(Side note: Saan got her cell phone back. Yaay! And Yif can't be Saan's cuddlebug because friends are for hugging and not for bugging)
Saan's cousin is in her second year of middle school, meaning she has her first year of English. Now, the problem with that is that she's not very good at it (yet) and has trouble with the pronounciation. So, from now on, in order to help her some, Saan has to write a short, simple story for her cousin to read out loud on Sundays.
The first one (witten today) introduced the main character and his sidekicks. There is Kobe the Cougar (owner of a club), with his flatmates Dandy the Dingo (a ladykiller who works in a clothing store) and Sam the Seal (who ate their goldfish last night). They all live in Manhattan And then, of course, to assure some romance in future episodes, there is the pretty Filly the Ferret, Kobe's girlfriend, who he often takes out to eat hotdogs with. The stories ('Kobe's Adventure's'), according to the story up till now, get written by Kobe's secretary, Zippo Hippo.
She managed to smear that out across half a page. Probably you all will receive a desperate help-the-blocked-writer plea next Friday. So far, Saan's little sis has helped her brainstorm on future titles, such as 'Kobe Cougar Is Bored', 'Kobe Cougar Learns Ballet', 'Kobe Cougar Discovers The Internet', 'Kobe Cougar Gets Drunk', 'Kobe Cougar Reads A Book', 'Why Filly Ferret Will Not Be Called Fanny Ferret No Matter How Much You Whine', 'Kobe Cougar Goes To The Cinema', 'Kobe Cougar Cheats On His Girlfriend', 'Kobe Cougar Buys New Fish'... And so on and so forth. Those might or might not become actual stories. The goal was to make simple stories, at the difficulty of your average Miffy book, but with slightly more interesting topics, and a handful of new words in each story. Perhaps a moral in some might be a good idea. Saan's cousin is fourteen and enjoys a laugh.
If Saan can't think of a post for tomorrow and her cousin has sent the file by then (or has given along the story to add a glossary), you'll probably get the story. As a matter of fact, you guys just might end up being test audience (or real audience) for these little things because Saan is too lazy (or too late) to think of something better.
Saan is once breathing that 'survived another week of back-breaking amounts of homework' sigh.
She checked time zone differences with New Zealand and Belgium. It's eleven hours. Saan's gonna cry if her package hasn't arrived by Monday. Really.
Saan has an oral exam (not that kind, you gutter-minded readers out there) of (not the medical or genetical kind either) French (see?!) on Monday. The plan is to make a small lecture on a French film. Saan's group's using 'À folie? Pas du tout!' (English version: 'He loves me, he loves me not'). Saan has her obsessions, but nothing quite as longterm or serious as the chick in this movie. Erotomania was not a word she needed to learn today. Really. People who build shrines with used bits and pieces (well, not the physical kind) of other people are creepy to Saan. It's just... ew.
Her cell phone's fixed. But her mom hid the receipt, so she won't get it back until tomorrow. Boooo!
Saan's bro is back from his team building week! Meaning Saan has a cuddlebug again. (Well, she bugs him with cuddling. Cuddlebug. It fits. Sort of.) Also meaning all computer problems accumulated in the past five days will mysteriously vanish in the following two.
Her French-speaking pen-pal sent her an e-mail. Once more, Saan shall have to take the time to figure out the bits that got a bit jumbled up in the sentence. She's not going to complain, because she knows she's worse than her pen pal when it comes to that sort of thing. So far, she's going to presume that the mystery word meant 'leader'. Or something close to it. She's completely lost if it isn't.
Yeah, she forgot to post last night. Try to take comfort in the fact that she's feeling mightily guilty about it and made up for it by filling up the empty date. Check if you like.
