joudama scribbling

OK, this is my fic master list to end all master lists. Everything as I post it will be linked to from this post. So, yeah. The Almighty Master List. Some things aren't linked yet, because I haven't uploaded them to this journal yet. Meh, I'll get to it one of these days. XD

( FF7 )

( FF12 )

( CLAMP )

( Yami no Matsuei )

( Fullmetal Alchemist )

( Metal Gear Solid )

( Grab bag! )

...ye gods. This is where all my time went, isn't it?

Yeah, I know. ^^;; But I'm getting back in the swing of things.

FF7:
Harrow Children: Part the Second
Biological Warfare

I have other stuff in the hopper, but I'm easing myself back in.

Also, the current word count from the next section of HC: 20,149 21,197 words

If y'all haven't seen this, well, apparently Microsoft is ripping off Apple and opening "Microsoft Stores." The stores look, well...like a ripped-off Apple Store, and the ubercool Apple Store in Shinsaibashi laughs in it's face.

Anyone, some astroturf blogger just happened to have a camcorder with him the day he just happened to go to the Microsoft Store, and on a day when the staff just happened to break out into a completely unplanned and unchoreographed 4-plus-minute line dance to a Black Eyed Peas song.

Yeah, this dude wasn't getting paid. Suuure. And was a hardcore Mac guy until his life changing trip to the magical land of singing and dancing techies at the Microsoft Store. Riiiiiight. (We'll just ignore all the talk on being a Vista beta tester on a link ON THE SAME PAGE).

Really, all that needs to be said about this sad spectacle is said at minute 2:14 of the video. Watch the woman in the white shirt veeeeery carefully. She says it all, really.



XD

This is a Bad Idea.

Other people clearly think this as well. How do I know this?

Check out the "Customer images" and customer-given tags.

XDDDDDDD

And for the best "Passive Aggressive Note" EVAR. Check out the note in the third picture.

AWESOME.

So the game tells me I have gained more weight--half a kilo, and I'm going >:( at it. And vowing once again to go back to the muscle training and yoga, since obviously that was what was working. But I am, to be honest, somewhat perplexed, and decide the sudden input of potatoes into my diet must be the factor to blame, sigh, and decide fiiiiine, no more starchy foods.

I start up the step dance thing, and it tells me "Please get off the balance board."

And I look at it blankly and go, "I AM off the board."

After several retries and finally getting it to register that I am not, in fact, standing on the board, I start the game, and it's making me as missing damned near everything. And I'm going, "...OK, you're broken. You are very broken. :/"

I have to go into Kyoto anyway, and I still have my receipt, so I'll try to get a new board and see if that helps explain the insane things it's been telling me, like the day it decided I lost nearly a kilo and a half (and the day I went, "You are FULL OF LIES") and why it's decided all of a sudden that I have chubbed up and my balance has gone to shit again. Hopefully, it's more a mechanical problem than me being full of fail. :/

Exercise time: 35 min
Calories burned: 157
BMI: 29.14
Feeling: Ow ow sore ow

So I realized today--I feel weaker. Or rather, I feel like I lost a lot of the progress I made--my scores are going down, and my balance is beginning to skew off again, and my weight has been staying pretty flat for the last two weeks or so. I'd been noticing this the last few days, but today seeing my bmi only going down .10 even after I busted my ass yesterday, it hit me--I was doing best not when I was thinking, "Oh god, gotta burn calories fast because I'm going home!" but "Hmm, what works best for my problem areas, like my weak inner thighs?"

So starting today, I started over--I'm going back to thinking, "What do I need to do for myself and to make myself healthier?" instead of, "What can burn the most fat the fastest on the slim chance it will appease my family?" The deadline hanging over my head was sapping the fun out of this, and turning it into a chore; filling me with dread and making it so I couldn't enjoy myself like I had been.

I will never make my family happy, ever, so, I wondered, why am I shooting myself in the foot even trying? This is for me, not to make people I will never be able to please. In their eyes, something will always be wrong or not good enough, so...wtf. Screw it and screw them--the only person I've got to please and make myself better for is myself.

Instead of all the jogging and random fat-burn exercises, I went back to yoga and weight training--everything I told myself I'd do after I got back from the US. And hoo boy, am I ever feeling it. x_X My sides are like *death* and my legs are like *death* and oh God, are my arms ever like *death*. Which I am taking as a good sign.

