A Rainbow Notebook and....well...HARD LIKE HEROIC, MORE THAN YOU CAN HANDLE

So, I know I said I'd post pictures and stuff when I finished that notebook I said I was gonna try to make.

Long story short: I have yet to make that one, but I made a different one. Not with coffee-stained pages; a rainbow one.

Obviously it isn't perfect - considering I went into it without any remote type of directions or actual plan. That said, I posted a collage-type picture and some wordage on >my deviantART page< earlier. Thought I'd just repost it here, so here it is; 

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SO. After started making and uploading her own journals, I decided I had to try my hand at it as well. [And therefore, she is what inspired this; as clarification. Massively talented artist, really cool person, and I suggest you go check out her stuff.]

She made her own by taking an old or damaged book, removing it's pages, decorating her own, tying them in, and redecorating the covers. She's come up with some fantastic, really gorgeous journals by doing this.
I, on the other hand, didn't have any old books around. I decided that wasn't enough to stop me from trying it, and so mine is made entirely from scratch.
Basic process;
The pages are simply white printer paper, cut in half and painted on both sides with watercolor paints. Those were pretty simple.
I wasn't sure how I was going to make the cover, but after flinging a few ideas around, I went with a simple method: I had a piece of fairly thick, sturdy cardboard lying around. I cut two pieces to fit the pages, slightly overlapping them.
Just about the hardest part of this, I think, was finding out how to put holes in the cardboard so I could tie it them and the pages together. [The cardboard was just slightly too thick for my hole puncher.] I wound up taking a pen and piercing the cardboard. Took quite a while and some muscle, but it worked.
I then covered the cardboard with a sheet of white tissue paper, gluing the paper to the board. I went a little further, dying two more sheets of paper rainbow-colored and decorating them [the little dots on them are all individually-glued on; I used the extra paper that was punched out for holes], and gluing them to each of the inside covers.
It's all held together by simple lavender gift-wrapping ribbon. [I found it the simplest method; idea again taken from She seems to have used ribbon like this to tie the pages to the books in at least one of her journals.]
I decorated the covers with more water colors; penciling patterns, drawing over them with pens, and then taking the paint to them.
The quote on the front is "Everything has it's beauty, but not everyone sees it." - Confucius
I'm filling the journal with some of my favorite quotes.

And that's that.
I plan on making some more; Next probably will be what I thought I'd make first, but didn't, including the pages I previously coffee-stained.

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And there it is.

I'm sure I'll post something similar when I get the coffee stained one finished - no guarantees when that'll be, but in the meantime....

>Some epic WoW nonsense<

Parental Brainwashing and Baby X

So the puppy's going well enough so far. Smart doggy. Still nippy, and getting into things, but for a puppy he's pretty good. [Granted, not everyone's cooperating as well as they could, but all in good time.]

That said, something else I have to mention, since it's now on my mind.
On another site, a decent friend of mine posted >this link<

It's a little lengthy, but if you can be bothered I'd strongly suggest reading it. 

Obviously I like the real message - that parents and everyone else are so brain-washed into thinking that their kids HAVE to act one way or another [decided by their gender] or there's something 'wrong' with them. And that when you stop worrying about what everyone else is thinking about, you and your kid(s) are likely to wind up a lot better off.
That said, it made me think of something else, too: Notice how in that story, the other children took a short time to get used to the new thing [in this case, X], but after they'd decided it wasn't a bad thing, they were perfectly happy and treated it just like anything else - normally. Alternatively, the parents never fully got over it, and were so stuck in their own little world where anything that was different was automatically wrong. On top of that, the biggest excuse for thinking this way that the parents had, was that it might screw up THEIR kids.
I find this absolutely ridiculous, because that's how people actually are: My sisters and I grew up on things like the 'Old' Disney and Nickelodeon. I.e. shows like Lizzie McGuire, Boy Meets World, Zoey 101 and others. There was nothing WRONG with those. Now it's nothing but sugar-coated garbage that makes kids think the world is rainbows and sunshine. They don't even air shows like Boy Meets World on kid's channels anymore. WE didn't wind up screwy - we learned to think for ourselves, not to be brainwashed by the media and anyone else.
Everyone's so afraid of everything. Parents forget that it isn't the shows that screw kids up - it's their parenting. We knew what was right and wrong, and it wasn't 'bad' tv shows or 'good' tv shows that taught us that - it was our parents.
People are so caught up with trying not to offend each other that they forget kids don't actually UNDERSTAND any of the 'bad' stuff - they learn it later, sure, but at 8 years old there aren't too many kids that are grasping any dirty innuendos in otherwise harmless shows. It flies over their heads, and parents don't understand that. [No, I'm not saying let them watch things like the Exorcist or anything horrifically dirty, but don't overreact about everything. My sisters and I were OBSESSED with the movie Grease when we were little. We didn't KNOW what the words to Grease Lightning meant - we didn't care. All we knew was that Danny was awesome, Sandy needed to lighten up, and the guys mooning the camera were goofy in the most epic way possible.]
Be a good, protective parent, yeah - but don't be the one screwing up your kid by trying to keep it sheltered from everything. There are a lot of things in the world, and flipping out over a show or not letting kids interact with people who are a little 'different' is going to leave them with a far more warped outlook on life than letting them figure things out, make mistakes, and actually understand things the way they are.

