noirenails

So. Last year was interesting. The summer was amazing but the winter could have been a lot better. I was busy, in many ways, and both got and did not get things done. One of things I wished I had done more was book reading. Now, I’m setting myself a goal. Or, well, not really a goal.

I’m going to start keeping a list of all the books I’ve read in 2010. This, I hope, will make me read more books and actually finish the ones I’ve started. Even now, there are several books on my shelf that are probably not going to be finished in quite a while. Also, I cannot really remember the titles of all the books I finished in 2009, so making a list will be useful.

Anyway, without further ado…

( The List of Books Read in 2010 )

I hate Valentine's Day.

People who have friends or a special someone shouldn't need a specific day to appreciate them.

For people who have no one, Valentine's Day is a painful reminder of what they don't have.

Also, there's sickening amounts of pink and glitter and hearts everywhere, and somehow you're a bad person if you don't want to celebrate Valentine's Day in some manner.

So instead, I will celebrate the much better holiday of Laskiainen, where there's tobogganing and (preferably) home-made buns filled with cream and jam. Or almond paste but not for me because yuck.

Happy Laskiainen, everyone!

I'm actually reading het fanfic.

You'd think it'd feel weird, after all those years of slash fics.

But it's Sheldon/Penny so it's okay.

Also,
( TMI female things. )

I've also been very unmotivated. I think it might have been because my proseminar class (where we write a 20-page essay that's part of our BA) was postponed and postponed. But today we had our first meeting this Spring and that cheered me up. The next meeting is going to be in March, though, and that means I'll just have to try to keep the motivation I got from that one class so I'll be able to actually write the essay.

I want pizza.

How can you wake up and nothing's out of the ordinary, attend very interesting Shakespeare course and not so interesting grammar lesson, and all's good... and then you get a bit scared that there might be something wrong with you (but probably isn't) and the rest of the day you'll feel crappy and cry at the smallest things and wish it was early enough to go to bed at 7 pm?

Damn it. I suck.

So I felt like drawing for the first time in a while, if you don't count the comic diaries, and drew a Night Elf woman in a skimpy outfit :P Inspired largely by World of Warcraft. I played the trial version for a while and was kind of impressed. I decided to play the trial to see what all the fuss was about, and the game was way better than I expected. Sure, there were the same jerks every MMORPG has, but the game scenery was beautiful and the storylines intriguing, and the competition between the two sides, the Alliance and the Horde, made the game more difficult.

Anyway, my the favourite character race + class was a Night Elf druid. Druids are so cool because they can transform into different animals, like cheetah and bears :D And I like the elves.

( To the art :P Rated... um. G/PG? There's skin but not visible boobage or anything. )

Diary entry every week my arse :P Also, sorry for not replying to the comments to my entries, it's been a kind of meh time. But yay, another entry *crickets chirp* Started during boring class and kind of finished in my flat :P

( Diary Entry 4 )

Arrrrrrrgh money issuesssss. When will I be able to actually own substantial amounts of money? Will I get a good enough a job when I have my BA? Will I get a job at all? Will it let me travel between Finland and Canada? How the hell can other people afford houses and cars and everything like that? Owning things like that seems like nothing that'll ever happen to me :(

And why didn't I choose to start studying for a profession that, I don't know, actually pays well? Honestly, if I ever have kids, I will tell them that while universities seem to be all the rage and everything, for god's sake, study for a real profession! Something people are actually looking workers for. Sure, translation is a profession too but it hardly pays large sums of money (unless you're a translator/interpretor for the EU, which I will never be because 1) I'm not smart enough and 2) I couldn't handle it).

Here I am, wasting my time writing essays about Shakespeare and attending lectures about the structure of Finnish, while other people are earning money. They might be only like hairdressers or cleaners, but money is money, and that's what our world is quite extensively built on.

I wonder if they have any part-time jobs in Joensuu...

Today was Gran's funeral.

Needless to say, I wasn't at my freshest, but I don't really care. I now know that there's not much point in putting on any make-up when going to a funeral.

A couple of summers ago, when we were at our summer cottage, Gran started telling me and my second oldest cousin of her life. That was the first time I ever heard her telling of her past, and I don't think I had ever heard so much of any of family members. I guess she knew that she wouldn't be with us for much longer. Mom was smart and wrote down as much of that as she could, and I appreciate both Gran telling me all that and Mom writing it down. My Gran was my favourite relative, after my Mom, and what she told only made me appreciate her more.

She was the oldest child in her family. Three of her siblings died when they were between the ages 2-6, all at the same time. The details are unclear to me, but they had eaten something that ended up killing them. My Gran was 9 at that time. She was left with two sisters and a brother. The sisters are still alive, both of which I only heard 1-2 years ago for the first time. Gran or her family couldn't afford education, but she was a survivor. She had her first child, my Aunt, at the age of 21, to a man who she loved but who did not want to have anything to do with a child. My Aunt was the sole reminder of him to Gran. Being a single mother in 1950s was not an easy thing to do, but soon enough, Gran found the man who was to be my grandfather. With him, she had a son, my Uncle, and a daughter, my Mom. My grandfather, however, was an abusive, selfish drunkard, who made my poor Gran and her children full of terror (spunky though she was). She had two jobs in order to support her family. It only started getting easier for them when the children started growing up, and the day my Mom became of age, my Gran divorced her husband. Eventually she moved to Tampere where she lived for the rest of her life, and when she became too tired and worn for work, she dedicated herself to taking care of her grandchildren. I remember how Gran was always there when we came back from daycare or elementary school, making sure we ate well dressed warmly.

I am ashamed to say that a couple of times, when I was small, I argued with her and said bad things to her. Back then, I did not understand how great a person she was. But I did love her, and I want to believe she knew that too. I've always felt closer to my Mom's side of the family, and especially to Mom and Gran. There is no one in the world quite like my Gran, and there will never be. There will be similar people, on surface, but they won't hold the same importance as she did to me. I just hope she knew that.

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Completely unrelated to the previous text, I doodled stuff:
( Whilst watching Girl With a Pearl Earring )