Yeah... I wasn't expecting too much out of today, considering that I only had one exam and nothing else to do for the whole day... but it turned out to be really good. I bumped into so many people who had seemed to be nowhere to be found all week due to finals and the "need to study way too much" panic that some people get into around this time of year, ended up talking to a lot of people at various times throughout the day, and walked down to Don Tequila's and got some chips and fish tacos for supper. And then, while I was waiting for my food, there just happened to be a bunch of girls I knew from school sitting at another table, and I got invited to come and sit with them! That literally has never happened before. Talked to them for a while while we ate, then got to try a little bit of some dessert thing that I can't remember the name of (which they had ordered but were too full to finish), and afterward I was really stuffed but didn't have to walk all the way back up to school by myself because they had a car with just enough space left for me to cram in with them.
Later on, the SVU cafeteria had Free Pop-Tart Night, and I stopped by there and had a s'mores Pop-Tart while talking to a few people. After that, walked up to the Lofts, where I bumped into even more people I know, and managed to catch up to a few people before they could leave so I could say goodbye (and a couple of those times, hugs were involved. I like hugs.) And talked to even more people. Eventually left after it was "all guys get kicked out" time, which is when I went down to the library... and, once again, talked to some more people for a while before managing to stop myself so they could get back to studying for their last final exam tomorrow. And then, on my way back (after the library had also kicked everyone out), I came across some people swing-dancing in the parking lot of Durham. Yep, that was definitely the first time I've ever seen that happen.
Overall... today was a really good day. There really weren't any really bad things about today at all, aside from my drawing teacher picking two of my absolute crappiest drawings as what were (in his opinion) the best things I had drawn the whole semester. And I actually had to think for a minute to remember that, because all the good things that had happened today completely outnumbered it so much that such a minor blip didn't even really bother me for more than a few seconds after it happened.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Finals almost done!
Yep... just got done with my Classics of Western Literature final exam, the only one out of the whole bunch that I was really worried about... and it turned out to not be all that bad after all. Managed to have breakfast beforehand (free waffles I grabbed from the cafeteria last night, along with a cup of syrup that I brought along with them), which is always good considering that I definitely didn't have enough time to go to the dining hall and eat something there. Got stuck in some pretty crappy seats due to the random seating thing we had today (seating was based on what order you were answering questions in), but surprisingly I didn't freak out too much because of that. And I got ridiculously lucky when it came to which questions I ended up having to answer; I had the option to toss a question back into the hat and pick a new one, but I ended up not using that at all, because the questions I got (explaining what "polutropos" means in connection to Odysseus, and describing the 4 rivers and 3 monsters in Dante's Inferno) were very, very easy questions for me. I was really worried that I'd get one of those annoying "what year did (insert something here) happen?" questions, which would've been borderline impossible for me to actually do well on since I cannot memorize dates/years at all, especially not in the span of a few weeks. But yeah, none of that crap managed to sneak its way into my questions, so I was able to answer them and got most (if not all) of the stuff in each one without much trouble.
Now the only one I have left is my Spanish exam, which is at 3:00 today. Shouldn't be too much of a problem, though certain bits (remembering when to use preterite vs. imperfect) might give me a little trouble. Once that's over with, I still sort of have a final for my Drawing class on Thursday... but not really, since all we're going to do is come in and get our portfolios of stuff, there's not an actual exam. So basically, after today I'll be done with school for the semester.
