fandom – Imaginary Sunshine

Of mice, public transit and term papers

Michelle — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:36:51 +0000

Today’s been pretty good. I slept in a bit this morning, and did get to class on time this morning (well, I was about 5 minutes late – but my prof had only gone through two lecture slides by the time I got there) and I went to my biology lab. Friend and lab partner, R, was late (it was an optional lab, but it was an open lab to work on our projects). So she was about an hour later, so everyone else was working on their projects, I did my notes, and I played with the mice that were in my room. One of the lab instructor had gotten 3 white lab mice from a colleague, the mice all have tumors, it’s so tragic. But she saw that they had caught my interest, so she told me to go ahead and feed them if I wanted to (so I fed them sunflower seeds, they were so adorable chewing on the seeds!). And then she let me open the cage and pull one out to hold. They’re really adorable mice – white with red eyes and long skinny tails. They were so adorable and squeaked! Ahh, they were so cute. But while I was waiting in that hour, I got the majority of another hat done while doing my notes and waiting for R to arrive while being completely amused by the mice and reviewing my project notes (the 1 page, single spaced, size 12 font, biology project is done, as of ~2:30pm).

Also spent my time on public transit today listen to Hans Langer (again… x many times) and read half of Story of O by Pauline Réage while ignoring crazy, stupid, annoying people that travel on public transit. Which was nice. That being said, some young child asked me what book I was reading while on the bus. Normally when people ask that, I just hold the book up to flash them the cover. But instead, I said I was reading the first Harry Potter. Know what that kid said to me? “Wow, you’re a SLOW reader! That book’s been around since forever.” Nice to know that 1997, for the UK version, and 1998, for the US version, counts as forever these days!

But the next few days will be so much fun. Mostly my psychology paper, which still needs a little bit more work and a lot of editing before I hand it in on Monday, and more crafting for fun things like… gifts? Yeah, my sister went and bought a shitload of yarn (pardon my French) because she’s making a fireplace cozy… (I’m quite serious about this.) Mostly because she can. Oh the people that I’m related to…

And… I have two upcoming fanlistings (yay): General Hospital (favourite soap opera!) and Seamus Dever (actor, who played Ian Devlin on General Hospital, and play a character on a new favourite show, Castle). I’ll probably be getting them between my third (biology) and fourth (and last, psychology) finals since there’s a week between them.

“I didn’t think that people wore stuff like that anymore!”

Michelle — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:36:40 +0000

Not much to report thus far. I slept in quite a bit today, which was awesome. But I did get up before noon, so not so much. And I did fall asleep sometime after 3am, so I need to work on that a lot. Especially as once September rolls around, I’ll be getting up at 5am on a daily basis for school. No more staying up for me! I’m going to be going to bed extra early for the last two weeks of August in order to get used to it. I don’t want to screw myself over that early in the school year by falling asleep in class!

Volunteering went so well today. I got roped into playing a card game with someone there and it was one I’d never played before (it’s called Kings Corners and I found a website with the rules, so you can check it out too!). It’s a lot like Solitaire, but it’s multi-player. I played so many rounds, she admitted later that she let me win a few times! I was kinda insulted, haha. But she said she stopped letting me win after I won in my first turn in one of the rounds. I also played a pseudo-Jeopardy with the people at volunteering as well as more cards and I played server and made many (many, many, many) cups of coffee (bleh) and tea (yay). Overall, volunteering went well.

There was a bit of a mishap where one of the volunteers (L) was commenting on another volunteer’s clothing choices for the day. C had leaned over once to get a straw out of the lower drawer and apparently L could see the waistband of the girl’s underwear and commented on ‘granny panties’ and whatnot. It was rude and G (our supervisor-type coordinator) rolled her eyes while I went “Have you seen what you’re wearing today?”.

L was in clubbing gear, essentially. Open-toed flats (which we are not allowed since we help with moving wheelchairs and carts). Very low-cut dress (not allowed, due to sensiblities and the fact that some of the residents will start sexually harassing us for it) and skirt that was mid-thigh (also not allowed, because of sensibilities, again – considering most of the residents were all born pre-1940s, they all like us to be a little bit “covered”). Oh, and her entire bra was basically showing (it’s so difficult to have a conversation with someone who’s 6’1″ when their bra’s completely showing and eye-level with your face).

