My last day at my store was yesterday. It was somewhat bittersweet. It didn't help that I was tired from only 2 hrs of sleep the night before. Then afterwards, I drove to Santa Monica to interview with some managers to "find the perfect place for me." My perfect place? Oh don't get me started.

I'm procrastinating. I'm supposed to be packing and cleaning up, but I can't get myself to do so. Psychological block, maybe? I slept 12 hrs last night, so I'm nice and refreshed. And then the day just up and went! I said I'd drop by to pick up my tips today, but I think I'll wait so 'til the rush is over. Meanwhile, there's plenty of CoH to play! For awhile there I just went around a beat up a bunch of low-level bad guys just cuz I could defeat 'em in one kick. Makes you feel like a bad-a$$. Perhaps that's why bullying is so popular.

And finally, a fun link, just cuz.

I should be asleep....

I hooked up with a random group on CoH tonight, and this guy offered me 50k (in CoH money) to stay on 'til he leveled up. So I stayed up 'til 4 am so I could help him level. Duuuuuude.

Perhaps this is a sign of addiction?

In an effort to get my readers interacting with this blog more...

Does anybody have an idea how I can post my movies on the web? DirectNIC currently won't let me (well, with the 20Mb limit, I wouldn't be able to host much anyway) unless I turn them all into swf files (which would lose a lot of quality and take up a lot of space). Is there a site where I can store movie files and be able to link to them?

(I like bleusky better.)

This past week was eventful. Girls' Nite Out ended up being only 5 of us. We went to a nice restaurant, then went to TGIFriday's, left after we ordered a drink but before we received it, then went to a club. One of my co-workers, a tall, leggy blonde, got hit on like crazy. I was rather shocked. And I'm realizing why I don't like clubbing. The reason? One word: Grinding.

My last week living at home. I'm scared witless. I mean, sure, things will be fine, I need to do this, and besides I'll drop by every week. But hey, I am my mother's daughter, and one thing she can do like nobody's business is worry.

I haven't posted by schedule in awhile, so here it is:
Mon -- no work
Tue -- 9:15 am to 4:15 pm
Wed -- 10:45 am to 6 pm
Thu -- 4:15 to 11:30 am
Fri -- movin' out
Sat -- movin' out
Sun -- church, finish moving

I allowed myself the weekend to move out just cuz I've got a lot of junk and before I can pack I gotta clean up my room.

My mom took the news of my leaving surprisingly well. Perhaps I worried for nothing.

I'm gonna sleep now... but it was a good day and night. No work, City of Heroes, long talk with good friend, and Olympic gymnastics was pretty exciting. I've got mixed feelings about elite women's gymnastics cuz of the book Little Girls in Pretty Boxes. Doesn't paint gymnastics or figure-skating in a good light. But I do enjoy watching the sport on TV.

Girls' Nite Out tonight!

Must sleep... but can't....

So I tried to transfer to a store that's really close to where I'll be living, and even though it is harshly understaffed, the manager didn't want me because I'm a student. She had too many students so she wanted someone with full-time availabilities. All I can say to her (though not to her face) is... good luck finding someone like that! I mean, if you needed a full-time job... would you work part-time at a Starbucks? Or more like, if you wanted a part-time job but you had the means for a full-time schedule, why the heck would you work for Starbucks when you could get paid more with better hours somewhere else? Basically, she was looking for people that wanted to join the company from the bottom up. And we all know that the only people willing to work, at least part-time, at retail places are students. Sigh. I wish I could argue that with her, but hey, she doesn't want me. So I'll just have to find another store. The good thing about Starbucks is that it's Starbucks, and therefore everywhere.

Trying to watch the Olympics nowadays... but the call of City of Heroes is too strong!

Tired, can't write much.

Yes, I was at a convention. SIGGRAPH is THE big one for computer graphics. Next year, I'm hoping to be passing my reel around. We did a lot of interactive digital art today and saw a few short films. No go on the raffles, though Dave did win something. We went and collected all the reel DVDs from the various art schools and watched them afterwards. So far the ones that impressed me were Savannah College of Art and Design and Ringling School of Art and Design, and the Media Design school in New Zealand left me less-than-impressed. For those of you that know, SCAD was the school I was seriously thinking of attending right out of Berkeley. The main thing that stopped me (besides finances) was that my portfolio sucked and I wanted to develop a good one and also get some non-flaky teachers to write my letters of rec. Anyway, now... I don't think I need to pursue another higher education degree to get my foot in the door of this crazy business, but a part of me is thinking about teaching (at a college), so that's always an option.

