Look, I'm actually coming back when I said I would! Whaaaaaaaaaat??
Also, here's the Henry doodle:
Remember last post, that I was trying to have a wee bit of a Tim Burton vibe with these TAU doodles? That's what I was doing with the big, dark-circled eyes and super upturned nose (I hadn't really thought of how he tends to draw noses like that and so do I... non-coincidence?) and such. The part that frustrates me is that there ended up being some pen inside his eye that makes it look like his eyelid, which totally ruins the whole big-eye effect and gets him closer to Lazy Susan. Not what I wanted. Maaaybe I could fix that in Photoshop, but I don't have it (my dad does, if I was that desperate...).
I also considered maybe putting pictures of some of the clothes and trinkets I got from Mexico, since I think I've done that to an extent on previous trips, but I'm just gonna not bother this time. I will mention something I accidentally left out in the last post, though- we bought my dad a bamboo recorder on our last Saturday, along with a little snare drum keychain, along with a couple things with the Aztec calendar on them. Apparently, he liked everything (and he actually put the keychain with his keys! Awwww).
Okay, so since we left off at Christmas Eve, I'm gonna pick up at Christmas all the way to the present. Which isn't all that much, but hey, it'll be off my list, right?
I actually spent most of my Christmas on my laptop, headphones on, on a voice call with my Hangouts friends while trying to write a Christmas crossover one-shot together (which ended up involving FMA, Kuro, Bleach, and OCs from our fics). It took hours (and even then we only got almost halfway done), and fun, but also tiring. I felt kinda bad that I was kinda ignoring my family in the process... But apparently, as long as I wasn't talking loud, they didn't mind. They were all just watching Netflix and stuff anyway.
The next day felt a little more like a proper Christmas, as we went to have brunch at Golden Corral for the Christmas family reunion party... thing. I got to talk with some of my cousins (including the ones from Texas, whoop!) and they did a whole White Elephant gift-exchange that ended with me owning The Very Merry Muppets Christmas Movie... Who knows if I'll ever actually watch it. The game got surprisingly intense a couple times (cuz, I mean, this side of my family is not particularly crazy) since people fought over some of the gifts (including a fancy pen?) and my sister totally went into savage Swiper mode and stole J's Family Feud game at the very, very end, leaving him with a puzzle she'd been plotting to get rid of since the beginning.
I also watched a Pedro Infante movie with my mom, since I hadn't in forever! It was Dicen que soy mujeriego, which I liked quite a bit. Unfortunately, we didn't get to hear some of the songs because copyright or something. I WANT TO HEAR YOUR BEAUTIFUL VOICE, PEDRO!
The next day, she also decided that she wanted me to watch one of her favorite TV shows, Nosotros los guapos, joking that this was teaching me "real" (stereotypical naco Mexican) Spanish. Just like with the old movies she's shown me thus far, she stopped every once in a while to explain things and make sure I was on the same page, because they talk really fast (dangnabbit, Mexicans, stop doing that!!!) and say a lot of stuff I've never heard before. Though I had to concentrate quite a bit to get through watching it, I was surprised to find that I was enjoying it and laughing with my mom (sometimes without even needing explanations!). She did another "real Spanish" session the day after, too, but I guess it got forgotten at a point. We're probably gonna end up picking back up on it next time I visit home.
I also ended up watching some That 70's Show with my sis and helping (or trying to, at least) her with dying her hair. My mom did all the bleaching, and then all three of us worked on putting in the purple and pink dyes. I ended up with Barbie pink on my hands (mostly my left, since that was the one holding hair and my right was holding the brush), which actually looked kinda cool, and the nails on my left hand are still stained pink. I have a feeling that's permanent... Guess who's gonna be walking around with randomly kinda-pink nails, waiting for them to grow so I can look normal again! *points to self*
Last Friday, my dad wanted us to try this place that he said was almost Indian (pretty sure that's literally what he said), which turned out to be called something like The Bhutan House. It was really good! I had no idea that that's how Bhutanese food tasted like (and, well, to be honest, have barely even heard of the country itself). I have a feeling this is gonna be one of my family's new favorite restaurants.
