Friday, August 20, 2004

Jack of all trades and a master of none!

I saw Kill Bill Volume 2 at the Student Life Building (SLB) last night and I still saw some new things. I love movies like that. I also love how much you learn about all the characters in the second volume. At this point, I think that Budd is probably my favorite, although they're all incredibly interesting. Anyway, I'm almost completely moved in now. There's still a little more unpacking to do, but I think I need to do some shopping before I can call it quits. I need more shelving. o_O;; Hopefully I can get that done before Monday. I wish I could take a picture of my desk and all that, though. I'm in love with it. It's all very neat and small and cute. When I first moved in, I was kind of wary about my room because even though it's much better than Kellum was last year (and I have my very own bathroom), it's smaller, and the way it was set up before made it very cluttered and disorganized. And that's the sort of thing that could drive a girl crazy. But after a little re-arranging, and after slowly settling in and getting everything unpacked and all that, it's really starting to grow on me. I only wish I had more posters to decorate the walls with. I accidently left my Labyrinth poster at home (utter sadness!) but I'll bring it back up Labor Day weekend. There's also this gorgeous Kill Bill poster that I have my eye on, and it's only $8.50. I have the feeling that I'll break down and buy it. Beyond getting everything ready in my dorm room for classes, I've been getting together with some friends whom I haven't seen since spring, so it's been nice catching up. Saturday I think I'm going to the beach (holy crap, that's tomorrow), and so you see that I am running out of time to get all this done, heh. My poor, crazy life. I've tried to get over to OtakuBoards and keep up with what's going on, but because of Charley and switching cities I'm still hopelessly behind. So. How about those Olympics?

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Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Just a quickie

I'm in Tallahassee right now, on my sister's powerbook. We got here all right - the drive is so much easier when you've got people to talk to. We're about to head over to my dorm room to set things up, now that we're pretty much finished here (in my sister's room). I'm very tired. Cleaning up after Charley wore me out, and then I pulled an all-nighter watching anime with my dear friend Meg. And then I finished packing and here we are, getting ready for classes on Monday. My internet isn't hooked up yet, but I suspect it will be by tonight. I'll be able to give out my address then, to those whom it may concern. They're showing Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 at the SLB, however, so I don't know if I'll be on a whole lot tonight. My new roommate, Jasmine, is very, very shy. But I have a plan to convert her. ^_~ RahXephon is my new favorite anime, hands down. And I've only seen the first four episodes. But more on all that later. Toodles.