Saan has a biology test tomorrow. On blood and osmosis (so pretty much the entire term's course). She's taking a seven minute break at the moment, because visions of exploding fish and cherries and pink hormones are dancing evilly in front of her eyes. That, and the strangest hints tend to sneak into Saan's notes due to a few wanderings off subject by the teachers. So far, it's been mostly about gardening, cooking and how to put people with fish allergy into a coma. These off-topic diversions happen with about every biology teacher. Saan's first biology teacher always had a way of going from the most innocent subject, such as a leaf pattern, to stories of horrible loss of limb(s). Her second dropped the occasional quote from books with titles such as 'the little penis book'. Her third and fourth were always behind in class and never had time for stories. And now this one is proving to be a Martha Stewart clone. The down side to all the story telling (and a congress in Poland) is that the lessons get all jumbled, and some things don't make it to paper, but do find their way to Saan's test. Or, they get two words and then Saan has to write three whole lines on them. And half of it isn't even Saan's fault. Or she gets questions about trivial things, the ones you do not put in your synthesis and then gape at in confusion for five whole minutes. Such questions, since teachers do not like the You-Never-Fucking-Told-Me-This-Dash, require a careful balance of course knowledge and a vivid imagination. And the test is during lunch hour due to lack of time. So, everyone out there reading this, burn a candle for good luck for Saan (or ignite a digital one somewhere) between 12.00 and 12.50 tomorrow afternoon. Saan is now going back to the exploding wildlife (oh, and the sketch of the medieval fortress under siege that was not an idle doodle but actually part of the lesson) and hoping she'll get it all pumped into her head by tomorrow.
Time zones are confusing. Meaning Saan hasn't got her package yet. And so she's pouting behind her pc until she gets it. Or until she has to leave for school tomorrow morning. Whichever comes first.
While Saan appreciates Artemis' offer for help with her letter, she managed (with some serious help from her good friend Mr. Dutch-French dictionary) to get something on paper. Her brand new pen pal is going to have a few snigger-moments while reading, but, then again, so had Saan when reading her own letter.
And to answer the question: she writes in English mainly because she's got the habit of doing so whenever she starts typing without educational reasons on her pc. And she likes to write. She wanted to make sure that she kept on writing at least something every day that wasn't fanfiction. Maybe someday she'll get a story fully her own. So far the most succesful thing she's typed in Dutch is a science-fiction-esque paper on human history, meant to be the beginning of a prelude to a story. It's one page long, and the rest of it got horribly stuck (but, then again, most of Saan's stories get stuck at one point. The firm belief that predecided storylines are for sissies has somethig to do with it). It's become the base for her reading binder for Dutch, and has become completely unreadable. She usually finds more to write when she gets going in English. Her talking in English, during class, sucks. Her translations suck even more. She knows what it means, but she can't translate it because she actually gets the slight flavors that accompany a term and there isn't a word in Dutch that carries the exact same one. When it comes to holding up idle conversation or phoning to Great Britain to inform if they happen to still have a copy of that single book that went out of print last week, she's better at it. The downside of it is that Saan now has to play tolk whenever her uncle isn't around to explain.
(Hopefully) Tomorrow: Saan freaking out about the package that she won't be allowed to play with until Saint Nicholas has paid his little visit.
And Saan still has some homework to do. Ouch. Since she's pretty sure it'll take a while, she's posting early. Saan's a wee bit gleeful today because: A) She found the name of the run-with-your-dog-through-a-muddy-track-sport: canicross. Only problem: there's no place saying when you're too old for the kids cross, so that's a bit confusing. B) Someone who never commented before commented on the blog.This is Saan, taking over the net, one blogger at a time, muahahaha. C) Tomorrow, it's a new week. Meaning she should get a package from New Zealand, containing her St. Nicholas presents somewhere in it. Also, her cell phone should be fixed by Wednesday. Unless the Sony Ericsson corporation ate it. In which case, Saan's going to be sad. D) Her toe has officially stopped hurting. Hurrah. So now's Saan's off to figure out how you write a letter half in Dutch, half in French.
