These icons aren't ads! These are easy ways to help people and animals around the world! I personally go to the Animal Rescue Site to click their button daily to donate. I'll play Free Rice whenever I can and make small donations to WFP whenever I am able to.
The Animal Rescue Site Fight World Hunger Help end child hunger

Monday, August 12, 2013

My Super-Chapped Lips?!

Ever since I've moved to Utah, I've had super chapped lips. Maybe the air is drier here than in Vegas, sometimes Vegas can get humid and maybe it has the right humidity for me, don't know but ever since I moved here, I've had super chapped lips problems and way-too-frizzy hair problems! I've learned with my super chapped lips that I cannot use just any chapstick.
I tried the classic Chapstick, in mint, cherry and regular...nope, doesn't work. It'll soften it right away and a few minutes later, it will get chapped again...and more than before.
I tried Blistex, in regular and raspberry lemonade. They didn't make my lips soft at all, they just coated my chapped lips and made it...made my lip skin...harder? I guess I can describe it as that...but it gets harder, to where I pretty much have to peel it off (gross, I know, sorry).
I tried a couple of others that I don't remember what they're called.

What does work for me:
Burt's Bees Tinted Lip Balm
https://www.burtsbees.com/other/best-sellers/tinted-lip-balm.html?cm_vc=PRODZ1

Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer
https://www.burtsbees.com/other/gifts-her/lip-shimmer.html?cm_vc=PDPZ2

Maybelline Baby Lips
http://www.maybelline.com/Products/Lip-Makeup/Lip-Balm/Baby-Lips.aspx#shadedetails

Carmex
http://mycarmex.com/lip-care/original-tube

Softlips
http://www.softlips.com/product/classic/


The Burt's Bees chapstick is the best product for me. It outlasts the others that I've listed and I looove the color! Now, I..will be honest. I only bought Burt's Bees because they were cheap and it had color. Because I don't like wearing a lot of makeup (I only wear eyeliner) and I hate lipstick, I thought tinted chapstick would be the only way to go for me to add some color to my dull look. My local Ross had Burt's Bees chapstick bundle packages for only $7!! It had beautiful colors in the package. It had the Burt's Bees Tinted Lip Balm in Red Dahlia and Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer in Fig. Now, this is a huge leap for me. I'm spending money on tinted chapstick that I don't know if it will soften my lips or look good on my lips or with my skin tone. I was hoping that since it was a chapstick, that it wasn't going to be really pigmented and thick. To my surprise, it's perfect! The Tinted Lip Balm looks a bit diluted with more chapstick but actually came out a lot more red than I thought, but it was diluted enough to give my lips a nice color, with some gloss, without over doing it. The Lip Shimmer looked so dark, pigmented and thick in the tube but once you apply it, it's actually less pigmented than the Tinted Lip Balm! It still has great color and gloss and is not overly pigmented like lipstick. (One day, I will post pics of the results...or maybe not if I don't remember. If not, I'm sorry). And just to add...even though I've never tried these before, they were such a great deal and I've heard so many great things about this brand, that I bought three of these packages! And a job and steal well done! :)
They lasted me quite awhile, it's been..quite a few months, almost close to a year ago...I know that sounds weird...and that I shouldn't keep these that long? But it's because I don't use one tube at a time. I keep one next to my bed, one in the living room, one in my car, one in both of my backpacks (one is for work and the other is for school) and one at work.

The second brand that I love is Maybelline Baby Lips in Cherry Me. I've never used this brand before so the Cherry Me was the first Baby Lips I've used, along with the color. Again, I wanted color that's subtle and not overpowering like lipstick. This is a pretty amazing chapstick, has great color (more bright and pigmented than the Burt's Bees...so it's a bit more adventurous) but it's diluted enough to look gorgeous. It's glossy and makes my lips very soft. It will soften my chappest lips, although, sometimes my lips are so chapped that my skin is pretty much dead and needs to get peeled (again, sorry for being so gross lol but it's reality for me).
Here's a pic of me with Maybelline Baby Lips Cherry Me, although it's a bit more reddish.


