Feb. Photo Challenge: Days 4-9

WOO HOO!  It finally feels vaguely like winter/spring!

Let's see... I've been super busy since my last post, and was even in the mood for a bit of cooking!  And for some reason, I've really been into making French toast this week, I made it 3 times so far.  I also tried my hand and candy-making.... but more on that in a future post.  

One afternoon, I randomly just started cooking a batch of yakisoba and rolled egg, then reheated some karaage chicken to go with it

 ★★★★★★★★★★★★★ PRP ★★★★★★★

One of the most recent commissions that I finished

And part 1 of type of payment to a friend:

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ TECHNOLOGY ★★★★★★★

Netflix App

Recently, my sister decided to try out the Netflix streaming subscription, so I downloaded the Netflix app on my iTouch.  There's a disappointingly small variety of things that you can watch, but I enjoyed being able to start off my morning watching a National Geographic special on oceans, then a TLC special on the top bakeries, and most recently, a Wallace and Gromit movie.  xD

I keep on forgetting how detailed these claymation movies are x3

I noticed that I watched two bakery-related things that morning.  xD

Next, I'm going to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's, woooo.

 ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

February Photo Challenge:  Days 4-9 (plus runner-up images)

~~~Day 4:  A Stranger~~~

sorry to the random person.  > x >

~~~Day 5:  10 AM~~~ 

~~~Day 6:  Dinner~~~ 

~~~Day 7:  Button~~~ 

~~~Day 8:  Sun~~~ 

I was actually worried that I wasn't going to be able to complete this challenge, since it was super overcast that day.
but near sunset, the sky cleared up, and I ( as well as two other people here who are doing the challenge) was able to
get a photo right before it set.  xD

~~~Day 9:  Front Door~~~

Feb. Photo Challenge: Day 1-3

Wow.  I am amazingly tired.  The last 2 days have been a blur, and while it's nice to be getting things done and being a lot more productive, I think that I want to crash on a beach soon...

Looks like it'll be a busy busy weekend, though... if I don't totally burn myself out and crash.  xD

At least I finally got my evolving ring to level 10!
Annnnnnnd got a nifty wing "cape" equip for a week.
(Though I probably won't even log in anymore since I already leveled my ring  >_> )
I wish that those free cash shop items would expire already, though.
Like the oh-so-lovely alien gray mask.  xD

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February Photo Challenge:  Days 1-3 (plus runner-up images)
~~~Day 1:  Your View~~~

Left:  Honolulu cityscape   Right:  Close runner-up, my backyard (with banana trees and a beautifully flowering mango tree)

