*cuddles Amazon.com* *cuddles her pile of Sandman comics* :D

o.O Can anybody explain to me why I always get the role of a moderator/mediator when we simulate meetings and stuff like that in English class? o.O I'm no diplomat...

And on a different note, this is brilliant. Heeheehee.

A bit later than the rest of blogland, on the "videogames are not a form of speech" thing. Excuse me?! That is wrong on so many points.
I'm not America. The ruling does not affect me in any way, in theory. But it does effect me in practice. Because it goes against something good.
I'm not good with words, and yet, there are many things I want to say. That the stories some videogames tell are better than some of the assy movies or crappy books that are around today. That some videogames are brainless entertainment, yes - but so are some movies or books. That videogames can actually made you think. They can make you laugh, they can make you cry, they can make you feel. They can make you reflect on what you are, what you will be - hell, try looking at a game like Final Fantasy 7. Or Soul Reaver 2. Or even Thief (oh wait, I forgot, such a game is objectionable because it teaches you to steal. Whoops, my bad. I'm a criminal now, aren't I?). I spent hours and hours and hours thinking about the plot of those games and beyond - thinking about what free will is, when something is or isn't morally good, and everything else implied by those games.
Saying that games are not a form of speech - that videogames offer "no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech" - is BULLSHIT. But then, if you, to make your analysis, review four games, which are "Mortal Kombat", "Fear Effect", "DOOM", and "The Resident of Evil Creek", for FUCK'S SAKE, can you be expected to see beyond your nose?
Grrr. So much more I'd want to say, but as I said before, I'm not good with words. I'll just leave you with two links - a rant off of Penny Arcade, that does a great job of explaining the situation, and Kris' comments, very well thought out and exposed, and certainly more than I could manage to say.

Hahaha... went to see Ice Age this afternoon. That movie is THE FUNNY. Seriously. First movie ever that had me in tears of laughter with the first scene. Heeheehee... that squirrel thing was rofl-worthy. XD And the scene in the ice cave too. XD
And the sabertoothed tiger SO kicked ass. :D

Hey, this is cool... Wikipedia, an "open content" encyclopedia.

Oh for fuck's sake. A program that comes bundled with spyware removes AdAware upon being installed. >< Excuse me but you have NO FUCKING RIGHT to go and uninstall programs off my harddisk.
That program is now #2 in my "most disgusting spyware" scale. Because no matter what, I think that Brilliant's 200 registry keys are still at the top.
(Yes, 200 keys. My dad had had Kazaa on his harddisk, so I uninstalled Kazaa and de-spywared the computer. Next day, he reinstalled Kazaa, so I had to despyware his computer again, and I got to count the registry keys Brilliant's shit left behind. Yeuch. ><)

Ick. Spent all of yesterday and all of today with a really bad cold. And it shows no signs of wanting to go away. >< My sinuses are so stuffed up that my head feels heavy and I swear I could just fall asleep here.

Oh, and the Moulin Rouge DVD I wanted to watch this afternoon? I took it out of the box and it was scratched. Very badly scratched. >< I'll return it tomorrow... bleh.

Ever been bored out of your mind - so bored you went to Babelfish and took a random sentence and started translating it to several languages and back to English again just because the results were so absurdly amusing? Sure you have.
Now there's a site which does all the hard work for you. \o/

Huh...

Congratulations, you are a Water Faerie! This means you are giving, helpful, sensitive and are good with healing the wounds and pain of your loved ones and friends. Water faeries love to aid others and are very good at it! Not only are you all of these things, but you are a great friend to have because you know how to make friends in need feel much better.

Index of the logical fallacies. Heh. Funny thing is, I've argued with people who used just about all of the logical fallacies presented there... ¬¬

Because AYB never really went out of fashion: The $20,000 zig.

"Let's make a ball of stuff and call it art!"
Here, have an Etherknot. And a BraBall, while you're at it.

And because it made me snicker several times, and who cares if it's already been seen?, the Periodic Table of Sci-Fi.

And for the "oh ffs, stop being paranoid" category: girl finds what appears to be a two-headed toad in her family's pool, and her whole family panics.
"OH TEH NO A MONSTAR TOAD!!!111"

Only it was simply two toads getting it on.
Hahaha. :D

A she or not a she... that is the question for Shakespeare, apparently:

Fresh light has been thrown on William Shakespeare's sexual orientation by the discovery of a previously unknown portrait of the playwright's patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton - apparently dressed as a woman.

