We got snow over the weekend. A pretty decent amount of it, though it was no blizzard. Next time I operate a snowblower, remind me to try and figure out where the choke lever is.
Anyways, Marmalade Boy Collection 3 and Princess Tutu DVD 1 arrived on Monday, along with more snow. After getting some extra shoveling done, I sat down to watch more of the former. Even though the series is over ten years old now, it's become one of the strongest of my most recent obsessions. I sat down late Monday night, and basically watched 12 episodes with little break, including rewatching one of the episodes with commentary. I had to stop myself from putting in the third disc and marathoning straight through that too. (And trust me, I would have done just that if I had started it.) That kept me occupied until around 4am, and I didn't sleep until an hour later. I tend to be wired after a marathon of a show I really like, regardless of how late or how sleepy I am.
I had planned to finish the last seven episodes in the collection off in the daytime, but as I got home from campus, I got a call from work asking if I could come in. I got a lot of hours cut from last week, and I hadn't been able to make it at all on Saturday because of the snow (and the store closed early anyways), so I decided to come in. So I picked up MB when I got back, marathoning seven episodes and once again rewatching one for the commentary. That took me to about two hours ago, where I did a quick scan of the Princess Tutu extras, but didn't start watching the show. I'll do that some other day.
And here I am, two hours later. Still kinda wired. No caffeine either.
I actually don't drink many caffeinated drinks. I don't drink coffee unless I'm in an office. I like tea but I don't usually drink it unless I'm at a restaurant. Aside from those two, I don't think we have any caffeinated drinks in the house at the moment. We have some 7-Up, A&W Root Beer, and Canada Dry Ginger Ale currently. Carbonated, but not caffeinated. You'd think with all the Mountain Dew and Coke I used to pratically live on that I'd be completely addicted. Nevermind when I actually drank coffee at work. (It's not my style of coffee unless the sugar content is far higher than the black content.) Nope, not showing a single sign of addiction. I think. Not that caffeine has ever had a big effect on me. I could still fall asleep immediately after downing a two-liter of Mountain Dew. (Coffee is a different beast, however. Especially with all that sugar.)
That paragraph was completely random. To quote the King of All Cosmos, "Woo, tangent."
Yeah, I think I'm going to try sleeping now. Have to get to campus to see if I can get instructor approval to switch one of my classes, then to more extra work hours, since I was called in and asked to work more hours at work. Friday is still the last day.
I'll be leaving for New Jersey to visit family Saturday morning, to return sometime on Sunday. Probably night. I'd better finish installing stuff on the PS2 before then. Need to install Puzzle Bobble, Rez, Gitaroo Man, and a couple other things still. Haven't even started installing all the pop'n music yet.
Yeah, sleep is good.
Somehow, I've been putting off updating for over half a month.
Not that there's really much to talk about. I either worked, or went to Chris's house. o.O (Though before that once, Alison and I did end up going to the mall, eating at Bennigans with Billy, then going with Kevin, Brice and David to a Roy Rogers near springfield that I didn't know about...) We did finally beat Secret of Mana, though I ended up doing it myself while Chris and Alison watched. Also played a lot of Resident Evil/Biohazard 4... I'm on the fence about getting it when it comes out on PS2. Played a bit of DOAX too, even though the game has camera issues and oversimplifies the controls to make up for it. I didn't even have to touch the sticks, just hit buttons at the right times. >.>
Seeing Alison again was nice too :3
Of course, this week has been a bit different, since none of my plans involved snow. My arms are still aching from the speed-shoveling job I did Wednesday night.
But, what brought me back to doing this (instead of sleeping, which I haven't done much of yet) was seeing a new initiative to add "nofollow" tags to links, so that comment spams won't influence PageRank, and thus remove their primary reason of existence. If you run Movable Type, grab the plugin (it works in MT 2.661 as well as MT3). All you do is add two files to your MT directory, and you're done. This has already been done here, after a particularly vicious round of despamming. (Luckily, 287 of about 340 spams came from one site, so it didn't take -too- long.)
People may have noticed that I've been updating my LJ a lot more often. While having to despam every time I log into MT is one reason why, it's also because I use LJ for more random, disassociated posts, while using this site as a journal. The difference in content between the two should be clear.