~~~Day 2:  Words~~~

Calendar page from my kitchen, turned into pop art.

~~~Day 3:  Hands~~~

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ INTERNET AWESOMENESS ★★★★★★★

THIS.   

This has got to be one of the most awesomesauce plush/puppets ever created.
This is the ultimate level of artistic integrity/expertise toward which I aspire and am inspired by.

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AND THIS.
This makes my inner LotR fangirl so, SO happy.
...BUT WHY IS THIS MEDLEY SO SHORT?!?  ; A ;
</3

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One of the most delightfully whimsical and refreshingly creative uses of bokeh lights that I've ever seen

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ FOOD ★★★★★★★

Mmmmm, famous and Honolulu staples, manapua and pork hash dim sum from Libby's  

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ PURCHASES ★★★★★★★

My first pair of arm warmers 

My new business cards came in today, yay~!

February 1- Random Stuff Post

Happy February, everyone!  Sorry that I can't even produce a blog entry with even a semblance of coherence, but the next one will.  Hopefully.  xD

Saw this from my friend, aaznpnaigurl , attempting to complete this challenge~!

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I am such a dork.  I get oddly excited when I see all the legendary warriors with their Pokemon.
But I guess that's what's to be expected of a girl who once drew her own DBZ Pokemon crossover doujinshi back when she was 12 >///>

I'd imagine that those meetings where they determined who got what Pokemon were

incredibly heated and dorky ones.

You fool, Nobunaga would never have that Pokemon!

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Sometimes I forget how beautiful this song is.  But I always come back to it.  <3

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When I saw this on Facebook a while back, I felt upset that you can only "like" something once.  

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A stunning digital painting in which one of my lychee stock photos has the honor of appearing in

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My dad found this Panda ko panda plush in a thrift store and is going to resell it... </3
DAD, GIVE ME THE LINK TO YOUR AUCTION LISTING, KAY?!?!  ; A ; 

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Hahaha, Pixiv is just too awesome.
While I recognize most of them, I'm not so sure about 25%.
Which characters would you choose?  o.o
(Professor Layton and Cardbo for meeeee! )

Happy Chinese New Year 2012

Happy Chinese New Year, year of the majestic water dragon!

...but how happy can this lunar year start without any gau?!?  TT_TT

Dad didn't make us any of his famous gau for us this year  </3
But I'd even be happy with even the one in this picture  >.<

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It must be the dead of winter around most places around the country, but here, it's been a stifling, still, sticky, hazy, weird rainless summer here for a good 2 weeks now, although we've had a random half day of weirdly cold and windy weather that abruptly stopped as soon as it started.

I'm often dizzy and headachy all day, go to sleep in the heat, wake up all sweaty and without much of an appetite... blegh.  Being all sweaty in the dead of winter...  This is beyond weird.  This is supposed to be the coldest time of the year, even over here.

 COLD WEATHER, COME BACKKKKKKKKKK!!   > A <

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ LITERATURE ★★★★★★★

So it's been trudging through Etsy and Gaia commissions, trying not to get migraines, missing a whole bunch of people, trying to get myself out of this rut, trying to figure out what to do next.  I'm going on a skype/socialization break for a while to concentrate on getting back into a productive schedule again.

  In the meantime, though, I finished reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, which is one of the most brilliant and emotionally striking novels that I've read in a long time, I've already started to go back and read it again. It makes me really wonder how faithful the movie adaption is (or could be), so I can't wait to watch it when it comes out on DVD.  o.o

"I went to a tattoo parlor and had YES written onto the palm of my left hand, and NO onto my right palm, what can I say, it hasn't made life wonderful, it's made life possible, when I rub my hands against each other in the middle of winter I am warming myself with the friction of YES and NO, when I clap my hands I am showing my appreciation through the uniting and parting of YES and NO, I signify "book" by peeling open my clapped hands, every book, for me, is the balance of YES and NO, even this one, my last one, especially this one."

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ PRP ★★★★★★★

Last week, the book that I spent so much time designing finally came in!

It's a compilation of my creative works throughout 2011, I've been making such yearly compilations for the last few years now.  :3

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ INTERNET AWESOMENESS ★★★★★★★

...I think that I NEED this.  o____o  

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ GAMING ★★★★★★★

MINECRAFT

I actually haven't been able to play much games recently, but I still have a bit of screenies from my gaming vacation, so I'll be posting those until I find a good public server to join.  (Though I'd rather play with a really good friend... so maybe I'll just wait til summer  ; ~ ; )

So anyway.  Without further ado, the second of me and my friend's Minecraft buildings, which I named "Sky Garden I":

 

Habib arriving via the waterfall entrance  

After exiting via waterfall to the ocean, under the sky garden

Shaky start

...Whoa.  For some reason, blogspot lists the date of my last post as being written on 12/31/11 when it was published on the 7th of January.  I was thinking, "Whaaaaaa, no way that I didn't post since then!"  ...but, admittedly, I'm a bit late if I wanted to do blog posts on a weekly basis.  >.<  

I know that I probably mentioned this before, but ever since the beginning of December, I've felt like such a burnt out and hollow shell of a person (especially for a reason that only one person knows).  Sometimes I'll feel like my senses are returning, but it doesn't last long.  ._.  Nothing really feels good right now.

Even the postal service is adding to my unease, I now have a total of two packages that never made it to me, it seems.  </3 And in the last couple of days, when I've been feeling really horrible from both the weather and a cold.  ...I wonder what can get me out of this horrible rut...?   >~<;;

I finally hit my 7777 pageview mark on dA, though~!  >w<  .... uh oh, now to make a kiriban pic.  ahhhh!  @ o @;;

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ INTERNET AWESOMENESS ★★★★★★★

Okay.  So even when it feels like a big part of me isn't even here, I fully recognize the awesomeness of THESE.  

