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Holiday insanity
Dec. 27th, 2004 11:38 amWell, I have a lot to catch up on, don't I?
Christmas was awesome. I hope you all had great holidays, too. I'll be sure to read your LiveJournals about it when I get a chance, but I'm writing this from offline right now, so I obviously can't do that at the moment. I will later, okay?
Christmas Eve, as is tradition, we drove down to Davis to spend the evening with some of my Mom's side of the family. Unfortunately, Ryan had Mom open her present (the Clay Aiken Christmas CD) before we left, so we were stuck listening to Clay Aiken sing Christmas songs. -_-;; Luckily, the CD was short, so after it ended we listened to Maaya Sakamoto for about twenty minutes.
Well, just as Yakusoku wa Iranai was starting, we arrived at our relative's house. We brought Lily along with us (but left Tia at home in the house), so the first thing we did was check if their cats were in the house. They weren't, so we let Lily in their [nice, big, expensive] house. Lily went in the living room immediately and peed in the middle of the carpet. XP It's pretty embarrassing/amusing when your very well-mannered, mature, intelligent dog goes and pees on a relative's carpet. So we cleaned it up.
After that, I wandered around aimlessly in the house for a while, and talked to the younger of my two cousins who live in that particular house, Todd. He's cool because he's a semi-otaku and still likes Pokémon. Gives me plenty to talk about with him. ^^ This, however, is not particularly true for my only older cousin, Nicole. She's about four months older than I am, and is also the polar opposite of me. She's quiet, exceptionally normal, not particularly creative, and...well, we just come from different types of mindsets. We talked (slightly awkwardly) about the thing we do have in common-- school. She questioned once or twice about anime conventions (I kept talking about them at the family reunion this last summer), and I've decided that she has probably put me on her 'More than slightly insane' list in her head. XD "Yeah, we...errr...run around in costumes hugging complete strangers and exclaiming things in Japanese with several thousand people doing the same thing. Then we spent insane amounts of money buying imported stuff and go to Japanese rock concerts with cat ears on."
We talked to my Grandma and aunt about what we usually talk about--animals. A really interesting part of the evening was that my uncle just came back from Iraq about a month ago (he was there for six months working at a clinic), so he showed us hundreds of pictures from Iraq on his laptop. He had some interesting stories to tell, and it was cool seeing what's going on over there from someone who was there. The pictures he took were awesome.
I watched Todd and Ryan play violent video games for a while, then we decided to play some rousing games of Pool, followed by some highly competitive foozball. It was Nicole and I versus Todd and Ryan. Even though Todd was definitely the most competent foozball player there, Nicole and I managed to beat them once out of two games. Go us! XP
One of our other uncles, Chuck, showed up, too, with his Brazilian wife Patricia. We held some short conversations with them, though most of the time that there were there I spent playing pool and foozball, and eating dinner.
We opened presents (I'll post a presents list, if I can remember it all, later) then ate dessert, and basically talked 'til about 10:30 PM, when we decided we should leave. We gave my Grandma a ride home (she lives about fifteen minutes from our aunt and uncle's house), and on the way back we listened to...that random (but good) mp3 CD I made recently that consists of music from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Hellsing, .hack//sign, and Gravitation. What a combination. XD Then I went to sleep when I got home, and that was that.
The next day, we woke up and opened the presents from Mom. She didn't get much as far as actual presents go (which is fine with me), but she decided to give Ryan and I each $150. ^_^ Ryan is going to buy a PS2 with his money.
Christmas day at noon, Dad picked us up from Mom's house to go down to Marin (close to San Francisco, for those who don't live in California) and visit his side of the family. Dad just got a bunch more Grateful Dead CDs from his friend Ross, so we listened to those for...at least two hours. -_-;; Ugghhhh...boring. Not only have I heard all those songs hundreds of times starting at the day I was born, many of the songs go on for seriously fifteen minutes or more. AND it's all one genre, which now officially bores me because I'm so used to Yoko Kanno-esque switching of genres just about every song. Anyway, when that was over with, we listened to some random soundtracks and J-pop and J-rock and stuff.
We were way ahead of schedule, so we met my aunt Nancy at the hair salon where she works, and she gave us all haircuts. I only let her cut off about an inch of my hair and thin out my bangs, but she was thrilled that I even let her do that. (I normally won't let her touch my hair.) She's the crazy one who is fun to be around, but excessively girly (see: Thanksgiving entry). As usual, she asked me, "Any cute boys I need to know about?" Again, I was like, "Only anime ones!" Again, she was weirded out. She wasn't as weirded out this time, though, because I explained that I was FAR from the only girl who is interested in anime guys, and that almost all of my friends are attracted to them, too. Dad brought up the fact that one of my best friends is male, though, so we talked about Cody for a little while. It took her a while to get the idea that no, he's not my boyfriend/crush or anything. Of course, I conveniently left out the fact that Nicole and I use him as our cosplay slave, are constantly hugging him, and are extremely possessive of him. XD Seriously, no normal person can understand the way that Nicole and I feel about Cody, because we can't even describe it. ^^;; We try to find comparisons, but it never works.