But really... why should it matter if ole Willy fancied men or women (or both)?

Erm... That's a rather... unfortunate picture. Heh heh heh...

So it's official... next year I will not have to go abroad to study. I spoke with my tutor, and he said that my reasons for not going are definitely valid. And I won't be forced to go if I don't want to, and he will work on finding the best solution to allow me to continue my studies at best without going abroad.
*phew*
This is probably a surprise to most of you... only a handful of my friends know already, I kept my mouth shut about it for quite a long time, so don't feel bad if you didn't know. I had enough problems admitting to myself that I wasn't ready to go... heh.
Either way, I'm glad this is solved... one less stress factor in my life.

Gah. I'm spoiled by Opera already. I'm forced to use IE here at uni, and it's such a pain in the ass...
Maybe I could download and install Opera like I did for mIRC... but I have the feeling this ancient crappy computer would choke on the download ¬¬
And the people who run the computer room still have to realize that light glaring directly on the screen = BAD. Gaaah. *squints*

Lessee, a bit of social blogging...

Bird, love the skin. Even if I have no idea who the green-haired person is. ^^; *not an expert in Utena at all* Wish I could skin like that... I don't have the patience. ^^;;

NnM-chan, heh... Legolas kicks ass, no reason not to look at him just because he's lusted after by a myriad of rabid fangirls... :p

Great new layouts, Zeruel. I love them (even though I can't see them very well because of the light glaring on the screen... ^^;; I'll have to look again when I'm at home, to look at all the little details), especially the sucks.to.squall one.
And you're right... Mihawk kicks ass. XD

*ponders* Maybe I should make a Mihawk layout for my blog or something...

Today's quiz (link from Arashi):

Your integrity and sense of morals are as strong as a steel wall. Your honesty and pride give you honour, and your haste to defend the honour of good people make you worthy of being called a friend. But you harbour deep feelings of unworthiness, and hide them beneath layers of outward strength and discipline. Because of this, you have a hard time allowing others to call you a friend, and find much of your discontentment turn into frustration. Try to understand that by letting others in, you eliminate much of your frustration and improve your true self-image. Which Love Hina Girl Are You?

...maybe I should go do homework for my Spanish class now? Stars, I'm such a procrastinator.

Hrm... been a few days since I last posted. Didn't have anything special to say...
I'm sitting at uni now, bored out of my skull. They cancelled class this morning, and didn't tell me... to think I could've slept in instead of getting up at 7am... bleh. I'd just go home, but I don't want to skip Spanish class again. Plus I have an appointment with my tutor after Spanish which I don't want to miss, as I've been trying to get an appointment with the guy for just about forever...
That, and I have an ultra-extended weekend this week. No class tomorrow afternoon because the teacher can't come, and Thursday is a national holiday, and they decided to make Friday a holiday too. w00t. Some free time to watch the Moulin Rouge DVD.

Anyway... I've been in a bit of a foul mood lately. Stuff piling up on me... if I snapped at anybody, sorry. :/

Mycathatesyou.com. Personally, I find those cats cute rather than hateful... but it might be just me.

Morbid thought of the day:
Have you done anything to make sure that, if you die, your online friends know?
For example, leaving instructions for your parents / whoever lives with you to post on the forums you frequent / your blog / your site / whatever... which is what I'm thinking of doing. Meh.

MoreCrayons.com - an expanded palette of colors for the web.

image::copy. I think that o.O is the only possible reaction.

What can you do when you have a lot of free time? Build a church out of lego bricks, of course.
I wish I had the patience (and the time) to do something like that.

(And goddamnit, the poem about God lending out kittens made me cry. Gaaaah. I am such a soft-hearted fool.)

"Thank you for visiting the Brand! You now have "Speak Friend and Enter" tattooed above your tailbone."

Excuse me while I go laugh my ass off. Bwahahaha. XD
(link from Felicity)

Hot tea works wonders for stomachaches. \o/

Yeah, I went home. I feel like a large drunk elephant is dancing the cancan in my stomach. Though the hot tea is helping somewhat.
Damnit, I didn't want to skip that class... it's interesting. But I couldn't have payed attention anyway...

Suddenly feeling like complete, total, and utter shit. I'm considering just skipping the afternoon class and going home.

