I've had a nice long weekend. Last Friday I only had to be in school for a couple of hours to work on a cellphone comic project, and we also have today off because it is the Independence Day.

I had my birthday yesterday. I and Juri sat under the blanket on the futon in our living room and watched two movies we had borrowed the day before. We watched Lost In Translation, which was okay, and a Japanese film called the Returner (starring Takeshi Kaneshiro and a cute girl whose name I don't know). I actually quite enjoyed that film. It was fun and suited my mood.

We ate chips and candy and drank soda and watched movies the whole day. And it was fun. Juri gave me the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban DVD and the Playstation 2 game of the same title, and my friend, also named Maija, gave me a Discworld quiz book called The Wyrdest Link. I knew almost none of the answers to the questions when I browsed it, because I've read so many of the books so long ago. But the gifts were nice, and the Playstation game made me smile since it was such a silly gift, and I can think of times when I will want to play something simple like it. ^__^

I've done nothing today also - I watched the Potter movie and some extras on the DVD. I thought there would be more deleted scenes there, and at least something with Lupin or Black in them, but there wasn't. Oh well, the movie is still good. The way the Extra DVDs are constructed for the Potter movies are always developed more for children, in my opinion. Perhaps 'grown ups' should have a different version of the Extras. ^__^

Anyway, off to eat now.

I am a



The story this year was much worse than last year, but do you see me care?

Plus my Buffy box came today! Hurrah!

On not so great things, I need to read for tomorrow's test and can't watch any Buffy now... But I don't mind. I have the DVDs, now I can watch Buffy whenever I want!

begin rant

I just got my new computer after two weeks of extra waiting. I was all happy and ready to write more to my nano with my new keyboard. Then we noticed that the diskette drive didn't work. It just didn't notice that there was a diskette inside. I couldn't get my nanovel to the computer.

So we opened the case to see if the drive was connected. It was, and we wondered about it. Then, as Juri switched the computer on when the case was open, I noticed there was smoke coming out from inside the machine. The hard drive was smoking! Who has ever heard of/seen a hard drive smoking? We sure as hell hadn't. Processors can smoke. Hard drives don't.

So, the catch of the first day with my new computer is two parts that need to be replaced. Now that's a good computer. My trust for the functionality of the other parts is now gone and I will buy nothing from that computer store again after I get my replacements.

end rant

Of Quizes

Which Johnny Depp character are you?


Johnny Depp, the great man himself.


Who is your inner Johnny Depp Character?
brought to you by Quizilla

Why does this always happen to me? When I did the quiz 'Which Jhonen Vasquez character are you?" I was "Jhonen Vasquez - you create all this fucked up shit". Apparently I cannot be a fictional character. ^_^ I don't mind that much.

Of success!

I finished coloring a picture with Photoshop! It's up on my homepage in the original art section. It's an art trade I did with Luke McKay. He did his version of my Coal picture and I drew his characters Blue and Green.

I'm really happy that I finished it, even though I managed to screw up with the last save and save the small version I had ment for a jpg on top of the original psd. So now I only have an older version of the original, big picture left, which means that it misses the last five hours of work and is thus unfinished. :tears:

Yes, I know I should be doing nanowrimo, but I'm happy I got this thing done!

101 steps to get rid of your money

Alright. I went and did it. This morning I ordered that Buffy collector's edition box set from Amazon.co.uk. It is about 202 euros + delivery, which I estimate to be a little under 10 euros - so, in total, a little under 212 euros (the box usually costs more, but this is a preordererer's discount).

I thought it was a lot of money, but if I bought all these seasons separately - whew. In Finland one box would cost a hundred euros, and I don't even want the Finnish ones but the British ones with better packaging (book-like), so ordering the British season box from the place I usually order DVDs would cost 150 euros. And now I get all seven with a bit over 200 euros? Bring it on! (Btw, if I had ordered the collector's set from that Finnish DVD store, it would've cost 325 euros.)

The box will come out November 22nd. How can I wait?

Of coolness

She has made Cthulhu jewelry. ^_^

Aaagh!
Buffy! *drool* (Although I've heard that at least the season 1 DVDs have better image quality as R1 than R2... damn you regions!)

Of stupidity

Nanowrimo. Again. Next month. I'll be there.

Of Helsinki Comic Festival

So, I was at the Helsinki Comic Festival last weekend. Jeff Smith was one of the guests of honour, so of course I went to listen. He didn't look anything like I had pictured him - I'd imagined him to be older, balder and with glasses. I learned that he was a friend of Neil Gaiman and Bryan Talbot, and began to wonder what Talbot looked like, since, as my sister pointed out, at least these two belong to a hair mafia. I searched the net, and saw that Bryan didn't sport the exact same hairdo as these two gentlemen. A pity.

