relay unto you a story Sister Girl told while she and her friend J. and I were in the kitchen afterwards: "YOU HAVE TO BLOG ABOUT THIS." (J.: "You haven't told her this yet? Oh, you gotta tell her this.") This past Monday, Sister Girl was minding her own business, working at Panera, you see, walking behind the registers carrying whatever it was wherever she was going-- ( The best book title Robert Ludlum never came up with )

Moving on! A Tannenbaum picspam expanded from LIVE ON THE SCENE Twitter posts last night:




( Read more... )


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

--

day 2

. got my dog washed
. ate nomnoms
. loved some more
. got loved

day 3

. my boss and manager crack me up <3
. ate more nomnoms: octopus!!
. loved some more
. got loved
. livestreamed and got wayyy nice compliments i don't deserve ahha <3

Tags: art, life, meme, orichar, sketch

Max Brooks, who wrote The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is Mel Brooks' son. That's hilarious and awesome. I'm glad I randomly decided to take a look at his Wikipedia entry. Also, Paramount apparently got the rights to make a movie of World War Z. Let's see how that one turns out!

Also, if you haven't read either of those books, then you should. I'm talking to you, too,cunningbunny , just 'cause we play L4D2 together recently. ;) Though I have no idea if you've read them or not haha.

Yes, it has been a long while. As I write this, I am preparing to give my final presentation in Historic Preservation, my most hated class this semester. It's not that the material is uninteresting; in fact it is completely enthralling. However, the lecturer, a professional in the preservation field, cannot deliver a captivating or coherent lecture to save his life. Through determination, I've gotten through the class, but just barely.

My two other final papers are finished, it's just this presentation and the write-up afterwards and then I can go home to Eureka for the christmas break.



Now the classroom in which I'll give my presentation in a little while, but is now currently occupied by undergrads, is playing Abbey Road at a louder than customary volume. Particularly, 'here comes the sun,' perhaps the only Beatles song I don't like, if only for it's saccharine optimism and subtle depression, but oh well.

Things have turned around in the last few weeks, and by the time I went home for Thanksgiving I was finally feeling great about the program, and my life in general.

Things have only gotten better from there, for various amazing reasons. So play on, Beatles, and give me luck for this presentation.

YAYS, my Aromaleigh samples came in!




As previously mentioned, this is my (early) birthday present to myself. I got a ton of similar colors for the express purpose of trying them out side by side, to figure out which one(s) I like best--at $1 a sample, I figure I'm good for it. I have very deep-set eyes, so I can't wear terribly dark colors; I'm mostly looking at softer, lighter shades. After some deliberation, I have decided that I am neither a cool nor a warm, but rather a neutral, and I think I might actually try some of their foundation powders next. I've had better luck with Bare Escentuals (also a loose mineral makeup) than with other powder or liquid foundations, but it's still not quite as invisible-feeling as I'd like, and, again: one dollar per sample at Aromaleigh. Even an entire container would be cheaper than Bare Escentuals. It's worth trying.

(All of my heterosexual male readers just ran off to chug beer or headbutt each other like frightened deer or something.)

I think I'm down to Wish ("A peachy golden pink with slight iridescence") or Aurora ("A pinky-beige plush matte base scattered with tiny shimmers of blue and pink. Fit for a princess." I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE) at this point. Hell, if I'm going to bed anyway, I might as well just do each eyelid a different color.

As for the three lipstick samples, I think I will start with Nuance, and then maybe the Rosewood blush.

(OH MY GOD SHE'S TALKING ABOUT BLUSH, RUN AWAY!)

Oh, and I still need to do photo tests of their three Twilight powders for you. FOR SCIENCE. After which I will probably break into a Twilight Merchandise Curse rash. (...What? How do you think I got The Littlest Edward to sparkle?) OH OH I HAVE MORE TWILIGHT CANDY TO TRY because I am fearless. And apparently suicidal.

I'm still getting used to Lizzie's touchpad mouse, but I think we can have a little more linkspam. ( GALADRIEL YAY )



(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

Oh right, so yesterday I needed to do grocery shopping. I hate shopping alone so I had asked Rachelle to go with me, but she called me at work saying she was just too exhausted and recommended I ask Mom to go and she could take the kids. Rachelle's kids, I mean. Sounded fine to me so after work I cashed my paycheck and then headed over to Mom's and she seemed more than happy to go with me. :) Janie was acting up a bit but Destinie was behaving pretty well, fortunately.

Once we got everyone in Mom's Jeep it was ohhh around seven o'clock or so, so we decided to go out and look at Christmas lights since the girls would probably enjoy it. Which they did. ^_^ It brought back a lot of memories for me, too, since going around looking at Christmas lights was something we did every year when I was growing up. We went over behind the Safeway on Harris and Harrison, too, but the house that was lit up back there in years before wasn't this year. The tree houses were, though! Man, I'd nearly forgotten all about those things. Destinie was saying how much she wanted to go up them lol. They don't let people up into those anymore, though. (Oh, for anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, there are two tree houses built into redwoods in the back of someone's property in our town; they're really large and one is probably, I don't know, 30 feet above ground while the other might be 35 or 40.)

Yaaay, I was able to find a picture:

(If it gives you any perspective at all, that's the top of a house in the bottom right corner there.)

Annnnyway, once we were done looking at lights we went grocery shopping. The kids were mostly well behaved though there were some problems; Destinie was a bit too energetic and wanted to run around, and Janie refused to listen when Mom told her to stop hanging off the cart a couple times, but like I said they were mostly pretty good. So I bought them some shrimp when we passed the deli in the back. I guess maybe they'd never had it before? Lol. I thought they had because they wanted it when they saw it, but when we got the bag they were almost afraid to touch the shrimp at first. :P In the end they were happy with their little snack, though.