On a less positive note: the second floor of Craton continues to be a terrible place to be if you want to get any sleep at all, thanks to those five or six noisy douchebags who like to stay up until 1 AM blabbering on about nothing of any importance. I mean, I don't have any problem with people staying up late and talking, as long as they do it in a place that actually makes sense--like the lobby, or outside, or something like that. NOT in a room right next to mine while I'm trying to sleep. And it wouldn't be too bad if it was just the two guys who actually live in that room doing it, since they're usually not too excessively noisy... the problem is when the entire douchebag population of the entire floor congregates in that room like it's got a giant flashing neon "DOUCHEFEST 2012" sign hanging over the door, and then of course they generate this nearly-constant stream of noise that just keeps going until 1 or 2 or sometimes even 3 in the morning. I'm pretty sure they're violating the "quiet hours" rule pretty blatantly (even if talking at "inside voice" levels at 1 AM in a building where the walls don't block sound very well doesn't quite break the rule, yelling and laughing really loud and throwing stuff around and playing a damn ukelele at 3 AM definitely does!) Nothing seems to work when it comes to getting them to shut the hell up--I've tried just asking them to quiet down many times (both nicely and in a more "I will murder all of you stupid kids if you don't shut up so I can get some sleep" way), I've tried thumping their wall when they get too noisy (which sometimes does work temporarily, but they usually pick back up again before I can get to sleep), I've tried standing menacingly in front of their doorway, and I've even told the HRAs about how much of a problem it is. Of course, so far nothing seems to have been done about it at all, even after I've alerted the HRAs to it at least once and mentioned it to my RA once as well. It doesn't help at all that my roommate apparently is on their side, always claiming they have "the right to talk" and that "they're not making that much noise" (yeah, maybe it's "not that much" if you're an entire room's distance away from the source of the noise--instead of being right on the other side of the wall from it--and have hearing that has probably been damaged by listening to headphones so loud that people halfway across the room can hear. You have no freakin' clue.) And I'm pretty sure that list on the inside of our door claims that everyone living here has the "right to adequate sleep," but I don't see anything resembling a "right to talk" anywhere.
It's too bad the right to adequate sleep isn't taken nearly as seriously as it should be, because that's really the only major problem I've had with living here so far. I'm definitely not going to miss Craton Hell this summer, or especially not next semester when I'm in the library mods with a room to myself (hopefully), carpeted floors, an actually comfortable and hopefully non-crowded lobby area, and a kitchen complete with stove, sinks, and a full-size refrigerator.
Now the only one I have left is my Spanish exam, which is at 3:00 today. Shouldn't be too much of a problem, though certain bits (remembering when to use preterite vs. imperfect) might give me a little trouble. Once that's over with, I still sort of have a final for my Drawing class on Thursday... but not really, since all we're going to do is come in and get our portfolios of stuff, there's not an actual exam. So basically, after today I'll be done with school for the semester.
On a less positive note: the second floor of Craton continues to be a terrible place to be if you want to get any sleep at all, thanks to those five or six noisy douchebags who like to stay up until 1 AM blabbering on about nothing of any importance. I mean, I don't have any problem with people staying up late and talking, as long as they do it in a place that actually makes sense--like the lobby, or outside, or something like that. NOT in a room right next to mine while I'm trying to sleep. And it wouldn't be too bad if it was just the two guys who actually live in that room doing it, since they're usually not too excessively noisy... the problem is when the entire douchebag population of the entire floor congregates in that room like it's got a giant flashing neon "DOUCHEFEST 2012" sign hanging over the door, and then of course they generate this nearly-constant stream of noise that just keeps going until 1 or 2 or sometimes even 3 in the morning. I'm pretty sure they're violating the "quiet hours" rule pretty blatantly (even if talking at "inside voice" levels at 1 AM in a building where the walls don't block sound very well doesn't quite break the rule, yelling and laughing really loud and throwing stuff around and playing a damn ukelele at 3 AM definitely does!) Nothing seems to work when it comes to getting them to shut the hell up--I've tried just asking them to quiet down many times (both nicely and in a more "I will murder all of you stupid kids if you don't shut up so I can get some sleep" way), I've tried thumping their wall when they get too noisy (which sometimes does work temporarily, but they usually pick back up again before I can get to sleep), I've tried standing menacingly in front of their doorway, and I've even told the HRAs about how much of a problem it is. Of course, so far nothing seems to have been done about it at all, even after I've alerted the HRAs to it at least once and mentioned it to my RA once as well. It doesn't help at all that my roommate apparently is on their side, always claiming they have "the right to talk" and that "they're not making that much noise" (yeah, maybe it's "not that much" if you're an entire room's distance away from the source of the noise--instead of being right on the other side of the wall from it--and have hearing that has probably been damaged by listening to headphones so loud that people halfway across the room can hear. You have no freakin' clue.) And I'm pretty sure that list on the inside of our door claims that everyone living here has the "right to adequate sleep," but I don't see anything resembling a "right to talk" anywhere.
