Mercy is alive and kicking shit up.

I was bored out of my mind the other day and decided I wanted to try making some more icons for that 100 Serial Experiments Lain icons I had tried to do a while back. First, I posted the new ones I had made onto my website So-Koi.com and that lead to me reminiscing about Merky's Icons, my icons website that was taken down due to a domain name hijack. After a week of designing and coding (and an hour or two today of making it IE-friendly), I introduce to you So Koi Avvies (avvies = my shorter term for avatars).

It seems that I'm still missing a few on that website as I see some in my LJ usericons list that I don't have up on the site, so there's a little more work to be done.

In other news, I'm getting married. Twenty-three years old, the both of us, and we're going down to Miami to tie the knot. We got engaged back in December and will be man and wife in August.

As far as entertainment goes, I'm really into the anime Soul Eater. I am loving loving loving the song "I Will Possess Your Heart" by Death Cab for Cutie. And I really want to play that new FF Tactics game for the DS.

Mmhm.

It's a big change for me to live in a place that's predominantly white and black. There aren't so many Hispanics around here, and even fewer Asians so I tend to stick out more so than I used to.

I have a new job (something like technology retail) and it's situated between a few major cities but it's also close to a lot of small towns, meaning I get a lot of people who either know way more than I do about what I'm supposed to be selling and a lot of people who know next to nothing because they live in some hole.

At this job, someone was supposed to be coming today to train me on a specific service that we sell. I knew this a few days in advance, so last night I went to bed knowing that the next day, I would be meeting someone and learning a few new things.

After dreaming about a rusty toilet and other things, I dreamt about my trainer coming in, training me and flirting at the same time, then inviting me to lunch after my shift - his treat. In my dream, I declined, as I care about my boyfriend very much and I'd much rather go home to eat lunch, knowing in my heart that the only reason I was here was because I wanted to be with my boyfriend Sean and only him.

Whenever Sean and I argue (which isn't often, luckily) I start thinking about leaving to somewhere or maybe even someone, then I always start crying because of the aforementioned reason. I don't want to leave his side.

So I went in to work today. Some smart looking clothes, no makeup, just some chapstick, and sometime during my shift the trainer comes in. An introduction, a handshake, then he decides he wants to get some coffee with me. It's a place just a few doors down from my store, and if I "didn't want coffee," he said, "then just walk with me over there."

He goes and asks my manager if we could get some coffee, the chief said it was fine, and so we went. We get there, and he buys me a cup without my asking.

After we get back and go through some training, we engage in some small talk. He asks if I was up here living with a friend, as I told him earlier that I moved here from Miami. My manager was close by and he knows that I'm living with my boyfriend and that I moved here specifically for him, and I know that I shouldn't lead guys (or girls) on, so I told him that I was living with my boyfriend.

His face dropped and he said, "Oh."

It makes me feel bad, but not bad enough cause my Sean is one sexy guy.

Tomorrow, I'll be able to finally feel some of the cold that one expects when it's wintertime. Sure, the heat is fun...but when you endure it from Spring to 80% of the Winter, you'd like to have at least some change. A nice, comfortable sweater; some hot cocoa with floating marshmallows slowly melting on top; and perhaps a short break from the mosquitos? One can only hope.

And hope I do. I was depressed a few weeks ago, and now I'm much better. I don't know what it is or how it came to be, but I feel like I'm improving somehow. Things are looking up. I'm looking up. There's a future for me, and I won't reach it if I don't try, if I don't look forward.

Like a forward march into alien territory.

There's this book I want to write. I have the general idea of it, the conflict, the solution, and whatnot. The problem is that the only place I think it could happen is in Japan, simply because of the abnormal obsessions and country-specific psychoses they have over there. So, within the next ten years I want to travel to Japan and perhaps live there for a couple of months. It'd be the best thing ever.

P.S. Rest in peace, Mr. Instant Ramen Inventor.

