I don't NEED no instructions to know how to ROCK

Cooking with Matthew and Kei

2008-08-05T02:12:13Z

Since moving in (I am now in my own one-bedroom apartment -- story upcoming), we've had more mishaps in the kitchen than we've ever had before.

Cabinet space is scarce real estate in my kitchen, so the top of the toaster oven made a good shelf for a package of mini shortcake cups and a loaf of bread. We'd just remove them if we needed to cook anything, right? As it happens, the simplicity of cooking with a toaster oven lures one into a false sense of culinary ease. Just open the door, plonk the food in, turn on the oven and come back when it dings. Extra steps like "remove flammable objects from the top of the oven" don't factor into the toaster oven equation.

The bread bag and cellophane wrapper melted before Matt noticed and now the oven has a permanent image of a bar code and nutrition information glued to its surface. Shortly after, we declared the top of the toaster oven an "item-free" zone. Surely, now there would be no more mishaps involving heat, plastic and melting.

Well, not quite.

The next instance involved heat, plastic, melting, what's that smell? and OH MY GOD IT'S ON FIRE.

Like I said, there isn't a lot of cabinet space, so I had to take advantage of every nook and cranny I could find. Which included the drawer under the gas oven. I put some cookie sheets in there, a muffin tin and a large plastic cutting board that didn't really fit anywhere else (a very DURR moment, if I do say so myself), right on top of everything in that drawer. Of course, I also forgot I put it there when we decided to make my birthday dinner a week later.

We'd gotten everything finished -- rice cooked, sauce mixed up, tomatoes chopped, chicken baked (which we'd done in the toaster oven) -- and were just waiting for the broiler to melt the cheese on top of the chicken in the oven. Five minutes went by and the cheese was barely gooey. The broiler was taking an awful long time and it smelled like gas, so I decided to speed things up a bit by turning the oven on 200 degrees. The smell got even worse and I walked into the living room to complain to Matt about the gas leaking. He said it didn't smell like gas, walked into the kitchen and declared that there was smoke pouring out of the vent on top of the stove and that there was fire coming up the sides of the oven. I turned the oven off and he, noticing the source of the flames, pulled the drawer open to reveal OH MY GOD THE DRAWER IS FULL OF FIRE.

I ran away from the smoking mess into the bathroom to grab a bucket, ran back into the kitchen, filled it in the sink and proceeded to throw it on the flames, all while yelling at Matt to disable our smoke alarm so the building sprinklers and fire alarm wouldn't go off. The flames yielded after only a couple partial bucket fulls to reveal the source -- former cutting board now turned muffin tin impersonation.

We'd gotten rid of the emergency, but now the apartment was full of ashy grey smoke and the horrid smell of burnt plastic. Matt opened the patio doors and window all the way and turned on the air conditioner and fan to help vent the smoke. I peeled the stinky melted heap off the muffin tin and threw it onto the patio, then stuffed some wet towels at the base of the front door so the smell wouldn't invade the hallway.

The inside of the oven was covered in a layer of plastic soot that glistened silver on top of the now-melted cheese and wouldn't rinse out of the many sponges that were sacrificed to clean everything. Along with the sponges, we threw out a roll of paper towels, a glass baking dish, the muffin tin and, of course, the cutting board. Surprisingly, it only took a couple of days for the apartment to smell normal again. And, fortunately, only food experimentation with delicious results have since come out of the kitchen.

a healthy sense of claustrophobia

2008-05-20T05:29:53Z

Well, I certainly wasn't aware that, in Japan, there exists a job of shoving commuters into packed, rush-hour trains.

I've no doubt I'd have a panic attack if I were crushed in a train car between strange, smelly bodies, pointy limbs and purses jabbing into nerve endings, breathing in stagnant humid air. Makes me a little nauseous just to watch it.

The sniffles

2008-05-11T19:21:19Z

Well, I seem to have come down with some horrid sinus infection, complete with painful cough. I haven't been this sick in a couple of years and I still have to pack stuff before the end of the week when I move into my new place.

I'm also replaying FF8 for the hundredth time and it's making me want to buy Kotobukiya figures (already have Selphie and Quistis!) and read fanfiction.

BRB

2008-04-27T04:05:50Z

brb finals lol

Unf Unf Unf

2008-04-10T03:45:51Z

I cannot wait for Fallout 3 to come out. Only about five more months. :)

Udder Chaos

2008-04-01T20:54:14Z

So... StarCraft II is looking pretty awesome, eh?

"I lift heavy objects"

2008-02-08T20:42:36Z

Bear soldiers are awesome.

Let It ____

2008-02-05T01:17:41Z

It's been snowing a lot here, more than I can remember it doing for the past five years, and I can't get over the urge to kick the dirty clumps of snow and icicles stuck to the bottom of cars.

Help me, Saint Jesus!

2008-01-30T01:46:09Z

I don't deny that a favorite pastime of mine is subjecting others to awful trainwrecks in order to take pleasure in their horrified reactions. So, after stumbling upon one today, I thought it might amuse some of you to know that there's something out there that even I, the self-proclaimed lover-of-trainwrecks, can't even stomach. No, it's nothing graphic or sexual, but it is pretty disgusting.

I present to you the One Hundred Greatest Quotes from Fundamentalist Christian Chatrooms. I'm slowly subjecting myself to it, reading through it quote by quote, but it's slow going because it's just that painful and sickening to read more than a few at a time.

~~Enjoy!~~

Toxoplasma gandi, anyone?

2008-01-09T03:03:23Z

I've found my birthday cake for this year.

Phase change

2008-01-08T04:04:14Z

Over the past year, I've been slowly shifting from black to dark brown, both in my wardrobe and ink choice for wash and line art.

