I found out this morning that one of the coworkers is very arachnophobic. I was by the fax machine getting something done when I looked behind me near the fridge, only to see a small brown spider walking along. I pointed it out to the coworker, but she in turn got bug-eyed and backed away and told me to get it. She's seriously not go anywhere near it! I grabbed a paper coffee cup and a slip of paper and easily caught the thing, but I had to walk past her to escort the spider outside. The coworker made sure to give me a wide berth, despite the spider being safely contained within the cup. The spider was more than happy to scurry away once outside.

Later on after we'd finally been able to close, the same coworker was emptying the trash cans. After she'd taken a trash bag out and was returning to put in a new bag, she was greeted by a small white spider that was apparently upset at having its home disturbed. It had its legs out in an aggressive stance, or so she says. (A beetle did the same thing to me down in Florida, so I'm willing to believe she was right.) The spider was moving about a bit too much, so I just escorted the whole trash can outside where I could blow the spider off. It decided to scurry under my car.

The coworker is pretty goodnatured about her fear though. She knows it's stupid. I did tell her that I'd watch out for her, so if another spider enters the bakery she just needs to let me know and I'll remove it for her. ^_-

In other news, I'm going to pull a cruel DM trick. Everyone who sent in a bio (all three of you) shall get a special item. Exactly what is a secret. The other two of you... Twenty more minutes to go before I say no. :P

I finally got to see Ice Age 3 yesterday, and I have to applaud Blue Sky Studios. They may not be Pixar or Disney, but they understand what the others do: it's the characters that make the story. I'd already gotten attached to the main trio in the first movie (Manny the mammoth, Diego the Sabertooth tiger, and Sid the sloth). It took a bit of warming up to the new additions in the second movie (Crash and Eddie, the two possums and their sister, Ellie the female mammoth), but by the end I liked them too. I'll admit that when I heard the premise of the third movie it sounded pretty dumb to me. Dinosaurs? What? But, I enjoyed the first two movies enough that I wanted to see it anyway.

I am so glad I did! We have all the main characters from the first two movies, plus an interesting development. The whole theme of parenthood struck a chord with me since I too want to be a mother one of these days... Also, the addition of dinosaurs wasn't as bad as I feared. In fact, it made things fun when the main characters realized they weren't the largest animals alive. I don't want to spoil anything, but if you liked the first two movies, you'll enjoy this one as well.

Also, support merc16! I saw your name in the credits! The animation and lighting were spectacular!

Now onto suspending reality... I was reading reviews last night, and apparently Ice Age 3 got pretty dour reviews since people can't get past Ice Age mammals existing at the same time as (what should be extinct) dinosaurs. The explanation for why there are dinosaurs is never explained much in the movie, but it shouldn't have to be! I think people tend to forget that the very point of animation is to tell stories that cannot be told (well) in live-action. Have people forgotten that pandas don't learn Kung Fu moves? That houses can't really fly with balloons attached to them? That people cannot be turned into frogs! Lets not forget that mice don't walk around on two legs talking like the rest of us...

In short, it's stupid to discount a movie for not being factual when the very medium it's made in isn't factual. Honestly, the Ice Age movies never set out to be a specific time in our history. Plus, what are the odds that a predator (Diego) would form a herd with mammoths, or that even a sloth would tag along? What people embraced for one reason doesn't seem to hold true for another. Animation is fantastic, fantastic as in fanciful, fantasy, separate from reality. It's for this very reason those like Walt Disney ever dabbled in the medium in the first place.

If I ever see an animated feature that's based entirely on reality and has no fantastic elements at all, I might as well be watching a live-action film...

There's nothing quite like getting home from work to kick off the shoes, only to realize you've shared your shoe with a crushed cricket(?) for over eight hours. I feel...pretty gross at the moment. At least it didn't get guts anywhere, and I'm shocked I didn't once notice.

*cringe*

Okay! No more of that! Have awesome music from the Beets!

Enjoy Freedom of Speech! Revel in choosing a religion (or not) of your choice! But most importantly, choose what milk to put in your latté!