Anyway, Dad and Ryan kept telling me how nice my hair looked, which caused me great annoyance. After we were done at the hair salon, Nancy showed off her new sports car and we took off to our Grandma Doe's house about ten minutes away.
There, we were confronted with tons of relatives giving us hugs and happy holidays and all that, so Ryan, Chris, Jordan (Chris and Jordan are our otaku cousins), and I went and hid in the computer room and/or the downstairs room with all the broken exercise equipment. I caused mass hysterics among the four of us by emphatically acting out your typical Inuyasha episode, and then I proceeded to further break an already broken piece of weird exercise equipment. I brought some AMVs with me, so at some point we trekked upstairs to the computer room and watched the few that actually worked on her computer.
We were fetched out of the room after the AMVs to open presents. Lots of presents this time, but like I said, I'll list what I can remember later.
Then we ate dinner. As usual, we got a kid's table in a different room, which let us do things like talk about weird aspects of anime during dinner without attracting weird stares and play with our food. I ate some lasagna and mashed potatos (sculpting them was out of the question, because it didn't work last time either). The green beans were used for interesting purposes. I put mine on the end of a fork and burned it in the candle 'til it was pure black and smoking, and then buried it in Chris' mashed potatos where no one could find it. XD Oh, a major disappointment: the burntbottoms weren't burnt! ;_; It was so saddening.
We left at about 8:00 PM and Dad insisted on listening to Grateful Dead the entire two and a half hour drive. >.< The drive was beautiful, though, because there was a nearly full moon and there was thick fog almost the whole time. We got home at 10:30 PM to open presents from Dad.
I got some cool stuff from Dad, and the big present he got me was this fancy $150 keyboard. I thought this was pretty awesome, but... Realistically, I knew I would never play it nearly enough for it to be worth it. I felt really bad about it, but in the end we decided to return it to Costco the next day. Like I said, I felt bad about it, but I believe that the novelty would have worn off after about two weeks and I would hardly touch it after that... Plus, while I am musical in my brain and good at figuring songs out on keyboards, I feel like I'm not experienced enough in music for a $150 keyboard to be justified. Dad was cool about it--he knew that it would go either way with that gift (either I would love it, or would feel like it wasn't what I needed), and he understood that I feel like if I'm going to invest time into anything artistic, it'll be something I'm serious about, like drawing or writing. I already feel like I don't draw or write nearly enough.
I didn't sleep well that night because I felt a little guilty about returning the keyboard for cash, and because I couldn't get my mind to shut up about anything. I got up at about 9 AM. Ryan went to Jake's house yesterday and Dad and I drove down to Roseville (this time I got to listen to anime music the whole ride there and back). We thought it would be completely crazy at Costco (due to the day-after-Christmas shopping), but Costco was calm. It only took about five minutes to return the keyboard (and therefore I have $150 to spend on buying my stolen CDs back), and then we went off to Best Buy just for a second. Dad was looking at TiVo subscription prices because he got a TiVo for Christmas from his mom, but didn't know that you have to pay for it monthly. In the end, he decided he's going to return the TiVo, because he doesn't need any more monthly expenses.
On the way home, we stopped at Target because Dad and I both got Target gift cards. I forgot mine, though, so I vowed to buy stuff at Target the next time I went.
We got home, picked Ryan up from Jake's house, and went to Mom's.
Well, when we got to Mom's, she said she was thinking about going to Roseville. Wow, Roseville twice in one day?! I was hyper, though, so this sounded like an excellent idea.
Oh, and I must add that yesterday was a gorgeous day. There were these big, puffy clouds EVERYWHERE, and after the sun went down, the moon was the brightest I think I've ever seen it. It was windy and cool, and before we left for Roseville I went and stood in the moonlight for at least forty five minutes. Because I'm a weird persona and I felt like it, I howled a whole bunch of times like a wolf. I made all the dogs in the neighborhood start barking at me (I have a fairly realistic wolf howl), but it was so awesome out I couldn't help it.
So, off we went to Roseville again. This time, I actually brought the gift cards I needed to spend, along with a little money for Wolf's Rain Vol. 4 and 5 at Best Buy. We stopped briefly at Target in Auburn, and I bought myself a Pokémon: Leaf Green version and Pichu and Azurill plushies with the gift card. The plushies are so cute! They're staring at me as I type. I can't wait to start the Leaf Green.