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Sunday, August 15, 2004

Damage Update

The bad news is that there was some damage around the house (but not to it, amazingly enough). The good news is that there wasn't a lot of it, and we still have power, unlike the majority of Seminole County. We've been taking pictures and video taping over the past couple days (between cleaning everything and then collapsing indoors) and so I've got a few shots to share with you guys. What you'll see here is probably the average - some houses had only a few stray branches and leaves to rake up, while others had trees fall on roofs, on cars, and into pools (all three of which happened to my friend). The morning after, probably around 9:30 or so. That's our house in the background. This is after we swept all the leaves out of our driveway, to the left. As you can see, everyone's yards were littered with this kind of debree. The guy in the little blue moving chair thing is my neighbor (his house is towards the left), and the girl in black is also a neighbor, who lives across the street. You can kind of see my sister behind her. A tree next to our house. While a lot of trees didn't go down, they lost a lot of branches. The wind was at pretty steady, at around 90 mph or so during the hurricane, with gusts up to 105 mph. You can imagine that a lot of branches just snapped at that kind of force. (By the way, the one hanging branch to the left is not on the van, heh. Thankfully, we were spared any sort of vehicle damage.) The tree we did lose, and are still currently cutting down. It fell over onto my neighbor's fence, but no real damage was done. Had it fallen the other way, it would be in my brother's bedroom. It was, however, a gorgeous tree, and I'm sad we lost it. You can see where the roots were pulled up; it actually brought most of the ground around it with it, including the big (and heavy) square stones that we used as a make-shift sidewalk. I'm amazed that the wood table next to it (on the right) didn't fly off somewhere. My mom checking out the entrance to our neighborhood. (On a personal note, this is one of my favorite pictures.) Another toppled tree. Although this one technically isn't on our property (which is past the chain link fence on the right), we had a special attachment to this tree. It's in what formerly used to be a cow field, and is now going to be another subdivision. My parents went and fought with the people to keep this from being torn down. We won that battle, and you can see that it was fenced off. But unfortunately, Charley knocked it over anyway. The same tree, different angle. You can see here how big the damn thing was - it not only took out a section of our back fence, but it also snapped one of the wires off of the big electricity pole there. We called it in, obviously, and they think it's just a tension wire and not an actual live wire. But the tree has completely blocked the entire sidewalk - you seriously can't get passed this thing without walking into the street. Close up of the same picture. What's kind of funny about this is that the neighborhood was in negotiations to buy a new fence anyway (although it screws us over because we lose that big hedge against it, but that's another story for another time). Me, doing some raking.All those leaves are from our driveway, believe it or not. It started to rain, which was absolutely wonderful because it was so hot and humid before. It's been like that today, too - it's horrible all morning long, and then we get some afternoon showers, and it cools down a little. From earlier today - still cleaning up after Charley. All those branches are from the tree that fell behind it. My dad and this other Trinidadian guy named Marcus had been using an electric saw on it all morning. You have no idea how big a tree actually is until it falls and you have to cut it up and move it. Which is why my mother looks like she's going insane, lol. My mom again, clipping the branches down to a "managable size" for the guys who are coming around to collect it Monday. After she cut them down, we dragged them out to the neighborhood entrance, which is one house down from us. We were doing this all day. My hands are blistered and dry and my legs and arms are all scratched up. Joy. My neighbor, in a sea of tree branches. That's all from the one tree. Bits and pieces of our beloved tree. As they cut off the branches to take it down entirely, we dragged them all out here. This was taken when we were only half way done sawing - that's a ton of tree, and really, the one that fell was a relatively younger one. That's all the pictures I've got right now, but I think it's plenty enough to give you a perspective on what's going on in my life right now, heh. It's been a rough two days, and if you think about what's happened in other places in Florida, we got off easy. As I mentioned before, my friend had about five trees fall on her house. Her pool enclosure is completely destroyed, the backyard is now officially a jungle, the roof of one of their rooms is cracked and falling in a little, the front of her house is dented, her mom's car is totalled, her dad's has a cracked windshield (the last three were all from the same couple trees - they also blocked their front entry way, so they had to climb through a side garden to get out) and they have no power. I don't think I can fully express the full horror of not having air conditioning in August in Florida. It's humid and hot and you're constantly sweating. There aren't a lot of places to go because the roads are still being cleaned, street lights are still being fixed, and really, most stores and restaurants don't have any power, either. When they say that Florida is a disaster zone, they aren't joking. I think it's going to be a few more days before I can actually resume some semblance of normalcy on the internet. There's still a lot of cleaning to do, as well as packing, so it'll probably be Wednesday before I can get back to the boards. Hopefully all is well on that front. Until then, though.

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Friday, August 13, 2004

O_O;;

We have power! So. Hurricane Charley. Kind of scary. Lots of wind, horizontal rain, branches everywhere. Gusts up to 100 mph. I can't wait until morning - the neighborhood is going to be crazy. I just got off the phone with my friend Meg, who lives not even five minutes away from us, and they've got trees up the whazoo. One fell on their pool screen, another fell on her mom's car and is currently blocking their front door, the roof of their added-on room is crumbling and falling apart, her basketball pole was knocked down, .... so much crap. They don't have power. There are absolutely no words to describe a storm like this. It's scary, especially when you're afraid a tornado is going to form on top of your head, the wind is howling and the house is shaking. Hurricane Charley is breaking up, though. Losing strength. The dry air that was sitting around north of us finally began to sweep down and it's kind of just dissolving the hurricane. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be in Port Charlotte, or somewhere on the west coast like that where they probably just got ripped apart. On the news tomorrow it'll say that Sanibel Island just plain sank, lol. So it looks like the worst of the storm is over. It's going to rain for 100 years, though, but I think we're about used to that now. Things that don't have to do with Charley: 1. I went to the midnight showing of Alien vs. Predator last night and I am here to tell you that is the single greatest movie of the summer. It was hysterical. I loved it. Go, my little ones. Go see it. 2. I have no earthly idea of when I'm going up to Tallahassee, heh. Definitely not tomorrow, and probably not Sunday either. We'll have some cleaning around the yard to do, I'm sure, before we can even begin to think about packing. 3. There is no number three.

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Hurricane Update

Charley is now a category four hurricane, which is ridiculous, but what's even crazier is that it's going straight over Orlando. I've lived here almost all my life and we've never had a hurricane go directly over us. We always catch the edges, the tail ends of the storm because either the gulf or the atlantic winds pull it one way or the other. Except Charley would like to visit Disney, apparently, so he's merrily going to kill us all. For those of you who can't tell, I'm exaggerating a little. Chances are, we're going to get a lot of rain and wind and thunderstorms, the power is definitely going to go out, we might not have clean water, and it's possible that some trees get knocked over. Frankly, that's normal. This, we can handle. What's a little scary is the threat of tornadoes. I've never been anywhere near a tornado in my life, and although I think they're cool as hell, I don't exactly want to break that trend. But it looks like there's a pretty good chance of that happening, as well. This has all put a major strain on my packing for college. I am nowhere near done, and we're supposed to be leaving this weekend. Yeah, right. Okay. Anyway, so that's my hurricane update. Consider me the myOtaku weather guru for the moment, I guess. Because of mother nature and her decidedly sick sense of humor, however, this will probably be my last update for a while. Otherwise, you kids have fun now.

