The V.A.T./Real-Time Fighting system is AWESOME, but srsly, gtfo Bethesda

Been staying up late playing Fallout 3 for the past two nights. Besides feeling like a pathetic bum (being an unemployed 24-year-old, playing video games all night while crashing at my parents' house) truth is this shit takes a really long time. And, uhm, I don't give three shits if I complete a quest. I don't much care why Dad left the Vault (uhm, for there to be a Main Quest, Sally). It's not where I'm at anymore. Bummer.

Well, time to catch some sleep, bike to the notary and finish carving a pumpkin (that I'm really not all that into...I had a perfect pumpkin design idea a month ago. Then it flew out of my head and I haven't been able to pin it down since). If I can finish those things before playtime with Lacey and Lauren, it'll be a good day. And then I'll do my damnedest to hop back on the art-making wagon. Honestly, I drive myself self insane with all the art I don't make. Eeesh.

sigh...

Bollocks. Jinxed it. Next Job Mention will be Got The Job Mention.

Kuh-chigguh!

I had a phone interview for a job last night! And I'm really excited about this position, so I shan't jinx it by talking about the gig itself. I actually didn't have a phone interview last year. Lindsay sent along my introduction video (which you can see on her recruiting website [ here ]. How cool is that?), so my school didn't feel the need to call me. My friend Stephanie reminded me to smile (a great tip!) as it would be appear in my tone and I think I did. But my heart was all but pounding out of my chest so I don't think I spoke slowly and clearly enough. Most school representatives (this one included) speak English as a second language, so slowing down a bit is helpful.

I just got some more adorable pictures from my Korean family. Here's a picture of their dog, Baekgu (who lives at their country home), and her seven adorable new puppies.

Their dog is named after a famous Korean dog. Here's the story:

Baekgu was born in 1988 in Donji-ri Uisin-myeon Jind-gun and its master was Mrs. Park, Bok Dan.  Although it was sold and sent to Daejeon in March 1993 at the age of five, Baekgu could not forget the love of Mrs. Park and her grandchildren.  Eventually, Baekdu cut its leash and escaped.  It traveled 300㎞ and finally returned to its original master in October 1993.  When it came back home, it was skinny and exhausted. 


Baekgu retrieved its health with the love of Mrs. Park and later gave birth to cute puppies.  Well-known in Korea as the most faithful dog, Baekgu lived a happy life with Mrs. Park and her family until it died in February 2000 at the age of 13. 
Baekgu crossed many mountains and rivers to find its way back home and showed the faithfulness, brightness, and mysterious capacity of Jindogae. 


To remember Baekgu, a Jindogae, Baekgu Park was established at Donji-ri Uisin-myeon Jindo-gun in June 2002. 


I'm enjoying a coupla  days visiting Conneaut Lake. My friends, Jim and Phyllis have a house here and it's one of my favorite places in the whole world. I love lake.

My friend Lizbith invited me to go with her and some other lovelies to the haunted house at Conneaut Lake Park this past Saturday. I'd never been to a haunted house before and this was a particularly large one...with 7 separate houses and a coaster to ride on. I'm a giant weenie, so I screamed non-stop (and recorded it for my sister using my voice recorder/mp3 player. Maybe I'll post some highlights when I get around to editing the tracks). I walked through each house holding on to my friend Brian's shirt. 'twas a great time with great people. And then they kindly dropped me off and PnJ's 'round the other side of the lake.

Oh, I've just checked my bank account and I've received a charge from the FBI for processing my background check! This is great news! It means, hopefully, that my background check was able to go through. I've been worried that having them done in Korea would be a problem. It could mean they couldn't complete the form, but charged me anyway. Either way, at least I'll know if it's gone through or not.

I'm reading Bone by Jeff Smith with Noah after school. And Axe Cop [ www.axecop.com ].

Here's another fall-ish video to enjoy.

"Bloody Nose" by Jack Conte

Prison Chart

If I were a cowboy, I'd be dead. Time to draw. 

Tomorrow is meditation and the first round of storyboards. Period.

Edit: http://tamzprojects.blogspot.com/

Happy Fall!

I am stupidly lucky to be home. Fall is beautiful beyond reason. See my friend Jenny's recent blog entry about fall, HERE...she articulates the beauty of fall better than I ever could. And I love my loves.Can't wait until the boys get home...I want to hear more about Noah's second boyscout meeting and Tyler and I are going to watch yesterday's Glee together. Now it's time to study for my driving test and then scrub Hyung Bu's antler. ㅋㅋㅋ

Enjoy this gorgeous music video (it's got a fall-ish vibe to it).

"The Daylight Here" by My Terrible Friend

Umbrellas ( 우산 "oo-san" ) of all Things

The weather in NWPA has been absolute crap lately. Cold & Rainy. Something, something, storms someplace. Anyway, I'm visiting Meadville and I left Jeremy's apartment to go do some Visa paperworky stuff (yes, that's still happening. ugh.). By the way...the Meadville post office is open 24 HOURS PER facking DAY. SWEET MOSES. That's like the coolest thing. But I digress. On my way out, I grabbed an umbrella and as I grumpily tromped towards the bank, pouting about the newest crap direction my acne has headed, I felt a bit silly. And I remembered that for the five years I lived in Meadville, I never owned an umbrella. It rains all the damn time here (meh, 44in. annually)...but I just couldn't be bothered with the damn thing for whatever reason. I hate holding extra stuff when I walk around and that pet peeve beat out being cold and wet.

And in Korea, people luuuuuuuuurve umbrellas. Ho-ly crap. If it's barely even sprinkling, the streets are a sea of (very fashionable) umbrellas. Korean children are told that because of acid rain, if their hair gets wet, it'll fall out. One of my students repeated this to me with concern and I simply pointed to another student who had decided that the fine mist didn't warrant an umbrella either. I asked my friend Hyun Jung about it and she explained that this is just told to "Korean ladies" to keep their hair pretty. So it's essentially like when your mom says "if you make that face, it'll stay that way." So there's that.

