Just a quickie to say how sad I am about Robert Palmer's death. His songs are some of ones rat and I consider part of 'our songs' group. "Addicted to Love", "Bad Case of Lovin' You (Doctor, Doctor)" and "Simply Irresistible" are three which speak directly of how we feel about each other.
That's all for now. I have lots to do, no energy to do it all with. Two anime events are this weekend and I am not going to either after all. rat has to work Sunday so we will not have a day just to ourselves this week. Evan has sparked me heavy and I have been writing when I should be studying. And I want to put in Robert Palmer's greatest hits CD and just veg.
Joules and Talon, special THANKS for your words of encouragement on this endeavor! I feel like I have pretty much fallen off both the creativity and social wagon because of this class and I do GREATLY appreciate your support.
And speaking of class...
Reprieve!
Sensei wanted to get through the rest of the tape (part 1) last night so the quiz is Monday. Of course, he added two new Kanji, sen and sei. Plus a new line of Katakana, the 'n's. I am losing my Katakana some so I need to go back and drill them, plus the blends and the ones with the slashes and dots. Every time I get called on to go to the board I fuck up so I need to drill some more. I guess I have board anxiety as well as test anxiety. And of course I fuck up on things I should already know and DO know but my brain does a data dump when standing in front of that white board.
First thing last night he made us put all our stuff away and pull what we knew so far out of our brains without looking at anything. He wanted us to tell him all the Kanji we had learned so far. And he called on us down the line so we HAD to pull something out of our pea brains.
Then he wrote nine sentences in Romaji and told us to write down what was being said in Japanese, giving us the letters we did not know. So many people got finished so much more quickly than me but one of my problems was not being able to see what was written on the board. My glasses are a compromise of lense strengths (done by the doctor) and not the best for fine detailed viewing at a distance. I think I am going by the office supply store and get sensei some new dry-erase markers. Some of the coloured ones he has I can barely see and I am not the only one commenting on it.
I had to get up a few times just so I could copy the sentences, and I still missed copying one completely. I also write slowly too, partly to be neat but partly because I AM slow at this. I looked around and saw people using their notes so I decided to do the same, just so I could finish in a reasonable amount of time. I am ALWAYS the last one to finish. I do try to pull it from my brain whenever possible and it takes for-fucking-ever. I was also very neat on my paper, so I could actually read what I was doing. I am a superslob when I write normally and my signature is almost doctor-like. I tried to print all the Romaji sentences and make my Japanese neat, because I KNOW this will come back and bite me on the ass (meaning we will be tested on it again) if I don't have it done well to begin with.
A funny little tidbit: we are supposed to call each other by our last names with -san after the name, something we who are into anime are very much aware of. Anyway, when he does the fake oral quiz at the beginning of class where he wants us to know each other's name EVERYBODY knows my last name, of course, and I roll my eyes and the class laughs. FYI-my rl last name is Smith, duh! Later in the class he was picking people to write on the board his usual way-throw the marker in the air and whoever it points to when it lands goes to the board-and when it landed on me he called me by my first name and no one caught it or commented on it. Well, the students know we know each other but truly we do not know each other well enough to call each other by our first names, if we are following the Japanese tradition. I just found that a bit humourous.
Need to get ready for the next round of dentistry now. Plan to write about that soon as well, but I need to get myself in gear so I can be there on time at 8am (ugh!) today.
The weekly quiz is tonight. Don't have the numbers except a few but I think I may have the 16 Kanji okay. Yesterday I wrote the Kanji up on the edge of two large cards and kept them propped up in front of my computer. I have found I do absorb the letters when I do that, even though I am not staring and studying it.
So hopefully I will not fumble this quiz too much. Maybe these weekly quizzes will help me with my acute test anxiety.
Doesn't help we have four Chinese students in the class so they already know the Kanji.
One of our ex-students came to the lab yesterday, saw my cards popped below my monitor and wanted to know if I was learning Chinese. I told her I was learning Japanese so she started talking to me in Japanese. When I answered back she said I had a cute accent. (cute? me???) I told her I was learning from a native French man who teaches the class with a French accent.
Stupid-ass eBay is going after people who sell hard yaoi. I think it's not eBay actively hunting down sellers but other sellers going after their competition by turning them in to eBay.
