blodeuedd

Today's LOL: especially the 4th strip, though they're all great. XD

Thanks to not having a headache of doom and feeling like my sinuses were about to explode, I accomplished much more today than I did yesterday! Let's compare, shall we?

- I showered! Before noon, even! Yesterday, I took a bath... in the evening.

- I got dressed! Yesterday, I spent the day in my pyjamas, even though Kimberly came over to crochet and watch a movie. We don't stand on ceremony with each other, so it's all good. Like when I go over to her place, and we've been sitting around chatting for an hour, and she exclaims, "I'm sorry, I completely forgot to offer you something to drink!" "Don't worry, I poured myself a glass of water when I got here. :D"

- I translated a Travelpod post! Yesterday I didn't type a single word except for a couple of emails.

- I cleaned up my apartment! I vacuumed (at midday, so as not to do it at a time when most people are turning on their heaters and whatnot), tidied up, aired my futon, and reorganised my sewing notions. I even vacuumed Tabitha -- apparently, she'll tolerate the little brush nozzle; she looked rather confused about what was going on, but she didn't try to run away, and though her ears were slightly back, she was purring. Yesterday, I... I put my dishes in the sink, at least.

- I went outside! I actually took a rather long walk along the Senkawa, and took lots of pictures of the last few plum blossoms in the area, then spent a couple of hours studying Japanese and drinking Coco's out of their drink bar. What can I say, verbs, both transitive and intransitive, make me thirsty. Quite an outing, when you consider that yesterday I only opened the door of my apartment when Kimberly arrived and when she left.

- I ate a proper meal! One. My breakfast was a grilled cheese sandwich* and I didn't eat anything else until Coco's. I sort of forgot about lunch! Yesterday, I ate a bowl of Cheerios, 3/4 of the little pizza Kimberly brought over, two slices of toast with honey, and a small bowl of leftover ebi-chili. Hmm, I guess we can say this one's a draw, if we're talking total amount of food consumed. But I might have a snack later.

- I burned my finger while making the grilled cheese sandwich! Maybe scalded is a better word. You can't tell, but it's tender enough for me to feel it whenever I touch something. Yesterday, I didn't injure myself in any way.

- So far I haven't knitted today. Yesterday, I finished the second mitten of the pair I was working on. Tonight, I aim to start assembling the afghan for Baby Roo.

- I haven't watched or read anything yet today. Yesterday, I started The Girl Who Played With Fire while I was in the bath (with the bath bomb Hannah gave me for my birthday -- thanks, Hannah! ^_^), and I watched an episode of Ace wo nerae. I'll get some more sparkly pastel tennis in once I finish this.**

- Yesterday, I tried to do a little cleaning out of my bookmarks, and ended up revisiting some PoT fanfiction I'd bookmarked ages ago. And no matter how cliché many things have become in that fandom, some of them will never not be funny to me, like Tezuka hanging up on Inui, or Shishido expressing disgust over the Golden Pair being lovey-dovey/touchy-feely/really gay. XDDD

* The daughter of a friend of my mother's couldn't pronounced "grilled cheese" when she was little, and called them "grouchies".

** I really want to make a long review post with lots of screencaps for this series. It's really cute and fun. The main character, Hiromi, has huge crushes on both a female senpai and a male senpai, and she totally ships them together. <3

Know what's funny? This is. Also, this. Tears of mirth, people. Tears of mirth.



You know what I like? Seeing something I enjoy being improved upon. In this case, it was the reboot of tenimyu. What's good about it?

- they cut out the boring parts (i.e. Arai XDDD, and they fit Fudomine into half a show);
- they kept the good songs ("I'm always wiener", V.I.C.T.O.R.Y!, etc.);
- they vastly improved the choreography, or maybe it was just the fact that these guys can dance;
- an Echizen who transcended the script (bratty character made somewhat charming by acting age-apporpriate);
- the cast is adorable and THEY CAN ALL SING! :O

The last point cannot be overstated enough. Echizen and Tezuka were particularly good, and OMG@#$%@^ a Golden Pair that can sing*! Better than decently! *happydance* Both of them! It made their song soooo much more enjoyable.

As I said, the actors are adorable. I wanted to put them in my pockets and take them home with me. The ichinen trio were great, especially Katsuo; Kachiro basically acted like a seven-year-old girl, but girlier. Momo and Kaido were awesome, Fuji was pretty in spite of his horrible hair, Oishi was really sweet, Kikumaru was very bouncy, Taka was BAAANINGU!, Tezuka was a very good robot though his face (and head) seemed kind of large for his body. Kikumaru's head seemed a bit small for his body, but then again, he's all legs. (Of course, compared to the last Kikumaru, who had stubby little legs, anything would look longer, but still.) The only one I was slightly disappointed by was Inui. He wasn't bad, he just wasn't... Inui enough.

