Eureka Seven: Astral Ocean

Hey guys... there is a new Eureka Seven series. It started in April. I just found out about it.
But WOAH I love it!!

It's a sequel/alternate story of sorts. It has a bit of Big O esque "what is going on? what is the truth?"

Pretty much all of it is on Hulu at this point. I have no idea how long the story is planned. It is up to episode 19 right now, and there are some really cool moments so far. It feels different from the first series, but it is still really great.

Everybody go watch it so we can talk about how cool it is.

Rant Time! (Update)

Okay, so I want to rant.

I'm applying to PhD programs. I study animal behavior, but the kind of research I do is a bit rare. I'm pretty selective because the research I do isn't mainstream, and I have no desire to be mainstream. I was talking to people at a lot of different schools. Both in psychology and zoology programs. The majority of people I spoke to were retiring, or were out of funding for students. Eventually I applied to three schools. Brown, IU, and OSU. Brown and IU are fairly prestigious. A former co-student went to Brown, an my current advisor is collaborating with the researchers there. IU has a pretty interesting animal behavior program. I have some connections to both schools. OSU is not a prestigious little school, but it has a researcher that I really like.

My top choice was OSU, for good research and freedom, then Brown and IU. Prestige is nice, but research freedom is much better for a guy like me.

I went to visit OSU and spent two days with my potential advisor. I even went to the dentist with him! Weird I know. I felt like we got along really well, and our research paradigms are very similar. It sounded great.

A week and a half I get an email from the psychology program at OSU. They did not give me an offer and instead decided to hold onto my application as an alternate. What! I thought that was pretty ridiculous, so the next day I called my potential advisor.
Here is where the situation becomes rant-worthy.

I did not get an offer to go to OSU because I applied to Brown and IU, two schools with more prestige.

What! This makes me SO angry! They thought I would not accept an offer because I would get an offer from one of the more prestigious schools. So they didn't even give me an offer. I wanted to go to OSU! But I wasn't going to rule anything out because you can learn so much from visiting the program and meeting people.
Also, I didn't get into Brown, and IU doesn't sound like it is happening either. I honestly don't care about that so much. There is still a lot of good stuff I can do where I am. But the reason for not getting an immediate offer at OSU just makes me furious.

I do get a slot in the psychology program if anything happens, and my potential advisor ensures me it is likely. I also applied to the zoology program there, where my potential advisor also works. So its not like I don't still have a decent shot... but they should have given me an offer. I would have been so much less upset if I they did it because they thought I had a bad application. Instead they did it because they thought my application was too good, and I applied to other schools. I just hate to have been over looked for such a foolish reason.

Anyway, there isn't any more information to give on the situation. I'm sure I could think of a thousand different ways to describe my frustration, but I think you get the picture. I am hugging pissed.


For now I'm just playing it cool, keeping in contact with my potential advisor and hoping the situation will work itself out.
If things don't work out, I get to hang out with my current advisor another year, which is great except for the financial situation here.
I guess I would apply to OSU again... but I don't know... I'm not a person with much pride or ego to bruise, but I'm pretty upset with OSU.
I really want to know who on the admissions committee thought that was a good idea. I don't *think* it was my potential advisor.
Anyway, nothing to do now but wait and be pissed off.

Robot Mode Packaging Is A Turn Off

So I just can't get behind robot mode packaging.
It takes away all the mystery of the figure. I haven't bought a single scout since they started packaging them in bot mode. Some of them look pretty cool... but its like once I see them in bot mode, I don't really need to buy them.
Leader ROTF Prime and Brawl were exceptions, as will be Leader Starscream.
With Prime it was okay, because transforming him INTO a truck for the first time is one of the great achievements of mankind.

I saw the first set of power core combiners today... all packaged in bot mode. I really wanted to try one of them, but I just am not really that interested. That's another topic entirely. But being packaged in bot mode doesn't help.

Anyone else feel that bot mode packaging spoils the figure?