It's too bad the right to adequate sleep isn't taken nearly as seriously as it should be, because that's really the only major problem I've had with living here so far. I'm definitely not going to miss Craton Hell this summer, or especially not next semester when I'm in the library mods with a room to myself (hopefully), carpeted floors, an actually comfortable and hopefully non-crowded lobby area, and a kitchen complete with stove, sinks, and a full-size refrigerator.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Well, I'll probably be posting less now that this site has made everything super ugly and kind of confusing.
Okay, the blog itself isn't awful-looking, but everything you have to go through to edit it at all definitely is. Seriously... what is it with websites changing themselves to be horrible-looking lately? First Facebook's craptastic Timeline thing (which, thankfully, I haven't been forced to switch to yet) and now this... I mean, yeah, this change isn't as bad as Timeline, but still, it's completely unnecessary and doesn't actually seem to have improved anything--every change I can point out between this version and the older one is one of those changes where the previous version was just as good if not better.
But yeah... since school is ending in a week, there's another reason I won't be posting on here for a while: because there won't be anything to post!
Not much to post about in my life lately, either. I've been wanting to at least attempt to ask this girl on a date for the whole week, but I haven't had any luck there (even though there's been a few times when I could have actually asked her... but then I wasn't able to get the words out before she left.) And to make it even worse, certain people keep trying to convince me to ask her anyway. Seriously, it always happens right when I've just about decided to give up, someone manages to convince me to start trying again (and in the case of today, this led to me wasting way too much time trying to figure out some way to get in touch with her.) Even though it's the end of Friday now, so to ask her on a date for tomorrow now I'd have to ask her "hey, want to go on a date later today?" which just seems ridiculous and not nearly enough advance notice of something like that.
Ugh. I kind of want school to go ahead and end so I don't have to worry about this crap anymore, but at the same time I kind of want this semester to start over so maybe I could figure out some way to make it actually live up to how good the first one was at least partially, and not screw so many things up...
But yeah... since school is ending in a week, there's another reason I won't be posting on here for a while: because there won't be anything to post!
Not much to post about in my life lately, either. I've been wanting to at least attempt to ask this girl on a date for the whole week, but I haven't had any luck there (even though there's been a few times when I could have actually asked her... but then I wasn't able to get the words out before she left.) And to make it even worse, certain people keep trying to convince me to ask her anyway. Seriously, it always happens right when I've just about decided to give up, someone manages to convince me to start trying again (and in the case of today, this led to me wasting way too much time trying to figure out some way to get in touch with her.) Even though it's the end of Friday now, so to ask her on a date for tomorrow now I'd have to ask her "hey, want to go on a date later today?" which just seems ridiculous and not nearly enough advance notice of something like that.
Ugh. I kind of want school to go ahead and end so I don't have to worry about this crap anymore, but at the same time I kind of want this semester to start over so maybe I could figure out some way to make it actually live up to how good the first one was at least partially, and not screw so many things up...
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Last non-final-exam week of school...