/endrant

This is Starting to Become a Thing, Getting Dogs on Superbowl Weekend

First off, forgive me for not writing anything the past week. I kind of didn't even slightly notice it had been that long. I've been busier than I thought, I suppose. Also, I just spent way too long babbling too much writing a journal on deviantART. SO, rather than re-write the entire thing, I'm just copy/pasting what I wrote there, here. [You may already be aware of some stuff from reading this blog. You may not. But, now you'll know it all.]

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[WARNING: Long rambling story you probably don't care about incoming. The shortened, lazy-person's version shall be at the very end.]
To elaborate/clarify; We got a puppy yesterday. The last puppy we got, we also got Superbowl Weekend. [But that was like...6 years ago.]
I'll post pictures when I take some/get the chance, but in the meantime:
My dad's been a little obsessed with getting a 'real' [read: Big] dog for quite a while. [We have a Yorkie (9yrs) and a rat terrier (6yrs) - we never got a big dog since my mom wasn't comfortable with them, especially when my sisters and I were little.]
Us being the lazy, impatient people that we are, we didn't do much by the way of training at any point so far in my other dogs' lives. Therefore, Mom's been insisting that we train the dogs we already have before adding another to the mix. [Our dogs aren't 'BAD' exactly - just very anti-social and a little....dominant. LDS, what can you do.]
But then my dad went into excitement-overload mode [MOMMY SHOWED SIGNS OF PUSHOVERNESS, THERE'S A POSSIBILITY!] and began constantly researching bigger dogs. We were pretty set on a Great Dane, until we convinced him out of it due to their massive risk for multiple health issues. [And considering our current funds and whatnot, another dog at all is a little bit of a stretch, but we'll manage. Really not smart to take something so risky since we don't have the money to be at the vet 24/7 as might be necessary with something like a Great Dane.]
After going through alllll the possibilities, we started thinking about a Black Mouth Cur. Then on one of the adoption sites my dad had been frequenting, he found a 14 week old Boxer/Black Mouth Cur mix just a little bit north of us. My mom began corresponding with one of the women running the place at the beginning of the week, and we had an appointment to meet him set up for yesterday morning at one of the local Petsmarts.
So after a few hours of waiting around [ah, they got lost. Happens, I guess?] and making a few phone calls to make sure nothing was out of order, we decided to run across the street and have breakfast. Dad, being the 12 year old that he is, ran back over to the store while our food was being made. Came back all giddy since the dog had finally arrived. [Mom sent him over to check, since he'd have wound up with indigestion if he had to wait through his meal not knowing if they were there or not.]
So after we'd finished breakfast [quickly, mind you. It's a wonder we all weren't sick. Poor Jackie [ didn't even get to finish her pancakes since the rest of us were rushing her.] we all ran back over, made a beeline to the adoption set-up, and....well, it was pretty much a given he wasn't staying there.
Mom made a bit of a deal about his eye, but ah. [He has a fairly noticeable scar on the bottom half of his right eye. We knew this from the adoption site before meeting him. Quoting (copy/paste) from the site, he "has a scar on his bottom eyelid. It seems to be an old njury and the vet said it does not impact his eyesight. He said the lscar may or may not heal completely but eiither way, his vision is fine."]
As a whole....this puppy's ridiculous amounts of awesome. Isn't being a psycho and barking at everyone, gets along fantastically with both people and other dogs, is learning quickly [seriously, he already understands 'sit' just about flawlessly] and is extremely...sweet, for lack of a better term.
He's not getting along brilliantly with our other dogs just yet, but it'll take some time. [He wants to play....they're afraid he's going to squish them....Process, it is. They're getting better.] But he got along awesomely with the neighbor's dogs, most everyone in Petsmart yesterday, and the year-old, 106lb female Black Mouth Cur that lives next to my grandparents.
That said, he's in his inquisitive puppy stage. In other words, he found the red blanket covering our bird's cage, pulled on it, and toppled the whole thing over. I'm sure the bird wasn't pleased.