Looks like I am going to have to get my yummy smut from other sources eventually. Got a very tasty GOJYOxSANZO hard yaoi last night. Really nice artwork and close to the artbooks in style, which is ugly horsy faces and bony bodies. Why anyone would find that remotely attractive is beyond me. Bony men in bed are NOT pleasant. Anyway, the artwork is still nice, great lines and screentones and, of course, lots of wet penetration.
Still haven't gotten my teeth cleaned. They want to do a deep cleaning, which is fine. I had a deep de-scaling done about 20 years ago and I know it won't be a problem, just time-consuming. So I go in for one side Wednesday at 8:30am and the other side on Thursday at 8am.
And I am finally getting a bite guard. The insurance will not cover it but for only $130 it is more than worth it. I know, 'only' $130? Well, this morning I woke up with my whole mouth aching, my jaw sore and my head pounding. I know I am grinding and clenching while I sleep because of the Kanji. I have TMJ and the sockets in my jaw are not very deep so I can pop my jaw out easily just by chewing sometimes and have to push it back in.
Anyway, when I push my jaw forward I can alleviate the pain to a degree.
Have a Student Clubs meeting today, to go over the official procedures for the Anime Club. D plans on being there too. Poor guy. He hardly knows any anime series, just what he can sneak from Cartoon Network. His wife keeps looking askance at him and saying, "You're watching cartoons, AGAIN?" I think he watches late at night after she is asleep now. I need to get him the next eps for Weiss. Thought it was a safe show to start off with.
Alright, Joules! Haadri is up! Looks like you had fun with the planets! Excellent!
Gah, we will be having a Japanese quiz EVERY WEDNESDAY! Got a 95 on the first one. Most students got a 100. I know a lot of them used the board (cheated) . I didn't. I just looked at the grade tonight and said to myself, to hell with it, I am not getting a grade for this class so I am not going to sweat it. It is only going to get worse as the semester goes along anyway so I might as well not worry about the grades anymore. I AM still going to study my ass off but if I fuck up a test I am just not going to care about it. I am determined to continue the class and go on to the next semester.
This still means the most I am going to get out are snippets to people and little bits of artwork. I hope to make it out to the oekaki board twice a week. I don't think I have the time for every night.
Blegh! The Spider Saga is giving me the willies!
Finally found my #2 Fake manga, and read it. Awww.... More kisses, please!
Have to go to the dentist today since they had no record of me Friday and I did not have the card with me. I cannot find the card, either. I suspect it is buried under stuff at work or I pitched it. Oh well.
For someone who is only half male, I find this next one humourous...
You are a very rare breed indeed, and for good reason. If there were a lot of Supreme Seme wandering about, then there would be a LOT of conflict. This is because your kind likes to take control of EVERYTHING. Think alpha male with wolves, but applied to humans. People are either your plaything or they're in the way. You manage to manipulate people into wanting what you want, without them even knowing it. You'll also stop at nothing until you get what you want, doing whatever it takes to get it. And you want more from your uke than just the carnal pleasures of the flesh. You want their mind, body, and soul.
Likeliness of being uke: 0%
Likeliness of being seme: 100%
Some fellow Supreme Seme: Akio (Shoujo Kakumei Utena), Fuuma (X/1999)
Off to the dentist before work, whoopie. That tooth that gave me fits back in March is still sensitive so I will be discussing that, plus my desperate need for a bite guard to help alleviate some of my killer headaches.
Spent two bloody hours in the language lab last night. There were two eps on the tape, one I had never seen before and not on the tape sensei let me copy. Well, for a buck a tape I can check out the tapes for three days so I plan on doing that, duping them off and having them at home.
Took copious notes yet again and I am hoping some of it sank in. Sometimes I dream Katakana kana! Argh!
Anime club today as well.
Gobs of studying this weekend memorizing the days of the week, numbers, plus how to write the date.
Hope to get a chance to catch up on everyone's blogs/LJs, if possible.
Woke up with a fucking headache and twisted gut this morning but I must be off to work anyway. I suspect this is related to sleep deprivation, stress and left-over illness, all wrapped up in a blegh package.
