anivad

two children's books whose titles continue to elude me:

1) a picture book about a girl in a big house. I think she was alone, or at least explored on her own, maybe to get away from others. I vaguely remember a brown-toned picture of her going through a trapdoor into an attic; perhaps there was a secret passage at some point. it was all very peaceful and yet mysterious and exciting. all I know is that I loved that book - I love the concept of discovering secrets in big houses - but IIRC it was a library book that my grandmother borrowed more than once. I remember reading it at her house while the grown-ups were finishing dinner. I can't remember the story, but the feeling of the book seeped into my subconscious and has influenced every single thing I've ever written about characters wandering around large houses, which seems to pop up a lot in my writing.

2) that blasted series about the kiwi, one of which had him meeting up with a pink car that cried tears and then wiped them off with its windshield wipers, and its doors opened and the kiwi went in and the doors closed and idk what happened but I think the kiwi got kiwinapped, but then it became friends with the car in the end or something and it was all ok. I'VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR THIS TITLE FOR YEARS TO NO AVAIL. The books kind of creeped me out when I first read them, but they were such a formative part of my childhood literature. We actually owned the books and I read them a bunch of times even though the sentient car creeped me out, but maybe they were given away at some point because they are now nowhere to be found. again, huge influence on my writing.

I get this feeling that if I ever locate those books again, I'll uncover some great answers to life the universe and everything.
although I guess it's just as possible that finding them would ruin the magic, because children's books are never the same when you go back to them as an adult.

i'm feeling happy right now and am a bit wary that it probably won't last.

10,555 visits to WINM yesterday; that's about 10 times the normal.

THANK YOU, REDDIT. :D

*continues going through and answering various questions Keanu left unanswered*

yay Yuletide!
I never sign up because I'm terrible with commitment and obligation. I usually just go through the prompts+letters and write for whichever I want, then submit it under Treats, like this BTTF fic last year, which is one of my favourite things I've written. :D
'tis more fun that way. plus there are always lots of great stories to read, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on that side of it.

Also wow, NaNoWriMo is coming up soon.

omg, WINM is now the first Google result for 'keanu reeves fansite' and 'keanu reeves fan site'. :'D

OMG OMG OMG WE JUST GOT WORLD IN CONFLICT: THE COMPLETE EDITION
it was on sale at Steam for US$9.99, and I hadn't yet got my brother a birthday present, and we both really wanted this, so I bought it for him :D :D :D

BEST GAME EVER I MISS IT SO MUCH EVER SINCE OUR COPY STOPPED WORKING
I love it so much I even had an LJ tag for it
...wow the last entry on that tag was almost 3 years ago D:
and this is the complete edition with the Soviet Assault expansion pack, which we've never had before. :D

this is perhaps the only game I've ever played where I can get into the 'zone' - in which I'm almost on autopilot and everything flows perfectly and everything is beautiful
(I really loved Age of Empires 2 back then too, but somehow I never got that same kind of high from it. in competitive AOE2 I was only mediocre; my team got into the finals in a Singapore competition, and I was the top scorer for the prior round, but playing online on international platforms I got routinely thrashed. but it was still epic.)
whereas for WIC, I used to be among the top 15 players in Singapore. which admittedly isn't that impressive, because there were only like 200-ish competitors, but still. I was really good at this game, and there's a special kind of joy in playing a game you're really good at.
my goal was to get into the world top 500 (out of 27k-ish active players), which I still have yet to accomplish. I think the best ranking I ever got was #589. at least, that's the one I saved a screenshot of. my brother was a more hardcore player than I (he's played 13+ days vs my 8+), and I think he was ranked in the #400s at one point. he's won a higher percentage of matches and got more medals than me. and he has a 1.20 kill-death-ratio, vs my pathetic 0.88. >_> I have a higher average score, but that doesn't really count for much other than showing off.

and now I will have something to do whenever I'm feeling restless, instead of picking fights on the internet. which would be a great improvement.
there were fights on WIC too, and I guess lots of frustration at noob players who did stupid things and/or selfishly refused to cooperate, going to do high-point-scoring things for themselves which did no good to the rest of the team (WIC is a very team-focused game; if someone on the team is a jerk and doesn't work with the others, you're almost guaranteed to lose). and gamer demographic is heavily dominated by adolescent males of the sort who like to taunt their opponents by calling them girls or gay, which isn't fun either until I get the top score and go 'hah, guess what...'

but the great thing about that is that once the game is over, you usually don't have to see them again, and the next game it's a different team of people unless you specifically search friends out.
sadly I seem to have forgotten all my skillz, but they'll come back eventually.

until then I shall go get stuff done before the game is downloaded and installed and becomes a distraction. >_>

that surreal moment when an lj user has been using one of my icons for so long that i've come to associate it with them and completely forgot i made it until i went browsing my icon folder.

omg my brother's ringtone is the Mos Eisley Cantina thing

conversation with my brother in a NYC Chinese restaurant

David: Shall we get the Singapore Fried Noodles?
Me: No.
David: Why? We'd never find it in Singapore.


in the end we did get it.
it tasted pretty good, but like nothing I'd ever eaten in my life.

\o/
Arrived yesterday noon, jetlagged like whoa. blueberlin and _pyroxene and merilynt and quipex and gooday picked me up. Slept 11 hours last night. Am better now. :) Rest of family arrived this morning because there was no space left on my flight.
Attempting Internet hiatus for a bit while I deal with the mound o stuff I have to do.
Also I shall start weaning myself off tumblr. ;_; it sucks up so much time.