There were others that I thought about getting but 1) my mother seemed vaguely to be in a hurry for IDEK what reason (we forgot to go back for the bougainvillea sapling that we asked about grr grr grr I wanted that) and 2) we couldn’t really carry bigger plants in the car. So either I go back there tomorrow or check out QC Circle (when we passed by earlier it looked like they had something of the sort going on) or maybe that spot in Katipunan. I still need to buy soil and clay pots and other supplies anyway (someone remind me to grab one of those coffee ground pack things that they give away at Starbucks).

Anyway it just dawned on me that two of my interests are gardening and World War 2 vehicles… which I guess means I’ve turned into a grandpa! Get off my lawn. :3

* * *

♥ Speaking of WW2, I’ve gone almost a month without playing World of Tanks and I don’t miss it at all!

loljk. But truth is I don’t miss it too much, except when I watch videos like the “Moments of Tanks” animation series and the always hilarious RNG No Comments videos.

I really wish I could’ve at least published my 7-kill Hellcat replay video before my PC decided to buy the farm but what are ya gonna do. XD Anyway, shouldn’t be long now before I get my new computer. For the meantime I’ll just be pruning roses lol.

♥ Someone please, please, PLEASE remind me when ToyCon is around the corner or else it’ll creep up on me again. It’s scheduled for June 13-14 and I really really want new figures to take pictures of. With a few exceptions my toy photography album has gone dormant, mostly because I’ve gotten kinda tired of using the same figures over and over again. I already missed TagCom (or was it Collecticon or somesuch) earlier this year, I am NOT missing ToyCon too.

♥ TWO OF MY INTERESTS PLUS YOUR TYPICAL TUMBLR HIPSTER PHOTO STYLING. WILL IT BLEND? o(｀ω´*)o Let’s see:

♥ Of course this entry ends with Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins. Do you even know me at all?

In fact my only mistake throughout the session was that while waiting for my turn I let the salon assistant coax me into a back massage, and immediately remembered why I don’t get massages. I felt like a slab of beef being tenderized. I do not understand how people find that relaxing. The hardest part was trying my best not to giggle the entire time because I have the most ticklish spine in the history of ticklish spines. But anyway the haircut went well, they styled it and everything, and of course I took entirely too many pictures of it when I got home. It looked better before the humidity and sweat and headphones and such, but anyway here are two pictures in which I manage not to look like a total goober:

♥ IS DICK IN OR NOT?

–is of course one of the main concerns on my mind since yesterday. That, apart from the bile that I feel towards some of the senatorial candidates who managed to rack up enough votes for a sure win despite being glaringly, comically unqualified for office.* It pains me to see a few no-good asshats coasting their way into Senate while Gordon teeters on the edge of the win–some reports have him in at #12, others at #13. Oddly enough all the dick jokes–and there are plenty going around because of course there are–are helping me not be in such a foul mood about it. I just hope that by the time the official count is over, we’ll be able to declare that Dick is in! He came from behind!**

*I want to punch her in the face. Repeatedly. While wearing a steel gauntlet.
** That was unnecessary, I know. I’m sorry.

♥ I am absolutely loving this “Birth of Venus” cloth wallet that I got from a shop called Apostrophe. I bought it sometime last week (after several days of  indecision) because my old wallet was literally starting to disintegrate lol.

♥ Another thing that has helped my mood immensely was that Barça celebrated their league win yesterday, which meant footage and photos of my team being a bunch of drunk, dancing goofballs on an open-top bus party.

Here is Iniesta victoriously wrapped in flags, a sight that I’ve seen in past seasons but will never get tired of. :D

Aaaand here is our legendary Captain, drunk, topless, dancing, and trying to take off VV’s shirt:

♥ MY BACK HURTS DAMMIT I SHOULD’VE JUST SAID NO TO THAT FRIGGING MASSAGE  。ﾟ(ﾟﾉД｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡

I realized I had never posted Air Supply on here yet and that is unacceptable! Here you go.

I went a little after 1PM and THE ENTIRE PROCESS TOOK ME AROUND 10 MINUTES. Maybe 15 if you count the time walking home from our village clubhouse where the voting in our area took place. I had been expecting to brave the lines all afternoon so I was all derpy when one of the assistants directed me straight to the registry table where I was handed the ballot. No line in my cluster at all when I got there, and no PCOS foul-ups, luckily.

