Currently Reading The Shadow Of The Lion By Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint see related

Just got done watching the latest Dr. Who episode (hooray for DVR). I'm really liking what they've been doing with the new series. This particular one had living statues that couldn't move unless you weren't looking at them. So you'd blink and they'd be moving closer and closer...gaaah. I read an article about Dr. Who, and the author made a comment about thousands of Britons being united by the common experience of hiding behind the couch as children whilst watching Dr. Who, so they could duck behind it during the scary bits. Yep. One hundred percent.

My experiments are moving along, I guess. I won't be graduating in May, but I talked with my advisor and he's okay with it. The problem for me now is figuring out how I'm going to keep my graduate stipend. I'm going to talk to graduate services on Monday, maybe they'll let me file a full time status certificate again. If not, well, I'll have to talk to my advisor some more. Sigh.

Jamie and Laura have been all gung ho about redecorating our apartment. I dunno. The couch cover looks nice (covers up how cruddy our couch looks) but some of the other stuff is just.. meh. New pillows and curtains 'n stuff.  I guess I'm not much of an interior design person. I know that when I have my own house, it's going to be the most eclectic in the history of ever. I like old furniture, so pretty much nothing is going to match, although I do like mission furniture so that might tie rooms together. And there's going to have to be a ton of bookcases, of course, to hold all my books.

Speaking of books, I finally paid off my giant library fine. That's what I get for taking out so many books at a time and not returning them on time. But if I don't take out at least ten books, I'm done with them in less than a week, and since the nearest library is kind of out of my way, it's not very efficient to go there every week. It's terrible.

Currently Gaming The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass By Nintendo see related

Haha...I haven't updated this thing in forever.

I guess I'm on track to graduate this semester. I've filed my memorandum of courses and all, my committee is meeting early next month (eek!), and I've got a seminar to give in March (also eek!). Of course, during my meeting yesterday with my advisor he mentioned that maybe I'm not getting all the alpaca cells off the time course plates. If that's the case, that means I have to do those experiments all over again. I'm going to do some more stuff to check this out, though, so hopefully that isn't the case. But if it is, then I don't know if I can graduate if I have to redo the stuff that took me like four months to finish, because my alpaca cells grow so slow and are hard to get going. Agh. Stress.

Mike and I are a couple now, which is exciting and weird at the same time. It's been three years since I've dated anyone, plus I've got a whole "subscription" of issues, but it's still pretty nice.

As you can see, Birthmas was good to me. I got the DS Lite I've been wanting since roughly forever, plus the new Zelda game. It's a pretty interesting game. I wish that they would make the "writing on the map" feature retroactive with every Zelda game ever. Now I can write little reminders on the map to go back and do stuff once I've got the right item. The only part that I find slightly annoying is the Temple of the Ocean King. It's a dungeon that you have to return to at several points in the game to find new maps to explore. At first, the dungeon only sucks the life out of you as you walk through; annoying but not impossible to deal with. Then, once you have an item that protects you from the life drain, suddenly unkillable enemies appear in the corridors that you have to avoid. Later, they make the enemies faster and give them little spy drones to hunt you. By the tenth level of this hellhole, they add floors that make noise when you walk on them, enemies that drain time by touching you, and the enemies get teleportation abilities to all that other stuff. Add this to the normal Zelda hazards (spikes, pitfalls) and puzzles (switches, collect the items etc.) and it's enough to make me want to throw my DS out the window.

Currently Gaming Trauma Center: Second Opinion By Atlus Software see related

I like this game a lot, but right now it's making me kind of want to throw my wiimote through my television. I'm on the second "Triti" virus mission, and it fucking sucks.

For those who haven't played this awesome game, Triti is a virus that looks like these little triangles with thorns at each corner. You have to remove the thorns to remove the virus. The trick is that if you remove the thorns in the wrong pattern, the virus starts replicating all over the place. If it covers the target organ, then it's game over. If I had just a few more seconds to think, then my mediocre spatial skills could probably handle this, but the virus regens in like ten seconds. It pisses me off so much. Bleh. I wish there was a way to skip ahead and do later missions because when I hit these roadblocks in the story it's very frustrating for me.

I finally got the nerve up to check the score on my immunology exam. I got a high B, which really surprises me. I walked out of that test thinking it was the worst thing ever and that I might not have passed. Everybody I talked to in that class thought the exam sucked ass too, but then it turns out I only did about five points worse than I did on the first exam. Huh. Either I had a reserve of awesome power on that exam that I didn't notice or he was really generous with partial credit. Well, whatever. It makes me feel better anyway.

