I decided to take a break before resuming the backlog of what I have been up to and do a lovely little collection of memes. Here's a chance to get to know me better~! Or to be bored death by having me talk about myself. *shrugs* Rather same difference, I figure.

Meme rules: Reply to this meme by yelling - or typing - "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. Or explain in the comments.
( Click for the 5 words I got! )

1. Leave me a comment saying "interview me"
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will post the questions and the answers to the questions in your journal.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
( Click for the interview of... Me~! )

List 10 of your favorite characters from different fandoms, and ask people to spot patterns in your choices, and if they're so inclined, to draw conclusions about you based on the patterns they've spotted.
( I'm on your couch, so analyse me! )

It's been, what, over 2 months already? Time sure flies when you're ridiculously busy. *sigh*

The "ridiculous" part of me being busy lately is because all my classes ended early May already, so technically this should had been vacation time for me! In reality though, there have been University related matters to take care all the way until last week. I had several deadlines throughout May, including but not limited to my Bachelor's Thesis and the article for the conference publication. There was also a book exam and seemingly endless amount of running around filling and filing papers in order to officially get my degree. I was quite stressed and worried that I would not have everything by the deadline. It's awfully frustrating when you have done everything you can and all there is left is hoping and praying the heavy byrocracy doesn't screw you over. For example, by University rules, we are supposed to get any course registered within two weeks after the officially ending date of the course, but sometimes it can take up to months for it to actually happen and I did not have the luxury of time on my side. Still, by some small miracle or because I was constantly emailing the professors and staff, I got everything put together in time and as of Tuesday last week, I have officially been Bachelor of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies~!
Congratulations and presents are most graciously accepted, should anyone feel inclined. >D

Now, Bachelor's degree isn't that big of a deal, I know, especially not around here. On a personal level to me, it is somewhat of a big deal, though. For one, the subject I majored in is only available here up to Bachelor's, so whereas most people here continue without any notable difference from their Bachelor's studies to their Master's studies, I'm forced to change department, even if I go with the "normal" route and continue my studies come fall. Seeing how there will be a change regardless, I am actually hoping to make it into a much bigger one, but everything is still pretty much up in the air when it comes to more concrete plans. Hopefully I will find time to start putting time and energy into this soon or I'll run out of time all together and that would quite devastate me, since the hope of getting certain changes is what has helped me to push through so far.

The other reason getting my Bachelor's is a big deal for me is because that silly piece of paper is a concrete proof of something I have achieved. Sure, it's not exactly world altering achievement or even a very rare one, but I want to be proud of myself for having gotten this far. I mean, at the time I entered University, I could not even handle studying a book all the way through for an exam because of my stress issues. Even the fact that I was even able to study at all for an exam was a huge step from the breaking point during the last year of Middle School, which rendered me incapable of even really picking up the book for studying without triggering a fit of stressed out hysteria. So managing to not only get my degree in pretty much the average time on really good grades but to also get to the point where I could handle reading a book through as a preparation for an exam and writing a thesis doesn't seem too shabby to me. Yeah, there are people who have done tons more, certainly, but I figure it is better for me to try to focus on what I have achieved rather than what could had been achieved if this or that was different.

Besides school related matters, there have of course been several other things eating up my time as well. Right now though, I am off to the summer house for the first time this year, so further ramblings on these other issues shall happen another day.

Glada vappen to everyone who celebrates it~! (aka who are Finnish)
Me? No time for such silly things like national holidays! I have school work to do!
...
*crawls into a corner to weep*

Oh alright, so admittedly even if I wasn't up to my neck buried in deadlines, I wouldn't be out there partying. This is for several reasons, out of which the most pathetic one is that I don't really have any to party with. My idea of nice celebration is good food and maybe some anime or a movie, which doesn't go so well with the concept of going out to drink. I do actually really love dancing, but that's rather impossible to do without having to put up with being surrounded by drunk people, which just kind of kills the mood. I haven't gotten to properly dance since YaoiCon and that was in September! Most displeasing. Anyhow, to return to the the original topic: while I don't think most of my friends actually do go out to drink heavily or anything, but most of them do have a bit less, ah, socially challenged preferences when it comes to celebration. XD;;

( The Record of My Academic Progress aka What the H*ll I've Been up to )

Happy Easter~!
On this glorious day that the Christ overcame death, I have also returned back among the living! Admittedly my feat is slightly less impressive in scale, seeing how I only faced a cold, but it was an evil cold of DOOM and TORTURE, I'll have you know. Far worse than any cold I have had in years. Still, I am feeling quite a bit better by now, thanks to spending a whole week doing nothing while taking ridiculous amounts of medicines.

I'm not yet up to 100% health points, with stuffy nose and nasty cough slowing me down, but at least I 1)can sleep, 2)am not in constant pain and 3)am below max recommended doze with daily medicine intake. Well, ok, 3. is not *completely* true, since I still take double the maximum dosage, but that is with the blessing of a doctor. My pollen allergies are quite wicked during early spring.

Of course, having spend a week pretty much incapacitated, I am horrible behind in everything. On the bright side, part of this week has been Easter break from University, so I didn't miss that many classes. Unfortunately I had planned to use the break to catch up on all the essay and thesis writing that I have to do and that plan has been pretty much destroyed. *unhappy moan of suffering* Where on Earth am I supposed to find time for it all?! Adding it all up comes to roughly 50 pages~

To avoid dwelling in the stress of school work, I shall employ the ever clever tactic of "When in doubt, babble about anime"! Once the worst part of the sickness passed, which would be on the 5th day, I could switch horrible brain-numbing daytime TV to watching anime from computer. Admittedly I didn't get much watching done, since the chair isn't very comfortable for cuddling into a blanket. However, I was able to watch the first two episodes of the new Fullmetal Alchemist anime.
( I have OPINIONS! )

Can't really claim to have gotten better. Yesterday seemed rather promising; my fever going down, the aches giving up and so on. Coughing got worse, as did pain in throat, but you can't win them all, right? Unfortunately I'm not sure I won any in this deal.

