I haven’t posted in a while, which is truly a pity ‘cuz lots of stuff has been going on! Let’s move semi-chronologically.
Firstly! My trip to Bellevue outlined in my last post (woo driving adventure) was truly excellent. I was initially unbelievably nervous about it since I had little to no contact with Will (cell phone reception = NOPE SORRY LOL), plus I would be driving to an unfamiliar place to meet unfamiliar people. And as some may know, this is one of my worst fears. I am often concerned I will be judged in some manner if people see me doing stuff that I don’t understand or…somsuch. Anyway, the actual drive to Bellevue wasn’t hard at all, and once I got into the town, I found that Google Maps had led me not to the State Park but to a cemetary. SUCCESS. So I called Mark, who got me to an entrance into the park. Unfortunately, I then got ahold of Will (thank God for that–even if he had to use his mom’s phone and therefore a different service provider) and found out it was NOT the right entrance to the park. Yes, there are several, and they do not connect to each other. So I floundered around for a while on the highway until I found the proper gravel road and made it to the campground.
I met his family and all of their friends and such, which was overwhelming in terms of name-learning but very fun nonetheless. They were very…talkative. In a very friendly, open way. I was terribly amused by the conversations I observed and heard–it was a lot like hanging out with my dad’s side of the family (minus the unbelievable volume of swearing, haha). Anyway, after a lot of hanging with Will while food was consumed (their breakfast–I had eaten before starting out on the road), we all crammed into a few cars and drove to Galena to mill about the shops and such. I didn’t buy anything (I had forgotten my wallet in the car, and I didn’t want to impose when it was offered–plus I didn’t really want anything anyway, I was just enjoying the trip), though I did get ice cream with Will at one point which–I may say meekly and with a kind of embarassed sappiness–was kind of really adorable to me because it was in one of those old-fashioned-looking parlours and even if it was updated otherwise, it was kind of super cute and…I dunno. Eating ice cream with your bo is kind of traditionally adorable. …Don’t kill me. I am overly romantic in most ways. BUT ANYWAY IT WAS COOL, I LOVE ICE CREAM HAHA.
Then we all went back to the campgrounds and had dinner after they played some games (like the bean bag tossing one with which I am so familiar, plus…this strange…beercan…frisbee…thing that I had never even seen before, go figure there), and that was delicious. Then I had to go home (sadface). The drive back was much less interesting, and I ended up yawning a lot, so I switched out the Star Trek soundtrack for loud rock music that I could sing along to. Win.
SO THAT WAS SATURDAY. I had a lot of fun, it was really nice to meet all them peoples and spend some time with the boy, who I probably won’t see forrrrrr two weeks? Well, a week and half anyway. Patience is a virtue I am learning to accept–usually I am pretty good after an initial emo moment. In any case, I am looking forward to the next visit. Hee.
On to things that are probably of more interest to people other than me, art! Lots of art has been going down. I started in on a comic for my dear friend (and fellow admin./superior/founder of Org. Nu and Keyblade Brigade) where her character, Xeth’s, beats up this dude and then makes out with my character, Xalna, after she totally scolds him. Epic win. I should probably work on that more, though, since I am up to page 6 and then got distracted. And everything from 7 on is really interesting! Like thee FIGHT and the MAKIN’ OUT. Motivation, I choose you!
Aaaand I was told about an OC tournament! Just in time–I was recently missing the good ol’ days of Dark Kingdom and 9 Levels (which never really got past the second round…that is a cryin’ shame, if I do say so myself). It’s a really interesting one; you enter an artist (usually yourself in some incarnation or another) into this world where you can use some item to summon up to 3 original characters to fight for you. It is kind of like Pokemon battles, but there is an artist instead, and the Pokemon can talk and be…humanoid. And there’s no capturing. And you don’t have to collect anything. Okay, it isn’t a LOT like Pokemon. But I digress. I am entering myself under the name GG for the artist, and I can summon Tek and Noirei using my cell phone, hurr hurr. I have missed those boys, though, so it’s nice to give them a fresh new look and let them run amok in a new setting. Here’s hoping I get in! I really need to finish my audition comic, then I can actually submit my entry (I already did all three character sheets). Since it’s based more around writing than artistic merit, I made sure to choose characters that I can be frustrated with (instead of them just listening to whatever I wanted them to do) and that don’t get along with each other. Much more interesting that way.
Plus the shiny new versions of Tek and Noirei have made me start rethinking Miles 7, which has been so sadly neglected for…what, the past two years? I think that is pretty possible. Anyway, I have been reformatting the history leading up to the main plot, and I’m reworking the way half-demons look, act, function, etc. Plus Lakai got one more change to her design (along with the last few, which included a height change, a new eyecolor, and a different coloring for her hair)–she is finally losing the paper white skin. I KNOW, it is shocking. But I figure all the half-demon markings should correspond to their color (red markings for red half-demons, yellow for yellow half-demons, and so on and so forth), so…she needs white markings, and with white skin, white markings will not show up too well. Hence, she is going to have darker skin! On top of that, she has always been drawn to look somewhat middle-eastern or somesuch, so this makes more sense, honestly. It should be a big difference, but I think I will be very pleased. Plus the plot might be taking some pretty hard hits as far as changes go, but who knows! I am still working it out. I don’t know if/when I’ll actually go back and start rewriting parts, but it’s nice to start in on the process of updating it. It needed it–badly.
Oh, I still haven’t found a paying job for the summer, but I DO have an unpaid internship! I will officially be spending, ehhhhh, 3 or 4 hours a day working at KLJB, a local TV station (where my mom used to work–like, 20 years ago…and everyone who still works there remembers when I was a baby, haha, awkward-ish). I figure I can do graphic design stuff, some editing (since I have experience there), and they seem to want me to blog perhaps. I think this is because I mentioned that I can blog and while they have on for the station, no one has even touched it. Ah well, that will be interesting. The best thing about it, though, is that my boss remembers me from when I was little and was really close friends with my mom. Furthermore, he plays video games. EXCELLENT. He had a desktop of the cake from the end of Portal surrounded by Companion Cubes. We spent an hour talking about Bioshock, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, and watching YouTube videos. I think this is promising.
Movies! I won’t delve heavily into this one, but MAN is the new Star Trek good. My love for it is, like, borderline Pirates of the Caribbean-caliber, and that is hard to achieve. I have already made a fancharacter and started babbling about it to my mom–who, fortunately, loves Star Trek and therefore enjoys and understands our conversations. We also started watching some of the older movies, which are actually pretty dang good. So I highly recommend seeing it. I have seen it twice now, and I am going to see it again with Grace and her mom and sister, I think. HOORAY.
Laaaastly, on the gaming side, I took a heavy break from FF7 and lost motivation to play it, but instead I decided to start up a new game of FF8. As one might expect, I am blogging the journey. Anyone who wants to read my numerous complaints, bragging, training strategies, and healthy doses of my opinion, the URL is:
ff8garden.wordpress.com
I think that about covers everything. I have a lot of work and interesting stuff coming up, so I will do my best to keep this page updated with all of that craziness. Catch y’all later!
