*hits her brother* My brother has been playing on a free Ultima Online shard a lot recently. He and other people are having a New Year's party in the tavern, getting virtually drunk.
But wait, there's more. My brother is playing a female character for some reason. And he's just done a striptease for the male characters.

Yay, my dad got a package yesterday and he forgot to throw away the bubblewrap :D Two large sheets of bubblewrap for me to pop! :D

(Bubblewrap, #1 toy for the easily entertained.)

And yes, I'm feeling better, if you care.

Raaaar. The absolute worst thing somebody can do to me when I'm in a foul mood is whine at me that I should not be in such a bad mood and I should be more sociable and shit like that. Guess what my father just did. --;;;

Eh... problems with one of my friends. Great friend, and all that... but lately I've been feeling more and more used and ignored. And I don't like that one bit. It seems like he only talks to me when he's got nothing better to do, or when he needs something. The rest of the time, it's cold shoulder. I doubt he even cares about me anymore. Or if he does, he doesn't show it.

I have the sudden sinking feeling I did something wrong.
I don't know what, though.
How sad is that?

Search request of the year: ffs piss off i am depressed. Hee hee hee hee.

o.O I think I'm addicted to Megumi Hayashibara songs. I can't understand a word she's saying - but damn, they're catchy.

I should really go to sleep now. Got to stay up longer than usual because I was a good girl and went to the relatives' reunion today with my parents, but I should really go now.

Allow me a minirant before I go, though.
I'm frankly starting to hate that "shadowed text" effect that seems to be all the rage right now. Why? Easily said. I do not mind it if it's done tastefully, but 99% of the time I see it it's done so awfully that it makes reading the text incredibly hard. Ick.
Also, another thing that seems to be popular but annoys me is the scrollbar on the left thing. Dunno why... it's just awkward for me, I guess.

Added a couple links to the sidebar.

And you thougth Pong was just a game...

For everybody who's looking for a good comments system for their blog, use yaccs. It's good.

It's Christmas, and what do I do? I work on a webpage layout, of course. ^^;;; This one is the layout for my old blog archives... the ones that were left from my first blogger account and from my brief trial of Greymatter. It's quite pink, but I like it. But I can't be arsed to html all the archive pages today... so it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Lessee, Christmas presents...
- A new mouse for my computer. Logitech optical mouse, w00t. The other one was so old it worked only half the time... it did not even have a scrollwheel, fs.
- A new sweater. I chose the wool and everything, but I was not expecting my mom to finish it in time for Christmas. Whuh, she knits FAST. A whole sweater in only a week.
- Books. Only 5 books, unfortunately (plus another one from my aunt, but that's so small I'll read it in 10 minutes, so it doesn't count), but I plan on taking a trip to the local bookshop soon.
- An amethyst stone formation thingy. This was an extra present. See, I'd bought one of those for my brother, then I had given it to my mom to keep safe. But she lost it. ^^; So she bought another one as a replacement. Then she found the other one. So I got the one she'd originally bought as a replacement.
- A cellphone holder thingy.
- A cuuute plush leopard from my brother.
- Balloons. (Yes, I'm nearly 20 and I still like plushies and balloons, yes, I know I'm childish, shut up.)
And I could swear I got some other gift, but I can't remember and I can't be bothered to go upstairs to my room to check. Maybe later.

Right, I'm going to open the rest of my presents and then to bed.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYBODY!! :D

Okay, I'll have to wait to open the presents from my family... but I have opened the presents from my friends.
d0om, thank you for those books. :)
FB, you 0wn. That lamp is perfect. :D

:D CHRISTMAS!

One hour to go...
(yes, I can't wait to open my presents... does it show? :P)

*eyes the clock* Three hours to go for Christmas...

Yaaaaaaaaaaay Snape layout! ^___^

... Apparently I am the Penguin Penguin. "Sophisticated & stylish, you care for your fellow human beings and think for yourself. Knowledge is your highest priority." (Which corporate mascot are you?) Trust me to get something related to books... ^^

>< Why the FUCK doesn't my dad just go have his afternoon nap in his bed??? Instead, he insists on sleeping right behind me, on a sofa. And he snores REALLY loud.

Throw a ball: fun with gravity.

Oh... just got my present from FB. The present from d0om arrived a few days ago. *eyes growing pile of presents* Must... resist... and... not... open... them... before... Christmas...