Payday is this Friday and I can hardly wait. I wanna finish my Christmas shopping! I already have about half of it done (my roomies' presents and some of the people from my DnD campaign) but the major purchases for the sibs and Mom are lined up for this weekend. I already know what I'm getting for most people. Mom only has perfume on her list. Pfff. I'm going to figure out which Michael Buble CD she doesn't have yet and get her that, plus the flower vase thingie I saw her admiring at the Lauritzen Garden gift shop. Problem solved.

Currently Reading The Return of the King (Lord of the Rings, 3) By J. R. R. Tolkien see related

*********Convention stuff**********

So yet another Nebraskon has passed and once again I somehow got roped into working security again. There was a panel on planning and making costumes and props that I wanted to go to, but maybe I'll be able to catch it some other year.  On the plus side, I was able to buy some more animoo 'n such. And I stayed within my budget, for which I am impressed with myself. Usually I go to a convention, buy way too much stuff, and wind up eating ramen for the rest of the month. I guess it helps that my budget was augmented by the money I made from making all the uniforms for the security team.

At least they went with a "classy" uniform (shinigami from Bleach). I was working the security desk at the door to the dealers room on Saturday, our busiest day, and I counted fifty-four Naru-tards cosplaying. That doesn't sound like a lot when you realize that it's out of eight hundred people or so, but since only about half the con goers were cosplaying at all, and there was a representation of many different shows/games, it works out to be about two thirds of the people in costume were wearing something from Naruto. Mostly fangirls. Bleh. I like the show, but dear Jesus on a pogo stick do I hate fangirls. Two boys were dressed up as Light and L from Deathnote and were putting up some kind of quasi-yaoi show in the lobby after the karaoke contest. The squealing of the fangirls was deafening. Sigh.

I'm kind of burnt out on sewing a little right now, so I'm probably going to take a break for a few days* at least. I got my Quincy costume done just in the nick of time for the convention. Not as many people took pictures of it as my Zelda costume from last year (maybe only 12 pictures versus about 50 pictures). That doesn't make it a "failure," but I always feel kind of sad if people don't seem to like it. Ah, well. Although it turned out very well, my Quincy costume just isn't a "flashy" costume. The Samus costume I've got planned for next year/con will surely be sufficiently awesome though. I'm probably going to buy a bodysuit from Mangleson's in O-town (I love that store) and make most of the armour out of craft foam, with paper mache and paperclay for stuff like the big round shoulder plates.

***********End convention stuff*********************

Tl;dr: Holly had to work con security again and hates fangirls/boys more and more with each passing year.

Mom said it would be all right if I invited my roommate from India to our Thanksgiving, since she really doesn't have a place to go, but it turns out she has to work :( . So Jamie and I are going to put on a little mini Thanksgiving for her this weekend. I'm going to make Mom's famous corn casserole and a pumpkin pie, and Jamie's going to make some stuff too. It's a little difficult to come up with a main course, because Janki's a vegetarian, but I'm sure we'll come up with something.

My Immunology teacher hasn't managed to get the exams graded because he's sick, so I'm going to be in suspense for another week. I'm not really looking forward to seeing it, since I don't feel I did as well on this exam as I did on the first one, but knowing my score will help me determine how hard I need to study for the stupid comprehensive final *barf*. I've started studying a little bit, but nothing too major.

*Oh, who am I kidding? I want to make Gorden and Kyle new dice bags as presents for their shared birthday on December 3, so I need to get on that. Plus most of the people on security want Bleach captain's coats too, so that will take care of Christmas presents for a lot of people.

Currently Watching Shogun Assassin, Vol. 3: Slashing Blades of Carnage By Yoichi Hayashi, Michi Azuma see related

Best. Sequel. Title. EVER. 

I don't know which Lone Wolf movie (s) this one is supposed to be, but it's pretty much the best thing to watch when I have to make a whole ton of kimono and hakama. On the plus side, I only have one more outfit to go, and then I can start making my own costumes already. Jeez.

I can't believe it's November already. I've got a few more assays to do for my experiments and then it should be pretty much wrapped up. Dr. K wants me to be done with the majority of my experiments for this project by Christmas, and I'm sure that I'll be able to make it by then. I've really only got one more set of growth kinetics to do, which is good, because I'm sick of being in the frickin' lab until 3 in the morning like I was Wednesday. After that it's just a whole bunch of titration plates, plate staining, and figuring out how I'm supposed to be doing the luciferase assays. Bleh.

My friend who's in Iraq is coming back a little bit after Thanksgiving too. He admitted that he has a huge crush on me just before he left, so when he gets back it could turn out to be pretty awesome or just really, really awkward. I guess I'll see.

"No, manga is Japanese for 'secret Yankee culture poison'."