Car Troubles
Posted at 12:54 PM

Ever since the day I got my drivers license, the fates willed any car in my possesion to be doomed. For example, my first car. 'Twas a beautiful little civic. I'm not a car person, and I could care less about how fast or slow it goes, but any civic between the years of 2000-1996 was a happy car. Ever seen those chevron with techron commercials, where the cars are happy? Yep. That was my civic. Only minus the chevron with techron. Its headlights were always happy and seemed to smile at me. Its cute little grill was always curved up into a little grin. It was my friend in times of emotional distress. It took me to see my friends when I was bored. It took me shopping when I needed to get out of the house. My car was a happy car.
Unfortunately, on February 18, 2003, my cute little civic came to rest in peace between Parson's and Wilson road. The woman who murdered it was going 55 mph in a 25 mph school zone, but I got the ticket because I was the teenager and I was turning.

Sheep Tag!
Posted at 05:52 PM

Suikoden Fan Art of Chris!
Posted at 10:00 PM

This past Christmas (2003), I went video game hunting for Colin. You see, Colin has an affinity for crappy games *cough FFX-2, Disgea, Wario Ware & Yu Gi Oh- on the emulator on his computer played with a plug in game controller cough* So I went around to several gaming stores at the mall looking for cute, high-quality graphic/art RPG's that didn't have slutty chicks and yelling at the various sales reps who tried to sell me X-2.
Eventually, some guy convinced me to buy Suikoden III. The cover didn't look all that impressive graphics-wise, but at least the lead female on the cover isn't wearing say- a bra, ass floss, and a scarf.

Months went by, and Colin didn't even open the plastic wrap to the game. Eventually, I would be the one to open up the game, I would be the one to actually play it, but Colin's friend Jiaz would end up finishing the game before any of us.
Now I've never played any of the previous Suikodens, nor have I played any RPG ever (unless you count Kingdom Hearts which isn't really an RPG in my book). When you start the game, you get to pick one out of three characters. Geddoe was this oldish looking guy with a patch over his eye, and Hugo looked like some little 12 year old punk with poorly done blonde highlights. Then there was Chris. She was a silver-haired maiden in shining armor. The image triggered some long-ago memory of Queen Serenity from Sailor Moon (minus the goofy hair). After 122 hours of playing the game (yes, it took me THAT long to finish it), my level 67 Chris kicked ass. But enough chatter. Onto the pictures (btw, clicking on the thumbnails will open a new window):
Chris sketched with pencil on graph paper


Chris outlined in black sharpie on graph paper


Chris scanned and outlined by mouse on PSP


Chris with first layer of colors applied


this is a work in progress...

Friends Season Finale!
Posted at 07:49 PM

Now this is going to make some die-hard 'Friends' fan cry, but I am proud to say, I have never watched a SINGLE 'Friends' episode. Ever.


And I get by just fine.
:P

Disclaimer:
Posted at 01:50 PM

I would like to inform everyone that comes here, to read the entirety of the DISCLAIMER before doing anything else.
Thank you, and have a great day!

Tips for the Inexperienced
Posted at 06:42 PM

Alrighty there, for all you inexperienced boyfriends who play warcraft: DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT ever kick your girlfriend's ass in a game of warcraft when she has had a bad day/feels grouchy/has pms!

Any one, or a combination of the above will result in terrifying consequences. >:O

A Completely Bald Man
Posted at 08:32 PM

December, 2000.
My parents wanted a "family vacation" that Christmas. We would be taking a 6-7 hour drive (not including pit stops, driving breaks, and eating time) down to Orlando, Florida. Disney World* was our final destination.

Although my little sister and I don't get along, we would often invent little games to keep ourselves from mutilating one another. One of our favorites was the scavenger hunt. The night before our trip, we would each make a list of random, but reasonably find-able objects on the car ride. Items such as "a New York State license plate", "an 18 wheeler depicting impossibly perfect food", "a really old and wrinkly couple" or "a red-faced crying child" would be common occurences on the list.

On the morning of the trip, we would exchange lists and get to hunting. Usually, my sister's items were pretty easy to find. I could spot them all within two days. My items, tended to be a little more radical, but my sister could usually find them all by the last day of our trip. However, it was that year my sister had a problem with a single item: a completely bald man.

Now of all the things on her list, I thought a completely bald man would be easy as a piece of pie. After all, you always see random bald men around. But during our trip, I was surprised to admit, those completely bald men were pretty elusive. Sure we found plenty of men missing hairs on their heads. The just-beginning-to-fall-out-haired men, the it's-not-half-gone it's-half-on-haired men, and the this-is-the-last-of-it haired men. Though we could not spot a single, completely hairless man.