I'd told them if they were good, I would give them the last half of a Hershey's bar I'd bought before we'd left, but when we got back into the Jeep I realized it had become a melted, gooey puddle in the bottom of the bag. >< The floor of the Jeep must get super hot while it's running. D: I felt really bad about that since I'd already told them they would get some, so I gave them each a piece of a taffy instead (I'd gotten a bag of taffies for Mom and me).

OMG, that's right, I still have taffies in my purse! Oh maaaan, taffy! >w< Yay!

I saw a QUAIL yesterday, everyone. A quail. Somebody be happy and excited with me, GDI! Everyone I told yesterday just gave me a disinterested "Oh, that's nice," with a faked smile. I SAW A QUAIL RUN ACROSS THE ROAD AHEAD OF MY CAR AS I WAS HEADING DOWN GLENDALE DRIVE TOWARDS MURPHY'S MARKET YESTERDAY BEFORE WORK. IT WAS CUTE AND LITTLE AND IT HAD A BOBBY THING ON ITS HEAD LIKE QUAILS HAVE. I haven't seen a quail in probably fourteen years. >:(

He looked kinda like this:

Awwww, so cute.


Anyway, about Saturday. :D

I met up with Elysia and Heather and I guess we left town around noon. XD I'd thought it was more like 11 or 11:30 but we got a late start. We were going with Elysia to the Buddhist monastery in Ukiah which is a bit of a drive. :) I cheered when we went over the new bridge on 101. :D

By the time we got into Ukiah it was definitely late lunch/dinner time so we drove around to look for maybe a local restaurant or something Eureka doesn't have, but Heather's GPS "Clarice" was being a total bitch and led us astray more than once, so finally we settled on an Applebee's we noticed and it was a great choice! Our waiter was the most fabulous waiter I think I've ever had. He sat right down next to Elysia when he came to serve us. XD Ohh and there were jokes about cowboys and things too I think. Anyway, it was a great, awesome dinner and I'm glad we ended up there. After that we headed out to the monastery and Clarice tried to take us off the end of a road/cliff. Seriously, talk about machines out to get you.

I feel like I should be putting a lot more detail or feeling into this entry lol. But I'm afraid I can't think of a way to articulate it into something magical or really special. The temple was very cool, though. It was extremely quiet when we got there and we looked around a bit before finding someone who told us that tea with one of the monks would be at . . . was it 6:30? So Elysia and Heather walked the trails for a bit, while I went back to the car. I'd had a sore throat and my sickness was just starting up, and since the cold air was like fire in my lungs I'd decided it was best not to go for the hike.
At 6:30 we shyly found out where to go and what to do and made some tea before going into the meditation room (or is it called a tea room? I don't know). We got mats to sit on the floor with and little cushions, too, and got to listen to one of the monks speak about his experiences in different monasteries, namely the time he'd spent in Tibet, I believe it was. After he told about his personal experiences people were able to ask questions about him or about Buddhism in general and it was pretty nice just to be able to be there and hear him talk. :) He'd been a monk for 17 years, and he seemed very down-to-earth and, well, I'd say he seemed pretty happy with how he was. There was a hippy-looking guy who asked a lot of questions about the rules of Buddhism and the difficulties of abandoning worldly pleasures and he seemed to be very borderline criticizing the religion, but the monk was extremely gentle and friendly in answering all of the questions.

I felt like my legs and feet were going to die by the time it was done, though. ^^; I just can't sit on a floor for long, it's awful. While waiting for the chants and meditation at 7:30, we got a chance to speak with some of the other people who were visiting or maybe a part of the monastery. They were extremely friendly and tolerant of all the little things we ended up giggling about. ^^;; I hope we didn't annoy anyone too much. I think it would be hard for them to think we were seriously interested in the place when we kept giggling amongst ourselves. ;x

The chanting was really neat, IMO. We got to sit on the benches in the back of the room (if only we'd known before!) so it was much more comfortable. The chants were all in English, too! I'd never heard it like that before. It sounded really neat, though, but I was kind of confused that they referred to the buddha and the dhamma as their lord and guide, which seemed to imply a level of worship of Buddha that I had been taught was not what Buddha had wanted of his disciples. BUT, I really don't know a thing about Buddhism so who am I to think anything?

We ended up leaving around 8:30 I think, around when they started the meditation (I have never been in a room with that many people and have it be so completely dead quiet... it was rather unsettling to me).

Before heading home, we stopped by a Baskin-Robbins. :D I'd never been! It was yummy, but IMO not as good as Cold Stone Creamery or our local ice cream parlor Bon Boniere's. The cool thing about BR was that they had a huge selections of really awesome, yummy-looking cakes! It made me wish we had one locally because I'd totally buy those for birthdays and stuff; they were so cool!

Then we got home around midnight. :) I'm cutting this so short. Maybe because my head is still full of gunk I don't want to write a lot more about the day lol. But it really was super super super fun, and I'm so glad I went. :D Aside from hanging out with two very awesome ladies all day, the Buddhist monastery was a very unique experience and it was wonderful to be able to see it myself.

And then I got hella sick, yeah! :D I can't even remember what I did on Sunday, wth. My sister brought me Chicken and Stars soup with saltine crackers on Monday night, though, yeahhhh! \o/ I told her I would cater to her every need the next time she's sick, since Blue Lake is so far out from Eureka for her to make that trip for me.

Sudafed PE and Comtrex Severe Sinus & Cold do not work for me. >O Blah! Mucinex D is awesome but I couldn't afford to indulge myself with that one this time around. Boo-hoo. At least I can actually blow my nose now, and the pressure is mostly gone, and my ears have been popping. Hooraaaaay~!