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Thursday, August 12, 2004

Why you shouldn't ever trust someone named Charley.

So as it turns out, Hurricane Charley is going to be a bit of a nuisance. See, he's got it in his mind to pass directly over my house, and then continue up the eastern coast of the merry old US of A. Right now, he's a category three, which is probably a mild cause for alarm. There's a tornado watch for the area, which could possibly turn into a warning as it gets closer to us. Earlier me and Jen brought in all our potted plants, wind chimes, bird feeders, and outside furniture so that it doesn't get knocked over, carried off or broken. My mom went out and bought lots of water and a propane tank at Sam's, along with every other mother in Florida, apparently. So I'll be hiding out for a bit, I guess. Hopefully power doesn't go out. If you don't see me after this, then you will know that my house was destroyed and I was probably struck by lightning and/or thrown fifty feet onto my head by hurricane/tornado force winds.

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Wednesday, August 11, 2004

The hamster of doom rains down coconuts on your pitiful city.

Things are starting to get kind of frazzled here. We're probably leaving for Tallahassee on Saturday or Sunday, but I'm not really sure which. I'm not sure if anybody actually knows when we're leaving. However, because of Tropical Storm Bonnie and Hurricane Charley, it's undoubtedly going to be horrible and wet out right up until then, and probably after. I take that back. It's going to be wet, but not horrible. Probably not horrible. Okay, so I'm a little jaded. I live in central Florida, we get hurricanes. Or, more appropriately, we somehow don't get them. For the last few years, the season has been pretty damn mild. Who's to say these two pretentious little hurricanes don't wimp out and go back to being the dinky little thunderstorms we all know they are? When you've lived in florida for awhile, you get used to storms. You get used to rain, period. I do remember one hurricane that we actually boarded up our windows for. I think it was Hurricane Erin, but I'm not entirely sure. It was still pretty mild, as far as hurricanes go, but we had to sink all our patio funiture (in the pool, cause that's what you do), bring in everything else, stock up on water and batteries for flashlights, clean my parents closet (since it's fairly big and it's the safest 'room' in the house) and then wait the thing out. All things considered, it wasn't that bad. It was windy as hell, and there was a lot of water and thunder and lightning, but when the eye passed over we went outside, surveyed the damage (little to none) and then played in the water before going back in to wait out the last half. That's pretty much how it works. Or at least, how it has been here in Orlando. If I lived on the coast, it would be completely different, I'm sure. But I've never had to evacuate because of a storm. We've had days off from school before (which I'd just like to say is unfair because kids up north get way more snow days then we get hurricane days), but that's about it. I don't know where I'm actually going with this. I guess I'm just saying that it doesn't seem like a big deal right now. There's going to be a lot of rain over the next couple days, though. Good thing it doesn't flood here. Back to the college stuff. I don't know exactly how much I'll be on in the following week or so. It's going to be kind of weird - it could go either way, actually, but we'll just have to wait and see. By this time next week, though, I should be back to normal. Better than normal, because then I'll be sitting around for four more days doing nothing until school starts. But there you go. As it turns out, Tori and I did not get to meet up. I don't have a car, and it's times like these that I really can't stand that. It's only when I'm completely without one when I really realize how beneficial they can be. To me of course, not the environment. Of course, that isn't to say that we won't ever meet up. Eventually, I will have a car, and then you'll be hard-pressed to get me out of it. I'm fond of roadtrips. Things I've bought recently: Kill Bill Vol. 2, Collateral Soundtrack, Franz Ferdinand, oreo smoothie. Books I've read recently: Sailing To Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, which together make up The Sarantine Mosaic, by Guy Gavriel Kay, who is now officially my favorite author alive and soon to be victim of my obssessive stalking habits. Seriously, this guy is so unbelievably clever, his dialogues are so witty and his characters are so dynamic and wonderful. I'm going to hunt down every other thing he's ever written because of it. I like him so much that I would, in fact, marry him. So there.

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Sunday, August 8, 2004

That's the sound of inevitability.

