Can't believe it's been two weeks...so crazy-busy, the time just flew by. I probably wouldn't even been updating now if I hadn't been struck by an annoying bout of insomnia. Lovely. I'm just hoping this isn't starting to build up into a problem like it was when I was a kid.

BPAL Will-Call was a whole lot of fun. Dragged sis along because I needed the ride and she owed me one, and amusingly enough she actually really enjoyed herself too once she got inside and checked things out. They had told us beforehand that E! was doing an interview with the lovely Beth of the Lab (who is an absolute genius and a totally sweet woman to boot), and while I'm sure everyone was jazzed that BPAL is getting the publicity it well deserves, the whole interview should have been taped an hour or so beforehand so everyone didn't have to wait outside an extra half hour before being let in. But when we finally did it was great (super-crowded, though. Those guys need a way bigger area) and a lot of the winter scents were really amazing. I especially liked Pink Snowballs and Peacock Queen 2009 in particular-I'm definitely picking up some at the next will call. The Peach-Moon Lunacy scent was really good too, although I love peach...anything, to be honest. As per usual, I went a little nuts with the sniffing and ended up with fifteen imps and four full sized vials of my favs: Algaea (peaches and champagne), Persephone (pomegrante and rose), Hi'iaka (hibiscus, tropical blend), and Coral Snake (an impulse purchase, but a GOOD one, just sexy sugared vanilla and lush apple that smells frigging amazing). Sara even picked some imps out herself, when she wasn't chatting everyone up, including Beth and the camera crew from E!, the little networker. Actually, I think they really liked her a lot, so the interview they taped with us may air, who knows. I'm keeping an eye out, at least. Afterwards, we went and got some frozen yogurt at Menchie's (everyone "HAILLLLLLLLL ILPALAZZOOOOO!!!!" now) and then Target because we needed a new dog bed for her dog (ostentiably) but really because Target is amazing and I love it so. The amount of money I would spend there, given the chance, is best left uncontemplated.

And yes...after all that, I still just ordered a bottle of 13 online because IT IS ONE DAY ONLY! AND LIMITED EDITION! AND...I am weak. Besides, I forgot to pick up some Jolly Roger at the will call anyway and yes I am probably going to order some of their anniversary blends too shut up.

I'm really glad the Will Call was so fun, because I've been feeling stressed out and a little depressed. Holiday season is great, but it means the pressures on at work, which is not helped by this economy. >____> And I normally like gray weather, but my energy is just being sapped and it's never been plentiful to begin with, y'all.

I (or Sara, to give credit where it is due) finally got my bed set up too. It's so...cool and grown up looking, it actually kind of looks out of place in my room. But I can see how my redecorating would come together, and I'm making arrangements to get the paint job done. Time to...ugh, do a bunch of pain in the ass moving of stuff. But I think it'll really be worth it, to achieve something. Especially since I'm behind on my Lemon Contest entry because I got struck with was either an ear infection or an especially bad case of jaw-grinding (stress again) and was out of commision for a few days. Le sigh.

More boringness soon to come! *crickets*

FIRST: If you've been tagged, you must write your answers in your own LJ and replace any question that you dislike with a new, original question.
SECOND: Tag eight sexy people. Don't refuse to do that like a pansy. Don't tag who tagged you. In short: Guys I did it! Man up and follow me off the cliff of meme!

ALL HAIL THE CLIFF! Man, it has been awhile since I last did a meme...huh.

TAGS: yukari_rin, umbra_elf, misheard, luna_hoshino, sobloodycute, berrygold, jyoohan, anonymous_proxy, yukie1013.
( CLIFF-DIVING! XD )

Blargh...it's the time of year again, and I've been at least winged by the bout of flu going around at work. I.E. kind of sick in all the annoying ways, but not so sick I can lounge around in bed all day. Speaking of which, new bed get~! Shame I can't put it together because of teh sick, but it is pretty nice to have a bedframe after five years.

And for those of you who care, my first round of BPAL reviews. Still have a second round to do, but I thought someone might find them interesting so here we go.