No...seriously. Fun story. A group of four adults came in today, one older woman sporting a very lovely Australian accent. They wanted sandwiches, so I took their orders, but they also wanted drinks. The Australian woman asked for a latté, so I asked if she wanted whole or nonfat milk in it. She gleefully replied, "Nonfat!" I couldn't help but notice how excited she was, so I asked if she'd been waiting for just that question. She replied, "Yes! It's the first time I've been asked since coming here!" She then went on to explain that in Australia they put a mix of half cream and half milk in the drinks (half & half, basically), and she's never cared for how thick it made the drink. It was a dream come true to get a nonfat latté. ^_-;

This does come up a lot with tourists from other countries. Just a few weeks ago we had a small group of people visiting from Scotland (they have a friend who now lives in the U.S. but was born and raised in Scotland) and one of the woman ordered a latté, but was overwhelmed by all the choices she had in how she wanted it. She explained that in Scotland you got your drink however the establishment makes it, and you have to be happy with it.

Rather interesting the things people like to experience about the U.S. while visiting. ^_^

Status on the Ghostbusters video game: since someone again managed to screw up the address, I did not get my game. Instead it sat over in Tracyton for a week before finally getting out again - only to be returned to the sender. So I watched for two weeks as my package went to the wrong place, only to be recalled instead of being corrected and sent to where it really belonged. Needless to say, I've been ticked. Upset. Frustrated. Annoyed!

This all came to the stupid conclusion just the other day, so it's been on the brain. Well, last night I had a really weird dream where I went to get the mail and inside the mailbox was a letter for me. It was from the local mail carrier thanking me for the letter I had written on my great-grandfather's service as a U.S. mailman. I woke up soon after. Something seems true about a great-grandfather being a mailman, but for the life of me I don't know whether it really is true or not. I'll have to ask my parents later. In any case, the dream left me without any anger toward the mail service.

Come to think of it, I've a feeling the mistake was made by stupid computers since a human could look at the address label and say, "Oh gee, this package needs to go to Silverdale but has the wrong zip code!" while the computer more than likely let the incorrect zip code RULE ALL. So I get no package.

I did send an e-mail to Amazon about this second failure in getting a package to me, then I also saw that somehow there was an incorrect address in my address book - yet not the address I had selected for a shipping address. (That one is correct.) How and why that came into being, I don't know. But, it certainly sheds some light on things. Now I'm just waiting to get the stupid e-mail from Amazon saying that they've refunded my money since they couldn't deliver my order, but I sure hope not! I reserved the stupid game, so hopefully someone will make an effort to get it to where it really needs to be now that I've let it be known I'm an unhappy customer that wants to be a happy customer.

In any case, Little King's Story is coming out in a few weeks, and that one was wisely reserved at a local Software Etc. (Gamestop if you really prefer) so there won't be any failure on the mailing system to deal with. I'll have to be sure to rely on the Gamestop in Idaho Falls if I want any games coming out later this fall as well. I don't want to keep dealing with watching packages get shipped all over the country instead of to my doorstep.

UPDATE: I found out that my great-grandfather was indeed a postmaster. o_O

Me last night: "Yay, I'm getting to bed early! I'll get a full night's sleep! It'll be awesome!"
My brain: "So....is now a bad time to mention these characters I just created for you?"
Crotchety old Gold Dragon: "I for one refuse to sit here in silence."
One-eyed ancient Red Dragon: "And I'm not letting him be in charge!"

...and that's all I can say on that. Why must characters come (literally) roaring to life at the worst times? XP

English and my brain continue to become farther apart as well. I will parrot back a customer's order (for pastries and such) to make sure it's correct. Today a woman came in and asked for "six pink sprinkled Butterspritz cookies." My response? "Spree!" before stopping since I realized as soon as it left my mouth that I had utterly and completely FAILED to say, "six pink sprinkled Butterspritz?"

Oh, the joys...

Talk about a bummer of a day. I was on the way to work enjoying the drive when not too far from my house I spotted a deer dead on the side of the road. At least, I'm pretty sure she was dead. She was leaned up on the embankment but not breathing, moving, or even registering she was right next to the road. Plus, her eyes were wide open as if she'd been killed before she was even aware of it. I have a really bad feeling she was one of the deer that frequent our property, perhaps even the one I sketched just a few days ago.

Needless to say it made me very, very angry. I hate when people zoom up and down the roads as if no one else exists! The animals live here too, and that needs to be remembered when people get behind the wheel. The idiocy of people gets to me sometimes...

Work itself was good, but it doesn't ease the fact that one of my gentle neighbors is gone. :(

It's kind of odd how little the human brain really picks up on when something is so commonplace. I've seen deer for as long as I can remember, but the other week during a lunch break I decided I ought to draw one since I never had. Lets just say I failed miserably! Who knew deer were so challenging? The cherry tree in our driveway produced a ton of fruit this year, so even with birds going at it there's been plenty they haven't touched. What's more, the cherries the birds drop have attracted deer to the base of the tree. I never saw a deer eat cherries before, but let me tell you, it's rather comedic watching their jaws working like crazy to eat the cherries. Sometimes they chew so much that the pit comes flying out of their mouth, but they leave poopy evidence behind that not all pits exit via the mouth...

