I'm on spring break... I guess it's nice to be back and not working... but... I seem to have the worst luck with everything.

Instruments
I found out today that my flute broke... it was fine last Monday (Kiltie band concert). One of the pads is missing... I mean pads themselves are easy to replace but the screw that keeps that pad in place also seems to be gone. I have a Gemeinhardt 2SP. It would be great if anyone can tell me where I can purchase a screw. I'm probably going to bring it to a music store when I go back to Pittsburgh... but I'll probably ask Mr. Gerlach if he can do anything about it first... I'm pretty sure the kiltie band has extra instruments that people can borrow. I mean worst case... I may have to purchase a new flute... but if I do that... I may just buy/learn a new instrument all together. I don't really think my flute is all that broken except for the pads that desperately need to be changed. A Gemeinhardt 2SP costs about $100+ these days... so that's not bad but I may opt for a really cheap asia made flute which of course... probably won't be a very good quality. If I'm going to get a new decent flute... I'd prefer an open holed one because I think they sound a lot nicer. Of course my Gemeinhardt has been with me for a long time and it's great but I really like playing the open hole ones.

I kind of decided that I want a new guitar for my birthday... I've been playing/learning on my friend's acoustic for a while until I broke a string and of course... Montgomery doesnt have that many music stores and I keep on forgetting to buy one in Pittsburgh. So I really haven't played in a while but I'd like to. I seem to be on a music rampage these days as far as playing goes. I'm planning on buying an Ibanez GRX20. It costs about $150. I'm not sure what kind of amp I'm going to buy yet. Any recommendations for guitars and amps would be great. As far as guitar requirements go... I'd really like a tremolo because they are fun and humbuckers are great too. Guitar searching meant me spending hours staring at La Jeune Fille... they are so beautiful O__o I was planning on buying those over-priced mana guitar picks in a pretty can but apparently they don't make them any more? It's like a can of 5 picks for $12... but it's from Mana... so... If anyone knows where I can buy that that would be great too =)

Art
I've been on a mission... I want to draw again... but I keep on getting distracted by EVERYTHING... music, anime, videogames. I've taken some steps to make myself become more "active" in the art community or just to "force" myself to draw more.
1. I finally published my website... it's not complete yet. It's completely functional and has most of the things up in the gallery. I kind of want to change the code for the gallery though.. . and the links out list is not complete either. The website address is from a long time ago when I first planned my online gallery. It was meant to be a project with a friend. Claire, if you are reading this, I hope you don't mind me reusing the domain name.



Making another gallery made me realize that I pretty much only finished 2 pictures within the last 3 years... pitiful...
2. I joined Ochiba. It's yet another art community. I think I used to be in ochiba a really long time ago. They have a good art community and a wonderful oekaki board as well. I pretty much joined because I want to oekaki again... the good old days of oekaki circle ^^;
3. When I first took the name "Morana-sama", it was a comeback from another decently long art hiatus. One of the things that really helped was GaiaOnline. I used to draw for art contests because I had no way to make gold. The abundance of art contests on gaia was great for my art block. I'm planning to go back to gaia and do lots of art contests <3

Games
I got a R4DS for my NDS a while ago. It's awesome. I do feel kind of bad for not supporting the gaming industry... but now I can try out so many games without doing research on them to guess whether I will like them or not. One of the most awesome things avaliable on the R4DS is Colors. I first saw Colors in an ImagineFX magazine that I was reading at the bookstore (I want to get a subscription... but it's more expensive than NewType!). Colors is pretty much an oekaki program for the DS. It's such an awesome idea. But I'm having some trouble with it... since the way I draw is very line dependent and lineart and coloring are such seperate things for me... it's really hard for me to work on one layer. But colors is a great program non-the-less. I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes art and has a flash card for his/her DS. I really like the interface for Colors, it's simple and intuitive. It even has pressure sensitivity!

I have a tendency to play a lot of games "at once". Or more like I'm playing one game, gets "stuck" or start another game at the same time. Some games that I'm currently "playing" are: Zelda: Twilight Princess, Drawn to Life, Castlevania: Dawn of sorrow, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy III, Kingdom Hearts I, Final Fantasy XII... this list is pretty long... I'm probably going to work on FFXII over spring break so that I can play the DS sequel. But there's a problem with my PS2 memory card. When I bought my PS2, we couldn't find a memory card anywhere, so I ended up buying a "Memory Manager Plus". It's pretty much one memory card with twice the amount of memory as a normal PS2 memory card... catch is... it needs a boot cd. When I brought my memory card back to CMU after winter break, my roommate's PS2 refused to read the boot cd. So now I'm kind of worried since there's so many files on there that I need... all those hours... argh... I'm hoping it will work if I try it on my ps2 (since it was fine all winter break). I have my boyfriend's ps2 memory card too so I'm going to copy the files onto his before I buy my own "normal" ps2 memory card...

Life
I still need to get my driver's license... my permit expired which means I have to do the whole process again... starting from the test... argh! I'll be taking the written test this thursday...

This is probably my longest journal entry ever. Sorry for taking up so much space on everyone's firendlist... I guess I just feel like writing today ^^;