After that, we tried to go to Best Buy, but it was already closed. ;_; This was exceedingly disappointing, because I actually thought I was going to be able to get Wolf's Rain Vol. 4 and 5 that night, leaving only two volumes to go. So, instead we went to the Galleria for dinner. Like I always do at the Galleria, I got a Strawberry Julius and some steamed rice. I also shared a piece of cheesecake with Mom.
We went to EB Games, FYE, and Macy's in the Galleria. At EB Games, I discovered with great excitement that they had used anime! However, it was overpriced ($15 for a used DVD when I can get a brand new one half that price on EBay? I don't think so!) and they didn't have anything too exciting.
At FYE, however, I hunted down and found Samurai X: Reflection (Seisouhen, is it?) Director's Cut and happily bought it. (*Dodges anything Catystorm throws at her*). I like it, okay?
Mom bought us a new toaster oven. Excitingness.
Mom wanted to go to Walmart, even though it was late by that time. We got lost on the way to the Walmart, but we found it within about fifteen minutes. Ummm...Walmart was just as uneventful as always. I did find and buy Fluke on DVD, though, for cheap.
Today I woke up and it was raining. This isn't surprising--all the weather people said there would be a storm. I love the rain, so it's nice. I wish there would be something more intense, though, like a thunderstorm.
Anyway, today I'm going to call Cody and Makayla and see if they can come to Japantown with Mom, Ryan, and I on the 29th and 30th (I would invite Nicole, too, but she's in LA), and I'm also going to try to talk Mom into watching Millennium Actress with me. I think she'd like it.
I'm not going to list the Christmas presents yet because I don't have most of them with me here at Mom's. I got lots of great things, though, and enough money that I can buy back some of my CDs and have some money to spend at Japantown. It's pretty sad that $300 will only buy me back eleven of my CDs... I used to have around seventy imported anime CDs. ;_; BUT...OMFG, Yoko Kanno released another Cowboy Bebop CD a few days ago! *Dies of happiness* It's for the video game, but it's more Yoko Kanno Cowboy Bebop music!
Oh, and now I have to go send thank you e-mails to the relatives for the Christmas presents.
Too lazy to proofread. Ignore any typos. >.
Christmas was awesome. I hope you all had great holidays, too. I'll be sure to read your LiveJournals about it when I get a chance, but I'm writing this from offline right now, so I obviously can't do that at the moment. I will later, okay?
Christmas Eve, as is tradition, we drove down to Davis to spend the evening with some of my Mom's side of the family. Unfortunately, Ryan had Mom open her present (the Clay Aiken Christmas CD) before we left, so we were stuck listening to Clay Aiken sing Christmas songs. -_-;; Luckily, the CD was short, so after it ended we listened to Maaya Sakamoto for about twenty minutes.
Well, just as Yakusoku wa Iranai was starting, we arrived at our relative's house. We brought Lily along with us (but left Tia at home in the house), so the first thing we did was check if their cats were in the house. They weren't, so we let Lily in their [nice, big, expensive] house. Lily went in the living room immediately and peed in the middle of the carpet. XP It's pretty embarrassing/amusing when your very well-mannered, mature, intelligent dog goes and pees on a relative's carpet. So we cleaned it up.
After that, I wandered around aimlessly in the house for a while, and talked to the younger of my two cousins who live in that particular house, Todd. He's cool because he's a semi-otaku and still likes Pokémon. Gives me plenty to talk about with him. ^^ This, however, is not particularly true for my only older cousin, Nicole. She's about four months older than I am, and is also the polar opposite of me. She's quiet, exceptionally normal, not particularly creative, and...well, we just come from different types of mindsets. We talked (slightly awkwardly) about the thing we do have in common-- school. She questioned once or twice about anime conventions (I kept talking about them at the family reunion this last summer), and I've decided that she has probably put me on her 'More than slightly insane' list in her head. XD "Yeah, we...errr...run around in costumes hugging complete strangers and exclaiming things in Japanese with several thousand people doing the same thing. Then we spent insane amounts of money buying imported stuff and go to Japanese rock concerts with cat ears on."
We talked to my Grandma and aunt about what we usually talk about--animals. A really interesting part of the evening was that my uncle just came back from Iraq about a month ago (he was there for six months working at a clinic), so he showed us hundreds of pictures from Iraq on his laptop. He had some interesting stories to tell, and it was cool seeing what's going on over there from someone who was there. The pictures he took were awesome.