P.P.S. I swear that my fiction writing is better and more understandable than my journal entries...Really! Hey, it's 4:30 AM! Cut a girl some slack!

What can be said? I've been having some really crazy ideas lately, the craziest being about opening a restaurant with a guy "friend" of mine sometime in the future. It is a possibility, though.

Oh, have you heard of the Cereus? It's a plant whose flowers only bloom at night. While it's kinda awesome, it's freaky too just because the way the flowers are...they remind me of that man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors because it seems like the flowers are rearing up to eat you.

Seriously.

I really should be sleeping. Instead, I'm going to accomplish something for once! Hella cryptic.

Hello guys. Long time no see and whatnot. I'm not sure if I'm going to start using LJ again, but it doesn't hurt to come and say hi every now and then, right?

Wait! I'm not done!

Did Mercy actually write something? Why yes, she did!

Hey, I'm surprised too.

I need someone to break me - to rip my heart out from my chest, fling it onto the floor and put their foot deliberately, squarely, onto all of the good feelings I've ever had and just stomp on them.

There's no other way for me to get this. My heart's never been really broken, yet I've done it enough to people that didn't deserve it at all. It makes me wonder why I even go through with "love" and things of that nature, because I really don't understand it anyhow.

Nothing seems genuine to me anymore, and everything I do reflects that.

Anyway, life's been good otherwise.

Billy, a B-L-O-G is NOT a pad and paper that you carry around with you.

Next Sunday, we'll be seeing Billy with an iPod, except it's a record player that he just carries around!

I haven't posted in a long time, and it's even been a longer time since I've properly checked my friends list.

Thanks to Hurricane Wilma, I have no electricity at my house. It'll be a full 2 weeks without power on Monday, and there may be one more week until I actually do get power back.

Sucks.

And I have to run off to work. I hope all of ye are OK :)

After only half a day of playing, I am now addicted to Puzzle Pirates.

I am pretty good at bilge pumping, I beat a person at the Treasure Drop game my very first time of playing without knowing how the game works, and I'm getting more experienced at distilling rum and shipwrightery.

I also got invited to join a crew that goes looting other ships (I was doing a job for them and the captain invited me afterwards), and I happily accepted.

It's incredible fun and you get a 30 day trial. I'll probably end up getting myself a subscriber account soon :)

Not dialup safe!

( some shots I did late one night, some after the hurricane... )

Oy.

Right now I'm putting music onto my brand new ipod (I named it Stellatus because I couldn't come up with anything else) and it's taking forever. Stupid laptop doesn't have a high speed 2.0 USB port, so I'll probably have to purchase a card for it.

Anyway, I DIDN'T HAVE TO WORK TODAY! I'm so happy, and my sisters likewise, what with their chanting of "FOUR DAY WEEKEND!!!" Even though this hurricane is a wimpy one, I'm really glad I didn't have to go to work.

Stella has downloaded only half of the songs I have in my library and it's been like, 45 minutes already. I want to use my wireless headphones already.

I've been holding on to Audition and Visitor Q from Netflix for like, 5 months already. I really should return them, along with the third movie I have out.

I screencapped a few parts from Audition, and am uploading it to my screencaps site, but it's taking a damn long time for the script to finish adding them to the gallery. And I keep getting errors, which aren't good.

My galleries are pretty scant...so I should start working on those when I get the chance.

( my list of DVDs that I can remember )

Well, I feel a lot better than I did before (I was really grumpy) so I'm going to make some leftovers for dinner or something (didn't feel like eating earlier) and either take more screencaps or start cleaning stuff.

Trace Memory
Release Date: 9/28/2005

A puzzle/adventure game for the Nintendo DS? The graphics look good, the story sounds interesting, and the only bad thing I've heard about it was that it was short. But that's OK with me, considering I forget storylines and whatnot very easily, meaning, I can replay it the next month without complaining.

So for September:
- Dreamfall (really looking forward to this)
- and this Trace Memory game.