Ah. His name's Dante. We decided to just go with what the adoption agency had named him, rather than confuse him. [Even though he doesn't seem to really know his name just yet.]

SOYEAH. S'pretty awesome.
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SHORTENED VERSION for the lazies:
Dad wanted a big dog. Mom caved. Found one online. Met and adopted him yesterday. Epic dog, getting along well enough with everyone. Other dogs getting used to him. Work in progress.

Pictures and Puppies

Now that I've just finished adding way too many pictures/quotes around here, I think I'm more or less satisfied. 

Speaking of pictures, I've finally been convinced to bother joining Flickr. And thus, my new Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/reveriebynote/

Check it out. Or don't. 

Lazylazylazy day. 

BUT.

The likelihood of us getting a puppy has shot up by about, say, 40% or so.  [And I'll estimate for the hell of it that it was about 40-50% BEFORE today/yesterday, so we're look at a basic probability of 80-90% right now.]

Why the sudden increase? 

Well, considering my dad has done very little apart from constantly researching dogs since the topic was brought up with a hint of possibility, this was bound to happen sooner or later. 

What was?

Ah. He may have finally found one that'll work.

After everyone being very into the idea of a Great Dane, I think I/we've finally convinced everyone out of it. [I love them to death, but seeing how they have way too many health risks...and we're sorta fairly broke as is....we just really don't need that right now.]

A neighbor of my grandparents' adopted a Blackmouth Cur puppy not long ago. We started looking into them, and I believe it was yesterday or so that my dad came across a Blackmouth Cur/Boxer mix puppy, not too far from here. Sooo.....Once my mom gets some sort of message back from whoever's in charge and sets up a meeting, we'll likely be meeting him and, well....we'll just have to see what happens, eh?

It Seems April Might Wind Up A Semi-Busy Month

Ulcers suck.

[And to clarify; I don't mean anything along the lines of, say, stomach ulcers. Just those irritating bumps you get on your tongue from eating too much of something sour/citrus-y. Something I brought upon myself, yet again, but that doesn't make it any better.]

In other news: Candles are awesome. Matches are awesomer for allowing me to have candles lit. My neighbor's cats are kind of awesome, too. [An odd statement in itself - 'cats' and 'awesome' don't go together too often.] Tank tops are not the most suitable attire for holding a cat that really isn't fond of being force-fed medicine. I could very easily be attending prom in a couple months. Those little bottles of syrup you get at Cracker Barrel are definitely worth stocking up on, for when you run out at home and just happen to be having pancakes.

In more specific, weirder news; "WAIT WATI WAIT...Meg+prom? Wut." 

Which, if I were you, would totally be my reaction to that randomly-placed sentence in the text-block above, so I'm going to go ahead and assume it's your reaction, too.

Either way. Boyfriend now seemingly interested in going. [Love is a funny thing - I do believe it makes people do things they otherwise wouldn't. I mean, nobody sane would actually think of bringing me along to something that would include any type of dancing, so surely he must be unstable. Or maybe that's why we get along so well: We're both nuts.] Meaning, should that play out, I'm going to need a dress....and more frighteningly, heels. Something both to look forward to, and dread just a little bit. 

Oh. Other news I seem to have skipped mentioning the last few days: As my sister's 16th birthday was Wednesday, and one of the only things she asked for was a concert, it seems we get to go to that. So, massive amounts of yay. The yay is amplified by the fact one of my bestbest friends [For the past like...4 1/2 years that I've still yet to meet in person...] is likely going to wind up going as well. So it'll really just be a pile of awesome. 

All Time Low - Yellowcard - Hey Monday - The Summer Set. 

Now, as we've already seen ATL and Hey Monday, we know they're pretty awesome. [Honestly, I'm really not too fond of Hey Monday as a whole, but they sort of kick ass live, so it's all good. And it's hard to dislike ATL.] The Summer Set is generally not a type of music I'm insanely fond of, but they're tolerable at least. And Yellowcard is massive amounts of awesome. 

