Yay! 21! Now you can legally gamble in the U.S. Road trip to Las Vegas!

This is an exciting weekend for you. Birthday and new Doctor Who. ;-)

Happy Birthday newnumber6! I bet this is the oldest you've ever been. :-D

Xīn nián kuài lè! Or if you prefer the traditional greeting: Gōng xǐ fā cái!

I'll be pigging out with my family on Saturday. None of this "attend the university's celebration and get bonus marks" crap.

According to my profile page I created my journal a year ago today. At 11:32 at night. Huh. I don't remember that part. That must be LiveJournal local time.

Well, I can definitely say the past year has been fun. I know originally I wanted a LJ just as a place to post fics and to rant a little about fandom stuff I'm sure no one else cared about and it looks like I've fulfilled that. ;-) But without LJ I doubt I would have become crazy obsessed with Doctor Who and met a bunch of people because of it. So a big yay to LJ. And thank you for being easy to use, unlike some other social networking application whose name rhymes with Macenook.

I can't even begin to fathom how many hours I've wasted on LJ since joining, but I'm sure I'm bound to waste many more. :-D

Happy Birthday, browncoat_2x2!

It's 8:00ish in the morning here. I do hope you're sleeping in on your birthday. ;-) Have fun today and eat that birthday cake.

- I feel like crap. :-P I blame the weather. It's been snowing all day and it's really depressing. Either that or it's the Chinese homework I've been working on all day. Started out with a mild headache, then bam! I'm suddenly all dizzy and nauseous. Totally messed up my plans for tonight. I wanted to see Cloverfield. Though, my sister told me the camera work is kinda vomit inducing so I think it's for the best I decided not to go. And there's always tomorrow.

- It's amazing the random things you can pick up. Today I learned that in Chinese, the word "igloo" translates into "small house used by Eskimos made by layering snow bricks." Okay, it's a rough translation, but that is the gist of it. Thirteen characters to say house made out of snow. Got to love how precise the Chinese are.

- I caught one of the Reboot TV movies while I was trying not to up chuck and I was reminded how much I miss the show. It was such a great cartoon full of geeky references.

- And how cute is the little penguin telling my mood. I've seen custom mood themes out there, but I love the penguins.

I seemed to have developed an obsession with Olympic mascots. The mascots for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics were revealed yesterday and while they're not as cute as the Beijing 2008 Fuwas, these guys are a close second. I have to say the Vancouver mascots look cuter on-line than they do in real life. The costumes look really bulky; I feel sorry for the people inside.


The three have been dubbed "modern Pokemon" according to the news. I'm not really sure how that's relevant. They do have a slight anime influence to them but they're definitely not creatures who live in tiny balls and fight for pre-teens.

I was kind of hoping the Olympic committee would settle on an inuksuk as a mascot, but alas, no. Then I could have gotten to say, "Nice pile of rocks" every time I saw it. :-D

And hee, the mascots are acting out the winter sports!

On occasion, my Chinese class can actually be kind of amusing. We've been learning sports words this week and my prof brought up the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. She showed us the mascots for Beijing and I have to admit they are the cutest things ever. Just look:


From left to right they are: a fish, a panda, fire, a Tibetan antelope, and a swallow. The fish one is a little creepy, but the others are cute. :-D

And each Fuwa, I think they're being called Friendlies in English, is shown performing a summer sport here. My personal favourite is this one:


ETA: Damn, the link changed. It doesn't show you the Fuwa acting out the sports anymore. And they were so cute, too.

Happy Birthday tobeachkid! I hope your gift has kicked in by now. Enjoy all the new icon space. Think of all The Dresden Files icons you can have now. :-D

I'm leaving for a family vacation on September 1st to Sudbury. We're driving out, which should be fun and/or insane. My sister, minus her husband, is coming along, too. Since Sudbury has a giant nickel as one of its attractions, we're going to check it out while we're there. Now this has sparked a whole theme for the trip from my sister. She suggested we stop for any giant attraction we see along the way and take a picture. At first I was thinking, "How many giant attractions can there be in Canada?" A lot, apparently.

I don't know how, but creating a list of giant things to see fell to me. Since we're driving and on a schedule we can't stop for too much, but in the cities where we're stopping for the night there's some stuff.