The other choices are listed and those work well but not as great as the first three. I really love how these tinted lip balms have worked for me because I have weird lips. Dark ontop and light on bottom (pretty common) but I have this weird dark lipline look to my lips too, as you can see from the photo.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

New "Ink It!" Covergirl Eyeliner Review

Covergirl's come out with a new product:

Ink It! By Perfect Point Plus

Get inked — without the commitment! Ink It! colors glide on smoothly and easily without skipping, dragging, or pulling. Our bright, bold shades last all day long.
Ink It! By Perfect Point Plus
/


Review: I was buying new eyeliner and decided that my new favorite was Covergirl's Eyelights in Pearl Black (I think that's what the color was called). It's my favorite because it was the longest lasting eyeliner I've ever used that doesn't smudge as much as others I've used and doesn't migrate into my crease as soon as others. I went into the Covergirl section and saw this display. It was also one of the cheapest eyeliners they had ($5.94). It states that it is "Crease proof", "Smudge proof", "Long lasting", and "Waterproof". It also states that it allows expert precision and the darkest, boldest colors. This sounds perfect right? Well, I'll just state now that this was the biggest disappointment that I've experienced when it comes to eyeliners!

It deserves an only one rose rating because of how big the disappointment was!!

When I first tried it, I loved it. As I applied the eyeliner, it really did have a really dark, bold black color. It was very solid and smooth and glided like a breeze. It did give me great precision and because it's so bold, it looks like I've used a liquid liner without the hassle of a liquid liner. So I was really impressed and had high hopes that the other statements were true. I have oily eyelids. A horrible problem of mines, because I can't really wear eyeshadow, even with primer, it still will gather at the crease (just not as bad with the primer). So I was hoping, since this eyeliner was the only eyeliner with the "Crease proof" claim, that it really was "Crease proof".

The Eyelights eyeliner will not smudge until toawrds the end of my work day, so it will be smudge proof from 6am to about...2 or 3 pm. It also depends on how much laughing I do or smiling. It also goes into my crease but only at the end of the day and it isn't that much. I can also sleep with this eyeliner, with other eyeliners, when I sleep, it will smudge and look all crazy. This is why I love Covergirl's Eyelights eyeliner.

This Ink It! eyeliner was a huge dissapointment. It smudged after 3 hours, giving me the horrible racoon under eyes. It went into my crease. It didn't smudge on my lid where others would go into my crease and spread around on my lid, this one just creates a really defined dark line in my crease.

I haven't tested the waterproof part as I do not go swimming but since it smudges so much and even though sometimes I cry and laugh, I can't tell whether it smudged from not being waterproof or if it was already smudged.

Don't even try this eyeliner. Yes, it's dark and provides great precision, but you will not want to deal with the constant smudging underneath your eye and constant crease migrating. I will now just go back to buying the Eyelights eyeliner.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

My new office!

I loved moving out of my old apt to a 2 bedroom townhouse. It's perfect (except for the fact that the people who lived there before us....were not clean people, ew). There were a lot of things wrong with the townhouse in terms of...when the snow melted, we had bags of trash in our backyard and lots of various trash laying around, they broke a few things, etc. BUT, it's big, has a fireplace, is two-stories, has a bakcyard, allows pets and we have super-quiet neighbors :D
The one thing I was excited about was the room that was going to be converted into my office. With me in school and working at home half the time, I needed my own room where I can sprawl out my work. I also had tons of books and pretty much needed my own library. My solution, rather than just keep buying more and more bookshelfs and taking up my whole room, was to build one in my closet! I didn't need the closet in my office, obviously, since it's an office, so I googled ways to build a bookshelf in my closet. It took a few searches before stumbling on an awesome video! The thing with me is, I wanted my bookshelf a certain way. I did not want to build it with shelf brackets, as it will cause breaks in my books and not allow maximum book storage...plus, it wouldn't look as great. So this video was a lifesaver! I knew how to do it but not how to explain it to my boyfriend...he just wouldn't get it...he's more of a visual person at times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTIQxX6MrHs

I did exactly as this guy said and it turned out amazing!

Before the unveiling. Yeah, those are Bleach dolls lol 

Ta-da! I freaking love it, and it fits all of my books and more! (Yes, those are all mangas...but not ALL of my mangas)

I found a solution to my manga addiction, for now, it will do until I fill this all up too! Then I will just buy a bookshelf and hopefully my addiction will die down lol 
I also applied shelf liners to the wood to give it a more elegant, soft look rather than the plain wood look. 

