Well there's now less than a week and a half of the semester left. Thank God. One quiz and two more tests in Calculus and then I'll be free for a month. I don't remember if I mentioned it in my last post, but I currently have a B in the class. I took the Chapter 5 test last Friday though and felt extremely good about it, so hopefully I won't be disappointed.
Geez, we're already over a week into the month of December and I still haven't written about my Thanksgiving. I've actually been stupidly busy, so I'll catch up on everything right now, including pictures.
Overall my Thanksgiving seriously sucked. I got to my Aunt Tammy's at around 3:45 P.M. My mom hadn't even gotten there yet. Turns out my grandpa got pissed off at some ridiculous thing and went home. My mother showed up just a few minutes after me...with her room mate in tow. Instantly everyone was voicing their disapproval considering she never even told anyone that she was going to bring her along.
The dinner was short and it was strange not having the whole family there. Everyone's become so disjointed and are holding so many grudges that I'm not even sure who's still talking to who anymore. There was a lot of arguing since my mom decided she was going to flaunt her online boyfriend collection. I was very close to saying something to her, but I hate stirring things up even more than they already are.
My brother and I decided to go see the movie "Tangled", but of course even that couldn't go smoothly. We misread the time and ended up going into the theatre a half hour late. We didn't realize it though until we walked in and saw that the movie was already playing and people were everywhere. Turns out we didn't miss much at all and it ended up being an extremely good movie. It doesn't end here though.
The car I drive is a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme...A.K.A: Old and doesn't want to run. It takes a long time to warm up, otherwise it'll stall. Normally if it does stall it will the first time I hit the gas. Well this time it decided to do things a bit differently.
I was taking my brother back to my mom's house when a red light came on in the dash. It said "GEN", which means generator apparently. Immediately my car started to deaccelerate. I was not a happy camper at this point, especially since I was going 75 MPH on the highway. Obviously I pulled off to the side, which was when my car decided to not allow me to steer anymore either. Here is a picture I took while stranded on the side of the highway:
You can kind of see part of my car and the window on the door that's open. My mom, dad, and grandma all ended up coming out to get us. My dad and grandma came in the same vehicle so that my dad could drive the Oldsmobile. Of course it was fine for him all the way home. My dad used to be a mechanic, and according to him the Oldsmobile stalled. I don't think I've driven it since then.
Of course with it being Thanksgiving and all the next day was Black Friday. My original shift at Best Buy was supposed to be 4:30 A.M. - 1:00 P.M. I ended up getting there at 4 in the morning and found out they extended my shift until 2:30. The good news is that it wasn't near as bad as I expected it to be and only one customer yelled at me. Apparently an employee was telling people that we were doing price matching that day when we had a meeting that morning that specifically told us that we WERE NOT doing price matching on anything. Hell, we weren't even matching our own website. So the customer got pissy and threw the items around. Oh well.
What was kinda funny is that even our lunch breaks were all scheduled, yet they had people taking them early anyway. My "lunch break" was at 9:30 if I'm remembering correctly. I also ended up getting out of there at 1:30. One of the supervisors let me leave since I was originally only scheduled until 1. I would have stayed if I could, but I honestly could not take much more. I was dead tired and completely exhausted, so I snatched up the chance to leave.
Besides the terrible holiday and the end of the semester coming up, I have been finding time to relax. Almost every night I watch a movie. I signed up for Netflix a few weeks ago, and it is seriously the best thing ever. I only tried out the instant watch thingy the other day since I wasn't sure how it would go with my craptastical internet, but it works amazing and I have already watched three instant movies:
Here are the ones I've watched using DVD's:
Since I'm posting quite a lot of pictures right now, here's another one from the night I went to the midnight showing of the new Harry Potter movie. Hopefully you can see it, but it looks like there's a rainbow above the moon. The picture really didn't capture much of it since I was using a phone, but in person it was truly amazing:
Now that it's December it seems like it's opened the doors to all the good ol' lake effect snow. Here's after the first snowfall of the month:
And here's on the way back from work on Sunday:
And finally on the way to the college I attend on Tuesday:
On the way to school I actually saw my art teacher in a vehicle going the other direction...away from the college. Turns out class wasn't cancelled, but he was just 5 minutes late. One whole side of the art room is windows, and at times the visibility out of them was zero. It was just pure white outside. I have no idea how these geese and swans tolerate it:
I do have a few postcards to post, but I have yet to scan them so I'll just wait until next time. I do, however, have some pictures I'd like to share of my cats:
This is Charmin...
...He loves boxes
Jack also loves boxes.
My computer is now starting to get very angry with me from all these pictures, so anything I've forgotten will have to wait. Hopefully I'll be able to post more often, but it might have to wait until the end of the semester.
I'm still hoping for an A in Calculus. Hey, miracles do happen.
I'm going to start this post off by saying that the missing cat I talked about in the previous post was found shortly after. I went into the kitchen at around 9 P.M. on Saturday to give my diabetic cat her insulin shot and heard Jack meowing and scratching at the garage door. I was so happy that I cried. She's fine and was her normal self immediately, so all is well in that aspect.
This past week has been a mix of ups and downs so far. I've been barely getting any sleep, but that's mostly my fault by staying up until four in the morning talking and playing games. Today was a dozy though.
I had to wake up two hours earlier than normal since I had an interview with Best Buy. I was pretty happy about the interview until I started getting ready. I couldn't find anything I was looking for, none of my dressier clothes fit, and to top it all off I was being yelled at by my grandmother. So needless to say I wasn't too happy with how the day started when I headed to Best Buy.
When I got there I found out that it was basically a free for all. Anyone could come in and have an interview, so I really don't understand why they bothered to call me. There was 8 or 9 people sitting in a little area they had designated, so I had a seat with them to wait until my name was called.