I could barely get any sleep last night, because swallowing hurt almost unbearably much. I haven't done much better in the sleep front during today, either. By now the throat pain is kind of constant, though swallowing still manages to make the pain flare up with renewed vigour. Most of the muscles of my body are sore from the coughing I've been doing. And as an extra icing on the cake, the pollen season has begun bringing with it the delight of allergies. Not only am I in pain and aching, I also itch like crazy! The allergies are messing up my nose, the pain is messing up my throat and I keep running into moments when I don't know what way I'm supposed to breath. Nose bleeds and thus having blood dry up in there are not helping either.

... I've way over-dozed all the cold and anti-allergy medication I have gotten my hands on and there's still the world of constant pain! Why?! For the love of anything holy, can't I just pass some of this misery asleep?! I just want to sleep and wake up feeling better, can't I please have that?


The thing worse than being sick is being sick alone. As in, having no one to help you out. It's one of those aspects I always mildly tread when thinking about living alone. I guess I really shouldn't though, because if I was on my own, at least there would be no one snapping at me for "annoying mumbling" when I can't get any more voice out than that and no one getting annoyed at being asked to pick up medicine from the pharmacy for me when they are already going out.
... Makes me want to cry. Except I'd probably choke for real if I even dared to try. Not to mention that it'd just make my body hurt worse. Thanks a lot life, just what I needed and with *perfect* timing.

I have no idea how I've managed it, but somehow I have gotten sick.

This morning I woke up with a sore throat and feeling kind of under the weather. By now I have had to take two naps and two dozes of cold medication, but keep feeling progressively worse.

Everywhere hurts and aches: my head, my insides, my back. My throat feels like it is full of something unpleasant and way too thin for me to breathe properly through. My head aches and feels empty and full of cotton and heavy, all at the same time. Even my stomach hurts, as a protest to me daring to try to eat in an attempt to give myself some energy.

Cold doesn't usually come with stomach pain, let alone resistance against cold medication, damn it!

Fuckity fuck. I really do *not* have the time to be sick. *would bang head against table, but has no energy for that* Going to crawl to bed now and pray that I miraculously feel better tomorrow and thus avoid being utterly screwed over.

Over a month with no update? Whoups. *scratches back of the head*
Well, unlike what some people may have been hoping for, I have not yet managed to fall of the face of this Earth or anything similar. Of course, it is great consolation that apparently people don't really even notice should I decide to crawl under my desk to hide for several weeks. Always good to know one is not missed. *tragic sigh~*

Explanation to my absence? It's rather simple: busyBusyBUSY. That, and a trip to Japan. *hearts~* There is no way to properly cover all that has been going on, so I think a quick re-cap would be the way to go here:

School - I survived all the exams and actually managed to get everything besides my Bachelor's thesis done. I'd feel worse about the failure to meet that deadline, but only 2 out of 4 students turned in anything by that deadline and I actually had made progress with my thesis. Of course there is no rest for the wicked, so while I did survive the crazy load of stuff that I had to do, I still have even more to complete in pretty much exactly a month. x_X;;

Japan - With one word: AWESOME. Made me full of magical sparkles and floating hearts. The 10 days of fairytale magic included (but were not limited to) HaruComi, Otome Road, Swallowtail *the* butler cafe, Seraphim High School Bar, Akihabara, Tokyo International Anime Fair, Sunshine City Aquarium, Cherry blossoms at Ueno park, soft ice at Tokyo Tower, cakes, sushi, shabu-shabu, tempura, yakiniku, onigiri, yakisoba, crepes and lots of green tea. Hopefully I will be able to write more about the my amazing adventures in the land of amazingfull!

Other - Still no internet connection for me. It's tragic. Tragic and annoying. Also tragic and annoying, though in lesser degree, is that I seem to suffer from a bit of a jetlag since I tend to get utterly exhausted by 9pm. *yawn*

Apparently whining about how I was busy before somehow earned me some sort of cosmic punishment in the form of life dumbing even more stuff for me to do. Either that, or some higher forces are having a good laugh at my expense while making bets on how long until I snap. If anyone is in on that bet, I suggest placing your money on "pretty bloody soon", because with the slight fever & cold that I seem to be having, I suspect I will be collapsing in very near future.

Things To Do:
-Study Kanji; tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday
-Write a speech in Japanese; tonight and tomorrow
-Do the "extra" Japanese exercise; tonight and tomorrow
-Extra, but not voluntary, Japanese class on Wednesday morning
-Kanji exam on Thursday
-Web course exam on Friday
-Study for Swedish exam; Friday, Saturday and Sunday
-Swedish exam on Monday
-Read 2 or 3 more books for my Bachelor's thesis
-Write, and finish, my Bachelor's thesis; next week
-Study for Japanese Grammar Exam; next week
-Update CV; sometime this week
+... usual homework, classes and work project

Life has been quite extraordinary busy for me the last couple of weeks. I can't even really put my finger on what exactly has been the cause of this, so most likely it is due to a lot of things piling up all at once. The increase of stress has manifested in form of nightmares and anxiety dreams, which in turn make me really damn tired all the time and thus less efficient with what needs to be done.

The list of things that needed my time and attention is a combination of Japanese course work (including a paper), the work project, writing my Bachelor's, checking and double-checking my courses to make sure I am still on the path of getting my degree this spring, and trying to figure out options for the future. Most of these tasks have also been made more complicated, or even impossible, by the lack of my own computer, which continues to quite grate on my nerves.