Yeah... it's still so weird that school is almost over. This week's been pretty busy so far, but most of the homework is almost done already--I got my Classics of Western Lit paper done this past Sunday and then finished up both my Picasso drawing (which I had previously not even started) and my Spanish presentation earlier today. Now the only big thing left is my Art History theme paper (which isn't due until 5 PM on Thursday) and what's left of the Western Lit reading (which I am... pretty far behind on currently, since I've only just now finished chapter 6 of Paradise Lost and only a little more than half of King Lear. Of course, once I don't have any papers or anything to work on, it should get a lot easier to finish the reading.) Final exams are next week, but for the most part they shouldn't give me much trouble; Classics of Western Lit is the only one I'm worried about, and that's only due to the insanely weird format of it--two 2-minutes oral presentations on topics that are going to be randomly chosen for you when you get there, so you really can't know what you'll get until you get it. This is very, very bad for me, since there's some topics about stuff from the stories we read that I just can't remember well enough to come up with anything resembling a decent answer. Some of the others I'd be able to pull off without any trouble, but others I would pretty much blank on... and on top of that, I barely know anyone in that class, so it'd be hard to find anyone to have a sort-of study group thing to figure out some of the questions I wouldn't be able to do. I do know at least one or two people from the previous class, though, and I'm assuming they have the same final exam... so maybe it'll work okay after all.
On a completely random note, as of Monday, I have part of a pineapple pizza in my fridge. The Young Democrats club had a pizza party which I showed up to, and after eating slices from several of the pizzas (a couple of pepperoni, a couple of cheese, and a couple of pineapple) I end up taking the rest of the pineapple pizza, since nobody else wanted it. I had some for a snack Monday night, and I'll probably eat the rest for lunch tomorrow instead of a full meal (so I'll be hungry enough to eat when Mom and Julia come to visit, which will inevitably end up with us going to eat somewhere.)
I also found out that I most likely will not have a girlfriend over the summer after all, since it turns out that the girl I met at Busch Gardens has already found a boyfriend (just in the past week--it's not like she's had a boyfriend the whole time we've known each other or anything, this was a pretty recent thing.) Apparently she hasn't completely lost interest in me, though--she said she definitely would still want to date me if she were still single. Which I guess is a good thing; she's not the type of person who loses interest in people overnight, and she's also not the type of person who would even consider slutting around with other guys while she's already in a relationship with someone else, and neither of those would be good. She still seemed to like the idea of me coming out to visit her sometime over the summer, though, so I'll at least have a friend to talk to and hang around with who won't be hundreds of miles away after school's over.
On a semi-related-but-not-really note, I've sort of been considering asking a girl on a date recently. The weirdest thing is that she just happens to be one of the few people I know who's graduating this semester, so... there's basically no chance of it ever going beyond just one date right here at the end of school... and yet I want to try anyway, and have seriously been thinking of asking her for a few days now. I would have actually attempted it on Monday, but the way things worked out I just didn't have a chance to catch her alone for long enough to actually bring it up. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow, if I see her at all. With my luck, I probably won't (I know I didn't today!)
On a completely random note, as of Monday, I have part of a pineapple pizza in my fridge. The Young Democrats club had a pizza party which I showed up to, and after eating slices from several of the pizzas (a couple of pepperoni, a couple of cheese, and a couple of pineapple) I end up taking the rest of the pineapple pizza, since nobody else wanted it. I had some for a snack Monday night, and I'll probably eat the rest for lunch tomorrow instead of a full meal (so I'll be hungry enough to eat when Mom and Julia come to visit, which will inevitably end up with us going to eat somewhere.)
I also found out that I most likely will not have a girlfriend over the summer after all, since it turns out that the girl I met at Busch Gardens has already found a boyfriend (just in the past week--it's not like she's had a boyfriend the whole time we've known each other or anything, this was a pretty recent thing.) Apparently she hasn't completely lost interest in me, though--she said she definitely would still want to date me if she were still single. Which I guess is a good thing; she's not the type of person who loses interest in people overnight, and she's also not the type of person who would even consider slutting around with other guys while she's already in a relationship with someone else, and neither of those would be good. She still seemed to like the idea of me coming out to visit her sometime over the summer, though, so I'll at least have a friend to talk to and hang around with who won't be hundreds of miles away after school's over.
On a semi-related-but-not-really note, I've sort of been considering asking a girl on a date recently. The weirdest thing is that she just happens to be one of the few people I know who's graduating this semester, so... there's basically no chance of it ever going beyond just one date right here at the end of school... and yet I want to try anyway, and have seriously been thinking of asking her for a few days now. I would have actually attempted it on Monday, but the way things worked out I just didn't have a chance to catch her alone for long enough to actually bring it up. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow, if I see her at all. With my luck, I probably won't (I know I didn't today!)
