Hi! How are you? I’m good, I guess. I’m just—figuratively—wiping the dust off Callistonian.net and its antediluvian (but still beloved!) layout. It’s only been approx. 530 hours since I last blogged.
Of course, I dislike the idea of beginning every blog entry with an apology for being MIA, but I keep disappearing. I hate this blogging once-a-month thing, but it’s what I’ve been doing. We’ll see just how possible blogging more consistently is for me—have you ever wanted to do something consistently only to not do it?
Books. So, in terms of books, I have done the unthinkable. I, a Pulitzer-Prize-obsessed-literature-loving-logophile, read Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. I didn’t just read that one. This month, I finished it as well as New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. I read all 5,212,323,875,213 2,515 pages. And guess what? I like all four books. Have I lost my mind? Perhaps. Maybe I’ll post reviews explaining myself later, maybe I won’t. At any rate, I have no real intentions of watching the Twilight movie because it looks stupid to me.
Is it any wonder that my favorite song (for the moment) is 8eight’s lovely vampiric ballad 심장이 없어 (Without A Heart)?
Academics I need to study Korean. I hoped to have my proficiency in Korean tested in April, but since that’s become impossible, I intend to take the test in October. Now that my test has been pushed back several months, I’ve decided to tackle the insurmountable. I’m going to—I use the term “going to” very loosely—learn 3 to 4 years worth of Korean between now and then, and sit the highest level. -_-;
Academics Part 2 Sometimes, I play English teacher. For extra credit of sorts, I challenge my students to find non-technical English words that I do not know. For awhile, I was doing quite well and warding them off, but then one of the little geniuses got me with floccinaucinihilipilification. T_T
I’ll be more interesting next time. Ciao!
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?
![[image] Things I've sent in the mail](http://www.callistonian.net/ima/blogged/mail.jpg "Things sent in mail")
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.
Does my odd drawing make sense? No? Either way, let me explain.
Rock, Paper, Scissors is a classic. Almost everyone everywhere knows this game. At work, we played it today, on Friday, and on Thursday. And I think we’ll continue playing. Why? Well … By itself, Rock, Paper, Scissors is pretty lame—but it becomes much more fun when the loser is punished, no? For instance, if everyone who didn’t lose got to take a swing at the loser, wouldn’t that make it more fun? :P Perhaps? Anyway, we don’t hit each other at work. We’re a bit more civilized than that. Instead, we force the loser to spend money. Today, she had to buy ice cream for everyone else who played. T_T Before, it was coffee or some sort of drink.
Today, I played against 3 people and lost. I knew that my adversaries were going to throw paper. I just knew it. Before I made the fatal mistake of throwing rock, I thought, “What happens if I throw rock and all three of them throw paper? Will I lose?” Yes—I did lose, because I threw rock (anyway) and they all threw paper. T_T So, I bought everyone ice cream. That’s okay. I won’t lose tomorrow. Have you ever known (strongly felt) that something was going to happen and then acted as though it wasn’t going to happen, anyway? If so, did you regret it?
Aside/FYI: The stove in mentioned my past entry about setting stoves on fire was set on fire again. I wasn’t there this time, though. Also, I probably won’t be doing anymore voice entries—my last one was too strange. It didn’t go over well.
So, like the title says, this is a voice entry about … books? paper? an abacus? As for what it’s about, I’m not really sure. It’s 5 minutes long. Listen if you dare, and then comment.
The volume is low, so turn up your speakers.
Repeat One vs. Repeat All. I’ve been craving a particular soundtrack for weeks. Today, it happened; I have it. There’s one song in particular that’s really sweet and girly. It’s so soft. It’s not really good, but I absolutely love it. I’m listening to it right now, at this very second in time. It’s played 4 times in a row, already. It’s still playing. I’ll probably play it 5 more times before I decide to move on to the rest of the soundtrack. Here’s a question, though. If you were in my presence or in the presence of someone playing the same song in an endless loop, would you A) kill that person B) be annoyed C) not care D) like it? Do you repeat songs endlessly?
Snowboarding 101. Last month, I went snowboarding for the first time ever. I’m not an athletic person, and I was terrible at snowboarding—but it was still amazing fun. I couldn’t get down the bunny slope, but … Next time, I’ll get down the hill without falling? Maybe? Probably not. After my first snowboarding adventure, my legs weren’t sore. My arms weren’t really sore. My back wasn’t really sore. However, my poor butt was terribly sore. Afterwards, sitting down hurt so much, so next time, I want to spend more time standing up and less time in the snow!
Good Things. Feb. 16th is my mother’s birthday (happy birthday!). I got her plane ticket, today! She’s coming to Korea, next month. She’s never been here before. I have to make lists and plan out everything we’ll do. I’m so excited. :)
Other Good Things. I’ll do a voice entry next time? I uploaded pictures (finally!!) to my flickr account. They’re photos from COEX Aquarium that I took at the beginning of December. I need to add a lot more.
Here’s one.