So. Moar things to look forward to. This one without any traces of dread. [Not, of course, to say I'm actually terrified of the idea of prom or anything. Just...mildly disturbed, is all.]

K. I might bother taking more/uploading pictures here in a bit. Go me for some odd form of productivity.

Plantar's Warts Are the New Bane of My Existence, and Pancakes Are Starting to Become a Semi-Regular Occurance.

You know what sucks? Not being photogenic. Not to whine, or anything, but it'd just be cool to not have to go through 20 pictures to find one decent one. This is why I prefer being behind the camera.

Speaking of which, finally got a chunk of inspiration and was in my happy-photography mode...when my camera battery dies. My fault - knew it was low, didn't charge it, forgot about it. S'what I get. BUT, now it's charging all content in a corner and sometime either later tonight or perhaps Sunday I'll actually bother uploading said pictures - since I haven't taken/uploaded anything in ages and it's kind of getting to me. 

Also; Plantar's Warts need to go die. Seriously? Shit's not even funny. When you start having to pick your foot up in the shower because it's too sore to stand on, it's reached a new level and must be put down. So, since I've kind of far surpassed the two-week period of dropping salicylic acid on it and it's still hanging around....A number of other options have come to mind...

• Take a torch to it and burn the little bastard off. 
• Since it's located just under my big toe on my left foot, another option would be sticking that entire front portion of my foot in acid. Can't come back if all that's left is bone, right?
• Jackhammer. 'Nough said.
• Numb my whole foot, then find a butcher's knife and cut/pry it out. Continue to numb until healed. [Note; Have cotton balls/some other form of soaking-device around for blood.]
• Just take the easy way out and chop my whole foot off, right at the ankle. 

I'm a slightly twitchy person, so a third or so of it's been removed....[Go figure, the acid does kind of loosen things up a little. Any part that isn't directly connected to my foot is gone.] Aaand there's a couple little black spots of dried blood, since I can't seem to leave the parts that are in my foot alone, either. 

/sigh

Do forgive the less-than-appealing topic choice above. This thing's irritating the hell out of me. 

On the bright side, there will likely be more pancakes, and Cuban sammiches tomorrow. [The brighter side is that I don't mind cooking.]

Server Maintenance = Pancakes

Title confuse you? Understandably so. It seems my will-power has swelled a little and I'm still working on math, so let me break it down for you:

7 days in a week. World of Warcraft being playable all of these - minus about half a day a week, every Tuesday. [Tuesdays are server maintenance day - all servers down for fixing bugs/adding things/all=around maintenance.] 

So, 7 - 1/2 = 6 1/2. Leaving half a day a week free from distractions of WoW. So essentially, leaving half a day to kill, in the morning/midday....

And thus, server maintenance = pancakes.

[For those of you who are particularly slow; I got up my normal 8:40 time, got math and such out of the way, and decided fuck it, I have hours left, I want pancakes. So I made pancakes. Then I got murdered repeatedly in Black Ops because I haven't played enough to be decent and my sisters have. But, at least there were pancakes.]

And I know this post alone makes me seem like one of those game-obsessed, sleep-deprived, zombie people. That's only partially true, I swear. 

[Zombies don't eat pancakes - unless they're brain pancakes.]

Forgive me for the complete ignoring of this for the past week or so - I may have forgotten about it ever-so-slightly. Nor did I really have anything to say, so in a sense, I think I spared you. 

Now, I'm kind of....in the writing mood. I kind of miss journalism, oddly. [Was on my school newspaper for a few years. Quit one or two ago. Got too....unworthy, for lack of a better term. (And yeah, I know: "School paper? But....you're homeschooled. /bonk" Online classes = online news, oddly enough.)]

So, article-writing would be cool, but seeing how there's really no point in me just writing things to write them. [Or rather, I COULD just make a blog for articles and such, but...I feel odd doing that. Why, I'm not sure - just one of those weird twitches you kind of want to kick in the face, but twitches don't have faces so you're perpetually screwed.]

Writing-to-write doesn't seem to fit articles, for me. Which is why I'd just go with my random fiction writing. The problem with that is I always tend to get too into it, and start sending it to people. And then I wind up regretting it, deleting the whole thing, and swearing off it entirely for months.

It's a circle, I swear.

Moving on, because I know that made little sense and I can't be bothered to go back and fix it now;

...Actually, no. I'm just gonna go. I think I'm a little out of it today. 

Sidenote; Narwhals will fuck you up. Never pet the narwhal. [It's a conclusion and you'll do well to abide by it.]