Birthday presents part 1

Happy birthday to me :) Now I'm 21. That is not reflected on the presents I got today (next batch comes on Saturday when the family shows up for cake).

Day starts out with pancakes with vanilla ice cream and strawberry jam for brunch :) Then I got a 200g bar of Marabou milk chocolate with Dime in  from a friend :D Then I got my presents from Love. Three of them. I opened them in order of size of course, smallest first ;) The Nintendo DS game for Plants vs. Zombies. See you sometime around Christmas. I've pretty much finished everything there is on the PS3 game so now I can start over on the DS one. I'll be so lost.

Second biggest was a Harry Potter book called "Harry Potter Film Wizardry". It's amazing. It's more of a toy than a book. Except for containing loads and loads of information on the actors and the sets, the actors memories etc. It also contains loads and loads of artefacts and pop-up things. The first thing you get to actually hold in your hands is Harry's letter to Hogwarts; a parchment paper envelope with green ink writing and a Hogwarts crest and a wax stamp at the back. As you open it you're able to extract Harry's admittance letter to Hogwarts. As you keep turning pages you arrive to Diagon Alley where you can find (after opening up the spread) a product catalogue from Borgin & Burkes. Later on you're given a copy of Advanced Potion-Making with stickers to put on bottles and boxes to make them look like they contain potions or ingredients! When we arrive at Hogsmeade we're given a sheet where you can extract two sweet boxes to fold together :) Moving on we arrive at the Quidditch World Cup and we're given a programme to flick through. At the Yule Ball we're given another programme to flick through. Towards the end there's an awsome spread of the Black Family Tapestry. Then we arrive to Dolores Umbridge and we're given five Educational Decrees on paper than you can actually use and put on your wall. And (the best thing) at a page called Confidential we're given the Marauder's Map :D At Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes we're given a product catalogue. The last thing we're given is a Ministry of Magic Identity Card for Mafalda Hopkirk.

The third present (and the largest) was a huge Harry Potter-esque book (meaning it takes up all of my desk and doesn't fit in the bookcase). It's called "Harry Potter: Page to Screen" and basically tell you the story of how the films were made with loads of photos and interviews etc. How the casting was done and everything. It was quite fun to read although I didn't read all of it, I mostly flicked through the pages and looked at the photos and read whatever I though was interesting. I loved reading about Evanna Lynch who played Luna Lovegood since her story is somewhat remarkable. She started out just like the rest of us: a huge fan of the books. She was one of the lucky few who wrote to Rowling and got an answer and at the casting they realised that she was a personification of Luna. I love this book. I actually thought of buying it myself, but then I decided against it - and I got it anyway!

This night we will order some sushi for home delivery and then we will cuddle up in the sofa watching a film of my choice - Cutthroat Island. I wanted something piratey, but I've seen Pirates of the Caribbean too many times so I decided to let Love watch my other pirate film for the first time. Obviously it's not as great as Pirates of the Caribbean, but it's not total shit either ;)

So to sum up my 21st birthday:
• Pancakes with icecream
• Chocolate
• DS game
• Harry Potter nerdiness
• Sushi
• Pirates

And the world seriously considers me an adult? O.o

Challenge accepted

After being shown this video I kind of feel like I need to prove my nerdiness in some way, and at the same time help her prove that hot nerdy girls exist ;) (Cause seriously she's hot. The first thing I look at when she's going to show the Lord of the Rings copy around her neck is her boobs! O.o)

I've kind of done this two times before: 1 and 2.

Let's start with the obvious:

