So here's pics and reviews of the stuff kakeochi_umai sent us, as well as some other stuff I had around the house. I think I sized my pictures smaller than usual this time, oops.

( A bunch of wacky Japanese KitKats and some other stuff. )


I am also doing some giveaways along with the usual reviews, as 1. I am trying not to eat as much candy these days, and 2. some of it was not to my tastes. If you are interested in the Tropical Fruit Aero and/or the Kinako KitKat, just email me at megchan@gmail.com with your address and I will send you a couple pieces (specify which you want, or if you want both, that's fine, too). I also have a limited number of Salt & Caramel KitKats I will be giving away (I liked those quite a bit, but I don't think I want the whole bag of them around), so if you want one of the other two and are also interested these, lemme know and I'll add one in. Last but not least, although I love them to death, there's the whole trying not to eat as much candy thing, so I am giving away one Cherry Mash. I am willing to ship outside of the US, since they're small and shipping won't be that much, except for the Cherry Mash, which is heavier, so US only for that. First come, first served.

So when Bruce got home last night, he unfortunately did not know much more than me about the water heater (I just wrote "about me than the water heater", which would put our relationship in a pretty sad state, as I'm sure the water heater knows nothing about me at all). He did, at least, know where I was supposed to look for the pilot light.

But. I got the outer panel off, and the inner one was one big slab of rust. (Well, the whole water heater is one big slab of rust, but the panel even more so.) I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get it off. It wouldn't budge, and there was no way to tell which way it was supposed to move, so I didn't want to try too hard, lest it like, break off entirely. So we just left the gas turned off for the night.

We looked online for water heaters, and why the hell are electric ones like $100 cheaper than gas? No fair! Anyway, we thought about just going to Sears this morning and buying a new one and telling my mom to take the cost out of the rent, but we decided to give it one more try first. I called my mom and Tom answered, so I asked him if he remembered what he did last time, which of course he really didn't, but he did think the panel pulled upwards.

We tried that and eventually managed to get the panel off, but amazingly enough, that was not the hardest part! For one thing, the instructions on how to do all this, while printed on the heater, are not right in front, but rather curve around to the side, making them virtually illegible, since there's, you know, a wall right there. But we finally figured out what to do, by a combination of reading what we could and trial and error. Got the thing lit. Got it to stay lit. So now it's just waiting to see if the water heats up properly.

Bruce called my mom back and told her what was up, and how bad it was leaking in there (which may be what contributed to the pilot light going out twice in the past few months when it's never done so before) and they're going to start looking around for a new water heater. So at least we don't have to do that.

I've added pics with commentary to flickr. The first is here and you should be able to see the rest just by going to the next one in the set. It's pretty bad.

1. For some reason I only got about 2.5 hours of sleep this morning. NOT COOL.

2. I have been trying to get my money from Western Union since Monday. I tried once and the guy said it was telling him he couldn't access it and to call Western Union. I called and the automated thing said the money was available, so I went back Tuesday thinking maybe it had just been a glitch in their system. Nope. So today I called Western Union again and talked to actual live people (amazingly, I didn't have much of a wait, so that was nice). I did have to get transfered once, but overall it was fairly painless and the people were helpful. Turns out the money was somehow mistakenly sent to the Philippines instead of Los Angeles. I'm not sure how that's a mistake you make, but okay! They were able to fix it, thankfully, so I was able to go over today, third day in a row, and finally get my money. ARGH. At least it's done, though, and I have my money.

3. When I was washing dishes this afternoon I noticed the water wasn't very warm. And then by the time I finished, it really wasn't warm at all. I just went to check now and it still isn't warm, so I think the hot water heater's gone out. I hope it's just the pilot light blown out or something and not needing a new one. I went out to look at it, but I can't even tell where the pilot light would be if it was on, argh. This happened a few months ago and we called my mom's husband over to look at it, but I didn't go out and look with him and Bruce, and Bruce is not home today (doing some work for his old office, yay). This may be the first time in ever that Bruce is the one with the knowledge to fix something around the house. Gah. Oh well. I'll ask him when he gets home. If I'm awake.

I just found Cake Wrecks and have added it to my feed reader. OMG, I was in tears and in pain by the time I reached the end. Those are some really, really bad cakes.

1. I'm still trying to decide whether or not I want to keep this ergonomic mouse. I'm slowly getting used to it, but the question is whether it's actually making a difference or not, which I can't really tell yet. At least it's stopped feeling completely weird, though it is a bit harder to go from mouse to keyboard in this position, I'm finding, and I really don't like that.

2. I got paid for the past two weeks of scanlation work, but when I went to the check cashing place, they were unable to access the transfer and told me to call Western Union. I went home and did so, but it said the money was available, so... Maybe it was just a glitch in the system. I guess I'll go back tomorrow.

3. I'm trying to get off this sleep schedule. The past few days I've been sleeping from early/mid afternoon to evening/night and I don't like it. That's like my least favorite sleep schedule ever. So today I'm trying not to give in to the urge to nap, because I know that even if I only mean to sleep a couple hours, I will sleep a full night's worth and then I'll never get off this schedule!