I will shoot for trying to burn at least 175 calories (I missed it today because d00d, my dinner was ready), but I'm not going to sacrifice shaping up my weak areas all for the sake of a number.

And now, for another installment of "Kantan cooking!"

Kantan Cooking with Jou: Parmesian Potatoes and Asparagus and faux-Italian baked chicken breast

Yes, this is easy. I promise. It is easy because, again, I am laaaaaazy.

Ingredients:
1 or 2 Chicken breast(s)
2 small potatoes
2 stalks of asparagus
feta cheese
cooking oil
asparagus
in you are in the US: "Italian-style diced tomatoes"
If you are not in the US: 2 small tomatoes, oregano, basil

Both of these bake at the same time, so you can start your oven pre-heating to 350F/175C.

First up, the asparagus and potatoes:
Slice the potatoes into chunks however you like. I ended up with squarish-triangly things.

Put half of them in a baking dish.

Chop up a stalk of asparagus.

Put it in the baking dish.

Drizzle with oil, then coat with parmesan cheese. Same kind you put on your spaghetti.

Repeat with the rest of the potatoes and asparagus.

Cover with aluminum foil and stick in the oven.

Now for the chicken.

If you live in the US, you are lucky and I hate you, because you can buy canned "Italian-style diced tomatoes," which are already seasoned. That was what I used when I first created this dish. Open the can and dump everything in a baking dish.

If you're like me, get two smallish tomatoes. Chop them up and put them and the resulting juice in a baking dish.

Liberally add oregano and basil, and then get your hands dirty mixing it up a bit.

Get the chicken breast out of the fridge and put it on top of the tomatoes.

Get your hands dirty again getting the tomato on the chicken and the chicken nicely coated.

Open the feta and put as much as you want on the chicken. Also pour some of the oil the feta is in in there.

Stick this in the oven.

Wash the few dishes you used and wander off to read stuff on line, preferably in the kitchen area.

Cook until you can smell it and it smells like win. :D

Exercise time: 1:19
Calories burned: 381
BMI: 29.17
Feeling: throat owie ;_;

So yesterday it was full of lies with the lying 28.83 BMI. And I knew it was full of lies. Today it jumped up to 29.27 and I went, "You are also full of lies today!" but the game insisted I justify my weight gain. I stuck my tongue out and said I ate dinner late. Which I had; my belly was still full of soup and a piece of cake I picked up because dude, chocolate. Everyone once in a while, you just need chocolate. :p (and I reweighed myself after exercising, figuring the sweating would counter all the food remaining in my stomach.

( Winter is evil for me. )

So Not A Gamer's Game Review: Okami
 
I am slow and late, I admit this.  Everyone else on the planet played this years ago.  And I actually started to play it years ago, well before there was an English version, and my Japanese back then was sufficiently crap that I ran screaming.  But in honor of Okamiden coming out, and it Chibi-Amaterasu being the cutest thing EVER, I decided to pull out Okami and play it (never mind the PS3 version of Tales of Desperia sitting sad and alone in my PS3.  That's next on the list To Play, followed by finishing FF7.  And no, I've never played it.  Shush.  I'll still be playing FF13 long before you suckers. >XD )
 
Also, as a warning...yeah, I played it in Japanese.  And a lot of the names are different--the names of people, places, and animals were really truncated in the English version.  I'm using the Japanese names, just because that's how I think of the characters.
 
( The long of it. )
 
( The short of it. )
 

There comes a point when you have a horrifying realization of just how big of a nerd you really are.

I was putzing around with the Ultimania author's notes for A Hope in Hell, and I had mentioned the Divine Comedy (because I was talking about the Chimera, and how the Angeal!boss in Crisis Core matches the way Dante described a chimera, and that was were I got my idea for "The Griffin and the Chimera" from). Which made me look on line for the first few stanzas, because it mentioned being "lost" from the "straight way" and that tied in with how I'm doing Angeal in it. And I realized how well the first few lines tied in to the fic, even down to the "a dark wood...savage, dense, and harsh" and how the name of the city, Daerimmun, means "the gate to the great forest."

And then went, "...I can SO use this! >:D" and decided to reread the Inferno. For a fic. One I'm not even working on right now, since the next chapter of HC is a priority.

So....yup, I'm a neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerd~.