...
You know, against all my expectations, I really do like the IT teacher we have this year. He kicks ass. He's really nice, too... Take this morning, he'd never actually talked to me before but he stopped me in the hallway, asked me how I was, etc. because he knew I was a second-year student and since I was not around the whole last week he'd guessed I'd been ill.
And he explained nicely that he doesn't want to be forced to lower people's grades because they don't pay attention in class / never show up to class / are noisy in class. Which is really quite reasonable of him. Most teachers I know would just say "ah screw it" and lower grades straight away. But of course my classmates see what he did as being "strict". --;
Meh. Anyway. I reckon I'll enjoy this class. \o/

Um... anybody know how much I can ask to be payed if I do a translation from English to Italian of a document that's roughly 9700 words long? I have been asked, and I have no clue. First time I do something like this. ^^;

Hum. Nice. If only I could think of something for the tag... I suck at short poetry.

Ooo... free handwriting fonts. I love handwriting fonts.
I probably have 95% of those fonts already, but I'm not going to check now or I'll spend all the evening downloading fonts. But I want to find that site again. Hence, a bloglink.

Remember the Evil Bastard Devil Exam From Hell?

Just got back the results.

29/30.

Do I 0wn or what? XD

(Final grade for that class, 28/30. The essay got a 26/30 which was not too shabby considering the thing was 75% quotations, and my classwork/homework got a 28/30.)

Exam results: 27/30 in the English exam (I feared worse, I thought I'd fucked up the last exercise almost entirely) and 29/30 in the Spanish exam. Hell yeah. XD

And it's back to uni for me... oh joy.
I was the only one in English class this morning O.O Dunno where the rest of my classmates went... So heh. It wasn't that bad though, I like the teacher. We chatted a bit... I'd shown her some of the stuff I write, and she told me it's very nice, and I should definitely keep pursuing this and try to get published, because, in her words, I'm "a really excellent writer". ^^

Of the force of nature:

After lunch, my mom went to eat an apple. Upon cutting it open, she stared briefly, then told me, "come look at this". She held one of the apple seeds up, and I saw that the seed had already sprouted. I blinked and said that it was odd, and we should try planting it in a glass with a bit of earth to see if it lived. Mom agreed, and went to look in the cupboard outside since she knew we still had a small bag of soil in there from when we put flowers on my balcony last spring. I was inside, tidying the kitchen, and she called me again, "...come look at this".
On the same shelf the bag of soil was, we had some potatoes. They had clearly been there a while - they'd already sprouted roots and stuff. And get this - they'd dug through the plastic bag - the thick, closed plastic bag that contained the soil to get at the soil and root themselves in it.
So what could we do? We planted two potatoes as well, two small potatoes that had already had several little daughter potatoes. Heheh. Oh, and an onion had done the same thing as well, and got planted.

There's a saying here which goes, en avril, taca anca el manego de un badil (in April, even the handle of a shovel will sprout roots)... guess it must be true. *lol*

The Nonverbal Dictionary of gestures, signs & body language cues. Very interesting.

Heh heh heh. The deadly follies of stick-figure warning man and family (which I may have already linked, but I don't care - it deserves a relink) and, while I'm at it, Orange cones.

ô.ô Apparently, in the medieval age I would have been a benevolent ruler. Sure, whatever you say. ô.ô

Bird- lemme guess, when you tried to scroll in Netscape, the text and everything else left streaks everywhere? (I don't know how else to define what happens.) Definitely not the lab computers - it does that when I look at it with Netscape too. And I can't figure out what's causing it (and making Opera choke on it entirely)... very, very odd.
By the way - LOL at the liquor labels. :D I don't drink, and I've never actually seen anybody drunk, but I've heard enough tales of drunkennes from my friends.

Via Neil Gaiman: one American city is going to spend $273000 this year to combat Goth culture.

Goths -- kids who tend to wear black and think dark thoughts -- are an at-risk group of students, said Blue Springs Police Officer Colby Lalli. The students who shot and killed 13 people in 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado allegedly were attracted to Goth culture.

"It's not just the clothes they wear," Lalli said. "We're seeing kids on the unit, whether it be suicide or homicide, they're just one more culture in our community that is at big risk, and we need to deal with that. We need to educate people."

Anyway, just came home from an after-marriage dinner party. Contrary to my expectations, I actually had fun. Heh.
First of all, the (very loud) music prevented my relatives from cooing over me and going "my how you've grown". \o/ And secondly, dancing is fun. At first I wasn't going to even try dancing because, well, I dance like a three-legged epileptic crocodile... :p But then I thought, hey, I can't possibly look more ridiculous than them old ladies dancing like youngsters, can I? Heheh. And it was fun.
Though I've noticed one thing. When I dance, I tend to favor my right leg. So my right thigh is all cramped up now that I've stopped moving. Meh.