Towards the end of the day, on our last day at Disney, we had almost entirely forgotten about the scavenger hunt. Typically, we would both be done with our items by now, but during that trip, my sister still had yet to find a CBM. However, it just so happened, that on our way out the gates, my sister cried, "Look!"

And before I focused on where she was pointing, my little sister dashed off in the direction of her finger.

She stopped about a foot away from the man whose back was turned toward us, but I knew what she meant.

"I found a completely bald man!!!" she yelled.


*Remember folks, Disney World is in Florida, while Disney Land is in San Diego, California. (Though I've been lucky enough to have gone to both)

Feeling Whimsical :)
Posted at 07:10 PM

It's a windy, rainy night outside, and Dashboard Confessional's The Only Gift That I Need is humming in my head. *btw, right click on the link and select 'save target as...'*

" You'll be leavin’ for the winter, but I'll concede that it’s true
It’s the right thing for you, but it’s tough to be moved with the holiday spirit
And to tell you the truth, I had big plans for Christmas, and high hopes for you.

I want you here by my side
Cold nights and fires and white wine
And dreams of holidays to come
But I’ll wait for spring, to bring you to me
the only gift that I need

I’ll be living off your phone calls and your letters and your postcards
Every single word is like a secret wish come true
Well, who cares if we’re apart for the big days
It’s the small ones that made me fall in love with you.

I want you here by my side
Cold nights and fires and white wine
And dreams of holidays to come
But I’ll wait for spring, to bring you to me,
the only gift that I need

The only gift that I need."

(the picture below is from neopets.com!)

Cooking With Cindy
Posted at 10:01 AM

Back by popular demand, I am going to give you the step-by-step idiot-proof recipe for Tomato & Eggs, Cindy-style. I know it may sound gross, but if you've actually had some of my Tomato & Eggs, you wouldn't make such false judgements on something you've only imagined in your head as "chunky pasta sauce/salsa + egg".
-+-+-+-+-
Ingredients:
2 large tomatoes or 4 plum/roma tomatoes or a box of cherry tomatoes
2 stalks of green onion (you know, the long, thin, green stuff)
2 or 3 large eggs (more eggs = more protein, so it's up to you)
A bottle of ketchup
Sugar
A bottle of soy sauce
Vegetable oil
And that's it! :D
-+-+-+-+-
Cutting:
You may not realize it, but the cutting up of your ingredients contributes to the over all look of the finished product and how long it's going to take to get cooked.
For tomatoes- cut the 2 large tomatoes into cubes no bigger than your thumb (I mean the tip of your thumb nail to the very first joint in your thumb). Roma/Plum tomatoes, cut into slices like you would put on a burger. Thinner = better. Cherry or grape tomatoes, you want to halve them. Unless they're very large cherry/grape tomatoes, then you could quarter them, but that's entirely up to you.

For green onions- cut them up into fine little loops. The thinner you can get your loops, the better for it will look prettier and more appetizing.

For eggs- crack them on a plate and then slice them. Just kidding! :) These are going to be scrambled, so crack them in a bowl, and mix the yolk and white around until it's all one homogenous mixture.
-+-+-+-+-
Cooking:
Look! The hard part's over. Congrats if you've made it this far! :D
So, the eggs have to be dealt with first. Pour some veg. oil into the pan. I'll leave the amount of oil up to you. More oil = more greasy, but if you use too little, things tend to stick and get burned on the pan, unless of course, you're using a teflon pan. Some oil is essential. I use about 6 spoonfuls of veg. oil. Now my spoons may be bigger/smaller than the spoons you use at home, but like I said, it's really up to you on how much oil you put in there.
Pour eggs in the oil and scramble them. Take half of your finely chopped green onions, and scatter it in your scrambled eggs. (I tend to use the lighter, bottom parts of the onion in the scrambled eggs simply because it takes longer to get the thick, bottom parts to cook)

Next, introduce the scrambled eggs to tomatoes! Don't take your scrambled eggs out of the pan, just let them socialize with the tomatoes. Now, right after you add the tomatoes, you want to put sugar on the tomato and egg. You need lots of sugar to neutralize the sour of the tomato. I think I use some 15-20 spoonfuls of sugar. But it really depends on if you want your tomatoes to be sweeter or not.

The sugar won't mix with the tomato and egg unless you add soy sauce. Soy sauce is like salt to asians, and lots of households will substitute salt for soy sauce. So, more soysauce = more salty. So soy sauce to your liking. You want to achieve a balance between the sweet and salty. You know how ketchup is kinda sour/salty but it can also be kinda sweet? That's what you're aiming for. So guess what comes next? Ketchup! Ketchup is really the optional ingredient here. You could definetly do without it. It just adds to the texture of your tomato and eggs. If you like your tomato and egg to be more soupy, then add very little to no ketchup. If you want a thicker texture to your tomato and egg, then add more ketchup. There's no wrong amount to use!

