Let Me Pencil That In

Dearest Journalman of My Soul,

In keeping with the trend of confessing my darkest secrets to you, I have another one: Google is taking over my life. It has everything I could ever need to organize my otherwise whirlwind of a life. In fact, the How-To of the Day today on my Google homepage is How To Balance School and Word as an Adult, something that I personally find useful, seeing as I do just that. And it gave me some useful tips, such as opening an online calendar to keep track of tests and work things and to schedule study time. I think this is fantastic, so I went ahead and added my whole life to my calendar. Now, if only I had a blackberry and could check my Google Calendar from anywhere.

(Side note: The best part of my job-- getting called sweetie by giant African men. I don't know if this is just because they want to suck up and think that's the best way into my heart, or whether it's because I'm such a flaming queen that they assume I'm a woman, but...I hope not the latter.)

Well, last night I decided to delve once more into the wonderful world of making Chili. Jenna has this amazing(ly easy) recipe, involving beef/turkey, bell peppers, onions and a crapton of canned beans, tomatoes, tomato sauce and refried beans. It fills a giant soup pot to the rim, which is totally awesome, but since my kitchen stuff is totally disorganized, it led to a lack of tupperware to contain my concoction. I ended up bringing about a gallon of it to work today in the hopes that someone will help me to eat it all. I'm slowly building up a repertoire of foodstuffs that I can cook. This is going against years of being kept out of the kitchen when my mom cooked dinner and only being allowed to assist during cake- or cookie-making. I still have a phobia of baking pies because she couldn't do it. You'd think this would cause me to be more motivated to bake a freaking pie, just to prove that I'm a better baker, but it just makes me nervous. But I'm very much into cooking my own meals right now. I've been spending entirely too much money on eating out and ordering in (not to mention booze and video games...or crack). Last night's bean and beef extravaganza cost me a total of 27 dollars and probably yielded something around 15 servings. Pretty good, I'd say.

In other news, I have some sort of uncontrollable urge to own every edition of every Final Fantasy game, even when one version is fully sufficient. Take Final Fantasy IV. I played it on Super Nintendo, I've played the original SNES version on an emulator, I've played the harder JP version of the SNES game on an emulator, I bought FF IV Advance for the Game Boy Advance, despite having already played and beaten the one Chris owned. Now, to taunt me, they are developing a DS version of Final Fantasy IV, which I imagine will include some touch screen capabilities like the DS version of Final Fantasy III (which I found insanely dull after a while). I am hoping (obviously) that this version of Final Fantasy IV will have some more enhanced touch screen stuff, but it's unlikely, because honestly what would you add to a Final Fantasy game that would require a touch screen. Maybe at least they'll do something with the two screens. FFIII DS just put a stupid world map on the top screen, which made it silly that there was a button to pull up the world map, because it just copied what was on the top screen onto the bottom screen and what's the point of that!? REALLY NOW! At least I completed the GBA version of FFIV before this one is created. It would be sad if they released a DS version of FFVI, because I'd buy it and I haven't even done the extra content on FFVI Advance yet.

Ok, I'm geeked out. I may have just lost some of the few friends I have left.

Love,
Me

Forum Trolls and Onion Knights

Journalman,

We meet again. You come here often? My place or yours? Rawr.

In a fit of RPG-mania I purchased a Nintendo DS over the weekend, in addition to three RPGs on Amazon.com (Final Fantasies IV, VI and Tactics Advance) and one with the DS (Final Fantasy III DS). Now, some might say that that is a mite excessive with the RPGs. After all, a good RPG takes anywhere from 50-70 hours to finish in a reasonably completionist manner. That's a significant number of days of my life slated for brain-rotting enhancing my strategery strategy.

I began with Final Fantasy III, as the other games have not shipped to me yet. This game hearkens back to the Ye Olde Dayes of White Mages and Black Mages, but they re-vamped it to be 3D and they gave the heroes personalities. Go figure. Way to ruin it!

Anyway, liking as I do to be absolutely perfect in RPGS, I read every single FAQ I could get my hands on and discovered a secret class obtainable only through use of the DS's stupid Wi-Fi system. Now, since I have about four friends total, and I'm the first to own a DS, this is clearly an impossible feat. Fie on the DS people. Or is my fie premature?

I decided to do a little trolling of the message boardsat GameFaqs to discover a solution to my seemingly insurmountable problem. It turns out, people exchange Friend Codes ALL THE TIME! So, I made a little account and posted asking for some friends. Two people replied, so we added each other and when I approached the moogle mail system next time, I had a letter awaiting me from Jeff. Jeff sent me a stamp for Master Devout (I've yet to discover what that means/does for me, but I'm excited regardless). So now, with a few more Moogle Letters and some hard work, I may just unlock the Onion Knight class for my dear sweet party. Granted, the Onion Knight supposedly sucks until you reach level 94 or so, but I'm diligent and hard-working and I will make it through the rain.

Love,
Henry A. Tilney