National Ice Cream Day!

Mood:

Who doesn't love ice cream?Unless you're allergic to it, but then there are some pretty close alternatives. (Sorbet is an example.) There is such a variety of different flavors. I like rocky road, cookie dough, caramel swirl with chocolate chunks, (occasionally) mint chocolate chip, Dutch apple pie, and many more flavors. Of course, there's also ice cream bars, sundaes, and banana splits...Today's also National Lollipop Day, Fortune Cookie Day, and Moon Day. Quite a lot for one day. I'm ok with lollipops. Kind of have to be in the mood for one. Fortune cookies are always interesting, even if the 'fortune' inside is lame. One of the more memorable ones I've gotten was: "Happiness is contagious, scatter the seed." 

The moon's pretty important, so it's great to celebrate it.Although, in Judaism we kind of already do that with celebrating every new moon, which marks the start of each month in our calendar, called Rosh Chodesh. It's a lunar calendar after all. It's also a somewhat important women's holiday for us. Many communities have Rosh Chodesh groups that meet then. They're groups that generally center around women's issues and topics. We had one through our local synagogue for a while. We made our own candles, lit them, sang songs, had intense debates, occasionally cooked, said some prayers, did crafts, etc. It was a lot of fun.Kind of miss it...By the way, we're in the month of Tammuz right now. In roughly a week it'll be the new month of Av. 

The second season of Tsubasa Chronicle has been interesting. I'm finally getting close to the end.About 4 more episodes. It seems to be dragging a bit right now. They apparently don't want us to know very much about Shaoran and his 'clone'. Haven't mentioned it much, but showed what seemed to be a cloned version of him. Plus, that 'version' took over his body at one point. They already speculated about who the 'real' one is, but it's just slight hints. Still haven't gone in depth about why they are essentially seeing the same people in different worlds. They touched on it a while back, but didn't talk about the specifics. I've noticed a lot more continuity errors with this season. It didn't really impact the story, though. It seems that Sakura is getting very close to actually remembering Shaoran from before, but Yuko had taken away her memories of him in exchange for Shaoran helping Sakura. I'm wondering, if there are 2 of him, what happens if she does remember a version of him?A lot of unanswered questions still. They'll probably answer most of them during the last episode or something. 

Finally got back to writing the 10th short story to my nightmare anthology. I was too nervous and warm to write while I was in Scottsdale.This is turning out to be one of the most gruesome/gory stories I've written so far. Kind of hard to sit through, yet fun at the same time. The nightmare it's based off of was super short, but one of the scarier or more shocking ones.So, it's interesting to try and spin it into an actual story. 

Edited more of the exaggerated expressions meme in Photoshop. This is of Junko's most exaggerated sad expression. Kind of sad to see.My oc's are like my babies. But, the next section shows different levels of her angry expressions. That one should be more amusing to look at. At least, it's good practice, too.

Drew the rest of my characters' outfits/accessories from Alliance. Even got to the last 2 nameless characters that were introduced towards the end of the story. That was interesting. One's an assassin, but her clothes don't look like what an assassin would wear. At least not in my mind, but it still looks good. The other seems to be the 'bad guy', although you don't really know. Even by the end of the story. His type of 'demon' is essentially a trickster, and loves to mess with people. He's a Dark Healer, and there are Light Healers as well. They don't get along. Anyways, his clothes are interesting, too. I really went with a 'dark' look with him.I just realized one of the main characters who's a Light Healer has a tattoo as well as this Dark Healer. They have them in different places and are different types, but I don't think I really planned it out like that...

日本語

Studied the kanji: 練 and 路. When 練 is pronounced as 練り or ね.り (ne.ri): (suf) kneading, gloss, tempering; paste (e.g. bean paste, mustard paste). When it's pronounced as 練る or ね.る (ne.ru): to knead, thicken into a paste (stirring over a flame); to polish (a plan, etc.), refine, elaborate, work out; to train, drill, exercise; to gloss (silk), soften; to tan (leather); to temper (steel); to walk in procession, parade, march. It's only pronounced as れん (ren) in compounds. Usually not pronounced this way by itself. 練習 or れんしゅう (renshuu): practice, practicing. When 路 is pronounced as じ (ji): (suf) road, route; distance traveled in a day; (with decade) one's..., age...As みち (michi): road, street, way, path, course, route, lane; distance, ways (e.g. "a long ways"); the way (of proper conduct, etc.), one's way, morals; teachings (esp. Confucian or Buddhist), dogma; field (of medicine, etc.), subject; way, method, means. It's mainly pronounced as ろ (ro) in compounds. (There weren't any common ones listed.) Next time I'll be going over the very last kanji for the 'grade'. So, yay! I'm almost done with it!I can move on to the next 'level' this way. But, that last one has a lot of common compounds listed...So, it might take me a little while to get through.