So I went out and spent too much money this afternoon. As a result, I now have lots of cosplay supplies, including a black string bikini top, OMG, and thus have no excuse for not spending all of my free day tomorrow working on stuff. On the plus side, this means that Summoner Yuna is almost finished, and White Mage Yuna is starting to actually look like White Mage Yuna. Now I'm practically up to all the little fiddly hand-sewing bits. Which I could probably machine-sew, but they'd look like crap, probably. Note to self, which others are free to remind me of should I forget it: no commissions, ever, not even for friends. Unless they agree to the 'it gets done when I get around to it' clause, and even then, only if they're friends I know won't get annoyed by said clause.

Anyway. My other spending was on a birthday pressent for Jesse, which will be in the mail...uh...when I get around to it, which is my timeline for almost everything at the moment (Mara, make me post as Satsuki tomorrow. I keep saying I'll do it and then forgetting until it's two am and I don't have the brainpower to do it). And I finally caved and bought Kingdom Hearts II with some of the money I got for graduation, because I have no shame. I spent my free time this afternoon (and evening, and early morning) playing, and thus, have ( some begining thoughts (warning, spoilers through the first trip to Hollow Bastion) )

So, I'm officially a high school graduate. The whole ceremony was very nice, not too overdone or underdone, as my dad put it. Almost started crying during some of the student speeches, which were really great, but managed not to. My gown was way too narrow in the shoulders and thus looked a bit silly, but I've decided the whole purpose of academic regalia is possibly to make the wearer look as silly as possible. The highter you go, the sillier looking it gets. Mrs. Ferrell came too, which was nice. We went out to eat at the Outback Steakhouse afterwards, and I made myself entirely stuffed on some rather excellent baby back ribs.

I don't think the whole thing has really sunk in yet, to be honest. I'm really tired today, so nothing is really registering.

So, this morning was my firearms class - aside from the early start, it ended up being tons of fun. I got to shoot two different .22 revolvers, a .22 semi-auto handgun, a 12-gauge semi-auto shotgun, a 20-gauge break-action over-under shotgun, a few different kinds of .22 bolt-action rifles, a .22 semi-auto rifle, and a turn-of-the-century.38-40 lever-action Winchester rifle.

A few observations, which may also help various writer-friends reading this (part of the reason I took the class was because I was trying to write a gun-fight on S_F and realized I had no idea what the hell I was talking about):

-Shotguns have a lot of kick, more than I expected - I'm going to have a nice bruise on my shoulder, I think. They're also both the loudest, and hands-down the heaviest of all the types.
-Conversely, rifles have a lot less kick than I had expected, even the .38. The weight varied a lot, with the semi-auto, which was all synthetic being the lightest, and one of the old .22s with a big wood stock being the heaviest.
-The .38, for some reason, was tons of fun to fire.
-The revolvers had less kick than the semi-autos, probably because they were heavier, and didn't have the slide going back. My aim was a lot better with the revolvers, and I think that was why.
-Apparently side-by-side double-barrel shotguns are generally the most expensive type, because the barrels have to be hand-aligned.

First, because the all of two Academy kids reading this are probably wondering where the hell I was Friday - apparently I utterly fail at life, and either my alarm clock didn't go off, or I slept right through it until it turned itself off, and by the time I awoke, it was half-way through Microbio. So with the only class left being the one I hate, I just didn't bother coming in at all.

Instead, I have been sitting around re-igniting my on-again, off-again love affair with Harry Potter, or, more accurately, one Remus John Lupin. Because he's really my main draw in the series, and I think that probably deserves a post all to itself, about me, and him, and brown, and all sorts of weird introspective things. It's sort of a cyclic thing - looking at my old entries, my last bout of HP-fannishness was actually about a year ago.

In between the HP-stuff, I have also been playing lots of RE4, mostly because I have just under two weeks before I get it back, and I didn't want to work on my paper for history (still don't, which is why I'm writing this. Gonna be up late tomorrow, probably). Main complaints about the PS2 version - the sound quality is poor, and the load times are terrible, particularly as the GC version had basically none. There's some weirdness with item rarity, too. Stuff that was really common to pick up in the GC version, like handgun ammo, is now a lot harder to find, but certain things that were really rare show up more commonly, like magnum ammo. More positive feelings will probably come when I get to all the shiny extras, probably later this week - I'm right before the Krauser boss fight right now.

An aside, the above two things (HP and RE4) lead to really strange dreams, in which Skuld is an evil sorcercess and I'm trying to keep these stone tablet-things away from her, and there is a great deal of nice landscaping and big old stone buildings, and possibly a pond with alligators in it. And I totally haven't wrapped my brain around only having two days of classes left in high school. But I have decided where I'm going next year - UBC.

