Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Natasha's LiveJournal:

Saturday, January 10th, 2009
6:46 pm	Dear diary, Today I pried silkworms off of wilted mulberry leaves and put them on fresh mulberry leaves. Then I vacuumed the entire insect zoo. After that, I told kids why bees are so awesome. This is the best (unpaid) job ever.  Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: JAM Project - Olympia (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 6th, 2008
7:28 pm	This is the worst year ever. I spontaneously develop idiopathic gastroparesis, putting me on a liquid diet for a while and causing me to lose 15 pounds until I finally find a drug that, at least for now, stops the constant nausea and makes food eventually go through. I miss a semester due to illness and will possibly never be able to eat more than a tiny meal at a time again. Then I get a mystery boob bleed and need minor surgery. Not cancer! Yay. Nope, year still hasn't sucked enough. Maddie, my little cuddle cat, 16 years old, born in my closet, had an intestinal cancer. We went through with the surgery and she bounced back, but in the last week she crashed. Chronic renal failure and a metastized lung cancer combined to make her untreatable. We had her put down today, after she spent the second day in a row sitting quietly and looking uncomfortable. She was the best cat I'll ever have. I miss her so much. Goodbye, princess. Current Mood: crushed Current Music: BUMP OF CHICKEN - supernova (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 3rd, 2005
10:15 pm	it all comes tumbling down So with sadness in my heart I feel the best thing I could do is end it all and leave forever What's done is done it feels so bad what once was happy now is sad I'll never love again My world is ENDING Current Mood: endless DEPTHS OF AGONY!!! Current Music: Komm, Süsser Tod. Eva is SOOOO DEEEEEEP like my TRAGIC PAIN (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 12th, 2004
10:10 pm	Everybody seems to love this story, so... Crossposting from SA. Thank you, lj-cut. ( Driving Lessons: CAR HAS THREE FUNCTION ) Current Music: Simon and Garfunkel - I Am A Rock (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 5th, 2003
6:00 pm	Off I go to a Simon & Garfunkel concert! Vweeheehee! Current Mood: excited (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 16th, 2003
4:02 pm	all my base are belong to it This entry is being aerated entirely using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. To make it more amusing, I will not correct any areas, even if they render the sentence completely incomprehensible. In such case, I will just redictated the sentence. First, thanks to Frank for giving me this program. It's a lot more accurate than I ever was expected. After a dozen resellers of training, I've become able to navigate the computer almost entirely hands-free. But, obviously, it hasn't problems. Luckily, most of them are pretty amusing. One great feature is that I can enter new words, like Gundam, Zaku, and Azumanga. Unfortunately, plenty of them never ever ever come through. The biggest drawback is really that I have to speak very clearly and loudly, recasting everything I say across the house. This makes for very heavily censored chatting. And extremely large phone bills. On a totally random question, anyone know a relative might know what exercise videos are good? Any search for cause, my chiropractor suggested that meeting even more exercise. Here's hoping that works. Current Mood: Achy Current Music: Cowboy Bebop - The Real Folk Blues (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, January 20th, 2003
9:04 am	wail Note to self: Stop taking mom's book recommendations. Her definition of "won't make me cry at the end" is my definition of "six-Kleenex ending." That's it, time to hit the Hitchhiker's Guide. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 30th, 2002
8:52 am	for once, I'll expose myself and show you who I am o/` And I'll put down my weapons and I'll take off my helmet and I'll take off my chestplate and my combat boots and gloves and the rest of my weapons... I find the most awesomely weird stuff online. Current Mood: more than just a bounty hunter Current Music: Danger Bob - Slow Dance with Boba Fett (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2002
11:13 am	Exactly one year ago yesterday, I wrote in my journal about dad trying to force me to feed meat to Sweetie after she was diagnosed with kidney failure and cancer. She went downhill pretty quickly after that. She lost a tremendous amount of weight, going from obese to skeletal in just months. For a long time, we had to administer an IV of fluids to make up for her lack of kidney function. Eventually she got too weak to withstand the treatment. It kept getting worse. A couple of weeks ago, it reached the point that she could barely walk. Still, she kept eating. She even ate yesterday. I've heard that cats will stop eating as soon as they become seriously ill, while dogs will continue to eat as long as they can operate their jaws. Sweetie was always more like a dog than a cat. This morning, I woke up to bad news once again. Sweetie could no longer stand. She'd already called the vet and arranged to have her put down. The appointment was at 8:30. Dad's been crying on and off all morning. I'm okay, I think; I prepared for this when she was first diagnosed so it's no shock. Duo knows there's something wrong and she's been cuddling me as much as possible all day. Sweetie was my first cat. I don't remember what it was like before I got her. Current Mood: numb (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 24th, 2002
11:01 am	Master Onion Last night, while mom was chopping carrots for dinner, something went wrong. She cut the tip of her thumb about halfway through. Of course, the worst possible time to visit the ER is on a Saturday night. The only nearby ER is slow in the first place; Saturday night is an absolute nightmare there. We got there somewhere around 8:15 and didn't leave until after 11. Mom's okay. She got three stitches and it's expected to heal just fine. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 5th, 2002
9:26 pm	No Shi... Or Not Today was spent shoveling raw sewage. Yes, raw sewage. At grandma's, of course. About a week ago, her sewer backed up and it was repaired. But nothing was done with the backup. Today, a team from Roto Rooter put a SeeSnake Color down into the sewer and we got to take a look. I now have a video tape of grandma's sewer system. But after the taping was completed, we had to do something about the layer of sewage covering her back yard. Let me say that shoveling sewage is not an experience I would like to repeat. Then there was grandma herself. Noteworthy events: - She claimed that she had personally painted every picture in her house. None of them are actually by her. - She claimed that most of the clothing she has was sewn by her mother. Wow, grandma, I didn't know your mom's name was Neiman Marcus! - At one point she said darkly while mom and I were reading a note from grandpa's sister: "She's gone now, you know." And who was gone? "Russ's mother." Russ is my grandfather. His mother died in 1980 at the age of 84. - She bugged mom repeatedly over her clothing choice for today, which consisted of really old funky clothes. Mom's statement that it was because we'd be shoveling sewage were meaningless to her. As usual, I also hauled out a ton of old magazines and mail -- two large canvas bags full. I'm deep into the layers now, and the next visit will bring forth a great deal of magazines from the 1970s. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 17th, 2002
8:35 am	Just a Map of Russia In grandma's house, there is The Room. It's somewhat of an office and somewhat of a lounge. Judging by the layers of junk, it's barely been touched in two years. The disaster makes it clear that grandma's mind has been slipping away for years. This has been determined by my insane effort to clean that room in the interest of The Future. There are three reasonably good reasons to clean it out: - To study how long ago grandma really lost it, - To attempt finding some letters or genealogical documents of interest, - To make the house that much easier to clean up when we get grandma out of there. My findings: Grandma has been hoarding mail since 1995. In my exploration, I found entire boxes of sealed requests from charities. There were no less than 15 different letters from UNICEF alone in there. It took three hours to locate and haul out several large bags of mail, and four more to separate trash from recycling at home. Yes, seven hours went into the disaster, without so much as a thank-you from grandma or an interesting newspaper clipping. Plus, while I was sorting all that mail, dad installed Earthlink's browser on the already-wounded computer, going as far as setting it as default. Repairing the computer again wasn't exactly what I planned for the late evening. In other, less grandma-related news, I almost got to bed early last night. In fact, I did, but the first effort didn't go very well. As usual, I dozed off slowly, drifting into a rather pleasant dream, while listening to peaceful sounds: The ocean, the humming air purifier, the-- HORK. Hork? Impossible. After such a long day, there's no way it could be topped off with cat puke. No kind and loving-- HORK. Two horks means danger. The light goes on. Duo was on the foot of the bed, jaws open wide, horking. I shoved her onto the floor before she could move from horking to chucking, so she kindly deposited her kitten puke on the floor. I believe the following proves that nothing -- nothing -- will come between me and sleep. Still not entirely awake, I got a bunch of paper towels and some cans of soup from the kitchen, and covered the puke, using the soup to keep the towels from moving. Then I went back to sleep, my room reeking of cat food. Current Mood: awake Current Music: (Gundam Wing) - Heero Yuy - Heero- Flying Away (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, January 4th, 2002