She started to defend herself and G just cut in there and restated the rules and that L should have gone home and changed (she slept over at a friend’s house and then went straight from there to volunteering) and changed into something appropriate and that L should have been very glad that none of the residents had complained about it as they normally do. Or they normally throw food down the shirts of women wearing low cut tops (I saw someone learn that the hard way!)

I stayed an extra half-hour to help out one of my favourite residents (he’s such a charmer!) with his blueberries. Which was fun, actually, he likes telling me random stories from when he was younger. Besides that, I didn’t really do much after I got home. A lot of computer, some coding, some Photoshopping and photo-taking for me today. I also read a book and whatnot.

New fanlisting up, for the relationship between Ethan Lovett and Lulu Spencer of General Hospital (they’re half-siblings) and it is called “Acceptance”. As, in soap opera-land, they only recently discovered their familial connection and she accepted him (while her brother and other half-brother are kinda… rude and unforgiving at times). Worked on my dolly blog, but it’s not quite finished yet (I just can’t decide between 2 columns or 3!; but there is a new photo up on my Flickr photostream of my darling Sophie. I love that girl so much.

There’s this weight on my shoulders

Michelle — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:02:52 +0000

First thing’s first…

I got approved for a new fanlisting! The Ethan Lovett & Lesley Lu “Lulu” Spencer fanlisting. They’re are two characters in the ABC soap opera General Hospital. They started off as adversaries, then they decided to be friends, and then, it turns out that they’re half siblings. I love their relationship. Hence the fanlisting. Besides… Ethan has an Australian accent. Which was a really pleasant surprise, I applied for the fanlisting nearly a month ago so I nearly forgot about it.

Work was okay, rather boring and long, but it was okay overall. The new logo that was revealed a while ago, came with a new company website (of course). They came up with little slogans for each product line and someone actually approved the phrase “you need balls for this job”. For a company website. I’m not sure why someone would approve that. I mean, yes, on some level it’s amusing. But at the same time, for a professional website for a company that deals with people on an international scale, it’s not appropriate. That and I don’t have much of a sense of humour tonight.

I went thrift store shopping with my eldest sister today and it turns out that I introduced her to it. I found a really cute hoodie (green with white daisies all over it) but the sleeves were ratty and… it had this horrible smell to it. I mean, the smell would probably come out with a good washing (maybe). But I didn’t like the sleeves. I also found sweatshirts and such from my school – the thrift store was selling them for $5-6 and they retail for $60+ at my school’s bookstore (granted, those ones don’t come with stains…).

Some… stuff happened tonight, so I don’t really feel like writing too much. I did want to share my new fanlisting acquisition though, since I love their relationship and all that.

Anyways, I decided that I will be making a dolly blog so I won’t bore you all to death with details about Sophie and her hopefully soon-to-be expanding wardrobe and other dolly-craft endeavours! It will probably be on a subdomain (I have 3 domains already… And I’m not that good at updating all of them!) but I need help coming up with a name!

Because, left to my own devices, I just know that I’ll end up with something like… “Make Believe” or “Imagine” or something equally non-descriptive, short and… well… kind of boring.

A little bit of everything

Michelle — Sat, 16 May 2009 04:39:34 +0000

The last week has been… Well, “interesting” is too vague and “exciting” is all wrong, no matter how you take the meaning of the word. Work’s been fairly consistent. Go to work, log into my computer and scan a few documents before getting my ‘real’ task for the day. Now, my supervisor will be off on vacation, so he’s loaded me up with lots of things to do next week (which is a four day week, thanks to Victoria Day! Hello, long weekend, it’s been a while!). So that should be… fun? A lot of driving between buildings, he thinks I might even just end up spending whole days over there… I hope not. But that’s work.

Umm… Someone new from work knows about the Boyfriend and myself. That would be my own doing, and I really have a good reason for it. This occurred on Tuesday. Umm, not going to get into it right now as it involves a story and me explaining why I would even tell anyone. That being said, D’s pretty trustworthy and he understands all my reasons for why people can’t know. Plus he thinks it’s cute. And he actually used the word ‘cute’, which was kind of weird. And to be honest, I only told him because he gave me some advice that was kind of useless unless someone found out. And yeah, that was Tuesday.

Thursday was the Grey’s Anatomy season finale. Two hours of “No!” and “LIVE, DAMN YOU!” and “NOOOOOOOOOOOO” from me. It was good fun. And, of course, they had to end on a cliffhanger of all things. Two hours of all that and a freaking cliffhanger. But I’m sad that I have to wait until season 6 begins in order to find out what happens! Ugh, when do season premieres start again? (Too far from now, obviously!) I’m also wanting to know what’ll happen in season 3 of Private Practice as well, but not as much as I want to find out what happens in season 6 of Grey’s! And that’s it for my fandom-ness for today.

I’m currently in the process of designing new crochet projects. One involves math (… I know, math and me… What a horrible combination!) and the other involves cutesy animals and babies. So that’s interesting. I also came up with a new project that I’m going to do for myself so I have something to decorate my cubicle with. But I’m keeping that completely underwraps since I want it to be a surprise (I’m not even telling my sister!).

Speaking of my sister… My other sister is officially coming back to Canada on the 27th. My parents are falling over themselves getting things ready so that we’re all welcoming and that she’ll stay instead of moving out as soon as she finds a new job here. Fat chance of that, seeing as it turns out that the only reason that she took the job in California was because it allowed her to get away from the parents. I mean, honestly, just taking a job in the next province would have done that, or stay in the same province and just move time zones! But yeah, that’s how badly she wanted to get away from the parents. And they’re thinking that they can convince her to stay at home…

But on a happier note, I’ve been getting updates done on my baby (read: Ames!). Turning 3 years old next month, I’m crazy happy about that. I’ll probably make the site a new layout in a while (the current one was just put up in late April!) but right now I’m organizing some kind of ‘election’ in the game as it takes place in a city and they don’t have any form of municipal government at the moment. But it’s not going to have mayors or anything, just councillors. Which was treated very nicely when I first suggested it, so I’ll see how that goes.

Umm… I think that’s about it? Oh! One last bit – I need to go to bank to get money so I can buy myself a present that my parents are going to kill me over (maybe). =) I’ll be sure to post photos when I get it!

Wedding (!!!), work and a new fanlisting

Michelle — Fri, 08 May 2009 04:09:57 +0000

If you haven’t yet, and you still can, go watch Grey’s Anatomy. It’s the 100th episode and the wedding that you don’t want to miss.

And in other news… It’s Thursday! Which meant Grey’s night. No more Private Practice as the season finale was last week (the season finale for Grey’s is next week, it’s going to be two hours, I can’t wait!). And Thursday means that tomorrow is Friday and that means then it’s the weekend, yay! This week has seemed incredibly short, but oh well. Weekend! Which means… my dentist appointment (that my parents made for me and didn’t inform me of until two hours ago), volunteering, Mother’s Day and hopefully seeing the Boyfriend (right, Clay?).

I got dating advice at work from the most unlikely of pairs. A and D (not the nice one, but the one who has been nice thus far). They were giving me dating advice and the weird thing is that it wasn’t bad advice (however, it was all very common sense!). But still, weird. So I didn’t do much prior to lunch. Then I got sent to the other building because the guy I normally work with over there (let’s call him “C”) actually sent my boss an email saying that he wasn’t going to do something (… write a freaking document) because “there are many technical terms that I do not understand”. And he put it in writing of all things. In electronic form. To be forwarded or printed as my boss may wish to do. Oh boy. But yeah, so I got sent over to take notes (no photos – my boss didn’t tell me that he wanted photos until after I got back!) and I spent some time with someone new-to-me, J. He was really helpful and explained everything as best he could. So hopefully that’ll work out well tomorrow when I continue working on it. I also got ‘packages’ done for tomorrow’s meeting… 161 pages in total for all 7 copies (23 pages/package). We don’t like trees very much at work, as you can see. I may have pilfered some copies from other people as well. To prevent me from printing on even more paper.