( BPAL Reviews I )

*flops down* So...tired...the rerason being I had not one, but two events to be at today-Special Olympics Pier del Sol charity event and BPAL's Lunacy event where they open up their location once a month and you can smell/buy all their stuff in person.

Pier del Sol was good mainly because I got to eat enough free gourmet food to feed a starving African villager for a year (there was this beef thing straight from Godhisownself, and a wonderful mango lassi with mint), but man was it a pain getting in. Thankfully, my osanajimi Zack helped me out when they lost my ticket-my insane hunger by that point probably explains why I stuffed myself so grossly.

Anyway, that was all in the morning, and I went pretty much straight from Santa Monica to North Hollywood for the BPAL's Raven Moon Lunacy event. I think my ability to smell has been wrecked beyond belief (and when you work at Lush that is saying something) but I walked out with full bottles of Rapture, New Orleans, Eve, and Sea of Glass. Plus imps of Jolly Roger, Juliet, Poisoned Apple and a few other extras they tossed in. It was pretty awesome, but I am BEAT...and hungry. *hides face in shame*

An old picture I found whilst clearing through my room that I'm particularly fond of. Taken at the Lincoln Memorial, back when it was actually fun to go to D.C. and there weren't security checkpoints every five feet. It was a good trip, and I have a lot of nostalgia regarding it. The adorable little brown haired girl is my sister Sara before she got cranky and sarcastic, and the blonde who has clearly already begun developing the misathropy legends are made of is me. Taken...roughly June '95.

Maybe it's the season changing or something, but I feel much less wound up than I was during the summer. It's a nice feeling to not feel totally strung out, and I hadn't realized how much I missed cooking until I started having the time to do it again on a regular basis. Made a brown sugar apple cake I would have taken pics of had it not been readily devoured. :3

AND MAH BPAL SHIPMENT, WHERE IS IT?!?!?!?! *RAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEE*

New username GETTO~! Thanks, rdmajere for the rename token, you are and continue to be a far better person than I. fairywine for yuurei_san, in a time where I wanted a nice change of pace. It feels good, and honestly it really surprised me that it wasn't already taken. Source is of course from Stardust, specifically:

"Mr. Bromios had set up a wine-tent and was selling wines and pasties to the village folk, who were often tempted by the foods being sold by the folk from Beyond the Wall but had been told by their grandparents, who had got it from their grandparents, that it was deeply, utterly wrong to eat fairy food, to drink fairy water and sip fairy wine."

Oh Neil. Could you possibly rock my world any more than you already do? Other than a totally kickass Death movie? I think not.

I need to keep this good feeling going through tomorrow.

I miss her.

Feeling kind of blah now for several reasons...toe broken, sister-girl gone off to Australia and amazingly not already attacked by one of the 20918239812093810920928319 lethal creatures that call that country home, and just...life stagnation in general. It's a September kind of feeling, when life is half-assing it between summer and fall. At least, how it does in California.

I need a change of pace, really. I'm thinking of a username change (*LE GASP*), and since we're getting the bathroom retiled/repainted anyway, maybe we can work out an arrangement to get my room done too? I'm beginning to realize someone as preoccupied/lazy as me actually going through all that grunt work myself is an impossible dream. Here's hoping.

I've ordered some pretty sweet new boots and a jacket from AE, as a kind of pick-me-up, along with six "imps" (sample vials) from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. One of those things I've meant to check out for a long time and never really got around to until now, the scents I'm trying are: Akuma, Delirium, Psyche, Szepasszony, Rapture, and New Orleans. Yeah, I like fruity/floraly scents...a lot. Their offerings all seem really unique and innovative, so I had a hard time limiting my pack of six to just those choices. I suppose if I like what I get, I can always get a second tester pack when I order a full-size vial. And since Back in Black isn't available on iTunes for some infathomable reason WTF, APPLE? No Beatles AND no AC/DC? I'll probably do an Amazon order too.

No, I am not using shopping as a form of self therapy mostly. I'm not! Now, to work on my TMLC entry.