Of course, eating away my time was also the task of preparing the house for house guests aka cleaning and re-organizing like crazy to have space for extra bed. Said house guests just arrived and will be staying over for this whole weekend, so it definitely looks like my busy days are far from over. No rest for the wicked, eh?

Today is quite possibly the end of the world as we know it.
Why?
Because the Japanese classes were cancelled today due to the teacher being sick!

Yes, with any other class this would be far from scandalous, it might even be seen as a normal procedure, but the Japanese class is *not* any other class! It does not get cancelled, ever. I tried to desperately think what kind of illness could be the cause and nothing short from something highly contagious and dangerous is an option. Mere cold or fever would not prompt cancellation, even the loss of voice has not been enough in the past, and we can rule out things such as broken limbs because there are wheelchairs etc. to get around that!

Another sign of the end of times being near might be that I have now officially passed the first phase of the Swedish required for University degree. I went to see the teacher yesterday and she went over the exam with me, which was mildly painful seeing how she kept asking me "Well, what's the right word for this?" and I had to bite my tongue to keep from replying that if I knew that, I would had written so in the exam. *shakes head*. Still, I was highly surprised by the amount of words that I had gotten correct, since I was sure half of them were utterly ridiculous and made up by yours truly. Funny how that goes, eh?

During the meeting with the teacher, I also discovered that there has been a slight, ah, miscommunication between us. What I thought I was doing is taking the exam for the first two credits and then going to a course for the remaining three credits. Apparently the teacher thought I was looking to self-study the whole 5 credits. *nervous laugh*. Naturally it is too late to set the situation straight aka I have already passed the first of the two things I need to do for the self-study, but it does not correlate with the courses so if I went to a course now, all the suffering for the exam would had been for nothing. Whoups? Basically this all means I'm kind of stuck doing the self-study option, which means I will have one more written exam and one spoken one. The written one will be making a 200 word summary in Swedish of some article that is in Finnish and spoken exam will be talking with the teacher, in Swedish. I guess that if I passed this first phase, I can get through those too, right? *scratches back of the neck*

Today I attended a seminar about contemporary China. While I have no particular passion towards China myself, I figured it might be a useful opportunity to get some information. A lot of people still see Asia, and especially East Asia, as more or less single entity. This leads to that there will likely be an assumption that I will know about China because I know about Japan. Thus, it can't hurt to try to learn at least some stuff. So, with this as my motivation, I dragged myself out of the bed at the ungodly hour of 6 am and dressed in nice semi-business like clothes and even did make up. I was somewhat worried of how I would stay awake for the 4 hours of presentations, but it all went quite well in the end. They offered us tea and coffee right of the bat and the space they had reserved was actually large enough to not run out of oxygen, which is sadly rare at Uni.

I've felt relatively good both yesterday and today. It might be the lack of horrible evil Japanese assignments for couple of more days, I think. Another thing I suspect to be part of the reason is that I've actually doodled some on both days. I can't claim I took time to draw, since yesterday I doodled during a class and today during the seminar, but it's still been rather nice. Even if yesterday was a bad art day, meaning that nothing turned out looking even half-way decent. Today was much better though and while none of it is high quality art, it's decent enough that I would be ok showing them to someone. Alas, still no webspace that would function for hot-linking, not to mention my sketches probably wouldn't be at all interesting for anyone. XD;;
Oh, and no, I was not slacking off by doodling, it generally helps me to focus on the listening the lecture, thank you very much. Unfortunately I can only do it during lectures that do not require insane amount of note taking, such as Japanese.

Still no working internet connection from my computer. *sigh*. Yesterday it worked for hour and a half before promptly dying on me. Again. I'm far from a happy trooper with this situation continuing to drag on until the unforeseeable future.

Time sure flies when you're too frikkin' busy to even properly sit down and relax, AUGH! *whimper*. Sure, admittedly not all of the things causing my life to be busy have been bad or unpleasant, but there has been more than enough of those too. Such as the, oh, closer to 3 hours I just spend agonizing over Japanese translation homework. So many words I didn't know, so many evil grammatical structures to hammer together~ *twirl of despair*

Yesterday, however, was on the side of less unpleasant things: the local comic book store *finally* gave me a chance to work there! I've been trying to hint in less than subtle ways for the past year that I sure would like to work for them and now they seem to be willing to at least have me help occasionally. Next weekend there is a one day con happening, so yesterday I was helping to organize and pack up the yaoi manga for that. That took 5 hours, minus some time for food. It was... just like working at a comic book store as I know it, both in good and in bad. Up and including socially awkward boss, subways for food and facing different standards & requirements for being a female. I know one of their male employee sometimes just doesn't show up for his shift, yet I get repeatedly reminded of having missed a single title while doing the new weird organizing this store insists on. *shakes head*
... Call me crazy, but it was really nice to work in a comic book store again. There's just something that's good for my soul in working with comics and manga, surrounded by said goods and toys.

Another thing more on the pleasant side of the scale was the invitation-only opening for this new Japanese art exhibit taking place on Wednesday evening. I was quite sincerely surprised by getting the invitation and I'm still not exactly sure where or why one was sent to me, but that's details~! Since the invitation was for two, rather than "with avec", I figured I should ask a friend to go with me. While trying to decide who to ask, I came to the rather alarming realization that while I have hard time getting a friend to come along for amusement park, there is no shortage of friends available for art exhibits. This might have something to do with the fat that most significant others of my friends are not into art exhibits, so there is no "boyfriend gets first pick" issue. Still, clearly I need more friends who are into amusement parks!