Lastly, add the other half of the chopped green onions, and stir. Did I mention that you were supposed to be stirring the pan throughout this whole time? Well, you were. You'll know when your tomatoes are cooked when the tomatoes' skin gets kinda wrinkly, and the actual tomatoes themselves are soft and mushy.

Tada! You're done! Give yourself a big applause for having made it through this edition of Cooking with Cindy and enjoy your dish :D

My First 'Date' Date
Posted at 10:03 AM

Last night, Colin and I went on our first date. What do I mean by "first" date?? Haven't we been going out for about a year now?

It's simple. In all the time that we've been together, we've never really went out on a 'date' date. Every time we planned something for the two of us, it either wouldn't work out, or something came up and other people ended up joining us.
So last night, we went to Macaroni Grill and watched Van Helsing.

I'd been craving some really good chocolate cake, and the Bridgetown nearby had really good chocolate cake, but it was much too fattening. I wasn't in the mood for mexican, otherwise we would have gone to Rio Bravo, so Macaroni Grill it was. The site of post-AP calc-grump sessions, the restaurant I went to for two homecomings.

First, I'd like to say, we had a great waiter. Who could write his name upside down in one fluid motion. (I wrote my name upside down in a less-than fluid motion.) Despite the fact that he thought I was weird for skipping the main course and went right on to dessert, he was still being a good waiter. And it was a divine not-too-fattening chocolate cake.

As for Van Helsing, all I have to say, is that I didn't scream at all during any of the spooky scenes. (Colin just lost all circulation in his arm last night.)

3 observations after Van Helsing:

3. Even if you don't care what movie to watch, don't let your bf pick the movie. You will regret it.

2. Without special effects, that movie would have been absolute crap.

1. A werewolves' transformation is like PMS. It happens once a month, and it makes the person very grouchy/irritable.

Dead or Alive!
Posted at 11:04 AM

I went over to Colin's yesterday, and we played Dead or Alive 3. At first, his little brother Ian, wanted to help me out. But after watching me soundly whip Colin's arse in some 30+ consecutive games with every single character that was available, Ian decided he should be helping Colin instead.

I've finally found a game that I could beat my bf at!! :D

Happiness
Posted at 08:45 PM

She said, "You are a true and mortal wizard now, as you always wished. Does it make you happy?"

"Well... men don't always know when they're happy. But I-- I think so."

~The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

Why I Don't Lie To Strangers Anymore
Posted at 04:21 PM

I recently attended a birthday party hosted by one of my old high school friends, Rena*. It was a party for her daughter’s first birthday. Rena and I live in the upper-middle class of Georgia, where we all went to one of the top, blue ribbon schools in the nation. Most of us were expected to graduate. Most of us were expected to go on to college, and lead great lives.

But is it really so terrible not go on to college, get on the “right track”, and head on out to the “real world”?

In our bored freshman years of high school, my friends and I would make it our hobby to get online, pretending to be 63 year-old goat herders from Djibouti. We fabricated such detailed accounts of our supposed lives, and were positively delighted when a youngster more foolish than ourselves came to believe us. Over time, we invented a great many personas, and managed to fool a great many people on AIM and ICQ. To us, they were just little boxes that you typed into, and the little boxes would give us a reply.

Then came the day that I went on AIM’s random find-a-buddy feature, and talked to lightbulb*, pretending to be a teenage mother of 3, each with a different father, though the state took all 3 of my children away. Now lightbulb did not believe me for a second, but rather, he played along and pretended to be one of my 3 bastard kids that the state took away. By and by, the chats with lightbulb would get more and more ridiculous:

Me: So my son, I hear you are now the holy leader of the monkeys in search for the golden light!
Lightbulb: That’s right mommy, your son is all grown up and leading monkeys.

Until Rena decided enough was enough. She would talk to him, inform him how silly he was starting to sound, and how we often had a great many good laughs at his expense.

She told him all of that and more. They talked about life, school, and love. Over the years of chatting, they grew closer than anyone would ever have imagined. None of us believed in internet dating, much less the possibility of actually having a relationship online, but Rena was now a believer.

The rest of us now knew that Lightbulb had a name, was a few years older than the rest of us, and had a home in Colorado. In fact, he even came to visit Rena here in Georgia a couple of times. But it would be in our senior year when he finally ran away from home, packed up all his belongings, and drove down here in his mother’s car to be with Rena. Her family tolerated him, but they eventually kicked him out of the house.

Rena, in her senior year, was pregnant, and her baby was due in May.

By the second semester in her senior year, she had to withdraw from our blue ribbon school of excellence, and go to Independence, the special needs high school.