And...here's more pics of my office.
My beautiful wall of calmness lol

This is my desk (IKEA Expedit desk)

I found more appealing ways to put all of my supplies in (all cheap too)

All in all, my office was renovated cheaply. I found lots of stuff on clearance or on sale. That whole wall of pictures, mirrors and clock was all on sale (shadowboxes were gifts). The pretty pearly decorative white thing was from the thrift store for $1. The other pretty, white jar things (cream, sugar, and cookie set) were on clearance for $3, the blue pencil holders (actually are candle holders) were each 20% off, the tall glass was on sale for $4, and the little cute globe was 20% but was still $8 (the most expensive thing on that desk lol). The only thing I've bought full-priced was the IKEA expedit desk. For the Buddha canvas, flower glass art, leaf glass art, and the forest canvas, it was all discounted but was only $90 all together. Sounds like a lot but they're bigger than they look and that includes shipping. The mirrors were on clearance for $5. Below the collage is a bookshelf that holds my printers and wireless equipment, but also a Buddha statue, two Himalayan salt candle holders ($7 each) and two fish bowls ($1 for the geometric one and $2 for the round one) with bamboo and bettas in it. It's amazing what yo can buy at thrift stores or when things go on clearance or sale. 
My boyfriend always complained about me buying stuff in our old apartment since I bought all of this stuff over time before I moved and it took up some space, but it all paid off :D

Monday, June 10, 2013

Walmart.com Customer Service is Sh!t

Oh, how I love Walmart. No, not really...not too much anymore. Not after how shitty their payment processing is. It's like playing a game with their payment processing. Keep trying different payments and the same payments over and over until it goes through. So far only Bill me Later works...and that's only half the time. I like to buy my Virgin Mobile top-up cards through Walmart since it's cheaper and has none of those other annoying phone fees nor taxes. But trying to buy these cards are getting ridiculous. I've tried Paypal to directly fund from my bank account and to try BillmeLater. Didn't work. Tried it again for BillmeLater through Paypal. Didn't work. Tried my debit card directly. Nope. Tried BillmeLater. Fuck that. Tried Paypal to use my debit card. Screwed.
Wow, how I love you Walmart. It's like playing a game with my money. Thanks for all of the pending transactions for the next few days you piece of shit payment processing errors. WTF is wrong with your system.
Oh, and here's the best part. I decided to email walmart.com's customer service. This is our conversation. It's pretty short due to the fact that they never replied back:

My last reply back to them:

___________________________________________________________________________________
That was the most unhelpful answer I have ever received from a company. You should probably read the whole inquiry rather than pick out key words and give out stupid answers that are barely relevant.
 

----------------------------------------------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------------------------------------------
Walmart Resolutions (reso@cs.walmart.com)
6/03/13
Hi Ajanta, Thank you for contacting Walmart.com regarding the cancellation of your order. Most items that are available on Walmart.com can be purchased using Bill Me Later. However, there are a few ex
From:Walmart Resolutions (reso@cs.walmart.com)
Sent:Mon 6/03/13 10:42 PM


Hi Ajanta,
Thank you for contacting Walmart.com regarding the cancellation of your order.
Most items that are available on Walmart.com can be purchased using Bill Me Later. However, there are a few exceptions. The following items cannot be purchased with BML:
  • Digital Music Downloads
  • Photos
  • Tires
  • Pharmacy
  • Online Gift Cards
  • Live Plants
Ajanta, if we have not fully answered your question or you have additional questions, please reply to this email.
Sincerely,
Walmart.com Customer Care
Original Message Follows
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
06/03/2013 12:45 PM from you:
Hi, can you tell me why whenever I try to purchase this card, it gets cancelled. I tried Paypal to directly disperse funds from my bank account, tried Bill Me Later directly and before tried Bill Me Later through Paypal. I don't know why you can't "verify" my accounts when you've done it before. This is really frustrating and downright annoying. It's almost like playing a game, trying to see which payment will go through. Seems like Paypal never works with your website and the other form of payments are cards that you play in a game of chance. If the walmart.com payment process was materialized as a person, I would have punched it and I'm a very patient person.

Feria Power Reds Intense Deep Auburn R48


/

I DO NOT recommend this hair dye. Flat out, straight and forward, not a good dye at all and most reviewers out there agree. Which is why it got a 1 rose rating.
I know that your hair color will never turn out like the box, since my hair is naturally black, it's always darker, and I'm ok with that, I like my colors dark...but this hair dye....ugh.
For the past 2 years or so, I've been obsessed with dying my hair, and that obsession involved reds. I wanted to dye my hair something noticeable but nothing too outrageous. Weird coming from someone who used to bleach half her hair and dye it bright colors like hot pink and cotton candy blue or stick in different colored extensions. Anyways, since I've been obsessed with trying out different colored of reds in my hair, I've tried a lot of different brands and colors. Every single dye have dyed my hair to somewhat close to the box or a bit darker.
This dye, was the worst I've ever tried. It does not even look close. It's a dark, blood, cherry black color. You can't even notice the red until the sun hits it.

