Times like these I wish the television stations would come through to my little basement. Bored as I am at times, it would be lovely to just switch on the tube and channel surf until I found something interesting. Or watch Conan O'Brien again. Or any show, really. The Internet only gets me so far.

Don't know what to think of my days off anymore. I love the break from work, but at the same time I have little to do with my free time. It consists mainly of reading, laptop, and sleep. And grumbling whenever my grandmother tries to make me doing something I don't want to do (you'd think living on my own would put her in her place some, but not really). Such as earlier today when I decided not to go to the driving class because I'd been up sick until an hour before it was to begin and she wanted me to go anyway. Or how when I explained I'd make up the dirving part (not the class) tomorrow before work and she tried to talk me into doing both.

Got kinda sick of this awhile ago. I hold the reigns now, so I'm tired of the negotiations. I should get to decide what's what... even if that means deciding to do nothing. Which probably doesn't make sense in the long run, but that's my choice too.

Getting back to that, it leaves me with this odd desire to do nothing and everything all at once. Stay in the cave vs. going out to do whatever I want and etc. Which only tends to lead to an unpleasant mix of the two in which I spend way too much time thinking. I've come to hate thinking. It's never gotten me far.

Such as my situation with my cat. My landlord has suggested to me (and my other neighbors) that we should get rid of the animals. Technically none were approved of and the leases did state pets weren't allowed. He didn't mind so much, but I guess one neighbor's dog caused some property damage and my cat's still making noise, so he thinks they should go.

I don't quite know what to do with her. She's still being quite a pest lately, even though I have been giving her more attention. Broken more stuff too- glasses, plates, and very nearly the VCR of all things- as well as put some scratches on my bedroom door. It'll probably be the best if I give her up, but I don't know how. I refuse to take her to the pound- they have enough cats as it is, and few find homes. I don't want to just throw her outside either though, as that would seem pretty cruel. But I don't know anyone who wants a cat either. Gah. Got a week to decide.

...Geez, am I rambling enough? Note to self: learn to pick a topic and stay with it.

❶ Reply to this post, and I will pick six of your icons.
➋ Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
➌ Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
➍ This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

Chosen for me byivy_chan:


 

Hee, I made this one! Helena Bertinelli was born into a prominent mafia family. At the age of eight, her parents were murdered before her eyes in their own home*. When she's twenty-one and set to gain her family's inheritance, she learns more about the murder and becomes the Huntress to seek revenge upon the killer as well as the ones who ordered their death. In the comics, she's shown to be a bit more violent than your usual costumed hero. She once took up the Batgirl mantle when Batman disappeared from Gotham for a time, but gave it up when she wouldn't follow his exact orders. For a time she was actually exiled from Gotham when Batman thought she was getting out of control. She leaves with Richard Dragon and The Question and during this time achieves a better balance with herself. When she does return to Gotham though, she's torn between the new ethical version of herself and the one of vengeance that still hears the call of "blood cries for blood".

JLU follows this origin pretty well in my opinion, while keeping her character true to form as well. She's actually one of my favorite characters in the series, and it only helps that when she's around, The Question (one of my other faves) usually pops in too. Their relationship is awesomesauce as they kick equal amounts of ass and have actual chemistry together, whereas some of the other pairings in the series take forever to get moving or have a lot of friction to them.


 

Nico Robin from One Piece pretty much has the saddest back story you can get. She was born on an island of scholars (Ohara), to archaeologist Nico Olvia, who left to sea to study the True History when she was two. Left with family to care for her, they made it very clear that se was not wanted by both physical and verbal abuse. Most of the other people on the island feared her for her Devil Fruit ability (she can replicate any part of her body onto any surface that she can see). The only people who accepted her were the scholars at the Tree of Knowledge, where she spent a lot of her time. At only eight, she aced the archaeology exam and expressed interest in learning the True History like her mother, but was reproved for this. She ran crying to the beach and encountered a giant named Saul. The two became friends, but upon learning he was on Ohara, Saul warned her that the Marines were coming to destroy the island. At this time Nico Olvia returned, heaving escaped from Marine custody, to warn the scholars of this same thing. The Marines were after the Poneglyphs that were kept in the tree, and they intended to kill everyone to make sure no one learned the True History. The scholars refused to leave though, wishing to protect the tree. Robin returns to the tree to warn them as well, but this is when the attack begins. Olvia (who is gravely wounded) later recognizes her daughter when she hears her name, but then the Poneglyphs are found and all of the scholars are sentenced to death by a Buster Call. The Marines leave as the bombardment begins, and Robin is reunited for her mother for a short time. Saul shows up, having come when he saw the battleships, and Olvia urges him to save her daughter (despite Robin's protests). While he attempts to get her off the island, Olvia and the other scholars throw as many books as they can into the water so that others may find them until the tree begins to burn down. In the meantime, Saul takes on a Marine Admiral with a DF ability over ice while Robin attempts to hide away on a ship, though she has no success. The admiral begins to encase Saul's body in ice, and before he is completely frozen he tells Robin to take his raft (which he'd been building on the beach). She runs to the raft and sails away, weeping as Ohara burns to the ground. She's the only known survivor. 