Friday, April 13, 2012
Hmm, I don't post here much anymore, do I?
Yeah... I just remembered that I probably hadn't posted anything here since shortly after the Busch Gardens trip (I didn't actually check, so that might not be quite right... but I don't remember posting anything here recently so it probably has been about that long.) I guess there hasn't been a whole lot to post about--just the usual stuff with classes and such, trying to go to various events but being unable to stay due to there not being anywhere I can sit comfortably, and that sort of thing.
There was an orchestra concert tonight, which I actually did go to (and thought was pretty good!) They played music from TV, movies, and video games (though unfortunately most of the game music was from games I haven't played--the only one I recognized was a song from Kingdom Hearts), and during some of the songs there was some goofiness--like several people running around with sunglasses and Nerf guns during the Mission Impossible theme, and people dancing around with green handkerchiefs during this Jewish/Russian song.
There's also a dance tomorrow night. I'm going to go, of course (since I always do)... but I'm not really expecting much out of it, since the dances this semester have been on a rapid downward spiral after the Honor Ball (which was easily the best dance I've ever been to, probably even topping the two that I actually had dates for--the problem is that the other dances this semester after that one were pretty damn awful, the second being even worse than the first.) I wasn't planning on asking anyone to go with me, since I can't really dance that well and I don't want to drag someone along with me to a dance when I can't really dance that well. Of course, earlier this week I had been thinking about asking someone on a date for... today, I guess, or Saturday... but obviously that never happened. And now that I think about it, it probably would sound kind of weird to be asking a girl on a date and trying to explain to her that I don't want to go to the dance with her because I can't dance very well, so we could go on a date earlier instead. That's probably too much trouble to bother with, especially when it's piled on top of the whole "Mormon girls so obsessed with temple marriage that they won't even go on a date with a non-member" issue. I mean, I haven't really run into too many of those so far, but I also haven't actually asked very many girls on dates (...I've only even attempted it once this semester, which didn't work out.) The annoying thing, of course, is that earlier tonight I had some random (male) stranger try to convince me to ask some girl to the dance. I probably should've mentioned that I actually had a reason for not asking anyone (me not being able to dance very well and not wanting to feel like I'm dragging someone else down) rather than just saying that I didn't even try because I knew I was doomed to failure, but still... trying to convince someone to ask a girl to the dance at the last freakin' minute when they've already decided not to ask anyone is a pretty douchey thing to do.
EDIT: That dance was pretty crappy. I only managed to actually dance with anyone twice (...and neither of those times did I actually manage to ask them), nobody told me that I needed a tie until 15 minutes after I got there (so I had to go all the way back to my room and get one), and so on. It seemed like every time I thought about looking for someone to ask to dance, the person I had in mind had already left... seriously, this happened something like 3 or 4 times.
There was an orchestra concert tonight, which I actually did go to (and thought was pretty good!) They played music from TV, movies, and video games (though unfortunately most of the game music was from games I haven't played--the only one I recognized was a song from Kingdom Hearts), and during some of the songs there was some goofiness--like several people running around with sunglasses and Nerf guns during the Mission Impossible theme, and people dancing around with green handkerchiefs during this Jewish/Russian song.