Yes or no?

"You are just as interesting as your weblog!"
"You have an interesting weblog and an equally interesting life. You don't need to exaggerate to make your stories sound exciting. They already are. You have a small circle of friends, both online and offline, and they all love having you around. You're an all around nice person and the best friend anyone could ever imagine having."

Well that's good ^^ Though I dunno about that last bit.

So yesterday I managed to eat, then handed in the stupid essay. Guess it was better than I'd thought it would be, because the teacher made me read portions of it aloud "just to see how it was" and all my classmates were like, "O_O You did that in FOUR DAYS?? O_O" ^^;;;

At any rate, I got home, and proceeded to relax. I'm on holiday, w00t. Thief Gold, here I come. (When my dad decides to go away and turn off his goddamn light, of course. I can't play with a light glaring on my screen.)

Though I cut my finger on a piece of paper earlier, and it hurts like fuck, and it was bleeding a lot (yeah, I know, a papercut bleeding? that's a first for me too), so I had to put a bandaid over it, and now typing is incredibly annoyingly difficult. Having a bandaid on my index fingers lowers my accuracy, fs.

HUNGER. Right, I'm going to go and see if I can manage to eat in... *looks at watch* 20 minutes. Let's hope that the McDonald's is not too crowded.

*looking at various blogs* A load of people have already seen Lord of the Rings... I will only get to see it in January... I wanna see it NOW... ;_; ;_; ;_;

Zeruel, I did NOT want to do that essay! T_T I was feeling like shooting myself after page 7, to be honest. Stupid, stupid teacher... ah well, it's over now. ^^v

Origami shuriken, for when you're tired of shooting rubber bands at your friends.

And it's the 2001b, too, which means I could load my contact list from the server and ICQ away... but is it worth it? Nah.

...o.O ICQ is installed on this computer?

And of course I can't even go on IRC because the java chat doesn't work on this shitty computer... blech.

So here I am at university, having just finished my Spanish exam. It wasn't overly difficult, but there were some things I had problems with, of course. --; Eeh.
I risked not taking it, too... this morning I got to the train station, looked up at the train list, and saw that my train had been cancelled. Eeeeek. *insert panicking eagle here* So eh, what could I do? I called my father, and he agreed to drive me to university. I arrived 45 minutes late, but it's better than not taking the exam.
So here I am, sitting at one of the university's crappy computers (the left CTRL key on this keyboard doesn't work...gaah), waiting to be hungry so I go to lunch (I'll probably go in half an hour or so, I have to be back at uni by 1pm... or maybe I'll just skip lunch... hmm, we'll see). Heh.
But hell it's cold in here.

Why the hell is Word arbitrarily refusing to print out page numbers on some random pages? >< And why the hell is it arbitrarily refusing to put footnotes on the page they belong on? >< Gaaah. Piece of shit software.

Right. So I finished my essay (17 full pages, w00t). XD Yaaay.

That, and I got Thief Gold (I'd been searching for that game for years), and two cute reptiles (a snake and a lizard) made of cloth filled with sand, that are now sitting on top of my monitor. Good day, today. And it was about time, after that series of shitty days I'd had recently.

The insanity test.

*cringes* Eeeeh. You know you have problems when you feel awkward writing a paper in what is supposed to be your mother tongue. >< Maybe I should just write it in English - the teacher would allow it - but what you can say with two words in English you can say with ten in Italian (yes, Italian is a rather wordy language), and I need the extra words. How the hell am I ever going to make it to 15 pages, albeit doublespaced? ><

And I've been working on that paper for the whole morning, and my mom whined at me that I "have done nothing the whole morning". And told me to get off the computer and start studying (wtf? I NEED the computer to work on that paper!). --;;;

>< Still working on that Media paper, which is supposed to be 15 pages long (doublespaced, thank God), is due on the 20th and deals with how the media dealt the events of the 11th of September (more specifically, in my case, how they were dealt with online in forums, chats, news sites, blogs, all that). Right now I want to kill that sadistic fuck of a teacher. What the hell was he thinking, giving us a paper on that? When all of us have friends who were there when the towers collapsed? When some of my classmates themselves were there when the towers collapsed? When some of us (not me, thank God) lost friends under there? What the FUCK was he thinking?? And no, there is "he did not know" excuse. He KNEW. We TOLD him we'd rather if he gave us a paper which dealt with something else. This is not enjoyable at all. It's the first time in years I find myself really loathing a work I have to do for university. I would skip doing the paper entirely, if I could, but it's worth 40% of the final grade, so there's no way I can not do it and not fuck up my grade. ><

Gaah... can't get past the fourth level. Fun, though.