I also bought two Copic markers. Woohoo, now I have a wide array of colours: grey and red. I would've also liked a light blue and a darker gray one. These cost 3,50 euros, the refillable ones were 5 euros. And I just read my friend's Japan diary (you can get to her "Kyoto Nikki"-blog from that Labelled Angel link I have), who wrote that Copics are 2,90 euros in Japan. Now I'm just waiting for her to answer my question if they really are the refillable ones, these cheap copics.

I saw a few fellow Deviantart artists and leafed through their portfolios. They have some really nice pics. I also bought two postcard sized prints of Korone's.

Nothing much more to say - I haven't yet really tried my copics, since I haven't found a nice enough picture to try (and one that would still be expendable, if I happened to do everything wrong).

Now I'm off to my optician appointment. I'm going to get five pairs of disposable contact lenses - now that I know that I actually can get contacts. There was a time when my eyesight was too bad for me to get contacts, but things progress and stuff. I'm not going to get rid of my glasses, since I quite happen to like how I look with glasses, but in some occasions contacts could be nice (that's why I'm getting the disposable ones).

Of sisters and hairdos

I added my sis to the blogosphere: "give me oxygen". Before there had been a link to her homepage, but I changed it to her blog when she got a new one. Her last one had gone missing in action, perhaps due to the half a year when she didn't write to it when she didn't have internet access.

I went to get a haircut yesterday. The barber got it wrong. It doesn't look bad, but I wanted something different and this looks a bit like a previous haircut I've had. The goal was to leave the hair long at the front, then make it short in the back (you know, the goth hairdo that one should dye purple ^_^). But it looks more like a bob from the side. She didn't make the hair short from the side, only from the back. I don't know, perhaps I couldn't explain it right. Bleh.

(The hair should've been a bit like hers, actually, but without the bangs and a bit longer on the top back. Too bad I couldn't find this picture before I went to the barber.)

Of updates

Hey lookie! I chose a new blogger template and finally managed to add links to the sidebar (after much fumbling and messing with the code - I suck). Yay!

Of nice weather and turning Buffy-skeptics to Buffy-fanatics

At last we have decent weather around here. The whole July it rained, poured. Some rivers in East/Middle Finland flooded, causing property damage. Not here, though. I didn't think there would be floods in Finland. But hey, there were in Sweden, so why not here? Okay, after the rain, when July turned to August, we suddenly got a heat wave: over plus 30 degrees of celsius every day. But today, we have a blissful about +25 degrees, and all is well.

I watched the 7th season of Buffy to the end last week. Now it's over. Sniff. No more Buffy to watch. But I haven't seen the 5th season of Angel, so that's something to look forward to, although there will be no more since those idiots at Fox cancelled the series, while still continuing Charmed (to the seventh season!) and Smallville. I mean, Charmed is crap. And it didn't do as well in the ratings as Angel. There has to be somekind of logic behind this, right?

In a Finnish magazines called 'Pelit' ('Games') there was a fun challenge: a writer in the magazine had reviewed the Buffy game (can't remember if it was the first or the second), but he hadn't actually seen that much Buffy, and didn't think highly of the episodes he had. So a Buffy fanatic of the staff challenged the guy to watch the whole series and keep an online diary of his feelings on the magazine's web site. It was so much fun to read how a skeptic turns into a fanboy. When he began season six, he ordered the whole series to himself on DVD. (By the way: the guy watched all the seven seasons in little over a month, at first four, then two episodes a day - he switched to two when he didn't want the series to end! ^_^)

He said that he understood that people could be skeptic about Buffy, it does, after all, tell of a stupidly-named teen-aged (at first) girl who fights vampires. But he also said that all those people who look Buffy down their noses *haven't actually seen the series*.

The guy said that the only bad thing about Buffy as a series was that it made Babylon 5 suddenly look worse (he was a huge B5 fan, I gathered). He still thought B5 was a good series, but the relationships of the characters, especially that of Sheridan and Delenn, seemed to him like sugarcandy when compared to the real relationships of the Buffy characters.

And thus I think that it is proven: Buffy is quality TV. By season two this guy, who had only seen a couple episodes of the series and didn't think highly of it, was shaking his preconceptions, and by season four he had already turned into a fan, only to be a real fanboy by season six. And now he's going to watch Angel.

All hail Buffy!

