Movin' on up

Ok so first of all I forgot to mention something HUGE in my last post. On Sunday morning, while driving on Interstate 35, I saw.........THE OSCAR MEYER WEINERMOBILE!!! Seriously! I was like OMGWTFBBQ!!??!! Because I mean, there's only one of those, right? And what are the chances that you're going to wake up and see the weinermobile that day? I felt like I won the lottery!


Anyway, moving is such a pain in the ass. I've done zero packing, and everything in my old apartment has to move to my new one on Sunday! To exacerbate the problem, I'm flying out to Dallas early Friday evening so that means I only have like, tomorrow to prepare everything! yeah, good luck with that :P Especially since I'm playing vball tomorrow, and that means I'll be home from work late. I'm starting to feel overwhelmed at everything I have to do again. But the good news is I got finished with the last chapter I have to translate for now, so I'm taking a one or two week break from translating to get my life together (once again).

Other than being busy though, things are going pretty well. We hired a new graphics programmer to work on our long-neglected video engine for Allacrost, so I'm really pumped about that. I've made some friends playing volleyball at work and its really nice to be able to talk to people and not have the conversation soley be about school or work for once. And (hopefully) my last day of work is next Friday, and then I'll have nearly a month of much-deserved freedom! I've started to realize how wondeful personal freedom really is, because doing what others tell you to do all the time and not being able to lead your own life in the direction you want really sucks. I'll talk about that more another day.

Oh and as for the picture above, well I just thought I should spice up the blog a bit. :) It's from School Rumble, the main manga I translate, and I just love the expressions of those two in the picture (you kind of have to know the context of the situation to know why it's so funny that they look like that). Ok, time for bed.....err, I mean floor >_>

I like mine well-done

I've been getting pretty tanned lately, and I've been pumped about it. After all, how often do you see a caucasian engineer with a nice tan? :) Today I got a little burnt though. I played volleball from 10:00 to about 1:30, then went to the pool from about 3:30-5:30 to swim laps. I guess I should have used something stronger than SPF15 if I knew I was going to be in the sun for 5~6 hours today. :P Anyway, there was this girl at the pool who was......simply captivating. I spent about half an hour watching her sunbathe and trying to get up the guts to walk up and say something, but I just couldn't do it. She was looking at me a lot too, but I don't know if it was because she knew I was looking or because she was also interested. But.....I think it was because she was interested, based on the last look I exchanged with her as we were walking past each other.......


ARGH damnit! Why is this so hard!? I think I'm going to be regreting my lack of courage today for the rest of the week. Speaking of the rest of the week, man this weekend went by fast. I still need to clean my new apartment, pack my stuff, etc. I'm flying up to Dallas on Friday to visit my father, and then on Sunday we're driving down with a bunch of his old furniture and stuff to move into my new apartment. He and my mother are also being forced to sell their houses and move because of their divorce settlement (which SUCKS!), so they are both dumping a lot of stuff on me. Holy crap, I just realized that I still have an old PC at my dad's place that I don't want him to get rid of. I'll probably have to take that too. That means I'll have 3 PCs and 2 laptops when I move into my new place! @_@ Ummmm, maybe I should like donate them somewhere or something (after setting them up with Linux of course!). Anyone have an idea of who/where I could donate working PCs to a good cause?

これを読めますか

So a lot has happened in the past few days. On Sunday I went for a 9 mile run, which naturally exhausted me, so I went to bed around 7:30PM that night. Then I get a phone call around 11:30PM and it turns out to be someone from my scanslation group of all people. (By the way, when I talk on the phone when I'm almost completely asleep it's really fun. For some reason I can't lie when I'm tired, and I'll never remember the converstaion either). He said something about School Rumble being licensed (which is the first manga I ever started translating, in November last year). It really sucks for me, because SR is like...a part of me now almost. I love that manga, and I love translating it. But, all good things must come to an end eventually I guess.