4. I started reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and it's really good so far. I like Diaz's writing style a lot. I also really like the use of Spanish throughout the narrative, though I don't know how easy it would be for someone with zero knowledge of Spanish to read. I know a lot of the words and can figure out the bulk of the rest from context. It prompted me to think about how different that is to my reaction to, say, Japanese sprinkled liberally through an anime or manga fic, which is a huge pet peeve of mine.

The latter bugs me not just because the people writing are usually not fluent in Japanese and thus it's often wrong, but also because it just doesn't fit. The reason Diaz's use of Spanish works is that it's a story about Dominican-Americans, people whose speech is a mixture of English and Spanish. Animanga fics are about people in Japan speaking Japanese. We're just reading them "translated" (just as you imagine a Star Wars fic is "translated" into English from whatever standard language is used in the SW universe). If I'm supposed to imagine the characters speaking Japanese, it feels weird when actual Japanese words are thrown in.

Also, well. Skill. Like how I am perfectly happy to read Trainspotting entirely in Scottish dialect, but cringe and back button when I find that kind of stuff in fic. Irvine Welsh can pull it off.

So I was awake and not particularly sleepy when Bruce woke up this morning, so we decided to go down to Fry's and maybe hopefully get him a mouse that both works with his computer and that he likes. While we were there, I saw they had the Microsoft ergonomic mouse on sale for $50, down from $80, and since my wrist and forearm having been hurting a lot lately, I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm really not sure what I think of it so far. For one thing, I'm annoyed that instead of having a flash drive type USB receiver like almost all the other mice nowdays, it has a clunky old receiver on a cord. Not a huge problem except that I already have a receiver like that for my keyboard (and old mouse, which I'm obviously not using at the moment), so now I have to have two of those plugged in.

The mouse itself is...interesting. It's going to be difficult to get used to, and with the way it was hurting me a bit ago, I'm not sure I really want to. Have any of you had experience with this mouse (the 6000, in case Microsoft makes any other ergo ones) or any other ergonomic mice? What are your thoughts?

Urg. Shouldn't have gone this weekend. Even the morning show was packed out and we had to sit in the second row. We sat to the side, so I didn't get too dizzy (we were originally sitting in the middle and that was very, very bad), but my neck hurt from having to look up at the screen, and when you're that close, it's hard to focus on things. It made it a very long two and a half hours.

( Spoilers )

We saw previews for The Watchmen, Terminator something or other, a movie about cops who kill people, and...something else. Nothing looked super exciting, but they're not exactly advertising my type of film during these summer blockbusters. I am somewhat curious about Terminator. I never saw the third one, and I haven't been watching the show, but now I feel like maybe I should.

1. No Counting Crows/Maroon 5 concert for me. First off, Live Nation's site is horrible and confusing and I never want to order tickets directly from them again. Urg. But. When I finally was able to see where the $10 tickets would be, it turned out to be on the lawn up top. (Irvine Meadows Verizon Amphitheater is an outdoor venue.) I couldn't find any info on how seats on the lawn worked, so I was already iffy, but then it turned out that the ticket was $10, plus $6 parking fee, plus $6 and change other fee, plus $5 and change other other fee, bringing it to $27 and change, and I thought...do I really want to drive to Irvine on a Friday night, to sit up on the lawn behind the stadium with no idea of how well I'll even be able to see? Nooooooot really. Even for the awesomeness that would be those two bands together. So. Disappointing. :( But at least I have GLAY to look forward to next month!

2. We're going to an early morning show of Batman in...just a few hours, actually. The first show is at 9.30am. I'm hoping they still have that deal where tickets are $6 for shows before noon. I wasn't that thrilled with Batman Begins, though it was fun enough, but this seems like it's going to be awesomely dark and fucked up, so I'm looking forward to it. Yay, Joker!

I was listening to Maroon 5 and thinking God, how are they so good? And then I remembered last month I'd seen they were going to be playing with Counting fucking Crows* and argh, argh, argh, match made in heaven, Y/Y? But for some reason I had decided not to get tickets. Now I see that reason is that the nearest concert to me is in Irvine**. But! Today 10am to midnight Live Nation are having a special sale where tickets are $10. Sooo...I think I'll stay up til 10 and see what I can get for that price. I wouldn't mind driving down to Irvine if it was only $10.



*Even though Counting Crows will almost surely play mostly from their newest album, rather than my preference for all August and Everything After all the time.

**The other So. Cal. location appears to be Chula Vista, which...no. I drove to San Diego for B'z, but that was very special circumstances. Like, you know, band from Japan that may never come to the US again (though they did, yay).

This week's Naruto, Bleach, and D.Gray-man were all kind of eh. Naruto and Bleach are both in a sort of boring bit. ( Vaguely spoilery for all three, but I do mean very vague. )

By the way, someone linked to this site today, which has scanlations for online reading (no downloading required) and appears to use my translations. Bleach and Naruto are under the scanlation group SleepyFans and D.Gray-man is JustInFive. No, I did not know this until today. I do the translation. I get paid. I don't really care what happens after that. :p But if you read those manga and you want translations that are guaranteed to be correct, go with those.