For the quiz I studied all the katakana and all I had to know were the vowels, k, s, h, ra, n and a few others...
Sensei had made copies of the wrong quiz so he asked what English words we had used as examples, wrote them on the board, and used those as the majority of the Quiz!!! He had us convert some from Romaji to Katakana and translate some from Katakana to English. Ugh! I hadn't studied those words! I thought they had just been examples of how English words are written in Katakana! He left the original English words on the board for a while and I know many students used the list a lot to rush through the quiz before he realized he had left it there and erased it.
I was the last one to finish because I was determined to pull from my personal knowledge and do it right and legally. Then I showed him all I had studied. His eyes got a little large. I am very much ahead of where I need to be. But for me I am driven and determined to be able to READ Japanese.
I absolutely SUCK at speaking it.
I get to go to the lab after work today and drill the tape. Whoo hoo...
Katakana test tonight. Drilled as much as I know of Katakana with rat for about an hour and a half last night. He was actually impressed with all the letters I knew. At lunch today I will drill the Kanji, just in case...
Spring 2004 (that's right!) schedule due by noon today.
Body feels like it's getting sick again, plus I am getting unexplained muscle pain in the tops of my thighs. Think it is part of the reaction to the groin pain since my legs can be bothersome when I get cramps. Doncha just love how everything is interconnected?
Okay, so you're not exactly *blonde*... Maybe honey blonde? ^_^; In any case, you're cute and seemingly perky and happy, but within you there is a deepset angst and turmoil. You've been through a lot of shit, and you're still going through it. Cheer up; you'll pull through eventually. Just remember you have friends all around you.
And with that, I think I am going to leave work and go home. I am utterly exhausted and need energy for class tonight.
I have dealt with the horrible experience of a severely abused uke, if you catch my drift.
Luckily the colloidal silver worked its wonders yet again and the bleeding stopped after a few hours.
The intense jabbing pain is now a dull throb.
rat questioned why I did not call the doc so I explained: If they would take me to surgery immediately they would find what was wrong. But they would wait for a few weeks, I would go through the hell Talon went through recently and they would find nothing. Actually, the hell they would put me through would flush me out and I would be healthier than before. Since this happens once, sometimes twice a year I just deal with it. If I got this every three months or so I would do something about it.
I just need to take the colloidal silver daily for a while. Need to go to Whole Foods to buy more first though, since I used up what I had with this bout of hell.
Now, back to bed. I am feeling well enough to put a few words to paper and maybe the laptop.
*looks over at Miju and Sage holding their noses while Grunt grins at them*
Leave them alone, Grunt. Go back to the pool and let them near me. Eiri has my ear now so you can leave for a while.
Sensei hit us with some Kanji tonight. He showed us how the Chinese, Japanese and English relate to the kana and how to translate a sentence. So we learned HON/moto (origin/source/root/book), NICHI/hi (sun), SHI/watashi (I/me) and JIN/hito (person).
He threw a lot of Hiragana at us but he does not expect us to know it yet. He says Hiragana will begin next month. However, I suspect he will want us to know the Hiragana for 'wa' since it is part of 'watashi wa'. And he threw 'desu' and 'dewa arimasen' at us too.
Also got into what sensei calls 'blended sounds', where yu, ya and yo are written small and to the right of the main kana to make the blended sound. Example: Newbroken down is NiYu, blended is Nyu. And you always use the i column to do this.
Found the Saiyuki doujin and the cover art is as lovely as I remember. The two doujin are from the same circle. The pairing? Don't die - it's Hakkai and Goku. Actually the doujins are not yaoi at all. They are really quite sweet, just some nice hugs and what looks like comforting. At one point in one doujin Goku walks in after a bath with just a towel around his shoulders and is completely comfortable about it. He crawls into bed next to a fully-clothed Hakkai, you see them talking and laughing in a few frames and then in the next frame they are asleep. Very very sweet.
I also remember why I purchased these - the covers were to be used as reference material for Gohan/Sage pics. They could also be used for Yuki/Shiyuuichi pics. I am going to let them lie for now, since the drawing muse, Evan, is not around at this moment. I am definitely in 'school mode' because of the Japanese class.