Harry Potter. I have two copies of each book. One in English and one in Swedish. I haven't actually read the sixth and seventh books in Swedish but I like to have the complete set, you know? I also have "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", "Quidditch Through the Ages" and "The Tales of Beedle the Bard". I also have had two books containing background facts about the world of Harry Potter, unauthorized by JK Rowling. The first one I got kind of fell to pieces (like my very first Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Swedish. Had to buy a new one) the second is "A Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter", which I must say isn't all that accurate. I actually had a lot of fun correcting the thing while reading it! ;) I also used to play dress-up Harry Potter as a child (so long playing with dolls, I'm off to Hogwarts!) I had a wand as a child, but it broke. Now I've ordered a new one (Bellatrix Lestrange's wand) along with a wall scroll of the Marauder's Map ^^; Oh and after I got sorted into Slytherin at Pottermore I bought two key chains with the Slytherin chest; one is on my keys and one is on my rucksack. I used to have Harry Potter Lego (it's probably still in the Lego bin at my parents' house). I also have a Quidditch card game and I have a fair few of Harry Potter Trading cards, along with the playing chart. Oh and I also loved playing Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 on my DS and I can't wait for Years 5-7 to come out which is happening real soon! Yay! :) Oh and I've played through the computer games for Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets a few times each ;) Here's my Harry Potter playlist on YouTube and if there's anything else you want to know of my Harry Potter fandom then I redirect you to this older blogpost of mine. I also used to hang out a lot at hogwarts.nu (Swedish community) before it closed down, still have contact with a few people from there though. Now I sometimes hang out at mugglarportalen.se, but thing is it's not the same. Hoggy had this amazing spirit and it's not present at Mugglis :( I kind of miss that.

Now how to top that? :P The others aren't as much fandoms as fangirl crushes... Oh well, let's take them in some kind of order.

Pokémon. I fell for them in elementary school. I still stand by that there are only 151 Pokémon, I may stretch it to 250. But I really don't like the Pokémon beyond the second generation that much. That is why I'm still playing SoulSilver on my DS ;) I love the PokéWalker! I didn't really get the hype over Black & White, although I do have White version. I don't have all my old Pokémon cards left. I sold most of them, but I kept those that I really liked and now they serve as bookmarks (I have a tendency to lose real bookmarks, but I've never lost a Pokémon card :P) I have seen the first three films and I have the entire first season of the anime on my external harddrive ;) If you throw a Pokémon from the first generation out in front of me I can probably name it without having to think (much) about it. A friend of mine used to have a poster of all the first 150 Pokémon on the ceiling above her bed and we used to lie on her bed and testing ourselves if we could remember the names of all of them xD I only have one plastic figurine left and that's Charmander, but I did buy a mobile strap with Eevee on when I was in Tokyo. I also love reading this one.

Digimon. Well I might as well. Digimon was the only thing that made me get up early every Saturday morning. (I got that sleeping-'til-'noon thing when I was about 10). I've seen the first two seasons of it and I have the first season on my external harddrive. I never collected the cards, but I used to know the names of all the Digimon and what they evolved to, similar to what I knew about the Pokémon. Thing is I can still find watching Digimon fun, that's not really true for Pokémon anymore.

Pirates of the Caribbean. Wow, I can't believe it's soon going to be 10 years since the first film was released... I feel so old... Anyway, the first film got me into a kind of big frenzy. I read up on pirates in general, both on the Internet and in books. I bought a book about it. I had a pirate flag in my room and I still have a pirate cushion. I know all the lines of the first film by heart. The DVD with the extra material on it has gotten jumpy due to me watching deleted scenes and bloopers too much. That film also got me a huge fangirl crush on Johnny Depp and I started watching every film I could find starring him. I've kind of gotten over that one by now. But Pirates of the Caribbean is still going strong. I love his entrance in the first film, I love this song and I love this cover. I have Lego Pirates of the Caribbean for my DS, but I haven't really tried to play it yet.

Hello Kitty. Not even slightly possible to skip that one. I can buy anything because it's Hello Kitty on it. I have socks and shirts with that cat on them. I've got a tin can no longer filled with caramels, saved just because it's Hello Kitty on. I even saved the soda can with that cat on ^^; I still love Hello Cthulhu. It's such a shame that in Sweden Kitty is percieved as something only little girls can wear and have. So loads of children's clothing and stuff have Kitty on them but not adult ones. There are also a lot of make-up and creams that have Kitty on them - but I don't really use that :/ I have Hello Kitty case for my DS and loads of DS Hello Kitty stuff that came with it. I also have four mobile straps with Kitty on. This is my current desktop background:

Manga & Anime. I used to have a really big one for that. It started with Pokémon, Digimon and Sailor Moon. Then it evolved to Naruto, xxxHolic, Chobits... really I've seen a lot of them! I lost interest in anime first cause I always found the manga so much more interesting and funny to read. I used to buy a lot of them. One time I counted my manga volumes to about 400, of course 40 of them were One Piece, 15 Naruto and another 15 Fullmetal Alchemist, but you get the point. I used to have a really big thing for CLAMP so I had loads of their mangas, other than them it was mostly shounen that I liked. Oh and the gothic style of Kaori Yuki! I got a slight back-glimpse at anime when Kajsa showed me the anime for Nana (I had previously read Paradise Kiss). I watched the entire anime with her, then I found OneManga (which is currently not working because of copyright issues) and there I read all the mangas I was currently reading plus a fair few one shots and I started on several new ones. Now I've sold most of my manga volumes. I still have my 45 One Piece ones and some odd ones like the first volumes of Azumanga Daioh and School Rumble, and I don't really read a lot of manga anymore. I only keep track of five; FairyTail, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto and D.Gray-Man.