But besides work… And getting teased by M over at the new building… And getting Skittles today (from you-know-who!)… Nothing much happened. It’s been a pretty okay week. Decent deadlines for work and whatnot so I don’t have too much to do as I can’t do much until after the meeting on Friday (which is at 1pm and expected to “only take an hour”… I doubt that very much). So I’ll probably get started on the bulk of the work on Monday. Which will hopefully be lasting me for quite a while. Cheers to data entry.

And last, but not least, I have a new fanlisting up! It’s for the song “Miss California” by Jack’s Mannequin and the fanlisting is called Misplacing My Affections.

So what’s the difference between two different things again?

Michelle — Sun, 03 May 2009 02:11:09 +0000

So today… Woke up, ate breakfast, made a new bracelet for my mom, went for a run (my legs aren’t being very forgiving for it, by the way). Then there was a lunch, watching Dollhouse as I didn’t get a chance to watch it last night (SPOILER, because I’m awful: omg, did you watch it?! Alpha? Paul? Echo? Alpha was a lot more attractive once he was no longer acting like someone else. And Paul’s a jerk for what he did to Mellie.). Then there was a lunch, some crocheting, a little photography taking and then.. yeah, that’s about it for today. Oh, there was dinner as well. But that was shortlived.

I’ve applied for a few fanlistings, mostly for characters from television shows that I noticed were lacking (shocker). Thanks for the comments about the new theme, I’m glad you like it.

A little while ago, my dad was asking me a question regarding Photoshop about a feature that I’ve used before, but I haven’t used in ages and it’s not something that I’m particularly familiar with. So I tell him that I don’t know and then I suggested that he go and look it up with Google. Then he gives me this look and goes “But it’s so much easier to ask you than to look it up. Why don’t you go look it up for me and then tell me?” I tried to explain that I was busy (… sort of, not really – I just didn’t feel like it) and then he starts going on and on about everything that he’s ever done for me. Chinese school (nine years worth of Saturdays that I will never get back, plus I didn’t learn much), my laptop (… bought with the interest from my RESP), various family vacations (from before the age of 13) and how much stress I cause to him and how that hinder his health. So I fucking Googled the stupid feature he wanted me to explain to him and then told him how to use it. Now he’s sitting in the same room and playing with Photoshop and keeps on asking me questions. “What’s the difference between the healing brush and blurring?”

My final (scaled!) psychology mark is out! It got scaled up 5%! Now I’m just waiting for that mark to officially show up (it’s only on my prof’s website right now) and my biology grade.

I’d like to take suggestions for any television series (finished or not) that you think I should watch. Because, see, I have nothing better to do. Last year I caught up on all the seasons of One Tree Hill that were out, as well as Gossip Girl and a few other series. And so far, I’ve been keeping up pretty well with General Hospital, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice and Dollhouse. Any series that you think I should watch? Thanks in advanced for your suggestion(s)!

There’s never a wish better than this

Michelle — Sat, 02 May 2009 03:37:46 +0000

@ Kristi – I probably won’t end up decorating it too much since it’s a) surrounded by random boxes of old computer parts, b) the walls [where I could pin things up] are partially covered with other documents and c) I spend a third of my time over at the other building, a third downstairs and a third in my cubicle.

And today is the end of my first work week for the year. I finished up all the paperwork for payroll today, got access to almost everything that I need access too. I also spent most of the day roaming around a building that I am not familiar with at all. And as a result, a lot of people were asking who I was and if I was supposed to be there. I texted Clay later saying that I really ought to make a shirt going “Yes, I work here and yes, I’m [my mom]’s daughter”. It really would make life a whole lot easier. Because I get a lot of “Do you work here?” and “Are you [my mom]’s daughter?” So even if my supervisor calls ahead to get the okay for me to roam around and observe, people still question my presence. Someone thought I was trespassing, until I saw someone that I knew and got them to vouch for me. At least they’re diligent? I also froze my computer by accident by having too many Word documents open. I have to remember that the computer I’m using is fairly ancient and can’t handle having more than five documents (without photos) open at a time. And then I get home and I’ve currently got… Thunderbird, Firefox, Windows Media Player, 7 MSN chat windows and Photoshop open. And it’s not even slow… But whatever… I get paid to wait for files to load, whoot?