We watched the second Futurama movie tonight. I don't have much to say other than it was pretty awesome. Lots of Kif and Amy, which was fun, as Kif is one of my favorite characters. There was also Stephen Hawking. ♥ I tell you what, I really had no thoughts one way or the other about Stephen Hawking before he started showing up on all sorts of cartoons as himself, but I totally love him now, because he's obviously got a good sense of humor.

Before that, we meant to go out to dinner, but we made the mistake of trying to drive and couldn't find parking anywhere, so we abandoned our first choice and tried somewhere else, with the same results. After that we decided just to get takeout Chinese, so we stopped at Canton Kitchen. It's not really a disappointment, as A. we love the place, and B. we got a hell of a lot more food for $40 than we would have at either restaurant we were thinking of (Furaibo first, Gyu-kaku second), so we have leftovers to last for days.

This morning we went to the farmers' market again. Spent about $20 on strawberries, peaches, nectarines, cucumbers, tomatoes, and cheese. Now we need to go back to Trader Joe's to get some of that omgsogood yogurt.

I'm really annoyed with our internet. After switching to Verizon's fios, we didn't have any problems at all, but lately it's just been horrid and we have trouble connecting to any websites and have to keep refreshing to try and get it to connect. *kicks*

Okay, so. Not sure where to start on this one. I guess I'll start with Penny Arcade. This specific Penny Arcade, to be precise. In particular the words "I'm a twitter shitter", "Alright poop time", and "Okay poop is coming out".

Around these parts, we often say "I'm a twitter shitter". We also say "poop coming out now", which is how we had misremembered "okay poop is coming out". Frankly, I like our version better. We don't necessarily say these things when there is poop involved. Just, you know. When it seems right.

The other day when we saw a raccoon, somehow we ended up with "raccoon coming out now". Which we now say a lot, too.

Just now, Bruce was playing Wii bowling and not doing so well, so he was indulging in a bit of creative swearing, my favorite of which was "whore pooper". I imagine I'll use that a lot. But of course my very first thought was, you guessed it, "whore coming out now".

Yes. This is a typical day in our household.

Tomorrow (today, rather, since it's past midnight) is our tenth anniversary. The secret to a happy relationship is apparently toilet humor and the ability to quote from internet memes and the Simpsons for years without ever tiring of it.

:D

After a short break, I got some more work in this week. Last night I finished translating 112 summaries for these porno anime I've been working on, and I've been given 10 more of the videos to translate (with the promise of 10 more per month for at least another two or three months).

The other day I was inputting the new totals on our credit cards after the recent payments I'd made and was excited to see that it's now under $15,000 total (compared to over $20,000 when I started on these videos two months ago). If we hadn't had to buy out the car loan earlier this year it would be $6000 less than that, but oh well. If I can keep paying down the cards at this rate, we may be nearly debt-free by Christmas. It's almost impossible to think of, because we've been crushed under this debt for so long, unable to do more than make minimum payments (and when we did pay larger chunks, inevitably something would come along to put it back up again). It's even more amazing to think we've been able to pay off so much while Bruce is unemployed. What a difference being paid a decent wage makes!

*

Today we have to go to Best Buy to return the mouse Bruce got, as he doesn't like it. ;_; We'll probably go to Fry's, too, or maybe tomorrow, and see if we can get the one we were going to buy last weekend. I think the one he was going to get was on sale then, though, so now it may not be. I really, really wish they still made his old mouse! The stupid thing is, they do, only it's now Windows-only. *headdesk* We've looked on Amazon and eBay for the old Mac-compatible version, but it's always incredibly expensive (I guess other people loved it, too), or if we find it for a decent price it's in Hong Kong and shipping doubles the price.

( OMFG SPOILERS DUH )

We went to Best Buy this afternoon to see if we could find a mouse for Bruce. Bought one, but after trying it out, he decided he didn't like it. ;_; So we'll be returning it sometime this week. *sigh* We also got Wii Play. Thought about getting a nunchuk as well, since they are cheap and just include the regular controller, but we figured so far nothing much needs it, so it's not a priority.

I also saw they do have a volleyball game! It's called Big Beach Sports and it's got soccer, football, volleyball, lawn bowling, frisbee golf, and...something? I don't know, there are six sports, so obviously I'm forgetting something. Anyway. Volleyball! I think we might actually go down to Blockbuster and see if we can rent some games to give them a try first. (I wonder if our account is even still good anymore...)

When we were at Fry's I saw they had a program for Wii that allowed you to transfer Miis to your computer, but it was $19.99! I would really like to post Bruce's and mine, but not for $20. I tried to take a picture of the TV, but it wouldn't work. :(

This evening we walked up to the neighborhood market to buy some more lunch meat (they have such a good deli, and this time the roast beef was even better than before, so red it was practically mooing...mmm...). Everything was going well until about halfway home, when Bruce accidentally stepped off the sidewalk onto the parkway, which is about two inches down and stumbled and fell flat on the sidewalk. Thankfully he didn't sprain or break anything (including his glasses) or even tear his clothes, but he skinned his elbows and palms and chin (though his beard saved him from a worse skinning) and jarred one wrist pretty bad. He managed to hobble home and hopefully will feel better in the morning.