Anyhow, back to the issue of art exhibit opening! For an art show opening, it was quite disappointing in terms of refreshments; that is to say, there were none. They did however offer all kinds of performances. After the opening speeches they had a female quartet playing rather interesting instruments, including one playing a koto. It was quite interesting, though I think a bit shorter performance would had served the purpose better. After the music, an older lady, who was a Japanese calligraphy master, had a calligraphy performance. She made 4 pieces all together, with the first one being a huge one panning through the room while the other 3 were of normal size. Personally I found the calligraphy more interesting than the music, but this might had also been influenced by the fact that one did not have to stand in a stuffy over-packed room for it. What can I say, I am a creature of comfort at the heart.

Due to these performances and having to stop by occasionally to talk with familiar faces (Look ma', I'm trying that crazy networking thing!), I didn't have time to check out the actual art exhibit. *sweatdrop* Funny how that goes, huh? It just means I'll have to try to find time to go again for the actual art work. There are some ukiyo-e pieces and some modern art by Japanese female artists from different decades, both which from the glance I did manage to get, it seemed rather interesting.

I haven't really had time to do more work on my Bachelor's paper, which is a bit of an issue. There has been next deadline set in little over a week from here and I really need to get ton of stuff done by then. The final deadline has been set just before my trip to Japan, mEep~! It's rather scary having to actually *finish* the paper, because then that will be it, no more chances to adjust little here and improve a bit there and my perfectionist side is not ok with that! Especially since I found out that apparently 2 other people are working on making their Bachelor's papers on same/really similar topic, so I'm feeling somewhat competitive and have a need to make mine the best, which makes it even more difficult to let go of tweaking my work.

A project that I have gotten some work done on is the art & writing contest that I'm helping to organize. The deadline for the entries was on Friday and I was really worried up until the last minute that we would get no entries. Especially I was concerned with the art contest, since that was my responsibility. To my huge relief, I actually received an email from one of the schools I had tried to get to enter the contest letting me know that they indeed had decided to take part and asking if I could pick up the entries from their school. It's probably not a coincidence that the school was the one I used to go to when I was only widdle Wind, but hey, I was not above using that to coerce someone into participating. You'd think schools would be happy to have the kids draw something for art contests, but apparently not many of them feel like bothering. I feel somewhat bad for the kids, 'cause I know I loved entering art contests when I was young (and when I was older, but that is neither here or there). Especially contests with good prices and a decent shot at winning.

Tomorrow, I will have to go meet up with the Swedish teacher who made and checked the exam I took. *wince*. We'll "go over my exam together", whatever that will mean. I'm not looking forward to that, not one bit. The silver lining on this storm cloud of DOOM is that by doing this, I will actually pass the exam! Booyah~! *booty shaking dance*. Considering how horrible the exam was, I'm just quite relieved to be done and over with it. That is, assuming I *survive* tomorrow. x_X

Oh, and my internet connection is STILL not working. *annoyed~* In fact, the situation is getting worse! While a week ago there would still be couple of days when the connection would work for several hours, now even when the connection miraculously happens it will die in less than an hour. Not only does this really get in the way of relaxation activities, such as LJ or chatting or downloading & watching anime, but I also need internet connection to be able to email out school projects and to do my Japanese homework (hi thar kanji dictionaries~). There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel, either. Waaah, it's downright cruel to deprive an internet addicted person like me of a functioning connection of my own~!

I tried to avoid LJ and internet in general for most parts these last few days. The reason behind such strange and uncharacteristic behavior? I had Swedish exam on Friday and I wanted to avoid using English to be avoid influence of the wrong language. Admittedly it was fairly easy to keep my time online to bare minimum seeing how my internet connection still isn't really up and functioning. I am currently on my computer, but this is the first time in almost a week that the connection has even worked out, let alone stayed up. *knocks on wood*. At least I managed to use this oppurtunity to download couple of the new anime releases~ Would be downright tragic to be deprived of anime altogether!

Anyway, back to the tale of pain and suffering! While I miraculously have managed to learn English to the point where I am quite fluent, languages have never been my strong suit and I'm currently having my hands more than full enough trying to struggle with Japanese, so I was hoping to get the Swedish done and over with. From what I had heard of the exam, it was more about the grammar and less about the vocabulary. This had me fairly optimistic that I stood a chance of, since while my vocabulary is dreadfully small and my brain incabable of remembering words of that language, I was able to cram the grammar rules into my head.

Sadly though, my sacrifice of internet time and efforts of studying for the exam were utterly wasted. For whatever reason, the exam this time was super short and consisted of only Finnish-to-Swedish translation. There were some full sentences to translate and then there were some single words to translate and the single words then needed to be used to make sentences. I had been expecting and hoping for grammar oriented exam and ended up with vocabulary oriented one. The best part? I have no clue where I supposedly could had studied up some of that vocabulary, because the listed/required reading for the exam was a grammar book! Hell, some of those words I don't even know in English because they were such freaky specialized academic words! T_T

So, how did I do? Well, I think I haven't made up that many whole new words in ages! ... Yeah, doesn't look too likely I passed, which sucks big time. I wanted to be done and over with this stupid oblicatory stuff so I could concentrate on the things I'm actually studying! Urgh.