And then there's the parasols.

I've probably mentioned this before, but Koreans are SERIOUS about protecting their skin from the sun. More to the point, they're serious about keeping/making their skin white. And that means face masks, visors, scarves, "arm socks" (also handy for covering your tattoos or, if you're in a biker club, giving you temporary tattoos to look tuff while you ride), gloves, and, you guessed it, umbrellas.

Upon hearing I was moving to Busan, famous for Haeundae beach, my former student Hansuk wrote me: "Do you know Haeundae is registered in Guinness book to numerous parasol. ㅋㅋ" And I tried to explain to him how silly I find parasols. Oh, Korea.

Aaaaaand back to Amrrrrca. While bopping about, I noticed HOW FEW people were carrying an umbrella. Seriously, like no one could be bothered. Most people just scooted along quickly from their car to wherever and got a bit wet. I saw some men with heavy coats and baseball caps. And I felt like a bit of weenie, haha. I have one little swatch of machismo that I guard rather fiercely. And the big men didn't have umbrellas. murr.

Those are my terribly interesting observations on umbrellas ( 우산 "oo-san" ) in Korea and NWPA.

THE END.

P.S. I finally remembered to download [ I Love You Phillip Morris ], a silly little film starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor. It was released in South Korea last July and won't release in the States until December. Likely because many audience members would throw rocks at the screen, hahaha (assuming they had brought their own rocks to the theater). I have NO IDEA why it was picked up in K-town. But my friend Kevin and I bought tickets at Mudeung Cinema and were ushered to an underground theater that you had to go outside to get to. And were the ONLY people at that showing. It was awesome! So anyway, downloaded that and when I went to plop the shiny new file into my movies folder (GET ON WITH IT), I saw the Korean movie Harmony ( 하모니 ) in there. I watched about 5 minutes of it and it is THE CUTEST THING. Maybe I can persuade Jeremy to watch it with me. I think my mom would like it for sure...but we'll see if she can be bothered with all the reading. Some people hate that which is fair enough, really.

Anyway, if you feel like watching something Korean and A-DOR-ABLE, download a copy of 하모니 (2010) with subtitles and prepare to squeeee from all the cute. ^^

MOAR Amrrrca

I'm a bit sleepy and that's stream of consciousness gold right there. I've been home for an entire month after a marvelous (overall, ㅋㅋ*) year teaching English in Korea. That's a lot of ground to cover and it's much more fun to approach it all slapdashery than to actually attempt THIS SENTENCE IS TOO BORING.

* oh yeah. That character is like a 'K' in English and several of them in a row is the Korean version of “haha.”

My sister with a goat!

Oh, so I've quit the Facebook for the time being. If I ever want to publish a comic book before I die (and I do), it's not going to happen if I continue to piss away time at the current rate. I could ramble on about the pros and cons of the thing, but 1. that'd feed more time to the monster and 2. I've already spent pages whinging about it in e-mails to friends. So, that's that. Kerchow!

What's going on here?

I've watched like a bajillion movies and tv shows this past month. Oh, p.s. The Shake Weight is like the cleverest marketing in the universe. The people who made it totally know what it looks like. And that that's a hilarious novelty and enough to get it sold. Genius.

Do you know what I am saying?

BRO LOVES BURGERS. That's a triple whopper, baby. No foolin'.

The county fairs were kinda late this year and I was able to catch the Wattsburg AND the Waterford fair. I got to try deep fried: oreos, cookie dough, and reese cups. I thought I was going to die. And there were SO MANY MULLETS. And farm animals!

"Dad, will you point at those gourds for me?" "What, THESE gourds?"

Dude, I totally left this off of my culture shock list. When I was at the airport in Newark, NJ, I was standing in some queue for immigration. And there was this white woman standing next to me talking...and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. She looked funny and her voice was weird. And then I realized I was confused because she was a 15-year-old girl. I hadn't seen a western person under the age of 22 for most of a year (excluding the 2 weeks I spent in Germany in January).

Mom got a new car! A BRAND NEW ONE. Her first since she was 19! Don't roll this one in a ditch, Dad! HEY-O

I spoke at my alma mater to some of the kids in the psych department about teaching in South Korea. Well, mostly I tried to ramble about linguistics because I didn't want to admit that I didn't know what I was doing a lot of the time. I got to the good stuff, though. The kids were terribly silent, but hey, I'm used to that, haha. And SOMEONE in the room asked “have you ever whipped out your love stick?” TOO GOOD. It was fun. And a bit bizarre to be in an old classroom with a bunch of students and a former professor.

LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!

These leaves made me single-tear (v.) a week ago.

It's been great to be home.

To help Noah with his spelling tests.

To watch the Madonna episode of Glee with Tyler. He's SUCH a dapper gent.

To meet Ally's boyfriend (THIS GUY) and get a tour of her university's campus.

I'm also still on a “I never have to see The Cha again” high and I'm getting a steady stream of adorable e-mails from my former students.

And of course, lots of e-mails from my Korean family. With ADORABLE pictures. I'd post some, but it's taking AGES to get my photos to upload and now I'm super mega tired. Might could take a lil nap before I put Noah on the bus at 8am.

The woman on the news right meow has THE WHITEST teeth. I plan to ship some stuff to Korea as soon as I have an address to mail things to. Still Visa paperworking. And I've denigrated into minutiae and misusing SAT vocab words.

The Takehome is: I sure do love my life.

Ok, byeeeeeeee!


p.s. I have seriously gained 15 pounds.