Because Philou challenged, and Saan's childish enough not to let it pass (no spell check, 10 minutes work):
De zwakzinnige crimineel uit de Tolpoortstraat rolde uit zijn bed en overwoog even zelftoegepaste euthanasie met een scheepsanker om aan het gedrocht van een kater (die hij de vorige nacht op zijn kroegentocht had aangekweekt) te ontsnappen. Jammer genoeg lijdde zijn tas met inbrekersgerief aan acuut ijzertekort sinds een commisaris (een man die, aangezien er gepensioneerde agenten hem nog herinnerden, met recht een brontosaurus genoemd mocht worden) ze had uitgekuist. Het peperdure stukje speelgoed dat hem eerst aan een kaasboor had doen denken, voor de smid het liefdevol een 'madelief' had geheten, kon hij die ochtend dus ook al niet meer gebruiken om alle vezels uit zijn zevengranenbrood te keuteren. Hij krabte overwegend aan een steenpuist die hij al had sinds hij via een kruipkelder uit z'n eerste jeugdinstelling was ontsnapt en begon zijn gewapende overval op de dichtsbijzijnde videotheek te plannen.
Okay, so after the shoesocks Saan got yesterday, Saan went shopping today for a new coat. And (gasp!) for once, she found it in the first shop she looked in. It's not black, but it's not, exactly, an eye-stabbingly bright color, either. It's some kind of red, with a hood (Yay! No soaky walks back home!!) that has the most evil line of fur at its edges. The fur can be zipped off (No buttons in Saan's hair). Later, she found a new top (Color's slate, or something) with a nice print on the back. Hopefully, she can wear it on one of her jeans. And find something to wear over it. And then she got three new markers for school, because her old ones were either nearly empty, or dark blue. The new ones are the size of a normal pen, meaning Saan doesn't have to struggle to fit three chunky markers into her pen case anymore. The downside of it all is that Saan lost a lot of homework time and (whoops) only started on her homework at nine pm. It's now eleven, and she's right back on schedule: somewhere halfway through the first load.
Saan's anti-slip socks were completely worn down and sacrificed to the trash can gods on Tuesday. To replace those, Saan got today a pair of ultra-warm anti-slip, sock-like slippers! Okay, so they're three sizes too big and they stick to a floor a little, but they beat woolen socks when you're talking hardwood floors. So, this winter, Saan will be running around the house in brown socky shoes, with one big W on the front of each, and dozens of little W's on the back. And not slipping her way into her room, onto the bed. And Saan's toe is feeling a bit better, too.
Today, Saan has been playing the hero in training by looking things up. Like nature-loving moth repellants. Like 5 Latin verbs for her cousin who had completely forgotten she had a dictionary of her own. Like French stuff for her grammar book (though that's still under construction). Like chocolate (which she didn't eat). Like new slippers (which will have to be returned because they're damaged). Like what genus a vendiagram had in Dutch. Like when she's stopped her pill and should start another (Tuesday night). Like OHSHC episodes. Now seems like a good time to look up her bed. See y'all tomorrow.
Saan's feeling sad because the cell-phone-shop-man couldn't fix her cell phone (which wouldn't make any kind of noise any more. No ringtones, no IM tune, no mp3 player, no FM radio, not even game sounds) at all. And then took out the SIM card and the headphones and gave those back with a piece of paper. When you know the phone cost considerably more than a sheet of green paper and all Saan's contacts she forgot to make a backup of, it seems like a rather unfair trade. She should have her cell phone (which isn't leaving the country) back around the time her New Zealand package arrives. So no music on her walk home on Thursdays and field trips for the next week, no completely irrelevant instant messages at the most ungodly hours and the need to recollect all her contacts. And no shiny orange bits and pieces. And an empty pink sock. (Lucky she made a backup of most of her pictures on it, though) ... Saan misses the jukebox-you-can-phone-with.
Saan has reached the current top of the homework mountain. And now has to clean up her stuff, because it's cleaning day tomorrow. So no post today. There will be blankies, paper, paper, byros, school-stuff, cell phones, bookmarks and loads of other stuff Saan can't remember using, but that somehow got out of place.
...On Yon Small Ink Stainh On Yon Mhap Somewone Had Jokingly Nhamedeth 'Belgium', Just To Seeheth What'd Happeneth, Yon Spoiled Bratte of Yon Sixteen Year Oldeth Experiencedeth-- Okay, so Saan's stopping that particular line of thought before she hurts herself.