So far I've got a big cactus and a giant Canada Goose in Hanna, Alberta; Mac the Moose in Moosejaw (Sister has already seen this but she wants another picture with the whole family I guess), a giant pitchfork and Regianld the Grasshopper in Regina (the place that rhymes with fun!), and a giant buffalo in Swift Current, Saskatchewan; the world's largest Coke Can in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba; and Max the Moose in Dryden, the Big Nickel, a giant Brontosaurus (which might be in a mini golf course), a giant steam shovel,a giant Sundial, and the Mining Heritage Sculpture in Sudbury, and a giant curling stone, giant moose hunters, and a big polar bear in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

I'll be impressed if we actually find all of these and take a picture. If we do, you know I'll totally be posting them here. :-D

Whoo, I got sucked into trying a shameless marketing ploy! Simpsonize Me.



I did enjoy the fact that they had different options for skin tone rather than just giving you the generic yellow.

I'm reading Old Man's War right now by John Scalzi. It's not a bad book; has a interesting premise for a sci-fi. It was Scalzi's first book so maybe that has something to do with it, but I'm finding he does very little description or too much, somehow at the same time. He often has the main character telling the fate of his friends so it's not seen first hand but it's a giant info dump at the beginning of a chapter. I don't find this too annoying but I have noticed he doesn't bother going into too much detail about people's appearances or the places they visit. Halfway through the book and it feels like most of it has been huge chunks of dialogue.

It only bothers me because it's something I struggle with in my own writing. How much detail and description should you give the reader? Scalzi doesn't reveal much about the main character John Perry except that he has brown hair. No description of what he looks like, how tall he is, etc. But is it really necessary to give all that? Is it worth it to give an entire paragraph describing what a character is wearing? I find it depends on the character. Like, if I'm writing Inara, she'll notice what someone is wearing because it's in her character, but if it's someone else or something original, it becomes boring. It's always hard to find that balance.

So it lack of description: lazy writing or effective writing?

Happy birthday hjea! Today is your birthday and Canada Day. How bout that. :-D You can have cake and celebrate the birth of Canada as a nation on the same day. Whoo!

Meme courtesy of darthvol.

Name Things You Like Meme. lorelei_frolick gave me the letter "A". Leave a comment if you like and I'll give you a letter.

Angel - The T.V. show and the character. I will admit freely that David Boreanaz was my first T.V. celebrity crush.

Allergy medication - I'm allergic to a lot of things - dogs, cats, mold, dust, nuts - so it's good stuff to have around during the spring or autumn and when, y'know, I don't want to die. :-D

Apples - The best fruit. You can make a bunch of things out of it: apple pie, apple sauce, apple juice, apple cider, apple crisp. Plus, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Or so they say.

Animals - Despite the fact that I'm allergic to a lot of them, animals = cute.

Art - It's pretty plus something to do when I don't want to do homework.

Animation - I'm a big geek for cartoons. I'll watch it even if it's for kids. Also, one of my best classes was a Canadian Animation class. Cartoons and learning; can't go wrong.

Antagonists - Because they make plots so much more fun.

Atypical - Good word to describe the things I like.

Arse - It makes me giggle and more fun to say than "ass". ;-)

Anthony Stewart Head - No list starting with the letter "a" would be complete without ASH. He plays my favourite character on Buffy and he's hot. :-D

Gakked from blueanddollsome.


You tend to pursue many different activities simultaneously. When misfortune does happen, it doesn't actually dishearten you all that much. You have a peaceful mind, viewing the world with calm and serenity. To you, life is not about struggle and strife but about existence and co-existence. You like following the rules and being objective. You are precise and meticulous, and like to evaluate decisions before making them. You feel morose and are prone to lethargy.

Don't know about that morose part, but spot on about everything else.

I just want to say Happy Birthday to newnumber6. Eat lots of cake!

Another meme courtesy of browncoat_2x2. Leave a picture or describe your work area (home or office). List 10 gadgets/items you can't live without. Tag 3 people.