I could almost say I've forgotten all about blogging this summer. On occasion the thought would enter my mind ("Hey, I have a blog. Perhaps I should actually write to it?") and then desert me with equal speed. It all just slips my mind.
 
Many things have done that to me this summer. I should be doing a lot of things. As it seems, I'm not. I spend my time lazying about with my sisters or boyfriend, or playing Final Fantasy. I'm not complaining about that life-style choice, but there's this feeling of guilt because I should actually be doing something else. Nagging guilt over things undone is not the way to spend one's summer holiday, full of good opportunities of lazying about.
 
I should be doing this portfolio page for school. I should be doing mobile logos for the place where I went to work practice (I'm getting paid after the summer, or I would get paid if I actually did something). They're prepared to accept about a hundred logos. So far I've done a little over ten. Hey, they don't mind if I don't send a hundred, but it doesn't seem to be worth the trouble to only do ten and get paid accordingly, now that I have this chance.
 
Remind me that next summer I should do nothing.
 
Or then I should do everything right away, and blissfully lazy about the rest of the way. 
  
Well, at least I got a new monitor. It isn't actually (or in any way) new, perhaps 'another' would be a better word, since this is my big sister's old monitor. But it is a working one, and I could ask no more. Well, the next thing I could ask is a computer with a more than 2 Gb hard-drive. I mean, face it, MP3 players have bigger hard-drives than my computer. So it is good that my boyfriend has a better computer, which I am (note: also currently) hogging.
 
Harry Potter finally makes its way to Finland on fourth of August. Yes, I know. What the hell took so long? Movies don't take so long to travel on these modern days. Perhaps it lost its luggage or something. I mean, Spiderman 2 (which I, btw, saw last night) came here the week after it came out in the USA.  Is there some horrible secret society that wanted to stop me from seeing HP3 when it came out? At least I'm going to the preview screening on the third of August. They are showing the other movies that day also, but they weren't that good, so I don't need to go see them again.
 
And this has nothing to do with nothing: You Americans out there, could you tell me what a Twinkie is? Everyone eats Twinkies in American movies or TV series. What's the deal?
 
And why has Blogger suddenly become this ugly?
 
Hey, this blogging thing seems actually nice. Perhaps I should do this more often. Perhaps next time I'll be more coherent.

Everyone, rejoice! I actually drew something last week! Four pictures, two of which can be found on my website. And heaven forbid, I even inked them! I never ink my drawings, which may be the reason why they always look unfinished and sketchy pencil-y things. Ink does something nice to a picture. I'm in love with the faun I drew. Can't help it. Sorry, fans.

I think it's spring that makes me draw. If only it would make me write as well. That remains still to be seen, since I still need to actually sit in front of my computer (I'm writing this at school, our teacher's train is late). My computer screen sucks. The power cable is sort of broken, so my screen decides to blink on and off when it feels like it. And I do not have the money to by a new monitor, they're really expensive!! I wonder if anyone would notice if I took this great monitor from school and switched it with my crappy old 14" one.....

Well, my work practice is over and school has begun again. It's great to see the stuff everyone else is doing (I've seen some good animations during these past few days, wow!). I'm not that keen on the fact of three more weeks of school, but I think I'll manage.

Then it will be summer. And I have no summer job, so no money. Last year I did the Damon-project for credit and study grants, but now I don't even have a project. I'll be in the hands of the social welfare people this summer (well, at least we have social welfare, so I shouldn't complain that much). But it would be nice to make some money during the summer so that the next school year would be a bit better money-wise. But it would be nice to just rest, too, after all this work and essays and stuff. Dunno.

Fool's Court is also back up! I rather like the new look. ^__^

And the homepage, Mayakashi is up! Fool's Court, the webcomic, will be down for a couple of days still, due to a complete visual update.

My homepage will appear here sometime this Sunday. Now there is just a kick-ass "under construction"-pic. ^__^

Come on, everyone. Sign the petition. Save Angel.



And everyone living in the USA, watch 'Angel' April the 14th.

I bought Beyond Good and Evil today, cheap. Hoping it will be fun.

.... though I have yet to finish FFVIII, after.... what? One and a half years of playing? I played Kingdom Hearts in the middle there, and then didn't remember anything of FF, and had to start it all over again. Now I've played it to disk 2, and somehow stopped. The last time I got to disk 3. Don't know what's wrong with me.

It's raining. Water. It's not snowing. Spring is here! Woohoo. It's not pitch black starting from four thirty in the evening. NO, it takes at least until seven. Rejoice.

And yes, I am talking about the weather.