I watched Todd and Ryan play violent video games for a while, then we decided to play some rousing games of Pool, followed by some highly competitive foozball. It was Nicole and I versus Todd and Ryan. Even though Todd was definitely the most competent foozball player there, Nicole and I managed to beat them once out of two games. Go us! XP
One of our other uncles, Chuck, showed up, too, with his Brazilian wife Patricia. We held some short conversations with them, though most of the time that there were there I spent playing pool and foozball, and eating dinner.
We opened presents (I'll post a presents list, if I can remember it all, later) then ate dessert, and basically talked 'til about 10:30 PM, when we decided we should leave. We gave my Grandma a ride home (she lives about fifteen minutes from our aunt and uncle's house), and on the way back we listened to...that random (but good) mp3 CD I made recently that consists of music from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Hellsing, .hack//sign, and Gravitation. What a combination. XD Then I went to sleep when I got home, and that was that.
The next day, we woke up and opened the presents from Mom. She didn't get much as far as actual presents go (which is fine with me), but she decided to give Ryan and I each $150. ^_^ Ryan is going to buy a PS2 with his money.
Christmas day at noon, Dad picked us up from Mom's house to go down to Marin (close to San Francisco, for those who don't live in California) and visit his side of the family. Dad just got a bunch more Grateful Dead CDs from his friend Ross, so we listened to those for...at least two hours. -_-;; Ugghhhh...boring. Not only have I heard all those songs hundreds of times starting at the day I was born, many of the songs go on for seriously fifteen minutes or more. AND it's all one genre, which now officially bores me because I'm so used to Yoko Kanno-esque switching of genres just about every song. Anyway, when that was over with, we listened to some random soundtracks and J-pop and J-rock and stuff.
We were way ahead of schedule, so we met my aunt Nancy at the hair salon where she works, and she gave us all haircuts. I only let her cut off about an inch of my hair and thin out my bangs, but she was thrilled that I even let her do that. (I normally won't let her touch my hair.) She's the crazy one who is fun to be around, but excessively girly (see: Thanksgiving entry). As usual, she asked me, "Any cute boys I need to know about?" Again, I was like, "Only anime ones!" Again, she was weirded out. She wasn't as weirded out this time, though, because I explained that I was FAR from the only girl who is interested in anime guys, and that almost all of my friends are attracted to them, too. Dad brought up the fact that one of my best friends is male, though, so we talked about Cody for a little while. It took her a while to get the idea that no, he's not my boyfriend/crush or anything. Of course, I conveniently left out the fact that Nicole and I use him as our cosplay slave, are constantly hugging him, and are extremely possessive of him. XD Seriously, no normal person can understand the way that Nicole and I feel about Cody, because we can't even describe it. ^^;; We try to find comparisons, but it never works.
Anyway, Dad and Ryan kept telling me how nice my hair looked, which caused me great annoyance. After we were done at the hair salon, Nancy showed off her new sports car and we took off to our Grandma Doe's house about ten minutes away.
There, we were confronted with tons of relatives giving us hugs and happy holidays and all that, so Ryan, Chris, Jordan (Chris and Jordan are our otaku cousins), and I went and hid in the computer room and/or the downstairs room with all the broken exercise equipment. I caused mass hysterics among the four of us by emphatically acting out your typical Inuyasha episode, and then I proceeded to further break an already broken piece of weird exercise equipment. I brought some AMVs with me, so at some point we trekked upstairs to the computer room and watched the few that actually worked on her computer.
We were fetched out of the room after the AMVs to open presents. Lots of presents this time, but like I said, I'll list what I can remember later.
Then we ate dinner. As usual, we got a kid's table in a different room, which let us do things like talk about weird aspects of anime during dinner without attracting weird stares and play with our food. I ate some lasagna and mashed potatos (sculpting them was out of the question, because it didn't work last time either). The green beans were used for interesting purposes. I put mine on the end of a fork and burned it in the candle 'til it was pure black and smoking, and then buried it in Chris' mashed potatos where no one could find it. XD Oh, a major disappointment: the burntbottoms weren't burnt! ;_; It was so saddening.
We left at about 8:00 PM and Dad insisted on listening to Grateful Dead the entire two and a half hour drive. >.< The drive was beautiful, though, because there was a nearly full moon and there was thick fog almost the whole time. We got home at 10:30 PM to open presents from Dad.