There's also a dance tomorrow night. I'm going to go, of course (since I always do)... but I'm not really expecting much out of it, since the dances this semester have been on a rapid downward spiral after the Honor Ball (which was easily the best dance I've ever been to, probably even topping the two that I actually had dates for--the problem is that the other dances this semester after that one were pretty damn awful, the second being even worse than the first.) I wasn't planning on asking anyone to go with me, since I can't really dance that well and I don't want to drag someone along with me to a dance when I can't really dance that well. Of course, earlier this week I had been thinking about asking someone on a date for... today, I guess, or Saturday... but obviously that never happened. And now that I think about it, it probably would sound kind of weird to be asking a girl on a date and trying to explain to her that I don't want to go to the dance with her because I can't dance very well, so we could go on a date earlier instead. That's probably too much trouble to bother with, especially when it's piled on top of the whole "Mormon girls so obsessed with temple marriage that they won't even go on a date with a non-member" issue. I mean, I haven't really run into too many of those so far, but I also haven't actually asked very many girls on dates (...I've only even attempted it once this semester, which didn't work out.) The annoying thing, of course, is that earlier tonight I had some random (male) stranger try to convince me to ask some girl to the dance. I probably should've mentioned that I actually had a reason for not asking anyone (me not being able to dance very well and not wanting to feel like I'm dragging someone else down) rather than just saying that I didn't even try because I knew I was doomed to failure, but still... trying to convince someone to ask a girl to the dance at the last freakin' minute when they've already decided not to ask anyone is a pretty douchey thing to do.
EDIT: That dance was pretty crappy. I only managed to actually dance with anyone twice (...and neither of those times did I actually manage to ask them), nobody told me that I needed a tie until 15 minutes after I got there (so I had to go all the way back to my room and get one), and so on. It seemed like every time I thought about looking for someone to ask to dance, the person I had in mind had already left... seriously, this happened something like 3 or 4 times.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Only three weeks left? What the heck!?
Seriously... it doesn't seem like the semester is almost over. Didn't we just do midterms a couple weeks ago? But yeah... my first year at SVU is almost over and it has pretty much snuck up on me, even with all the people recently mentioning that we only have 4 weeks left, or 3 weeks left, or 20 days left, or whatever. I'm not sure how summer's going to be, especially considering that I'll be going from having a lot of friends here (possibly pushing up on triple-digits for the first time in my existence) to being back home where I barely know anyone who still lives in the Covington/Clifton Forge/Alleghany County area. I dunno... maybe I could try sending out a "hey, people who still live around here, I need to get to know you guys better and we should actually do stuff!" message to those few friends I had before coming out here to SVU, or at least the ones who still live within a few hours' drive of the middle of nowhere. I know I'll have to do something to avoid the alone-by-myself-in-the-middle-of-nowhere boredom. I'll probably be able to keep in touch with my SVU friends over Facebook and such also, but considering how bad the Internet connection is back home I don't know how often I'll be getting on Facebook, especially with how annoying it will be to constantly log out of my sister's account to get to my own. Maybe I'll try mooching off the neighbor's wireless connection with my laptop, since I recently found out that he has one.
And speaking of stuff to do over the summer... I might actually end up having a girlfriend, or something along those lines. Apparently I become a million times more attractive when I'm carrying a giant Jamaican banana, because one of the girls I met at Busch Gardens ended up liking me and we've talked a good bit (well, sort of talked, since it was just text messages and Skype chat) since then. She basically asked me out already, I just need to finally get around to letting her know that I'm thinking it might actually work and I'd be willing to try dating her despite the long-distance issue (she lives in Hampton, which is a 3-4 hour drive from home.) This is literally the first time a girl has shown any sort of interest in me since late 2004 or early 2005, so it seems like it would probably be a very big mistake to just ignore the possibility... and plus she seems like a pretty interesting person, we get along pretty well already despite knowing each other for barely over a week, and she's kind of cute. I'm not getting any horrible "this is a bad idea, do not go through with this" feelings like I did before attempting to ask Amber out way back then, which is always a good sign. And on top of all that she's not Mormon, so the whole "I won't even look at you twice if you can't marry me in the temple" thing won't be an issue like it probably would with 90% of the girls here at SVU. A lot of the Mormon girls I know here are really nice, and there are definitely a few that I wouldn't mind being in some sort of relationship with... but with the girls here I'm always going to be worried about running into problems due to the religious differences between us, especially after actually having a girl refuse to go on a date with me for that reason (and hearing several others say that they understand that way of thinking, or even worse, that they wouldn't date non-members either!) I mean, I'm sure not everyone here is like that, but I'm always going to be afraid that anyone I ask on a date is going to be one of those girls.