Rena gave birth, unmarried, to a baby girl. Her neighborhood was alive in gossip that month. In the Bible-belt south, this was scandalous. They would eventually be married, but it was too busy a time for the two of them.

She still graduated as a student at our high school. As for college, she’s considered it, but she would rather be a housewife and a good mother to her baby girl. It wasn’t the end of the world. Her fiancé is not flipping burgers at McDonald’s for minimum wage. She and her family get along fine, and I wish her all the best of luck in the future.

But I don’t ever lie to strangers online anymore.

*names have been changed

The 5 Types of Blogs
Posted at 04:33 PM

After going through a copious amount of blogs these past couple of weeks, I daringly present to you: Cindy's Generalizations of the Five Types of Blogs

1. The WBC Blog These blogs are the Whine-Bitch-Complain blogs. They are a source of outgoing steam or stress, and provide a substantial amount of relief for the writers. These writers will mostly, if not mainly, post about how bad their day went and how much life sucks, tending to focus only on the negative aspects of Life in general. Their goal in making a public WBC blog with commenting abilities, is most likely to get attention, and seek sympathy from their readers.

2. The Zine Blog These kinds of blogs attempt to create diversity in their subject content. They may be witty, sarcastic, mockingly ridiculous, or scathingly cynical in their writing. Their main purpose of writing is for their readers to be entertained and to share ideas/opinions. They don't update often, as most will update once every few days/weeks. Their blog design may be very aesthetically pleasing, though most tend to focus more on the content of their blog rather than its visual components.

3. The Personal Blog Like its name suggests, this blog has a few readers limited to their close friends or family only, or would preferrably not have readers at all. These blogs consist of the writer's real and honest accounts of daily experiences/observations. These writers truly think of their blog as a diary or a journal, only better; for the typed word can be amended whereas the written word is static.

4. The Non-Serious Blog These blogs belong to those who have trouble commiting themselves to blogging. They may write about a few, trivial matters, or their posting frequency may be sporadic, or they may be both. These writers perhaps don't know what to write about, or are unsure of what to write. Thus, they result in scanty entries or short, commonplace ones.

5. The Linking Blog The writers of these blogs are more avid readers than they are writers. They'll find an abundant amount of intriguing, upsetting, or humorous links on the web, and cannot wait to share it with others. You won't find out much about the writers of these blogs except their likes and dislikes. These are the writers who will surf for hours upon hours, being entertained or enraged by what they see, and post the various links to entertain and enrage others. Dave Barry has a linking blog.

Now of course you can mix and match these five basic blogs to get creations like: the non-serious linking blog, or the personal WBC blog. So the question is, what kind of blog do you have?

Nooooooo!!
Posted at 04:07 PM

Gone.
Posted at 09:47 AM

I'm leaving for china tomorrow (the 23rd) at 6 am. I'm coming back July 17th.

Current thoughts:

No Warcraft for almost 2 months! All my practice will deteriorate! :(

My poor compy has been infected with some nasty STD from the dirty ho (aka the internet).

Damn these random programs that are self-installing themselves onto my poor compy!

Damn these random programs for not letting me use windows media player!!

I am running out of space to pack my clothes.

I hope when Mrs. Webster puts Melvin (my betta fish) into the big tank, the Webster's fish will eat Melvin so I can get a prettier betta fish.

I never cease to be amazed by an airplane's take-off.

Me being a teacher in China = GTC (Great Teacher Cindy!!!!) :D

Just Curious
Posted at 06:14 PM

Who is this "Ann" the owner of this here blog who links to me:
http://sparkysix.blogspot.com

And do I know her from somewhere?

I went to high school with an Ann Kim, but I don't think she went to Boston... or did she?

It's Hot and Humid
Posted at 04:48 AM

And that's the worst kind of hot.
A quick run of my first week here in Nanchang, China:
Monday: Flew from Atlanta to San Fransisco (I was in CA! Yay!) to Shang Hai, to Nanchang.

Tuesday: Staying at paternal grandparents, went to visit maternal grandma after breakfast, got my hair cut to shoulder length and straightened. (My hair was already straight, it was my sister who wanted her hair straightened, but since it was really cheap to get anything done to your hair here, my mother made the both of us get our hair cut and straightened)

Wednesday: Got up, went to maternal grandma's house, went shopping all day with my grandma and one of my aunts

Thursday: Taught a group of 40 freshman college students "Conversational English". Yes my father told me that I'd be teaching little 10 year old kids. Just add 9 more years to the 10.

Friday: Went to visit where my mom grew up and the people that took care of her (long story, I'll explain later)

Saturday: Finally slept in till 7 am (I've been getting up at 4:30 every morning and sleeping at around 8 every night) Sat on my butt, played cards with my cousins, and took pictures.

That's all for now! I'll post pictures when I get back to the States :D