It's been pretty warm lately, which means sandwich weather! We've been having so many delicious sandwiches. Today I had three, one for each meal. :D Egg salad (with tomato and sprouts on toasted whole grain bread) for breakfast, BST (bacon, sprouts, and tomato) on toasted sourdough for lunch (I used a whole tomato which was actually a bit too much as I could barely get my mouth around it), and roast beef (with tomato, sprouts, and muenster cheese on egg bread) for dinner. Mmm...sammiches!

Oh, and speaking of warm weather, I cut my hair again the other day. I hadn't cut it in a couple months, so it was getting long. I buzzed it at 3, which is almost to my scalp, and I keep forgetting about it until I see my reflection or my shadow and then I'm like "oh! I have no hair!" XD

I forgot to say, we were looking at Wii stuffs at Fry's, but of course didn't buy anything because of the line from hell. They didn't have Wii Play, though, which is what we want most, because it means another controller! We were looking very hard at the Bomberman game, though. I'm also intrigued by the Dragon Quest game where you actually use your controller as a sword. That seems pretty awesome, Y/Y? And I already love Dragon Quest!

But you know what? The Wii has reminded me how much I actually like sports! Guys. I like sports! I have never liked sports as in watching them (which seems to be the way the majority of people like sports) and playing video games of sports has previously seemed to me entirely pointless because um, it doesn't involve actually playing them. Like, ever. But the Wii is different! I feel like I am actually playing the game! I would love it if there was volleyball in this, because I think you could do it, just hold the controller with your hands in proper positions? Like, setting would be most difficult, because it uses both hands separate, but you could use the regular controller and the nunchuk. Serving, spiking, and bumping would be easy even with just the one controller. WHY IS THERE NOT VOLLEYBALL I REALLY WANT TO PLAY NOW.

I played sports all through jr high and high school. In jr high I played softball for two years and volleyball for one. In high school I played volleyball for all four years and basketball for one. If my school had not been super tiny and actually had more sports, I would likely have played those, too. I always enjoyed when we'd play sports in PE, too. (As opposed to the horrible times we had to do aerobics (I am too uncoordinated) or just random exercise.

But. The problem with sports is, you need other people to play. You also need equipment and a place to play it. But mainly the drawback is the other people. In school, those other people were provided to me! But now. Now I would have to go out and find other people and that would just be icky because if there is one thing I don't like, it's other people! I did take a volleyball course once in college and it was okay, but it involved way too much interacting with other people in ways that I don't approve of, such as being expected to talk to them and be friendly.

But now! Now I can play sports in the comfort of my own home. With just me! And once we get another controller, with Bruce!

THIS IS SO AWESOME.

I'm sure I will eventually get some other games for the Wii, but right now I'm just really enjoying Wii Sports and I wanted to share that.

We went over to the farmers' market this morning. This location has been there for a couple years now and we keep saying we're going to go, but never do. The problem is, of course, it's in the morning, and I'm usually sleeping then. It's only about seven blocks away, so not far at all. We took the bus up there and then walked back.

They had a lot of good-looking stuff, though as expected, it was all pretty pricey. We did buy a loaf of sourdough bread, some cheese, some butter, and some strawberries. The prices on fruit in general seem to be less than non-sale prices at the grocery store, but higher than sale prices. Now, the thing with sale prices is it often means the fruit is gone or going bad (we were excited to see rhubarb down to $2.29 a pound at the store the other day, but when we picked it up, we found it was moldy). Plus the produce at the farmers' market is so much better in terms of quality than at the grocery store, so there's that to take into account as well.

I've been really enjoying the fruit (and yoghurt) I've been eating the past few days, and had already resolved to try and eat better (more real food, less junk food), so I think if I don't buy any crap, then I can allow myself to buy more produce (esp. fruit), even if the prices are a little higher than I would normally want to pay.

Oh, and speaking of the sourdough bread, one night at Bruce's folks', we had this delicious sourdough bread, just plain (untoasted) with butter. It was so much milder than any sourdough I'd ever had, and had texture more like "regular" bread than sourdough that I don't know I would have even realised that's what it was had I not been told. I do love regular sourdough, but usually for toast, not just eating plain, because I don't like the texture as much. So I have been looking for something similar ever since we got home, but so far no luck.