School has been a bit busy lately. I ended up missing several things that were going on today because I had so much homework to do (a couple different Spanish assignments, reading King Lear which I am horrendously behind on, and writing a paper for Classics of Western Lit), and it looks like there's going to be more coming up considering that I have a Spanish oral presentation, another Western Lit paper, and yet another one for Art History approaching in the next couple of weeks. There's also final exams, but those should be no big deal (they're just tests, after all.)
And just like the end of last semester, the quality of food in the dining hall has definitely entered its end-of-the-semester downward spiral toward total inedibleness. I've had to eat at Jonzzey's, Subway, and Hardee's all in the past couple of weeks just because there really wasn't anything I wanted in the dining hall (and there've been other days where the only thing edible was cold-cut sandwiches and cereal; even the salad seemed suspicious since I got a whiff of that funky slightly-rotting-fruit smell whenever I came near the salad bar.) Good thing Subway is yummy as always, the student chefs in Jonzzey's haven't been slipping much, and I've recently discovered how good Hardee's barbecue sauce is on their chicken strips. I might also end up eating at Don Tequila's or one of the other restaurants in the area again before the semester is up, depending on when I have time and whether or not I can find decent food on campus.
And, as if schoolwork wasn't enough... I'm entering the OHRRPGCE's Ridiculous Game Contest again this year. My last RGC entry, from 2010, was the Pokémon spoof known only as Puckamon. This year, the rules are that you should try to use one of eight rulesets made up before the contest started, credited to one of the various villains from past OHR games. I'm planning on using the Gahn rules (try to make a chaotic game where the rules are always changing), which I interpreted as meaning either "make the game look like there were multiple people working on it" or "make the game change into different kinds of games at different points." I don't know if I'll be able to pull off the first, but the second is definitely what I'll be aiming for; right now the game is tentatively just titled Utah, and starts off in an OHR House-ripoff style game show with a bunch of random characters all living in the same house. Chef JePoo, Señor Rialgo, fat Ash from Puckamon, and the giant Jamaican banana are going to be the ones left at this point (instead of making four full episodes of the "OHR House knockoff" segment, I'll be skipping to the fifth), with Dark Blubber being kicked off just as the "fifth episode" starts. And then, shortly afterward, the house is invaded by Mormon crickets (which are giant humanoid crickets who are Mormon, not the actual species of bug called "Mormon crickets") and Ash gets caught by a pair of cricket-missionaries while the rest of the characters run away. And of course, since the crickets have converted their house into a cricket-temple, they aren't able to get back in (since they're not Mormon crickets.)
As for the game-changing-rules part... well, as I've already mentioned, it starts out as an OHR House ripoff, then switches to a regular RPG, with some of the battles possibly working differently (in addition to normal fights, there will be battles with Mormon crickets where you have to beat them up before they can convert you; healing items won't restore your "religious HP" unless they're things the Mormon cricket religion disapproves of, like beer), and then when you get to the town it becomes more of an adventure-ish game with few if any RPG battles... and at least one part later on featuring the Jamaican banana alone in a sidescroller.
I'm thinking the crickets' religion will be officially titled "The Church of Jiminy Cricket of Latter-Day Saints."