Hey look. I wrote poetry.

...Winamp just pulled five songs on friendship in a row. I think somebody is trying to tell me something. ¬¬

The pre-date confidence builder. Hahaha. :D
(Thanks, MsLedd.)

Omniglot, a guide to writing systems. *gets ready to bury herself in that site and come back out after a few weeks*

I'll just do some more whining.

So after staying home yesterday, and feeling all rested, I was planning to go back to university today. After all, I don't want to miss the first week of courses after the Easter holidays, yeah?
Yesterday evening I was feeling a bit... well, odd, though. Like I usually feel when I'm really sick. So, just out of curiosity, I checked my temperature again. (Keep in mind that my normal body temperature is somewhere between 36.2 °C and 36.6 °C...)
Since I had nothing better to do, I was sitting there looking at the thermometer as the temperature went up. 36.8... 37.0... 37.3... 37.6... it finally stopped at 37.7 °C.
So yeah. Going to university for the rest of this week is out of the question. And now I'm sitting here, bored out of my mind, with a headache that won't go away even after I took some painkillers. Buh.

scumble (from comments): I played it on one of the very first computers my family got... before we even got Windows 3.1. It was this old DOS box, with an absurdly small hard disk and two floppy disk drives: one for the small floppies (3.5") and one for the large floppies (5.25"). I remember playing it from a 5.25" floppy.
I looked through all our old computer stuff to see if I could find the disk it was on, but all the 5.25" floppies were apparently thrown away when that computer died (since we no longer had any computer with a B:/ drive, capable of reading 5.25" floppies). -.-

Perhaps someone who reads this blog can help me...
I remember playing, when I was a kid, a game which was like PCbert. It had several differences, though. For starters, the "player character" was a bird, and instead of the disks you can take to go back up at the top of the pyramid, there were wings. The ball which contained the snake was not different in color from the normal balls: it was simply larger, and it did not turn into a snake almost immediately (instead it shook a couple times before doing that, IIRC). The ball that stops time if you catch it was blue IIRC, not green, and the effect lasted for longer. If you died, you started back at the top of the pyramid, not where you died. The things that came up from the bottom of the pyramid were cats, not whatever the hell those pink things are. The frog thing that turns the squares back to their previous color looked different too.
The whole thing had different sounds too.
Can anybody help me find it? PCbert is a nice substitute, but if I can find the original one...

Here we go: some of the photos I took in Florence. As you'll notice, I'm not a very good photographer... enjoy anyway. ^^

The front of the Santa Maria Novella church.
Inside Santa Maria Novella: light from a stained glass window on the floor. (No, I have no idea how I managed to make it turn out like that. Dumb luck, I assume.)
The Santa Maria Del Fiore church and its belltower.
The belltower alone.
The dome of the baptistry (which is in front of Santa Maria Del Fiore, fyi), from the inside.
(Part of) the place we were staying at.
Another photo of the place we were staying at.
The front of the San Lorenzo church. (Obviously, they never finished decorating it.)
Palazzo Vecchio.
The front of the Santa Croce church.
The Pazzi chapel: a view of both the domes it has, the large undecorated one inside (on the left) and the small one outside (on the right). Taken standing in the doorway and looking straight up.
The Arno river from Ponte Vecchio: from one side and from the other.

Oh yes... I got the photos I took in Florence developed today. I'll scan some of them tomorrow.

Bird- it basically doesn't even load. I have no idea what's causing that - I've looked at the source code, but I can't find any reason why it should make Opera choke like that... Isn't just my computer, either, I've tried it on three different computers.

Finished. Well, sort of. I have the main layout, I still have to actually code all the subpages. (Yes, it's a webpage layout I'm doing for my mom.) But I'm so tired I can't code straight. And my brother just told me, "Go lie down somewhere. I'll defend you with mom if necessary."
He's so sweet sometimes.
I think I'll go and sleep on the couch for a bit soon. *flas voer*

Yes, I'm aware this is turning into a whining blog... I must be scaring readers away. Heheh.
Sorry, but what can I do when I feel like shit? I have to vent some way.