After we got home and cooled off a bit, we headed down to Book Off(s). I didn't get much for myself, just two vols. of Conan that were on the $1 shelf (actually three, but it turned out one was one I already had and I had been reading the wrong line on my list of manga to buy!), but I did pick up some manga for someone else, and Bruce got a few CDs. But! We went again to the omgsogood curry place in Marukai. It's called Sawtelle Kitchen, and is apparently connected to a little Japanese-Italian restaurant on Sawtelle, but from reviews of that place, it seems completely different. I like this curry-centric version! Mmm...I wish I could eat it again for dinner! The pork cutlet is like none I've ever had before. So tender and juicy, and the breading light and crispy. *drools*

We also stopped at Fry's, which was a HUGE MISTAKE. We got a parking place easily enough, but when we got up to the front of the store, we found the line winding all the way back to the front door, which let me tell you, is a long way. And yeah, they have like forty registers, but it still would have taken forever, so we didn't buy anything. We were there for a new mouse for Bruce (computer mouse, since inevitably any time I talk about mice, someone thinks real mice), as his has been having trouble for a couple years now. The thing is, we go to the store and he looks at mice and nothing seems just right, so he'll stick with his old one for a while longer, but that means I have to listen to him complain about it all the time, so now I have really had enough. But I was foiled again by the long lines. :(

In other news, my mom emailed me a bit ago to say her father-in-law died last night. They have been expecting him to go any day now, so it wasn't a surprise. He had a fall a couple months ago that basically took him from a sprightly 95-year-old to a frail old man just waiting to die in one fell swoop.

Oh, also I had meant to say the other day we saw a raccoon at the end of our street! I don't think I've ever seen one "in the wild", so to speak. The main animals we have here are squirrels and possums. I know people have bad raccoon problems the further north in Santa Monica you go, as that's closer to the mountains, but that is also the rich part of town, so really, I can count on one hand the number of times I've been up there. It might as well be a whole other city (or country).

I had this out from Netflix for ages and ages, and then before our trip, Bruce ripped and encoded it for me so I could have it on my hard drive, but I didn't watch it then, either. But I did finally watch it tonight!

This was an interesting film. Basically it's an afternoon on Hampstead Heath, and the focus switches between a bunch of different people (mainly couples) there that day. Some of the stories were more interesting than others, but overall I enjoyed it.

( More detail (spoilers, obvs) )

All of the stories felt very real. I liked that there was quite a variety in ages, that several couples were interracial (though all black/white (two black girl/white guy couples and one black guy/white girl couple with a daughter), that there was a gay couple (and lots of other gay guys in the area they were) and mention of a lesbian couple (the little girl says she wishes she had two mummies like her friend). I liked that they weren't Hollywood beautiful (this happens more often in British stuff than American) and while no one (except one guy who walks by) was terribly overweight, several people were kind of pudgy and just generally looking like ordinary people.

Definitely recommended.

It's 4th of July, but all that means around here is that there was no mail today. We're not doing anything or going anywhere, and the city's big fireworks show that we usually watch from our backyard (as it takes place across the street at the college) was last Saturday when we were driving home (it's always the Saturday before the 4th). I heard a few little fireworks yesterday and last night, and I'm sure there will be some more tonight.

I was talking about fireworks yesterday in chat, though, and how weird it is in the midwest that fireworks are such a HUGE business. They are everywhere. There are only a few cities here where they're allowed, and in those places you'll find them in Target or the grocery store, but not so in the midwest. They put up giant tents on the highway and open up entire stores for them. Every other billboard on the road is advertising fireworks.

This one place in Illinois (or might have been a bit into Indiana) called Krazy Kaplan's had billboards for, I swear, about a hundred miles. And not just one billboard here and there, but several each mile. We were so sick of the place by the time we finally passed them.

Anyway, I don't really have any attachments to fireworks myself. They have been outlawed in LA my entire life. When I was very little, they were still allowed in Culver City, so we'd go over to my great grandma's house and set them off there. But they were banned in Culver City when I was around four, so I don't really have much nostalgia about them. I can remember once holding a sparkler while the adults set off fireworks, but that's it.

In other news, I've been pretty unproductive this week. I think all the exhaustion from travelling is catching up with me. I haven't had any work (aside from my scanlating job last night), so I have got a few things off my to-do list that had been hanging on there for a while, but I think most of my time has been spent playing Peggle. I am so close to beating every damn thing on that game. After beating all the regular levels, there are 65 challenge levels, where you have to do various things like clear the entire screen or get a certain high score. I have now beaten all but two of them, the one where you have to get 750,000 points on a level (my highest has been about 100,000 short of that) and the one where you have to beat ten levels in a row without dying (my highest there has been 8/10).

I have also been playing Wii every day and, well, *points to icon*. Today I tried the baseball for the first time. I assumed I would be playing some sort of batting practice thing, but no, it was actually a game. I had to bat as me and everyone else on my team, and then pitch when the other team was up! Thankfully it was only three innings because I was dripping with sweat by then.

It was nice to see how well-balanced the computer-generated Miis are in terms of race and gender. On the two teams, the ones I remember are a couple white girls (one with a ponytail and freckles, the other with just longish straight hair), a black guy with dreads, a black girl with buzzed blonde hair, and the Asian girl and bald black guy who are always my opponents in tennis (and of course me and Bruce). (Though I did find it really annoying when you're creating your Mii that if you choose the gender as female it automatically puts you in a dress (you can't really change your clothes, just the color), so my Mii is male because fuck that shit.)

Bruce put in an application yesterday at Foster Freeze, which is an ice cream/burger place just around the corner from us. It would really be ideal, even if it's only part-time, so I'm hoping they get back to him.