I'm finally signed up for class next semester, though it's a lighter load than I wanted, mostly because I have to figure out what classes I'm really supposed to be taking in order to transfer. I found out a bit late that UMBC had changed around their entire Information Systems program, so all the references I had been using to determine my courseload were outdated. >.> So, I have to actually get someone at UMBC to work out what I actually need to take from this point. The good part being, I might not need to take Accounting and Economics anymore...
And I think I'm going to get more sleep rather than try to fill more space in what must be a very disorganized read.
Well, I actually started the year off by selling calendars, but I didn't think that was quite spectacular enough to make my first post in 2005 about. =p Today was quite different though...
I had also planned to go down to meet up with Kp again yesterday or today before he goes back for more Army training fun, but I wasn't able to. Yesterday after work, I had dinner plans I had forgotten about (with my family, Allison and Daniel's family, and Mandy's stepfamily without Mandy). Today, the timing just didn't work out.
Ended up starting out later than I wanted today, shoving myself out of the house with only one hour before the 4pm meet-up time. I had planned to give myself at least another half hour to get there. My plans were to drive to either Glenmont or Silver Spring Metro, depending on traffic conditions. (I wanted to park further south because I was planning to head to Chris's house afterwards.) Traffic going towards Silver Spring was kinda iffy, and time was a bit short, so I decided to park at Glenmont.
Naturally, it takes 15 minutes for the train sitting there to leave. I had probably -just- missed a departure. Though I got to the station in 20 minutes, I didn't get to Union Station until 40 minutes later - meaning, I basically got there exactly at 4pm. Somehow, I figured it would happen, since that's exactly what happened the first time I tried to take the Metro into Union Station.
After finally finding the restaurant, I find INCyr, Dasro Kast, and a few others waiting outside. (I'm -really- bad with remembering people's names and even nicknames, so sorry for being brief in this department.) Kristen arrived around 5-10 minutes later. We had a restaurant reservation with a table inside, but we end up asking for one of the tables outside so that latecomers would be able to see us. (CoffeeJedi and his fiancée, and Chappy would arrive later.) And, well, we had dinner.
It was really great meeting Kristen. She remembered everyone personally, and she was honestly interested in talking to all of us, which is basically how these dinner plans got made. I'm particularly surprised she remembered anything about me, considering how limited my involvement with the ARG was. She even commented on how she liked my current Karin avatar, which I also switched to over at unfiction. We talked about a lot of things, from her experiences while doing the live axon calls from her home (phoned into the system, with Elan and Jane connected via IM) to having to take care of her dogs. (There was a particularly amusing story about a puppy that -really- needed to go during a live call...) There were also a couple of red balloon encounters that she shared...
America Restaurant was rather interesting, too. They strived to represent just about every area of the country with a different food dish, resulting in the most varied menu I've ever seen in a sit-down restaurant, aside from sports taverns and diners. The menu even listed originating cities and states for each of the dishes they presented. Kristen seemed to disagree with one of their choices in cities, though. The food was pretty decent; I had a pretty good bowl of New England Clam Chowder, and they got the thickness to just about where I like it. The chicken tenders, however, were -really- dry, and I was quickly wishing I had just gotten a burger instead. I was still hungry, but I just couldn't finish the tenders because they were that unpleasant to eat. =/
At some point, INCyr brought out the joint purchase of the "Melissa" drawing. Kristen would later autograph it, and a couple of the ilovebees DVDs. Of course, I had neglected to bring anything to autograph.
After sitting at the table for almost four hours, CoffeeJedi and Dasro Kast really needed to be heading back home (they both drove in from out of state), so we made a quick stop at the ever-so-familiar Union Station phone bank, with the "Spartan Power" vending machine that Kristen just stared at for a while. Of course, we still have no idea how or why that message got on there. After one last group photo, we all departed for our various destinations, with CoffeeJedi, his fiancée, and I heading to the Metro station. (They had parked their car at Silver Spring Metro, so we were headed in the same direction as I had to get back to Glenmont to get my own car.) So, I got to talk with him for a bit more on the train as well. ^^
Of course, since I got back to Glenmont at 9pm, I figured going to Chris's was out of the question since he has to get back to school in the morning. So, I headed directly home, and uploaded the two pictures. (Thanks to Cortana for cropping and resizing these, as I can't get to the P2 to do my normal image manipulation handiwork at the moment.)
I guess that's about it for today. I'll have to see about somehow keeping in touch with Kristen... I might even have to actually buy Halo 2. =p