It was quite the blessing that I had agreed to meet up with a friend afterwards, so I couldn't just spend the whole day moping. She had actually volunteered to celebrate my birthday with me on the actual day even, but since there was the exam of evilDOOM, I had figured I shouls study for it on my actual birthday and save the fun stuff for later. Blessed little good that ended up doing for me, huh? -_- Still, no matter, the late-birthday was really nice. ^_^

We watched anime while having sushi and cake, which totally is my idea of celebration, thank you very much. The sushi we got from a restaurant, since I would had been too hungry at that point of the day to actually wait while we cook properly, not to mention that sushi is the only real and proper birthday food. *nodnod*. Watched some Kuroshitsuji and then some Antique Bakery *while* having assortment of cakes. There's this convinience store/deli that I pass every day and they have always had really nice looking Cheese cake that I've been wanting to try, so I had gotten some of that and couple of others too. Mmmm~! There was also a small candle for me to blow out, provided by my friend~! And she even sang to me when I did blow it out. It was pretty silly, but really sweet. She really gave me a proper mini-birthday party~

Also on the watch list were Nabari no Ou and Boku no Pico. Yes, Pico. What kind of birthday of mine would it be without graphic shota pr0n, anyway~? >3 I know it wasn't exactly her cup of tea, but she is one of the extremely few people I could show something like that to. One has to be familiar with yaoi to understand to not take it too seriously. I mean, Boku no Pico is like the perfect epitome of the most generic shota story elements and cliches all wrapped in one and I find it really entertaining. However, to people unfamiliar with the genre many things in it would not go over too well. XD;;;

Seeing how this past week, especially the last couple of days, were all busy with studying, it is pretty much given that I would suddenly recieve numerous interesting things trying to tempt me and steal my attention. This includes last volume of After School Nightmare being released and my two doujinshi purchases arriving. Oooh, how hard it was to not abandon boring ol' grammar book and instead bask in the glory of pretty doujinshi or to find out the mysteries of one of the manga series I am most into at the moment! *wibbles* It took a great deal of self-control, but I did actually manage to only briefly pet the pretties rather than spend hours reading through them. Ah, sometimes I amaze even myself!
... Of course, this all means that today has been spend by reading the manga and checking out couple of the new doujinshi. Ranting and rambling of them is sure to come sooner rather than later~!

One week of the semester down, 13 more to go! Of course, there is almost 2 weeks of random breaks, so the overall time until the end of the school term is longer than that. I've decided that I prefer counting down the weeks though, since that somehow makes it feel like less of an endlessly long torture. I mean, I can survive 14 Japanese speaking classes, right? One is already done and one will be an exam, so it's really only 12 normal sessions. I can do it, I can! ... maybe. ;_;

Today marks the day of my charming presence having graced this Earth for 25 whole years. As I pretty much expected, it hasn't been exactly remarkable day in any way. Some people did remember (or I did better job reminding people this year? XD;;) and congratulated, which was very nice of them. And waterpuzzle_ drew me a lovely picture; thank you so much for it~! ^_^ The picture was definitely one of the highlights of the day~

Another plus side would had been the cake because I do love me cake. Except that the cake, which looked really yummy and chocolaty and full of delicious, wasn't actually that good. Why would anyone think peanut butter and no sugar in chocolate cake is good idea?! Boo! Fortunately, not all was lost because there was also some whipped-cream filled chocolate puffs.

I haven't really had time to work on my age crises, because there are some rather more pressing issues to stress over. Mainly the fact that I am so busy that my head spins! Not to mention that I have signed up to take a Swedish exam this upcoming Friday. Languages are *really* not my strong suit and Swedish words are something my brains have never really been able to wrap around, so I am more than mildly terrified. I've tried, and managed a bit, to read the grammar book, but my lack of vocabulary is painfully obvious even when confronted with the simple example sentences! Oh the woe~! I'm sure to I will be quite full of panic before Friday rolls around.

To fight the stress and to try to make today just a bit nicer for myself since hey, it's supposed to be my special day, I heated up the sauna for tonight. This clever tactic worked quite wonderfully, since I am currently just feeling really deeply cleansed and somewhat sleepy. I do so love the feeling one get from after sauna or good soak in hot spring or Japanese style bath. You just feel so soft and smooth and clean in a way no shower or normal bath can ever match up. Aaah~ *happy sigh* I really should take the time more often to use the sauna.

I was actually going to update here already yesterday, but my internet connection decided to fail me. It's been quite a while since the last time there has been this type of connection failure and I think this episode is quite probably thanks to the new router my father decided to randomly get on Friday. I know that with modern technology, one should be constantly updating everything, but it never really goes smoothly according to my experience, so I'm quite reluctant to switch a perfectly working system. If it's working, just leave it well alone! -_- Grrr. It doesn't help either that my connection is currently down *again*. It came to life for some time during today, but then it died again and I am stuck on the shared computer, which just feels kind of wrong with it's different keyboard and different screen settings and everything.

For me, my computer is rather personal thing. While I may have a bit of hate-love relationship with it at times, it's still *mine* and I don't want people messing around with it. This contributes to my dislike of issues arising, because they then lead to other people going onto my computer to try to fix it when they refuse to believe that I know and have already tried every trick they do. Last night, my dad tried to fix it, since he wanted to shared computer for himself, and it was all around unpleasant. Complaining about my room, complaining about my desk top, complaining about how I have organized my computer, and so on. Made me quite unhappy and I constantly felt the urge to tell him to just get away from my computer. Complaining about my room is enough of a personal insult, but doing so about my computer is crossing the line.

I know some women feel their purses are very personal and don't want other people going to their purse. For me, the personal item is definitely my computer. Hands off, no touchy, mine~! Permission to use may be granted to special people. >P

The Japanese course that I am convinsed is trying to kill me?
It's trying to kill me. And it hasn't even re-started yet! *curls into a ball and sobs~*

Today, I went to copy the materials for this period, since we are required to have the material and be pre-pared the minute the course does kick off again. Now, on avarage, we get roughly 90 pages of material to copy for each period and it's devided into 3 different sets, one set per each different type of lesson: grammar, speaking and listening&reading. I figured I'd copy two of those sets today, since my copy card had around 70 pages left. Oh how blissfully ignorant and wrong I was~!

All of those 70 pages were spend in copying just one of the sets, the grammar one. This is because on the top of the usual grammar explanation material and vocabulary, it had pages upon pages of extra exercises! About 6-8 pages worth per week! On top of the already far too time-consuming and insane amount of exercises that we have! That's more than doubling the grammar exercise amount and it's just fucking insane and evil and driving me into deep despair and depression. ぜつぼう~!!!