Super dark purple nail polish mani-pedi? Righteously badass. I never dreamed it would look so awesome.

Doesn't really make up for my toe being fractured, or the incredible heat wave we're going through right now, but I have to cling to what I've got or I'll go crazy.

Speaking of which...TSUKIHIME FINALLY GET~!...AGAIN! I need it to write this year's TMLC entry, so it's nice to have a chance to replay it since it's been awhile. I need to brush up on my characterization.

Happy birthday, jyoohan! Hope you have a good day, and many more times of cruelty and abandonment play instances of me plying you for ecchi years of hearty companionship to come. And I swear I'll get that bloody gift sent out tomorrow.


Feet. Hurting. Bad. Looking forward to my spa trip Monday more than words can possibly say, because goddamn I DESERVE THIS. Hopefully being less strung out will kick the muse into gear. Well, it's not so much the muse not being in gear as the muse having a harder (heh) time with ze smut, so if once I get past that part I should be fine.

80's megamix. Everything is better with eighties music! Such a shame playlisting is beyond me for the moment because MY IPOD DIED DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD:

Currently getting by on my unearthed shuffle, but dayum. I need to get the screen on my green iPod nano (Hisui) fixed so I can go back to a normal, iPod enabled life.


Work, starting to really, really piss me off. Can't say more.

Rewrites are hard when you want so, so, so badly to get on with writing new stuff (and, in fact, have made more progress on the latter than the former). It sucks, because I really want to fix all the problems I have with earlier chapters of Across The Universe, but at the same time I have so many good ideas I'm just burning to put into play it's driving me nuts. I mean, the Far East Magi Association? OH HELL YES. Bah, I suck.

Maybe I'm just feeling unmotivated to do harder things because I'm feeling so strung out from work. It's getting pretty damn tiresome...we need more people. And other things that I won't go into. I just need some spark of inspiration, of something to kick me into high gear. I know, I know, cry moar.

And is it sad I want to see G.I.Joe simply for lots of fit-man eyecandy? Yes. Yes it is.

At Miyazaki event at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Will fangirl about seeing Animation God later.

Update: *SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*

Thought One: Miyazaki looks like a Japanese take on Colonel Sanders. To my mind, this only makes him more awesome.

Thought Two: The bromance between him and Jon Lassiter(yeah, Toy Story guy moderated) was adorable.

Thought Three: Miyazaki is wonderfully down to earth, and has a sense of the ridiculous I was well able to appreciate.

Thought Four: Miyazaki said as a child who was weak growing up, his dream was to become a strong hero. Jon says, "You are one." Cue group "Awww."

Thought Five: All in all, a wonderful experience. SUCK IT, COMIC-CON!

What do these two things have in common, you may ask? Simple: you can never have too much of them. Especially when you can have Archer/Rin shooting dakka. Good times.

Everything else, however, has its limit point, and frankly Comic-Con has reached it and indeed shot far past the mark. It's gotten to the point where it's just TOO big, and the amount of people versus the amount of space the venue actually has means what was once easy to do on a whim now requires hours of planning in advance. Twice today I waited in line for popular panels-only to not get in as there was simply no room.

It was almost this bad last year, too. The planning and crowd management is a joke, and I'm not having as much fun as I should. It makes me sad to even think of it, but this is going to be my last Comic-Con for a few years until the commitee gets its act together and allots more space.

150,000 people. It's just a number until you're stuck in a single venue with them, and a firm knowledge of how much that really is comes through.>

Well...at least I still have Anime Expo.

...Is what I am feeling right now in a major way. I'm working so often I dream I'm there. I can't even escape it in my subconscious! My days-long run of insomnia hasn't been helping things any either.

Well, it's all money in the end, so who am I to complain? Clearly, the way to get through this all is to imagine how my room will look so much better for all the improvements I'm going to do. Just yesterday I got a really stylish comforter set at Target, and the sense of progress felt really good. More and more I'm planning things out-the possibility of change and growth is motivating like nothing else.

Comic-Con this weekend. Good times, although the way they handled the Kubo Tite signing STILL has me pissed a year later.

Latkes, why so good and easy to make? D: D: D: D: *ate eight in one sitting in a midnight food-craving haze* Stuff like this is why I could never go on a master cleanse. I'd crack in twenty minutes and then make cupcakes. mmmcupcakes

I've been clearing stuff down from my walls today-one of my "summer self-improvement" goals besides getting off my procrastinating ass and actually learning how to operate a vehicle is to get my room repainted, and, well...updated so it looks like someone who is not a fourteen year old weeaboo anime fan lives in it like a twenty-two year old anime weeaboo instead *brick'd*. I have grown, just been too lazy/whatever to redecorate. But I have the time and some money saved up now, so carpe diem. I'm going to do the painting myself, since it's expensive to have someone else do it. Kind of a pain, but hey...cheap here. Besides, my sister managed to do her room just fine. To IKEA and Home Depot!

Dentist tomorrow. I hate my life sometimes.

I...actually didn't have one. I was totally new to lj at the time, and couldn't even code a layout at that point. Truly, I have grown. Looking back on some of those entries is more than a little cring inducing. It's painful to think I was that immature at eighteen, or that I had apparently never heard of that remarkable concept "space between sentences".

Thus far, I have been failing in my vow to update this thing more often. It doesn't help that work has felt all but endless lately, and I've been closing up shop night after night. Doesn't really make for a riveting read, "Closed the store again today, wish all teenagers would die in a fiery pit of vomit". Whatever, I plan on spending tomorrow just kicking back and relaxing-I feel I've definitely earned it.

I had to think long and hard about this one, surprisingly enough. There are many black-hearted cynics out there, but without a doubt the one I identify with the most is Discworld's His Grace Commander Sir Sam Vimes. Who else for that mix of pure misanthropy yet lawful good? That's me to a T, and probably the reason I never tire of reading Watch-centric books or Discworld books at all. Close second would be Archer from Fate, but it takes him a little too long to get around to doing the right thing. Third would be Daria, cyncism, detachment, and intelligence she isn't sure what to do with all in one deadpan package.

In yet more Neuro related news, I want to write fic. LIKE BURNING. Only good idea I've had thus far is a Higuchi I LUFF YOUUUUUUUUU centric fic, though. Maybe the arrival of my Neuro and Yako nendoids will change that.I give him five minutes tops before he bondages her. Bless.

Happy Birthday, umbra_elf! Hope y'all have some good times out there, and your birthday gift is being sent out tomorrow, so you have that to look forward to.

New layout, just cos it's summer and I feel like something fresh. Much love to Mai Waifu misheard for the banner-does it really get any more kickass than Team BFF? The answer, my friends, is no. Even considering how girly Waver was back then. Went back to my Fate moodtheme as well, since I wanted to tie the whole thing together.

Enjoying summer break and its bon mot for laziness. All that needs to happen is for Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro to get an English license (at least for the manga), and my life will be complete. Hopeless Neuroholic here, people. Read it, because it is awesome black comedy/drama with one of the more unique Shonen protagonists out there. You won't believe some of the stuff Neuro does, yet he gets away with all of it AND has you rooting for him due to ridiculously high levels of awesome.

What is it about graduations that depress the hell out of me? All the ridiculous pomp and circumstance? The sense of overwhemling futility? My own inferiority complex?

Of course, having to wake up at SIX FUCKING THIRTY for a nine o'clock ceremony when I'm already feeling sick doesn't help things any. Goddamn UCLA. Goddamn afterparty I have to make a token appearance at for at least an hour. Goddamn making polite conversation with a bunch of people I could, on the whole, care less about.

Stuff like this makes me seriously want to take up smoking full time, instead of just the occasional cig when I drink healthy, I know. I just want to go home and sleep.

Sick. It sucks, especially since this is the first time in a while I've gotten so sick more than a night's bed rest was required. I won't go into the gory details, but needless to say it hasn't been fun.

Been passing the time with the awesomely effed up Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro-not the type of thing I usually go for, but it's got an interesting premise to it, and wonderful black humor.