So today's been filled with good stuff and the bad stuff. The good stuff is that my sister and I actually got extensive feedback which we were in desperate need of for round dancing, to help us massively improve our Latin-rhythm technique. (Well, at least in theory. There's showing us, then there's us actually remembering.)

The other good thing is that I've basically skyrocketed through the ranks at Heroes of the Realm. (On that note, I'm averaging 5-15 zones a day in Clicker Heroes.) While they do have a Halloween event going on right now, I was hanging around in the mid to lower 4,000s as my typical. But today, I had gold to spare, not to mention, time. So I went adventuring, picked up some hero cards, burned them, spent time with that...

...And mainly, crafting items with gems. But I ran low...so I went to the market, and with cash to burn, bought some fancy rare items (presumably overpriced) while nabbing bargain-value gems, to knock out a bunch of the upgrades to my heroes I had been wanting to do. Which worked.

A minor side-effect of this, in the Colosseum, my army in the Expert's League is always either mediocre enough to stay or just good enough to advance onto Masters (where--no matter which of my two League armies I use and how buffed I make them--I end up absolutely massacred as dead-last each time), this time, I'm actually in second! And better yet, the improvements I made, I made AFTER I had already lost to first place, so in the rematch tomorrow (tomorrow being day two out of three), it's possible I'll beat him.

...Not particularly probable, mind you. He absolutely massacred me. (I watched the battle. He lost two soldiers, with the remaining ones being at under half health mostly except for one who was at basically full. I lost all ten of mine. He probably got an A rank. S or B are both possible, but A is my guess as to what he got. Not something like F--barely passing--nor something like C--comfortably passing--but an A, where he easily passed.) Heck, I might lose second place tomorrow because even with these improvements, I only got an F-pass against previously-second-place, now-third. (That was probably a bit of an upset.) If the other players put in time to improve their armies like I did, I'm screwed.

Buthey, one can hope, right?

And I am still ridiculously proud of how far I've come. Now, granted, I'll probably lose points the next time I feel like getting rid of my redundant heroes (I have one or two duplicates right now), but right now, I'm sitting comfortably at 3,500. I could stagnate, and thus, drop, but...1,500 down, 1,000 to go!


...And then, there's the bad stuff. As a start? My keys have disappeared. There's only two places they could be: in my jacket's zipped-up pocket...or on the table. They weren't in the jacket, so I assumed they were on the table......but they weren't. So, I'm kind-of screwed.

Worse, I promised my group I would submit my work to them, which I said I had mostly done.
...I lied. I have barely any of it done at all.
I have to send it to them before tomorrow, too.

Fun stuff.

So while the full blog post for this is probably best saved for the currently-slacking-off-on-writing entry on Sunday (even though the events are relevant to both then and tonight thanks to my costume), but basically, I went as Dracula sort-of to dance tonight, and it gave me the idea to write a story, mostly slice-of-life, about the classical Hollywood monsters living in modern-day life...ALL of them, from Dracula to Frankenstein's Monster to the Wolfman to the Mummy and whatever other ones may exist...with a twist:

The events from the films are (mostly) canonical, except that each of them remains a monster alive in the current day. And while in the time of their original 'stories', they were actual monsters, in current-day life with modern resources, they're basically able to get away with living normal lives. Now, the thing is, though...I know almost nothing about them. So it's an ill-thought-out idea.

Yet it's something that if I could do, I would. Read Bram Stroker's Dracula, read the original book about Frankenstein's Monster, read any other relevant books, and then watch every movie relevant to the characters that has helped to establish them as we know them, plus any further films sharing that continuity (even if loosely)...and even some that don't. (For instance, after I did research to see the monster-film about The Mummy, the original one, then that would be the basis of the character...yet the character may gain aspects of The Mummy from the first two movies of the modern trilogy that weren't in the original.)

That'd be a ton of research. If I had to guess, I'd say that'd probably be around 50 or so old films. Plus, references to some modern works featuring the characters. (As an example, the manga Hellsing is something I want to call out by name.) So I'll probably never actually write the book. (There'd be no point in writing the book without the research done, because it'd be easy enough to make some half-baked reference to it; the whole point of this idea is to pay homage to every aspect of the characters, past and present, so if I didn't do my research, not much point.) And I don't really have the writing really solid. All I truly have is Dracula as the main character, explaining his life to a mortal. (For instance, I'm thinking that the whole "Invasion of London" thing was more or less because the British Empire was the largest in the world at the time, and he was utterly bored. But that is a statement I make in ignorance because I'm just guessing, having not been that familiar with the source material.)

But I felt it made a good blog post!

You know, it? That moment! Yeah, that one! That moment where you have a really, really good idea (in this case, for a blog post), but sadly, you're in the middle of another task (in this case, class), but you tell yourself it can wait because, surely, you will remember it? Yes! That one. Oh, but then, do you must know how that moment ends. That time when you actually have the time to do the idea...and are drawing a complete blank about it!

...Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaahh.........

I'm feeling a little bit sluggish today. My day got off on the wrong foot, when the alarm clock I use as a radio (and ONLY as a radio) got all messed up...and acted as an alarm clock.

And my performance in kickboxing today SUCKED. And my computer's being slow today, and weebly is being a pain by insisting that I need to log in, and all-around, giant pain. It's just shaping up to be a...really bad day.

Made worse by my having slacked off on my group presentation stuff, which...I kinda really need to have not slacked off on. And...I might have messed up if my group's planning on meeting today (I'm not sure), since I didn't arrage for it.

You know how the saying goes, I guess. The highest highs, followed by the lowest lows.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god...
FACEOFF.
FINALE.

Oh my GOD, FaceOff's finale.

It's just...I mean, I'm not going to say anything in the astronomically-small chance that there is someone who reads this blog, is interested in the show, and yet has somehow NOT seen it.

But just...OH, MY GOD, IT. WAS. AWESOME.

Every season, FaceOff does its best job to up the ante from previous seasons. Some with success, other times not as much. But I am telling you, I'm not sure how they can top this one because...JUST FREAKIN' WATCH. However you find a method to, doesn't matter; you need to watch it because...words fail to describe it. The advertisements for it vaguely hinted at something cool, but they for once did their job at hiding just how EPIC the finale was. It really says something that if that had been the SERIES (rather than just season) finale, I'd have been perfectly content because it was just. that. good. It was a finale that was worthy of the name.

...Now, granted, I have full faith that they'll be able to pull it off, topping it off next season. They seem to have a knack for it, after all. But just...wow. It was incredible. The person that I went in thinking would be the weakest actually started out with the strongest concept, and I thought that up to the very moment the winner was announced, they could actually take it all and win. The person I was favoring to win and wanted to win, I was deeply concerned wouldn't win, but they managed to actually earn a well-deserved win. And the third--while easily predictable as not the winner--was no slouch, either, with a killer makeup.

You really have to see it to believe it. I'm in awe. So I do apologize for the potentially-minor abuse of language. (Depends on your beliefs and your strictness, I suppose.) But truly, those words were the first to enter my mind once anything coherent at all was in there: Oh, my god, it was incredible.

I heard an alternative theory as to why so many people have been absent from school as of late, today:

The flu. With that in light, my dad offered to take me to get an injection, but I had to decline, because today was Tae Kwon Do, and I know that anything to do with needles has always ended up visibly influencing my performance negatively for TKD that day. I did say "any other day", though, because I know that's probably something best to get.

I'm asocial (not antisocial) enough that it probably wouldn't be a problem for me. But in case it could be, always a good step to take.

Anyway, today my sister called my PB&J, lunchmeat+cheese bagel sandwich combo 'weird', which I grant her it is, but it's a delicious weird; the flavors augment one another.

Now if you don't mind, I'm beat. I don't think I'll be making another entry tonight, even though there's probably a ton of stuff I could talk about.

Oh. On that note, I did write some further notes on Disease. But that's the wrong story; I should be working on the novel I'm actually trying to get finished. Especially with NaNoWriMo right around the corner. Ah, well. Life doesn't always work the way you will it to.

So I forgot to mention why I didn't make my blog post yesterday in detail, and the reason why is because I was dead tired.

And let me be honest with you: I am now. Monday has been a VERY long day. Let's start with me almost being late for Kickboxing, because I needed to fill out the homework assignment I didn't do.

Then, I had my dialog with my partner in my communications class. Then, I discovered that most of the work that I had done for my group presentation in said class was probably going to be worthless, and that we would have to hash it out after class.

And it took several difficult communications before we were able to pull that off, too. (Turns out, I should be able to use enough. It's writing the speech I'm worried about.) But it gets worse. I discovered that today, my midterm paper was due...and I was not prepared for it, at all.

If that wasn't bad enough, I ALSO had a quiz due today in that same class! (Fortunately, electronically-submitted, butstill.) The quiz wasn't easy, either, being the wostly-worded one since the first quiz. And the midterm paper I didn't finish until Jeopardy was finished, and I'm still not sure it was coherent.

...Needless to say, today's been a really, really rough day. Busy. But some good has come of it! I decided to just throw together a scene from Disease. (Well, technically, its sequel.) It's one of the most powerful scenes, and I think that for throwing together writing on a whim, mentally writing the words as I was transitioning between classes and had a distraction in the form of having the text from my partner in mind, that it is phenominally good.