I have no idea how we supposedly have time to check those extra exercises, since we don't even have enough time to get us through checking the insane mountain of stuff that we have had to do weekly so far! I have even less of an idea how I'm supposed to survive this extra work, when I've been struggling this whole fall to try to hang on. There are only that many hours in the fucking day, I can't magically fit more stuff into that time than is possibly within the restrictions of reality! What the fuck am I supposed to do?! *bangs head against the nearest wall*

... The people I was with at the time when I found out this lovely addition remarked that they could actually *see* my stress levels rising. Good to know that the look of trapped terror actually shows, I guess. I keep going between just collapsing due to despair and the need to hurt someone (possibly me) because of this burning rage at the situation.

... oh, oh, I can almost smell that ulcer developing~! Let's see if that catches me before I have complite mental collapse!

I hope that the year 2009 has started in pleasant terms for everyone~!
In the honor of the new year, I am thinking about trying the "101 things in 1001 days" meme/challenge. I don't usually make any New Years resolutions, but maybe a list of goals for a longer period of time would work for me...? The problem is, I'm not sure I can come up with 101 things that I want to do and that are possibly within my powers. XD;;

Exactly two weeks from now, I will be officially quarter century old. Closer to being 50 than to the moment of my birth. Only half a decade away from 30. Everyone is more than welcome to remember me on such special day by fanfics or fanart, for example. Should some filthy rich most sweet and overly generous person wish to remember me by some material goods, my address will be revealed upon inquiry. *blows kisses~*
( Birthday Bemoaning )

On somewhat more pleasant topic, let there be fan rambling~!
The first volume of Code Geass: Suzaku of the Counterattack was published recently and I got my greedy little hands on it just couple of days ago. I'm quite enjoying it more than the default title of Geass manga.

For one, the differences in terms of the story are enough noteable from the anime to make it interesting and keep one from comparing it to the anime all the time. It would had been probably interesting enough to just follow the anime plot from Suzaku's point of view, but while many of the events of the beginning are similar, the plot takes a different course soon enough. I mean, for once, Suzaku's father issue is explained and portrayed in a way that makes sense! Plus replacing mecha with skin-thigh battle suit and mask creates quite a different world, even if it is admittedly carries the scent of gay and fanservice. Suzaku's ass sure gets a lot of attention, it does.

Another thing Suzaku of the Counterattack has over the default manga adaptation is the art. While the art still isn't stunning, it is much nicer to behold. Especially Suzaku and Lelouch look very pretty and have wonderfully expressive faces.

Speaking of Lelouch and Suzaku, I'm getting pretty convinced this indeed is the gay-est adaptation of the story, the anime possible excluded. The first volume is pretty much on the same levels as the first season of the anime had, having made certain scenes gayer while not having some of the lovely scenes the anime had. I find it endlessly amusing that Lelouch recognizes Suzaku as "Lancelot man" by having Suzaku on his hands and knees with his butt up in the air. >3 Ok, sure, one could argue he recognizes Suzaku because part of Suzaku's mask cracks away, but that simply means that Lelouch has an ear-fetish. People do not memorize the way someone's ear looks unless that's their kink and even then they probably are into the person whose ear they fancy.

Of course with Suzaku having been made into the main character, the "everyone wants Lelouch" vibes have changed to "many want Suzaku" vibes. Not only Lelouch and Nunnally, but interest is also expressed by the Euphie-replacement-girl, Orange and Schneizel. Lloyd might also fit into that list. It's kind of weird seeing Jeremiah and Schneizel give off the homolust vibes for Suzaku. o.O;;

One new manga, or actually manwah, title that I have picked up is Devil's Bride. I actually noticed a Finnish translation version of it at a kiosk not too long ago when I was killing time waiting for a bus. It's by the same author who did Boy Princess, which I ended up loving, so I wanted to check this new title out too. Since the Finnish version was translated from the English translation, I figured I'd rather get the English translation since texts don't tend to get more faithful to the original version to more they are translated.

The art is the same as with Boy Princess, so it is a little weird and kind of off at times, but it does grow on to you with time. With me, after all the volumes of Boy Princess, the art sits quite well. As for the story, I'm not comfortable giving any final verdict on, since Boy Princess started out with such typical and almost cliched yaoi plot but then evolved into this whole complicated web of power play and ambigious relationships. Devil's Bride starts off interestingly enough though and I'm really looking forward to the next volume, even if it is fairly obvious that this is a series with no happy endings in sight. It's sad, since the blond devil and his child bride were really adorable~!

I hope everyone had pleasant Christmas/happy holidays~ ^_^

This probably seems like a pretty late post to be about Christmas, but due to couple of reasons it feels to me like the holidays just ended. The first reason is that here in Finland, Christmas lasts for 3 days, starting on the day of Christmas Eve and ending only after Boxing Day. Not everyone celebrates all 3 days of course, but majority of people do have the days off from work so I think it counts.

The other reason is purely personal; this year we had such busy time for the first 2 days that only yesterday did I feel like it was the proper post-Christmas mood of lazing around eating chocolate. In a way, this year quite reminded me of how Christmas used to be when we were younger, though not necessarily in a good way. We met up with family from both my dad's side and my mom's side on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. This means 4 separate come-togethers of relatives, two of which took place at our house on Christmas Eve. Serving Christmas dinner *twice* within the same day is kind of a huge process in itself, let alone with all the brickering between parents that was in the air. It's mainly the brickering and the constant mad rush to try to meet both sides of the family semi-equally that reminded me of childhood years. *sigh, shakes head*

I don't mean to imply my Christmas particulary bad one or anything, though. There were no big crises and no huge fights, it was just quite busy, stressfull and exhausting. I want my time to curl up in a large armchair or sofa and munch on chocolates while reading comics or light-hearted books~!