Background (before the dye):
My hair is naturally black, I've been dying it red for quite some time. The last dye I tried had amazing results but was not lasting at all, everyday I would see the dye come out and with other dyes I've tried, it would seep out for a week and afterwards, would be fine. This was the Garnier for darker hair with oils (not the one in my review section). I will not try that again either. So, before I dyed my hair, my hair has been faded from different tones of red (lighter by my roots, darker hair overall and lighter at my tips, the tones are due to my bleaching a long time ago and then having them grow out and trimming my hair). After the Garnier faded, my hair was a light brown to black and so I thought that it was time for a change. I actually really liked my hair before this dye job, it was red in the sun but brown and black otherwise so why I dyed my hair, I don't know. Actually, I do. Because I'm dumb. Because of the different colors in my hair or tones, everytime I dye it, regardless of which dye, it comes out with the different tones of the color...if that made any sense. It will all dye red but some parts will dye darker than others. This Feria dye, dyed my hair all ONE color, so that's weird.

During the dye:
The dye process was normal except for the many components to this dye. Most home box dyes has a big developer bottle with developer creme in it, the dye in a tinted bottle, directions, gloves, and a conditioner for afterwards (and maybe a small tube of oil). This one includes the developer bottle with cream in it, a dye in a tinted bottle, a tube of red dye, oils, shampoo tube, conditioner tube, gloves and instructions. In the box, it tells you to mix evrything in to achieve the color in the box, EVERYTHING. This made me think that the other reviewers who were unhappy, did not put EVERYTHING in and mix it. So this box comes with two dyes, a brown one and a red one. The brown one looks normal, brown, liquidy, looks like brown hair dye. Sign #1, why would a red hair dye contain this much brown hair dye, that's odd. Sign #2, why are they seperated, I don't know but the dyes that worked for me was already mixed and even though it isn't hard to put all of these ingredients in, I thought it was so the red could be super strong. I put in the oils last and shook it like no tomorrow. Started applying dye in my hair, and let me tell you, after 5 min, this dye burned my nose hairs and my eyes. I was literally crying the whole time and the fan was on. I've never gotten so teary-eyed before this dye, that's how strong it is. It was like any other home box dye, messy but I did it.

After the dye: I checked my hair numerous times and decided to keep going for another hour. My hair looked like it did not change to any form of red at all. After I followed the directions to take out the dye (can't remember if I had to shampoo or not), and then conditioned and rinsed, I waited for my hair to dry naturally to see the results. This turned my hair to almost black. Like an intense deep red black...all in one color. Since my hair has many different tones, I can't see why it did this. But it literally looked like it was black with a slight red undertone rather than a bright red like the box or any type of noticeable red. My hair did feel soft after the dye, probably due to the conditioner. The conditioner smelled pretty good BUT a warning, it has glitter in it. When it says "Shimmer Conditioner", it means it. It's shimmer conditioner due to the glitter in it, not because it's a conditioner that makes your hair super shiny (it gives it some shine but nothing completely amazing). So even when you rinse out this conditioner for many, many minutes at a time, the glitter will stick to your hair. And when it's dry, expect the glitter to rub on everything and fall everywhere. It's like I had shiny dandruff. I would only recommend this conditioner if you were going to go out clubbing or if you wanted your hair to feel extra special, but I would not like this conditioner on before going to a gym.

Conclusion: Never will buy this dye again. I don't know how they dispensed this dye without testing out their formula first, or if they did, why they thought this passed the coloring test but I would not recommend this dye.

*UPDATE* It's been a couple of months since I dyed my hair with this. It's been fading rather quickly. Every single day, I've had the dye come out for a month straight. Now, it looks like a nice medium red, but I couldn't wear any color but black for shirts, for a long time. I don't want to go through that again, for these results. I would like my hair to dye how I want it the first time rather than wait a couple of months for somewhat good results.

Where did it all start?