My sister’s gone for the weekend, which leaves me with my parents… Yay? But Wolverine came out today, so I’m going to see if I can find anyone who’d like to see it with me. Marvel comics characters in another movie? Count me in! (I am such a dork.) My sister wanted to see it with me, but she’s off on a freaking mountain for two days. So I don’t really care all that much that she wanted to see it too. I have volunteering on Sunday for two hours, I have to find the person that I’m reporting to – too bad I have no clue what she looks like… So that should be interesting. Plus, I’ll actually get some exercise by walking the three blocks it takes to get there (since my bus pass officially ran out yesterday). And it’s supposed to rain on Sunday? … I think I have an umbrella somewhere, which will be super helpful in avoiding that ‘drowned’ look that is so not in season. No clue what I’m doing for the rest of the weekend though. I know tonight Dollhouse is on, so there is that. But that’s Friday. I might just head out to the library and chill for a while in those nice comfy (probably fake) leather seats. Ransack their crafts section again, perhaps. Not having a life on the weekend? … Not that much of a change.

Hope you all have a great weekend! At least better than mine is forecasted to be (well, besides the volunteering). And that you had an excellent Friday.

Today’s title comes for “100 Years” by Five For Fighting.

Look at what I have!

Michelle — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:44:00 +0000

I went shopping today. At BestBuy. The weird thing is that they had this display of the dvds right by the door and the prices were $22.99 and $27.99 (regular and BlueRay). And the thing is, that’s just the ‘regular’ dvd sets. The box set (… pictured below) that was advertised as a ‘BestBuy Exclusive!’ was $17.99 and came with things besides just the dvd… but it was hidden behind the display of regular (and more expensive) dvds… I noticed that the price was off and got confused until I spotted the cheaper sets. My sister and I saw this mom and her daughter looking at the dvds and picking them up and we pointed out the cheaper ones to them and they thanked us. They got into the line-up for the cash register right after us too (the woman ahead of us with her two teenaged girls also had the same movie). And now I have a promo code for a ‘custom TEGO skin’ for either a cell phone or an mp3 player… Now to just decide what Twilight image I want on my electronics…

I twilight-fangirl-squealed a little on the inside.

Michelle — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:53:06 +0000

I am totally blogging this just so I can look back and point back to the exact date that the lovely boyfriend agreed to go see Twilight with me in the event that he’s a total jerk (again) and cancels on me (again…). Anyways, as the plans currently stand, we will be going to see Twilight on December 21st.

Which means, of course, that I’ll get to see him like… 3-4 times this month? -jaw drops- Yeah, I know, I’m shocked too. But that’s how the plan is right now and I’m really excited excited since I haven’t seen him since my birthday party (… November 8th) and I really want to see the movie. Now I’m just hoping that the movie is as good as the hype is

And umm… Yeah, that’s about it for the moment. I need to start reading the psychology textbook, the final is in six days!

Pixie?

Michelle — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:02:10 +0000

You know that feeling right after a final exam when you walk out of the room and just put your back against the wall and slide down until you hit the ground and you yank on the zipper on your bag so you can pull out your notes and you read things over in this frantic way that you almost rip the pages out of your notebook and then you read and read and read and then you realize that what you wrote down on the exam that can mean the difference between a whole letter grade was correct? Yeah, it’s a great feeling.

And I am fully aware that the above was a crazy run-on sentence.

I was sitting on the ground outside of the room with my English lit exam and waited until J came hobbling out on his crutches because I knew he was going to need help going back up the stairs outside. He comes out and looks down at me and just has this funny expression and goes “Michelle, why on earth are you sitting on the ground when there’s chairs around?”.

Yeah, he’s very grateful for my help carrying his super heavy backpack up and down stairs… He just doesn’t show it very well, see. And he called me a freaking pixie because I just looked “so tiny” sitting on the ground like that, so he “almost didn’t see” me.

But I identified every single poem on my English exam correctly. Full titles, full author names. There was only one passage that I couldn’t identify, but we only had to do five of the six and I could name the other five so…

So it’s an okay day today. And I hope everyone had a good or fairly decent day. It’s Thursday! New episode of Grey’s Anatomy! And could Dr. Hunt get any hotter…? -fans self- Same with Sloan. I love the attendings on Grey’s…