I also picked up my new glasses! I had those clear frames for forever, and was honestly getting kinda worried about how outdated my prescription might be, so when my mom said I'd be getting a new eye exam done and new glasses, I was kinda excited. I promised her that I was gonna look at the ones made of metal, just like the ones I wore when I was younger, but they just didn't feel right. I really wanted big frames- ones that beat the clear frames, and maybe even beat the teal ones that I rarely wore in 10th grade- and there weren't any that satisfied me made of metal. So, I looked in general for frames that seemed big enough, and then- I came across this beauty.
These are the biggest frames I've ever seen (besides those giant oversized party glasses they sell around New Year's). The bottom basically goes past my cheekbone! I don't know if I can find a picture of the specific ones I got since they weren't from an online store this time, but I don't think a picture of just the glasses would've worked anyway. I didn't bother with a full-face drawing, so here's the next best thing:
Yep, Microsoft Paint is a thing I have on my laptop. Are you jealous of my mad skills?
The awesome thing is, that is actually pretty good accuracy proportions-wise, so I'm not kidding about my glasses having such big lenses. (They're not just real big in this way, though; my eyes have gotten worse, and now the glass is actually pretty thick.) I absolutely love them.
Besides finally reading through some of the bookmarked fics and articles on my laptop and catching up on RWBY (got pretty far behind, oops), I also watched Murder on the Orient Express with my parents. I'll have to admit, the final result of who actually killed Johnny Depp got all three of us good. (Just realized I haven't mentioned that I also watched The Last Jedi with my dad, but I don't quite remember what day it was... It was crazy good, dude!)
Lastly, I took this day and the day after to take proper notes about the Arabic alphabet and some words given in an online lesson I'd looked through a month or so ago. ...I just have the last page of info I still need to write down, but for some reason the last page confuses me quite a bit. I'm also confused about how you're supposed to be able to write this language in fluid cursive, because I had the impression that cursive means "your pencil rarely is taken off the page" and most of these letters are making that really hard. I might just be overthinking this and people don't actually do it as cursivey as I thought.
Sunday, we went to my grandma and grandpa's for dinner, so I got a better opportunity to properly hang out with my cousins. My grandma made funeral potatoes, by far one of my favorite things she makes, and dessert was pumpkin pie and chocolate cheesecake (both store-bought, but who cares!)~ Besides that, the whole gaggle of cousins (besides my sister, who's been too cool for us for years, but at least now I'll admit it would've been weirder to hang out with us with Captain there, too) did a lot of random chatting, and we also played Clue together for a few rounds (my first time, according to my memory). At one point, Holly (that's the new code-name for one of my Texan cousins) mentioned to J that she'd heard he's a good singer and wanted him to sing, and he made the deal that if he lost this next game of Clue, he'd sing. And so, we (the other players) conspired to win by sharing our notes and knowledge, so obviously he lost (I felt a little bad about it, but he'd seemed resigned to his fate) and sang (specifically, "Cave In" by Owl City, which I'd never heard before this but it was really good). He really did sound good! His little bro (since I don't think I ever said otherwise, I think he really is stuck with the nickname Yee, the poor thing!) then got excited and gave his own rendition of "Bulletproof" by Sia. Then Holly and her sis (can't think of a decent name for her, ah!) sang together "Ask of God" (that brought back some FSY memories for me), then I did "Cough Syrup" (in my deeper range, which didn't sound quite as good as I was hoping for in a few spots, but I guess not too shabby for my first time actually performing it). We'd egged on Cam to go stand in front, too, but the poor thing was nervous as heck, so we sang "Fireflies" loudly with him as well, so I guess it didn't really count as him performing for us but it was fun. J ended up going one last time (don't remember the song), but we all somehow moved on to other things from there. Holly, her sis (I'm sorry, I'm seriously blanking out on a decent name for her, but I've come up with Cloudy for her older brother [who's currently on a mission in Argentina, being the only sibling who doesn't already know Spanish, hehehe]), and I went through some Disney songs while the male cousins were doing... something else (I think just watching TV and goofing off?), and later all of us were together again to just chat and have fun. When we were leaving, I initiated a group hug with my cousins fake-bawling my eyes out because "I won't get to see you guys until next year!" (because it's New Year's Eve, and we're dorks). Even better, when they started gathering, they started wailing along with me, loud enough that the adults upstairs apparently got concerned about what the heck could possibly be happening for us to be so loud (not sure if they could tell it was supposed to be crying, though).