So what am I doing this grey, but still strangely light Sunday, when the streets of the city centre have gotten rid of all the snow, and are brown again? I am... working! (You've heard that before, haven't you?) The thing is, the place I'm working in has a bit of a hurry with that character chat - the deadline is next Tuesday. There's many extra people helping, and I've been working this weekend, full day. But for those extra hours, I get paid. Which is good, since I have almost no money on my bank account at the moment.

The bad thing is that I completely missed (yes, also forgot) the local anime night. It began this Friday at 6 PM, and ended Saturday 4 AM. I forgot, not to mention I would've been really tired at work yesterday, if I had went. Sigh. Too bad.

But it's been fun working here. Because of this big project, everyone is keeping busy. Everyone isn't always in the best of moods because of the hurry, but that's ok. I haven't been even asked to do the dishes once, even when they pile up in the kitchen (yes, I always wash my own right after using), or something, although I am "just" here on work practice. Instead, they give me real work to do. Yay for that.

What else? I'm very busy at the moment, what with having two essays to write for Thursday. I had planned to write them this weekend, but then the work came up. I also have to come up with a little speech for Japanese class. It would have to be somewhat ready for Tuesday, so that our teacher can correct the worst mistakes before I have to give the speech, the Tuesday after that. Gulp. I'm planning to talk either about Gackt or Fruits Basket.

They began showing Firefly here three weeks ago. So far it has been fun. Too bad that every decent series seems to be cancelled, sooner or later. Don't know what's up with that.

Anyways, back to work!

Ok, and here I am! And what I have been doing is... (drum roll)... working! How exciting!

So, two weeks back our work practice period in school began. To my surprise, I had managed to find a "real" job for myself, so I didn't have to stay at school and participate in some projects there. Real job in quotation marks because I don't get paid, this being just work practice.

Anyway, for the past couple of weeks I've been working at this place that does comics, mascots, animations and various other things for companies. What I have been doing is drawing clothes for this character chat for TV. The chars look quite realistic, and thus there is quite a job in drawing their clothes, especially when the same trousers are needed 13 times (walking with 6 frames, walking with 6 frames from the back + standing). Whew.

When I wrote to this blog, I usually did it when I was in school, but I can't do it at work. I work in the same room with the company employees (3 of them), and I don't want to appear lazy by surfing in the web. And during the evenings, at home, I'm tired or then the idea of blogging has just completely slipped from my mind.

That was it. Not that exciting, huh? As I said in the comments of my earlier entry, I'd love to change this blog into a weekly competition "Guess what Maija is doing this week?" Then the answer would always be something as exciting as "Washing her hair!" That'd be fun...

Lately I've begun to read more - perhaps because going into work somehow leaves me less burnt out than going to school, or because the days have become longer. Also, it appears that if one borrows just one book from a library instead of a huge pile like I used to do, one actually gets things read. *gaspshock* I've been going to the library once a week now, borrowing just one book, or two or three comics, then returning them the next week and borrowing some more. I usually read the whole book during the weekend, or some of it during my bus rides to work.

Whoah, that's the time? The season 6 finale of Buffy starts in 25 minutes! Yay!

That's all, folks.

I made buns and cinnamon rolls! Weehee. Yummy.

(No puns, please.)

Yes, I haven't written in a long time. No, I am not dead.

I honestly don't know why I didn't write here at all last month. My uneventful life perhaps doesn't crave to be archived for future generations. Who knows? Anyway, currently I am working on my portfolio/homepage website. It feels stupid not to have one. The problem which I am forced to face now is the fact that I have almost no new drawings, and most of the old ones are crap. I don't know why I don't draw. Sigh.

On blog issues: as you may have noticed, the comments-system has changed a bit. That was because Blogspeak went away, at least as freeware. I was happy to notice that I hadn't lost all my comments, though: an email by the former Blogspeak head told that the comments had been transferred to a HaloScan account (Spyder, I believe this is what happened to your comments as well). So I'm happy. My comments didn't die.

I watched the rest of Fruits Basket last weekend. The last three episodes were so exciting, though I was disappointed by the fact that there was no Ayame, Hatsuharu or Momiji in them. It feels like a waste marvelous characters, showing so little of Aya and Haru as a whole. Well, Tokyopop is starting to release the manga, and I am sure that has lots more of them in it. ^_^ Also, cannot wait to get my hands on Hellsing manga. I want it. Waaah. Well, perhaps it's a good thing I can't get to it since I actually don't have any money. I can't buy Pirates otC DVD either. Pout.

Shudder before the materiality of my life. Comics and movies and books, oh my!