Jet Planes and Big Boats

2007-12-13T04:45:17Z

As a reward for surving yet another finals week, I'll be heading off to Mexico. No, really!

My grandma decided to use her savings to buy everyone a cruise to Baja, so I'll be down there for about a week doing fun stuff like whale watching and sea kayaking and horseback riding. It's gonna be great!

And yes, I know, don't drink the water.

Matt is also flying down to spend Christmas with me. I haven't seen him in four months so I'm pretty psyched for that.

All in all, a fantastic way to end a pretty awesome year!

S.O.S.

2007-12-03T07:01:28Z

Drowning in finals. Send help, plz.

Think I need to treat myself to another one of these for surviving!

Fighting evil by the moonlight

2007-11-16T23:35:47Z

I've found a goldmine of full length Sailor Moon episodes on Youtube and the temptation to nostalgize and watch all of them is strong.

It's a cute, silly (even more silly now that I'm older) show and the first anime series I watched, the first thing I drew fanart for, and the first thing that made me seriously consider being an artist. I'll always have a soft spot for it.

There's ANOTHER name for it

2007-11-12T19:31:22Z

...and it's called Visual Snow.

Wow! I remember trying to explain this to my friend when I was about 7 years old, how I saw things "like wrinkles or a static TV." She thought I was lying and I thought I was the only one who saw things through that.

Mine is pretty mild, but it's constant. It's like I can see tiny molecules in the air moving around rapidly, kind of like a very, very low opacity .gif of TV static overlaying everything in my visual field.

Anyone else have this?

There's a name for it

2007-11-02T23:46:39Z

...and it's called Trypophobia.

For as long as I can remember, I've always hated looking at patterns of concave and convex holes. Honeycomb or other hexagonal patterns found in wasp/hornet nests give me the willies, especially if they have eggs in them. Lotus seed pods, shower drains, egg cartons, and even clusters of bubbles in the sink after washing your hands also inspire similar feelings of disgust to me.

It's a completely weird and irrational phobia -- if you'd call it that -- but after seeing a pattern like that, I can't help but become momentarily enraged at it and start smashing, shredding, crushing, or ripping it apart until it's gone. And if I can't actually do that (it's a picture, for example), then I have to imagine myself doing it, often clenching my hands open and closed, until I feel satisfied.

It's not as bad as it used to be, but I'd still probably step on this frog if I ever saw it.

FF7 Citadel Banner

2007-11-01T04:26:51Z

Check it out, yo!

Yuffie doesn't get enough love. She's still my favorite character and it was fun to draw her. I'll have the full image done sometime before the end of November (still not happy with the bottom of the background), when school and work are not hogging every minute of my time.

She was also originally giving you the finger while she stole the bag of materia, but I took that out for the banner. :)

The Real World (tm)

2007-10-22T21:03:29Z

Well, it looks like I'll be graduating with a Bachelors in Fine Arts in less than a year (whether it's at the end of summer or fall depends on if the remaining classes I need are offered in the summer).

I'm a bit anxious about it already, leaving the safety bubble of college and venturing out into the world of Real Adult Responsibilities. I'm going to have to get my own health insurance (getting kicked off of my mom's plan on my 22nd birthday next July), pay my own car insurance and rent, in addition to all of the stuff I already pay out of my pocket like utilities, groceries, art supplies and entertainment expenses.

All of this is kind of being exacerbated by the fact that I chose to be an artist instead of some other financially secure major. I willingly walked down this path knowing that I'd probably not make a lot of money because it was always more about doing what you loved than becoming rich. I'm not having second thoughts or anything, but I'm a little scared and kind of doubting myself, my abilities, and whether I'll sink or swim.

I'm Back

2007-10-16T04:29:14Z

My first online journal, way back on Diary-x, was started with the intentions of it being a place where I could vent whatever to get it out of my thoughts so I'd be able to concentrate on other things. I did, and it worked well, even after all of Diary-x was deleted. I just moved over here to Livejournal.

After I started talking to Matt on a regular basis, it felt like I no longer really needed this journal because I was getting everything out that I wanted to with him and retyping it would be redundant. It actually had crossed my mind more than once to just put up notice of a permanent hiatus. However, lately, it's really struck me that I don't just need a place to vent, but that I need a voice as well.

I don't talk that much, I never have, even when I was a child. I was always afraid that, if I tried to talk, people would just ignore me and that would be worse than opening my mouth in the first place. So I kept quiet and took enjoyment in the stories and ideas other people had to tell. It was only recently, as in the past six months, that I realized if you don't even try to talk, you're sure to be ignored. I want to listen and really talk now.

I'm already doing this in my close relationships and day-to-day interactions, but I want a place for stuff that might not fit or come up in those situations. I also miss my neglected LJ friends and communities.

So yeah, uh, this place will actually be regularly updated once again! :D

Old!

2007-10-11T01:11:29Z

HAPPY 23RD BIRTHDAY, DUCK, YOU OLD FOGEY!

Your present should be there by the end of October. :3

Fuuuuuck

2007-09-19T03:21:04Z

I wanna go to Burning Man next year.

Electric Need

2007-09-06T10:31:38Z

If the power goes off again today, I'm gonna be mad.

Art Post: Alice

2007-07-26T04:22:28Z

I haven't updated in forever because I've been too busy with Matthew (hoping to update soon on what we've been doing!)

But in the mean time, to prove that, although I haven't been drawing nearly as much as I should be, I have at least been doing something!

Work in progress of my new journal layout header. Original character, Alice, from what will probably be the first short-ish comic I pitch to a publisher.

Sounds

2007-05-20T03:30:38Z

Keeping my mouth shut has never hurt as much as opening it has.

...and I think that's okay.

Send Hugs

2007-04-14T08:16:13Z

Man, I feel like crap.