Blog stuff:
Joules, the pin is from Naruto, who is the blond on the right. I just saw the first ep in the Anime Club last Friday (forgot to mention that earlier) and those headbands mean they passed their ninja test. Well, they are magical ninjas.
Lutra, what colours/patterns are you using for your quilt? Is the colour scheme random like a charm quilt or are you working specific colours/patterns to make secondary patterns when they are pieced together?
Xe, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a fun show. It is on our list to timeshift - meaning, record and watch later when we have time.
Well, today I was able to write all the basic Katakana in the chart. I just picked up a blank and did it. While feeling good about it I know I will have to draw the chart to take any tests since I still do not know all the letters right off the bat.
It does help the apt has a plethora of Japanese products lying about in every single room. I pick something out and attempt to sound it out.
I am utterly horrible at speaking the language though. We learned kore, sore and are last night and lots of other phrases and they just do not sink in. Of course, my goal is not to speak it but to read it. But I know I need to know the phrases so I recognize them when I am trying to read it.
Watched the last eps of Saiyuki last night. Got a little misty at the end. Now I want more. Guess I need to hunt down the scanlation manga.
While looking for the two Saiyuki doujin I purchased over a year ago (liked the cover art - the only reason why I purchased them - didn't know the charas) I have been finding I own even more doujin than I thought. I dug through a box and threw away almost everything in it except for the magazines I purchased and the doujin. It was a big box. rat was amazed at my heaving shit into the trashcans. Got rid of all the cross-stitch catalogs, since I haven't touched it in ages. Thinking about sending all the quilt mags to the local nursing home, the one where my grandmother was until she died.
I am so wired after class I cannot sleep. The last few nights I have had class I have ended up sleeping only two hours or so. Not good, especially since work has been hell recently. Lots of administrative crap, plus this semester we have a bunch of baka students who are clueless about computer basics.
I practice katakana by drawing out the chart and filling it in. I can now get all but four. I am feeling heartened it might be sinking into this very thick skull after all...
First meeting of the Anime Club happened Friday. LOTS of people showed up. Saw Get Backers (so slashable), Onegai Twins (cute) and Scrapped Princess (interesting universe).
I come home every day now exhausted. I fall asleep early then wake up later and stay up too late.
I am off to bed. Sorry about no comments - promise later.
THANKS to all who helped identified cosplay charas! For-Chan has added a LOT to the labeling today! Thanks a lot, Angus! I am so glad Dreamweaver makes this easy to update...
Class last night whipped my ass. I have a LOT of studying to do this weekend....
My con report has been slightly derailed... my official Saiyuki DVDs showed up and I have been sucked away into that universe again. It is so funny and so interesting. I have gotten beyond the first six eps I saw in vcd format and I am now in new territory. It's pretty exciting. The subtitles are pretty damned decent for being a HK product. I am also recognizing more phrases, yay!
Just the icing on the cake of the con weekend where almost everything I purchased was Saiyuki-related. Hell, I already had everything Gravitation being offered, specifically the artbooks and the manga.
And speaking of Gravitation, my Yuki pin arrived! I am SO happy! It is such a difficult item to find. You can still find the other pins pretty easily but the Yuki pin is almost impossible. I am hyped! *bounces around*
Thanks: --> to Lia, my sensei, who has inspired me to draw again. I
wouldn't be doing this without your support, Domo Arigato!
--> to Talon, for sending me her fabulous fics, inspiring me with her writing to draw my first
illustration for a story and actually liking what I drew.
--> to Dasia, for her words of encouragement when drawing her original chara.
--> to Joules, a wonderful epic fic writer, for liking my art enough to want to post them with Talon's
and her own stories.
--> to Lutra, the other half of the epic team, for being so supportive.
--> to Jacque' & Becca Raddittzu, we met on eBay as bidder and sellers and now we are face-to-face
friends. You showed us the real DBZ with your fansubs. It's all your fault the house is full of
doujinshi! *LOL*
:: welcome to bakayaro onna's mindless ramblings, rants & raves :: 
Can anyone tell me what "o re" means? It is all over my Gravitation doujin.
Just in case you are thinking I am slipping about my long hair preference, here is a shot of Kougaiji with his long hair!
Yum!