:)

I made an assload of business cards last night and now I don't know where they are. I think I have about a 100 of them, and only 10 of them are absolutely perfect within their margins.

And the thing I've been anticipating - the arrival of the new menus - happened today. And now I'm stressed, pissed off, and will be working for several hours on both the site and some new signs indicating the prices for the buffet.

Apart from having to fancy up the redesign a little bit and changing the header, I have to finish the Spanish version ASAP. That's where the stress comes from.

The reason I'm ticked off? The printers left a mistake on our takeout menus. I wish it was something harmless, like a typo in one of the menu items or something, but it's not. Instead of having our hours as 11:00 to 10:00 for weekdays, they had it as 11:00 to 11:00, which are the hours for the weekend. What bothers me the most about this is that I had marked it as wrong and put in the right time on the preview they gave us for corrections.

Since I'm so anal about these things and don't want people calling me after 10 on weekdays wanting delivery and whatnot "because the menu says you close at 11", I'm writing in the correct time on each menu.

I'll be glad to be done with this site.

I just found out how to do a find and replace over an entire website in Adobe GoLive CS2.

Sorry Notepad. Our relationship was bound to end sooner or later.

No more wasted minutes trying to do a global site change over one link or site reorganization. I'm still handcoding everything (to perfection! haha) but at least things will be slightly easier.

Oh man, this rocks.

I don't know what it is, but for the last week or so I haven't had much of an appetite, so I've been eating a lot less. That's probably good, considering I need to lose the weight.

Anyway, tonight at work I hardly ate anything. By the end of my shift, I was getting hungry and didn't want any Chinese food (believe me, if you've been eating the same stuff for 6-7 years and eating it every day for the past 8 months, you wouldn't want it either) so I made Peter take me to Versailles to get a steak.

I got a sirloin, but I think I should've gotten the palomilla instead. The steak's OK, the maduros and the white rice are good, but what this whole post is really about is...the black beans.

THE BLACK BEANS ARE SO GOOD. I've never had black beans this good before.

These are to die for. Seriously.

PANDA DOG

Seriously, how cute is that thing? It makes me giggly.

Mercy: Style sheet switcher, oh how I love you.

Mercy's Common Sense (which is very little): AHEM... Shouldn't you be sleeping?

Mercy: But I made a second layout for my website! *cuddles her blue cloud layout*

Common Sense: You've stayed up all night. You need your rest!

Mercy: I'll be fine! I don't need sleep - I am sleep resistant!

Common Sense: ...Sure. Remember yesterday? You stayed up all night working on your website and you ended up being late for work because you overslept!

Mercy: Yeah, but I felt GREAT. I hardly ever wake up happy and I did yesterday! I'm fine.

Common Sense: ...Eff this. *pushes button to make Mercy's eyes heavy*

Mercy: Want...to work...on site............... *snore*

So I just made the new layout live for Headkablooie.com. I'm still combing through to try to get the pages validated, but it's not really a big deal to me. At least my content is a lot more structured now when it comes to the coding. I'm content for now, especially since the pages work just fine in IE5+.

And because I won't be able to see Peter this weekend:
( ugly pics of us )

Ugh. I'm hungry...Peter brought me breakfast at 10 when I was still sleeping. After that, I went right back to sleep and didn't wake up until 5. I usually get ready for work at 4 and leave by 5, so I was kinda late by my own standards. After getting to work and having to do some stuff while others milled about, I had my lunch at 5:45 or so. I haven't eaten anything since, unless you count a half of a stale-ish fortune cookie.

I should probably make myself a very early breakfast. Everything else just seems unappetizing right now.

Oh man, oh man.

Trying to make divs float just the right way is such a pain in the ass. For 20 minutes or so I was trying to make 2 columns line up next to each other, like a normal 2 column fluid layout. For some reason, it just wouldn't do it and I was so frustrated.

Now everything is dandy.

And why is it that I'm about to make headkablooie.com look like something off of Blogger?


preview

( rambling on my crappy design skills )

I should probably go make some list-item symbols...