I'd link to it, but it's hosted on my private site. ("Huh? I thought your blog was." No, my blog is public. Just nobody knows about it! The site is private, by link only. And only my original, ORIGINAL circle of internet friends* got the link.)
*Actually, that's a lie. They weren't the original. I had another group before that was more associates, and another group which WAS friends, but there was bad blood between some of the members. This is the first group of well and true, proper, online friends; we even did the internet equivalent of going out to meet each other at locations, like a getogether!

But I digress. The point of this blog post is that I'm probably going to have issues keeping my blog up to date for the next...well, while. My classes take priority, and I do have rather the active life. So the info unfortunately might get slightly put on the backlog until I can actually sit down and type it all up.

...That having been said, today's the *perfect* day for me to make up for something!

I watched Dancing With the Stars tonight, obviously, along-side watching Castle (and reruns for half of DWTS via a recorder for my sister), but while that was happening, I was eating my cheeseburgers.

You know, the ones that I wanted to mention earlier but never got around to?

Yeah, them. So you have to understand, I am not the one cooking the hamburgers. (Though I imagine it's one of the few foods I could easily learn to perfect. After all, my dad learned how, and it doesn't look *that* hard. I just don't, since I don't need to.) However, I AM the one who prepares my own. The process starts with squirting a large amount of ketchup onto the burger's more well-done side, the less-well-done side facing down on the burner.

Then, I place cheese over the top of the burger, and then place the lid on top of the grill. This traps the heat from the pan, and the cheese is melted by the ambient temperature. (I imagine, anyway. This is me, BSing an explanation for something that I have only my best guess as to knowing. The point is, putting the lid on makes the cheese melt; I don't know the specifics. I thought it was just steam, but steam's not a requirement I recently learned.)

While the cheese is melting in the pan, I retrieve the buns, paint ketchup onto them, and then place potato chips on the buns. Once the cheese is melted, I take the lid off, if the frying pan is plugged in and/or on, I unplug it (often, it already is), place ketchup on both cheeseburgers again, put one burger on, place chips on it, put the other burger on, place chips on it, and then close it up, for a crunchy cheeseburger sandwhich.

Now, this might seem unusual. But it's a process that's built over time. The pan part is because microwaved cheese just doesn't taste the same. Originally, it was a small bit of ketchup below to add flavor, but I increased that later. (See below.) Said bit of ketchup helped a great deal with cooking, flavor, and texture. The ketchup on the bun painted is to make sure there's always ketchup, and no "dry" spots on the bun pop up. 

The extra bit of ketchup on top was there for tradition, since before the bit below the cheese was added, I had always done a bit above the cheese. It's the standard which is traditional for any who use ketchup on their cheeseburgers, so I've kept it. (I've got practical reasons for the double-dosage now, though--see below.) That near-ritualistic process built up and was practiced for years, until fairly recently, when I added in the chips. Simultaneously, the chips caused more ketchup.

What sparked the change? Inspiration from a staff meeting at work. Someone there had a McDonald's cheeseburger, that they stuffed with fries and then dipped in barbeque sauce. Now, I don't have any of that sauce around, nor do I have fries. But I do have ketchup and potato chips a plenty.

Besides, it wasn't that huge a leap--I put potato chips on my sloppy joe's anyway, because they add texture AND help to keep the goods inside the bun, so to speak, preventing spills. So I tried it out...and really, really liked the change.

Soyeah. There you have it. That's how I have my double-cheeseburgers at home. They're absolutely delicious. (A common trend, you'll find, is that I make foods that are lazy and easy to prepare, but put an extra spin on them--which takes extra time, but makes 'okay' food taste like heavenly food.) Now that I've fulfilled my blogging requirement for Monday, it's time for bed. (Well, not quite. Still got gaming stuff to take care of.)

I realize I said that I was going to talk a lot in my Sunday entry...but at the risk of increasing my backlog of stuff to comment on even further than it already is (and it's already freakin' huge!), I think I'm just going to make multiple entries tomorrow (Monday), instead. Keeping up to date by talking about current events (don't want a repeat of me losing my chance to talk about burgers!), but also relaying what happened previously, i.e., today.

So I'm here with family, after having watched X-Men: Days of Future Past. And *right* in the middle of Xavier's speech...the power went out. And still is. I'm writing this on 10/25, on paper, so whenever I stop being lazy, you'll get to see me talk about stuff.

Like right now, how holding two quarters makes me think of my telekinetic character from one of my big-time stories, whose powers were made partially from envisioning two coins as being arm-diameter thin blades, launched from a glove, that he'd use his powers to control. (And by proxy, I've also thought of his companions, M the telepath and Moses the hydromancer, and simultaneously, thought of the tower defense game based off of Disease, the story he's from.)

Also, talking about my younger sister, who is attending college. (She does a lot there, like a bunch of singing.) She just did Humans vs. Zombies, and survived until ~2 minutes before the end of the final mission, going on a suicide mission with nothing to lose. (The game had zero survivors for good reason.) She apparently throughout the week foiled the lead zombie, known as a magnificent bastard, and one time, she was near him and he said, "...You!" She's also second-in-command of a team, so she's clearly competent at surviving; this is her second time living to the final mission.