I've been watching movies today. Actually, I've been watching movies all my life, but that's kind of digressing from the point here. Right now, Angelina Jolie is Lara Croft and she's kicking some big, scary, stone man ass. Before that, The Matrix was on. And before The Matrix was Romeo Must Die. All of which I have already seen, probably too many times. The other night I had the pleasure of seeing The Manchurian Candidate, and I really, really enjoyed it. It was intense, and even a little scary, in the way that you hope your senators aren't that corrupt and crap like that doesn't actually happen. The camera angles were pretty interesting, as well. They seemed to emphasize the entire mood of the film itself, which is pretty cool. I'd like to see the old movie, and also read the book that it was based off of. Should be interesting. I don't have any pictures developed yet, and honestly, I don't think I'll be getting around to them in time. I'm going to try, of course, but it's kind of expensive, and I've got about seven or eight rolls of film to get done, not including the new one from Universal. Even after I get them done, I'll have to scan them, and once I'm back in Tallahassee, it's going to get even harder. I think Shin took better pictures anyway. =P It was a lot of fun though, like I said before. Despite some early traffic and trouble with my damn park pass (don't even ask), we got into Universal Studios and began our lovely day with the newest and coolest ride there, Revenge of the Mummy. I was quite happy to learn that Orlando's version is better than the one in Hollywood. I bite my thumb at you, Universal Hollywood! After that, we just continued down the road and went on whatever ride popped up next. Since we got there as the park opened, the wait times for the rides were generally easy. At least, for the first few hours. Around noon, however, some of the rides began to hit the 60-70 minute wait time, and that's when it really starts to suck. We ended up not going on Men In Black or Back To The Future because the queues were so incredibly long. Eventually we headed over to Islands of Adventure and waited the 75 minutes for Spider-man. Which wasn't actually 75 minutes - it was more like 90 minutes, but who's counting? Well actually, this one lady was. Just as we were getting on the ride, this woman comes up and starts bitching out the guy seating people about how the wait time said 75 minutes, but she'd been waiting for a whopping 85 minutes and that they should change the sign and that they should be on the ride and blah blah blah. I can't tell you how much I despise people like her. It's a theme park - you're going to wait in line, lady. If you want to cut the time down, get yourself an Express pass. Otherwise, quit your bitching and wait like the rest of us. Anyway. Spider-man is awesome. It's probably one of the best rides in the park, besides the Hulk. But our friend Shinmaru doesn't like rollarcoasters, so we didn't go on them. Spider-man, however, makes up for that. It's just really freaking cool. I was thinking, too, that Shinmaru is also very lucky because the music and the big beach-like fluffy balls they were bouncing around in the line are a relatively new addition. First time I've seen them, at least. It definitely makes the waiting so much easier, heh. Okay, I've got to run now. I'll try and do more later. Keep your fingers crossed for the pictures. ^_~

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Friday, August 6, 2004

You're no fucking Elvis.

So I'm entirely exhausted. Theme parks tend to do that to you. Especially considering that I was there for nearly twelve hours, but hey, who's counting? >_>;; Anyway, meeting Mr. Shinmaru was a lot of fun. Having to go to work with my dad the next morning wasn't so fun. I'll try and go into detail later when I have more time. TIME. I do not have enough of it! Curses!!

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Tuesday, August 3, 2004

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good!

I spent a lot of today trying to organize my charming little powerbook for school (which is in two weeks, holy mother of fish eggs). Most know that I am indeed an Apple kind of girl, and I love my Chucky Wills very dearly. But sometimes, I hate computers. I really, really do. Not having an internet connection makes it slightly more difficult, but I think I'm handling it rather well. Panther is now up and running, and I erased all the songs on my iPod so that the library would match up with the library on my powerbook and not the one on the computer here at home. It took awhile to install some of this crap, but it's going to be worth it. Once I get my internet back, I'll get more updates and I'll be able delete some other stuff, and it should all be just dandy. Still, let's cross our fingers and hope that I don't blow something up. I'm actually sort of looking forward to my classes in the fall. I never have to take math again, and for this semester I don't have any kind of science courses, so it's just going to be a bunch of reading and writing. And that, I can do, and I can do it well. Italian is going to be interesting. I'm going to work my ass off in it, I've already decided, even if it means hacking and spitting and contorting my mouth in various ways in order to get the accent perfect. Because I will study abroad in Italy. Period. No need in thinking about that now, though. I've got some slacking time left, after all. I managed to get a "behind the scenes" version of Laeth E'Thae up in the Arena Underground, so you should check it out. I sort of doubt that too many people will respond, but at the very least it's going to be a great way to keep everybody's heads in the game, so to speak. That, and I actually made a nifty banner for it. Talk about effort! >_>;; I think I'm done now. EDIT:

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