Fudomine actually has seven members now, though Tachibana still failed to interest me, except for his little pose at the end; Kamio was quite good, and Shinji had the oddest face -- he looks like a manga drawing come to life.

Leave it to Nanjiro to make a bad joke about cups... XD;

This was my first time seeing tenimyu from the first row, and from that close, the guys' perfectly smooth and hairless legs were at bit distracting. XD William and I joked about being able to see up their noses and count their nose hairs.

During the first half, the actors seemed to keep their eyes firmly fixed on the back of the room, but their gazes started to wander during the second half. Tezuka was singing to me at one point, and he waved at us during the final bows, as did several others. We were kind of hard to miss, four foreigners in the front row as we were!

They locked us in the theatre for a little while after the show so the actors could do their "junbi", that is get behind their little velvet rope, so we got to "Otsukare-sama" a few of the cast members as we filed out, including Ryouma (he's so cute! <3) but not, sadly, Tezuka. I was kind of hoping one of them would try out some English, but none of them did. XD

Really, the weirdest part of the show was how empty the hall seemed. We arrived at Seinenkan around 5:20 or so, and there were a couple of girls waiting outside. That was it. Once inside, it felt like a ghost town, especially when we got to our seats, and no more than 1/10th (if that) of the seats were occupied. It did fill up more, but I'd say the first floor only got to about 90% capacity, and there were only a handful of people on the balcony. I can understand why people who followed the musicals from the start have quit and aren't bothering with the new ones, but it's kind of a shame, given how entertaining this show was. I wasn't expecting the show to suck, but I was very pleasantly surprised by how good it was, and definitely want to see what they'll do with the next one, which will have St. Rudolph AND Yamabuki mashed into one show. I can't help it, dancing tennis will never not be amusing to me. ^_^

* Maybe 3rd cast could? I don't remember, that's how much of an impression they made on me. ^_^; And 5th cast wasn't bad, they just weren't great.



I seem to have accomplished a whole lot of nothing today, apart from laundry, but I'm going out for a supper of sweets later on, so I suppose I should at least try to do something worthwhile while the sun is still up.

Now I can't remember where I got this link (maybe, possibly from someone's livejournal?) but if you've ever played D&D, or any similar RPG, or if you like The Lord of the Rings, or if you're into any kind of geeky stuff at all, you all must go read it now:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=14

Hell, everyone should go read this now.

Lately read and seen:

Sailor Moon, vol. 9 (Naoko Takeuchi, English translation): This corresponds to the third TV season and involves the Witches 5, Mistress 9 and the awakening of Sailor Saturn. It's Sailor Moon, what else can I say? The Outer Senshi are around, and they're always cool, so that's a plus. Sailor Moon becomes Super Sailor Moon, so she gets wings and even sparklier jewelry, the power of friendship helps everyone through, etc. etc. What really bugged me was the lettering. Not only was the font annoying, but the words looked really clumsy in the thought/speaking balloons. I know that when translating from Japanese, it's tough to get around the fact that the ballons are vertical rather than horizontal, but pretty much every other translated manga I've read, whether in French or in English, managed to do just fine, so why did the people at Tokyopop screw up?

C.R.A.Z.Y.: A coming-of-age and coming-out story about Zachary, born in 1960 in Quebec, the fourth of five brothers (the Z. in the title, the other letters are his brothers' names). The music of the era plays a big part in the story of the family so for any music fans will appreciate it. Even if you don't care much about music, it's a good film and worth seeing. Although, and I don't care if I sound picky, the sound mixing could really have been done better. I was watching it last evening, in my little thin-walled apartment and had to turn the volume waaaay up to understand each of the (many) whispered conversations throughout the film -- only to have another song blasted out loud two minutes later, sending me scrambling for the volume button again. There must be a happy medium, folks.

Slings & Arrows (both series, 6 episodes each): My family kindly gave me these DVDs for Christmas. Thank you, family! The first series, where they put on a production of Hamlet (hence the title) was looped a million times on Showcase a couple of years ago, so I'd seen all the episodes mulitple times except the fourth one, for some reason, which I'd never seen in its entirety. In the second series, made a couple of years after the first, the original cast is back (though Rachel McAdams and Luke Kirby are only there for the first episode) and trying to get through the Scottish play. It's not quite as funny as the first season, but it's still much funnier than most of what passes for comedy on tv nowadays, and made me laugh out loud several times -- the Romeo & Juliet rehearsal that you see in episode 6 just about killed me, it was PERFECT, especially after the set-up, over several episodes, of people complaining about it. There's even a third season now, about King Lear, which I want to see badly. And it always tickles me to see something made-in-Canada, especially something that pokes fun at funding for the arts and Ministers of Culture. I'd recommend these series to anyone, because they're good, and that goes double for anyone who has any interest in Shakespeare or theatre in general.