A Frightening Doomsday Article

http://www.helium.com/items/1882339-doomsd...d-killing-event


Scary stuff. I've never heard of giant methane bubbles in the first place, or any of these geological theories. I don't know how likely something like this actually is, but conceptually it is pretty frightening.

My tale of love(?) and sorrow

Okay... so one of those threads. Sorry, but it is useful for me to talk about it to keep my sanity.


I have been in love with this woman for about two years. And that is incredibly problematic for me.
When I first met her, she was my boss, and I was planning to leave the state for graduate school within a year. She is also 19 years older than me. I really thought that my feelings would go away over time, so I didn't see any reason to make a big deal out of things when there were some huge constraints. Even if I decided to choose her over school, I don't know what I could do for a living that would make me happy. So any any sort of relationship with her was in direct conflict with everything else in my life. So I just ignored my feelings, and tried not to get too close to her. I was going to cut ties with her when I left work, but she was emailing me the day after I left, and the next day, and the next day, and she gave me her phone number. I really wanted us to be friends, and apparently she did too. I couldn't just ignore her.

I never made any attempt to talk to her about this, because I didn't want to complicate things for her like they were for me. It never mattered how we felt about each other, because, right now, we are on different paths and in different locations. I really thought that over time my feelings would change. They didn't. Every time I felt like they were going away something would happen. Sometimes she would say things to me that were hard to interpret as completely platonic.

She said things like "It is a privilege to know you." "I knew you were special from the moment I first met you, and those feelings have only grown the longer I have known you." "You are unforgettable. You are like a young male version of me, except maybe smarter, and I think I like that" "You know how badly I miss you" "There are definitely unfinished good things between us."

I remember many times when I would see her at work, and she would throw her arms up in the air and shout my name. It was... weird. I remember the first time that I called her after I moved. She was so excited to hear from me that she shouted my name so loudly that I had to hold the phone away from my head. I always got special treatment at work. Starting during my last week of work, 1.5 years ago, I was never allowed to by my own food. That has continued to this day. Even when I try to buy lunch or dinner for her, she won't let me. I come back home to visit during winter break, and I go see her. When we are together outside of work... it always feels like a date, I can't really explain it. When ever I am with her, or whenever I speak to her, it always feels like there is something more than friendship there. In the last few months she started calling me baby and babe every time I talked to her. It could just be part of her dialect, but none of my other female friends called me baby, and I never heard her call anyone else baby. All these things felt really good... but they weren't helping me to think of her as just a friend. And my feelings for her only got stronger over time. And this was with me actively trying to like other women.

But when you love someone, and can't be with them, for whatever reason, there are some pretty unpleasant feelings too. I'm in a really stressful part of my life right now. I was afraid I was going to get stressed and emotional and do something that would ruin our friendship. I needed things to be less ambiguous, I wanted our friendship to be less complicated for me. I just wanted us to have a simple platonic friendship. I would have loved to have had a relationship with her, but it really wasn't possible. So I just wanted our friendship to be less complicated.

I felt like if she could just say that she didn't have feelings for me, that things would become simpler. And if our friendship was complicated for her as well, then maybe it was time we parted ways for a while, because pretending our friendship was simple wasn't working for me. I just wanted to make our friendship easier.

So I told her I needed to talk to her. I told her that I wasn't okay and that I was concerned about our friendship. I tried to get her to talk to me for three weeks, and she wouldn't give me a chance to explain. I had been on edge for months because of everything else in my life, and this really made me feel like she didn't care about me at all, and that our entire friendship meant nothing to her. I thought "What kind of friend won't talk to you when you tell them that you are concerned about the friendship?" And doubting our friendship like that made me a little emotional.
And things went downhill from here really fast.

The last thing she said to me before this happened was in response to me trying to get her to call me when she got off work. I told her I was concerned about our friendship and needed to talk to her. She said "Oh no, our friendship is going strong." She said she would call me that weekend. She didn't. The last thing she ever said to me before this got bad was "I'll talk to you later babe."