Anyway, we had a small deer going at the dropped cherries just a bit ago, then an older deer came along to join in the feasting on dropped cherries. The cherry tree is unfortunately in one of my mom's flower beds, so when one of the deer decided to nibble on things other than cherries, my mom went out to chase her off. The older deer was only a few feet away, but she didn't budge. She did give my mom a rather concerned look though. I tried my best to capture it:

( Consider this a twenty-second sketch. I was really just focusing on the head, but then the body just flowed out onto my tablet before I knew it. )

I'll have to do some deer study sketches soon, methinks. They are rather interesting in how they're built. Very unlike horses, which I've drawn forever, and their expressions are pretty interesting, too. One of these days I need to see if I can capture the look of a deer chomping on cherries...

I love when I find cool stuff online! Someone was asking about the 'magical vessel' adlib of scariness on the Software Sculptors version on the Slayers TRY DVDs elsewhere, so I went to YouTube to see if it had been uploaded there. It doesn't seem to be (so get the Software Sculptors DVDs if you really want to see it), but I came across something else...

...interviews with Veronica Taylor at an anime convention earlier this year! It's hard to hear some of the questions, but a lot of people ask about Pokémon. That's a bit of a hot topic since at one point Pokémon USA decided to change all of the actors for the dub. Ash almost seems like a child of Veronica's that was taken away by force when she's asked about him. Slayers comes up too, and she did leak that she did have interest in it, and we even get a snippet of Amelia...and yeah, just watch! She's mentioned Lisa Ortiz and Eric Stuart so far. I'm still watching these myself, but here's all of the parts for anyone else who's getting really excited about the upcoming Slayers dub:

( What a life voice actors must lead! )

It might seem sort of silly to notice this over all the other headlines I see, but when I heard that there'd been a monorail crash down at Walt Disney World, I couldn't help but take notice. I know from the monorails over in Seattle that accidents do happen and that the system isn't perfect (note: often it's the driver who is flawed, but not always), but it's still pretty scary to think of something like this happening at Walt Disney World. I used the monorail system quite a few times to get to the Magic Kingdom, so it's all the more real to me.

I'm really hoping for the driver that was killed that alcohol wasn't a factor. When a tragic accident like this occurs during a major U.S. holiday, I can't help but wonder if alcohol contributed.

earthstar_chan, I just got back from a friend's house after playing a card game that's right up your alley! The game is called Once Upon A Time and the whole point is to tell a story using cards from your hand until you can use your 'The End' card to finish. All the while the other players are waiting to interrupt the story so that they can take over and get their cards used up instead. You pretty much end up with really odd stories with convoluted aspects, but overall it's a ton of fun!

In other news, is it odd that I'm so happy to be getting the dub cast back for a show I rarely ever watched dubbed because I love the Japanese version? For anyone who hasn't yet heard, FUNimation announced today that the main four English voice actors are returning to reprise their roles in Slayers! (So, Lisa Ortiz=Lina Inverse, Eric Stuart=Gourry Gabriev, Crispin Freeman=Zelgadis Greywords, Veronica Taylor=Amelia Wil Tesla Saillune.) They've all done excellent voice work in the decade since Slayers initially came out, often to my great delight. (Shia Haas being voiced by Veronica Taylor in Irresponsible Captain Tylor is still my favorite shock/surprise.) If nothing else, it makes me feel all silly and nostalgic to know that once again I can torment people by switching the audio tracks while watching the DVD and hear familiar voices in English.

Once again Amelia can be way too polite in calling Zelgadis "Mister Zelgadis-san," and fun stuff like that. Seriously, if you've never swapped the audio tracks while watching Slayers, you have not lived! ^_^

Bwa! After a few more tries, I have finished Metroid Prime 3: Corruption! (With 85%, but I'll take it.) Awesome, awesome game! Despite my frustrations with it, that only encouraged me to try all the harder to complete the thing. I can now move on to other things in life...like waiting for my wayward Ghostbusters game to finally come.