I.... I just don't know what to say, but it's the work of an astoundingly talented master, watching him at work made my brain dither.  Seriously, this is one of the most amazing work processes that I've ever watched.  

...Though, to be fair, that artist who draws those portraits with ONE LINE is pretty mind-blowing too.  

First, you're like, "....uh....?  then when you realize what's happening---> mind= BLOWN

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AND THIS!~!  I NEED TO MAKE THIS!!  * A *
Chocolate dipped panda gummy bears!!
  http://www.thecheesethief.com/2012/01/chocolate-dipped-panda-gummy-bears.html

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...I may never buy it, but Gaia, I love you so much for making a Katamari King of all Cosmos item  :,D 

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absolutely amazingly geeky bangles by http://kerinewton.deviantart.com/

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ RESOLUTIONS/ PLANS ★★★★★★★

So.  I haven't had time to make any kind of real list of resolutions/goals for 2012, so I'll just throw one together righhhht now. Here are the first few that come to mind (I'll make an official post about it later):

--Reach level 120 on my Blaze Wizard on Maple story

--Reach level 200 on my Mercedes?  o.o

--Learning how to survive in Minecraft (and 2012 as well?... o.o )  Dx  

--Building a (simple) castle with Spec in Minecraft

--My first traveling journal project~!
--2012+ :  Make (reasonably good) friends with people in all 50 states~!  

My progress so far  ;o

....I like how most of the first couple of resolutions that came to mind were related to games... xd

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ GAMING ★★★★★★★

...Oh dear.  It seems that I really should have made a blog during my brief gaming vacation that I took last week, now I have a ton of screenies to post.  >.<  I may just make a separate post for my minecraft screenies.  But it's (incredibly) funny.  When I look back at my screenies folder, I wonder what on earth is going on.  For most, I can still remember the context of when I took the screenie, but some just mystify me.  

The most willfully suicidal octopus that I've ever encountered.  I found it right outside of a waterfall underground, then
Spec knocked it down and I tried to create a nice little pool for it.  And what is the first thing that it does?  Push itself
right onto the only available bare stone block to beach itself again.  Sigh.

... what is everyone looking at?!?  o.o  

And how did this happen?  I'm not even quite sure myself.  I learned how to wear a  jack-o-lantern, then the
next thing I knew, Habib and Spec had me imprisoned in a pumpkin prison, which I dug into the ground to
escape from.  xD

Happy New Year 2012~!

The first week of 2012, woo~
Is this blog going to turn into a weekly blog?  o.o  We shall see...

http://www.etsy.com/listing/86380201/new-year-2012-champagne-toast-12-pc-by

A personalized photo mousepad that I made for my parents using the
$75 credit for Kodak gallery products that came with the printer that
we bought last year.  I was cramming to create a photo book and this
before the credit expired on 12/31/11.  

How is everyone's new year going so far?  We're a full week into it now, and to be honest, this year started out feeling much more like a burnt out and demoralized fizzle than an energetic bang.  Barely one day into the year, and I already had one of my firsts, submitting a hacking report because I realized that all but 377 of my 43,020,453 mesos was alarmingly GONE from my main maple account.  -_-  My first MMO hacking, woo... Oh well, the only thing that I can do is to try and make things better, right?

But that's not to say that it's all been bad.  

dyed my hair on 1/1, but the flaming red and orange color is only visible in bright light/sunlight

Because you believed in me, when you’re lost, here I am
Forever with your soul. If I look up, you shine like the moon.                

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, they're so cute and fluffy that I can't believe they're real, and that taiillllllllllllll ASDFGHJKLLJJKFSLJFJLfFKSJK
-overkilled 10,000% by cuteness-   * A *  <3 <3

Yep, things were nowhere near terrible, especially when I had an amazing friend right with me the whole time, and who spammed me with adorrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaableeee panda pictures to cheer me up.   >w<

And I finally, Finally, FINALLY got to play the Mario Kart 7 game that I got for Christmas.  Though I keep on falling off Rainbow Road still!  Dx

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ INTERNET ★★★★★★★
deviantART

The highlights of my 2012 artwork~
...Looks like I distributed quite a bit of skill points to Amigurumi plush making. 8D
31 views til I hit 7,777 views!

GAIA

My first artistic work of 2012 was avatar art for my dear friend, Z e r o G u i l t~!
I'm quite pleased with how it came out.  >w<

★★★★★★★★★★★★★ GAMING ★★★★★★★

Maple Story

gaminggaminggaminggaminggaminggaminggaminggaminggaminggaminggaminggaming!!!  @ o @;;

I've been waiting so long to game, and as soon as I could, I started tweaking on Maple Story with my friend like CRAZY.  I had heard from someone in my Gaia friend thread that the new Mercedes job class was really awesome, so near the end of December, I patched up after a long time.  Later on, I found out that my Minecraft pal, SpecOpsSR, used to be a hardcore Mapler (he had an amazing Bishop, and, like me, used to be a solo Cleric!  o.o ), so we both created Mercedes characters.... and leveled up LIKE CRAZY in just a few days, no exaggeration!

This new job class?  Completely overpowered and fast (you can blast through maps and shoot up ladders/ropes!).  It's like playing Maple on super easy mode, once you play a Mercedes, it's hard to go back to the regular job classes.  I didn't even need to use a healing pot til level 50-something, and I didn't die til level 60-something.  But there is a dark side to being a Mercedes-  Everyone hates you.  But hey, I'd hate me too if I ran into me on a map.  xD  (But I also really dislike high level Cannoneers...  >.< )

Like firecrackers exploding

Nexon is going crazzzzzy.  As if all the Mercedes (and the new Cannoneer job class) overpoweredness weren't enough, Nexon has been throwing 1.5x Exp coupons, cake buffs, the Legends teleport space rock, and the Legends coin quests (that you can buy special equips, scrolls, etc, with) at us.  And they apparently went on a banning spree today during the unscheduled maintenance (which kept on getting postponed)to fix a huge exploit of the new monster Familiars, the huge mess with Evan skills and whatnot, lack of Hot time item grants, and illicit items.  Then after the game finalllly comes back up, they unexpectely rescheduled Hot time (that my friend and I missed, of course -__-;;) to just 30 minutes after the server came back up... and gave out scooter mounts.  Ugh.

BUT MY TWO MISSING JOB CLASS QUESTS ARE STILL BROKEN  orz

me totallllllyyyy not being a creeper