Haven't been around much, I know. It's the end of the year, so things have been finals, my community service, and playing RE4 because I have to give it back by graduation (more on that later). Senior project stuff is now entirely done and out of my hands, which just leaves the community service, two finals, and one paper. My dad and brother are gone this weekend at Coachella in CA - lucky them. My dad was also bugging me about getting a job with more hours this summer. I'm..uncertain. I know it's a good idea, but this is my last summer vacation before college and the real world, I'd kind of like to just kick back and enjoy it. Further consideration is needed, I think.

On the AX front...I'd really like to go, because it seems like I'm nearly the only person who isn't, but I'm looking at $300 for plane tickets alone, plus reg, hotel, and food, which is probably another $200+, which is all money I don't really have. Something to think about, though.

And proving I'm a huge geek, I totally had a dream last night I was cosplaying Rufus and had managed to find a Tseng to join me in my madness, although I dunno who it was. We were laughing about something...don't remember much else.

Yeah, finally got around to uploading a bunch of photos.

-The most awesome cake ever (tasty, too)
-Me looking cool (when do I _not_ look cool? Don't answer that.)
-Blue hair, front view
-Blue hair, side view
-Blue hair, top view (you can see where it didn't take on my roots)
-I go to the nerdiest school ever.
-Prom outfit!
-With my dad (and I totally just found Burning Chrome because of this photo. Been looking for it all week)
-The cheese log. Love the cheese log. Fear the cheese log
-With my lovely date, Mara <3
-Sephiroth. I look, uh, really scary in this. And possibly not in a good way
-Now I just look stoned.

I also have the group photo we had taken at prom, which looks great, but I need to scan it still.

Now in easy-to-read bulleted form!
-To steal a phrase from F_W, Squall's personality change iz pastede on yay. Seriously, he suddenly switches from 'Rinoa is kinda nice, but mostly just annoying' to 'OMG RINOA!!!1!'
-Esthar kind of sucks. I've probably just been spoiled horribly by Midgar (which I think you all know by now I love), but hell, even Zeal was cooler than Esthar.
-On the other hand, Laguna is lots of love. He's like Zack, but with more than ten lines in the whole game!

And I went and saw 'Take The Lead' with Grace and Anthony, which was surprisingly good, and makes me wish I could actually remember stuff from Dance last year. Particularly as I still think Ada + Leon + tango = win.

And kidavi, saw the post. Will write up up a reply tomorrow morning, hopefully. Right now I think I'm gonna crash though, before I cough up a lung or something. Ugh.

So, having played through disc 2, I've now hit the point where I've been advised to stop and make up my own ending, because what little plot coherency the game has totally falls apart at that point. So...

Rinoa finally admits that she's only been hounding Squall to hide her deep and undying love for Selphie. They buy and re-open Raine's bar and live in lesbian bliss. Quistis takes over the orphanage, because she likes being Everybody's Mom, and earns a reputation for being kind but firm. Irvine becomes a stripper in Deling City (look, he's got man-whore written all over him, okay?). After becoming a world-class fighting champion, Zell decides that it isn't the life for him, and uses his prize money to buy a boat and become a world-class fisherman instead. Squall buys a big house in the middle of nowhere with lots of cats, and enjoys not having people yelling at him to get things done. He visits Quistis and sometimes teaches special classes at Balamb Garden (which Cid and Edea fix after it's unfortunate collision with Galbadia Garden) when life in the middle of nowhere gets a little too boring. And everyone lives happily ever after, or at least tries to, the end.

EDIT:
Jo: What about Seifer?
Me: I...don't know. I tend not to pay very much attention to him. He hangs around the Garden worshipping the ground Edea walks on some more?
Me: And possibly has hot gay sex with Squall when they can get all the cats out of the bedroom.

I totally forgot to mention the most dramatic bit of prom, which is that I got pulled over by the state police on the way home. Not for speeding or driving erraticly - I actually didn't even get asked if I had been drinking, and it was midnight and we had very clearly just come from a party. No, I got pulled over because one of my brake lights was out. At which point I learned that apparently my inspection sticker was invalid, because we didn't get the car re-inspected after we switched the registration from me to my grandmother. The trooper told me it could have been an $85 fine, but let me off with a warning. The car has now been re-inspected, and the bad bulb in the brake light has been replaced.

And I feel like something cyberpunky. Probably because I was shamelessly pimping Gibson at Josh the other day. Maybe I can dig up that bit I had about the cyberpunk ninja assassain, because despite how it sounds, I think it actually had some potential. Mmmm, OCs. I have actually learned to really like them - I blame Asher. Or I could just read Burning Chrome for the tenth time.

...Amberlee's post totally just reminded me that the Star Wars exhibit leaves Boston at the end of April, and I haven't seen it yet. This needs to be fixed. Possibly next weekend.

Steal Red Hot Chili Pepper's Greatest Hits from brother. Mostly because I totally need "Under the Bridge" for my Asher playlist.

Also, I am so fucked on the Microbiology quiz I have next class. Mostly because apparently I utterly fail at chem. Ah well, my grade is good enough in that class I could probably not take the quiz and get an A, I think.