Now that I think about it, I don't know where my hauntings started. I don't know if I had an overactive imagination when I was younger or if I was really scared for a reason. I know that I have an overactive imagination but the hard part is telling what part was real and which ones wasn't when I was younger as I can't remember everything clearly. It almost seems like my mind has always been opened to ghosts...or at least to the thoughts of ghosts. I remember I was always scared at night when I was younger, thinking that something was always there waiting for me outside of my door. I also remember that after I lived in Compton and moved to Riverside, I wasn't as scared of the dark but then I started to be afraid of the backyard, never wanting to look out the windows towards it. It was the reason why I hardly fed my turtle after dark, which is a horrid thought now that I thought about it because I often forgot to feed him before dark. Everytime my mother forced me to go feed him, I'd run like the wind to the garage, gave him his lettuce and hauled ass back. Yeah, I got my cardio in as a child.
I can only vividly remember my hauntings after I moved from Riverside to Nebraska. Oh boy, what a change. From big, ghetto cities (I've always lived in the hood) to a tiny, mostly white town...and to the countryside nonetheless. We moved there due to family already residing there and an available free house in the country house and job. It all seemed like we were hooked up until we found out that it was really scary living in the countryside where the nearest house was a mile away, completely dark at night, and was completely surrounded by cornfields (thank goodness I never watched Children of the Corn...actually still haven't). Me and my sisters were scared because it was so dark and quiet, something we're not used to.
I'm not sure if the haunting in Nebraska started because of this event or if it was just because it took time for the spirit to start acting up. But, all in all, it seemed more because of this event: my stepdad going under the house. Even though we lived in Nebraska, we didn't really have an underground shelter, we had a basement, but it wasn't a full sized one. To get under there, you have to crawl through a small hole, none of my family really wanted to, especially my sister and I, since we're scared of spiders, the only one who really didn't care was my stepdad. I'm also not sure why he decided to go down there but he did one day and brought up all of this old stuff. Lots of old silverware and china, there were more down there besides the silverware and dishes but he didn't bring it up and I didn't dare go down there to see for myself. Now I wish I did since I'm a bigger history buff but back then, I was scared shitless to go down there.
After a couple of months after he ventured down below, my cousins and uncle moved in with us due to a divorce. They were the family that we moved to Nebraska for. I didn't mind though, even if I had to give up my room and share one with my little sister and female cousin (my room was for my two older male cousins and uncle). It was actually really fun living with them, all three of my cousins are cool. My male cousins were funny as hell and my female cousin became my best friend.
Even though my uncle was going through a divorce, his wife still visited us. She would come over to bring over food or hang out. We all loved the food part of course, she was an ok person but she always brought her crybaby son...not a fun little boy. He cried more than my two little sisters combined...he cried because he spilled milk out of his mouth, I don't know about you, but I would laugh at myself, not cry. Anyways, sometimes she would bring food over a bit later into the night.
One night, we heard a knock on the door. My cousin and I were watching TV in the living room, it was pretty late into the night. We heard a knock on the door. Both of us looked at each other. We didn't know what to think at first and then thought...maybe it was my uncle's wife.
"It's really late into the night, why would she be here this late?" We both thought in silence as we looked at each other in fear. Well, if it was her, it would be best if we let her in, so I went to go see if it was. I peeked through the window of the door. I saw no one. Seeing no one scared me, I even looked out towards the front of the house from the window to see if I could see her car. There wasn't any cars out there.
I was a bit creeped out as I turned around.
"Um...no one's there", I said not sure what to make of the situation.
"Are you sure? Did you check to see if a car's there?", my cousin asking to find any type of rationalization.
"Yeah, I checked...no one...I didn't see a car there or any cars driving away." (Forgot to mention that we lived off the main road and can see anyone driving away or to our house for long distances.)
I just sat down back on the couch and continued to watch tv. We both didn't say more about it, I think we were both trying to just forget about the whole thing.
About half an hour to an hour went by since the mysterious knocking.
KNOCK KNOCK.
Oh my god...
We both jumped and looked at each other. It probably about midnight at this point of time. We were both thinking, after realizing the time, that it probably isn't my uncle's wife...but we were both hopeful that it was this time. My cousin went up to check this time, she walked to the door slowly, peeked her head through the window. She looked back at me...the looked on her face told me that no one was there.
"Is it her?" I asked.
"No....no one's there...", she told me.
"Car?"
"No cars..."
"Maybe it's the dogs?" I asked, hopeful that the dogs are awake and were messing around and ended up accidetnally hitting the door.
"They're all asleep," she said as she walked back to the couch.
She sat back down next to me, for the next few minutes, we watched more tv until he heard another KNOCK. This time, we turned off the tv and booked it to our room.