Hmm, what else? Oh, one of the things that has been on my to-do list forever that I started on is organising a list of my music collection. I have one on my website, but it is years out of date. The first step is getting a list of all my mp3s, then I'll make a list of (just jpop) CDs and CDRs. The mp3 list has everything, not just jpop, because it's just easier that way.

I exported from iTunes into a text file, then dropped that in Excel and deleted the columns I don't want. Now I'm just trying to figure out how best to display it on the web.It's got fifty bajiliion songs, so I don't want to build my own tables, as that would take forever. I suppose I could just use Microsoft's built-in whatever to turn it into HTML, but the thought of all that bad HTML pains me. Anyone got any better ideas?

While you're contemplating that, have some music! This is just all stuff I've uploaded by request recently, most of which has been uploaded here many times before.

Individual songs:

Kiss Destination - Girls, Be Ambitious!
Dragon Ash - Fantasista
Manic Street Preachers - Umbrella
Rihanna vs UB40 - Red Umbrella
Rihanna vs Shakira - Umbrella Hips
Rihanna vs Timelock - Umbrella Moon

Albums:

( Yuzu, Da Pump, Hikaru Genji, SMAP, Amuro Namie, GLAY )

Since returning to CA we have found the most amazing thing...some produce is actually affordable! This is not the usual state of things. Normally the good stuff is shipped out of state and we're left with the moldy (and/or spidery) dregs. (Oh, there's some nice-looking stuff, but it's always out of our price range.)

But in the past few days I got black plums for $1 a pound and peaches for 88 cents a pound and grapes for...I think $1.29 or so a pound. Om nom nom! The peaches still aren't quite ripe, but I just had one of the plums. Mmmmmmmmm...

We stopped in Trader Joe's earlier to get some stuff, and while we were there, we saw some chicken in curry sauce that looked so good. Bruce had got some chicken out of the freezer to thaw this morning, and we have tons of curry powder, so I said, why not just make our own? We grabbed some yoghurt, but the container was far more than we'd need for the sauce, so I thought why not eat some with fruit?

It's Trader Joe's organic European-style yoghurt and oh my God, it's so good. I drizzled some honey over it, then chopped up a plum and added a handful of green grapes and it was the best snack ever. The yoghurt wasn't too bad price-wise, either, $2.99 for a large container (maybe 16 oz?). I'll definitely be buying it again (and again).

I should take a picture next time. :)

So far, our first day home has been pretty good. :)

1. I managed to fix the toilet last night. By turning the...faucet? I don't know what you call the thing that turns the water on and off! just so, I was able to keep the water to the toilet running, but not have it leak. I don't know how the toilet got turned off, as I certainly didn't do it, but we must never shut it off again! Because it's a real pain in the ass to find that one non-leaky place.

2. Some of the charges seem to be coming back onto the gift card. There is now $21.60 on there, so hopefully the rest will trickle in over the next couple days.

3. The Wii is so much fun! I played bowling last night and got all hot and sweaty (and yes, the remote did fly out of my hand once, but I made sure to tighten the strap after that). I haven't got this much exercise playing a video game since DDR (I still have one mat and one game; maybe I should pull that out, too). I am interested in playing golf and tennis, too, for sure, but unlike bowling, where I only had to learn what buttons to use, I have no clue as to the rules of tennis (Prince of Tennis has not really helped me understand this!) and only vaguely of golf (I have only ever played miniature golf...), so I may need to read the instruction manual to figure it out.

4. I have a $20 Barnes & Noble gift card from Bruce's aunt and uncle and was wondering what to use it on (I really can't bear to buy books new at the ridiculous prices shops charge these days), but then I realised maybe they sell Wii stuff! *checks* They do online, at any rate, and like Amazon, they appear to give free shipping with orders of $25 or more, so maybe I'll just order something there. :D

5. My grandpa came by this morning with my birthday card and the usual $100 birthday money. Also with homegrown zucchini and a tomato.

6. We got our mail delivered. I was afraid maybe they'd tell us we had to go to the post office and pick it up if it was too much, but no, he brought it. Mostly junk, but I did get two checks from work I was expecting, totalling $4000. That almost doubled the amount of money I've made so far this year. ^_^;; Hopefully things will continue to go well. *crosses fingers* I had paid several bills online while we were away, but I wrote checks for the few that arrived while we were gone.

7. Walked over to the check cashing place downt he road to collect the western union payment I had not been able to get while away and took that to the bank with the checks.

8. We stopped at the little grocery store on the way home, as we wanted some lunch meat and their deli counter always has the best. We got one of those reusable bags everywhere is pushing now, too. We really want to try and walk more, so we'll probably be going to that grocery store more often. (Also...next year? Sometime soon they will no longer be allowing plastic bags in stores (dunno if this is just a California thing or all of the country) so it's either paper or reusable, and paper is not so good if you're walking and have heavy things.)

9. We had delicious sandwiches for lunch, topped with slices of the tomato Grandpa brought over. OMG so good. I wish we had better luck growing tomatoes in our yard, because they taste so much better homegrown.

10. We did pull up one of our potato plants today (one of the few things we seem to be able to grow and not have infested by ants or eaten by squirrels, birds, or insects, or just plain fail to thrive for no apparent reason) and there are lots of ickle baby potatoes (along with one huge one O_o; frankly, I would rather have had another 5-6 baby ones than the big one, but I'll chop it up).

I am never leaving again.

*flops*

Got an early start this morning and had a bit of overcastness here and there, but no rain at all. Once we got into the western half of Arizona and into California, it was HOT. We stopped in Needles, CA for lunch and I was like, fuck this, we are going to the drive-through and eating on the go, because I am not getting out of the car in 118 degree heat. As it was, it was the slowest drive-through in the entire world. We only ordered three double cheeseburgers and it's not like there were a lot of people, but it took forever. Ugh. Stupid town.

There was some traffic once we hit Barstow and on into LA and Santa Monica. The thing is both the 40 (which we were on, which is anyone coming cross-country or going to Havasu for the weekend) and whatever highway goes up to Vegas converge in Barstow, so lots of people coming home from weekends away funnel in there. It was better than if we'd arrived tomorrow at the same time, where we would have had rush hour all the way through. But we got in around 6-ish, so yay.

Not so great things:

1. For some reason the toilet is leaking. I need to fiddle with the thing behind it that turns on and off the water, to see if maybe it's just turned too high, but ugh. I really did not need to come home to leaky things!

2. Right before the border between Arizona and California, a semi zoomed past next to us and its tires kicked up a small rock, which smacked into our front window and cracked it. It's just a tiny crack, down by the passenger side windshield wipers, so we're going to see if there's any way to repair it without replacing the entire window, and if not, well, it's out of the way enough that we can just leave it, and if it continues to grow, then replace the window once it gets too bad. I am really upset about this, though, because windows are expensive. :(

3. One of the conditions for going to visit Bruce's folks was that they would pay for part of the gas (it had originally been all of it, but the amount Bruce calculated turned out to be quite a bit less, and Bruce's dad was only going to give us $500, no more). They didn't have time to send us a check ahead of time (or rather, they just didn't do it; they Fed-Exed the I-Pass, so they could have included a check as well), so they just gave us money when we got there. But Bruce's dad had the bright idea to get one of these bank gift cards, which works like a credit card. Kind of. You can't actually use it like a credit card at some places, and it turned out to be a huge pain in the ass. We'd asked for cash, but they refused, saying that was too dangerous. *eyeroll*

So anyway, the stupid card. In order to use it for gas, you can't pay at the pump, but have to go in, tell them an amount, then use the pump, and if there's change, it will be credited back to your account. Unfortunately this does not happen right away. So we should still have $50+ on the card, but there's a bunch of credits that haven't come back on. Now I'm nervous that they won't, and how are we supposed to dispute that if they don't? We have receipts for some of the credits, I think, but it's not like we can go back to those gas stations. :-/ *crosses fingers the credits come back*

Meh.

I am so tired now. It's only 9, but I may go to bed soon. Maybe tomorrow I'll be productive.

Tomorrow at this time I will be home (and will have been home for a couple hours, hopefully). I am so, so, so, so looking forward to that.

Tonight we're in Grants, New Mexico, not that far from the border to Arizona. There was quite a bit of rain today, both in Oklahoma and in New Mexico. The rain in NM was accompanied by really strong winds that rocked the car. I had to hold tight to the wheel with both hands to keep from swerving. O_O Thankfully that didn't last too long. It wasn't raining when we got in tonight, thankfully. Nice and cool, though, and still pretty windy.

We stopped for dinner in Clines Corners, which we had stopped in on the way east and hated because of their really gross bathrooms and general tackiness. But this time we noticed a billboard for a green chili cheeseburger, so we decided to stop in so Bruce could get that. Turns out the food at the little diner there is really, really good. So that balances out the other crap a bit. I had a really tasty BLT. It was on eggbread! Yum. They had fresh onion rings, too, obviously cooked right there, not frozen and reheated.

It's only 10.30, but I think I'm going to go to bed now. So tired. (I did get about 8 hours sleep last night, though, but was still very tired today...)

I banged my little toe really hard quite a few months ago, and ever since, the nail's been kind of wonky, like looking dead and feeling really loose. Well, I kind of just let it grow, because I didn't want to pull it off and...well, I don't know why I didn't cut it; I suppose I could have. But it felt really precarious even touching it, so. Anyway, this morning, Bruce accidentally stubbed his toe against my little toe really hard, and my first thought was, oh shit, my nail. Sure enough, lifted up my foot and it was hanging by a thread. So he pulled it off. Didn't hurt, so I guess it was pretty much dead. There seems to be a tiny sliver of nail there, whether it's newer nail of that one and he just ripped the top off, or an entirely new nail, I don't know. I should have taken a picture of the nail, but alas, I didn't (just looked at it for a long while, because it looked pretty cool and had old dried blood underneath from God knows how long ago). So that was my fun morning. It really didn't hurt much at all, btw, just the initial ouch! when Bruce kicked my toe.

