tsubasahome

I'm planning on selling a rerooted Draculaura in the next few weeks...stay tuned if you're interested. ^_^

Last night Lauren and I watched this movie from the 70's called Lies My Father Told Me. I quite liked it even though it only got 3 stars. ^^;;; It's about this little boy living in a Jewish ghetto in Montreal in the 1920's, and his relationship with his maternal grandfather. The movie wasn't perfect and filled me with rage at the injustice of it all, but I would have given it an extra half star. I haven't watched very many movies with similar subject matter.

I still haven't set Frankie's hair. I haven't had time and the stovetop is always occupied. By something I'm making, that is. ^^;;;;

Seems like it's going to rain soon. Seems like it's going to be raining for the entirety of next week. =_=

I had to take some time off from writing because of a lot of commissions I had lined up, but now that I'm almost finished, I managed to get some work on Chapter 15 done. The great thing about having your story be over 300 pages long is that you keep needing to check back with earlier chapters to make sure you don't contradict anything. ^^;;;

Lauren and I watched a bunch of DVRed movies this week. We saw Dr. Coppelius, Wait Until Dark, and just last night, we watched Suspicion. Dr. Coppelius was...odd. I probably liked Wait Until Dark the best of the three...though Alan Arkin's hairstyle was really silly. The ending to Suspicion was a little too contrived...studio politics and all(RKO didn't want Cary Grant to wind up like his character in the book, since he was so popular with moviegoers).

Several of my daylily seeds have sprouted(one actually sprouted in the seed pod, ha ha!) So I have one Siloam Virginia Henson X Entrapment, and 2 Siloam Virginia Henson X Gentle Shepherd sprouts. I don't want to put them outside, so they'll spend the winter in my unheated foyer. ^^;;; Maybe I should have waited until spring for the second batch. I just have so many seeds! I'd love to know what manner of creature made off with 3 seed pods worth of Siloam Virginia Henson X Little Heavenly Angel! I'll have to redo the cross next year! >_<

Daring Deception is so fertile, it tries to cross with itself. ^^;;; It's a shame Cedar Waxwing didn't seem to want to produce viable seeds. I'm not sure if it's because we were in the middle of a heat wave, or maybe Cedar Waxwing is just not a good pod parent, because the few seed pods that formed dropped off prematurely. I managed to get 5 seeds using Cedar Waxwing as a pollen parent and Daring Deception as a pod parent, and I hope they germinate!

It looks like Ao no Kiseki got straight 8s from Famitsu. It must be an awesome game...there's no love lost between Famitsu and Falcom!

Thanks to this nasty weather that is not going to end until at least Saturday, both of my Chinese tree peonies have peony measles... =_=;;;; The fungicide hasn't arrived in the mail yet. I don't think they'll die(they better not!), but the thought of losing this year's growth is really upsetting me. If they die, I don't know what I'll do... ;_;

Bartzella, however, looks as fresh as a daisy! Anybody who said that intersectional peonies are just a fad and a ripoff needs to have a look at my yard! Practically everything has some degree of funk, but Bartzella is as pristine and green as ever!

I'm trying to console myself by dipping into my PSP backlog and playing Tengai Makyou: the 4th Apocalypse. The battle system is nothing to write home about(and I'm not too fond of all of my party members sharing MP), but story-wise, this is the most messed-up game I've ever played. There is literally something in there to offend every ethnic group and subculture. I just finished fighting this character who basically looks like an evil version of Miss Piggy, and before the battle she sings this song about the virtues of being really, really fat. And she's voiced by the (late) actress who played Rita Repulsa(not her dubbed voice) in the Japanese version of Power Rangers. There are bad Native American stereotypes, bad Chinese stereotypes, constant talk about the evil white man and a 15 year old pop tart in her skivvies doing a bunch of high kicks in front of small children while singing a song where she invites them to "lick her candy". (Her name is Candy, by the way). This is probably the most un-PC game I've ever played and I'm surprised it got an A rating...it would never see the light of day in the USA...::laughs:: Well, it's a lot more fun than the loli crap that comes out these days.

I also tried to watch the musical Camelot but quit about 40 minutes in because it was too awful. I don't know how Richard Harris lived with himself after that one.

I decided that I wanted to take back the prime full sun parts of my front yard, so I went out and dug up two HUGE clumps of orange daylilies. I don't know why I planted them...I keep hearing that if somebody gives you plants as a gift, beware because they're usually some kind of invasive weed, but I stupidly planted them anyway because we didn't really have much in our front yard at the time. Too bad orange daylilies come straight from hell! They're ridiculously tall, the flowers are not as pretty as the newer, less invasive daylilies and they are the most invasive plants I've ever had the misfortune of growing! At least the strawberries and anemones can be easily pulled out if they get out of hand! I spent hours digging up horrible 4-foot wide clumps of rhizomes, and I'm not sure if I got them all. I want to plant a Scarlett O'Hara peony in their place...and some Siberian irises...

I also sat down and watched the musical remake of Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Um...I feel like I'm going to be stoned to death by Peter O'Toole fans, but the movie was kind of awful. I figured that I would be holding a grudge against the movie since I was so fond of the original, but I honestly hadn't expected the remake to be THAT bad!

I finally managed to sit down and watch some more DVR'ed movies this weekend. I managed to get Lauren to watch one of my favorites, Kind Hearts and Coronets, otherwise known as "That Movie where Alec Guinness Plays Eight Characters". Like many British movies, it's very dry, but there were many scenes where I actually laughed out loud--the scene with Lady Agatha(a frequently-jailed suffragette who is also Alec Guinness) was priceless.

I also watched The Star, featuring an aging Bette Davis and a very young Natalie Wood. I thought it was okay, but I probably wouldn't watch it again(or make Lauren watch it). There was nothing in it that wasn't done better in All About Eve, and it didn't have the world's greatest script. Also, it was more than a little sexist. So, basically, Bette Davis's character is a hysterical wretch who just needs to listen to the nice man and do whatever he says in order to become a self-actualized woman? I realize that the movie was made in 1952, but I expected better. On the other hand, I can't help thinking that the movie was intended as a dig against Joan Crawford(who pretty much did what Bette Davis's character did when she was in her mid to late 40's, doing the whole "mutton disguised as lamb" routine rather than "lowering" herself to play a woman who is anything but an elegant, desirable lady). After all, Bette Davis was not exactly a fan of Joan's...

I've never been a fan of Natalie Wood's, but it was nice to see her with some meat on her bones, even if she was only 14 years old.

I've also been playing Zero no Kiseki. After the trauma of being torn away from Sora no Kiseki, I'm finally starting to warm up to the "new" series...too bad the new artwork of Estelle and Joshua is really ugly! I'm not looking forward to seeing Renne again, though...I never liked her.

EDIT: Apparently, I was right on the money about The Star! It actually was supposed to be Joan Crawford! Gee, I wonder why she didn't take the role...

Seriously, I had something else to say.

The results of my current rerooting project will be revealed in several days... I wonder if there are some people out there who will be angry, but I'm almost done and I think it's going to be a vast improvement. And no, it's not my doll, it's Lauren's, and it's a doll she's posted to her Flickr account before but not very frequently because her hair color made her hard to redress. I think she will be an enviable doll when I'm finished.

Maaan I had no idea they re-released the Sunbow cartoon version of G.I. Joe on DVD last year! ::laughs:: I used to watch that show all the time when I was a kid, and I watched the reruns in high school right before I had to leave in the morning. ^^;;;; Memories...I'm still burning a mini-torch for my favorite character, but I won't say who he is unless I'm sure I won't get teased. My brothers mocked me mercilessly for even mentioning his name. =_= Men...they can't understand a woman's heart.

I'm sure the more casual Joe fans won't even know who he is. ^^;;;;;;

Until I finish Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, I will remain unfit to live with.

I finally got the order of hair from Restoredoll that I need for my current commission in the mail today. Time to get to work! Uh...and I have to order some more hair now. ^^;;;;

I tried to get all arty and watch Distant Voices, Still Lives last night. It didn't work. That movie is just not for me. It's just a jumbled mess of clips of people singing interspersed with Pete Postlethwaite beating his family. I got about 45 minutes into it when I was forced to abort the viewing and delete it from my DVR, lest Lauren mutiny. She was so angry that I made her skip playing Ys Seven for that...::laughs:: Better luck tonight, I guess. I need a movie to semi-watch while I'm rooting, and there's no point to watching The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, since I can't delete the episodes, and we're running out of space.

The last time I stopped watching a movie in the middle was Mar Needs Women. I thought it was going to be one of those movies that was so bad that it was funny, but it was just boring and painful to watch. Kind of like Gigli.

Why oh why do the robins have to eat all my damn raspberries? They ignored them last year... I put up a bird net but the ends popped out and I guess the birds got under it and ate at least four raspberries. And here I was worried that the birds would get trapped in the net and injured. ::sighs:: I'm too kind! I know it's birds and not beetles because they were brazen enough to let out their stuff at the foot of the bushes. They better stay away from there! ::curses and fires a gun in the air:: I need better stakes that don't pop out. "Caroline" is supposed to be a heavy fruiter but robins have voracious appetites. They'll eat every single raspberry off my raspberry bushes(I have nine plants) if I don't do something, and fast.

Lauren and I decided to swap Blue Bird's Song III Mius--she kept the standard and I'll do the reroot for myself. I'm using a mesh of Restoredoll Brownette and Saucy Brown. Probably curly hair. I just felt kind of bad that she has 5 customized Ex-Cute dolls from me and I just have Kurohime. ::laughs weakly:: That, and she doesn't have any redheads, unless you count Sweet Punk Girls! Koron. The Miu has the same exact hair and eye color as Angelic Sigh II DS Lien, so she'd be better off keeping her... As a whole, I think the 7th series is very, very cute, but I've been disappointed in their hair. Not in the color and/or style, but in the actual rooting jobs... Lien has major flyaways(worse in the DS version) and while Chiika's pigtails are adorable, her hair is so thin that I can see her scalp right through the top of her head. 0_0;;; Miu actually looks pretty okay, but I'd like to see her with darker hair just the same.

I wonder why it is that some of the Ex-Cute girls have such thin hair, while others don't? Sweet Punk Girls! Lien in particular has beautiful and luxurious hair, but it seems like the lighter the doll's hair, the thinner they root it. I don't understand because I know they root the Azone heads at Licca-chan Castle, but Castle dolls, in spite of their lesser price, always have thickly rooted hair. And they don't paint the scalps! (hates painted scalps)

As far as jobs I have lined up, I'm doing a Nice Jenny Timotei with Restoredoll Limited Blond hair and a Calendar Girl policewoman Marine with Restoredoll Hazelnut hair for Lauren after I'm done with my current commission. I also have a Totoco Elise lying around with unfortunate hair that I'm thinking of turning into a redhead. I've been DVRing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz anime off of ThisTV and I think she'd make a cute Dorothy. Her hair, at least. :D