And speaking of stuff to do over the summer... I might actually end up having a girlfriend, or something along those lines. Apparently I become a million times more attractive when I'm carrying a giant Jamaican banana, because one of the girls I met at Busch Gardens ended up liking me and we've talked a good bit (well, sort of talked, since it was just text messages and Skype chat) since then. She basically asked me out already, I just need to finally get around to letting her know that I'm thinking it might actually work and I'd be willing to try dating her despite the long-distance issue (she lives in Hampton, which is a 3-4 hour drive from home.) This is literally the first time a girl has shown any sort of interest in me since late 2004 or early 2005, so it seems like it would probably be a very big mistake to just ignore the possibility... and plus she seems like a pretty interesting person, we get along pretty well already despite knowing each other for barely over a week, and she's kind of cute. I'm not getting any horrible "this is a bad idea, do not go through with this" feelings like I did before attempting to ask Amber out way back then, which is always a good sign. And on top of all that she's not Mormon, so the whole "I won't even look at you twice if you can't marry me in the temple" thing won't be an issue like it probably would with 90% of the girls here at SVU. A lot of the Mormon girls I know here are really nice, and there are definitely a few that I wouldn't mind being in some sort of relationship with... but with the girls here I'm always going to be worried about running into problems due to the religious differences between us, especially after actually having a girl refuse to go on a date with me for that reason (and hearing several others say that they understand that way of thinking, or even worse, that they wouldn't date non-members either!) I mean, I'm sure not everyone here is like that, but I'm always going to be afraid that anyone I ask on a date is going to be one of those girls.
School has been a bit busy lately. I ended up missing several things that were going on today because I had so much homework to do (a couple different Spanish assignments, reading King Lear which I am horrendously behind on, and writing a paper for Classics of Western Lit), and it looks like there's going to be more coming up considering that I have a Spanish oral presentation, another Western Lit paper, and yet another one for Art History approaching in the next couple of weeks. There's also final exams, but those should be no big deal (they're just tests, after all.)
And just like the end of last semester, the quality of food in the dining hall has definitely entered its end-of-the-semester downward spiral toward total inedibleness. I've had to eat at Jonzzey's, Subway, and Hardee's all in the past couple of weeks just because there really wasn't anything I wanted in the dining hall (and there've been other days where the only thing edible was cold-cut sandwiches and cereal; even the salad seemed suspicious since I got a whiff of that funky slightly-rotting-fruit smell whenever I came near the salad bar.) Good thing Subway is yummy as always, the student chefs in Jonzzey's haven't been slipping much, and I've recently discovered how good Hardee's barbecue sauce is on their chicken strips. I might also end up eating at Don Tequila's or one of the other restaurants in the area again before the semester is up, depending on when I have time and whether or not I can find decent food on campus.
And, as if schoolwork wasn't enough... I'm entering the OHRRPGCE's Ridiculous Game Contest again this year. My last RGC entry, from 2010, was the Pokémon spoof known only as Puckamon. This year, the rules are that you should try to use one of eight rulesets made up before the contest started, credited to one of the various villains from past OHR games. I'm planning on using the Gahn rules (try to make a chaotic game where the rules are always changing), which I interpreted as meaning either "make the game look like there were multiple people working on it" or "make the game change into different kinds of games at different points." I don't know if I'll be able to pull off the first, but the second is definitely what I'll be aiming for; right now the game is tentatively just titled Utah, and starts off in an OHR House-ripoff style game show with a bunch of random characters all living in the same house. Chef JePoo, Señor Rialgo, fat Ash from Puckamon, and the giant Jamaican banana are going to be the ones left at this point (instead of making four full episodes of the "OHR House knockoff" segment, I'll be skipping to the fifth), with Dark Blubber being kicked off just as the "fifth episode" starts. And then, shortly afterward, the house is invaded by Mormon crickets (which are giant humanoid crickets who are Mormon, not the actual species of bug called "Mormon crickets") and Ash gets caught by a pair of cricket-missionaries while the rest of the characters run away. And of course, since the crickets have converted their house into a cricket-temple, they aren't able to get back in (since they're not Mormon crickets.)
As for the game-changing-rules part... well, as I've already mentioned, it starts out as an OHR House ripoff, then switches to a regular RPG, with some of the battles possibly working differently (in addition to normal fights, there will be battles with Mormon crickets where you have to beat them up before they can convert you; healing items won't restore your "religious HP" unless they're things the Mormon cricket religion disapproves of, like beer), and then when you get to the town it becomes more of an adventure-ish game with few if any RPG battles... and at least one part later on featuring the Jamaican banana alone in a sidescroller.
I'm thinking the crickets' religion will be officially titled "The Church of Jiminy Cricket of Latter-Day Saints."
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