I didn't mention yesterday that we watched Cars (the Pixar cartoon) in the afternoon on Mike's PS3 (blue-ray) and very large screen TV. It looked awesome and was very cute.

This morning we got out of the house a bit before nine. Not as early a start as we were getting on the way out here, but we'd planned it that way. Last night was my weekly scanlation stuff, and with the 3 hour time difference, I wasn't done until 2am and so did not want to get up in four hours or whatever. But unfortunately I had sleep anxiety and so only ended up getting about four hours' sleep anyway.

I had an air matress to sleep on, which had been just fine the night before, no problem, but last night I couldn't seem to get comfortable. Part of it was that my feet hung off the end and that was bugging me. The fan going was bugging me, but turning it off would make the room horribly hot (he has AC but for some reason it's not up very high or not in every room or something). My right arm and leg were aching from I don't know what. And I just wasn't tired. I mean, I was tired, but my eyes were wide open. I tried getting up and going to the bathroom to "reset" myself as I do at home, but it didn't work despite trying two times. I just got worse and worse, to the point where I was lying there pulling at my hair and feeling like I was going to scream or cry or something, because I just wanted to be home, where I wouldn't be stressed out about sleep*. So finally I got up and took my pillow and blanket** downstairs to try the sofa. It took a bit of tossing and turning, but I did fall asleep fairly quickly then, so I guess the change was just what I needed.

Anyway, so tonight I am hoping for a good night's sleep. I was really tired and my back/shoulders/neck were tense and aching while driving today. :-/

We are in Claremore, Oklahoma. It is kind of hicksville. We had originally planned to go all the way to Tulsa, which is ~30 more miles, but then we saw a road sign for a Super 8 here and decided to stop, figuring that way we can just drive through the city in the morning without having to stop anywhere, and traffic will be better Saturday morning than Friday evening.

We are doing fairly even chunks of ~700 miles per day this time instead of 800+ the first two days and a smaller third day as we did coming out. The reason is mainly that once you hit Arizona it's a whole bunch of nothing except for Flagstaff in the middle (all the other cities are down south, not on the route we're driving). So if we did 800 today, we'd have to do like 600 tomorrow or nearly 1000 to get to Flagstaff. So we opted for three even days. We also gain an hour each day from crossing time zones, huzzah. Tomorrow we're stopping in Grants, New Mexico.

Oh, on the highway there was a sign for Arby's in this town, so we figured we'd go there for dinner, but we drove around and no sign of Arby's. We did find KFC, though, so we got that. They didn't include my biscuit, though, the bastards. >:0 What's weird about fast food in the midwest is that it's all staffed by teenagers. At home, I don't think I've ever seen a teenager working at a fast food place. Also so far everywhere we've stopped, I've grumbled about stupid kids, because seriously. Yeah, I've had people be stupid and not know how to work things or mess up my order getting fast food at home, but for the most part people try harder because they're adults and they kind of need their job, but when it's kids they're just like, fuck it, because they don't care. (I know there are some teenagers who would actually care about having a job and/or really need to make money, but these have not been the sort. I think one was high when he was taking our order at Dairy Queen.)

What else? Oh, funny story about Mike's cat this morning. We got up before Mike, and were packing up, etc. and his cat was demanding to be fed. She went in the kitchen, looked back to make sure Bruce was coming, then went to the cupboard, stopped and looked at him again, then once he had the cupboard open, she went over to her bowl...and stuck her face in the bowl. He was like, uh, you kind of need to move that, so I can, you know, put the food in. XD The difference between cats and dogs is not that one is smart and the other stupid, it's that cats want you to think they're smart, whereas dogs just revel in their stupidity.

Last night we went out to dinner with Bruce's sister, who also lives in Indianapolis. Her husband was working, but she brought the kids, who were actually fairly decent. We went to Cheesecake Factory and she bought us dinner, which was a nice surprise. I got the "chicken stuffed tortillas" or something like that, which are really just enchiladas. Not sure why they don't call them that. I realised after getting them that I'd got them last time (which might have been my birthday last year), but they were good, so I don't mind getting them again. Had I realised it before, though, I probably would have ordered something else, because their menu is so huge and everything looks delicious. Also got a piece of their banana cheesecake, which is what I get every time, because it's the best evar.

Today we went to Steak & Shake for lunch, which I've always looked at curiously when I've been in the midwest, but never eaten at. It is apparently not fast food, but more of a Johnny Rockets, retro-style burger joint. The food was okay, but for those prices I don't need to ever eat there again. I did have a delicious shake, though. They have it so you can get half one flavor and half the other, so I got banana and strawberry.

Now I am going to take a shower, because I am rather grotty-feeling and I don't want to have to bother with it in the morning. Just two more days before I am home, yay! Then I can rest and recuperate from the stress of vacationing. XD




*This whole trip I've not been able to sleep properly because it's either waking up for driving or waking up for meals with people.

**I brought my own pillow and blanket with me on the trip. I used to be more flexible, but in recent years I find it harder and harder to sleep if things aren't just right, which includes having this specific blanket (I have been partial to my pillow for years; it's practically flat and I really can't stand fluffy pillows).