It Started with a Journal

I have been watching a bunch more K-drama. :D

The only problem with watching K-dramas is that I can't multitask; I have no idea WTF is going on if I'm not reading the subtitles. (That said, it kind of explains why I am sometimes lost with my English-speaking shows; I think I am successfully multitasking when in fact I am only moderately successful.)

Anyway, I finished One Fine Day. It was one of the more maddening shows I've ever seen, even though the two leads were good and I liked the main storyline. What I DIDN'T like, however, far overshadowed those things. ( Spoilers. )

jade_okelani and I also finished a watch of High School King of Savvy, which is still one of my fave dramas of all time, due almost entirely to how amazing Seo In-guk is in it. <3 Jade liked the overall story of Oh My Ghostess more, but preferred the ending of HSKOS, which manages to have one of the most satisfying endings evar.

In a bid to see which drama we'd watch next, we went through six pilots this weekend. :D We each picked three dramas that interested us, and then we let the Decider Machine determine the order. ( In that order, we watched... )

On my own, I've also been watching What's Up Fox?, another show from 2006. It would seem that the leap from 2006 to 2007 was HUGE, because from 2007 onward, dramas all seem a step up in terms of writing, filming, directing, etc. Anyway, I've liked this one more than I thought I would. ( Synopsis and other spoilery things. )

Seahawks vs Green Bay... I don't... I can't... what an embarrassment. Does the team have an "off" switch when they play games on the road? They're 0-4-1 this season with 2 TDs. TWO. WTF. Our offense is offensive to me. Not that the D was that great this game, either. I realize Earl is gone, and that was always gonna hurt. I expected them to lose this game -- they were playing at Lambeau, they've been shitty on the road, they were coming off a big home game, Green Bay has been trending up, etc. But JFC. Oh and they snapped an 85-game streak of not losing by more than 10 points.

Almost as bad as the team doing poorly was the crapshow they made of my fantasy football games this weekend. I managed to squeak into the playoffs in both leagues with a 7-6 record (go figure; I have a whole different cast and play entirely different people, but still managed to get the exact same record). One game is now an impossibility to win, unless Ezekiel Elliot gets like 70 points ON HIS OWN, while the other one will take monster games from LeGarrett Blount and Julian Edelman tomorrow night, which, given my luck with these things, they will not have. UGH.

I even drafted Eli Manning with the intention of playing him in place of Russell Wilson. I don't how he'll do tonight, but it certainly can't be worse than how RW played today, good gravy. I didn't end up playing Eli because I felt that I was not being fair to RW or the team coming off a good game, and I would feel really bad if Eli was horrible (very real possibility) and RW was amazing, for multiple reasons.

Next season, I am not drafting ANY Seahawks in my fantasy football leagues unless it would be absolutely ridiculous not to (like the next SEA player is miles above the next-best). It's too fucking stressful. Every week, I end up not playing FF the smartest way because I have to consider stupid shit like "feeling guilty" if RW has a good game. If I have no Seahawks on the roster, it won't matter who I put in; I just have to pick the best players, and the Seahawks doing well or poorly won't affect my FF games (well, other than when my opponent has a SEA player, of course).

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I was felled this last week by some kind of cold or flu or whatever the hell. This one was brutal. When I got sick in New York, it was like a little baby cold compared to this one. That one I was completely over with in less than two weeks, and never even got to the really bad symptoms. This time has been the mother of all viruses. (And how annoyed am I to get sick twice in such quick succession??) I'm still not fully over it, but am on the road to recovery. A few days ago I was like, LET ME DIE, I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. I don't even know how/where I got this thing. And if it's the flu, eff you flu shot for not covering this strain.

Oh, and even better? Aunt Flo came to visit. So I had to deal with that on top of body aches and hacking my lungs out.

On a more positive side note, have you heard of Thinx? It's period underwear, to put it bluntly. It's my second month using them (I have a full cycle set), and it's official, I love them. jade_okelani is a fan as well. You can read this article to learn more; I've read several like it where women tried to use them as their ONLY source of protection, and I think they're nuts. Or their cycles must be quite different from mine.

( More TMI. Seriously, I am very frank in here, so don't click if you don't wanna know. )

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I have accomplished the feat of finishing two of my many WIP K-dramas. I finished High School: Love On, which was okay, and Coffee Prince, which was better than okay but had the most boring and annoying side pairing of all time. I've also watched a few more episodes of Oh My Venus, which has gotten to a super angsty part, and I have no idea where they're going to go from here. It's quite disappointing, actually, that it started out so lighthearted and cute and has now brought us to this. Sigh. Henry Lau is still the best part of the drama. Also? Much of it seems to hinge on the viewer finding So Ji-sub brutally attractive. I mean, he IS attractive; he's just not THAT hot (to me).

Because of finishing off two of them, I allowed myself to start a new one -- "Hello My Teacher" aka "Biscuit Teacher and Star Candy." It stars Gong Yoo and Gong Hyo-jin. Gong Yoo is the primary male lead from Coffee Prince that I ended up really loving, and Gong Hyo-jin is the female lead from Master's Sun. She's another one of those actresses who gets a lot of work and critical accolades, and I don't understand why. To me she's basically Korean Maggie Gyllenhaal. Anyway...

Synopsis: Na Bori is a 25-year-old woman who desperately wants to be a teacher at the high school she was expelled from, so that she can work with her high school crush, young art teacher Ji Hyun Woo. However, the only thing that enables her to get the coveted job is by signing a contract to essentially babysit Park Tae In, a 20-year-old troublemaker who starts attending the high school, of which he quickly becomes the king.

I'm sure I found it when looking stuff up on High School King of Savvy. Anyway, Gong Yoo plays the troublemaking high school student. :D I've only seen the pilot, and so far I'm "meh" on it. It seems to have all the stereotypical characters you'd expect of a K-drama, as well as flight-of-fancy fight sequences and such. I suppose such things should be expected, given that it aired in 2005. The content and the format (it's in 4:3 aspect ratio, *shudder*) shows its age. I'll give it a few more episodes to see if Gong Yoo and Gong Hyo-jin can somehow work their magic.

So first things first... in case there was ANYONE out there who was actually waiting for the second part of the High School King of Savvy giftset, I decided to just add it to the original post, because really, it just all belongs together.

Next, I should be talking about the other K-dramas I'm in the middle of, right? Well I hate to be predictable, so NO! I am not going to run through those right now! Instead I'm going to talk about cosmetics and skin care and all that, because I have SO MUCH STUFF NOW due to Sephora's annual VIB sale and also Black Friday.

First, here are my beauty boxes from November: ( Birchbox, Ipsy, and Sephora Play! )

I got a ton of stuff during Sephora's VIB sale, most of which I have not yet used. I did try out Urban Decay's Sheer Liar, recommended by akscully, and I LOVE it. It's in their new formula, and I don't know how it compares with the old, but it works for me.

Then, over Black Friday weekend, I went to the Etude House site, and OMG. Their prices are reasonable to begin with, and there were a bunch of things on sale, and you could take an EXTRA 40% off on top of that! I'd practically lose money NOT to take advantage! :P Anyway, so yeah, I just piled a bunch of stuff -- mostly lipstick -- into my cart and hit purchase. I have since been contacted and told that one of the items isn't available, so they could refund everything, or reorder everything minus that item, and refund me the difference. I said I wanted to do the latter, but I haven't heard from them since, and it's already been 3 days. WTF Etude House? Are you sending me my piles of makeup or not?