The interview itself was short and all they did was ask designated questions and wrote down my answers. The interviewer said over the next few days they're going to compare notes and chose who they think will work the best. Considering a ton of people were interviewed I highly doubt I'll get a call back, but at least I had something I suppose.
Besides that about the only other good thing that has happened so far this week is that I got a 91/100 on my first Calculus test. Apparently the average score was a 78/100, so I did really well and am highly pleased with it. The teacher also said that our class was weird in that people either did really well, or failed. All I know is that what we're going over right now seems really pointless and no one's understanding much of it at all.
I think this will be about the middle of the post, so I'll update with the postcards I've received. These ones are from Postcrossing:
This one is from Japan and since I don't know any Japanese I have no idea what it says. I also don't know anyone who speaks/writes it, so I guess I'm kind of out of luck with this one.
From the Netherlands
From Arkansas (USA) I really like how the moth looks.
From Finland. My scanner messed it up, so it looks a lot better than that.
I thought I had some from Swap-bot as well, but I guess I've already posted those on here. Ah well.
Anyway. I'll now get back to why this day was terrible besides what I've already said. I had a little bit after the interview until my Sculpture class so I took a little nap. Got to class alright, blah blah. We had to wait about 20 minutes before the teacher showed up. We were all about to leave when he walked in. Everyone seemed to either be really tired (like I was) or just not into doing any art today. I slogged through the 50 minute drawing we do almost every class and then started on my 2nd sculpture. After an hour and a half I just wanted to leave, but there was still 45 minutes of class left, so I asked if we didn't want to do anymore if we could just be done for the day. He agreed, so that was really good and I was happy since I'd be able to get home early and just sleep for a while. Apparently the world didn't think that was a very good thing.
I get to my car and leave the college. I take the highway home, but am only on it for 2 exits until mine comes up. I was in the center lane and sped up a little bit so I could get past the car in the right lane before merging into it and then getting off at my exit. Right as I'm about to put my turn signal on I smell something terrible and BAM! instantly smoke has filled the cab of the car and I can barely see. I immediately turn on my turn signal and just swerve to the side of the road. I'm glad I didn't hit any cars or anything, but I panicked. I put the car in park and turned it off and got out of the car as quickly as I could.
I stood a little away from the car and called home. My grandma answer, but I could barely hear since I was on the highway so I just told her where I was and to come get me. She took forever to get there even though my house was only four minutes away. But she got there and we popped the hood and there was no smoke. It didn't even smell like anything weird either. However, it still smelled absolutely terrible inside the car.
My grandma called home to see if my dad was there and he had just gotten home so he came out there. So there we were with a 1978 Oldsmobile (Mine), a little sports car (Grandma's) and a huge van (Grandma's but dad drives it) on the side of the highway trying to figure out what happened. My dad used to be a mechanic, so he knows what he's doing and looked it all over. He didn't notice anything wrong with it so it turned it on. It started up fine and there was no smoke, so he drove it home while I drove the little car and my grandma took the van.
On the way home it was fine, but we've been having problems with the heater core in it for a few weeks now, so my dad thinks that finally gave out. He doesn't want me to drive it tomorrow, which I am grateful for, but it definitely scared me. I've never had anything like that happen before. I'll probably use the incident to reinforce that I'm cursed. Haha.
Other than that things have been pretty ok. I feel less stressed and actually have the opportunity to go do something I've been wanting to do for a few years now: go to ACEN. That stands for Anime Central and is a huge anime convention in Chicago. It isn't until May, but planning early is definitely something you have to do. I'm skeptical about it though since I doubt I'll still be talking to the person I'd be going with by then, but who knows.
Another fun/annoying thing I did last night/today was download and play the Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow demo. That was a bitch to download. When it first started it was just about midnight last night. According to the time it said it would take it should have finished by around 4 in the morning. I only paid attention to it for the first 20% before going to bed, so at the rate it was going, the time seemed accurate. Well...I checked it at 11 in the morning and it was at 93% I have no idea what happened during the time I was sleeping and at my interview, but that download was taking way too long. Luckily by the time I was home again it was finished. I only played it about 2 hours ago though.
I'm not sure where in the game the demo starts you off at, but Gabriel (the main character) already has a boat load of skills and abilities. His weapon is also a whip and for some reason that thing can hit enemies from extremely far away. It makes the game seem way too easy since you can just keep mashing the buttons and kill everything.
My favorite ability/skill though is the Dodge Roll. Gabriel rolls so quickly and far that you can just keep doing that and nothing can hit you. Where it started me off I had to fight some werewolves and then a werewolf boss. For the boss fight I just kept rolling all over the area and then jumping and doing the aerial combo.
I've read that the boss fights can be really hard, but with how the fights are done I honestly don't see the difficulty. My only playing a demo doesn't really show me much, but hopefully without all of those abilities there's a challenge.
The graphics are definitely really good although I did notice some things that seem off. How Gabriel runs is an example, it just seems really strange and awkward. When I was fighting something I didn't notice it though since things move a lot faster, but just running up to things and stuff like that it's highly noticeable. The scene the demo also started on, it was raining, but how everything looked wet was really strange. The horse Gabriel was riding was definitely messed up. It almost looked metallic and a lot more reflective than it should have been for just being wet fur. I'm probably being too picky, but for all the hype about it I almost have to be.
I doubt I'll ever play the full game of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, but if I do it'd definitely be a long ways from now when it's discounted. I'd probably just play it to see the environment since what I have seen of the game is pretty damn beautiful. Hopefully the graphics live up to those standards and not what I've already witnessed with the demo.