On the run from the Marines, the Government gives her a bounty of $79 million, spreading the lie that she sank six battleships to cover up the truth. Robin spends the next twenty years of her life on the run, spedning it with various people. All either tried to kill her or turn her in. When she was twenty-four, she was accepted into the Baroque Works organization because she could read Poneglyphs (few can) and is the vice-president for four years. Uninterested in Baroque Works' goals, she attempts to help Luffy and his crew from time to time discreetly. In the end she attempts to betray the leader of the organization and is stabbed and left for dead, only to be saved by Luffy. When the battle is over and the Strawhats prepare to leave, she stows away on their ship, telling Luffy that as he chose to save her when she had resigned herself to die, he has to let her join them. Luffy has no qualms with this. 

Character-wise though. she's also very interesting. Obviously very smart, she enjoys reading. She's pretty much the only member of the Strawhat crew who's reserved, not to mention not overly-dramatic (though macabre XD). She's usually very calm and collected, but can be rather intimidating. Robin has the third highest bounty of the crew.

There's of course more to her story, but this is getting long already. O_o; I swear I was being brief. 

 

Shikamaru is simply made of awesome. This is the guy who starts out as the laziest character in the Naruto series, only to turn out to be an absolute genius and one of the most loyal characters. He'd much rather play games like Shogi, but grows into a capable strategist (sometimes leader) over time. I first fell in love with his character during the few glimpses of the Sasuke Retrieval Arc that I saw on television (such as his speech on how he'd never like Sasuke much, he was still a Konoha ninja and they would get him back). And it's no secret now that the Hidan and Kakuzu arc is my favorite of all time. I am constantly tickled with glee that he manages to get revenge for his Sensei's death in only a few chapters, and that he does it without going emo. And more by strategy than some newly developed ninja power.... though his shadow abilities are pretty awesome anyways. :D

In addition to that, his relationship with other characters is simply made of win. I love the Team 10 dynamic. I love the little friendship with Naruto (though I'd never ship them). I love his interactions with Temari (and I do ship them). His relationship with Asuma is one of my favorites for the mentor category. The way he checks in on Kurenai now that Asuma's gone is also very sweet, and I adore how he's promised to take their child as his apprentice, hoping to be as cool of a mentor as Asuma was to him.


 

Toph! Another awesome character! Blind and a child, she's still the greatest earthbender alive and has proved it more than once (metalbending ftw!). She uses her bending to 'see', and in some ways this form of vision is more aware than the norm. Besides this, her personality rocks. She's the queen of snark in this show, independent, but still fairly young and thus has things to learn.

...Also. She's the freaking Melon Lord. :D God, I love that quote. XD

 

Heheh... no point in explaining Leo. I've done it enough times already, haven't I (feel free to correct me though and I can essay again ^_^) ? Plus, nearly everyone on my flist is a TMNT fan, so it'd kinda be pointless... but yeah. Love Leo and all of his little personality bits. This scene is one of my faves- his face. Icon says it all. XD 

 

Likwise, I shan't explain Bishop too much. Though I do think he is a) the most awesome villain on the show and b) the most threatening to the guys, as he basically represents everything that would be a danger to them. He also has a lot more story to him than most of the villains on the show, along with a villainy purpose other than established evil. After the ninja forces, he's also pretty much the only other character I've seen who can match the TMNT in hand-to-hand combat without reliance on gadgets/other weaponry.


*Huntress' original backstory had her kidnapped and raped by a rival mafia family at the age of six and hides her shame of the incident until she's nineteen. At this age her family is murdered at a wedding before her eyes and she sets out to put an end to the crime families.

Well my floor is dry now, though a bit brown in places. The maintenance guy came by a few days ago and got a bunch of it out of the carpet with a wet vaccuum. He said we'd have to let the rest dry on it's own though and then eventually they'd get around to steam-cleaning it. I heard someone doing just that this afternoon in my neighbor's house (I guess the water damage in his apartment was far worse), so I'm guessing it'll only be a matter of time.

Had I been a little more awake, I probably would've had the sense to go and ask. However, it was a driver's ed day, so I was pretty wiped. I hate getting up so early for lessons, especially seeing as the hour and a half spent for class time is only to reach the fifty required hours. I don't even have to do any work, but it'd be kinda rude to sleep, you know?

The driving itself is getting a little more productive. Several people have joked before at work that my 'driving' skills with a pallet jack could use some work, so I guess it only makes sense that I'd have as much difficulty with a real vehicle XD. However, when I first started out with a pallet jack I was abysmal and now I can at least use one pretty comfortably. I figure I'll reach the same point with a car eventually, though I figure it's going to take a lot of practice. I don't want to go after my license until I've had such practice though, so this may take some time....

After all of these drives thus far, what it seems to be coming down to is steering. Sometimes I make turns a bit too sharply, and the steering wheel and I don't get along so well... not that I drift all over the road, mind you. Really the problem only occurs when I'm going in reverse. I often turn it the wrong way or something. ^_^; Just one more thing to work on.

But I did fairly well on both of my drives today! We went on a highway drive first, and I didn't do too horrible. Scariest bit was when I was stuck with one semi in front of me and another behind in a construction zone. That was pretty freaky. I thought my next lesson would've been worse actually, but parallel parking turned out to be much easier in comparison. Everyone had me thinking it was going to be really difficult! I'd much rather be practicing that one instead.

And that was pretty much my day. Wrote a little bit though. Once again I'm noticing how horribly out of practice I am on the writing front. Though maybe it has something to do with all of the other fandoms I'm trying my hand at. Avatar fic is pretty easy, actually. Deadpool is still proving a bit difficult, as is One Piece.

I think my problem with that one is that I'm so used to plotting around a fairly realistic setting... er, you know what I mean. One Piece is rather different though. 'Tis one of the reasons why I love it so, but it still makes it difficult to write. Thankfully my first try at it will be for an anonymous prompt, so if I epically fail it won't be so big of a deal. Plus the setting is something that's already happened, so I have some form of structure. The remaining variables are still a bit to work with though. Maybe I'll finally finish a project? Would be nice.

Yesterday before work, I spent my time reading comics. When it came to be time to walk to work, I hadn't finished the last one and debated taking it along on my walk to read. I couldn't get a hold of my grandma for a ride either, but I decided not to take it in case someting happened.

Not long after I started walking, the thunder and lightning showed up. Five minutes in and it was raining some. And then it started pouring, and that's not an exaggeration. On top of that, next came hail the size of teeth. There wasn't a single spot on my body that was dry, and I didn't even have a jacket. 

To make matters worse, the mixture was falling so fast that it couldn't all drain down the gutters fast enough. The water started flooding into the streets and by the time I got to the third intersection one has to cross walking to Wal-Mart, it was up over the sidewalks, leaving me nowhere dry to put my already water-logged sneakers. 

About the time my work shirt took on so much water that it was hanging down past my knees with the weight of it, I was seriously debating turning around and just calling in for work. Luckily for me, Billy had just gotten off his other job and was driving by and saw me. He pulled into a deep driveway and I started walking around the puddle to get to his car.

Naturally it was at this moment that some jackass in a Hummer drove through the puddle and sent a tidal wave over me.

Pi: (opens door muttering curses)
Billy: (trying not to laugh) Are you okay?
Pi: (trying to wipe water out of eyes) Are you sure you want me in your car? 
Billy: (still trying not to laugh) Get in.

After a moment, he pointed out the obvious in how difficult it would be for me to work in clothes that held enough water to swim in and offered to take me home so I could change into a new set. When we got back to my house, he had to drive all the way over to the front step because the entire driveway was filled. O_o;

I went downstairs to get some clothes out of the dryer, very thankful I'd done the laundry just moments before, so it was still all nice and warm. Changing actually proved to be quite difficult, however, as I had to literally peel it all off of my skin. It took over a minute to get my jeans off. Then I had to towel the rest of the moisture off before getting into the dry clothes. Alas, the only thing I couldn't change were my shoes.

After I was dressed, we headed to work. Was kinda fun watching the people in small cars drive through some of the more flooded streets. And the idiots who drove through puddles near the residential areas, sending tidal waves up and over people's fences.

As I walked through the back doors to clock in, I passed by my other co-workers. Despite the dry clothes, I was still wet (hair and a few other things were tell-tale signs).

Pi: >.<
Paul: It's a wet kitty cat!

Unloading the truck was fun. At one point I had to take my shoes off and walk around barefoot. XD

And now I is downloading Deadpool comics (thankskarehasu!) and reading the new One Piece chapter. Trying not to spoil here, so I'll sum this up shortly, though probably only three people on my flist could be spoiled.

AHHHH NO DYING AND MR.3 FTW.

Something I've never been able to turn off in regards to comics/fic/shows I'm interested in is theorizing what's going to happen next. If something is shown to be a mystery, I scour my canon knowledge to see what hints have been made and how they can tie together.

So I've made a great deal many theories on the MNT: Gaiden (which was recently updated again) plot before. I'm really starting to think that my ashes theory may be be true after all. But since then I've had a few more, all of which I've discussed over at TT and will cut and paste here: