Wheeeew. Due to lack of time thanks to that thingy called school, I’ve been really behind on blogging, fanlistings, web designing, and the like, though I’ve managed to keep up on forums. Production and creativity have gone down, down, down, though.

However, today I finished my math finals, ran out of school, and danced in the sunshine. No more schoooool! Only thing is, my summer doesn’t seem too fun…time for parents to pile up my chores again. Plus I’ll have to work about half-time for my internship, which is unpaid, not fun, and time-consuming. Aaaand my parents are dragging me off to Philadelphia this weekend for the first time, at the wrong time of summer so that they’re (probably purposefully) keeping me from seeing Nightwish in August. And three orchestra auditions toward the end of summer! *cringes* (I haven’t practiced.)

So I am actually going to study my butt off, because when I get to eleventh grade, I won’t have time for any fun at all. SATs, violin, internship, chores, Chinese homework, here I come. *___* At least I’ll get cheered up by my online hobbies, occasionally see some friends, and pray, pray, pray that maybe if I go back to MA to visit a friend, I can make it to the Nightwish show in Worcester on 8/30 instead of Philly the day before.

My life is about to start again.

Eee, I am so bad at blogging, and lots of important events happened these last few weeks but I am too tired and lazy to account for them all. However…yesterday, a friend of mine who doesn’t own a single fanlisting discovered that someone had applied to build a fanlisting for me of all people, under Webmasters at TFL! o___O

Everyone knows that although I love fanlistings to the depths of my heart, I am a most clumsy and un-perfectionist web designer, and though I love all my online buddies, I never go on IM much and therefore am not on intimate terms with anyone. However…mega hugs and love to the person who applied for and got my fanlisting!! <333333333

I am SO happy, as it has made my day, week, and month. All I can hope now is that I can discover who this person is soon enough and thank him/her (though most likely a her). And, of course, I’m hoping that my fanlisting gets built. Wheee!

Yes yes, I know, I’m quite a hopeless-romantic-escapist. Not that life isn’t going well or anything, but I feel like I’m drowning in a mountain-size pile of work…and a few disappointing losses, and knowing that I probably won’t be allowed to see Nightwish when they come to Philadelphia with VIP on August 29, though I had been anticipating and hoping and almost by instinct knowing they would return to the Trocadero months earlier.

School is taking its toll on me, my web designing is drooping, my parents are being stricter and piling up more chores, my violin teacher is acting like such a biatch…and my dream, “Once I had a dream and this is it” to see Nightwish after all these years in the best possible circumstance is as good as shattered.

But, last Monday, I found myself in front of a small new addiction: the manga (and anime) series Fruits Basket! My friend Rikki was loaning out the series to everyone, so from last Monday to this Monday I completed 6 entire volumes, but then some girl was hanging onto volume 7 for over a week and I was getting rather impatient. So I’m still nowhere. And when I went to all the manga upload sites, all the Fruits Basket scanslations were just recently removed by TokyoPop! Everything was there a week or so earlier, and the TokyoPop translations were being released since 2004, so why now?!

So instead I started watching the English dubbed version of the anime series, but then I realized that the plot went by excruciatingly slow. At first I thought, 23 volumes in 26 episodes, not bad. But then after watching some of the last episode, and reading summaries of the manga chapters, I realized that the anime series only goes up to volume 6, exactly where I left off and am desperate trying to advance from, and has long been considered “complete”!

These matters are definitely disappointing, not to mention that the spoilers indicated that all the characters and Chinese Zodiac members eventually get paired up in the manga in the most unusual fashion. The first week of being oblivious to the anime, eventual storyline, TokyoPop’s removing, etc. was glorious…I read a few pages every time I had a few spare minutes, and it was like a journey through the life of the main character Tohru, who in many aspects resembles myself.

And no matter what restrictions are placed on scanslations, however bad the incompleteness of the anime is, whatever awful couple pairings are in the later plot…the guys in the story are wonderful. Kyo is my favorite, but Ayame, Shigure, and Hatsuharu are also delightful and funny and sometimes even hawt! I hope the finer details of the plot will reveal themselves delicately later on, though, because the female characters (and soon-to-be-revealed character who is female) of the Sohma family are loathsome indeed.