And because of that odd-timed phone call, my sleeping schedule had been completely messed up for 3 days. I was going to bed at like 7:30 and getting up at midnight for no reason at all, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I'm finally back to sleeping like a human instead of a machine though. Oh yeah, I've been playing volleyball with other interns at work lately. It's a lot of fun and makes me totally forget about all the other crap in my life. It's left me pretty beat up though. My body aches all over, and I have medium to large sized bruises and lacerations all over. It's totally worth it though. Well I'll leave things at that for now. I have a lot more to talk about, but I'm just too busy right now.

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday at work there was a picnic along the lake planned that I had been looking really forward to. I ate, played frisbee, volleyball, and swam (it was my first time swimming in Town Lake, and it was a lot warmer/nicer than I thought it would be). It was the most fun that I've had in a long time. At first it was really cloudly and overcast, then it started pouring rain, and then later it was nice and sunny again. In that manner, it kind of felt like three days combined into one. :)

I was really tired after yesterday though and ended up sleeping like a rock. I wanted to run or swim today, but I got so roughed up yesterday I decided to do neither. I have a couple of large cuts near my left ankle and my right shin is bruised pretty badly. So instead I ended up watching this anime called Stellvia of the Universe, which I only started watching yesterday. I ended up watching 22 episodes of it today! @_@ And not only that, but today was my birthday too. What a weird way to spend a birthday eh? Well, I should go get some sleep now if I want to run in the morning.

Mmmm stuff

I'm slowly getting back into the work routine now. I've had this chronic cough ever since the end of May after I got over a cold, and it hardly effected me at all over my vacation. But now that I'm back to work, it's coming on stronger. I seriously think that I have a stress induced illness now. Well, all I can do now is look forward to the weekend I guess. I've managed to get myself translating 10 or more pages everyday now even with work, so that's good. :)


Oh, my roommate came back from Taiwan today (she's been away for 2 months). She noticed that I had become 'buffer' (as she put it) which brought a huge smile to my face. I'm really happy to know that the effects of my training are already starting to show. I had planned on going swimming after work today, but I had a 2 hour meeting that ended later than I thought it would and by the time I got out it was really dark and clouldy outside. :( So I think tomorrow I'm going to try to both run and swim, since I didn't swim today. Oh, when I was running yesterday I ran on the most populated part of the trails and 5 minutes before I was going to turn around, I felt someone on my back. Even though I've been relatively slow, I've never been passed on the trails by another runner and I sure as hell didn't want to get passed then either. So I pushed it and didn't let him pass me, but he hung with me the whole way and as I turned around he thanked me for pacing him. It's the first time in a very long time that I've felt pressure during running, but it kind of activated my competitive spirit a little more. :)

It's over ;_;

Well, today marks the last day of my vacation. I wish I would have gotten a little more done than I did, but I enjoyed it and that's the most important part. I don't feel all stressed out and I feel a little more like myself again. Although I failed to meet people and make friends, I'm in pretty good shape now and I'm tanner too. :) I swam 2km (1.24 miles) without stopping on Friday! It was the closest I've ever been to drowning. >_> Seriously though, I need to learn how to swim properly. I know I suck at it, I always have. But I really like swimming lately, especially when I switch off days of running and swimming. I'm exercising different muscle groups and also preventing injury this way. Maybe I should go the whole way and start training for a triathlon? That sounds like it would be fun. :) I also discovered that there's going to be a brand-new outdoor pool at UT starting in the Fall. It's such perfect timing, its almost like they made it for me! Alright, I better go finish up some work before I go to `real work` tomorrow.

Argh my hands! The lotion does nothing!

Ever since I can remember, I've been a victim of Dermitis (Eczema). It only happens on my hands and it suddenly comes without warning. Eventually it leaves and my hands go back to normal, but the cycle continues to repeat. When I was younger it was less severe and longer lasting, now its more severe and shorter lasting. It get so bad now that you can see the muscles in my fingers in some places. And of course, it hurts like hell.