This Monday and Tuesday I was beta-ing Carter's third chapter of DoH (for some reason, it was really hard to focus, so I took a lot longer to finish since I ended up doing tons of breaks and stuff). Dude, I'm jealous of how well he writes fight scenes. I can't even think in fight scenes, but I really want to learn how to do it like him. (Also, characterization and overall likability of characters [except Anguis, one of the nastiest bad guys I've ever seen] is top-notch. Lillian's also playing a bigger role in these first chapters than I'd expected, and kicks so much butt!!!)
Monday also led to eating sushi with my parents and hanging out with Broranges! He picked me up from the restaurant (after a while of talking and eating as well) to take me to his place, and we just chilled for a long while. He got an electric guitar for Christmas, which he apparently favors a lot more over his old acoustic ones, and we did our whole shindig of playing and singing songs. He always brings in a couple Steven Universe songs, which I have barely watched (I KNOW IT'S A GOOD SHOW ALREADY, BRO'S ONE OF THE MANY PEOPLE HOUNDING ME TO WATCH IT), and I decided to fire back by asking what Adventure Time songs he was familiar with. And then... we ended up remembering a video from years ago (I think it counts as a meme, though I think it was a little closer to just super-viral video) where someone overlapped "Bacon Pancakes" and "Empire State of Mind" together, and then he wanted us to sing it together (to him playing the simple chords on his guitar) to put on the internet. I've rarely done anything of the sort, but it was fun once we figured it out, and it didn't sound too bad! It was yet more proof that I need to work on singing lower keys, though...
The last thing we did was watch Akira (which I haven't seen yet, though I probably mentioned reading a wee bit of it a few years ago) before he dropped me off at home.
Tuesday, I finally went to properly get a state ID (because I don't drive, derp), and it turned out that I could register as a voter while I was at it. (Dang it, now I have to pay attention to politics. UUUUUUUUUGH.) It was a lot less painful than my mom said the whole process was in Alabama and Mexico, so thank goodness this is one of the things Utah does well. I also watched the new Jumanji movie with my parents, and it was a lot funnier than I expected. Also more adult. I hadn't realized that it was PG-13, but I think that was to this movie's benefit, because it would've been hard to keep it good and tame enough for kiddies (though there were some kids in the theater...).
Not much happened Wednesday (reading fics the entire day, oops), and yesterday my parents were driving me back up to campus. A new girl moved into the apartment, so I'm hoping we get along. I was also gonna say she has pretty good taste in music (yesterday she was playing really loudly some music that sounded along the lines of 30 Seconds to Mars, some a little heavier than that; not stuff I usually listen to, but I can dig it) until I heard her playing all Taylor Swift earlier today... Today, I was working on this post, watching Youtube (I've really gotten into watching 8-bit Ryan the past couple days), and seeing about maybe doing on-campus housing next year? I know I have to decide ASAP where I wanna go so I don't lose all my options, but I just don't know what I prefer yet.
All that's left to say is New Year's Resolutions. Here's what I've got:
- I declare from henceforth I will dedicate at least 5 minutes of every weekday to practicing drums or Arabic (which can include watching a Youtube video, going over notes, etc.). I think 10 minutes would have a bit better of an effect, but we'll see how 5 goes first.
- Get caught up on diary material. I'll probably try to get what I can in done over the rest of this month, since this is probably my best chance during the semester to put in the time toward personal projects.
- Along those lines, I also am determined to get that short story my professor liked to a place where I feel confident enough to submit it to that competition, and get it done in time. My deadline's the beginning of February, so I honestly should focus on that more than my diary, but I'll try to get diary done as well.
- Actually fast every Fast Sunday. (This Sunday's one of them.)
- Dedicate at least one Sunday every month to family history work and/or indexing. All I'm looking for is a couple hours. I'd also like to have 5 names ready to take to the temple (and actually go to the temple with them) by the end of the year (though preferably earlier than that, obviously).
There's a lot of other stuff I'd love to do this year, like finish Azul (for goodness sakes, it's nearing a year since I first came up with the idea, yet I still feel like I haven't put together a real plot!) and start again morning warm-up routine, but I think I'll really only make myself accountable for what is above. I'm the most scared of what'll happen with the first one, but I really want it to happen.
Alrighty, until next time I post (which is hopefully super soon)! Wish me luck on my second semester of full-time college!
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