I actually have two work areas at home, my desk in my room for writing out things and then my computer desk for everything else. I don't have a picture of either, but my room desk has much more cluttering it up, so I'll go with that one. For a visual, it's just a white desk with a lamp and a bunch of knick-knacks running along the edge that's up against the wall. And in no particular order:

10) Dictionary - It's actually my dad's. It's missing the outside cover, but I used it a lot before I wrote everything up on the computer. Right now it's sitting in the left hand corner of my desk gathering dust.
9) Cup o' pens - It's a plastic cup (with Kellogg cereal characters running around on the outside) full of the pens I pick up at career fairs at school. Saves me having to buy pens. I also have various writing implements I use when making flash cards for my Chinese class so they sit in the cup, too.
8) Lamp - I've had this lamp forever. It's kind of my thinking lamp since I always turn it on when I'm working on something for school.
7) Wooden hedgehog puzzle - I made it in grade eight. There's only three pieces to it so it just sits on my desk, but it's a nice reminder that I can actually accomplish stuff.
6) iPod nano - used to be a CD player, but gotta keep up with the times. ;-) I like listening to music while doing work.
5) Junk drawer - first drawer of the desk on my right. It's full of crap I never use, but a good place to store things that can become distractions if I want to put off doing something.
4) Knick-knacks - same reasoning as number 5. Some of the knick-knacks include a snow globe featuring the skyline of Montreal (the water's starting to dry up it's so old), a penguin figurine wearing a Christmas hat, and this cool glass ball my sister brought back from China for me.
3) Chair - not for the obvious reason that I need to sit down while doing work, but I like leaning back in it when brainstorming. I probably shouldn't be leaning back in it since it's kind of old and the legs might give way, but it helps me to think.
2) Monday poster - it's a poster of a teddy bear holding a seashell to its ear with the caption "You know it's Monday when you pick up a seashell and get a busy signal." It hangs on the wall above my desk. Shows my distaste for Mondays.
1) Desk - like a lot of things that go with the desk, I've had the desk since forever. It's also where I do a majority of my school work so I literally cannot live without it.

And now I shall inflict this meme on tag: blueanddollsome, lorelei_frolick, and sl_podcast.

I got tagged by browncoat_2x2. I've seen this meme floating around but now I can't avoid it anymore. ;-)

Guilt	What is yours?	Explain yourself
Culinary:	Mom's cooking	My mom makes the best desserts and she makes a lot mainly because I've got a nut allergy so there's a lot I can't eat. So I love eating anything my mom makes, but I always eat way too much. Though, I guess I would be a bad daughter if I didn't eat any at all...
Literary:	Fanfiction	I'm usually writing or reading it when I should be doing school work. I also find myself thinking about a fic I'm writing during a class so I tend to drift off when the prof is talking.
Audiovisual:	Anything I download	A lot of the shows I watch I download, though mainly because I don't get the right channel. So I be all illegal just so I can keep up with things. I also watch stuff when I should be doing school work (anyone noticing a theme?) However, to make myself less guilty, I buy the DVDs for the shows I really like.
Musical:	I dunno	I don't listen to the radio enough to have feel guilty about liking something current. I do have a few songs in the iPod from some "it" artists like James Blunt.
Celebrity:	None that I can think of	Entertainment shows drive me nuts so I really don't keep up with what celebrities are doing. Unless they're an actor on a show I really like but usually it's an obscure sci-fi show and those actors rarely make the news.

Now I tag:-


No one, because everyone else on my flist has done this meme.

Tags: meme, random

This meme brought to you by blueanddollsome.

Rule: Post the explanation of where your user name came from. Then tag FIVE users whose explanations you would like to hear. If you are tagged, post your explanation to your page.

Here's goes: Locker_Monster is actually my back-up user name. When I was starting out on the Buffy posting boards, I went with Ness since it was simple and my nickname. Of course, the only problem with Ness is that it's often taken so as I started to branch out I needed something else to go by. So (stay with me here) Ness is part of Loch Ness Monster and going from there I went with a great line from the Buffy ep "I Only Have Eyes For You", where Xander gets attacked by a hand in his locker and when Willow asked what happened, Xander replied, "I'll have you know I was just accosted by some kind of, um, locker monster" and Giles' response was "Loch Ness Monster?" Hopefully that made sense. So basically I sort of got to keep my main user name but at the same time made it relate to Buffy.

As for tagging people, I choose everyone else on my flist since I haven't bothered to make that many friends yet. So I inflict this meme on the following: browncoat_2x2, lorelei_frolick, newnumber6, and sl_podcast.