I got some cool stuff from Dad, and the big present he got me was this fancy $150 keyboard. I thought this was pretty awesome, but... Realistically, I knew I would never play it nearly enough for it to be worth it. I felt really bad about it, but in the end we decided to return it to Costco the next day. Like I said, I felt bad about it, but I believe that the novelty would have worn off after about two weeks and I would hardly touch it after that... Plus, while I am musical in my brain and good at figuring songs out on keyboards, I feel like I'm not experienced enough in music for a $150 keyboard to be justified. Dad was cool about it--he knew that it would go either way with that gift (either I would love it, or would feel like it wasn't what I needed), and he understood that I feel like if I'm going to invest time into anything artistic, it'll be something I'm serious about, like drawing or writing. I already feel like I don't draw or write nearly enough.
I didn't sleep well that night because I felt a little guilty about returning the keyboard for cash, and because I couldn't get my mind to shut up about anything. I got up at about 9 AM. Ryan went to Jake's house yesterday and Dad and I drove down to Roseville (this time I got to listen to anime music the whole ride there and back). We thought it would be completely crazy at Costco (due to the day-after-Christmas shopping), but Costco was calm. It only took about five minutes to return the keyboard (and therefore I have $150 to spend on buying my stolen CDs back), and then we went off to Best Buy just for a second. Dad was looking at TiVo subscription prices because he got a TiVo for Christmas from his mom, but didn't know that you have to pay for it monthly. In the end, he decided he's going to return the TiVo, because he doesn't need any more monthly expenses.
On the way home, we stopped at Target because Dad and I both got Target gift cards. I forgot mine, though, so I vowed to buy stuff at Target the next time I went.
We got home, picked Ryan up from Jake's house, and went to Mom's.
Well, when we got to Mom's, she said she was thinking about going to Roseville. Wow, Roseville twice in one day?! I was hyper, though, so this sounded like an excellent idea.
Oh, and I must add that yesterday was a gorgeous day. There were these big, puffy clouds EVERYWHERE, and after the sun went down, the moon was the brightest I think I've ever seen it. It was windy and cool, and before we left for Roseville I went and stood in the moonlight for at least forty five minutes. Because I'm a weird persona and I felt like it, I howled a whole bunch of times like a wolf. I made all the dogs in the neighborhood start barking at me (I have a fairly realistic wolf howl), but it was so awesome out I couldn't help it.
So, off we went to Roseville again. This time, I actually brought the gift cards I needed to spend, along with a little money for Wolf's Rain Vol. 4 and 5 at Best Buy. We stopped briefly at Target in Auburn, and I bought myself a Pokémon: Leaf Green version and Pichu and Azurill plushies with the gift card. The plushies are so cute! They're staring at me as I type. I can't wait to start the Leaf Green.
After that, we tried to go to Best Buy, but it was already closed. ;_; This was exceedingly disappointing, because I actually thought I was going to be able to get Wolf's Rain Vol. 4 and 5 that night, leaving only two volumes to go. So, instead we went to the Galleria for dinner. Like I always do at the Galleria, I got a Strawberry Julius and some steamed rice. I also shared a piece of cheesecake with Mom.
We went to EB Games, FYE, and Macy's in the Galleria. At EB Games, I discovered with great excitement that they had used anime! However, it was overpriced ($15 for a used DVD when I can get a brand new one half that price on EBay? I don't think so!) and they didn't have anything too exciting.
At FYE, however, I hunted down and found Samurai X: Reflection (Seisouhen, is it?) Director's Cut and happily bought it. (*Dodges anything Catystorm throws at her*). I like it, okay?
Mom bought us a new toaster oven. Excitingness.
Mom wanted to go to Walmart, even though it was late by that time. We got lost on the way to the Walmart, but we found it within about fifteen minutes. Ummm...Walmart was just as uneventful as always. I did find and buy Fluke on DVD, though, for cheap.
Today I woke up and it was raining. This isn't surprising--all the weather people said there would be a storm. I love the rain, so it's nice. I wish there would be something more intense, though, like a thunderstorm.
Anyway, today I'm going to call Cody and Makayla and see if they can come to Japantown with Mom, Ryan, and I on the 29th and 30th (I would invite Nicole, too, but she's in LA), and I'm also going to try to talk Mom into watching Millennium Actress with me. I think she'd like it.
I'm not going to list the Christmas presents yet because I don't have most of them with me here at Mom's. I got lots of great things, though, and enough money that I can buy back some of my CDs and have some money to spend at Japantown. It's pretty sad that $300 will only buy me back eleven of my CDs... I used to have around seventy imported anime CDs. ;_; BUT...OMFG, Yoko Kanno released another Cowboy Bebop CD a few days ago! *Dies of happiness* It's for the video game, but it's more Yoko Kanno Cowboy Bebop music!
Oh, and now I have to go send thank you e-mails to the relatives for the Christmas presents.
Too lazy to proofread. Ignore any typos. >.