I think this next one is more dorky than nerdy, but whatever.

Greek and Nordic mythology. I started with Greek mythology in about sixth grade. I read everything I could find, mostly on the Internet. It came to an abrupt end when I (at the age of fourteen) gave myself the task of making a family tree of the Greek gods. Fantastically impossible! Then I went through a phase where I wanted to find myself a faith and I went for the old Nordic gods. So I learned all about the myths, the gods, ceremonies all that I could find! In the end it stopped being for the faith (I finally found myself comfortable with being an ateist) and it became to be only for the fun of knowing and reading up on the mythology.

Code Lyoko. I spent an entire summer watching this show. It's four seasons of pure cartoon awesomeness. The first half of the first season is really not that great but then you start getting some hints of a background story. And the fourth season is just wow. Anyway four high school kids find an abandoned factory which contains a super computer. They start up the super computer and find that it holds a virtual world, where they also find Aelita; a girl who apparantly lives there. In this world there's also XANA an evil entity that tries to take control over and destroy our world. To stop that from happening three of the four children are scanned into the virtual world when a threat appears. There they have to fight off some of XANA's monsters to help Aelita (who can't fight herself) get to an activated tower (XANA activates towers to get to our world) where she can deactivate the tower and stop XANA. After the tower has been deactivated they press the button that makes the super computer return them to the past. All of the children remember everything that has happened but no one else does, and so the world remains unaware that XANA exists. But there's a remaining question almost throughout the entire series: who is Aelita?

Heroes. The TV-series, that is. I remember some of us had a period in school where we greeted eachother with "Save the cheerleader" "Save the world". I think that's enough to describe how nerdy we were about this.

Other small things that make me nerdy? RPG is one thing. My favourite dice is a D10 which instead of numbers has kanji. Another one is that I've seen all the six Star Wars films in the right order (the order they were filmed, not the order they take place). I've also seen the entire first season of the original series of Star Trek (I actually kind of enjoyed the 2009 film). I get the strangest associations to YouTube jokes when watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy ("They're taking the hobbits to Isengard-gard-gard-gard"). I used to watch the cartoons Batman, Superman, Spiderman and Justice League and thanks to that I know most of the characters. Spiderman is without any doubt the best of them! I have tried playing WoW, but I don't like games that tell me what to do all the time. I'm kind of good at Guitar Hero, Bejeweled and Fruit Ninja and I'm getting really good at Plants vs Zombies. I've tried out Magic the Gathering once in the beginning of the 21st century, but really we weren't that good at English at the age of 10 and really it wasn't as fun collecting them as it was collecting Pokémon and because of the lack of English and the lack of someone explaining properly I never got the game... Oh and I looooove boardgames. That's one of my reasons for buying Monopoly Nightmare Before Christmas edition:

Admittedly I have had other obsessions throughout the years, but other than these most of them were simple fangirl crushes (meaning reading everything, collecting pictures, downloading everything...). I've had fangirl crushes on Avril Lavigne, Jonas Brothers, Johnny Depp, Nightwish, Lordi, Alice Cooper, David Eddings, Neil Gaiman, Keira Knightley and most lately Ramin Karimloo :)

I think that covers most of it. Am I as good at the nerdy stuff as she is? I'm not entirely sure, but heck what to do if I don't like most sci-fi, Tolkien or MMORPG? I mean if I dislike those things I have to find supplements, right?

Dungeons & Dragons inspired fantasy RPG #2

It's been ages since last time, I know. Life kind of got in the way for at least one of us all the time. But we did manage to get together on October 29th (I know I'm lazy with the RPG blogging) the same day I had my phonetics exam. Great way to end a day, although because I got up at 7am I was tired to death around 11pm so we had to quit early :/ Anyway, if you don't remember (I know none of us did without reading old notes first) here's how it all began and where we were when this meeting started.

