It’s that time of year when babies are born and the forests come back to life. As amazing as mother nature is, I’d still rather stay in the house. It appears that by some sort of cruel twist of fate, we’ve been hammered with showers every weekend since we’ve hit the 70 degree mark. So what does one do in that spare time? Quite easy; we clean the fish tank!

I’m such a terrible procrastinator. My fish tank needed cleaning about a month ago, but I continuously kept putting it off. Finally, after pulling myself away from Mario Kart Wii (which is amazingly addictive) I finally cleaned it. Because I have such awesome algae eaters and because the two ghost shrimp I had were awesome scavengers (before they mysteriously vanished), the tank wasn’t too dirty. I did, however, end up pitching a decorative plant and coral. The filter needed changing too. After everything was completely cleaned, I ended up at Walmart, where I bought new decorations: a cute little cherry tree and a log that compliments the tree quite nicely. I then headed on over to Jack’s Aquarium to get me two more shrimp to replace the ones I lost and a catfish. The catfish, which my dad brought to my attention, is absolutely cute! It’s called a panda cory catfish (I think) and like a panda, it has large black spots over its eyes. Despite the slightly ridiculous high price of the fish, I still bought it. I even replaced the air pump I had, so my tank looks absoultely pleasant. I love my fish, but I still think it can be a lot of work to keep them happy and healthy. I mean, the only thing I ask of the fish is to give me inspiration when I glance over at them while I write! But I’m pleased that the tank looks nice, and even more pleased that my fish are all doing well.

Last week, I slaved over my most recent layout design: the current layout for Beautiful Addiction. I decided it wouldn’t take long to finish, since I already had about half of it designed. So I sat down Saturday night around 10, and didn’t go to sleep until around 4. As much as I detest being up so late (especially since I thought it would only take a couple more hours to complete) I do love the layout with a passion. I had fun making a dark colored Fruits Basket layout, and it was the first blendy layout I’ve done in months. What’s next on my layout makeover list? This site of course! I currently have two ideas on a layout for this site, but the question is: which one do I want to make more? What I do know, however, is that I’m going to be renovating the entire blog. Pages will be lost and added. It might take a week depending on my pace, or it might take a day. But the renovation will definitely be during the time I implement the new layout.

As for my fellow movie lovers, I shall leave you with this. If you want to watch one of those life-changing movies, a movie that leaves you feeling something that you can’t even begin to describe, you should definitely check out A Love Song for Bobby Long. It’s an independent film that stars John Travolta and Scarlett Johansson. Trust me, these two deserved the academy award for best actor and actress back in ‘04 ( ) for their stunning, brilliant, and emotionally moving performance. Also, I highly recommend Reign Over Me, starring Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle. Before you cringe and click the large ‘X’ looming in the corner of the webpage, hear me out. Reign Over Me is a drama that will either get you teary eyed or bawling into tears. Sandler’s performance was worthy of the academy award (which sadly was given to that guy in No Country for Old Men); it surpassed the surprising performance he gave in Spanglish (also an excellent movie) at least a thousand times over. I think it’s an independent film as well. And if you’re not an indie movie watcher, I sat and watched the three most talked about films for the Oscars: No Country for Old Men, Atonement, and Juno. Sadly, I was disappointed with two of those movies; they lacked in either pacing, story line, or acting and neither of the two had any emotional ‘wow’ factor. However, Juno was beautifully paced with such an intriguing, down-to-earth story and a wonderful cast, that I think anyone who hasn’t seen it, should. Not only that, but the soundtrack is also quite catchy.

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I was looking through my blog’s pages and I realized that I haven’t updated the writing page in quite some time. So, because a lot of the flash fiction and short stories I have aren’t quite polished up (I continue to procrastinate on that) I decided to post some of my old fanfiction! I was looking through one of them, and it’s just absolutely corny, but you have to start somewhere, right? I checked the publication date of my first fanfiction, and it was March 24, 2004. I published 4 fanfiction, but because 1 of them is like…uber terrible, I decided to unveil 3 of them. However if you’re actually really curious about the terrible one, it isn’t too hard to find if you know how to search. So, if you’re bored and want to be humored by my somewhat ridiculous attempt at fanfiction, check out the writing!

I went through and fixed the header and navigation problems with this layout. It works fine in IE7 now, though it still looks better in Firefox. I haven’t checked the site in IE6 yet, but I probably won’t. IE6 continues to elude me. It’s quite mysterious. So, for everyone with a Wordpress blog, if you’re patient, this layout just might be up for download soon enough! I need to come up with a snazzy title (I’ll probably go Latin on this) and I’ll place it for download sometime by the end of the month. Exciting, no?

Oh! I just finished the recent volume of Love*Com and let me tell you, it threw me off guard completely! This manga moves fast. Almost like light. It’s the end of the fourth volume, and the characters are already in their second year of highschool and on their class trip. I don’t read many highschool drama manga, actually, the only other highschool dramas I have read are W Juliet, Fruits Basket (it’s close enough to a highschool drama), and Vampire Knight (yet again, close enough). I don’t own W Juliet and I don’t remember all the details, but comparing Love*Com to Fruits Basket timeline…Love*Com seems to go by in a blink of an eye! The class trip in Fruits Basket happened in volume 13!! *takes deep breath* But, going back to how adorable Love*Com is. There are a lot of cliches in the story, but it’s given in a way that makes it seem fresh. By the end of the first chapter, you already know who’s going to get together, the only frustration for the reader is when are they going to get together. The art is done in a cute way, and although the panels aren’t exquisitely detailed and colored like NANA or Fruits Basket, the story is engaging enough to make your eyes divert away from some of the blankness that can appear on some of the pages. I checked the Shojo Beat website, and I’m happy to know that I don’t have to wait for long for the next volume, which comes out in March!!

It’s finally here! This is the layout I’ve been slaving away at (off and on, and then procrastinating from) for two or three weeks now. As you can see, it features Light Yagami and Ryuk from Death Note. I put in a lot of small details into the headers and even the bottoms of the navigation. I know the layout works fine in FireFox and it doesn’t look so great in IE 6. But, I’m beginning to hate IE 6 more and more, so I’m not too concerned there. I still have yet to check it in IE 7. For those of you on that browser and viewing the new layout, please leave a comment on any errors you may see. I think there’s still a tad bit of coding I have to do, but those aren’t major changes, and I think I’ll wait until later.