And since it's relevant, I recently got an e-mail from Amazon that next month Nintendo is releasing the Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii. That's all three Prime titles, the first two being tweaked for the Wii including nicer graphics and the play style used for Corruption. AWESOME! I need to seriously bust my butt to go down to Software Etc. to see about reserving a copy. Something tells me it'll be just the thing to enjoy for my (hopefully) last stint in Idaho.

It seems lately all I do at work is slice meats and cheeses (and sometimes even onions) so that we don't run out since we've been doing a lot of lunch business. This isn't a bad thing since I'm anal and like my meats and cheeses to be consistent in how they're sliced, but oh, does it cause the arms to cramp after so long. Today was no different. I was finally slicing and totally focused on that when my boss called out that I was needed to help up at the counter. The slicer is in the front of the bakery but behind the bread shelf, so simply turning around lets me see all the people waiting to be helped. So I turn around and who do I see, but one of my original coworkers from way back when!

"Sarah!" I exclaimed without thinking.

"Sarah's already up front," my boss responded, since there seems to be some unwritten law that there must always be a Sarah (or coworker whose name starts with 'S') employed at the bakery.

"No, not that one!" I exclaimed again, to which old coworker Sarah seemed to take delight.

It was then that my boss finally saw through all the waiting people and also saw a previous employee. After we got through all the waiting customers the three of us caught up on things. Sarah's the coworker that had grown up in Utah but moved to Washington with her mom after her parents split and had graduated with a degree in criminal justice a couple years back. Last I saw her (before I quit working at the bakery so many years back) she was getting ready to go teach English in China for a year. She's always been bold like that. I'd be freaked! In any case, through using me as a reference this past year (to which I was interviewed extensively between classes one day) she was able to get a job over on the Seattle side...watching inmates. Not exactly her cup of tea, but it's a job! It was so good to see her. This morning I was silently lamenting not really having anyone I could really pal around with who is on the same level (note: I love you, guy friends of mine, but sometimes it is nice to hang out with girl friends who aren't perpetually busy.. *sigh*) and look who comes walking in? ^_-

Her birthday is this next week, so hopefully we can go do something fun. It'll be sort of fun being around an inactive LDS person (I guess it's her parents who are inactive, for all intent and purpose she doesn't consider herself LDS at all, but still likes me despite this) who has a very warped sense of humor. For whatever reason, I take great delight in warped humor at times...

Why is it Amazon.com keeps sending my packages to Tracyton? Why?! Yes, it's on the same peninsula as I am, but also nowhere near where I actually live! If I get another e-mail from them saying they took back my game because my address was incorrect... Grr! I just want to get that blasted Ghostbusters game and have at it!

I even spent the morning playing to the end of Metroid Prime 3, but the last boss battle is evil in its simplicity. Pretty much I have to kill the baddies within a short amount of time without taking too much damage, since if I die on one stage of the three battles, I get to start all over again. Baaaaah! Awesome game though, and I've really been enjoying it up until this point. I'll beat it sooner or later... Hopefully sooner. The sound a pickup emanates into the atmosphere is stuck in my head and it is driving me a bit crazy. ("Where's that pickup? It has to be somewhere nearby! I can HEAR it! I'll find it yet!!") It's a good thing I'm not the real Samus Aran, else she'd have been dead ages ago... ^_^;;

Might be time to do something productive, like stay inside to avoid the heat, but take my laptop into a warmer part of the house (not my room) and do some writing. Or something. I think I need a break from video gaming for at least a little while. The combination of sweeping and mopping at work then duking it out with a blaster and grapple beam on the Wii equals very sore arms...

Talk about an odd day off. I woke around 9:40 a.m. not wanting to be awake, but my brain wanted to be awake, so of course I had to give in. I dinked around on the internet a bit before jumping in the shower, then afterward I tossed some clothes into the washing machine. While that's going on I head upstairs to eat some breakfast, being sure to say a quick prayer since I often get out of the habit of doing so. Breakfast eaten, I finish watching The Dog Whisperer then toss my now wet clothes into the dryer before playing some Metroid Prime 3.

Fast forward a few hours since I lost track of time playing the game.

I head downstairs to check the dryer before going outside to fetch the mail (my line of thinking: "I better fold my laundry before that Ghostbusters game comes, else it will never get done!") only to find the clothes still seem a bit damp. So I add twenty minutes, head outside to get the mail (no game still) then eat some lunch. For whatever reason I was in a rush to finish my sandwich, afterward I start heading downstairs to check the dryer again.