Ariana Stumbles the first scaly man that comes running. It doesn't really have any effect. But in that moment the entire place shakes as if from a huge earthquake and everyone lose their balance. We feel some kind of shockwave from behind - the direction from which we came.

Mirion has with the help of his Invisibility Cloak been able to move from the tunnel in which Gapy and Ariana are to the tunnel with the archers. He kills the archers then deactivates his Cloak. More scaly men comes running and Mirion recieves a cut on his arm which almost cuts his arm off. Starion heals him. Gapy hits the first one coming at him, he gets hit and falls down unconscious. Ariana tries to push him aside to be able to get past him. Starion borrows Mirion's Cloak and sneaks off into the hall beyond the tunnels. He conjures a huge Grave of Thorns which kills most of the scaly men, but when he conjures the spell another spell goes off and give each of us 15 HP damage. Gapy dies. Mirion, Ariana and Barrskägg are unconsiouc. Starion pretends to be unconscious (he's got some kind of magician in his mind that at this point tells him what to do. Starion's magic Protection saved his life.) The magician in his mind healed us and put a spell on us so we'd look dead, because now there's a person walking among us and making sure we're really dead. After this Starion's shizo-friend magician disappears (something with an old debt being repayed). We find a glass coffin or chest (blackened glass) that can't be opened by magic. At the glass there are loads of demon faces. The floor around and under the chest seems to contain loads of iron ore. Starion can't feel any kind of consciousness coming from the chest. Mirion's Perception gives us nothing. We try to destroy the ches with the weapons of the scaly men. Not even a scratch. Mirion conjures a sylph to get the rocks away from the landslide. Starion squeezes through to the outside and swims back to the surface. There is no ship. Starion flies around looking for a ship and finds none. He is discovered by a water dragon that agrees to help us in exchange for the chest. The dragon digs us out and takes the chest to his mistress. We get dropped off at the coast of Narania, because we still couldn't find the ship.

Mostly about The Sims 2

This Thursday I went out to meet a guy I had only talked to online previously. It went well actually. I'm just so ridiculously shy that I feel uncomfortable keeping eye contact for very long and then I don't know where to look. I can't talk with someone knew without having something to fiddle with (this time I ripped a napkin to pieces :P) But all in all it went well and he seems like a nice guy :P At least he said he'd like to meet again so I can't have been as weird and awkward as I thought ^^;

Moving on, yesterday and today have both been terribly boring days. I read some French books yesterday, but other than that half-hearted attempt at studying I've only been playing The Sims 2. Basically what I do is building houses. I usually get bored with the families after a while and to keep them interesting I usually do something kind of evil; like having the wife cheat on the husband with more than one sim. Having the husband abducted by Aliens makes for an Alien baby. Hurrying up the birthdays and creating new families with the children or have the teenaged sims cheat with eachothers girlfriends/boyfriends, make them run away from home, skip school (to the point where they are sent to military school) or having them sneak out every night and being brought home by the police every other night (the police yells at the parents for letting the teen sneak out). Sometimes I just kill off one of the boring sims :P Creating a big happy family without any internal problems is usually less fun than making a completely messed up family.

I also make up stories for my families. In the neighbourhood I created today my first family consists of Sayumi that fell in love with Bradley as a teenager and accidentally got pregnant. Her parents shunned her and they ran off together to start a new life. Their future contains some terribly naughty children :D I initially created two adult sims and after some cheating Sayumi had twins the very same day they moved into the new house (which made for her being pregnant as a teen without actually being it) and Bradley is already halfway through his adult life (which made for him being much older than her). This is the house I built for them:

Recently I got a thing for pillars, balconys, sloping roofs, several porches and orchards, and all my creations contain one or more of them. At least I've gotten over my fireplace period :P

The reason I'm still playing The Sims 2 and not 3 is because I tried out 3 and it was too much. So many details, it was so elaborated that it lost its fun part. I didn't like 3 because of that. 2 is what you make it out to be. 3 is just the way it is.

Oh, and because it's that day I just have to add this:

Remember, remember

the fifth of November

The gunpowder treason and plot

I know of no reason

why the gunpowder treason

should ever be forgot