One more day until April vacation, yay. Except first I have to survive a day with two quizzes and a test, though I suppose I should be thankful that it's not three quizzes because my chemistry quiz got pushed off until after vacation (as did my algebra quiz that I was supposed to have today, which is super-yay). Of course, this vacation isn't going to to be as restful as February break because I'm going to be college-visiting on most of the days, and I think we're spending the last weekend of vacation outside New York City with my cousins. When I'm not road-tripping, however, I will be attempting to write my ass off (though I know without a doubt that I will fail at that, because I have extreme issues with getting my characters from point A to point B), and playing FFX for nostalgia's sake (because that was what I was doing last April vacation... which totally doesn't seem like it was a year ago).

Speaking of Final Fantasy, today I was teaching the ballet class that I normally help out with, and I loaded a ballet CD onto my iPod so I wouldn't have to deal with CDs, and just for fun I decided to have the stretching music be from Final Fantasy Piano Collections. (It masquerades perfectly as regular ballet music. I'd totally do a whole class of Final Fantasy piano music, but the music is too irregular to do combinations to.) So I had the class stretching to "The Oath" from FFVIII and "Suteki Da Ne" from FFX. It made my geek!brain happy.

Another thing that makes my geek!brain happy: last night's episode of Lost. I won't say too much in case of spoilers, but let's just say that Hurley could quite possibly be the true writer of Empire Strikes Back, and then he gives Miles this whole speech about how people need to solve their daddy issues, because if Luke and Vader had solved their daddy issues then the Second Death Star wouldn't have blown up and Boba Fett wouldn't have been eaten by the Sarlaac and there would have been no need for Ewoks. Yes, all of this stuff was mentioned in the episode. Lost + Star Wars = WIN.

Also, as proof that my mum is just as much of a Lost geek as I am, here's a conversation that we had last Sunday:

M: "So what are you working on in math?"
A: "Variation functions."
M: "And what are variation functions again?"
A: "Basically it's when you have equations like y=kx or y=k/x, in which k is a constant."
M: "Constant like how Desmond needs a constant?"
A: *facepalms, but is totally thinking the same thing*

Damn it, I keep forgetting that I'm working on finishing my US History packet while I'm doing this.

Well, I think I originally intended for this entry to be more interesting, but I can't think of anything else to say. Sorry for all the Lost talk. (Hey, it could be worse. I could be brainstorming about my characters, but I think I'll spare everyone.)

Spent part of today downloading (in a technically illegal fashion, but shh) some more geek!music. The best find of the day? An alternate version of "One-Winged Angel" that appears in "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children" that combines Ominous Latin Chanting and electric guitar. It is so incredibly AWESOME. It also has different lyrics from the original, so now I can get things like "NOLI MANERE, MANERE IN MEMORIA, SEPHIROTH!" stuck in my head. I also found out that the lyrics from the original "One-Winged Angel" come from pieces from Carmina Burana, including "O Fortuna." (& that caused me to look up the lyrics to "O Fortuna," which I now have for my Latin geekery pleasure.)

Another good find was "Melodies of Life," the vocal theme from "Final Fantasy IX." It's a beautiful piece; the melody is really nice and the vocalist doesn't drive me up the wall (which is the problem with "Suteki da ne" from "Final Fantasy X; the melody is great but the vocalist annoys me so much). Strangely enough, I find it to be more applicable to FFX than FFIX (though maybe because I'm more familiar with the plot of the former). The lyrics seem to apply more to Tidus/Yuna than Zidane/Garnet... but maybe that's just me.

(Yes, I know no one will be interested in this entry. No, I don't care that I am spamming your f-lists with geek!music talk.)

This is the first time since Sunday that I've had time to go online that's not doing homework on my mum's computer. This week has been so GAAAH, what with lab reports and essays and research and having to stay late at school because my mum's been working. I'm so glad it's the weekend. Although Sunday is pretty much used up; I have to be a tour guide at the open house at school until 3:00 and then rush over to dance for Act II rehearsal which goes until 5. & then homework and such.

...What the hell, my x key is being silly. Something must be stuck under it. I'll have to be careful getting it out so that I don't end up with gum stuck under the key again (long story there, though no lasting harm was done).

So yeah, I get to be a tour guide at the open house at STA on Sunday. We had a meeting for tour guides during part of last period today, and it turns out that being a tour guide involves been much more of a people-person than I am, but it wasn't as if I really had a choice. It was the only job available when I went to sign up, and since I'm in NHS now I was pretty much obligated to have a job at open house (though I'd much rather be at dance rehearsal, to be honest). I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be an ideal tour guide. Trying to connect myself with the families by making small talk? No, I don't think so. Small-talk is the bane of my existance. I'm probably going to be awful in that department, but maybe I can make up for it by being good at pointing out things & such. Yeah. I'm definitely not a people person. Though I don't think there are many jobs at an open house that don't involve being a people person.