After awhile, we both got used to the knocking late at night as we watched tv. We stopped questioning it and just lived with it, as we're never going to investigate it, nor tell our parents. It happened a few times, mostly during the weekend. What I realized, was that it always happened before a storm. As I mention this, you might think, "Oh, if it's before a storm, it must be the wind picking something up and hitting the door". Well, if the wind can open the door to our porch and curve it to hit our front door twice, then yeah, it could be the wind. I noticed the "storm knocking" after it happened quite a few times, but each storm that we heard knocking, we always had a tornado warning. I'm thinking that it's a good ghost, one that was trying to warn us of a potentially lethal tornado storm. This helped me ease my fear of the knocking. It will still make us jump whe nwe heard it, but we weren't afraid after I realized this. It did scare my cousin when she went to get a drink of water. I asked her if she wanted me to go with her. She declined my offer and decided to go by herself. A minute later, she ran back in the room with a terrified look.
"What happened?" I asked, concerned about what happened.
"I was at the water dispenser and I heard the knocking on the other door." (We had two doors to enter te house, one through the kitchen and one through the living room with a windowed/walled porch with another door to enter the porch to get to the two doors.)
"Oh...uh...did you check to see if anyone was there?" Knowing damn well that no one was, it was around midnight again and if I were her, I'd be too afraid to check by myself.
"No."
"Oh ok, well, let's just pretend that never happened...but next time, I'll go with you."
"Alright, sounds good." I think it was hard for both of us to sleep that night...and this time...there was no storm approaching.

My family only stayed there for awhile, about half a year before moving back to the big city. This time, Vegas. I asked my mom why we were and she said because my parents were tired of the tornadoes. I think the last straw was when we actually saw one outside of town, a bit too close for comfort. If you can see it, you're too close. Even if it was miles and miles away. So we pretty much high-tailed it out there.

I later got in contact with my uncle's family when one of my male cousins decided to move in with us. My stepdad was getting old so he moved in to start a new life and to help out my family. He was really awesome, I loved him because he was the first person that I could feel that I could open up to and depend on. It actually made me cry when I realized this. Being the oldest out of my blood-related siblings, I didn't have anyone to go to or depend on, just little siblings who depended on me. Anyways, he moved in and after awhile, I asked them about when they moved out of the house, why they did, etc. He told me and that's when I had the idea to ask him if he ever experienced anything odd in that house, without telling him of my stories. (Everything that happened to me and my cousin, a.k.a. the knockings, was when we were both up alone, since my male cousins were in high school, they were always out or asleep). He told me a couple of stories that are quite interesting.
One day, he was alone with his girlfriend in the house. His brother went to some party and was gonna stay over there and his dad went somewhere and wasn't going to be back any time soon. My cousin and his girlfriend decided to take pictures. They took it of them with each other and then of each other seperately. Of course, being teens, they decided to take some "naughty" pics...of the girl with her top off. After a few of those pics, they decided to just take pics to send to their friends, to make it sendable to their friends, they took pictures of only their faces. My cousin took a picture of her face, with her face on the side of the frame, rather than have her face in the middle of the frame. After the shot was taken, he looked back at the photo. There was something odd in the picture beside her face in the thumbnail. He clicked on the picture to select it to view it in fullscreen on the camera. There was a face. It was a man's face right next to hers. He showed it to her. They both got creeped out and decided to go somewhere else, leaving that house behind for the day.
We all get up in the middle of the night sometime to go to the bathroom. Well, this one night, my cousin woke up to go to the bathroom. From his room, he turned out to the hallway and walked towards the bathroom. Atthe end of the hallway, is the kitchen...with the kitchen door directly in sight. He looked at the door and realized that he saw a figure in the door window. He thought that he couldn't see things clearly because he was still half asleep. He continued on to the bathroom and after he was done, came out and looked towards the door again. The figure was still there, in the window. Now that he's fully awake. He can see the figure's face. It was a man behind that door. A man that staring back at him. M cousin was frightened and power walked it back to his room (even during this event, his pride forced him to power walk rather than run).
After that incident, some time later, his brother disappeared in the middle of the night. My cousin woke up and saw that his brother wasn't there, asked his dad if he knew where he went and then after realizing that both of them didn't know where he was, they went to go look for him. They only had two vehicles, one was my cousins and the other was my uncles. My cousin's brother would never drive both of their cars unless he got permission from them so they knew that he didn't go anywhere. This was confirmed when they went outside to check their vehicles. He wasn't in the living room watching tv, nor was he in the bathroom. So where was he? When they went outside to check their vehicles, they noticed a small, dim light inside the garage. The garage was closed and they thought it was weird that the light was on. The garage was used for storage rather than for car parking, so this was strange. They opened the garage to check it out. There he was...my cousin's brother. He was sitting in a recliner, just rocking back and forth, with his eyes closed...like he was asleep but was awake enough to rock himself. They called out to him, he didn't react, so my uncle went and shook him. He's tough man, my uncle, I'm surprised he didn't yell at him and smack him. He then woke up and my uncle and cousin asked him what he was doing there. He said he didn't know. He was surprised that he was in there. They all just went back inside and went to sleep. Til this day, we all don't know if he was sleep walking or...what?
As I said before, my uncle is a tough man. You will almost never see him cry. He has a stern, mean look to him. He pretty much looks like he's from the Japanese Yakuza even though he's from Laos. He has his hair slicked back all the time and wears a long, black trench coat. He doesn't look like one of those weird guys that wear trench coats, he actually looks like that he's from the mob. His voice sounds very frightening too, although he is such a kind man to females...females of the family, I'm not sure how he treats females outside of the family. He'll be kind to the males but be really tough to them. When my male cousins were young, they were trained on how to fight and defend themselves, to always be alert. One day my cousins came home from school and as they opened the door, my uncle punched my little cousin in the face (the one who's telling me these stories). After the punch, he said with a stern face, "Always be alert". My god, this was a tough version of the karate kid. So yeah, he's a very tough man. But after all the incidents, he decided, it was time to pray. The last time my uncle ever prayed was when my female cousin was born. He prayed for her be born healthy because his wife at that time, was drinking and maybe doing drugs. She came out completely fine, but after all those years, he's never prayed. I don't know if it was Buddhist prayers or what (they're generally Buddhist but once foreigners come to America, they end up converting to a different religion due to different reasons), but he got my two cousins together and had all three of them pray for quite some time. They were praying to cleanse the house of any spirits or negative/unknown energies. After this, nothing weird ever happened in that house.

