Dracula's Ball

Dracula's Ball on Summer Solstice was fun.  

Here is an official bootleg of Samantha Diaz's performance.  

In summer

School's out for the summer, or at least it will be in about 2 days.  It's a day that every kid looks forward to and all parents dread.  

Actually, it's not all quite that dramatic.  I like having my kid at home and the fact that I only have 1 kid helps with that mentality a lot.  I do enjoy spending time with her though of course, I enjoy those few hours that she spends with the grandparents every so often, which happens just once or twice a month.  I never wanted to be one of those parents who drops off their kid/s every weekend at the grandparents while during the week the kid is at daycare while parents works.  Seriously, what's the point of having a kid if you never spend time with the child?  

During the school year, it gets so busy it feels like I never see my own kid so I'm looking forward to this summer.  I like our family day trips whether to someplace fun and different or just out running errands together.  It's not just idle time.  I usually have a planned educational hour everyday, whether it'll be practicing her recorder, reading a book together, doing an art and craft project and other such activities.  This year I'm adding astronomy to the learning lessons and I can't wait for a late night or two looking through my telescope to show her the wonders of the universe.  

Bring on the longer days, bring on the warm weather.  I'm looking forward to it all!

Memorial Day, things remembered and things to come

Today is Memorial Day, a day to honor those who lost their lives while in the service of their country.  I'm thankful every single day that my husband is not one of those who made the ultimate sacrifice and I think of those we were not nearly as lucky.

For too many though, Memorial Day is about the start of summer for barbeques, going down to the shore and family time.  It's not a bad way to spend the day.  It's the sort of thing that a person can only truly appreciate by having experienced it his or her self and as much as I believe everyone should understand such a solemn occasion it is, I don't wish for people to suffer unnecessarily.

My heart goes out to those who have sacrificed so that not all have to feel such pain.  

Adventures in babysitting

I couldn't help imagining that as I picked the title of my newest post to hear it in an epic movie VoiceOver with the added effect of an echo. Can you tell I'm a child of the late 80s/early 90s?

Getting to the point of things, I'm playing nanny to a friend's baby as she is forced to go back to work. The pay is low though to be fair I didn't ask much and the reason for her to go back to work is because they can't afford for her to stay home. Daycare, as everyone is aware, is expensive so I'm a cheap but loving alternative.  

I love babies.  I have my one baby, who isn't an actual baby anymore at the age of 6.  I love babysitting. It's all the fun of having a kid without the work.  It works well for everyone.

Not that I'm anywhere near perfect or anything like that but well, everyone knows the wonders of a British nanny, not that I'm British either.  

The pen is mightier than the keyboard

I fancy myself a writer.  I'm aware of the fact that I'm being redundant as this is a post of a fairly well updated blog.  Granted, I do absolutely nothing to promote my blog but I write things and I put it here as part of my creative process.

Again, to obviously state, I'm not a stranger to technology.  I have a smartphone--Samsung Galaxy S3, to be exact and, which in case you can't tell, I do love having it though I don't use it as constantly as some may think.  As said in a previous post, I also have an Ipad2.  It is my second brain, and without it my productive levels would be near nil or feel close enough to it.  I also have a PC.  My current model is not one that I built myself.  Due to space constraints, I have a Toshiba All-in-1 touch screen desktop.  I have no use for it being a touch screen but the specs are standard and as I mostly type, read, research with the occasional Sims game, it does it's job very well.

With having all that established, I adore pen and paper.  A lot of my non-prose poetry, that no one is ever allowed to read, is still put into a blank book of sorts.  I collect interesting journals and I love new types of pens.  My favorite type of writing instruments are fountain pens and such.  I do even own a quill with a bottle of ink.  There is just something romantic to take fill an empty page with the written word.  For me, it feels like my hand knows what to put down before my thought process has even started.