Who is going to bed, because it's 1 am, but will be curling up with my copy of the Divine Comedy. :D

Exercise time: 0:00
Calories burned: 0
BMI: 28.83
Feeling: COUGH COUGH HACK HACK Bwuh...?!

I have been hopped up on cold meds all day. Not even kidding. The cold meds keep me from coughing, which keeps my throat from wanting to weep.

I had decided not to exercise today, for said cough cough hack hack ow ow reasons. And also I made more soup since all I want is soup and bread, and it hadn'T finished until after 9, and 9 is when I usually start exercising. But I figured I should at least turn the Wii Fit on and weigh myself, since as long as you do that every day it doesn't bitch at you. And in order to make sure I didn't do something stupid like figure, "Hey, since it's on, I can do a little something," what with the "I only feel healthy because of the cold meds" (and right on schedule, about ten minutes ago, just when I was thinking, "Hey, we're not SO bad off, maybe I should actually get some exer---COUGH COUGH COUGH oh shit, the meds are wearing off. Never mind!"), I left on my regular clothes (a sweater and a skirt) instead of changing into the T-shirt I usually exercise in (yay, living alone, where I can exercise in just a t-shirt).

So I got on the balance board, and told it I was wearing heavy clothes, and awaited my results. And saw them and went, "YOU LIE!!" when it said my BMI was 28.63. I went, "NO. No, you lie," and the game congratulated me on reaching my goal, but then warned me that sudden weight loss wasn't likely to last. And I was still going, "You LIE, that makes no sense." Then I turned the game off.

About five minutes later, I changed into my regular workout clothes and turned it back on, and said, "DO OVER." And this time selected light clothes and waited for a more normal response.

28.83.

Bwuar?

So I was like, "...OK, this still makes no sense. Maybe because I didn't eat dinner? Wait, but I did eat something, I had that giant, heavy bread thing from the bakery right after I got home because I was making soup and it wouldn't be ready for hours and I was hungry, and that was only two hours ago, only an hour before I normally eat. I am so confused."

I'm still confused, but hey. If it jumps back up some tomorrow, I will also not be surprised, because seriously, bwuh?

So I still think it lies like a lying thing, but hey. We'll see what it say tomorrow. XD;;;

My mother just called me.

I'm not surprised; I wired her about $3000 yesterday, but the told me it'd take around a week to get there, because trying to send money out of Japan is insane. I forgot to e-mail mom to tell her it'd take a week, and she called me saying, "When is the money going to get here?"

So I told her about a week, and she went, "A week?!" and I said, "Yeah. A week. It's not instant." She asked if I sent it to her bank account, and I said yes. And apologized for not e-mailing her to let her know it'd be a week, since I was sick and had gone to bed not long after I got home (which I did; I had to drag myself out of bed to exercise, and then I dragged myself right back into bed).

And she went, "Oh, OK. Take care of yourself. I love you."

And I as "...hunh?" to myself and just blinked lots and lots, because I'm not used to my mother a) being nice or b) telling me she loves me. I was too flummoxed to answer for a second, and finally said, "Thank you, I love you, too."

( I hate it when my mother is nice to me. )

Dear fic brain,

I don't know how you do it. By all rights, the scene I've been putzing around on all day should lead to pr0n. And yet, it is not. I don't quite know how you're doing it. I'm not objecting, mind, but I'm having flashbacks to when I lived in the US and my roommate was reading one of my fic in progress while I was doing something else so I wouldn't be hovering over her, and suddenly I heard a scream and she stomped out of my room and told me that if the two characters in the scene (at that time Toya and Yukito from CCS) didn't get laid, she was going to kill me. Admittedly, them getting interrupted was supposed to be comedic, and the comedic parts in HC is few and far between, but still. I full anticipate someone screaming.

If no one else, the chibi-Aerith-in-my-head waving around "OT3!!!" signs is going to start ripping out her hair and screaming soon. She's yelling that they're hopeless, and I'm not disagreeing with her.