Gordon had better win–he was the first on my list and probably the only one I truly give a hoot about–to hell with the rest of them.

PS: I voted for this party-list.

The other ~scary~ dream was me showing up late and unprepared for a test. I still have recurring, extremely stressful dreams about schoolwork, which is not surprising considering the lazy-ass student that I was in college. When I wake up from dreams like that and realize I’ve been out of school for years, I’m overwhelmed with relief.

2. Random guys trying to hit me up on Facebook using World of Tanks as a pretext is nothing new (and it doesn’t bother me as long as they’re not being skeezy, but some of them are).  The latest one stepped up the game with a gallant hit-on-me/invite-me-to-a-clan/ask-about-my-about-tiers combo. But the guy had a 47% win rate mwahaha not so slick now are ya, kiddo. Yes I realize I’m kind of being a dick for saying that, but he was a little skeezy.

3. Tiger has been all about Iron Man lately.

4. On a related note, if anyone has an extra US $300 lying around that you have nothing to do with, I could really use one of these:

5. Every so often I go 90s music sound-tripping on YouTube, and during my last one I remembered this song by Peter Andre. It’s a great song, really really sexy, and WHY WAS I LISTENING TO THIS AS A 12 YEAR OLD.

It’s in the same league as that ‘N Sync song about cybersex. No wonder I’ve turned out so messed up as an adult.

6. A few days ago joined a website for Barça fans. It’s primarily in Spanish, and yesterday a girl from Senegal sent me a friendly message in what appeared to be Google-translated Spanish. Someone sent me a Google-translated message thinking I could only understand Spanish. It’s like a glitch in the universe lol.

7. The company I work for has ever so generously decided to fund my new CPU. :3 I didn’t even ask for it.

8. I have this nagging thought in the back of my head that I should try songwriting.  This isn’t the first time. Anyway you’ll hear of it if I ever come up with something that doesn’t completely suck, although chances are I’d get my sister to sing it instead of me.

9. This morning I was feeling a bit down and weak but then my mom made me a cup of coffee, and I realized things can’t be all that bad. ♥ An advanced happy Mother’s Day to all the nanays out there.

10. I’ve decided that I really want to finally try skydiving this before the end of the year (it’s one of the things on my very short bucket list), so I’m trying to do my research on possible drop zones. Sadly it doesn’t look like there are currently operating drop zones in Luzon. But the one in Pattaya, Thailand looks promising, and I’ll go all the way there if I have to.

**TO MY IRL FRIENDS: LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO COME WITH, OK? THE MORE THE MERRIER LOL if you are even remotely interested get in touch with me.

* * *

So anyway that’s that. I’m chipper at the moment but these past few days have been emotionally trying for me, I’m just doing my best to stay afloat. Here’s your random 80s video of the day.

*SQUEEEEEEEEEEE*

I’ve actually had that poster for over a week, but I just got to see the movie last night lol. Without getting into too much detail (for the sake of anyone who still hasn’t seen it):

MY FEELS

DURING THAT PART

WITH THE SUITS

（*´▽｀*）

I was so excited during that bit I had my fists to my face like a giddy schoolgirl. I want to watch it again!!! But even more so I want action figures!

***

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I’d picked up Age of Empires 2 a few days ago. It did not disappoint. For those unfamiliar with the game, it’s a city-building/strategy game that’s set from the Dark Ages all the way up to the Imperial age. I wish I could take screen shots but as it is I can just barely get it to run without the color issues (old game + Windows 7 = not good).

A few things:

☆ It’s a wonderful game and (I guess) can produce lots of exciting battles but since I’m still entirely a noob at it, I just play it sandbox-style against the easiest AI, kind of like an ancient SimCity except there are neighboring kingdoms who try to kill your people and steal your land.

☆ For the tutorial campaign you follow the orders of a highly excited William Wallace, i.e. the tutorial voiceover guy with an entertaining, if objectively bad, Scottish accent.

☆ You use the same key (delete) to remove unwanted structures or units. Thus I have all too many times been subjected to the shock of accidentally killing my own innocent villager while trying to remodel my kingdom walls. They let out a groan of pain when that happens and I have actually said sorry out loud to the monitor.

☆ There’s no distinction between male and female villagers except for appearance, and there’s no minimum number of villagers required for any building, mining or logging task. They don’t get exhausted or anything. So at some point I sent a female villager to put up a several miles of stone castle walls all by herself, and I was like damn, look at that woman go.