10:04 pm	Lauder? For no reason I can comprehend, I decided to go to grandma's with mom today. I'm glad I did: It was the best visit there ever. For the first time, she was actually nice. It was like having a normal grandma. She never even tried to argue. I was scrounging around in her huge walk-in pantry and ran across a collection of old cookbooks. Most were uninteresting, but some (dating as far back as 1946) came home with me. Some have beautiful old commercial art. Soup cans with faces! Angry eggs! The oldest one was included with a pressure cooker and truly showed its age with recipes for rabbit, pigeon, and squirrel. Yum? While I was doing that, mom called me into the backyard. She and Satia, the latest hired help, had discovered what the previous helper did with the used cat litter: Dumped it into a trash can. An uncovered trash can. Then they got four days straight of heavy rain. The smell is in the top ten for worst odors ever. Somehow, we tipped over the nearly-full barrel, completely emptied it, and buried the sludge with compost. Mmm, sludge. I got stuck with the huge blunt shovel for chopping up the mass of compost. Surprisingly, I'm not sore. Next up was examining grandma's pond. It was mostly filled and there's only a few inches of water. A few inches of MOSQUITO LARVAE-INFESTED water. No action was taken against them, but I couldn't resist bringing a jar of them home. If I ever get a rabbit, I'm going to name him Rarebit. Or Bunnicula. Rarecula? Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Record of Lodoss Wars TV - Kiseki no Umi (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 12th, 2001
6:45 pm	HELLO! BABY! 100% score on the final. :D Duo got spayed yesterday. Unfortunately, she immediately snapped and started ripping frantically at her stitches. She wound up wearing an Elizabethan collar in a cat carrier overnight. Somehow, she tore out one of the stitches anyway. That seems to have satisfied her: she's barely touched them since. The incision is staying closed, so I guess it's nothing to worry about. Time to start planning next year's Halloween costume. Mission of the evening: Work on drawing roundish circles. Current Mood: relaxed Current Music: Pocket Monsters - Oyasumi Boku no Pikachu (Comment on this)
Friday, November 2nd, 2001
3:58 pm	"Put That in Your Book and Write It!" The good news: The kitten is staying. I've named her Duo, because a dog, a cat, and an old lady have died in the last few days. She's the god of death, no question. Plus she's hyper and I once had a kitten named Solo. The bad news: Dad has completely snapped. Last night, he found some possible Hungarian names for the kitten. Hungarian sounds utterly goofy. Of course, I couldn't resist some jokes about it -- mainly that it some phrases sounded like the last thing you'd hear while being charged by a man with a Bat'leh. Dad got angry and wandered off. I chatted with mom some more. A minute later, he burst through the wall, screaming profanity and commands. He ordered me to go straight to bed, and to clean the entire house the next day. I zipped off and hid in the bathroom while mom tried to figure out what was going on. He'd somehow taken very, very great offense to a couple of light jokes about the Hungarian language. He does not speak Hungarian. While I was hiding in the bathroom (he'd given me permission to do what I needed in there before bed), I yelled something to my defense. He promptly screamed at me for talking to him from the back of the house, and demanded that I shut up when I said he'd just told me to stay there. It got worse. I estimate I heard the phrase "shut up" a few dozen times last night. Before long, he started throwing furniture. Unfortunately, I didn't witness that part, but he threw an ottoman ten feet. At some point, he claimed he was so offended because his Hungarian heritage was all he had left of his life. Yeah, I hate you too. >( Because I continued joking at his expense -- his psychotic rage was just hilarious, really -- he slipped into wacky threats-mode. He shut off and unplugged (?!) the computer, and then said: "I'm gonna unplug you, and you're gonna be talking to the stars!" I said I needed the computer to study so I'd need it back, and he countered, "You're not going to get any more education until you get educated! Put that in your book and write it!" Thank you, Dr. Doom. I didn't know people ever actually talked like that. Eventually, it came down to him screaming "shut up" over and over while I tried to get a single word in. His idea of a rational debate is screaming at someone. I was backed as far as I could go in the bathroom without climbing into the tub. Suddenly, he shut up and struck an aggressive karate-type pose. He moved forward a bit, went into reverse (beep beep), and then lunged. He came about five inches from hitting me in the face. I was far too baffled to react. It would have been completely within my rights to do something in that case -- kick him, grab his arm, anything. I was cornered and I didn't know if he'd stop. But I have terrible reaction times to physical threats, so all I managed was to flinch. After pretty thoroughly scarring me, dad walked away and turned on the TV. He told mom a few minutes later that he would not apologize for anything he'd just done. I hope for his sake he didn't mean that. He will regret it all. Music while Writing: (Rhapsody) - Emerald Sword, (Kodomo no Omocha) - Ultra Relax, (Gundam Wing) - Heero Yuy - Flying Away, (Gundam Wing) - Dorothy Catalonia - Joy To My Life, (Pocket Monsters) - Kaze To Issho Ni Current Mood: depressed Current Music: (Dragon Ball Z) - Hikari no Tabi (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 30th, 2001
9:25 pm	Meow Indeed On the last stretch of our evening walk, mom and I happened upon a little black cat stalking around. Having nothing better to do, we stopped and played with her for a while. It seemed quite odd for a kitten -- I'd say three months old -- to be out on her own in the night, so mom knocked on the nearest door. The door of our least favorite neighbors, in fact. I really don't like them. They have a little boy that they quite mistreat. The man of the house is not someone I'd want to spend time with. He confirmed that the unnamed kitten was his, but she couldn't go in because she wouldn't use the litterbox. He then added, and repeated several times, that we could take her if we wanted. Guess what I've got, now. I can't keep her, of course -- dad would never let me; he's made that clear already. But for tonight and Halloween morning, I have a fifth cat that matches Halloween precisely. She needs to be named before we take her to the shelter. Suggestions are very welcome. Current Mood: KITTY!!!! Current Music: (Guilty Gear X) - Awe of She (Dizzy) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 15th, 2001
10:44 pm	Note To Self: Read More Mythology Books. I spent perhaps two hours cleaning my room today, and the progress is barely noticeable. I work on it constantly and yet seem to get nowhere. I'm beginning to suspect that my room is actually some torture device straight out of Greek mythology. So, as if one torture isn't enough, I have what the teacher says is the hardest chapter of the class this week. I hold everyone in Japan personally responsible for giving the days of the month no relation to the typical number system. I was at Toys 'R' Us today and saw that they had Megaman 8 in stock. I was planning on getting it, so I battled through the crowd towards it. Then some large man grabbed it just before I could. Thankfully, that resulted in a trip to the main mall, and I managed to find a copy of Megaman X4(!) there. There are also dozens of copies of Dance Dance Revolution USA(!) on the shelf there. I must get one soon. After spending so long in my increasingly open room, this one seems horribly cluttered and claustrophobic.The prospect of cleaning this room terrifies me far more than any of the others. I have now been cleaning for a full week, and I still have no surface on which I can draw. I haven't drawn for nine days. This is really annoying: I want to learn how to draw. I'm willing to dedicate a lot of time for many years to gain this ability. But I cannot yet dedicate any time to it directly, because there is a never ending flow of junk onto my desk. I noticed that my old Nintendo Power magazines take up a lot of shelf space, and the prospect of throwing them out disturbs me. I shall find other ways to make space. And now an ancient version of Quicktime Picture Viewer has taken over viewing JPEGs for no apparent reason. The file option setup still says ACDSee is in control. About a week and a half ago, it switched over to Paint Shop Pro without warning, but that was no problem. There is, however, a big problem with Quicktime Picture Viewer: It doesn't actually display pictures. I bet that this program I had to install to play that lameass Jurassic Park game has something to do with it. I'm going to shoot it and reboot. Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: LoZ - Opening (guitar version) (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 12th, 2001
10:51 pm	I Am So Incredibly Happy. I can now say, with solid evidence, that I have met Bruce Campbell. Of course, I'll tell the rest of the story before I get to the actual meeting. I felt sick most of the morning, but thankfully got better by the time I was supposed to leave. By the time I got to the Booksmith -- just a few minutes after 6 PM -- the line was about six stores long. After a while, I started chatting with the girl ahead of me in line and realized I forgot my camera. Oops. Thankfully, she's a Penny Arcade-fan geek, and offered to take and scan a picture for me. We exchanged email addresses and chatted for the next two hours. At some point during the great wait -- just after the Q&A session, of which I only heard a few minutues -- we heard from the start of the line: "CANDY! Watch your eyes!" The tall guy behind us in line said, "Hey cool, candy. I could go for a-jesus." The Man himself threw candy at us. Dad got one. I have it here. I'm going to get a display case for it. And then finally, the moment of truth. I was, by then, tired and hungry but too excited to care. I got to watch as he chatted with the guy ahead of me and signed his three books, action figure, and beer can. The guy was so happy he almost forgot to get his picture taken. I'm getting butterflies in my stomach just remembering this part. My new friend quickly psyched me up and I went forward. Bruce immediately said some line that now blurs in my memory, but was something like "Come on up, dear." I somehow managed not to explode, implode, or otherwise -plode. He offered to guess my name. He guessed Emily. We shook hands. I had the book made out to "Nat," which he described as a cool nickname. I'll have a scan up soon, but he wrote in it: "HEY NAT - STAY GROOVY". During all this, I managed to avoid choking up, freezing, or blurting out anything stupid. Yes, my friend from the line got my picture. She swears she'll send it soon. Of course, I'll put that up too. Until then, just remember: Bruce Campbell says he's really bad at video games. Oh, and dad later told me that he almost said -- in reference to the book title -- "Nice chin." Amazingly, he realized that I would have disowned him, had he actually said that. Today has been good. Current Mood: ecstatic Current Music: Pocket Monsters - Type Wild (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 20th, 2001
10:06 pm	The Electric Company Crikey. At 9:45 PM, grandma called and left a brief message that she was having a "serious and important problem" and asked mom to call back. Maybe 6 minutes later, she called again saying that her house was "half-dark" and ranting about how mom should call her right away, and fretting that her power bill hadn't been paid. Of course, she woke dad up both times, and he's angry as an inconvenienced Reg. Mom just called her back. Turns out that some lights were stuck off, and more upsetting to her, some were stuck on. Somehow, that meant to her that her bills had not been paid. It turned out that one lightswitch was stuck, and her ancient electric system screwed up the rest of her lights. Gyarg. Note: When mom called back, she told grandma several times that she'd called way too late and woken people up. In grandma's latest message, which she left as I typed up the earlier parts of this entry, she said for us to "go back to what [we] were doing, eating or something." Nnngah. Current Mood: annoyed Current Music: Midorikawa Hikaru as Heero Yuy - Take Off to the Sky (Comment on this)
Monday, June 4th, 2001
7:11 pm	Dad vs. Logic Well, this was an interesting one. I bought two manga books on eBay (the Trunks and Bardock DBZ specials), and the seller is in Hawaii. After a great struggle with the printer, I got the envelope done. Mom was in here, and then dad came in and saw the envelope sitting on the desk. This is as close as I can remember the conversation that followed: Dad: What island is that going to? Me: Uh, I don't know. Me: It just says Hawaii. That's the state. Dad: Then it's going to Hawaii. Me: Yeah, but I don't know which island. Dad: It says Hawaii, so it's going to Hawaii. Mom: It's all the same state. Dad: It says Hawaii. Hawaii, Oahu... Me: It's all the same state, though. The many islands of Alaska are all counted under Alaska, too. Mom: It goes by city name or zipcode, I think. Dad: ... Hawaii, Oahu... I think I broke him. (Comment on this)