Yes. Thank you God. The thermometer tells me my temperature is 37.4 °C, while my normal temperature is around 36.2-36.6 °C. With a bit of luck, I'll be able to stay home and sleep tomorrow instead of going to uni.
Yes, I know I could sleep now. But I have something to do for my mom, and I don't want to get yelled at when she comes home. Because of course, no matter how sick I am, no matter how shitty I'm feeling, she always comes first.
The last time something like this happened, our conversation went like this:
Me: "Hey mom, sorry I didn't do that stuff for you, but I was feeling really shitty, so I went to sleep instead."
Her: "If you'd done it earlier, this wouldn't have happened."
Me: "I was feeling shitty the past few days, too. And I started doing it."
Her: "I don't care if you're sick, you have to finish doing that stuff for me."
So yeah. I'm going to finish that thing, then I swear I'm going to bed at 11pm tonight. And then tomorrow I'm staying home.

If I can convince my mom, of course. She tends to say, "Stop whining, just take something and go to university anyway" when I am sick. And it does not matter how zombie-like I am, or how little I've slept in the past few days.

And in other news, I got up at 7am this morning after sleeping some 4 hours, dragged myself out of bed, went to university, only to find out that there weren't any classes today, because the teachers couldn't come.
Uh, wasn't warning earlier doable, fuckers? I could've slept longer if I'd known about this yesterday. And if you'd bothered to tell me about it earlier today, fuckers, I could've not wasted my entire morning. This way, I got home at noon, after spending the whole morning doing absofuckinglutely NOTHING. Graar.

And now of course I have a headache. Ugh.

Uh, Mother Nature? Can I have a word?
See, we are in April. You know, the first month of spring for us people in the northern hemisphere? Warmth, flowers, birds singing, and all that jazz? Ring any bells?
April does not equal rain and wind so strong that I nearly fell off my bike due to it several times and me being able to see my breath when I go outside.
Not funny. Cut it out.

And I know I have posted this before, but:

If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too;
if you can wait and not be tired of waiting,
or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
or being hated don't give way to hating,
and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master.
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
and treat those two imposters just the same;
if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
and stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
and lose, and start again at your beginnings
and never breathe a word about your loss;
if you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to serve your turn long after they are gone,
and so hold on when there is nothing in you
except the Will which says to them "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
if all men count with you, but none too much;
if you can fill the unforgiving minute,
with sixty seconds worth of distance run.
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it,
and - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

(Rudyard Kipling)

One of my favourite poems, probably my favourite ever. I have it up in my room, actually.

Inside my heart is breaking
My make-up may be flaking
But my smile still stays on
My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies
Fairytales of yesterday will grow but never die
I can fly - my friends
The show must go on
The show must go on
I'll face it with a grin
I'm never giving in

Tomorrow I go back to university... meh. It seems almost... unreal that the holidays went by so quickly. Especially since I didn't really do anything... meh.

Oh, and this too: Condensed Harry Potter. XD

How to get detention with Professor Severus Snape, in fully illustrated steps. Roofles. \o/

Evil joke of the day, from my brother:
When God was creating the world, it came time to decide the characteristics of each nationality. Among other things, God decided to give two good qualities to each nationality: the Japanese would be hard-working and tidy, and so on. When it came time to decide for the Italians, God thought for a while, then said: "You will be smart, honest, and vote for Berlusconi."
"But, Lord," said Archangel Gabriel "you gave them three good qualities! It will be unfair!"
"Oh. You're right. I must have been distracted for a moment. Well then, they will only be able to use two of them at the same time."
Which is why, if an Italian is smart and votes for Berlusconi, then he isn't honest; if he is honest and votes for Berlusconi, then he isn't smart; and if he is smart and honest, he will not vote for Berlusconi.

XD

Sloppy coding on Blogger's part, though. The text box you type your posts in is extremely small in Opera. (And in Netscape, for that matter. So it isn't Opera's fault.) Meh.

By the way- Bird, I can't get your blog to display properly with Opera. oO;

...
Have I mentioned that Opera (yes, the browser - yes, I just downloaded and tried it) fucking OWNS?
<3 <3 <3 <3

How to clean Kazaa if you want to keep using it (dunno why you'd want to, WinMX is better in my opinion, but meh) but you don't like spyware.
By the way: the latest signature file for AdAware (get RefUpdate from the AdAware site, it's the quickest way to always have the latest signature file) gets rid of the BDE shit for you so you don't have to do the manual uninstall procedure.

Morbid thought of the day:
If I could choose the way I died, I would die really old, in a large library. It would be a place filled with light, with all my favourite music and all my favourite books. I would spend days and days and days reading all the books I love, then talk about them with all my friends while listening to the music I love. And then, at the end of it all, I would fall asleep at the reading table, and never wake up.

And in other news, I've been having a shit past few days. But I refuse to bitch on my blog about this. Too many people from That Certain Place read this, probably including The Bitch™ and possibly The Asshole™. She hates my guts enough already, and he would probably attempt to use whatever I write here against me. Bleh.

You know you are a fontaholic when:
- You have 700+ fonts on your hard disk, and they're making your programs choke. (check)
- You frequently stop, point at random signs, flyers, posters and things like that and go, "hey, I know that font! It's ______! I have it on my hard disk!" (check)
- You try to stay away from font archives, because you just know you will end up downloading 100 or so fonts you will never use. (check)
- You regularly fail to stay away from font archives. (check)
- You find something like this a fun read. (check. :D)

Heheh... my mom just told me a story that made me literally howl with laughter. I guess you'd have to have my (extremely warped and peculiar) sense of humour to find it as funny as I did... here it is anyway.

My mom's a teacher, as I'm sure I've already said once or twice. Two of her colleagues - let's call them Teacher 1 and Teacher 2 - are sisters. A few days ago, one of the teachers of the class Teacher 1 teaches was off sick, so Teacher 2 was called in as a substitute teacher. Teacher 2 had first period, and Teacher 1 had second period. During the second period, one of the boys (I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to call 13 year old kiddies "guys") approached Teacher 1 and asked: "Um... is Teacher 2 your sister?"
Teacher 1, of course, answered: "Well, yes."
And the boy blurted out: "God, but she's ugly!!!"

Heeheehee... I dunno why, but stuff like that always makes me laugh my ass off.

Three Ring Internet Mapping Project. And yes, it's fairly accurate. It pinpointed my whereabouts fairly easily (though of course not precisely).

Oh yeah... I've found the website of the place I stayed at while I was in Florence, just in case you're curious and can't wait until the photos I took get developed. The third photo here is the room I slept in; that door you see leads to the bathroom (yes, it's a very small door, I had to duck my head to go through it), which leads (through another door) to the kitchen / dining room, which leads (through stairs) to the room my parents slept in. (The bathroom, kitchen / dining room and upstairs room aren't in the photos.)

So I just went to imood to change my mood thingy... I took a look at the moodlist while I was there.
Who the fuck would ever feel "kawaii"? --; I can understand "cute", but "kawaii" is just a rehash of that ("kawaii" means "cute" in Japanese, fyi) for the anime fangirls who absolutely adore fangirl Japanese. I can just see that being used all the time on all of those cookie-cutter anime sites.

Remember how I bitched about having to go to a wedding and having to endure hours and hours of long lunch and boring relatives and stuff?
My mom just came and told me that one of my aunts called. Apparently, "young people" are not required to go to the lunch. So I'll just go to the actual ceremony, then go back home, and go back there in the evening for a couple hours of socializing.
YES. THANK YOU GOD.

*pokes blogger* Feel like letting me publish now? Goody.

This test tells me I'm Death of the Endless. (image) Dunno why, but I was sorta expecting that.

You know... I was looking at Progress Quest go, and well... while it is funny as hell if you watch what it comes up with... there are so many untold stories there. Especially in some of the items it can come up with.
Maybe it's just the storyteller in me talking. After all, I'm known for having lots of untold stories to tell myself. Who knows if I'll ever manage to tell them all.

...or perhaps, it's the tiredness in me talking, and I should just go to bed instead of being stubborn and staying up tonight. Heheh.

Hrm... interesting. I get the feeling it has a tendency to choke on homonyms, though. (ie. When I say "down" as in "I walked down the stairs", it doesn't mean I'm feeling depressed, dumbass of a program. *l*)

...whuh, that long? I hadn't realized. It looked short to me.

One last thing... as we were driving home today, we passed an accident. There were three parked cars, then a wrecked motorbike in the middle of the road, then a half-wrecked car. First I tried not to look - I don't like being a vouyeur of the misery of other people - but then I had to look... I felt odd. Part of me just wanted to look away. Part of me was thinking, "This could happen to me". And part of me, irrationally, wanted to help out. I mean - there were maybe 15 people there helping out, and an ambulance had already been called but... I wanted to stop and help. It gnawed at me for a while, too, the misery of those people there, the hurt, the pain, and I could do nothing to help.

Heh... I'm odd.

Aha. Found the floppy. Now to make my account of the trip actually readable... (it was written in the evenings, you see)

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Day 1 (right after lunch)
After a long boring car trip, we finally get to Florence. The place we are staying at is not in Florence, but outside Florence, in Sesto Fiorentino (a nearby town). So we go to Sesto Fiorentino... first surprise, there’s about 1.5km of rough road to get where we will be staying. Ohwell... off we go. The road is small small small, and difficult to get on with our car. We finally get to the place... really nice, I have to admit, it’s a really old watchtower (dating back to the year 900, and a national monument). Brief moment of panic... will our rooms have electricity? (heheh) They do. \o/ And they’re really quite nice, too. Old furniture, and all... very nice. The scenery is awfully nice as well, lots of flowers and trees and stuff... I’ll have to take some photos when I can get my camera to work. Heh. Apparently the batteries are out on the thing... I hope that when we get new batteries it works, I don’t want to have to rely on those shitty one-use cameras for my photos. I hate those.
This afternoon we’re going to visit the Santa Maria Novella church... we’re leaving as soon as I’m finished typing this. I hope we’ll find somewhere to eat, too... I’m starving, and munching on a cookie right now just to stop my stomach from rumbling noisily.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention... lots of olive trees around this place. I’m allergic to olive trees, the pollen to be specific. Let’s hope it’s not pollen season yet... otherwise, I’m in for a few days of sneezing.
My parents’ room is nicer than mine. Not fair. :p Nice smell in this room, though. The smell of... well, I dunno how to describe it... smell of old things, perhaps. Pleasant smell.
I hope the dog outside will stop barking when it’s night, or I won’t be able to sleep... heh, there’s three dogs here. Two of which are larger than I am... brief moment of panic when I realized that, but then the owners of the place reassured us that the dogs are really quite mellow - not to mention old - so they will not be doing anything. :p Yay. If there’s something I really would not enjoy, it’s getting pounced by a dog that’s larger than me.

(after dinner)
So we went down to Florence with the bus... there’s something ominous about taking a bus in front of the graveyard, heh. I’ve read at least five different horror stories that have something to do with that. At any rate, while we were on the bus, my mom told me an interesting thing... the name of this town, Sesto Fiorentino (“sixth of Florence”) comes from the fact that it’s exactly 6 roman miles (whatever those are... I’ll have to check when I get back home) from the center of Florence.
When we got to Florence, we had lunch (McDonald’s... bleh), then off we went to visit churches and stuff. First we went to Santa Maria Novella, which is a beautiful church both on the outside and on the inside. The stained glass windows especially are incredible... I took some photos of the light that was reflected through them and on the floor, I hope they turned out okay.
There was a grave inside the church, which I found interesting because of what was written on it... a certain “Septimia puella ornatissima” (“Settimia, extremely beautiful girl”) was buried there. This girl was apparently very smart and educated (“virile ingenium”, heh... basically it says she had the brain of a man). She died when she was 22, while she was being operated on (as the text says, and as the image on the grave shows), probably because of appendicitis. Heh. Just found that interesting...
We then moved on to two other churches (San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Del Fiore), but we couldn’t visit them because it was too late, so we just looked at them from the outside, we will go back tomorrow. I bought some postcards for my friends (and one that was more than a simple postcard, heh heh heh... I have the feeling I’ll get throttled when that arrives...), then we headed back to the bus stop (because everybody was complaining that their feet hurt). Heh, I’m such a sucker for books. We were walking, and my mom went, “hey look, that’s a huge bookshop...” My reaction: “Where? Oooh... I see it... can we go there? Please? Pleasepleasepleaseplease?” :D And we bought some books. \o/ And tomorrow we’ll be going to another bookshop, this one with books in English. \o/
Oh yes, dinner... bread and salami and ham and cheese. We couldn’t be bothered to look for a restaurant, so we bought some groceries and ate them in our room.
Then we played scala quaranta (Italian card game... *goes for the dictionary* nope, not there... I'll have to explain it if I can be bothered) afterwards, and I typed this, and now I’m going to bed.