Good night. I guess I wasn't that tired. ;-)

SIGGRAPH is so damn cool. I mean, talk about being surrounded by gazillions of computer graphics geeks. That's the fun thing about this group. Picture a merging of the art geek and the computer geek. It's like... geek squared. So fun.

It's been two days and we haven't even seen any of the short films. And we discovered today that there's a whole room we have yet to explore! We have to cram all this in tomorrow! I'm debating whether or not to enter the raffles tomorrow. Now that people know about it, there'll be hoards of people. But they're giving away an Apple iPod mini, nVidia Quadro video cards, all sorts of soft and hardware, and there's even a computer workstation worth $18,000 (retail)! But the chances are so slim and I figure my time could be better spent at the other untouched rooms. Hmmm....

On a different note, it looks like getting a transfer won't be a problem. Now I just have to tell my parents that I'm moving out.... I'm such a coward.

From "Candorville" published 8/03/04. It reminded me a lot about my situation. Perhaps I, too, like Lemont, need a swift kick in the patootie. 

The new "non-slutty" outfit. She looks a lot more like Batgirl now, though it should look cooler with a cape (coming in a coupla months). 

City of Heroes: The old "slutty" outfit. 

Through my old roomate's blog, I found out that one of the hapkido instructors (well, technically the wife of the head instructor) back in my days of Berkeley has breast cancer. Her blog which is fascinating. I hope she'll make it through okay.

City of Heroes is a fun game. I even managed to come out of it tonight without getting nauseous. Yeah, I think I get motion-sickness from video games with a lot of first-person scenery. (The character is always facing the same direction, but the scenery moves... like first-person shooters except the character's in front of you.)

My main character is a Batgirl-esque character, stemming from Robert's supergroup led by his Batman-esque character. Her costume's a bit slutty, I realize, cuz I was going for an overall aesthetic effect and ended up with a... well, a slutty outfit. I wonder what that says about me. I will post screen shots soon.

I've been creating characters just for kicks, mainly just for looks. It's kinda like doodling or playing with a complex Mr. Potato-Head. I think the appeal (about superheroes in general) are that they are an extension of your fantasy self. These characters can be as tall or muscular as you want, wear stuff you can't find or don't dare, and they can be of any color. That's another thing. With my Batgirl character, I was trying to make her skin tone a tannish color so that she looks like a cross between a tanned white girl and a fair Asian girl. Well, I must have picked wrong cuz she just looks pale. It was making me think about if my fantasy self was Asian, or if I'm like the negative stereotype that all minorities secretly want to be white.

I've been trying to find a link, but so far all I have is this:
Candorville

U-Comics

Try to look at the August 3rd comics for both Candorville (which I remember as Lemont Brown from the Berkeley days) and La Cucharacha. I just thought "La Cucharacha" was funny cuz I was at work when I read that. And "Candorville" just made me think about how my parents must see me. Sigh.

Tired. Must sleep.

Schedule this week:

Mon -- 5 to 10 pm
Tue -- 1:15 to 7:45 pm
Wed -- 7:15 to 11:45 pm
Thu -- 1 to 7:30 pm
Fri -- no work, no school, YAY
Sat -- 6 pm to 12:45 am
Sun -- church, no work!

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Vegas was so fun and time just flew by. The best part? Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. We did both the Klingon Encounter and Borg 4-D, and they were both great. Pricey, but worth it. (And you know me, Miss Miser, don't say that about a lot of things.) I think I like the Klingon one better because it had a surprise beginning, but getting assimilated was pretty cool, too. What can I say? Geek heaven.

In the gambling front, I think I ended up ahead by about $5. I took about $40 in gambling money as well as a roll of quarters (though some of that was used for the arcade) and I ended up winning about $50 on a video poker machine, as well as $5 on megabucks (hey, the pot's too tempting to not try) as well my very last quarter turning into $2. Cool beans.

We also went to the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay. Pretty cool. Too bad the pictures didn't quite turn out right. And the buffets!

So coming home sucked cuz we knew that vacation was over and there was a lot of stuff waiting for us back home. Well at least for me. Cuz as soon as I came back, we returned the rental car, then I had dinner, took a nap, worked on my final project for class, and then drove to Santa Monica, and then proceeded to finish my project for my 8 am class the next day. Ugh. Hard. But no school for a month!

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My (new) manager wants to talk to me today before my shift. I am getting nervous. I have to keep reminding myself that it's just a job and if it doesn't involve God, Family, or Friends, then it's not that important.