After I heard these stories, it just helped me confirm that my female cousin and I weren't imagining things. We weren't the only ones that experienced weird happenings. I never felt any bad energies, I always thought it was a good ghost, since he always liked to warn us of incoming storms. Maybe there was more than one, or maybe my family moving out affected the ghost in some way to where he was getting stronger. Either way, it was really weird and that changed my world.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Maybe I'm Crazy?

My family and I have moved a lot, we've lived in California half of our lives, then to Nebraska, Vegas and Utah. And for some reason, everywhere I move, I seem to always have weird things happen. It might be ghosts or I might just be crazy. Everytime we've moved, my parents get's the biggest room or master bedroom and since I am the oldest, I'd get to choose my room, which is usually the second biggest room.
It makes sense that a bigger room would be colder right? Compared to smaller bedrooms. Well, when I pick my bedrooms, they're usually normal room temperature but once I start to get used to the place and settle in, it's always the coldest room in the house...my paren'ts bigger room was even warmer than mines. I always tried to laugh it off by saying that it's because of my room layout, because it was laid out to where it seemed "spacious" rather than having objects closer together.
Well, I can't laugh it off when weird things start happening. It's only really happened to me, well, I'm the only one that really acknowledged it. My parents are superstitous but their views on ghosts in houses are, "I don't care if there's a ghost in the house. A house is a house. I don't care if it has ghosts or not, I'll live with them. You better be glad we have a place to live." ...yeah, they're pretty hardcore Asians. Truth be told though, I am glad I have a home, that we aren't homeless but dammit...why did the ghosts have to be there? Somewhere inside of me, I feel like as if something is following me but the occurances that happened at each house were completely different. I don't think my sisters have experienced anything or they may have, brushed it off or ignored it. Either way, I didn't want to ask them and get them scared.
I will have to write seperate posts for each of the houses I have experienced weird things with and link them back here.

I'm living on my own now and even though I'm not scared to walk around at night (with the lights on lol), I'm starting to hear noises again. It also doesn't help that I can hear my neighbors walk up and down the stairs or hear them walking in their bathroom (our floors are WAY creeky, creekier than haunted houses I've seen in movies)...or at least I hope it's my neighbors haha I can tell when someone is walking in my townhouse or in my neighbor's, it's my super hearing that helps so I haven't had "anyone" walk around in my hall or up and down my stairs....yet...and hopefully never will. I will admit though, when I hear my neighbors, sometimes it scares the crap out of me. But I have dogs now, so all is good, I have company when my boyfriend goes to work at night.

It's been about about 4 months since I've moved into my townhouse, it's a real nice townhouse if you take out how the previous tenants were gross. (Because of the snow, there was a lot of trash hidden in our backyard, lots of cigarette butts EVERYWHERE, it was literally covering every inch of land. There was also trash everywhere and actual trash bags full of trash...were these neighbors lazy or what? And in addition to that, there were a few problems, broken things and such BUT the kicker is that I had 3 people come over to ask for a previous tenant. Not friends. Oh boy, no, not friends. I think one guy was a "server", the other one...I'm not sure since I didn't see him and the last one was an officer. What did these people do? I'm not sure but I keep getting their old mail and some of the letters are from the District Attorney.

