Bleh.
I’ve been sick since Thursday with a 39 degree fever (approx 102 fahrenheit). This morning I thought I’d finally got healthy again but now in the evening the fever rose back to 38,7. And I really need to go to school tomorrow because otherwise I’ll have missed so many lessons it’ll be difficult for me to catch up. Sigh.

On a happier note, I’m turning 16 this Friday! Hopefully I’ll get rid of this fever by then.

Ahh the summer break has passed waay too quickly! Haven't done much, mainly sat by the computer and once in a while sunbathed in our garden . On the first days of the break my dad and I went to Maarianhamina to some party Viking Line organized (Viking Line = a Finnish ferry line) (I GOT TO SHAKE HANDS WITH VIKING LINE'S NEW OWNER! I feel so special now ! oh and we got VIP seats because my dad held a speech and presented the book he's written about Viking Line's history~ Dad also offered me to make the official english translation but I had to decline because it would've taken all summer to do it D: )

Okay enough about that. I also went to Germany (Travemünde) for a couple of days with my dad. We were supposed to go there so that I could practice speaking German, but my dad still ended up doing all the talking.
Man, it was HOT THERE! Almost every day over 30 degrees Celcius every day! Mom regretted staying at home in the rainy and chilly Finland .

My cousin Linda (aka ~blackberry-L) is currently visiting Finland ! She visited me on Thursday the 6th August and had to go again on the 10th, but thankfully she's coming back here on the 15th (I hope) and will leave on the 18th (when my school starts D: ). We've been working on a picture together, and it will be real awesome! Linda's trying for the first time to draw without outlines and she's already so good at it! I'm jealous . We've been working on the picture for over 20 hours and still have lots to do, but I hope we can get it done before she leaves.


It's amazing how a computer that is 4 or 5 years old can be so much faster than my own computer that's only 1 year old o.o! I even tried to install my whole computer again from the recovery CD, and I only feel like it's even slower now than it was before. Guess I'll just have to wait for Windows 7 and pray it's be better than Vista.


Argh sorry the journal entry became longer than I intended D:

Actually I just wanted to get a new journal to my front page, but now that I'm writing one I could tell about a few updates...

A week ago I got Photoshop CS3, which I really expected to be better than the old Photoshop Elements 5 I've been using. Well, I was kinda disappointed. So far I've only found one pro and three cons...

I like to start things positively so I'll list the pro first. Yays, I can finally organize my layers into folders! I've been wanting to do that ever since I visited blackberry-L and saw that she could do it with her Photoshop CS2.

And then, the lovely cons.

Most disturbing might be the fact that I can't just press ctrl+z ten times if I want to erase my ten last brush strokes or whatever I had done. I can press ctrl+z once, and it will undo the action, but when I press it again it just "undoes the undo", meaning I get back to the starting point. If I want to go back more steps, I have to manually go to the history tab, look up the right action that I want to go back to, then click on it. It just takes too much time when I could do all that in Photoshop Elements 5 just by spamming the ctrl+z command.

Secondly, I use a customized brush when I draw. In photoshop elements I would get that brush by going to a "tablet options" panel, then check a square that will make the brush opacity differ on how much pressure I put on the pen when I draw. I've searched every single brush and tablet option in CS3 and just can't find the same option! And I'm completely lost without it D:

Third. Is there any way to quickly/easily toggle between open documents? 'cause I haven't found one <.< - I have to minimize all documents and then I can open the document I want. In Elements 5 there were small arrows that you would click to get to the next or previous document.

Hmm... was there anything else? A lot of things are different than in Elements 5, but the rest I can easily get used to. Those above three things just bother me so much I'm not sure if I really should switch from elements to CS3. Somehow it feels like CS3 would be slower than elements 5 o.O;

Okay now I'm off to do something else . Got some ideas for pictures, let's see if I can make them into something decent.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009 EVERYONE!
...I bet you've already read that in thousands of journals, but I just had to say it too :'D.

New year, new stuff to do. I'm already waiting for summer vacation lol.
I usually never make resolutions because I can't keep them. Thought I'd try something different this year.
So... okay. Might list a few things I'm gonna try to do this year.
-Finish translating the Crystal into english. That's gonna take a while....... <- yeah it's done in finnish. finally. now just to do it in english, ugh. Still, feels pretty nice to have written a 313 page book
-Umm... start writing crystal 2. Maybe with luck I can even finish it before 2010.
-Stop spending money lol. Yeah, I seem to have more outcomes than incomes, gotta do something 'bout that.

And, a couple of lines about my experiences here in america, I'm going home tomorrow you know.
On wednesday we (meaning me and my family and and her family) went sightseeing around in DC, to see the white house and the congress house and a really large building which I have no idea what it is called .

Thursday we just relaxed at home and packed and stuff. Friday-sunday we spent in new york, which was really great! we lived on hotel radisson on 32nd avenue and broadway and went shopping and went to the empire state building when it was so cloudy it was zero visibility (probably 10 different persons that worked in the building told us that and probably thought we were stupid when we still wanted to go to the top to see the view... and yeah, they were right to think us stupid, you couldn't see anything but gray clouds ). We also took some skyride and I thought we were gonna see NY in a copter, but instead it was some computer simulated helicopter tour around NY. Was pretty fun when the seats went up and down so if felt like really being in a copter. We went to eat to planet hollywood on friday evening and to some mars restaurant on saturday evening.

On monday we went to hard rock cafe and tuesday morning we went to the museum with planes and space stuff and to the american museum, later we went to a mall and on the evening we saw the West Side Story musical. Today we went to some really fancy restaurant to eat and tomorrow (well, later today) I'll be going home D:..

I'd really love to stay here for another 11 days, feels like I haven't had the time to do anything! wish I'd come back here again soon, but I know it's not gonna happen. My parents told me we'll probably never come here again, which is pretty sad. Well, at least I enjoyed this stay and tried to live it to the fullest

Yeah so.. I'll start out with MERRY CHRISTMAS PEOPLE

I'm having so much fun over here in america!

I've been here for 2 days already and still have lots of fun left to do. The traveling part was the most boring, especially the 9 hour flight from Frankfurt to Dullas international airport. We arrived at the airport on sunday around 8pm. We were all really tired so we went straight to bed
Monday was boring, as had school so I had to wait until 2pm before she came home D:. Tuesday was more fun, as I had the opportunity to go to school with her D. Yeah, you all prob think I'm crazy, but I thought it was really fun. At least I got to see how american school is different from school in Finland. Well, the lessons weren't normal but still, I got to see how the building looked and how things worked etc. In spanish class we watched films, in history the teacher sang and danced to us :'D, on P.E we listened to a concert and then we ate and got to go home early because some water pipes had broken so the sprinklers wouldn't have worked if the school had began burning. Later that day we went to a mall to watch Twilight and to shop a bit (I wanted a shirt but it was 50$ so I couldn' buy it D.
So yeah, now its wednesday morning. Christmas eve . Appearently americans celebrate christmas on the 25th, but we (actually, ) are gonna get our christmas presents already today in finnish style :'D. No real finnish christmas food though, but it's ok. Never really liked it that much anyways lol.

So yeah.
Me and have planned to do a collab picture. Can't wait to get started .
Heh, feels so weird writing about a person who's sitting right next to me, talking to me xD.

also weird to think that it's already 16:20 in Finland and only 9:20 here! lol already afternoon for all my friends and relatives. They're gonna get their presents before me D: (if I'd get any, that is )