I am in the mood for a good fantasy novel, but I have a few requirements that are making the search a bit difficult.

I want:

• a strong female protagonist
• a magical element featuring Fae/Sidhe, but not vampires/werewolves. I am not looking for another Twilight
• High fantasy or urban dark fantasy
• a love story is fine but I do not want a romance novel
• general fantasy fiction or YA

I'm thinking something similar to Holly Black's Tithe or the kind of strong female characters found in Tamara Pierce's novels.

I will gladly take all recommendations :)

I keep receiving claims because of the "knee sprain" I had last month. I say "knee sprain" because I was misdiagnosed, the orthopedic doctor who saw me last week told me it was knee fluid that had spread, not a sprain. They're charging me almost $5000 for a few hours spent in the hospital and a CT scan (which I felt was unnecessary given my symptoms). Plus, I was kept in the hospital longer than was necessary, the doctor sent in the order for the scan and it was never transferred over to the radiology department, so he had to send a second order. I spent five hours waiting between the the time that the order was sent and the actual scan was performed.

The best part is that they think I can pay all this in one go. It's ridiculous.

Second Life is pretty big in the education sector and they keep hyping it up among librarians. I never saw the appeal in the program, but I decided to give it a try for a communications assignment that I have to complete.

I hate it. I have no patience when it comes to flying or my avatar's crab-crawl walk. I find that the educational uses all seem good on paper, but I wouldn't want to have to use this thing to take a class.

However, a lot of the people in the class that I'm taking think that we "millenials" are only capable of learning online. We're "always" on the interwebs, we must want to learn using these mediums.

My question is: Do any of you currently use Second Life? Or have  you used it in the past? Would you use this for an extended period of time to learn, or is it just a glorified chat room?

Opinions, comments, rants are much appreciated.

Bridget's mum from Bridget Jone's Diary (book and movie, though the character is much more developed in the book); she's flighty, silly, overbearing, and an absolute mess as a mom, but she makes you laugh. What other mum thinks that everything will be better if you just get your colors done?

I went to the MoMA during a recent trip to NY. I was walking to the ladies' when I heard this little boy throwing a tantrum:

"But mommy, why are we here?"

"For culture."

"But why?"

"BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE ANY!"

Made me laugh :)

I'm all for the love of art, but please don't torture your kids with it for the sake of "culture".

The Limited is having a Create the Ultimate Outfit contest. Here's my humble little entry. Go vote! :)

Create the Ultimate Outfit Sponsored by The Limited

Having spent so many months working on "Beauty and the Beast" for my thesis, I have to admit, I kind of love this piece....



Beauty and a Beast by *JohnSu on deviantART

Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables, I'd get up to all sorts of imaginative mischief and have red hair.

Matsuri Hino's Vampire Knight is one of my favorite manga series (only second to her MeruPuri ^-^), so I was really excited when they started animating it.

Since I was in an icon making mood (it's been a long time) ... I decided to make a tiny set based on images from my favorite part of the opening credits:





Credits:

Shoku-dan for the fabulous subs.

14 icons

8 mushrooms
4 lotuses
1 teacup icon and wallpaper - 1440x900



resources:
- stock.xchng
- dafont

Random Sampling:



( Icons galore! )

Ok, so it's been a lazy couple of weeks for me. I'm recuperating from undue amounts of stress. And what's my chosen form of indolence? Watching anime!

And, since I cannot resist capping, icon-making followed.

Here are a bunch of Paradise Kiss and Ouran High School Host Club icons for the taking.

I'm not one for using lots of brushes or text, so I'm fine with my icons being used as bases.

The few brushes that I did use are from 100x100_brushes.

As always, credit _acciobrain

Preview:


( the products of boredom... )