Growing up.
First of all, I'm terribly sorry for the complete lack of updates these past few months. I get on a roll, and then I become self-conscious about my writing, and my blog content. I get worried about who's reading it, or who wants to read it, or if I'm doing a good job being entertaining. Then I think that may be my everyday events aren't that interesting, and I'll just get teased for writing. I hope that's not the case.
Let's get back to the topic of this post. It's growing up. It's something I need to fucking do. You see, I've always just been a step behind everyone else. I'm afraid to move forward, become an adult, and leave what's familiar. So I took 3 years of college, found myself in a full-time salaried job, and then never looked back. It proved to me you could get a good job without graduating college. That people don't look at a degree as often as you might think. They look at experience. While I don't think I have that much experience, it's enough for me to get hired and not be asked any other questions.
However, I'm tired of feeling like an idiot. I'm tired of feeling uneducated even though I have finished my degree. Yes, finished my degree. In 3 years. Unfortunately the University of Delaware requires more credits than my degree provides me, so I'm left with having to take 18 credits worth of electives in order to officially obtain my degree. I'm an English major, but this year, I'm going back to school. I'm going to finish those credits, and I'll be able to call myself a college graduate by this time next year.
I applied for FAFSA a few months ago, to see what kind of money I'd be awarded. I'll be paying these damn loans off until I'm 40 years old, but for right now, I don't want to have to worry about that. I got enough money to be full time this year, but I'm going to only do 9 credits a semester. It's easier now because I work 3pm to 12am at my job, so all the daytime classes are out of session by then.
So far, I've accepted my awards, applied them to fall semester AND I have enough money to purchase books now. I'm even adding $150 of that to go to on-campus food, so I can eat between classes. What's next? I'm actually getting a permit so I can park my car. Sure I'll get crappy parking but it's close to campus, and I don't have to pay daily, and I won't be in danger of being towed or fined.
Finally, the big question is what will I take? I can't take that many more English classes. I have a limit of 54 credits that are allowed to be English, and I think I'm hovering somewhere around that. I've taken pretty much every German class there is to offer, except for a conversation class. The requirement for that, however, is that you haven't taken any German 300 or 400 levels, which I have. So that's ruled out.
I do love language classes, though, and I've always wanted to learn another language. I was interested in Portuguese, but the only option there is "Portuguese for Spanish speakers" which I am not. Not even close. Dutch isn't offered, or I'd jump on that. So I was between Hebrew, Japanese, and Russian. I think I'm going to choose Japanese. It think it's a good business language to know, and I would be able to watch anime now without having to focus my attention on the subtitles. I'm probably going to take Japanese I in this coming semester, Japanese II in summer, and then Japanese III in the spring. I won't be fluent but I'll be able to understand the language.
I should also probably take Technical Writing, even though it's an English class. I work with Technology nowadays, and I don't see myself leaving that career path anytime soon. I'm sure it will be helpful when writing tutorials and conversing with customers.
Lastly, ballet is offered as a class. It's specifically catered to people who have no experience with ballet. I do, technically, but I was 6. I don't remember very much from it. I think it would be fun and a good opportunity to work on my flexibility and lean muscles. Right now I'm so out of shape it would at least be something. I would also get an opportunity to purchase those vegan ballet flats that PETA is always advertising, haha.
To say the least, I'm very optimistic about going forward. I think if I finish this I can be ready to go on with the rest of my life. I feel like I've been wandering around wondering what would happen in my future, or not really caring. Now I can at least know, and maybe proceed with that.
The Cake is Not a Lie.
Long time without an update. Certainly not for lack of activity. A lot of things have gone on in the past month. I visited a Farm Sanctuary, went to the beach for a week, and lots else.
But today, my friends, I bring to you, the cake from Portal. I have to admit it's not 100% vegan. I *had* to have the fish-shaped crackers, if you know what I mean, and they have non-fat milk in their ingredients. But besides that, all is.