The Christmas food was, as per usual, delicious. This is quite a blessing, since my parents have a tendency of buying enough food to feed several large armies, so we're probably stuck with left-overs for roughly until New Year. Our Christmas foods are not exactly the traditional ones of Finland, but they aren't spectaculary atypical either. The main dish in my family's table is stuffed turkey as opposed to ham which is the most common choise around here. The turkey is served with red wine based creamy sauce, sweetened mashed potato bake and extra stuffing, which is made of bread, bacon, mandarin oranges, chestnuts and herbs. Before the turkey, we have usually some smoked fish, some grav lax with a sweet mustard dressing, vendance roe mixed with onion and smetana, cold smoked reindeer with horseradish flavored cream cheese, and a pate made of liver and minced meat.
... It's always amusing to me how far from tasty most traditional foods sound when they are just listed out or discriped. XD;; When you're used to them, you don't stop to question how they sound, but having to pause to analyze what they actually are in order to make semi-cohesive list in another language does always open a whole new point of view. They still taste great though! XD

In terms of the fun materialistic side, I wasn't expecting much this year. I had made an agreement with my parents that they would pay some of my ticket to Japan, so I figured that would pretty much be it. However, I did end up with surprisingly many actual packages too. I got couple of comic books of the European variety, a nice short-sleeved purple&white button up shirt, a hoodie, two pairs of Hello Kitty socks (Shh! I like cute and cool socks! And unlike underwear, you actually can show off your socks occationally!) and, from my brother, a Gundam model kit. All in all, nice things and nothing that doesn't suit my tastes. *satisfied~*


On less pleasant subject, I haven't gotten much work done on my article. *wince*. This means I will have hell of couple of days ahead of me. Uwaaaah, stress, panic, stress~! T_T I just... I just want it to be perfect and excellent! Is that truly so much to ask?! *wails, wringing hands in despair*
... *sigh* I guess this shows that as much as I have made progress in dealing with stress, I still haven't really recovered the ability to function properly when there is something I *want to* do great in. The pressure and stress that I collect onto myself intimidates me to the point of rendering me incabable of doing the task until the last minute when it's too late to worry about the polishing and just rush madly to get the task done.

I like the way Christmas smells. Or, if one wants to be all exact, I like the smells associated with Christmas.

Today I went with my dad to get a Christmas tree. That's one scent that I really love: Christmas trees. We visited couple of places and some of them had such strong scent all around~! It was very lovely, indeed. No such scent here yet, because while we did find a tree, and for decent price even, we didn't set it up inside the house yet.

However, another Christmas scent is currently floating around: freshly baked ginger bread cookies. We made the dough yesterday and today is was baking time! Now, while I love baked goods, I'm not particulary into baking since it's such exact science in terms of measurements. Cooking is much more freely creative, so that's more my forte. Still, ginger bread cookies are definitely something that brings Christmas mood to me, so it's the one time of the year I will fight with measuring cups and make them. The flavor turns out good pretty much always, much better than store brought ones, but more often than not the looks of the cookies could be improved. A nice way to put it would probably be that they look "home made".
But it's not even that I particulary like eating ginger bread cookies or anything, there are many other types of cookies I prefer in terms of flavor, to be honest. The act of baking the cookies and the delicious smell it creates are what it is all about~

Instead of proceeding to whine and panic about how I am not making much process with my article and am thus very screwed, I figured I'd post a piece of fan art in honor of my new server space! To be perfectly honest, I am not sure the new server space is worth having anything done in its honor, since they fail in properly displaying my site *and* they are against of things such as image files being uploaded on their own rather than as part of a page. I'm not all too pleased, but I am hoping we will find a way to get along.
Anyhow, art~! Well, only a sketch, really. But it's somewhat not-worksafe to make up for sketchiness, fufufufu~
( Commanding without Geass )

Personal Adds:
Hey you native English speaker with good grasp of both grammar and spelling, and no adversion to the topic of yaoi, a Finnish BA student hoping to turn hobby into academic content is looking for you for long walks on the beach at the sun set to beta her thesis. This will need to be done in fairly short time frame, since said student is a lazy slacker who never finishes until last minute. If interested, please leave a comment or contact the poster directly through email.

Indeed, I have deadline for my BA thesis at January 13th, which means no rest for the wicked even during break time. Before that project gets my attention though, I have to write an academic article of the paper I gave at the conference this fall. This, frankly, is quite a bit more intimidating than the actual BA thesis. Why? The article will be published in the conference publication, which admittedly will only be a virtual one rather than a real book, but it's still rather serious thing seeing how it will be available for anyone to read and search for and comment and criticize to pieces for all the years to come. mEep~

I planned to work on that today, but seeing how it turned out to be (one of) the day(s) of the month that I spend unable to be in any other position than curled up, the day ended up being more about groggy napping and catching up on some manga and anime. Not that there was much anime to catch up with, since no one seems to feel like subbing Kuroshitsuji at decent speed. Tsk. At least Aarinfantasy has been pretty good at keeping up with Junjou Romantica this season.