☆ I’m so bad at the game right now I managed to get a light cavalryman killed by a wild pig.

☆ I’ve also lost several warships because enemy monks “converted” them and turned them against me.

* * *

I’m gonna go watch WW2 in Color now, so allow me to end this post by saying today I ordered a Caesar salad and my body responded with seemingly a mixture of confusion and rage. I’m still feeling sickish actually, I’m gonna go lie down.

Back to form! Random video time! This one misses the 80s by a few years though lol but it’s been stuck in my head all day:

(translated)

Nanay: What happened? Only Ilieskas was working.
Me: Who?
Nanay: Ilieskas?
Me: Iniesta.
Nanay: Inieska?
Me: Iniesta.

She’s disappointed at Pedro for supposedly not doing anything in Messi’s absence. 

***

♥ I was pleasantly surprised last Friday to get an email from Fully Booked’s customer service telling me they might have a copy of The Cartoon History of the Modern World: Part I at one of their branches. I told them I’d definitely take it if it’s in good condition, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. :3 Also, I’ve picked up a new copy of A Tale of Two Cities (I’d lost the copy I had from my first attempt to read it many years ago lol) because for some reason part of my brain is fixated on 18th century England these days apparently. -_- Have you heard of the Cock-lane ghost?

♥ I’m not sure exactly why–probably an offshoot of how I’ve been reading more these days–but recently I’ve been finding my work a bit more enjoyable.

♥ I’m in the middle of, uh, ~acquiring~ a copy of Age of Empires II to install on my netbook. Another nice byproduct of not having a “proper” computer is that I get to take a look at older games that are really good but which I would otherwise have ignored. Fortunately the late ’90s~first half of ’00s were a wonderful time for RTS/grand strategy games, so there’s no shortage of promising titles (I also plan to check out Europa Universalis).

♥ I just wanted to get this out: A lot has been said about Messi’s absence being a huge factor in Barça’s defeat, but I think not having Busquets around merits mentioning as well. Given Busi’s bad rep it’s easy to see how many would underestimate his importance to the team, but the thing about Busi is his ability to switch seamlessly from defense to attack… without him it felt like the team could only do either one of those throughout a match. This has nothing to do with the point I’m trying to make but here’s an image that I whipped up back in 2010:

But even better, I picked up where I left off on this book, which I had stupidly neglected on my shelf for months.

So now that I’m well into it, I can declare that this book is absolutely AMAZING. It’s my favorite thing now. I’m a bit more than halfway through it, and about five centuries of world history has been crammed into my head in ways that my history classes in college and high school never did. The corruption of the British East India company, the transatlantic slave trade, the Enlightenment, the filth of the Industrial Revolution… In spite of its humor, the book doesn’t sugarcoat anything. Instead it irreverently tells the whos, whats, whens, wheres, and hows in a way that makes you understand the whys.

I can’t sing it enough praises, really, this book is both entertaining and important, and I love it to bits (and I’m actually kind of panicking because Fully Booked doesn’t seem to have Larry Gonick’s other volumes, so I might have to buy them online).

I’m in a bit of a of a history buff kind of mood this week actually. Partly because Nat Geo has been really good about putting history specials on again. And also while writing for work the other day I happened to read an article mentioning something about the Carthaginians, etc. etc. and so now I’m up for that sort of thing. When I get my new computer I would consider getting back into Rome: Total War instead of World of Tanks. But then again I can’t quite get a handle on that game… I’d be doing fine and my provinces will be all prosperous and stuff, then suddenly BOOM  EVERY OTHER EMPIRE IS WAGING WAR ON ME ALL MY FUCKING PROVINCES ARE UNDER SIEGE DAFUQ.

* * *

If for some reason you would be entertained by a detailed account of my feels during last night’s Champions League match (and the equally painful first leg), here is the new Twitter that I made for football spazz tweets (which, given the turn of events, I won’t be using much until the start of next season lol).

But to be honest this sums up all I’ve got left to say right now:

Me: *prancing around getting ready to go out of the house* I’m going to the PAWS animal shelter.
Nanay: Why?
Me: I’m putting Kookoo up for adoption.

*laughter*

*silence*

Nanay: …No seriously, why?

(Pictured: Kookoo, who is not really up for adoption.)