I left her a voice message. I told her that I was in love with her, that I couldn't be in love with her, that it wasn't right. I told her that I had done everything to keep our relationship professional and platonic but ignoring these feelings wasn't working. I told her I just wanted to talk to her so that we could find a way to be friends, and that was all I ever wanted. I was pretty emotional when I left the message. I didn't say anything I didn't mean, but I may not have been as clear as I wanted. I tried to call her a few times before she got the message, in case I could explain things better.

Well the message really freaked her out. All she heard from that was "I want a relationship with you." I never said that. She sent me an email in response:

"Please stop calling me. I really don’t know what to say. I am not interested in the type of relationship that you are wanting from me. It feels like I am being harassed at this point."

What!? I have no idea why she felt harassed. I tried to explain, but she hasn't emailed or spoken to me since. It has been two months. Because she freaked out so much, I have kept contact to a minimum. I emailed her twice, and called her once, spread out over several weeks. It has been a month since I have made any attempt to communicate.

I really thought she could say that could say "I am flattered, but I only think of you as a friend" or "I feel the same way." Honestly, I would have been so relieved if she said she only thought of me as a friend. I am so tired of thinking about the situation. Instead she pretty much said "I never want to speak to you again." I don't feel like that reaction fits the scenario at all. I am completely perplexed, and I feel completely abandoned. You don't say the kind of things she said to me if you don't care about someone. So I really thought we were friends, but this has really made me reevaluate our whole friendship. Now, I'm not sure if she ever cared about me.

I don't know what to do. I really care about her, and I've done everything so that we can be friends. I don't understand what about this is so difficult for her. A few weeks before she drove 3.5 hours to have lunch with me (and still wouldn't let me pay), so I don't understand why a conversation was too much for her. She hasn't even acknowledged that she understands that I just want us to be friends.

This has been just about the most unpleasant experience of my life. It was only supposed to be a simple conversation. I don't know why it has become so much more. I am at a pretty stressful point in my life right now. Honestly, I hate it here, I always have. Its good for me, but I haven't been happy since I left for school. I don't really have any good friends here, and I wouldn't have time for friends anyway. I haven't had anything good in my life since I got here, so its a pretty big deal for me to lose one of my good friends. But she was more than that, she was like my like my role model. I admired her. I have never had someone in my life like that.

I don't understand this at all, and I'm really tired of speculating. All she had to do was tell me that she only thought of me as a friend. I don't think this should be so hard on her that she can't even speak to me. And honestly, I feel like this should be much harder for me than it is for her. Maybe she had some bad experiences with men before. Maybe she is with someone that, for some reason, she never told me about, and this is making her relationship difficult.

If she couldn't handle being friends. I would have understood that completely, because I wasn't sure I could handle it anymore, thus the need for conversation. But I am not okay with how she ended things. Its not even that she ended things so unpleasantly, its the fact that she took every good memory that I have of her, and made me wonder if our friendship ever meant anything to her. She took my admiration and respect, and replaced it with confusion. I don't feel like anything has happened that was so bad that she can't speak to me. If we had to part ways, we should have been able to do it on good terms, with kindness and understanding. She doesn't have any reason to hate me, but if she can't even talk to me, I'm not sure she doesn't. I did get a little emotional, but I was never angry or hurtful. I don't regret anything that I have done, though I do realize I could have been a bit more patient.

I really just don't know what to do. It has been two months, and although I can actually function now, I'm still no where near over this. I'm trying really hard just to leave her alone, but I am having a hard time doing that. I really feel like I deserve at answers, or and least a confirmation that she understands me and still cares about me. For all I know she listened the first few sentences of the message I left (where I told her I had feelings for her) then freaked out, deleted it, and never listened or read the other messages I left (preventing her from knowing that I just wanted our friendship to be less ambiguous). I really feel like I deserve better. But I am keeping with the assumption that this is a difficult situation for her, so as not to become angry and vindictive.

Talking about it to anyone, in any form, helps me to retain enough of my sanity to leave her alone, which at this point I believe to be the right thing to do. That is really the purpose of the thread. I would love advice and answers, and I would love if someone could somehow make this better, but I don't really expect that. I'm just trying to stay sane so I can do the right thing. So thanks for helping with that. I mean it.