On Monday morning I discovered that the song "Eyes on Me" (the ending vocal theme of FFVIII) sounds utterly ridiculous at 6:15 in the morning. Waking up to Ominous Latin Chanting is fine. Waking up to Ominous Instrumental Music is fine. Waking up to Japanese Techno Pop Video Game Music is fine. Waking up to Cheesy Video Game Romantic Song? Not fine. Even though despite its cheesiness, I really like it. Just not at 6:15 AM. I should just wake up to "Liberi Fatali" every morning because it's freakin' awesome to begin every day with Ominous Latin Chanting. "One-Winged Angel" is also a good song to wake up to, although whenever that happens it ends up getting stuck in my head even more that it already does. Every Latin class, invariably, I get "ESTUANS INTERIUS IRA VEHEMENTI, SEPHIROTH!" repeating in my head over and over. & sometimes when Sephie's being an attention whore, I get "ESTUANS INTERIUS IRA VEHEMENTI, SEPHORA!" and that makes me angry because dammit, Sephie, you are not burning inside with violent anger or whatever the hell that translates to.

Speaking of Sephie, I've had an idea to write a sequel/follow-up of sorts to "Traveler" for the past month or so, except I haven't really had the time or inspiration to work on it. I'm going to try to start it this weekend, though, except I have to try to figure out how to begin. ( cut for more brainstorming )
One thing that I have done this week writing-wise is to finalize the alphabet used by my characters. I call it the "Sublimely Magnificent Alphabet Mark III," called "SMA3" for short until I can figure out a better name for it. (& unlike the Sublimely Magnificent Jecht Shot Mark III, it actually does have a Mark I and Mark II /FFX reference.) It has 34 letters (though some of them stand for more than one English letter). It's kind of cool, because with the way some of the letters work out, the names have so much fewer SMA3 letters than English letters. Perrin's name, for example, is 6 letters in English, but in SMA3 letters it's only 3. That's because spelled phonetically it would be Pairen, and since SMA3 has one letter for "air" and one letter for "en," you get only three letters. If my name were to be spelled out in SMA3 letters, it would be a similar thing, as phonetically it would be Alesen, which would be representated with only four letters: short A, L, ES, and EN. I really do love phonetic alphabets. They make me realize how utterly screwed people trying to learn English are because things can make so many different sounds.

Season five of Lost starts two months from today. I am extremely excited. It's always kind of weird getting new episodes again after a long hiatus, but it's always so awesome. & it's back on Wednesday nights now, which means yay! If they had it on Thursday nights again this year, it would not be good, especially if it was on at 9:00, because that would leave very little time for me to get homework done. ABC has finally decided to arrange things according to my schedule. Also, I'm getting season four for Christmas, which is good because then I won't have to worry about the old tapes anymore, especially the finale tape that randomly has Final Fantasy X popping up during the last scene. I still have no idea how that happened. One of Life's Great Mysteries, I suppose.

[ETA: Just came across a promo poster for season five and ZOMG FARADAY IS SO ADORKABLE. I also just found out that on January 21st we apparently get TWO EPISODES! ;alsdfl;kasjdlkfjsa;lkjf;salkjflksd!]

 I woke up this morning inexplicably full of RAGE, but those feelings thankfully subsided before I got to school. There was no banging of heads against trees and howling.

One of the downsides of listening to geek!music is that for some reason the songs always pop into your head at the most random times. Yesterday "Auron's Theme" from FFX was constantly playing in my head, and today "Missing You" from KHII randomly came into my head during lunch. Then, during my Latin test, there was the inevitable chorus of "One-Winged Angel," and it's very hard to concentrate on giving synopses of subjunctives when "VENI, VENI, VENIAS, NE ME MORI FACIAS" is blasting through your brain. (It's even worse when you're just innocently walking down the hallway and it pops into your head. Talk about ominous.) This is why I mainly listen to my iPod now, though because my current playlist is the Juno soundtrack, The Beatles, and Death Cab for Cutie, this only results in those songs getting stuck in my head. But at least it's not geek!music.

Also? I think Perrin is increasingly turning into a male version of myself. I don't know whether this is a good thing or not. It's good because I really enjoy writing him, but it's bad because it's almost self-insertion, which is a sign of Mary-Suedom. But I don't think he qualifies as a Mary-Sue; not many of my characters do, as far as I know, because whenever I subject them to Mary-Sue tests for fun, they always get ridiculously low scores. But one way that Perrin does differ from me as that he seems to display his RAGE a bit more often. I also don't think he fears failure as much. But other than that? Pretty much me in male form, except he's a lot less quirky and not as prone to fits of GLEE!

(Oh, and speaking of glee: I was incredibly gleeful for the first three periods of yesterday, following the return of my English essay. I probably would have been skipping down the halls had they not been so ridiculously crowded. But then I failed to complete biology homework, so my glee went away fast. It was sad.)