It's been half a year since I updated my journal, so I thought I'd give a recap to those who've either been in the dark, or following me on Twitter and have as bad an attention span as I do when it comes to keeping track of what is actually happening with people's lives.

In summary, my life has changed a lot and gotten much better since the beginning of the year. In fact, I'm almost in awe that so much good stuff has happened in the duration of half a year. Major changes include moving into an apartment in the city, getting a new job, and selling my car.

One day, my good friend Margot notified me of a friend of ours looking for a new roommate, in a room with amazing rent and in a neighborhood where I wanted to move. I jumped on it and confirmed the room by the end of the day. It's in the Tenderloin, which is known as the "worst neighborhood in SF", but it's where I wanted to move because of its proximity to so much good stuff. Nob Hill, Chinatown, Union Square, Downtown, and the Civic Center are right next door. The homelessness and drug abuse on the streets concerns me, but it doesn't affect me. I feel safe. And my roommates are wonderful people. My room is huge. I couldn't ask for much more.

I quit Diabetes Health in May, and got a new job doing web development at Linden Lab. So I get to walk around Second Life as a robot and get lauded by residents just because my avatar's last name is "Linden." The office is sweet, and it's a 10-minute bike ride from my house. Just this last week I got the nod that I'm going from contract to full-time. Some of the stuff I've put together at LL is already online. And I'm making much more than I spend, so I don't have to worry about money at all. (And buying drinks and stuff for friends without fretting about the cost is an added benefit, too.)

I sold my Prius within less than a year of buying it new, taking a substantial loss - but at the same time, glad that I bought a car and drove it around for almost a year instead of watching the money disappear even faster on the stock market. My primary method of transportation is my bike, and I'm loving biking through the city. My health insurance at DH just ran out at the beginning of this month, so it's a good thing I'm going full-time at LL, so I don't have to worry about cars becoming crashed into me.

Other bits of goodness include: making and maintaining friends through Something Awful, local bars and hangouts, work, and old friends from high school and college who are still in the area. Dating nice girls. Being within BART's reach, so the rest of the Bay Area's within reach (and so is my mom's place). Living in a city that I thought would be out of reach for at least a few more years. Using the Internet a whole lot less, and constantly being surrounded by friends without feeling overwhelmed. Oh and I also went to Europe earlier in the year for a week; I realized I never told LJ about that. So there we go.

So that's my life in a nutshell. All good stuff, no bad stuff. The only bad thing I can think of is that I haven't budgeted time to go to the gym, but that can be remedied. Sorry for neglecting you, LiveJournal, but at least for now, Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook are my venues. Goodbye for now!

( Pictorial AX Report )
Remember, only Celestial cosplayers can be tagged to convention coverage, that alone is worth the upgrade, coming home and just clicking on your name to find all the pictures people sorted of you already.

I'm currently in San Francisco and it looks like I'll be here all summer. Girl Scouts sucked, especially for $2.50/hour, so I'll be looking for a slightly less crappy job. Meanwhile I have this much free time: { ------- }

Actually, no, it's just that every year I seem to make a post on the 5th of July with that song reference.

Anyway, today I went back to Kamagaya for another Fighters-Marines minor-league game. In bullet points:

- the Fighters lost 6-4 (or the Marines won 6-4)
- I was given another sign-kai ticket, so today I got shikishi signed by Hoshino and Ugumori
- ran into my friend who works for the team but only got to chat for a minute or so. I think he's losing his English
- sat RIGHT BEHIND HOME PLATE; Ojisan saved me a seat there because most of our gang didn't come
- ran into Lenn Sakata's wife and some of their friends from Hawaii, hung out with them for about 2 innings
- received a box of macadamia nut chocolates from said friends (mmmm real chocolate!)
- got photos with Yohei Kaneko and Hideki Sunaga after the game... could have gotten more players if I'd been more assertive :(
- Imanari-kun hit a 3-run home run! I must really be assimilated now in that people came up to me later like "you must be so happy that your Ryota hit a home run today!"
- ran into Crazy Hosei Dude again and we chatted about the Hosei baseball team for a while. He showed me photos from the victory parade and the student/alumni championship party
- the guy who sat next to me yesterday and who I chatted with before the game today turns out to be the guy I sat next to with Hiromi at Lotte Urawa in April. WTF. I was like "why do you know where I live?" and he said "I rode home with you once!" Heh.

Oh yeah, I tried an experiment today. I froze a bottle of water overnight. Took it out of the fridge around 10am I suppose and brought it with me to the game. It was already somewhat watered down by the time I got there at 11:45ish, and by game start at 1pm it was basically a chunk of ice inside a water bottle, and by 2pm it was totally melted into cold water. I think next time I need to get some sort of thermal thing to keep it in, but overall it wasn't a bad experiment, and it was pleasant to have cold water for a while.

The after-game shots kind of suck since it was really windy and my hair kept blowing in my face, but...


Me with Hideki Sunaga. He grew up about a 15-minute walk from where I work in Arakawa.


With Yohei Kaneko. The photo he's holding, some kid had just given it to him. Pretty funny. I just wish I didn't look so awful. I was really happy to finally catch Yohei since I like him.


Player-stalking is fun!
But man, I'm zonked from this weekend. It takes like 2 hours to get to Kamagaya, so both days I left the house a little before 10am for a 1pm game, and got home at like 7:30pm afterwards.

er...planning to go on half-day tomorrow, just BECAUSE. I don't feel like it. XP

I'm planning to finish all my paperwork for school tonight, so I'm planning on a half day. Or I'll just be absent? I don't know.

http://joule.marnanel.org/chart/lj/tidus/2009-07-05

Friended by: None.
Unfriended by: None.
See the last month as a chart or graph.