♥ Alright, the real reason I went to the PAWS shelter this afternoon was to submit my volunteer application. Unfortunately I’ve missed the cut-off date for volunteers that can attend the orientation on May 4 (there were limited slots) and the next orientation is in August. But the nice people at the office told me that I actually could start volunteering even before having attended an orientation.There is, however, the small matter of getting rabies shots, which is necessary before some of the work involving direct animal interaction. ***If any of you guys happen to know a place in Quezon City (or Ortigas, even) that offers pre-exposure rabies prophylaxis, then please do let me know. :D ***

Also, if you’re one of my friends and you’re interested in volunteering as well, then get in touch with me and I’ll be more than happy to go with you to the PAWS shelter, which is in QC near Katipunan. Volunteers are generally required to submit their application forms in person. (They’re closed for holidays on May 1 and 2 though, and probably busy on the 4th) There are various things a volunteer could do, ranging from direct animal care to awareness campaigns and assisting the adoption program. If you need more information then read the FAQs on the website.

♥ Kenny Loggins time~

♪♫ YOU’RE PLAYIN’ SO COOL
OBEYIN’ EVERY RULE
DIG WAY DOWN IN YOUR HEART
YOU’RE BURNIN’, YEARNIN’ FOR SOME,
SOMEBODY TO TELL YOU LIFE AIN’T PASSIN YOU BY
I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU
IT WILL IF YOU DON’T EVEN TRYYYYYYY ♪♫

♥ I’m mourning the loss of my desktop computer by emotional eating while watching a Barça league match. And…  we’re losing 1-0 to 14th-placed Athletic Bilbao, so as far as making me feel better this is not exactly going well. *sobs*

Anyway, my 4-year-old computer basically decided to stop working last night. I tried to bring it back to life but after many grimy hours of trying to diagnose and/or repair it, I’ve resigned myself to the idea that it’s a fried motherboard. Which more or less means I’ll be buying a new rig–it’s just a question of when. I had kind of been expecting this moment for a while now but I was hoping the old clunker would hold on for a few more months, at least past the first half of the year (though ideally until 13th-month-pay season teehee). Luckily I still have this netbook that I can use for work for the meantime. Just no tanks (!!! ；へ： ) for a little while, huhuhu.

That said, I’m starting to entertain the idea that not having a desktop PC for a little while might actually be good for me in some ways.

♥ Last night my brony Art and I had dinner at this place called Cajun Red Rock in Megamall, and this is what I had:

I forget the rest of the name but it’s bourbon ribs something. It was delicious. :3 And only P395 for that whole dish (serving was pretty big, I only finished half of that) so not bad at all.

♥ MESSI WAIT YOU ARE NOT WELL ENOUGH TO PLAY WHY ARE YOU WARMING UP ON THE SIDELINE WE DO NOT NEED TO WIN THIS MATCH

MESSI

WAT R U DOIN

MESSI

STAHP

Never mind, he just danced his way through a clusterfuck of opponents and scored, I think he’s ok.

♥ This song actually makes me feel better. :D

♥ The reason for this entry’s title is that I had this game earlier tonight, in my Hellkitty with the 90mm, and this tank is seriously starting to grow on me. :3 I haven’t been playing a whole lot of matches lately because every so often lag would make the game unplayable, so results like this are very welcome (especially since we were kinda losing at the start). I might put up a replay with commentary in the next couple of days.

♥ I’m not too distraught (anymore) over Barça’s terrible loss in the CL. And I refuse to put energy into throwing blame around, like many other “fans” have started to do excessively. Maybe things could’ve gone better if Villa had played instead of Alexis (or at least was put in sooner), and Fabregas instead of a clearly unfit Messi, but that’s moot now. We had a broken team, and Bayern are in incredible form, in all honesty the defeat wasn’t all that surprising (although the scoreline’s a little hard to swallow.) What we need now is our morale back, the ability to spawn some defenders out of thin air, and a few anger management sessions for Jordi Alba.

♥ About a week ago I tried out the Vanilla Cupcake Bakery, which is the most unbelievably twee place I have ever stopped to have coffee and a pastry at. There was a frigging lampshade hanging about a foot over my head. The NY cheesecake was nice but at P85 it kind of borders on stupid because it’s a fucking cupcake. I didn’t quite fit there anyway, all covered in adidas and watching videos of tank lololol.

♥ IS ENDING INCOHERENT BLOG ENTRIES WITH VIDEOS OF 80S HITS A BAD HABIT? I DON’T CARE EITHER WAY.