Earth Hour

Yesterday, March 29th from 8pm to 9pm was Earth Hour. Everyone who wanted to participate was supposed to turn off their lights for one hour to save electricity and promote awareness of climate change and such.

The WWF site has some great before and after pictures of Toronto during the hour.

Fortunately for me, I was at a birthday party for a friend and was able to participate with a bunch of people instead of sitting alone in a dark apartment for an hour (note to self: buy a flashlight or candles or something).

We ended up playing a really fun game (yes, I found a game fun, believe it or not) so our Earth Hour looked something like this:

My thrilling life

Probably my greatest accomplishment this week has been completing Final Fantasy XII (always nice to have goals, isn't it?)

This game was gorgeous. The scenery was stunning and I often found myself panning the camera around just to take in the architecture of wherever I happen to be (except in caves. I hate caves. But even the caves were pretty)

Anyway, I believe I started this game 2 years ago... so it's been a while. I love long RPGs like this because I invest a minimal amount of money for a long period of entertainment. And I go through phases of playing and not playing.

So anyway, I went from these beautiful graphics


Back to Final Fantasy IX (for the PS1)

I beat FFIX a while ago but always loved it. I find that people are in two camps about this game. Either they loved IX and hated IIX, or vice versa. It's rare to find some one who loved both. (I hated IIX and gave it away. I wanted to kill Rinoa, who was one of the playable characters)

Anyway... FFIX has the best music, in my opinion, and I love the little black mage Vivi. I hope it doesn't take me 2 year to finish this game again (especially since it's much shorter than XII)


And, in other news, I did a lot of knitting over Easter, but not the sleeves of the sweater Dee and I are doing together. Instead I started to work on lamb parts to make myself an Easter lamb! I don't have any pictures of the guy yet (either together or in pieces) but since I don't know how to do seams, someone will have to help me out!

*chuckle*

Saw this on Neil Gaiman's blog and had to share:

Novelists Strike Fails To Affect Nation Whatsoever

Glad I'm not the only one

This is the best summation of the Sophie Kinsella's Shopoholic series that I've ever read:

"For those who haven't read it, Confessions of a Shopaholic is the first in a series of increasingly annoying books about a pretty darn irritatingly stupid girl for whom things seem to work out beautifully despite the fact that she never learns her damn lesson in a lasting way."

Bless those ladies at Go Fug Yourself. Nice to know I'm not alone, and that I'm in good company.

Follow the feathers

One of the three manga series' that I buy regularly is Reservoir Tsubasa Chronicles.


I originally started watching the anime before the manga was released in the west, and fell in love with it. I'm a fan of other CLAMP shows, and they had an ingenious idea with this series.

The main characters are alternate version of Sakura and Syaoran from Cardcaptor Sakura. The plot involves them traveling through different dimensions to find pieces of Sakura's heart/soul which are hidden in the form of very magically powerful feathers. The ingenious part is that every world they go to is populated by different characters from CLAMP manga!

(Because of this show, I've purchased and read all of RG Veda, and rekindled my love of X)

The manga also crosses paths with xxxHolic, which encourages readers to buy both mangas (which I do...)

Tsubasa is much darker than Cardcaptor Sakura, especially towards the later volumes, which makes it more appealing to older audiences while younger readers can first enjoy the bubblegum sweetness of Cardcaptor Sakura and still come to know the characters. Like I said earlier, it also exposes readers to characters from other CLAMP titles, which in turn encourages them to read those series'.

The real heart-wrencher for me was that in order to gain the power to travel to different worlds, Syaoran had to give up his relationship with Sakura, whom he loves. When she regains a feather and her memories come flooding back, she never remembers her childhood with Syaoran. Later volumes has the tragedy shift slightly, but I won't spoil it for anyone :)

Gen's damned fine yam fries

Recipe for Yam Fries (made from several recipes I found online, using the least amount of ingredients and some substitutions for what I had in my cupboards)


Ingredients:
2 huge honkin' yams (I had no idea yams were that big)
PAM
olive oil
rock hard brown sugar

1. Peel the huge yams, taking care *not* to drop one of them in the sink full of soaking dishes from previous meals
2. Rinse the soap off the yams after dropping them in the sink anyway
3. Cut the yams in half
4. Rinse the dirt from the floor off the yams after they go skidding out of control while you're trying to chop them in half (remember - these are HUGE yams)
5. Cut them so they vaguely resemble fries... very vaguely
6. Preheat oven to 425 degrees
7. Spray 2 cookie sheets with PAM
8. Lay the cut yam fries on the cookie sheets so they're not touching. Rinse off the ones you drop on the floor while doing this. Abandon the ones the kitten gets and hope that yams agree with kitten digestive systems.
9. Lightly coat the yam fries with olive oil
10. Swear profusely when the olive oil comes out much faster than you though. Mop up the excess with paper towel
11. Using the butt of your sharp knife (to keep the dishes to a minimum) try to pound the brown sugar back into granular form. Lightly coat the yam fries with sugar.
12. Lightly coat them with sugar again... can't have too much sugar!
13. Put the cookie sheets in the oven for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, take them out, flip them, and put them back in for another 10 minutes. Try not to drop them when the heat from the oven fogs up your glasses
14. Eat up! Just try not to eat them all at once. Remember how *huge* those yams were before you cut them and control yourself
15. Save the leftovers for lunch tomorrow... mmmm....