Anyways, I'm starting to hear noises, like someone is at the front door...as if they're standing there thinking or doing something and accidentally hit the door or the rail and then never end up knocking or ringing the doorbell. It's the only place that these mysterious noises are coming from. At first, I thought it was my super hearing, just hearing my neighbors but then I can tell which ones are right infront of my door or farther than that. Either way, it's not ok, if it's a real person, then I don't get why they're there and if not, then dammit, why do I keep moving somewhere that has problems.

I'm starting to think that I'm either crazy or a magnet to haunted places.

Monday, April 22, 2013

How to Change Icon Text Colors in Windows 7

Today, I noticed that my icon text color sucks with my new desktop background (which is super awesome because it's a bg of most of the super women heroines), so I went into the "Personalize" window and of course, it's not so easy to find where to change the icon text color. After a couple of Google searches, I finally figured out how to do it. People have suggested downloading softwares or doing other long or complicated processes, but I'm a sinple person and like to do EVERYTHING the easy way if possible and I always try avoiding downloading softwares for something so small.
The horrible, cold, hard, annoying truth about why the hell it's so hard to solve this super small issue:
Windows 7 is designed to change the icon text color to best fit the image or color background AUTOMATICALLY, it's designed to be smart enough to perform this process for us but with multi-colored images, it's a bit on the confused, dumb side. And because of this futuristic, hidden process, it's a bit more work to change the icon text color.
After reading some posts on this issue and some solutions, I just went to go do my own troubleshooting with bits and pieces from other people's fixes.

Here's my SUPER DUPER EASY WAY of how to change your icon text color:
1. Right-click on your desktop background and choose the "Personalize" option.
2. Go to "Desktop Background".
3. In that window, choose "Change Background Color" in the lower-left hand corner.
4. Depending on what color you want your text (either white or black), choose the opposite. So if you want white text, choose black. If you want black, choose white. The only options for the icon text color is white or black, sorry no cool colors for us, the fancier we want our interface to look, the less options we have of changing (ironic but I guess this is how the future will be). After choosing a color, you will see a preview of the font color of the icon name change.
5. Click "Save Changes". Choosing a background color will NOT change your desktop IMAGE, only the color behind the image.

It really wasn't so painful to do this but was much more painful to do the research, not as bad as other things I had to figure out but enough that when compared to the actual process, it's just kind of ridiculous, especially when I got a lot of "download this software" answers (my arch nemesis of answers).

**Note: This only works if your drop shadow is removed from the icon text titles. To remove the shadows from text, go to Control Panel and type in "performance" in the search box. Then click "Use tools to improve performance". In that window, select "Adjust visual effects" on the left-hand side. Once that window pops up, you should see a box where you can scroll down, scroll all the way down and deselect "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the Desktop", then click OK.**

Saturday, March 16, 2013

I'm not going to lie...

I completely forgot that I had a blog! I've just been to crazy busy with work, school, moving...being super lazy and worn out ahahaha Well even though this move has been keeping me super busy and is very money-consuming, I'm really happy and ecstatic that I did! I moved to a bigger place, away from my one bedroom apartment in a huge complex full of kids, cigarette smokers, a neighbor next to me who always asks to borrow money and my crackhead neighbors downstairs! I moved to a two bedroom, beautiful townhouse and it is super quiet! No dumbasses bumping their music in cars in the middle of the night or morning! I did have a parking war though, ugh, I wanted to slash some tires, if they want to park in my spot, then they can park there til they can buy new tires dammit! It's been taken of though but took like 2 weeks to settle. I'm ecstatic to move because I now have an office/study! I have room for ALL of my mangas...I have 481 mangas and boy....I was only able to stick half of them up in my one bookshelf that I could only have because of my small one bedroom. I didn't buy another bookshelf to put all of my books though...I transformed my closet in the office, into a HUGE one! ...well my boyfriend did....but it's beautiful and it still has two and half shelves (if I include the floor) to put more books on! After I fill that up though...I'll need to find another solution....eek....I should control my addiction for manga buying lol. After I calculated how many books I will have altogether if I complete all of the series, it'll total up to around 800 (I made an Excel spreadsheet to keep up with what books I have, how many, how many in the series I have and will have if I complete it and the percentages of completion, I'm kind of an Excel geek, but only to this extent, I can't do coding crap). I will have to do another post of my bookshelf and post links on how to do it, it costs me about...$100 though, but that's because I had to buy some hardware like a stud finder, small leveler, big leveler. It would've been around $70 if I didn't have to buy those additional items...but they are essential! The $70 is mostly what the wood costs and includes the shelf liner I bought for it. Anyways, tada for now...we'll see how long it will be before I post another...post xP