I also learned something about her, from my mom in casual conversation: she had (or maybe has--I believe it was implied past tense, but hard to tell) a boyfriend, at least, had one during spring quarter. I know she's the only kid in our family who's super-social (my older siblings have but a small circle of friends, and that's it; I have none as the least), and she's in college where this sort of thing happening is a normal, natural thing. Yet it's still a surprise to me. Not because of anything about her, mind you; if any of us were going to have a significant other, she would be my guess. It's more of a, "how'd I not know this?" kind of surprise.

...Not that I'm one to talk. My family thinks I waste all my time doing nothing. Admittedly, I waste more time than I should doing things that have no value whatsoever. But what they don't realize is that I also do a fair share of healthy activities, such as making friends and creating a future life for me, plus getting my feelings out always helps.

That's not even going into my much larger secret. They have no clue, in large part thanks to the steps I take to hide my trans status, but they'd at absolute minimum feel at least the same as what I described. (However, due note that's the absolute best-case scenario. The worst is...best discussed in a separate blog post, because it goes into the darker aspects of my life.)

Anyway, yeah, this outtage is highly-annoying. Widespread, on a weekend, at night, so no power = no internet for quite a while. (DIGITAL EDIT: Turned out that power came back early next morning, but internet didn't come back until after I was home from square dancing. But that's for my SUNDAY blog post.) Worse, though, is that this is (well, was--just turned past midnight as I was writing this sentance) Saturday...meaning I need to go through the pain of looking up every anime show that I missed, and now need to watch.

Soyeah. While this entry may be posted on Sunday, it's a Saturday entry. (That's why I missed a day by appearances, but I didn't because I still WROTE the blog; I just was unable to POST it.) Meaning I might not get a Sunday entry until after midnight, i.e., technically Monday. (SUNDAY EDIT: Given that I'm typing this up near midnight, my prospects of finishing the RATHER-lengthy entry for today before then are...rather grim, especially given my errands.)

Should mention I also worked out today, which I was supposed to do yesterday, but the dagger-drills replaced it. (I'll give you an update Sunday on how I feel.) So, I needed chocolate milk, like I always need after a workout. Coincidentally, with an oversight that meant no refrigerated cider, my brother and sister poured into their teacups......chocolate milk. (Worth mentioning is that family night is essentially to bring my separated family back together, since my brother moved out and my younger sister is living near campus while attending college.)

Butyeah. Power outtage, kind of sucks. Really messes with plans. Even with a generator, the number of inconveniences is high. (We did finish the movie, at least!) Probably more stuff happened (always does--I'm an amateur for a reason), but I got nuthin'. (SUNDAY EDIT: Well, I do now, but it'll be in the following entry, since I'm preserving this one as much as possible. Also, ironically enough, the lost entry would have been lost if not for copy-paste thanks to Weebly wacking things up again.)

This morning was a fine demonstration of why I love having them. To understand what I mean, I have a small dog, and a decently-sized cat. The cat last night ate some of the dog's food, and we had to intervene to stop that. (AKA, use a squirt bottle.) The dog has a sweet tooth for cat food, and every time, we have to intervene to stop that. (AKA, use a squirt bottle.) The dog stole one of the cat's previously-favorite toys and made it his own. The cat is not immune to doing the same thing. They frequently steal each other's favorite spots to sit, as well.

And today, the funniest of them all was shown: jealousy. When my dad petted the cat, the dog went absolutely nuts. But the cat isn't exactly above that same attitude; if another animal (the dog included) is receiving too much attention, he will rush in and try to get some himself, intensely jealous of the other animal.

It sometimes seems to me like they're almost siblings. (It sort-of fits, even: both were originally the pets of my younger sister, who is currently away at college, thus, both have the same "mother", and we're looking after them as grandparents and aunts.) Heck, there's even a bit of a big-brother, little-brother relationship based on their size. The big brother cat intimidates the little-brother dog, so much so, that it can be hilarious watching how much the dog avoids the cat.

...But when the dog is oblivious to the presence OF the cat (e.g. he's really, really excited), especially if he gains momentum in his movement, the tables turn and the cat is visibly nervous of the dog, even running away. Which reminds me of how--while I always was afraid of my brother--he could occasionally be scared of me when I got really angry.

Animal experts may equate this behavior that I've described differently, but I am of the opinion that animals are a lot like humans. (Well, technically, I'm of the opinion that humans are just animals like any other, but some people take offense to that wording thinking I'm cynically implying barbarism when I'm actually optimistically stating that animals can feel basically everything we can feel; we just don't recognize it.) Thus, even if it may not be technically true, I like the idea.