I subscribed to the LJ of one of my favorite authors, Stephen Brust.  He recently posted some thing amusing about a dream he had.  We all have dreams like this every now and then.

Read it.

Reported by The California Aggie today, Feb 13th, 2007

"Way to rub it in

A 40-foot tree was cut down and taken from Coolidge Street. The remaining stump reportedly had a smiley face carved in it. "

At least the culprit had a sense of humor - but what a random act.

I saw the best vanity license plate frame today:






On another note entirely, I picked up the latest book of Ex Machina today.  Book 3 was just as interesting as the last 2 and just as full of social-political commentary.

I saw something hilarious and just have to share.
It involves Sony's contest for an "alternative" costume for their God of War franchises' main character, Kratos.

Since the site containing the finalists requires a login, I took a screen cap so I could share it. I some were very well done, others just hilarious and even, yes, even stupid.
"Disco" God of War? WtF? Take a look for yourself.



And yes, I did put in a vote for the fish.
I really should have gotten off my ass and submitted something. I know I could have done better than some of those...

Yep the title just about covers it.

Let's just say I spent over 2 hours on a Job application yesterday. Not because I want to, or that it deserved to take up that much of my time, but because their web page freaking sucked. It broke halfway through in Firefox, crashed Explorer twice (so I wasted yet more time updating it), then continually timed out while I just tried to navigate between pages.

Petco - you're job site sucks. I was going to apply for 2 jobs but now I'm just happy that I finished one.

So Thanksgiving is almost upon us. It's going to be a tough holiday for my family this year. For the first time in ages, all of my dad's siblings will be gathered for the turkey-fest.

Minus, of course, my aunt who died earlier this year.

That's why it's going to be strange. My grandparents seem to be handling it well. they still go visit my cousin and his father, and they'll all be there for Thanksgiving. Still, there will be one less seat at the "grown-up table" - or maybe not. My sister is bringing her boyfriend in an attempt to "lighten the mood" (and keep her company of course). Which leaves me kind of alone again.

I've always been the odd one out a family gatherings. I'm almost 10 years older than my oldest cousin on my dad's side. Jenny's not much better, maybe 7 years their senior. I'm not ignored, but for a while my relatives didn't know who to treat me - I wasn't old enough to be fully a part of their talks and my younger cousins didn't always want to include me in their games, or I didn't want to be included. Luckily, now that the kids are older, I really enjoy talking to them and playing with them. I'm also old enough to be included in the "adult" talk as an equal. It's a strange feeling, flirting between the two age groups. Someday I'll feel like an adult, but I like pretending that I'm not sometimes.

And then Jenny and Adam (the boyfriend) will be there too. It's strange that she got a "steady boyfriend" before I did. I'm sure I confuse my relatives with my lack of dating and such. Truth is, it's just never worked out for me. I've been on a few dates (in college) and was never really interested in the guys as anything more than friends. Then the few I am interested in turn into some of my best friends and it's just awkward from there. I just don't seem to have any luck with dating, which is fine for now. At least I've managed to make some very good friends.

My copy of Final Fantasy 12 should arrive today. This means that I've got to clean my room enough so that I can bring my TV in here. I'm also going for election day training today (which shouldn't last long) and taking care of Abby-dog who had a bladder stone removed on Halloween,.

Dang. I really need to beat Dragon Quest VIII and I've almost beat DQ: Rocket Slime, but my left thumb hurts from using the d-pad, so I know that I have to take a break from that for a few days. Darn it. Marian also gave me Dirge of Cerberus and will lend me Okami sometime soon I'll bet. I've also been putzing around in The Sims 2 Pets lately too. And then there's Myst: Uru, Neverwinter Nights, Battlefield 2 (which I suck at- so that's not much of a draw), and the 3 new Redwall books that my mom got me.

Good lord. I know that I for one am thankful that I can't afford (or want) a PS3 (well, for the moment at least).
I'm having a hard enough time trying to squeeze in all the goodness thats released lately on the PS2. Sure, the PS3 looks pretty (no, it really does, the graphics are nice too), but frankly until I know that it can play a blue-ray disc for 3+ hours without crashing, I'm not going to be impressed.

The fact of the matter is this: PS3 and Xbox 360 are very powerful machines and if the developers remember to make FUN games, that also look pretty, they will be a wonderful investment. But at the moment, I have enough PC/PS2 games to keep me busy for months. You hear me, MONTHS. And guess what, they all look fun and pretty. So I'm happy with hanging on to my fatty PS2 until prices drop, quality increases and bugs are worked out.

The Wii on the other hand, well it just looks fun. I don't care if the graphics aren't "breath-taking" - that's never been the point of video games, just an added bonus. Which reminds me, Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess has to be chalked up on the list of things to do...

I'd better stop wasting time writing this and instead work on getting my TV up stairs...

So here I am back in Davis.

It's home. And my room feels really cramped... but I'm working on that.

I'll be working on finding a job soon, but in the meantime I decided to poke around some local sites for fun.
I ended up on the Yolo county web page and was checking out how much they pay volunteers for election day...turns out, it's a lot.
So I wrote an email to the county clerk and after an explanation of my qualifications, *poof* I'm hired.

I'll be getting up before sunrise (i.e. 5:30am) and driving around setting up electronic voting machines in the morning and helping out until closing, but I'll get $350 + gas money in exchange.
Seems like a more than fair deal for a day of work.
Too bad these days only come once a year at most...

Charles took this and it intrested me:

Well I got into the Vancover Film School but then had to decline. The loan I was offered has a bad rate and there were no better options. So the lesson I learned: it pays to go to school in the US because then you can get government finacial aid. >:\

So because I'm pretty much done with Redwood City, I stopped working at my last job after 3 weeks, I'm moving home to Davis by the end of the month. It's been fun and it's going to be hard to live at "home" again, but the thought of being able to rebuild my savings is very appealing. Also, I'll probaly have more time to hang-out with friends.

Now I've just got to find a place I can put Niles where my mom won't freak out about him all the time...
Oh and the fish, crap, where am I going to put my fish tank?
Ahh, the joys of moving.