I am suddenly aware of my cell phone, the one I completely forgot about in my room and cannot be heard when I'm upstairs, so I dash down the stairs into my room and fumble with my bag to get the phone out. It's miracle it didn't go to voice mail! I heed the call, heading off to help out a friend for about an hour, then after some small errands I come home.

A bit spent from the day I'm unwinding by watching some medical miracles show on television - then I'm suddenly struck with the seemingly random thing I mentioned in my prayer this morning. At the time I felt bad saying it since I assumed it meant I ought to go to FHE tonight (if I even knew where it was) and knowing I'd not be. Turns out I was wrong in that, and I was exactly where I needed to be at just the right time after all.

Life continues to prove most interesting. ^_-

(In ficage news, I need to write. I'm hoping that if I get up at the usual time for work tomorrow, despite my having a shorter shift, I can use the few extra hours of downtime to get some writing accomplished.)

I've been meaning to post about it forever but always put it off for one reason or another, but due to a comic putting it much better than I did, I can finally say... I HATE TWITTER!

So now you know. Enjoy the comic:



(And yes folks, the old guy is being smart. He always likes to poke fun at things, and oftentimes I have to agree.)

While many people have to be reeling with the loss of stars both pop and actor alike, I've been blissfully spending the entire day traversing Skyworld in Metroid Prime 3. I have to say, it was very relaxing... I continue to wonder just who the Metroid Prime games have been targeted at since there is so much content to read (if one chooses to do so, I suppose) since most every guy I ever saw play video games did forego text to blast everything in existence. I continue to love uncovering lore and such, loving every time I uncover some new little tidbit on how the inhabitants on whatever planet Samus is on lived and invariably ceased to be. It's so nice to play a game where exploration is more important than killing everything in sight. I was more than happy to leave all the little repairbots to go about their business as I wandered about.

Man, I love the atmosphere in that game!

Slowly getting closer to the end of the game (maybe? I'm only just at 43% complete) and becoming ever more distressed on just what's going to happen to Samus... Considering I've not heard any online chatter about it, it's either not that spectacular, or people haven't finished it. Or they were all too busy playing Halo or something... In any case, I'll learn for myself one of these days!

Now to get some sleep in preparation for working all weekend. Samus will have to just park it and wait for now.

On the one hand I did get out the door late to work yesterday since I wanted to write a response to a journal thread elsewhere, but I made up time on the freeway and got to my exit around the time I normally do. I got to the stoplight at the top of Finn Hill and turned down the hill toward work not seeing anything out of the ordinary...and then it happened.

I got stopped for road work!

The minutes ticked by as I sat in my car and waited, listening to various songs via the iPod over my radio. Soon I had only minutes before I was supposed to be clocked in for work, so I sent out a distress signal to work to let them know I was indeed caught in the construction zone. Too bad there wasn't any construction going on! Seriously, after staring at all the dirt being kicked up, I finally saw that the construction workers seemed to be...scraping paint off the road to repaint the lines. Really? :P I was stuck there for TWENTY MINUTES before they let us through, which hardly seemed fair since I was at a four-way stop and the other three ways were able to get through much faster than those of us trapped on Finn Hill.

My tax dollars at work, indeed, complete with disgusting dust bath all over my car. -_- When I finally got to work the baker had to tease me as he usually does by prefacing "Oh, you Mormons," since he likes to tease me despite actually respecting my religion a lot (he's told me that plenty of times, too), "You just don't know your way around." I might have laughed, only I've lived in the area long enough that I did know an alternate route to work - it was just impossible to get out of traffic in order to get to the proper road for that. At least I didn't get in trouble for being so late.

In other news, Dread Pirate is even better when played with four players! One of these days I might even play the 'advanced' game. Also, guys referring to something they're too polite to talk about by way of something else completely is downright hilarious. My "manhandled chest" is ready and waiting for a future game!

For now I'm off to hunt down a crazed hunter in the hopes of making more progress in Metroid Prime 3. :D Unless Ghostbusters finally shows up in the mail...

I just dropped off the old roommate at the ferry a bit ago, so now it's the downer time after a visit (coupled with the W.o.E. making me want to go take a flying leap into the shower). Some of these pictures I'm about to post I've been meaning to post up for a while but hadn't gotten around to, so sit back and enjoy a small trek around Western Washington:

( Fear me and my tree hugging ways! )

A minute from now I need to be in my car on the way to work, where I'll be for much of the day. Right after that I'm picking up the old roommate and will be entertaining (and be entertained by) her all weekend up until when she leaves on Tuesday. I'll be back after that, so don't fret! ^_-