(no subject)

Had to wake up very early yesterday morning to get ready to leave home. Marie had already left the house with Dad in the van, so I went with Mom in the car. Brought Tetris Party Deluxe (Wii) and the first five volumes of Yotsuba&!, which I had gotten from the library the previous night. Read the first two volumes as we drove.

Anyway, shortly before we arrived here at Lake Owasco, we stopped by at Brian's apartment, and spent almost an hour there before taking him with us here. He forgot his Game Boy Advance, but said he could go back to retrieve it during the week. (Mom was surprised, after asking, that I hadn't been there since 2006.)

So, we got here, I had a nap, and then brought my backpack upstairs and took out my laptop. At first, the Internet wasn't working, and it didn't exactly help that Brian was out on his kayak at the moment. So, I decided to pass the time by playing Pokemon Diamond for a bit. It's fully playable, but the sound on this particular DS (the gold one, which was described as "refurbished" by the seller) was even glitchier than normal. Usually, it's just certain notes in a given background song not playing, but this time, I was unable to hear half the sound effects. Even plugging in a headset (Marie's, in this case) didn't fix it, but it (ironically) seemed to fix itself only seconds after I unplugged them.

So anyway, Brian comes back, he's able to fix the Internet, and I'm able to access the Longwood Public Library website. Except that I can't check Twig, which is what I use to check my email when using my laptop. I don't remember if I even attempted to check my email when we were in New Jersey last April, but the fact that Twig is down on the very same day that we just got here (and is still down right now) doesn't exactly seem coincidental.

That said, rather than hope that Twig will be back up anytime this week, I've decided instead to PM Chelle and nanashi-no through DeviantArt and ask them if they've read any emails I sent them (regarding a commission involving Parasitic Trio). Both of them got back to me, but it became a moot point with the latter after I asked her (for the second time) to enlarge the girls' breasts a little bit. She cancelled the project in question and asked me not to commission her anymore.

Admittedly, I have only myself to blame for asking for something she already refused to incorporate, especially after I already made it optional. But then again, I did say "moderately" large, and given how big Rokuna's breasts were in Bikini Giantess Rokuna (smaller than I usually prefer; also similar to Forte's from Galaxy Angel), and that Chelle didn't make very big a deal over it when I first posted it (save for a reference in the description), I didn't think it would be too much to ask. Also, I would consider that a bit overreactive of nanashi to completely burn bridges with me after I only asked a second time. Well, what's done is done, and hopefully, I'll find someone else who can draw more than half-decently and doesn't charge as much as nanashi. In fact, I might have already landed myself someone since last night.

Anyway, been a rough day yesterday, what with all that and the shower not heating up enough before I asked Dad to turn the boiler on. Mom suggested I might feel better if I took a second one, but I decided it was enough, and just got ready and went to bed. Here's hoping that it goes uphill from here on and that Ami-Mizuno-KiRa actually is interested enough to draw something up for me.

(no subject)

Might as well get this off early while it's still fresh on mind. Not much is gonna happen after I finish typing this before we all go to bed.

Anyway, Mom went to several places today with Brian and Marie, and also to meet with Grandma Ella, Grandpa Bob, Aunt Allison, Uncle Blas, Cousin Steven, Grandma Barbara, and Aunt Marie. Grandma Barbara had brought me a carrying case full of anime DVDs that Cousin David intended to give me. Most of them were Yuu Yuu Hakusho, but it also included Read Or Die and volume 7 of FLCL. Seeing no shortage of anime that I'd be more interested in (especially with a Netflix account at hand), I'm most likely going to sell all of them at some point (except for ROD). Brian and Steven don't watch a whole lot of anime, so that rules out giving them to either of them instead.

Brian brought his Game Boy Advance to the house upon coming back, and I was able to load a Drash Berry onto my copy of Pokemon Sapphire with little trouble. No such luck with Ruby.

First of all, the battery in Ruby has inevitably run dry, which means that I won't be able to cultivate berries in that game since the internal clock won't work anymore. Well, that saves me the trouble taking out my Surfing Pokemon, making my way to Petalburg Gym, and obtaining a berry from Norman in that game. I read that you can get this remedied, but only at the cost of all your saved data. Not an option anytime before I get to the PAL Park in Diamond, nor will it be necessary ever. If I ever decide to start a new game with Ruby or Sapphire, it will be from my yet-to-be-purchased second GBA set.

This leads to the next issue: As it turns out, each card pack comes with two sets of cards. The pack I opened had the design for Freezing Ray, but also comes with a Seizing Poison set. That means that I had a second berry card in the pack (in this case, a Pumkin Berry) which went unused. Good thing that I'm only using these to transfer onto Diamond, where they'll be converted into Enigma Berries, but if I had any way to know any of this in "Advance", I could have saved myself half the money I spent on all three packs and the second e-Reader and just stuck with my first purchase.

Even more inconsistent than this situation is the e-Reader's limited success as a product. That thing never got released in the PAL region, and only the first card series ever saw the light of day in North America. There do exist card packs for Emerald, Coliseum, and FRLG, but they only got released in Japan.

Even more inconsistent still are the various kinds of berries you can download. Some of them cure status ailments, but a lot of them can only be converted into PokeBlocks (and not the best kinds you can get either; Nutpea Berries in particular are completely useless even as blocks). I also read on GameFAQs that you can only have one variety at a time.

What it comes down to, that is all the more reason to eventually write Parasitic Trio, given that half the point of that ficseries will be to write a fleshed-out version of the games. In that story, they will all be obtainable at the Battle Frontier I or the PAL Park (except for Chilan Berries, which can be obtained in-game and function differently in the Gen IV games), and they only exist to become Poffin. (I said Poffin, because May will already be due for Sinnoh after spending one week at the aforementioned Frontier I.)