Well I have it again right now. It came about a week ago, ironically the day after I told one of my co-workers about it (did I jynx myself then?). It's been especially bad the past couple of days, enough to the point where I'm not doing work on my game or translating because it's painful to do so. I have some prescribed medication I'm taking for it, but it doesn't make things better overnight. I hate my skin, seriously. Its the only part of my body I don't like. Well, I guess it could be worse. But still, this sucks. Why did it have to happen on my long-awaited vacation...? :(

Swimming and junk

So last summer I really started getting into swimming at the end of summer, in addition to running. I think the farthest I swam last summer was 800 meters or so. Well today I blew that record out of the water (pun intended). I just swam 4,000 feet, (1.2 kilometers, or 0.76 miles) without stopping once. It was totally spur of the moment too. And to top it off, I ran 6 miles this morning as well. And I'm not even close to being in my prime shape right now, so I'm going to keep pushing myself further. :)


A lot of people (mostly the non-athletic ones) tell me I'm crazy when I say these types of things. In fact, one of the co-authors of the paper I submitted a couple weeks ago accused me of trying to kill myself. >_> Well, in addition to being good for your body, yadda yadda, there are two main reasons that I try to stay in shape (and haven't done a very good job at it in the last 5 years). The first is increasing self-confidence, in which I am in short supply lately. The second is...more complicated. I haven't felt like myself for 4 years now. Either that or, I don't like who I've now become. All that I know is that in my prime (when I was 17 and a senior in high school) I was at the best I've ever been in my life. I was good at sports, unstopable in school, and maintained (gasp) good relationships. It was the happiest I've ever been in my entire life, and during that time I ran and worked my butt off. So I hope that if I run/swim/exercise enough, I'll remember who I used to be. Or something like that. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just walking down the totally wrong path in life. Even though I like what I'm doing (engineering and stuff) its been dominating my life for too long and I feel like I want out. I dunno...ok time for me to pass out in a corner somewhere >_>

(Un)Happy Independence Day!?

So this was the first July 4th I've been able to appreciate in a while. For the past 3 or 4 years, I had to work or something so its been a long time since I've seen fireworks. I found out about and went to this event, which was fun. And yeah, I went alone. I saw one other guy alone there who was like 70 years old and I thought to myself "Is this what I have to look forward to in life?" >_> Anyway, I contemplated bringing my laptop and doing some work while I was waiting for the actual fireworks to start, but I decided grassy outdoors and new shiny laptop were mutually exclusive. The Austin Symphony Orchestra played and I enjoyed it. They played a couple of my favorite pieces. Duel of Fates by John Williams and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, complete with real cannons . =D They played well for the most part, but I was disappointed when they played Duel of Fates. It just didn't have enough "UMPH" to it, and sounded rather weak and uninspired. Oh, and I saw a girl that looked like and smiled like one of my old best friends from high school (the only one I still keep in touch with). In a way, seeing her kind of made me feel even more lonely. :(

I used to be extroverted, I swear!

I think engineering has really screwed with me psychologically. After graduating high school I felt unstopable. I was brimming with self-confidence (but I wasn't cocky) and I could walk up and talk to a total stranger without a problem. Now I'm exactly the opposite. I'm introverted and I rarely speak unless spoken to. I've lost the confidence I had back then, even though I've accomplished a lot in the past five years. I don't know where it all started to go wrong for me, but I'm trying to make a comeback.

I've made attempts to put myself into so called "social" situations. Well actually all I've done is gone to the community pool a few times hoping to meet someone and make friends so I'm not so damn lonely all the time, but hardly anyone my age is there and they are usually with friends of their own. People have suggested other things to me like going to the gym, but I abhor working out when others can watch me (I don't know why). Bars, parties, etc. are no good for me either, because I don't like those environments. I'm starting to feel so desperate I should paint a sign that says "Help! I need friends." and walk around campus or something with it. I've never been one to make friends quickly with others, but I've almost been in Austin a year now and its starting to get ridiculous. *sigh* Well I just felt like whining a bit today I guess. If you have any good ideas for me to get out of this rut, I'm all ears. :P