Reason for the excessive cap use is that she finally ('After One Hundredth Of Yeers', like. Okay, really stopping that, now.) got the password to the paypal account to pay for her order on Home of Poi and it should be on its way by tomorrow. Also, she's got a five percent discount, on top of the LED poi she'd been drooling over losing about five euros of their original price. Meaning she's got twelve euros and some change left of her Saint Nicholas budget. So she'll probably find a post packet with barbie-pink fluffy poi and her blue LED poi for Saint Nicholas. The day after, there's... exams.
Luckily, she's got 6 hours of time for Latin this year, lifting some of the pressure you get when you prepare for a four-hour exam. Apart from Maths and Latin being placed in rather closed together, her exam schedule could've looked a lot worse. Now she only needs to get started in her book for French and perhaps start reviewing the 'short' (16 pages) review of Latin Poetry, mainly in the Golden Century. And then there's... Virgil with descriptions of landscapes even he admits are meant to fall asleep over and Tedious-Puppy-Dude-Who-Can't-Get-Over-Himself-Or-His-Girlfriend. But it could have been worse. Saan should probably have that printed on a T-shirt. No one's telling her they'll fail half the class just yet. No one's scrambling to see enough stuff to make it to the exam yet. So it's probably going to be alright.
Edit (8 minutes later): Saan's order has been shipped and should arrive within 7-9 working days. Gotta love time differences over spaces of 20.000 km.
What's this? Saan posting her daily message before she actually should have been asleep? The reason: Saan's still typing out her report on the practical chemistry lesson.
She's nearly finished with her first list of petpets. Naalala's the last victim. She's also the most expensive puppy in the box. Her next list's full of petpets which should cost about 5000 NP. Because they're easier to resell. And get the NP.
Her chart for physics turned out great. She stared at it for a full five minutes after it was finished and saved. Oh, and she's already finished her translation assignment for Friday.
To come back on yesterday's subject: Saan's now missing a pretty big chunk of toenail. And her toe hurts. It's wrapped in band aids. And it still hurts.
And, because she's still got her French stuff to repeat later, this post's short.
Saan did some auto-surgery on her toenail today (read: she cut away some dead skin and started bleeding) and is now limping on the left side. But at least it's stopped being yellow. And it doesn't sting quite as bad anymore than when she dabbed some 70% alcohol disinfectant on it. She did find out that disinfectant not only dissolves glue, but also does some serious damage to biro-written/drawn stuff (Uhm... Yif? Part of your doodle was contaminated. Accident! It wasn't much, and the most important bit's still untouched). It also took all the color off of the half-faded Windows emblem on her pc. Maybe it's time for Linux, or perhaps Ubuntu.
She also heard that, although her down-filled fluo monstrosity of a winter coat isn't ruined beyond belief, she's getting a new, preferably black coat. One that can be washed without giving her mom a nervous breakdown. Saan's demands: a cap and comfort.
Jittering some with colors and batteries and extra's, Saan managed to find a way in which she can get two pair of poi for Saint Nicholas. Fluffies and LED sock poi. And hopefully some chocolate. White chocolate. Lots of it.
She finished her Anita Blake book (and is already jumping for more) and finished 'The Truth' from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. She got started in 'Men At Arms' and wants to look up the recipe in 'Nanny Ogg's Cookbook' for Strawberry Wobbler. Provided she can find some straight champagne flutes. And gelatine. And strawberries. Maybe she can use deep-frozen raspberries instead. Oh, and she'll need an aerosol can of whipped cream. She's regretting she didn't have enough money for the 3 parts of Discworld Science and the Discworld Day Planner 2007 when she visited the Boekenbeurs. Then again, she knows where the stand's shop is: STERLING BOOKS!!!! God forbid Saan ever gets a credit card and figures out how to take the tram without feeling like she missed her stop three stops before getting on. She'd camp there. Go on, Google it, find the address, visit, buy some doggy-loving refrigerator poetry and Disworld-y goodness. Or, if you prefer, the Dalai Lama's book and The Da Vinci Code in English.
