Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Having an Elsa Moment



Maybe a month ago I was flipping through sermon notes from last year. My sermon notes resemble the ramblings of Mystery Science Theater 3000. And I came across this quote that I heard in a sermon.

"God hates sin so much that he saw my sin on his son and he killed his son."

Then my face did this.


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Even a year ago, I thought that was pretty stupid. Now it's just another thought that crystallizes like an icy blast.

I still go to church events because I know some sweet, genuine Christians. But there's a certain kind of arrogance that I would have accepted unquestioningly in college--and that's what I'm never going back to.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Things about being in your 20s....

Every year since my late teens, I've found new wrinkles. First it was my eyelids, because I started using eyeshadow and had no idea how to apply it gently or wash it off properly.

Yeah....I can't believe how lax I was about washing my face in college. I didn't even know there were special soaps for removing makeup. No one ever freakin' told me, so I kept wondering why hot water wasn't doing it. Seriously, are girl things like some Mason's Guild-esque secret???? I think the rule is as soon as you find out something girly, you have to pretend you knew it all along. Or admit you didn't in a voice that says, "Silly me! I can't believe I didn't shave my arms until last year. What a cavewoman, amirite?"

Anyway, first it was the eyelids. Then...probably either the lines on my wrists (I have extremely bony hands and thin wrists) and on my forehead. That was all during college.

Then last year I got a desk job and lines appeared UNDER my eyes because I was using a computer all day. Wearing PC glasses did not make them disappear.

This year it's smile lines!!!!!!!!

And seriously, they are the WORST. They're always just waiting at the corners of your mouth, ready to spring into action the next time you find something funny, making you look sad and pouty until they fade again. Why did they appear? Probably genetics. I've been getting new wrinkles for the last five years, and I'm sure the crows feet will be next. Also there's not much fat on my face and I haven't been moisturizing worth shit.

I realize it's inevitable and even really young-looking people have flaws, but seeing laugh lines on my face was a moment of panic. I kept thinking Quinn Morgendorfer-style "My laugh lines are cute, my laugh lines are tiny, I DO NOT HAVE LAUGH LINES!"

But I had to face reality. And I resolved that even though I was stuck with signs of aging, I would not go gentle into that good night, and have consequently fortified myself with a wide variety of skin care products to postpone the inevitable. I may do another post about just how many different goops you can buy for skin in Japan. (Some over $100 dollars.)

The lines are still there, but as soon as I started moisturizing my skin looked a lot happier. Lines I thought I couldn't do anything about suddenly got much less noticeable. Actually, I barely use concealer now because it always looked gloppy and didn't cover up dark circles anyway, and only made the lines more obvious. Huh. Moisturizer clears that up before I even put any base makeup on.

My goal is that even if I'm doomed to be lined by thirty, at least I can do my best to have soft, clear skin.

It's been a long time...

I've been either coding or memorizing Japanese in almost every spare moment, so haven't had as much time for blogging recently.

The most interesting thing I've done this month is do some modeling for a friend to show off a dress she designed. I'm supposed to be a lost doll looking for my owner, or so the story goes. This was my first experience modeling, so I can see why people say it's a lot of work. No kidding!

Yes, technically it's all other people doing your hair and makeup and deciding how you should pose. But sitting still for an hour while someone else does stuff to your face (which you obviously can't see), and puts fake eyelashes on you--not easy!

And then when you're posing you have to stand one way for 10 seconds, and then look the other way, and never move too fast because it will mess up the photos. And have the right expression. It gets tiring. Not to mention I was outside in November in a flimsy doll dress and pumps. Between all the shots I was huddled into my jacket.

Not to mention I dripped hot wax on my leg and couldn't get it out of my tights.


We also got harassed by a bunch of drunk Japanese guys who thought it was totally okay just to stand around and watch and shout encouragement to us. It's hard enough pose right without a group of strangers treating you like you're some animal in a zoo.

However, I like trying something weird and new and I'm interested to see how the pictures turned out. The goth makeup isn't really my thing (it doesn't even match the dress imo) but I think they'll look really otherwordly.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Programming--No Syntax Errors!

Yesterday I tried to write my own program and it ran the first time I tried it with no syntax errors! This is a with any program I've tried, even when I'm following directions. Of course, the program still didn't do what I wanted...

This week's topic was functions and I don't understand them that well so on Saturday I tried making my own program that included a function. A very simple function. In fact, I just used one of the chapter examples. I wrote down some code in a notebook and then tried it on my computer, making sure all the colons were in the right places.

The program was just to take your birth month and birth day and add them together for a "secret number." The function was adding two numbers together.

Surprisingly, it started running no problem. The prompts came up. But when the answer showed up it was "716" which meant it was adding the numbers as strings instead of integers. So I went back and changed the line int(month) to month = (int)month, ran the program again, and got the answer I wanted, which was 23.

However, the program still didn't work the way I wanted it to because of the error messages. I had put in a try/except clause, but the program just kept going when I entered weird information, so it gave something like "Julyquit" as the final result. So I added quit() to the except clause and that stopped the program every time I entered something that couldn't be converted into an integer.

Overall, it was a good feeling to be able to use a function correctly. And even though I still had to do some debugging, I felt very knowledgeable to be able to think, "Ohhhh it didn't actually convert to an integer," or "I need an extra line of code here," instead of "OH NO HOW DID I SCREW IT UP?????"

Next week is loops, which I also know nothing about but hopefully I'll get the hang of it eventually.