Day 2 (after dinner)
Ow, my feet. Ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Ow.
Let’s start from the beginning. Slept fairly well this night, though I had a very odd dream which I think was in the middle of the night, so I kept waking up and rolling over.
After we woke up this morning, we went to visit the San Lorenzo church, which was really quite nice inside, if a bit bland. Then we went to the Feltrinelli International bookshop, the one I was talking about yesterday, with the books in English. I have to admit I’m impressed with my mom’s courage. She agreed to go there, even if she knew exactly what would happen - me coming out of the shop with a large stack of books. And so it was... I got seven books, five of which are some of the Pern books I was missing. \o/ I wanted to buy more, but 1. my mom was frowning, and 2. I didn’t want to lug five bags of books through Florence for all the afternoon. Two bags of books were cumbersome enough.
Anyway, after we went to the bookshop, we went and visited the Santa Maria Del Fiore church. That church is beautiful outside, but really, really, really drab on the inside. Bleh. Then I wrote the postcards I’d bought yesterday, we had lunch, then went down to Piazza della Signoria and visited Palazzo Vecchio. After that, we visited the Historical Science Museum, then headed back here.
Dinner was a normal dinner, ham, salad, cheese, salami, olives, bread, and a small cake.
Then we played scala quaranta again, and now here I am.

Day 3 (after dinner)
I’ll be short, because I’m tired and cold and want to go to sleep. We visited the Santa Croce church today, then had lunch, then had a walk down Ponte Vecchio, then took a bus back to Sesto Fiorentino and spent the afternoon relaxing. Had dinner, played machiavelli (a variant of scala quaranta which really forces you to think), and now I’m going to lie down and hopefully sleep. Tomorrow we’re going to visit the Uffizi museum, will be tiring. Great (always wanted to go there), but tiring. And then on Monday morning we’re leaving to go home. w00t. \o/ We should be home in the early afternoon.
Oh, and I bought a small money pouch to keep my euro coins. They were starting to get cumbersome in my wallet.
God, I’m so tired that my eyes can’t focus on the screen properly and my hands are so cold I can’t even type properly. I’m going to sleep, like, right now. I don’t care if it’s 9pm. I wanted to go to sleep an hour ago, but due to my stubborness, didn’t. Serves me right.
Well, I’ve learned something at least. Never ever ever use my brain to do something of the machiavelli sort when my body’s already tired. If I do, my body and my brain coalize against me, say “goodnight, we’re going to bed”, and shut off. Guh.

Day 4 (after dinner)
Florence was so absurdly full of policemen today it had to be seen to be believed. There was risk of terrorism, you see, so there was a policeman at every street corner. On our way to the Duomo (which is on the way to the Uffizi museum), we were stopped and searched, as was everybody else. It felt odd, seeing so many policemen - armed policemen - around... I felt extremely nervous, but very safe at the same time. At any rate, we got to the Uffizi, and found that dailight savings time started today - so we were 30 minutes late on our booking because we did not know. Brief moment of panic, but they let us in anyway. The paintings and all were very nice... I couldn’t take photos of course, and I didn’t waste my money on postcards either. My parents did get me a nice ocarina after we came out of the Uffizi though, and my brother got one as well. I have the feeling they’re regretting it now, all we do is play the things. \o/
At any rate, after a couple games of machiavelli, I’m just about ready to go to sleep. Tomorrow we go home, finally.
Not that I mind being here, but I miss my friends, and my home too. I’ve just about had it with this place we’re staying at. For some reason I don’t sleep well in this bed, I wake up at least four times per night. Plus there’s a dog barking often, and it’s a pain in the ass. Plus it takes 15 minutes for the water to get warm (the water’s from a spring next to here) so it’s a pain to wash my face in the morning, simply because we don’t have enough time to wait for the water to get hot. Plus the room is cold 95% of the time, because the heating system is, uh, wood-driven so to speak (the owner of the place stuffs logs into a big fire, the fire heats water, the water heats the rooms, or so I’ve heard), so it doesn’t get turned on before late evening. Brrrrr.
But now I can say I’ve lived for four days in a National Monument. Heh.
(Oh yeah, and another thing this trip has proven: I can’t live without music.)

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I suck at writing diaries, as you've probably noticed. ^^; Kinda sad though, there's so much I want to say during a day, and I forget most of it when it's evening.

Oh yeah... I took some 70 photos there. I'll post some when they're developed.

Oh, by the way. This is... quite entertaining, actually. (Shows how easily amused I am, doesn't it?)

Back. Diary of the trip when I can be bothered to dig the floppy disk out of my bag. Going to make blogrounds now...

...oh, fuck. I just realized. My mailing lists email is probably overflowing.