Even I'm going bwuah?
jou

(and for the record, AHAHAHAHA, no, it's not in part two, but part three. I don't write linearly. :p AHAHAHAHAHA)

Total exercise time: 1:04
Calories burned: 287
BMI: 29.07
Time: fine, aside from my throat feeling like someone rubbed it down with sandpaper

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I gained weight, and I REGRET THAT DESSERT YESTERDAY AND THE YUMMILICIOUS CHEESE RICE BREAD TODAY NOT ONE LITTLE BIT. *gives game the finger*

The game asked me, "What happened yesterday?" and I went, "I was sick! Fuck you! Be glad I turned you on today!" Considering I ran into a friend randomly when I was at the mall getting something for lunch (yay, the post office taking up my whole lunch hour--I had to stay an extra half hour to make up for taking extra time at lunch, but no way was I not eating lunch, and since I was already fifteen minutes over, I said "screw it" and ran down to the mall to grab some bread, since the conbini closed) and he took one look at me and went, "Hey, how are...you look kinda rough." I spent most of today wishing I was home in bed, but I have a deadline of this Friday for some evals, meaning no rest for me until it's done. Cold meds will get me through. Somehow. But anyway, I felt like death yesterday and I feel like death today. So I was expecting to only do about 30 minutes, when the game cheerfully informed me I gained weight. Not enough for it to bitch at me and demand an explanation for my lapse, but enough to make me grumble.

( Hopefully only four more hours to non ugly pig. )

PSA:

Dear straight men:

There are some women out there who will jack your shit up. Remember that should you ever be tempted to cheat.

There was a demo this morning that was for a TV show--this one on TBS. And yes, there was a camera, but this time, thankfully, it was just a camcorder and not the big camera and mikes and all that jazz for the NHK one.

As always, English is the most interesting of all the languages, meaning I get to do extra bits. -_-;

I'm just thrilled, however, that the blasted machine did better with groking my accent. Since "in" and "en" are the same in Southern American English, it goes "Pbbbbth" when I say "Kinkaku-ji temple" and insists it's "Enkaku-ji temple." But it got it right this time, and on the first try, so YAAAAAY~. The one embarrassed by it was not me this time! This time, it was Chinese!fail, but that was more because the Chinese guy screwed up because he was using the iPhone app version for the first time (and he forgot his lines, aiya).

The one that has my blood running cold is the NHK one, mainly because it is for a very well-known program. Arararara.

Yay, meme!

If you happen to be working on some creative writing project, fanfiction or what have you, post one sentence/paragraph/whatever from each of your current work(s) in progress in your journal. It should probably be your favourite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion. Mention the title (and genre) if you like, but don't mention anything else--this is merely to whet the general appetite for your forthcoming work(s).

( A lot of fic, oh man. I need more free time. )

BEHOLD!

MY GLORIOUS FINAL FANTASY 13 PREORDER!!!

:DDDDDDD



December 18th, that bad boy is MIIIIIIIIINE.

:DDDDDDD

I have a cold and I wanted chicken noodle soup, danggit. And living in Japan has got me used to the idea of cooking everything from scratch instead of getting it in a can. Plus, a can means a can I have to throw away, and that means figuring out what random day out of the month is can day for garbage. And that's a pain.

So instead, I bought ingredients on my way home Friday, and it has been Soup Weekend. :D

Ingredients:
Chicken (preferable pre-sliced. I went that route because a) lazy b) only one cutting board and I use it for veggies)
Chicken consomme (2 or 3 cubes)
2 smalliish to mid-sized potatoes
2 smallish carrots
1/2 an onion
1 or 2 stalks of asparagus
OPTIONAL: pasta (or rice, whichever floats your boat)
water

Get a good-sized pot.

Fill it with water.

Toss in the chicken.

Wander off and watch something on youtube.

Come back, wash the potatoes, and slice them into 1-2 centimeter sized cubes. DO NOT PEEL THEM.

Peel and chop up the carrots to about the same size as the potatoes.

Toss them into the water (cussing when you splash yourself optional)

Add 2 blocks of consomme. Turn heat down and put a lid on the pot.

Wander off to watch more stuff on youtube. Like a couple clip of a Let's Play of Vagrant Story.

Wander back, check to see that the potato is cooked.

Get asparagus and chop into pieces. Add.

Chop up onion and add.

Toss in another block of consomme and put the lid back on the pot.

Wander off and watch another Let's Play clip.

Come back, add a handful of whatever kind of pasta you like. I added "salad macaroni," which was tri-color macaroni (yay, extra veggies and flavors!).

Watch more youtube--a ten minute clip is good.

Come back, turn off heat, and voila! Because it's boiled for so long, the potato really thickens the soup, and there are tasty bits of peel floating around.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaamn~