It feels nice and inspiring to have a self-made layout again.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate living in the suburbs. Sure, I can appreciate that I’m within walking distance of a grocery store, convenience store, several restaurants, some pharmacies, a plethora of salons, and some random shopping. I can also appreciate that I live a mile from a train station from which New York City is only an hour and change away. And sure, I grew up here. But this is in no way my kind of habitat.

I belong in the city.

When I lived in Queens, I could walk the same route every day and see something new, something interesting, something exciting. Here, nothing happens. Nothing. I long for the sense of adventure I got from simply wandering around my neighborhood with a friend or two. I can’t find that here in the sanctity of the suburbs.

I am mainly a pedestrian, relying occasionally on public transportation. Out here, that subjects me to constantly being ogled, honked, and cat-called at by passing motorists. In the more urban areas, pedestrians are much more common and rarely did I feel patronized when I walked the streets.

I miss the subways. I miss the rude New Yorker’s, the crowdedness of it all, and mostly, I miss all the Asian grocery stores I used to go shopping at on the regular.

Alas, I have to wait until at least the beginning of October before I can even think of moving out, since that’s when I’ll be graduating from cosmetology. Even then, I’ll need to have money saved up (something that’s virtually impossible without having a steady paying job). It’s so frustrating to feel like I’m “stuck” here.

Now that my life has settled down quite a bit, I’m making the effort to pull this all together again. I’m working on a new layout, and I’ll be bringing back some visitor content. Most importantly, I’m going to make an effort to blog every day (except Sundays. That’s the way I did it when I made my resolution). If I don’t have something to write about, I’ll post a picture. Maybe I’ll even invite people to guest blog. In any case, I’m gonna make this happen.

So. Temporary layout for now, and I can start getting my shit in order, and then I’ll eventually make a new layout.

In other news, today I found out that someone has deemed me one of the sexiest cosplayers at New York Anime Festival! I was naturally flabbergasted when I found this out, not being too confident in my own attractiveness for whatever reasons. The picture (fourth from the bottom) isn’t exactly the most flattering shot of me, but I’m honored to have made the list! XD

Anyway, I finally got a job! It’s just a retail gimmick in one of the local malls, but it’s a job. With everything that’s been going on, I’ve been so broke the past few weeks it’s ridiculous.

Things are finally moving forward with my divorce. My lawyer filed a motion last week with the courts to proceed without Eric’s consent (because Eric is being an uncooperative, childish asshole), and the whole thing should be over and done with within the next few months. Yay!

Anyway, muay thai has been going really well. I’m going twice a week. One class is a beginner class, but the weekend class isn’t, and it usually leaves me so sore and stiff the next day that I’m practically bed-ridden. It’s an excellent full-body workout though, and the instructors have expressed that they’re impressed with the speed and accuracy that I’m picking up on stuff, for someone who’s never taken martial arts before.

The best part? I’m starting to lose weight! I’ve only lost a couple pounds, but I was ecstatic when I stepped on the scale this morning, after months of only seeing the numbers go up.

I’ve also decided that I’m going back to school, for cosmetology. Not exactly the most intellectual thing to study, but I think it would end up being a wise career choice for me. I’d wanted to get into it years ago, but Eric discouraged me by telling me “beauty school is for high school dropouts.” My mom thinks it’s a great idea though, as do a lot of my high school teachers that I keep in touch with. I spoke to a friend who also studied cosmetology, and she let me know that it’s not as brain-numbing as I thought it would be. They teach aspects of anatomy and chemistry, as well.

Anyway, the reason I came to this decision is because one of my friends insists on hiring me to do the makeup for her bridal party when she gets married next year. Since I have little to no experience applying makeup on other people (but I’m fantastic on myself), I told her I would need to practice to the point of being comfortable before I gave her a definite answer. The cosmetology course is 1,000 hours, and not only would I get in plenty of makeup practice, but I would learn how to do hair and nails as well, which would be an added bonus. I know plenty of girls who would be glad to hire me to do their hair and makeup, so I already have a potential client base.

The crappy part is that there’s a waiting list for the class, and I probably won’t be able to get in until January, which means I won’t be going to Japan for my birthday. I’ll have to push that to later in the year. After I get licensed though, I’m hoping it will be easier for me to find a job, and my ultimate goal is to save up and be able to move out and back to Queens. I miss living there, and most of my friends live in/around the city anyway.

Well, for starters, I’ve added smilies to my blog. It’s just one of the sets I have available for download until I can make my own completely customized shiny.nu set.

I’m also tweaking my content and adding some new stuff. Last night I made the most delicious dinner for my family of shrimp and green bean tempura, bbq teriyaki chicken, and rice. Here’s the recipe for the chicken, since it’s sort of my own creation:

Ingredients:
- 4 boneless chicken breasts or thighs
- 1/2 cup sake
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 1/2 cup mirin
- 1/2 cup barbecue sauce of your choice
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1 tablespoon minced ginger
- A little oil

Combine the sake, soy sauce, mirin, barbecue sauce, sugar, garlic, and ginger in a large bowl. Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and thoroughly immerse in the marinade. Cover and let marinade in the fridge for at least 1/2 hour.

Heat the oil in a pan over medium heat. Remove chicken pieces from the marinade and fry. Transfer the remaining marinade to a saucepan and simmer over low to medium heat until reduced to a thick sauce. Drizzle the sauce over the chicken and serve with rice. Enjoy!

I went to Warped Tour last weekend with a bunch of my friends. It was fun, but all of us got pretty fucked up. CJ got kicked in the chest, Christina and I both got kicked in the head by crowd surfers (her, multiple times), Travis’s cousin had to carry a passed-out girl out of the Underoath crowd, and I got my knee dislocated in the middle of Escape the Fate’s set. The skank ass bitch in front of me kicked her foot back, and her heel went under my kneecap. It popped out, popped back in, and then there was pain. I ended up having to crowd surf to get out of the crowd, and limped my way over to the medical tent. The EMT who wrapped my knee had the scariest crack nail ever.

Sunday, I called out of work because I could barely even walk. Monday I went in, but was limping horribly, and my boss yelled at me and made me go home early. Instead of just going home, I headed into the city to visit my grandpa at his office in Chinatown, and then I headed up to the T-Mobile store near Penn Station to get my phone fixed. Since Sunday morning, the display screen had read “SIM Card Rejected,” and it wouldn’t fix itself. I tried removing and reinserting the SIM card, and even putting it in another phone, to no avail. T-Mobile gave me a new SIM card for free, and my phone is working again. Yay!

Before I go for now, I just wanted to share a little tidbit of lol that showed up in my comment moderation queue about a week and a half ago:

whatever
lrodriguez@yahoo.com
69.121.68.241

Submitted on 2009/07/12 at 7:31pm

U are so pathetic, your just as bad as eric, if you realy don’t want him in your life, leave it alone, but you instead are so obviously obsessed with him, you cant stop talking and blogging about him. Jeez get a life or go back with the fool cuz thats what it seems you want to do.

I don’t want Eric in my life, but he just doesn’t stop making an idiot out of himself and providing epic lulz for me and my friends. Also, maybe if him and his alter egos actually left me alone, it would rid me of Eric topics to blog about, and I’d find something else (less lulzy) to blog about. Just sayin’…

I meant to wait until after my birthday to put this layout up, but since I finished it today, well, here it is. So since I didn’t feel like waiting until Wednesday to change the age on my header image, I’m 24 as of today.

I’ve also added a few new recipes to the “extras” section, and a couple of new memoirs to the “articles” section. Still working on the pixel icons and graphics I promised though…

So yeah! Thoughts on the new layout?

Also, since I attended (and blogged about) Mokucon back in November, I’ve received a healthy dose of hits from searches for “mokucon.” It’s actually my 3rd top search term.

Honestly, I don’t know how people find my site with some of these. I’ve tested some of them in google, and can’t even find my site in some of the results. Anyway, some of my favorites (and yes, these are actually in my stats!):

- Flickr giant boobs
- Scorpios suck
- Jerry springer tranny
- New yorkers are assholes
- Her taking a shit
- Shiny preteen
- Plop stall -escapee
- Shiny hose
- Blowjobs for a living
- Skinny black trannys

I also use StatPress, which gives me a list of most recently used search terms used to find my site. This one is all-inclusive, and usually has ones that my WordPress stats have omitted. Right now, I have these search terms in my StatPress:

- Building up alcohol tolerance
- Red bull papageno
- Orange pee workout
- Random

Anyway, I’m off to work on my costume some more and make dinner. I had to re-dye my gi, because yesterday when I rinsed it out (and I followed the directions exactly), it went from a deep tangerine orange color to a light peachy orange. Wtf?

Well I emailed my host right after it happened, because I practically witnessed it happen. I was clicking around on my WordPress control panel, and when I went to click back to my dashboard, there it was.

Over the course of the night I received three emails from my host. The first one was pretty much “we are looking into the problem, please be patient while we figure it out, thanks.” In the second one, they had identified the problem. There was a security breach on the server’s main cpanel, and all that was replaced on the sites hosted were the ‘index.php’ and ‘index.html’ files, resulting in that page being seen. Nothing else was touched, which is why my site and all my entries still exist. As soon as I finish writing this, I’m backing up my database. Anyway, they were working on updating and securing thw server, and would let me know when everything was fixed. The third email was to let me know that my site was up and running again.

Anyway, you’re all probably noticing that I didn’t blog on here yesterday, effectively breaking my New Years Resolution. But no! I blogged on myspace about my site being hacked (as per Christina’s suggestion), and thus did NOT break my New Years Resolution. I plan on continuing to blog every day.