Besides feeling passively irritated that I didn't get to use a spoony bard and see his ending, I guess it's nice. Though I do plan to play FE7 soon, I'm going to pick up Valkyrie Profile first - it's apparently short (?), which is more than what I can say for FE6, which took me forty-four hours.

It was kind of sad to watch the roll of battle times and turns, because they started out so fast, and then got really, really long. Forty turns here, thirty six turns there, two hours over there... *cough* And I only got a C in tactics, which is also sad. Roy sucked to the very end. Lillina, Sue, and Miledy won the game for me, with some hot attractive surprisingly useful input from Percival and Cecilia.

I feel like Dieck and Rutger should've had a travel ending or something after their A support. That leaves me feeling a bit cheated. That chain of criticals in chapter 24 can't mean anything but true love - or at least a good working relationship. :D Hell, they have more of a bond than Percival and Cecilia, so I mean.

I do wish the game hadn't made me take Fa. She was useless. I spent most of my time protecting her. However, her ending with Idoun was adorable. ;_;

... I don't have anything deep or interesting to say.

Not really a report... but highlights for me to remember!!!

July 3rd - Friday

Meet the Guests reception!!!
The reception allowed each "table" to have 15 minutes with each guest... then the host/moderator would yell and we would switch tables. Very similar to speed-dating... just longer, and with better looking people! Yay cause Momosu was there and looking ultra ultra cute! They shared two circular tables with Ai/Koharu/Aika/JunJun/LinLin at the left table and Sayumi/Eri/Risa/Reina at the right table. ( Read more... )

Happy 4th of July to everyone. Seems the economy is bad, less fireworks have gone off tonight then usual. Still a large number of them just this time the sky is not green like it has been in previous years. It's just an ugly brown.

And looks like I get to hang out with BJD people while in Florida. There is a meetup at the same time I'm there. Yeah!

in which people realize that friending me was a bad idea

















michael jackson wouldnt fucking shut up about the dollar i lent him, what a tight ass
and he was like WELL HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BUY MY CHOCOLATE MILK AT LUNCH TODAY and i told him all the time he wastes in the chocolate milk line makes us miss firsties for tetherball
but whenever he would play tetherball he would just cry and hurt his hand when he hit hte ball and it wouldnt go anywhere he was the worst teammate and also a cheapass
and then i got detention for TALKING DURING LUNCHTIME WHAT HTE HELL WHY ISNT MICHAEL IN TROUBLE HE WAS BUGGING ME and i had to put my nose on a circle on the chalkboard while my teacher drilled a hole in my back for each word i spoke at lunch
and she put a piece of paper with thte word i said rolled up in each hole TELLING ME TAHT I WILL WEAR THE FOUL WORDS I HAVE SPOKEN FOR ALL OF TIME HOW DARE YOU SPEAK LIKE THAT TO MICHAEL and then she yelled LEVEL UP and the cirlce started moving and i had to hold my nose in it while hse was drilling and stuffing and every time my nose followed wrong and went outside the circle i owed michael another dollar
he had one of those old cash registers and a green visor and sang YOU'RE A HOOOO HOOOO every time he punched in another dollar

i woke up in a menses mess i forgot to put a tampon in when i went to bed

So I was rocking the 4th of July at work and traded away my 3rd tour, talking a tour 1, for the stairmaster tour known as tour 2.

About 2/3 of the way thru the tour a guest who had intently stared at my stainless steel water bottle and asked "is that a BPAL sticker on your bottle?"
HEE!
I replied "ah another of the addicted?"
She said her roommate worked for Beth and Puddin and I correctly guess it was wickedgoddess she refered to. I also offered my wrist and stated Golden Wave.
She does get the prize for being the first to notice and correctly identify teh BPALz.
Hi bdbdb
*waves*

Happy 4th of July, everybody.

Tomorrow, all of LJ will explode with everyone and their grandma talking about Anime Expo. SO I MIGHT AS WELL JUST ENJOY THE PEACE AND QUIET NOW WHILE I CAN. :V

*Proposes to Kate Beaton.*


--------------------------------------------------------
NEWS FLASH.
I sat through 'Jane Austin's Book Club' with my sisters.
My Saturday night cannot get more wild and crazy.


...Or we all start dancing through the house while lip-syncing to Michael Jackson songs. Scaring the dog senseless. Again.

/Makes Ed hate him more.

Popped in just as I was about to take a shower (hush, I get all my best ideas that way):

Over 40 Fangirl

I need to think about it more.

Happy Independence Day! I haven't seen good fireworks in years and I'll be looking for 'em tonight, damnit. Please be safe everyone.

I'm currently watching Yankees vs. Blue Jays, and for the 4th, they are all wearing special bright red hats. I'm confused, though, because the Blue Jays are based in Canada. If they are going to force them to wear things for the Fourth of July, did they allow for them to do something special for Canada Day?

Happy Birthday, Charline!
aka vtladyhawke

P.S. I was writing a text to someone to tell him that something good happened in the baseball game. (As of now, the teams are tied at 5 in the 12th inning.) T9 texting is hilarious sometimes. What I meant to say: "Tex doubled with no outs." What first came up, before I corrected it: "Tex doubled with no nuts."

Edit: Walk off single to end the game. Yay!

... what the f*ck?! Stir the chicken already!!

</ax>

XD

P.S. - Happy 4th of July everyone!

P.P.S. - This new laptop is totally a Decepticon. This morning he's managed to screw up every log-in anyone in the room has tried to use on him. > >;