The point is, though, that when it comes to sharing thoughts and ideas, do so in whatever way you feel comfortable and never feel limited to a single medium.  

Family, whether black, white, yellow, peach, purple or green

I'm Asian as I've stated a time or two on this post.  I love being Asian as there are so many jokes that go along so well with my interests and hobbies and such.  Here's a kicker--my husband is of European mixed ancestry; in other words, he's a white boy and I love him dearly.  We have a daughter, together.  To some, I'm just pointing out the obvious.  To others, I may have just shocked them into controversy.

The really interesting part is that I never even stopped and thought about how we're a interracial couple or how my kid is a mixture of races.  To me, my husband is my husband.  My child is my child.  We're a family.  We love each other and we spend time together and that's that, so no need to call the news media.

And yet, this commercial from the Cheerios company and its sequel is enough to stir hateful remarks.  I saw it and my first thought was simply that she's a cute kid cause she wants to make sure her daddy is eating healthy.  It didn't even register in my mind that the father is black and the mother is white.  To be honest, I don't see why such a thought should have ever been pointed out to me.

In a world, where people open gun fire in public areas, where people are still fighting for the right to marry who they want to marry, where people are still struggling to put food on the table, where people are trying their hardest to be able to take care of themselves, we should be happy that this commercial shows a family that cares about each other, but apparently, that thinking is just too forward.

Gaming means having lived many different lives

I'm a gamer.  I don't mean I sit on Facebook for hours playing FarmVille, Candy Crush or whatever crash culture game is popular at the moment.  I mean I shot my first Nazi in Wolfenstein.  A few of my favorite games on the Nintendo are River City Ransom, Dragon Warrior and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  I killed my fellow competitor with a blood splattered fatality in Mortal Kombat.  I played the original Sims and destroyed my Sim City.  My first RPG on the original Playstation was Parasite Eve and one of the top games on my list of all time favorites is Star Ocean the Second Story.  Many hours were sucked into Guild Wars and a few other MMOs.  I played against my husband and his army friends in home Halo 2 tournaments and won a few times.

I'm a fairly hardcore gamer, especially for being a bird (female) but I didn't go around telling anyone who will listen cause it used to be that I was too busy actually playing the game.  Nowadays, life keeps me busy with matters of the family and such.  The rare and few nights that I push all things aside for my own relaxation and entertainment I can't enjoy my first lifelong obsession.  

RPGs are the forefront of my love for video games.  I live through the plots.  I fall in love with characters.  I dwell in adventures of far-off lands.  I also adore simulation games.  I have no idea why I find planting turnips in any of the Harvest Moons so enjoyable for the many hours I have played any of the game series.  I obsess over the newest Sims games because I likely have a god complex and revel in it.  My first genre love though was in FPSs (First Person Shooters).  My favorite one on the PC while growing up was this crazy, gory and sadistic game called Blood.  I have mastered shotgun physics and call it my Equalizer as I can level any areas with it.  

I still play sim games any day of the week and wish I had more hours to devote to RPGs but I can't seem to play FPSs anymore.  I get motion sickness.  I can't play for more than 45 mins before I start feeling the acids in my stomach start to boil.  I am able to build on the time to add about 10-15 mins each day.  If I can up the total to about 3 hours, I can play for as long or as little as I want and it won't bother me but I can't go more than 3 days without playing or I lose any tolerance and go back to feeling ill at the 45 min mark.  It's near heart wrenching for me when that happens cause it takes me a week or so to build up that tolerance, get into the story, just to feel ill and not be able to enjoy the game like before.  

I have actually resorted to trying motion sickness remedies.  The first try is an all natural remedy that I have to rub behind my ears.  It's supposed to give instant relief if I am already feeling nauseous but that had no bearing on me whatsoever.  I'm going to try it again by putting it on beforehand as a preventive measure to see if that works.  If it gives me no results, there are a few other cures out there that I can try.  I'm not giving up quite yet.  I hope to game again!