She tried to come up with a better cover for her school diary. So far the frontal theme is 'Devil's Panties'. Not satanic porn, the webcomic. Downside: It's... Wow, nearly 5 years of daily comics. Upside: there's teletubbies scaring away the Jehova witnesses and pirate-fishing and Jesus having friendly chats with Satan and Legolas in a hall closet. http://devilspanties.keenspot.com Love it.
She did do homework. Honest. After she gave Yif her scarf (for which Yif still needs to pay her back, before Saan gets lynched by her mom). And played some on Neopets. And rebooted the pc. Before she went to the restaurant. Really.
She made a list of things she did wrong and needs someone else to fix. She made holes in her brand new gloves and doesn't know how to fix it. Her mom does. She removed the stickers off her paperbacks with her nails. Two are scratched up enough to make her regret it. So, she needs about... 10 books covered in self-adhesive plastic. Her mom's great at it. And she needs her toe made better, which her dad can help her with. The table-wrestling in Excel or Word will get solved with some help from her big brother, who's feeling a bit under the weather, but went out drinking anyway.
Today, Saan: -Developed an interesting ache in her neck. And back. -Managed to make a single mum with five kids work (up 'till now) on the Sims 2. -Didn't forget not to leave her shoes lying around in her bedroom -Wanted to practise her poi some, but it was dark by the time she finished dinner -Messed around some with her Saint Nicholas budget. So far, it works. Now, to convince her mother. -Didn't do any homework -Got a French-speaking pen pal -Is going to sleep -Should send a message to a classmate before midnight.
Saan's still suffering from post-free-week-jetlag and just wants to go to sleep. Her current plan is to go to sleep as soon as possible. To make sure you guys don't suffer too much from her state of half-consciousness, there are... ...The game Maths Nightmare ...The webcomic Count Your Sheep ...Dannygirl's Delicious Knockout Sleep-Aid ...The Fuzzy Dice to fall asleep on (or the 100-sided die to count the numbers of until you fall asleep) from AdvancingHordes ...Some fuzzy sickness to sleep off. ...A bit of fun and games, to burn off that last bit of energy of the day. ...Some X-tra soft and Fluffy Poi, for those die-hard spinners so far gone they need something to twirl day and night...without risking murder of any bedmates. ...And , perhaps, someday, her brother's website, if he finds a new server. The previous link was www.slapie.tk. Now, however, it's dead. It was tons of fun while it lasted, and might return. Especially when his classmates start asking about the study-aid Rubes dumped on it (site crashed due to excessive use during most exams), together with humorous pictures of sleep and things you do not remember after waking up from a night of drunken fun. Because sleeping sucks when there's a party to go to.
See TheSeals, the Lupe of the Official Irreality For Dummies Neopets Account Irreality4Dummies, is sick. He's got bubbles. Saan's insanely ( <-) mad quest for tons and tons of petpets (current petpet count: 37) while she tries to get the Pack Rat avatar (301/1000 items, petpets included) has been put on hold until she's got enough money she isn't spending on stupid stuff that keeps popping up to afford the medicine. So now Saan's playing her less favorite games until she has all the cash she needs. The picture was shamelessly stolen from the Neopets site and so does not belong to Saan.
Yif made a digitally colored version (okay, so a better digitally colored version) of the Halloween chibi, based on the one Do colored with pencils and I ruined in PSP8. ... Saan's feeling awfully jealous right now (and so should you; Yif's better than you at this, so there). On the other hand, she didn't have to come up with a topic for today's post! Thanks, Yif!
See TheSeals, the Lupe of the Official Irreality For Dummies 
<-) mad quest for tons and tons of petpets (current petpet count: 37) while she tries to get the Pack Rat avatar (301/1000 items, petpets included) has been put on hold until she's got enough money she isn't spending on stupid stuff that keeps popping up to afford the medicine. So now Saan's playing her less favorite games until she has all the cash she needs. The picture was shamelessly stolen from the Neopets site and so does not belong to Saan.