I don't feel like typing all the exact ingredients, but the cake is basically cocoa powder, a shitton of maple syrup, whole wheat pastry flour plus regular flour, and soy milk. The icing is a regular buttercream icing, with coconut milk substituted for soy milk. Since the original recipe calls for coconut pecan icing. I made 3 layers, icing in-between each. I pressed sliced almonds into the cake, and plopped maraschino cherries and fish-shaped chocolate crackers on top. Unfortunately, I had used all of my confectioner's sugar on the chocolate icing, and accidentally poured out the rest of my coconut milk before realizing I had to make some sort of whipped cream/white icing to hold on the cherries. So I compromised and smooshed the cherries into the cake.
The cake itself probably weighs about 5 lbs, and does not travel well. It's very moist, and won't allow me to wrap it in any way, so I'm hoping my two hungry boy roommates will make do with the cake ASAP. Basically "Hey, Portal cake in the fridge!" will be sufficient enough to get it eaten. Myself, I do not like chocolate cake nearly *this* much.
My awesome gaming system. 1337!!!
So as you all know, I purchased the Sims 3 recently, and I was trying to run it on my Macbook. I really shouldn't say trying, because it worked, but not as well as I'd have liked it to. It was slow and choppy at times, I couldn't maximize the graphics settings, and fast-forwarding was a joke.
Brady had been offering to build me a gaming computer of my own, as long as I saved up the money, so I figured I'd now take him up on the offer. The only thing was that I didn't have the money saved up, but he had the Bill-Me-Later option with New Egg. So I'm using his account, and I'm the one paying the bills, but the computer has been worth it.
I don't really know the specs, except that it's Intel Dual Core, and the processor is like 2.69 gHz (technically 2.7, but it only sees 2.69.) It's got 4 gigs of ram, and sees all 4, since I'm running Windows 7 64-bit. (Gross, I know.) I also have a pretty good graphics card. I don't know the specifics, but Brady said it's slightly better than his. I have 600-something gigs of hard drive space, and I also installed a wireless card. Why - I have no idea, but it works.
Here's the awesome part. The case is pink!
It's small and compact, and has blue LEDs on the fan, and gives me a temperature reading on the CPU and hard drive. Mine's always hotter than the gauge in the picture, mostly because it's so darn packed in there. The graphics card takes up the whole left side.
So anyway, I'm pretty excited and I thought I'd share that with everybody. I also have a pink Logitech mouse with it, and a keyboard that glows purple! ^_^
My finger will fall off.
So about a week ago, Brady and I made a bed from Ikea. You all know that. I briefly mentioned that I slammed one of the pieces of wood into my left thumb, while we were pushing the pieces of the bed together. That picture is here. I'll not embed it to spare you if you don't really want to see it.
So at this point, I'm waiting for it to heal. I realize it's more than likely dried blood, and not just a bruise, so I will probably have to wait a long time for it to fully grow out. Like up to 6 months. It's also very possible that it won't grow out, and it will fall off, and I will just have to grow a new thumbnail from scratch.
It really sucks, and the thought of having an ugly fingernail bothers me. I bite my nails bigtime, and I worry about having an ugly thumbnail. I worry that if I go to the nail salon they will judge me based on my ugly thumb.
I'll keep you updated on the status of my ugly thumb in coming months.
A new bed. Err… Pile of wood.
This past week the bed frame Brady and I had been using finally broke. It was one of those plain metal kinds on wheels. Not very sturdy to begin with, but the wheel literally snapped off, and we were left with a bed on a slope. I was joking with him that I was having dreams about falling, sliding, slipping, etc.
Saturday Brady and I went to Walmart. I should note here that I've never shopped at Walmart for myself and never intend on doing so. I feel embarrassed for human society when I go there, and feel like disciplining other peoples' children. After hearing me complain for the first 10 minutes, and not finding a bedframe at all, Brady decided we would take the adventure 45 minutes away from Delaware, to the nearest Ikea.
I've never been to Ikea. I was expecting a store on par with Target, Best Buy, or something similar. But no, this was like the Please-Touch-Museum. Or an Art museum. There was actual organization here, which was a relief in comparison to Walmart. They even had a food court. The food seemed really cheap, but was not Vegan, and I did not partake.
Finding an appropriate bedframe was the difficult part. We didn't actually get to the section we needed until the end. All the bedframes seemed to be either size Queen or Twin. We have a Full sized bed. We contemplated a few that were no better than simply having the mattress on the ground itself. We wanted storage, but all the ones with storage were in the $300 range.
Then, we decided to go into the kids section, and we found it. A nice sturdy wooden loft bed with space for "activities" (Step Brothers reference). It was $199 on sale from $399. We would be able to bring Brady's couch back upstairs from the basement, and have our own living quarters under the bed. I have to say, however, that the idea of a loft bed makes me very nervous, but the sign at Ikea said it'd hold 400 lbs weight, and we probably weigh 281 lbs combined. I hope we'll be okay. I've never seen a loft bed collapse except for in Step Brothers
The other concern I had was that we drove to Ikea in my 2-door Volkswagen Rabbit. It's been known to haul a good bit of stuff, but I wasn't sure if it would fit an entire loft bed. Luckily the entire bed was packed away neatly in two separate boxes that had no problem fitting into my car (surprise!) and we were able to get the bed home.
That was the easy part.
I understand the need for instructions to be easy to understand for any language, but I don't even think the Swedish could understand the instructions. It's all up to interpretation, and involved a lot of staring at tiny details in the pictures. Brady and I work tech support for a living so are used to figuring out problems and understanding the mechanics of things. So what I didn't understand was how do other people figure out how to build these damn things? Do they all call the Ikea people to come to their house and build these things? And how do those people handle their job? There must be some sort of high-suicide rate. I can't imagine having to build shit from Ikea all day every day. I would probably cry.
Despite a bashed up thumb, red and near-bleeding hands, scared cats, and probably angry neighbours, we were able to assemble the bed within 8 hours. I don't love the bed, but I love the extra space. I've never assembled anything from Ikea, and I will never be assembling anything from Ikea ever again. Next time we go to Ikea, we're buying plates instead. They don't require assembly (or at least I don't think they do!)
And so now, I understand this comic.
Tattoos and Blenders :p (how's that for disorganized?)
It's been a while since I last wrote. This is mostly since not much has happened, but I figured that since I want to keep this blog going, I should post something.
Friday I went shopping, and bought a food processor/blender. A lot of recipes I want to make require me to chop/blend/whirr. I also want to start eating a lot more fruit, and the blender is helping with that. I've been making smoothies out of my orange juice and bananas. I also had some strawberries in there, and blackberries. I bought raspberries, but those were mouldy the very next day. I was so upset about the mouldy raspberries, because (A) they were expensive, and (B) I *just* bought them.
Topic #2: My tattoos. I find my tattoos to be very unorganized. They seem to have no theme. They're just random things in random places, and I'm looking to tie them together a little bit. I'd at least like to get my arm going. I have this large tattoo on my forearm, as I'm sure many of you have seen it. A lot of people lately have been asking me if I'm going to "finish" it. I was kind of insulted by that because I didn't know what they meant by finish. It's done. I spent 3.5 hours in a chair. I consider it done; or do I? I'm now thinking of all the possibilities I can work into my arm. I do have the piece by Sherri DuPree on my shoulder, and I'm wondering if I could get it coloured in, and have a background added, and then eventually work that into a sleeve. I think then I would be really happy with how it looks. I just have to pick what kind of theme I want on my arm. Probably mostly Kurt Halsey, and then Sherri's angel can sit proudly on the top of my shoulder.
I'll think about that while I run off to make more cupcakes ^_^
Some things.
1. I'm listening to Tori Amos a lot today, and really enjoying it.
2. For lunch, I had black beans and rice with veggie crumbles, a "ham and cheese" sandwich on potato bread, and scalloped potatoes made with nutritional yeast. A recipe I found in Peta's College Cookbook.
3. I'm going to finish up Dexter season 3 when I get home from work today. Only 2 more episodes.
4. I need to do some actual work today.
5. My stomach has calmed down from earlier. I was feeling yucky.
6. The next 6 months are going to be awesome. Going to Texas, California, Nevada, and Lewes, Delaware. Not at the same time. My mom is renting a beachouse this summer, I'm hoping to see Holly for hopefully a week also this summer. Then in November for Thanksgiving, I'm flying out to Las Vegas, Nevada with my mom and little sister. We're going to then take the 4.5 hour drive to our destination in California and stay there for a week.
7. I have 1 1/2 hours left of work.
8. Bad things: I noticed that my WordPress blog doesn't know what timezone I'm in.
9. I noticed my new doll's eyebrows don't match her wig.
Mark Twain was a Vegetarian.
I'm starting to get that itch where I don't want to write anymore. It's a pain in the but, it's embarrassing, and I feel like no one reads my entries anyway. But I'll do it, because I can, and maybe someone gets some kind of enjoyment out of it.
I went over to my mom's house yesterday. We went to a little play her community was putting on. It was just a few parts of some of Mark Twain's stories. It was cute. It was very difficult to hear a lot of the actors due to lack of enunciation, or they spoke too softly, but it was entertaining. There was this adorable little boy playing one of the parts in Tom Sawyer, and he must've been about 4 or 5. He was begging Tom to paint in this adorable little voice. He even put on a bit of a southern accent. He didn't really like to stay where he was supposed to be. Curtain call was tough because he wanted to stand in the middle of the stage and wave to everybody, but adorable, none the less.
I made dinner for my mom as well, and I'm a little frustrated with how that went down. I cook for Brady all the time, and he doesn't care if it's vegan or not. He loves everything I cook and eats it and gets seconds later. But my mom was picking on the food. She shouldn't care if it's got meat in it or not. If it's delicious, you eat it. I know she was just teasing me because it was "fake" meat, but honestly, if I was cooking that in a pot, with all the taco sauce on it, it smells good, and it looks like meat, so I'm not sure what difference it makes. Frustrations aside, she did end up eating it, and said it was good, but didn't want me to leave the rest of it with her. I took it home, and Brady ate it, and said it was good, so at least I know it wasn't disgusting. My little sister wouldn't eat it because it had corn and onions in it.
I offered to cook for her again, just sans soy cheese and wheat meat. But she doesn't understand that food can legitimately be made vegan. Animal products don't HAVE to be in something for it to be tasty. I'm sure there's plenty of foods that you've eaten that are vegan by nature. Minestrone soup, Oreo cookies, pasta, pancakes (sometimes). And when I told her I was making vegan cupcakes that mysteriously disappear within days of making them, she said that was disgusting too, and couldn't imagine what one would bake with if I left out the butter and eggs. I noted that so many eat margarine, which is a butter replacement, without thinking twice. But the moment I put "soy" in the word it's disgusting. I'll cook something some day that she won't be weirded out by, but I guess until then she'll always be suspicious of my cooking.
In other news, another one of my dolls was repainted recently. To give you a refresher, she used to look like this:
But I had Aileen (frozen wings on DOA) repaint her to be my cute little deadly Zombie/Elf girl:
I'm going to get her these eyes in 12mm spirit dove. Then she'll need a little outfit, and eventually her own body. That's at least exciting.
Alice has returned, another workweek is over.
So another work week has passed, and today was my payday! So besides rent, I went out to Target and bought a blender/food processor combo. I'm hoping to be able to make a lot more of my recipes with this, like for smoothies, and different sauces. I also got some new underwear ^_^ I don't really take care of my clothes as well as other people do, so my underwear quickly loses that new feeling, or I buy them too small, too large.
Afterwards I went to the grocery store to stock up on some more food. I spent a lot of money unfortunately but I think I'll be good for the next few weeks. I also bought some blendable fruits and berries to make some smoothies! 
I also got my Milla in today, and put her eyes and wig on. She's officially Alice now. I just need to get a body for her, but I did take some pictures. I'm really happy with the way she came out!
I also made some Oreo cookie cupcakes!
Something that made me smile :)
I went to see Kevin Devine again at the end of April in Philly. He kept telling me how I looked really good, like compared to normal. Anyway I was just thinking about how I didn't know how I necessarily looked better, but he kept saying it, and it kept rubbing my brain. I'm not sure if my new diet was the reason, but I told him "I went vegan recently, maybe that's it?"
I mean it could be. No more crappy foods. I certainly didn't lose any weight, so that wasn't it.
Anyway, to this, he told me he used to be vegan for a few years. Wow! I never guessed that Kevin would have been vegan before, but it kind of makes sense.
I dunno, just something that I thought was cool and made me happy.