Callistonian.net

For the first time in months, I finished a letter. It’s in my bag now, waiting to be transported to the post office. It’s 2009, obviously, and a lot of people prefer email to tangible mail delivered by human mail carriers. But, I’m different. I dislike email. I love computers, blogs, the Internet, technology in general, and have an unneccessarily large collection of gadgets, but email?—no thanks. 

I’m bad at responding to friendly emails in a timely manner, anyway. So, I beg my friends living thousands of miles away for their addresses and try to send them mail. I say “try,” because I have lots of addresses and lots of people to write but … I’ve sent only a handful of letters and postcards in the last few months. I’ve been busy, kind of. Do you write letters? Have you ever (in your life) written a letter or postcard?

Writing letters was one of my better hobbies. I should write more often. If I don’t, I may find myself shipping obscenely heavy boxes filled with nothing but stationery to the USA from Korea. Collecting? things is great, but … hundreds of dollars in shipping fees is not. T_T (The picture to the left is a poor hodgepodge of 9 letters/postcards/envelopes I’ve put through the mail).

FYI, my favorite postcard ever—I turned a photo like this one of my friends and I toilet-papering another friend’s car into a postcard, photoshopped a caption on it, and sent it to that other friend. I’m so nice. ;)

In other news, I haven’t lost Rock Paper Scissors since that rather unfortunate day when I screwed up and played rock. Scissors ftw.

I’m just getting started, but let me warn you early. This entry is missing something. Direction? A point? Perhaps. :) Anyway, lately, I’ve been having gobs of fun, getting over a cold, fretting about grad. school, and adventuring about.

Girly~! I adore cafés with fresh and delicate atomospheres, so I dragged my willing friend to this fancy one a few days ago.  The cafe’s color scheme consisted of muted reds, browns, greens, and yellows. Its theme seemed to be dolls and flowers;  there were several dolls in lighted glass display cases, and the place was decorated with red and yellow flowers. Small couches paired with large pillows replaced the stiff wooden chairs of typical café chains. AND 99.9 percent of the drinks were served in dainty cups. The barrista drew a bear in my tea! 

Logophilic Today, during a break at work, I performed figurative CPR on my vocabulary at freerice.com. I incessantly badgered my colleagues too. It always went something like this.

me: What’s a rhyton?
them: What?
me: r-h-y-t-o-n
them: o_O

word: hippophagy
me (thinking): eating hippopotamus?!?! what?! kind of word is this?
them: hmm… crazy.
me (looking at the options): it’s eating horses
them: i don’t think so

So, in the end, everyone ended up on freerice.com… I wonder how long it will take me to get to level 60. Forever?

Other News I have been taking pictures. Wordpress has been deleting some of my comments. I learned how to make decent paper stars. I need to write letters (I’m so sorry, guys!) I’m being promoted?! My dictionary’s Internet browser displays sites as is (see snark and callistonian.net).

I confess. I’m a logophile (aka dork); I even created a list of beloved terms. At this moment, ten minutes after one on a Sunday morning, my favorite English word is ebullience (n. zestful enthusiasm). My favorite word is 진심 (korean. n. jin shim meaning sincerity). I suppose I love fancy terms for qualities I wish to possess. What about you? Do you have any favorite words?

Yesterday, Caitlin—Happy (late) Birthday!!— was sweet and linked FreeRice.com in a comment. FreeRice is awesome, a must visit for logophiles, those wanting to expand their vocabularies, those who like to raise things for charity, and the bored. Every question answered correctly equals ten grains of rice (not much but it adds up after awhile). Also, there are 50 levels. Can you reach 50? I’m not that cool. (I can’t do it. 45 is my best? idk.) I have a tendency to wallow in the spaces between 33 and 40.

Also, the three words I dislike the most are masticate, tribe, and gargantuan.

NaNoWriMo. I signed up. I don’t have any concrete story ideas; I don’t know if I’m going to write anything. But I signed up. That must count for something. I’m toying with the thought of writing a YA-ish piece from various perspectives. I made a character and a website for Rhiannon’s Worst Website Competition 2007, and I think that maybe it’ll be fun (in a slightly masochistic way) to write more from Ella’s point-of-view. There’s also the Korean Drama-like novella that I was working on. Hmm…

If you signed up for NaNoWriMo, how’s your novel going?

Also, I’m engaged! Oh wait—I’m engaged in my dreams. In one of them, my friend asked me to marry him—and guess what?—I said, “Yes.” I don’t know what I was thinking nor do I know what he was thinking. I’ve never had a dream in which I’ve put myself and someone else I know in anything that resembles a romantic situation, and sometimes I even have control over my nighttime musings, so this is completely weird. It doesn’t help that in the real world, I’m a little pissed at him… How could I say, “yes?” Anyway, because we’ve busy been (or, at least, he has), I haven’t talked to him in awhile but when I do it’ll be hard to shake the I-had-a-distrubing-dream-about-you feeling.

[”우리 왕자”와 약혼했다~ ㄲㄲㄲㄲ]

Three of my favorite quotes, randomly selected from an excel spreadsheet, are what follows. Share three (or one?) of your favorite quotes with me. ♥

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. – Dale Carnegie

The earth laughs in flowers. – e. e. cummings

It is strange that words are inadequate. Yet like the astmatic struggling for breath so the lover must stuggle for words. – T. S. Eliot