I suppose the only anime/manga series I was really into before was Yu Yu Hakusho, though I realize now that it’s shounen, more focused towards a male audience. Which was fine with me, as I loved that most of the guys didn’t pair up with idiotic girls, and there was a ton of fighting, action, etc. Fruits Basket is the first shoujo series I’ve been into, definitely targeted toward a female audience. Some parts are quite girly, and I hate it when there’s too much drama, but I’m loving it anyway.

Hopefully, if you’re just the slightest bit interested in a dramatic, hilarious, and later romantic series, then watch the Fruits Basket anime (I actually recommend that first, because you won’t feel dull at its slow plot if you watch first and it doesn’t end properly so you can catch up on reading afterwards) and read the manga!

Everyone knows how scared I am of (and bad at fixing) technology malfunctions. A little more than a month ago, I got a Dell Windows Vista desktop, and today I couldn’t login at all into the one administrative password-protected account. I tried restarting, shutting down, retyping the password, everything. And still I got the dreaded error “The User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded.”

After getting some friendly help from the folks at the Nightwish forum, who provided links, I went through a 20-minute-recovery-from-computer-hell-journey. And now that I am so happy I can do a jig, I am going to teach you all…in case your Vista decides to grace you with login problems, too.

1. Shut down the computer.
2. Turn on the computer and immediately press F8 repeatedly until you are taken to the page “Advanced Boot Options.”
3. Use the down arrow to select “Safe Mode,” and press Enter.
4. The computer will eventually load in the Safe Mode, a blown-up simplified version. Log in.
5. A “Help” window will appear. There is a “What is System Restore?” link. Click on it.
6. You will be taken to the answer page. Click the “Click to open System Restore” link.
7. A new window comes up, recommending restoring to a previous state. Choose the most recent one (I chose the one from yesterday - there was a selection from today but since it didn’t work today, obviously don’t choose that one).
8. Finally click “OK” and wait patiently until the computer restarts.
9. Login with your password! You should get the satisfactory blue wheel next to the Welcome sign as it loads. You might get a black screen for a few seconds after that (I was freaking out), but in time it’ll all load.

I was so happy by the end that I felt like I had conquered the world. If you get this problem, then give this solution a try!

Yes, I haven’t blogged in forever, I know! Plenty of things happen, but I can’t find anything more important than something else. I suppose I’ll just write about some light-hearted (and incredibly stupid) occurrences at good old school…

Yesterday, my orchestra director decided to pick on my irresponsible stand partner (he’s my partner only on Tuesdays and Fridays, thank goodness) and asked him what beat the second violins came on. He answered “The-” and then the director shouted, “See, I knew he’d say three!”

I popped in and told him he said “the” and not “three,” so he took a deep breath and replied, “Sherry, defending [insert name here]? I’m proud of you - you’re a really nice person.” And…ta-da…today’s concertmaster (the usual concertmaster was away) smiled at me! A reeaaal smile! And honestly the best-looking guy in our school of 3,500.

And…the guy with the shaved head and sunglasses (who nearly killed me at the December concert when he walked right into me holding his giant tuba) held the door open for me the day before!

Today was…interesting. My Wednesday stand partner in orchestra wasn’t here today so I ended up with that dude again, and he started telling me random things. Of course, I’ve known him for years, but he rambled on and on about his new speech, then asked me how to say “I’m a vegetarian” in Chinese after cracking a few awfully repeated jokes about his fake adventures in China, then declared that he was going to be a “doctor by day and a DJ by night.” I told him he’d never be as good as DJ Sammy and immediately he started singing at the top of his lungs “Baby you’re all that I want” and we got LOTS of strange looks from everyone. It was hilarious, though.

Life is crazy - and not always in a good way - in orchestra. And in Latin. Or rather, when I walk into the new wing hallway. I was poked (and if I didn’t turn around, would’ve also been robbed of my nice lemonade) by this little freshman in my Latin 2 class - though quite a giant, he’s “little” because he’s younger. Before I used to let him have a swig of my tea, juice, or whatever drink and then give it back to me, though I was always much too paranoid to drink it again afterwards.

But every time, the junior, who’s a bassist in the popular local band, is always looking in my direction. It always feels like I’m caught doing something naughty, and I get strange feelings…especially since I like him a heck of a lot more than the freshman. It happened again today in the hallway before eighth period, Latin class. He walked by, looked me in the eye for a second, and passed. I felt soo guilty for no particular reason, me just standing there with the freshman arguing about my drinks. Sometimes guys are crazy…and perhaps they think the same of me, too.

Arrgh, I always get so much attention from two freshman guys, neither of whom I like; I get along rather well with guys in my grade, one who is likeable; and then the two junior guys, my favorites, who never look at me in my “good” moments and always do look at the wrong time, usually when I’m being accosted by another guy and therefore almost giving off the air of being “taken” (ugh!).

And there you go, a little saga of me and school and those men…:P

Yes, I know that February is more than half over. But then again, it’s a wonderful leap year…29 days finally! And I need motivation to keep up my blog, but I shall start with a few events that have happened this month.

We had two snow days in a row - last Tuesday and Wednesday. Awful blizzard, almost got run over by a blind driver on Monday, and shoveled snow that piled up to my height. Ick.

Well, Valentine’s Day was last Thursday…I was wished “happy ridiculous day” and mooched off some cake and chocolate and cookies, but not much else.

Saturday I got the biggest shock of my life (since Tuomas replied to me, anyway) when I went over to the Tarja Turunen forum and realized that Orion of all people was the mod on the English side! Couldn’t believe my poor little eyes. Him, the perverted Finnish gramps who made fun of me for 1001 reasons! The topping incident, the pipari incident, the perkele incident, the umbrella incident, the harem girl incident…gosh. And what’s more, I’m now addicted to spamming…and nothing can be done because he spams too and I never get a talking-to because Orion would always want to make fun of me. @_@ Fun days!

I know, I know. I used to blog (or at least tried to) once a week. All the time I wanted to post something along the lines of a Merry Christmas (and a happy birthday to Tuomas) and a happy new year 2008. Looks like I’m way behind the times now, though!

So yeah, I’ve been kept busy by those evil research projects and midterms, as well as concerts and whatnot. But now, I have a three day weekend where I can finally relax a bit! I’m happy just thinking about it. I’ll be getting back my awful bio exams soon, but for now I’m not thinking anything depressing, oh no.

And we watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon over the past few days in history. Dang my parents for only letting watch barely the beginning and right before the end! I didn’t know anything about Dark Cloud (Lo) until now. He’s so awesome! And yes, there was one section where my history teacher snapped, “inappropriate” and fast forwarded (though we all got glimpses and the guys wouldn’t stop laughing).

So, in the midst of being totally obsessed with Nightwish, I’ve got some online stuff to catch up to. Trouble checks at TFL and List-Me are due, and I need to do some more active volunteer editing for the Mozilla-partnered directory and encyclopedia. I’m also going to co-own some fanlistings (well, taboolistings, actually) for the first time. Pretty exciting stuff. And I need to update a few fanlistings, build those on upcoming, and maybe apply for a few more. So that’s life!

And I’ve got CPYO on a tight tight schedule again, even right after the concert. But…a belated (and off-topic) happy new year’s post anyway! Cheers!

And oh, seems like my post on Maan mainiot seems to be the most popular by far. Yes, I’m still getting requests from people and I’m doing my best to send it over and will be more than happy to do so more.

Thanks to my friend Rikki, who found Dramacon 3 on the shelves of Barnes & Noble over a week earlier than the set release date, I read and finished the third installment of the Dramacon OEL series by Svetlana Chmakova early this week.

If you’ve never read Dramacon, or never even heard of it, head over to TokyoPop and read the first chapter of each book online! I promise, you won’t regret it. I know that the plot of a girl going to an anime convention and falling in love with a guy there sounds awfully cliche, but it’s not! Really, if people love the overly-praised mediocre Twilight series, then they would gush over this. Each book is a rather quick read…2 hours at the most, but you’ll enjoy every minute of it. I actually recommend that you take a closer look at the drawings in each panel instead of skimming over the word bubbles.

I must say, the ending was funny but left me hanging a bit. Matt *plug plug* and Christie finally got together, Bethany and Raj awkwardly become more than friends, and most of all, Beth got approval to draw manga for a job from her mother!

I know, I know…I was supposed to have cried when Matt kept hurting Christie’s feelings and made her run off sobbing, or when Emily finally gave them her blessing and let them be together. But I cried instead for something I could actually relate to (nope, I’ve never gotten hugged by a guy in my life), and that’s always achieving high for your parents’ sake and being completely rejected in return. Too bad I don’t have a friendly Aunt Jaz to clear things up between me and mom. Ah well.

It’s a great read, anyway. Girls, you just might fall for Matt…hehe. Don’t blame me, because I warned you! And then you can run off and join my lonely old fanlisting. ^_^

Ah, a big thank-you to the lovely Morrigan, moderator at the Nightwish forum, for giving us the 30-minute Finnish documentary called Maan mainiot with subtitles! It’s a precious little jewel of an account of Tuomas Holopainen, the founder, songwriter, keyboardist, and occasional singer of the Finnish symphonic power metal band Nightwish, the best in the world.

Although the doc doesn’t reveal to the reader everything about Tuomas, it does give me so much insight into Tuomas’s childhood life and the beginnings of Nightwish, as well as his struggles today in maintaining the legacy that he has already left Finland (and soon, the rest of the world)! I cried like a baby during some parts of the documentary…it’s really emotional for me.

It just makes me love Tuomas with all my heart (wasn’t I dubbed “the little girl with the big heart”?) even more. He’s not your average celebrity, no no. He is the most modest, sweet, and gentle man in the entire world, and I am not kidding. And my biggest crush ever.

If you would like a copy of the documentary in .avi format with English subtitles (revised by me to perfection, yay!), then just shoot me a line and I will send it over, or more likely have it stored at an upload site because the file’s so large! However, the documentary is well worth the download time and wait. Best thing I’ve ever watched in a long, long time.

Speaking of which, I’m going to watch The Village, Tuomas’s favorite movie. I’ll be doing it as a part of my utopia/dystopia project for English, presented in the form of…guess what?…a website! Yay, something new to add to my domain’s network. I’ve wanted to watch the movie for a long, long time, because many of my friends have claimed they loved it, and also because it takes place in the wilderness of Pennsylvania, USA - right where I live, and a place where Tuomas, as an escapist, would consider paradise! Whooya.

What, I didn’t write something about NIGHTWISH yet??!! Aaaahh! Don’t kill me, fellow Nightwisholics! *sprints away like a wolf*

Man, oh man. Nightwish is the best band ever! They got me addicted to metal, for sure. I’m sad that Tarja Turunen (the vocalist) is gone forever, but Tuomas Holopainen (keys and piano), Emppu Vuorinen (guitars), Marco Hietala (bass and vocals), and Jukka Nevalainen (drums) are all still here. It’s the hot guys that matter! And oh yeah, Anette Olzon, the new female vocalist from Sweden, isn’t that bad. The new and sixth album, Dark Passion Play, is pretty gosh darn dark and passionate for sure! I’m quite addicted to it, as well as my favorite songs Ever Dream and Nemo.

I could fangirl about Emppu and Tuomas for hoouurs! I love them more than any other musicians in the world, because Emppu always makes me laugh my head off and Tuomas makes me cry my head off. Emppu’s just so funny, and not to mention he’s overqualified to be a model even though he’s short (like me)! As for Tuomas, he’s a Jack Sparrow look-alike and though water is not my element, I love wolves too! His songs are so beautiful…I think that Ever Dream in particular was meant for Tarja.

And oh, last night I had a most interesting dream about Emppu…my first one! It’ll be up on my dream blog, whenever I update it…if you get restless, poke me! If I dream about someone, then that means I really am obsessed 24/7.

And, what? You’ve never heard of the legendary metal band Nightwish? Well, what are you waiting for? Get your butt onto Wikipedia or go to their official site and drop by the forum (where I’m on as Sherry) along the way! And watch a few of their music videos, while you’re at it! Nemo and Over the Hills and Far Away leave me in tears, as does the Oct 21, 2005 concert at Helsinki performance of Ever Dream.

*happy sigh* *dies* I LOVE YOU NIGHTWISH GUYS (and gal)! You make my life a million times better.