*dances* I GOT MY LAPTOP!!! *dances some more* It's a Dell Inspiron 8100... Pentium III 1GHz, 15" monitor, GeForce2 videocard, 256MB RAM, 30GB harddisk. \o/ Funny how my laptop has a better videocard, better processor and larger harddisk than all the other computers in the house... heheh. Only things it still needs are a proper keyboard and mouse... I loathe touchpads, and the keyboard is awfully cramped. But I will get those soon.

Finally sent the Christmas presents for my friends. w00t. I didn't spend as much as I expected to, all considered. I had feared that I would spend more to send the presents than I spent to buy them... ^^;

*kicks self* I am an idiot.

LOL oh dear... Okay, I have to say this in Italian, I can't possibly think of a coherent way to say it in English. Allora, per la neve, sulla rampa (discendente) che porta al nostro garage si è formato un unico lastrone di ghiaccio. Il che ovviamente rende molto difficoltoso, per non dire impossibile, salire e scendere con la macchina. E domani a mia mamma la macchina serve. Allora ha chiamato mio papà, dettagliando la nevicata, il lastrone di ghiaccio eccetera eccetera (mio papà è in Sicilia al momento, per lavoro). E gli ha chiesto: "Il sale scioglie la neve, giusto?" Giusto. "E il nitrato di quellochesia, quel concime che usiamo per il giardino, è un sale, giusto?" Giusto. "Succede qualcosa se vado a concimare la rampa del garage?"
^^;;;;
And she just left to do it, too. *falls off her chair laughing*

SNOOOOOOOW!!!!!!! XD I love snow. When I'm not freezing to death because of it, of course. Started snowing this afternoon when I was at university, both in the city where I go to university and in my own town (my mother called to tell me). My first thought was, "oh, snow, how pretty, it has been snowing for 10 minutes and everything's all white already, how nice... it's ben ages since we had proper snow." And my second thought was, "oh FUCK, it's snowing SIDEWAYS, how the hell am I going to get to the train station without freezing to death??" ^^;; But all in all, it's nice, even if my hands nearly froze on the way to the train station (to the point that it hurt when they warmed up again). And it would've been better if Mr. Stuck-up Prick (remember him?) had bothered to come in time to class, not an hour late. --; Of course, he arrived, I left. Class was supposed to last one hour, until 4pm, and that's when he arrived, and I had other stuff to do. Not my fault if he stayed in his studio sipping tea instead of coming in class to time.
Oh, and I got to cuss out Mr. Little Stuck-up Prick (this one university student nobody can't stand, unfortunately he's in my English class) in my English class, in English, and got the praise of the teacher. ^^;; He was being obnoxious, contradicting the teacher (the teacher's been speaking English since she was born, Mr. Little Stuck-up Prick has been studying it for two years, who has more chances of being right??), telling me to "shut up, you are not the teacher" when I corrected him (when asked to by the teacher). And when I passed him a photocopy the teacher had gave me to give to him, he said, and I quote, "do that again and I'll slap the shit out of you". To which I said, "shut the fuck up and stop being such a stuck-up prick". And the teacher cheered and congratulated me. ^^;;; And she offered me a tea afterwards.

My mom needs to stop moving stuff out of my room and to other places without telling me. --;;;

Grrr... ever noticed how when you don't need something, it's always in the way, but when you do need it, you can't find it? *growls* Now where the hell did I put that box...

I need to stop procrastinating, wrap the Christmas presents for my friends and send them. I need to stop procrastinating and do my Media & Its Transformation essay. I need to stop procrastinating and work on my webpages and do the things I'd said I would do ages ago. I need to stop procrastinating and type in what I've written so far of my novel thing.
I'm terrible, aren't I?

:D *dances the happy dance of joy* I now have a stereo - a proper stereo - in my room. Sure, it's small, but it's much, much better than the one I was using before. That one couldn't play CDs, only cassettes, and I had to rely on my portable CD player for CDs - and that broke a while ago. It arrived as a gift for my father, but as we already have a large stereo system in the house, we didn't need that. So I got it instead. :D w00t. (For those who are curious, here's what it looks like.)

I did not sleep any last night, for no apparent reason. Blech. Thankfully, the class I had this morning was one I can afford to skip (English), and even my mom instantly agreed to let me sleep this morning after seeing zombie-like me. Heh.

Went to see the Harry Potter movie with my family. Of course, there was the Monster Queue From Hell at the cinema... hehe. Good thing we had bought the tickets yesterday. So we happily skipped the queue while the other people who had not thought of buying the tickets in advance glared at us. ^^v
The movie was... well, cute. That's the only adjective I can think of to define it. Cute. Not bad, overall, though some things were really bad.

Warning - spoilers (not that there isn't anybody who hasn't seen the movie yet.. :p but you never know.)

Good things:
- Ron and Hermione. Very well portrayed. Hermione especially, though I think they overdid it with the "I-am-better-than-you"-ness. She got on my nerves throughout the first half of the movie, every time she came onscreen I thought "oh hell not Hermione again". Heh. Same goes for Draco Malfoy.
- Snape. Snape was perfect. (Ragabash-san? That Snape skin. Finish it. Please?)
- Hagrid! Hagrid 0wned.
- Quidditch.
- Hogwarts in general. Well done, though it looked a little fake at times. But I guess that's to be expected.

Bad things:
- Harry. Good GOD the kid does not know how to act. He apparently can show only two emotions - surprise, and extreme happiness.
- The ghosts. Thankfully they were only in a couple of scenes, but they were really badly done.
- They did not explain clearly enough some plot elements (for example, how Harry lived at the Dursleys' and everything related to that, or why Harry and friends started suspecting Snape of wanting to steal the Stone). I understood what was going on because I had read the book, but it just confused people who had not read the book (my father, for example... he kept asking me what the hell was going on).
- The scene at Diagon Alley where Harry first meets Quirrell. He's supposed to be famous. People crowding around him and all that. Not two people shaking his hand, him meeting Quirrell and that's it.
- They did not spend enough time in Diagon Alley! Come on. Gringotts was very cool, Olivander's shop was very cool, but why did they skip the rest of it? Where's the scene with Draco and Harry in the robes shop?
- Speaking of skipped scenes, why did they skip the potion riddle on the way to the Stone? I mean, Harry had his moment when he caught the key (and when he got the Stone), Ron had his moment with the game of chess, but Hermione? It was silly to just skip that scene.
- Where's Peeves, anyway? Okay, the ghosts sucked so it was probably a good thing that they skipped him, but still...

A guide for parents: is your son a computer hacker?

A site about snowflakes, including a gallery. Pretty. (Snow is, incidentally, more or less the only thing I like about winter, except Christmas. And we rarely ever get any snow here. Figures.)

Just finished watching X anime episode 8.
Seishirou 0wns.
That's all.

...uh, help, I've just realized I have the Italian One Piece OP stuck in my head. HELP.

Well-written HP RemusxSirius fics, for the fans of... well, you could call them Puppyfics. XD

Right, back to normal. (Or semi-normal, as it were.)
Oi, Reins. I did not go postal on you over LotR.
... *considers* Well, not much, anyway. XD

Funny how when I'm feeling miserable I can keep up a facade of quietness and normalness with everybody but my close friends.

Yay for my father spoiling my good mood. As always.

*kicks the TTLG forums* Stop being slow. I'm trying to read threads.

"Nevermind, most of the fun lies just in the very action of buying a magazine targeted to girls half my age. ^__^v" Hehe. That's one of the reasons I buy W.I.T.C.H. too. ^^v Btw, thanks for the links to those sites, especially this one. A dire la verità, stavo pensando di fare un sito su W.I.T.C.H., ma visto quel sito, non credo che riuscirei a fare qualcosa di meglio di una brutta copia. E resterebbe comunque probabilmente un'altra idea abbandonata, come quella pagina su Xadhoom (da PK) che pensavo di fare l'anno scorso. ^^

Heh.

Link from Ragabash-san. *waits to see the results her Brit friends get*

Yes, I know I did not blog yesterday. Was too busy playing Tetrinet. ^^v
Anyway. Went shopping with my friends from university yesterday during a free period. It was very fun, especially since there was me, three other girls and my (male) best friend from university. Guess what we went shopping for? (Even if we actually did not buy anything...) *evil grin* Yup. Clothes, perfumes, make up, girly stuff like that. *evil grin* It was incredibly fun. First of all, because of the sarcastic comment my best friend kept making. Also, it is very fun to drag a guy into a perfume shop and proceed to subject him to half an hour of "how does this perfume smell?" XD

Um, a little help please? I downloaded Battle Chess (for Windows - it's abandonware), and it's exactly as fun as I remembered (I had the old DOS version). Only one problem... the sound doesn't work. The game tells me: "Digitized sounds are not available in Enhanced Mode due to the nature of preemptive multitasking. Use Standard Mode (win /s) to allow for digitized sounds." How do I do that? ^^;; I want sound... the game is not the same withouth sound. ;_;

If I were a work of art, I would be Piet Mondrian's Composition A.
I am rigidly organised and regimented, although my cold and unapproachable exterior hides a clever way of thinking and a rebellious and innovative nature. A lot of people don't understand me, but I can still affect them on an emotional level.
Which work of art would you be? The Art Test

o_O Mondrian? Not what I was expecting to get. Well, okay, it sorta fits me, except for that "rigidly organised and regimented" part. And at least I'm not melting watches. ;D

^^ Actually, Reins, I think I started reading OP before you started obsessing over Zoro and corrupting other people. ^^ I'm just not very vocal about my obsessions.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention before. I got a 26/30 on my Media & Its Transformation midterm. w00t. Not bad considering I just read (not studied) the textbook, and I did it the day before the exam and the morning of the exam. XD

Yay, no classes tomorrow. I can stay home. Oh, I love my Creative Psychology teacher... when he doesn't come to class and warns us in time, that is.

Anyway. I'm fully convinced now that my dad is the definition of internet illitterate. Lately he had been complaining that his computer ran slow while he was on the internet. He had been blaming that on me "for downloading too many files at once", too, when I wasn't downloading anything. Like it's the fault of too many downloads if a computer is slow... that usually is due to too many programs running at the same time. So, just out of curiosity, I install AdAware on his computer and run a scan. Well, turns out that he had more than 100 spyware programs installed. Ick. No wonder his computer was slow. Of course, now that I removed all the spyware, his computer runs perfectly.

Cold... so cooooooooooooooold... it's cold even at home... I don't wanna go to uni, I don't wanna go outside in the cold... *hugs her cats for warmth*

Reins, yeah, the text up there *points* is from the book. It's the poem that goes with Aragorn's name. ^^ As for the Elvish writing, that particular poem was never written in that form in the actual book... I just took one of the many Tolkien fonts I have on my harddisk (fonts of actual writing systems Tolkien invented) and put the poem into that. ^^
As for Luffy's name... yes, they called him Rubber. -_- Thankfully the other names are unchanged. God knows why they felt the need to rename Luffy to Rubber... --;
Oh yeah, I got OP manga #6 today XD *huggles Zoro* *huggles Sanji* (ohwhatthehell) *huggles Mihawk too* XD

Changed the layout around a bit, modifying the link color so it's a little lighter and changing part of the text on one of the images for the same reason.

I've been searching for a decent informative webpage on gemstones for ages. I've had this plotbunny for a novel with a magic system based on gemstones gnawing away at me for a long, long time. I never had enough info to write it decently, though. The World of Gemstones (link from Diana-san) is a decent resource, and I might just start writing that story. After I've finished the one I'm writing now, of course. (Heh, me finish a story before starting another... that's a first.)

Anyway. For the "look what I found clicking on random links" section, Japanese manga sound effects explained.

And for the "game of the moment" section, Reflections. *kicks level 11*

-_- Missed the train. And of course, since there's a train every THREE FUCKING HOURS, I missed my Spanish class. Which is not good, since I missed it last week too. Blech. Oh well. Nothing I can do about it. Still, it's annoying. I was actually looking forward to going to class, but noooo. And you know what irks me? That specific train, the 8am train, is almost always late. And I have to sit at the station on a marble bench and freeze my ass off. And the day I actually needed it to be late, it left early. --;;;

Yeah, so I actually accomplished something while sitting at the computer instead of sleeping. *grins, yawns and stretches* Isn't that incredible? ;)

*points to self* Aragorn fangirl. *nodnod*

December already. Time flies.