On the manga front, I finally got my copy of Kuruizaki no Hana/Demon Flower vol 4. *wibbles* It's not like awfully much actually happens in terms of events in the whole series so far, but it's highly emotionally captivating. I felt so bad for poor Masato through the whole volume! And Nao too~! It's really hard to see how there could possible be a happy ending to this series, but I do still so wish for it. Guh, can't they just beat the odds? ;_; Probably not when the odds are like that, though. Even with Ushitora coming back to life, Masato is still Kuruizaki no Hana, so his life expectancy is short at the best, never mind after what he has been through. Maybe Nao could get a happy ending though? If both Gold and Ushitora can come back to life from practically dead, Kagerou shouldn't had died that easily either. Though the new volume did kind of seem to set her up with Onibi. Yay for lolicon? ^_^;;

There was also a new volume of One Thousand and One Nights recently. I'm so happy that Yen Press decided to pick that title up after the original translation publisher, Ice Kunion, went bankrupt. If a manga series is dropped, I still have some distant hope of maybe one day being able to read Japanese enough to get to finish it, but with manwah there is no such illusion. I know my limits, thank you very much. XD;; Thus, I need the korean stuff translated. Anyhow, the new volume 6 was really good and interesting. Sehara and the sultan Shahryar are tentatively moving towards possibly romantic relationship and the story included in this volume was a homosexual one~! All the more interesting, it was supposedly historical story, of Socrates and Alcibiades.

I got quite interested in the possibility of one of the great Greek philosophers having been into other men, so I tried to search up some info on that. It's not definitely something that is taught at schools during history or philosophy and I wasn't particulary surprised at how hard it was to find much information of it, seeing how our society has been very partial to heterosexuality for centuries. Saying a great classic philosopher was into young boys, or men of any sort, is not something that would be considered appropriate. What I could find can be separated into two categories:

1. It seems to be a fact of a sort, that both Socrates and Alcibiades were indeed real and knew each other and Alcibiades seems to have been used as one of the reasons to eventually judge and punish Socrates. Plato, who was Socrates' student/follower, has two text written about their relationship. Some texts of that time quote Achibiades confessing that he was attracted/in love with Socrates, but that Socrates did not return his feelings. There are also mentions of them having spend time together in Athen and having served together in a war, sharing a tent during said trip. Achibiades also apparently was very attractive by that times standards, including to other men.

2. Athenians of that time and age did have a tradition of older men having a sexual relationship with younger, preferably pretty, men/boys. While the practise was perfectly acceptable in itself, the younger men/boys were supposed to resist and be reluctant, apparantly as a part of their masculine pride. (Anyone else reminded of yaoi here?) Now, Socrates is said to have "seduced" younger men while not having had any sexual interest in them but rather wanting to educate their minds with philosophy. What I am curious of is how one seduces a reluctant boy to want to have that type of relationship without actually doing anything sexual with them?

Ancient history is ancient history though, so there really is no way of knowing anything certain. Socrates' possible homosexual tendences are also not something I see anyone really being able to bring into research canon, since even in our modern society such suggestions would not really be taken very kindly. We still live in a society where speculations of any other sexual orientation than heterosexuality of an important historical figure is considered to be of bad taste at the very least if not out-right slander.

Important notice to anyone who contacts me on semi-regular basis, or contacts me ever at all really: My email address has changed. I can now be reached at wind @ windyways . net sans the spaces of course.

I'm not entirely happy with the new mail provider, mainly because it seems to take forever to open the actual emails, but I'm running out of time before my ex-bestfriend will just delete my email regardless of my situation. I also got a gmail account to use to transfer the last 3 or 4 years worth of emails. I did consider just making gmail my default email, but I have heard some less than reassuring rumors of their habbit of monitoring one's emails and I'd rather stay away from that.

Tomorrow I need to save rest of my stuff from our server that she locked me out of and then I guess I should start uploading it to my new space. The new space is free, so we'll see if it will actually work out. Since I couldn't find any paid server space that wasn't far too extensive for my needs, and thus unnecessarily expensive, I decided to try to see how a free one would work. I did buy a domain name, which is what the email service came as a package with. Of course, this means I have to figure out how to apply the new domain name to my new web space. I can smell the fun hours of beating my tecnology-retarded head against a wall trying to figure that one out, haha. -_-;;

Emotionally this is all kind of hard. Most of the old emails I had in my to-be-deleted account were from my ex-best friend and they did remind me of how things used to be; of the person who used to be. I so wish it would stop hurting, even if I know it won't for years to come. It might seem like easier way would had been just to have all those emails deleted, but I kind of need to keep them to assure myself that I'm not imagining things or making things up. Most likely I'll never really get to know what happened, but I need to have the actual records to reflect back on when I start questioning my own memory or my own sanity because of all the things that are being said.

Therapy tomorrow! I sure can guess what I'll be talking about~ *sigh*

The finals of evil are finally over. This tecnically speaking means break time, though I don't really get to properly have time-off. Since Japanese class was epitome of all evil and consumed not just my mind and soul but also all my time, I have my Bachelor's thesis to complite over this supposed break time. At least there are no classes for now?

Of course, the lack of classes is somewhat balanced by the fact that everything I have been pushing off to do once the classes are over is attacking me now. Homefront is on my back about cleaning, I have 4 days until all my files and my emails will get deleted by my ex-best friend and I'm so damn behind on the work project. I tried to get myself webspace today and it didn't really work out and why the fuck is it so complicated? Not to mention how the thought of trying to tackle the horrible website editor program that the work project requires me to use just makes me want to tear at my hair and/or cry.

I honestly should be feeling much happier about the winter break finally being here. Maybe I'm just too tired to feel more relieved? I've slept over 12 hours the two previous nights and I've taken naps on top of that, but I still feel utterly exhausted. This might be partially because I'm most likely somewhat sick still. Probably slightly feverish, though I haven't bothered actually checking. I've tried to not take cold medication this weekend, since I have been taking it pretty constantly for well over a week and supposedly it's bad to keep taking it for long periods of time. The lack of cold meds might also explain the need for the excessive sleep. It also probably doesn't help my energy levels that my stomach decided it has had enough and that I deserve pain, so I haven't been able to really eat properly for a few days.

Seriously, I wanted to write more up-beat entry, maybe with some happy spazzing over manga or comics or something, but I just can't find a happy bone in my body right now. Feeling utterly miserable.