Hilary Booth... of course!

Oh great. I appear to have a cold. Hopefully I'll be feeling better tomorrow.

The Olympics have started. The opening ceremonies were mind blowing. I've been wallowing in the coverage, jumping around all the channels. Besides the usual gymnastics and swimming, they've also given me plenty of volleyball. I'd blame reading "Crimson Hero", but I recall watching the US team at really odd hours in 1984. I've even learned to like beach volleyball, which I've always looked on as the popular cousin you don't like visiting.

The saddest thing I heard during the gymnastics was about the state of Romanian gymnastics: "Little girls don't dream of being Nadia anymore." Punctuated by showing a Romanian gymnast falling off the balance beam... *sighs* It makes me want to dig up old gymnastics videos on youtube or something.

The Stitching Olympics are off to a flying start. I've already finished one page of Quackworth, which stunned me.

It's not a good sign when your little WeatherBug display on your taskbar turns blood red and says 100, is it? I can only hope it's slightly better tomorrow and that Scarlet Thread has good air conditioning for the class tomorrow.

Shoujo Beat must have sensed I needed a cooling off. They're previewing the skating manga Sugar Princess in their latest issue. I didn't quite laugh at the opening pages at the idea of a rank beginner landing a double axel their first time skating, much less turning her into a pairs skater. But the accompanying article on the sports popularity in Japan was nice. I do wish they'd given more credit to Arakawa, but their focus was on Mao Asada and Miki Ando, along with a little bit on Mirai Nagasu. With her dual citizenship, the Japanese federation is apparently hoping they can woo her over.

The glories of the coming of the new prescription. Lately I've noticed just enough of a blurring of my distance vision to make me concerned. I'd had it checked a few years ago, but it hadn't been that different, but I did wind up with new reading glasses. Finally last night I hailed out to Seven Corners to get checked out at my venerable eye place. I think I've always gone to that location, even before it changed to Pearle. Have I mentioned I loathe the glaucoma test where they puff air at you? They tell you not to blink, but it's a reflex action. The actual exam was pretty painless, just an adjustment of the old prescription. "Is one or two better? Is that worse?" They do think it'll make my vision a little clearer. Then I went to find new spectacles. I hate picking out the right frames, so I'm glad the opticians are so intuitive on what works and what doesn't on my face. I wound up getting two pairs, one regular and one sunglasses.

I took a quick stop across the way at the Barnes & Noble for new manga. I picked up the latest volume of Gunslinger Girl, which ADV is finally releasing. I have the anime on my Netflix. I also bought the first volume of La Corda D'oro, a shoujo book set in a music school. I was curious after seeing an article in the last Shoujo Beat on some of the classical pieces mentioned in the series. I may regret picking up the Dark Horse translation of the Dirty Pair book. They're definitely an acquired taste.

I discovered to my horror they'd changed the bus stop at that shopping center. I'm not wild about the new location. That led me to getting home too late for the "Heroes" premiere! Horrors! Thank god for dvrs. I have to reset my brain to "tv watching season", because it's been on summer saving time

Sometimes it pays to glance through the Express before settling on my daily sudoku fix. I came across an article on the Shojo Manga exhibit held at the Japanese Embassy's Japan Information and Culture Center. This exhibit has been touring around the country. It'll be here through March, so I'm hoping when I'm feeling more mobile, I can see the exhibit. One person's four blocks sounds like four miles to me. Although, according to the WMATA site, I might be able to get even closer if I take the bus from Ballston. Something to consider certainly...

"Away in a manga": Lengthy and by and large well written article by Mangablog writer Brigid Alverson on the genre, covering the basics. I was a little put off by the attitude towards Western super-hero comics. It generalizes on the usual reasons given why women read manga rather than say DC & Marvel. It's very teen oriented with discussions of libraries, so the more controversial aspects of manga are there more as warnings, rather than in depth explanation.

So I spent most of the weekend resting and getting some needlework done. My head is still having its days, but at least it's nowhere near as bad as it was last weekend, right? While I'm not wild about DMC's mini needlework carrier, I do like the Stitchbow Roll. It holds twenty threads in a roll so I can carry around a fairly decent size project. The only real annoyance is the the little tags with the floss numbers slip off so easily when you're taking the Stitchbow out.

In manga news, Shoujo Beat has revamped their interiors, switching to the brightly tinted pages in the tradition of Japanese shoujo anthologies. What was wrong with basic black and white? I personally found it easier to read that way. They've also swapped out "Godchild" for "Vampire Knight", which sadly is not a FK manga.

Historical link: WWI Color Photos: Photos taken by the French in the last two years of WWI in color, no less.

Two blogs I'm reading: Deep Genre: Fascinating reading on genre fiction, mostly sf/fantasy and the writing/publishing thereof. And a LJ feed deepgenrewr

Artistic License: Teresa Wentzler's blog. She's branched out into art prints since I last looked in on her website.

Musicland picked a rather annoying time to file for Chapter 11 protection. I had preordered the first volume of Macross from the local Suncoast, only to be delayed because of their distribution problems. The local store is very understanding, even willing to give me a refund on my deposit. I'll wait another week before seeking it elsewhere, maybe check the one at Pentagon City to see if it's any better, but I doubt it. They haven't received a good chunk of their new dvd releases, which I'm sure is killing their business. Suncoast has made a healthy living off my dvd habits lately. I'd hate to lose them. And I had just discovered the fellow sf/comics geek on staff. He never blinked twice at my selections. In fact, he usually wanted copies for himself. I wonder what he thought of the "Hikaru no Go" dub since he admitted to having presumably the fansubs.

I also glanced through Dark Horse's Harlequin manga titles. They looked like the standard shoujo artwork. What I couldn't get over was the colored paper. One book was tinged in pink, the other one was tinged in purple. Apparently it's a color code to denote sweet versus sensual. I can understand putting that information in the covers or a logo. But the paper itself?

They washed the windows yesterday, but they haven't put the screens back. I'm more than a little worried they won't get it done, since they're predicting rain for the rest of the week. And they're still having issues with the water pressure. Lovely timing for July, isn't it?

Animenation finally shipped the latest Afternoon manga. I was beginning to think they'd stopped carrying it. I also ordered an Italian translation of a manga story I enjoyed featured in Kappa magazine. The magazine is about 200 pages, some stories flipped and some unflipped. It arrived on Monday after only two weeks. I've been having quite an interesting time with the online translation places like Babelfish. No site is perfect though. There's always some word that isn't in one dictionary. It became a little easier after I figured out how to add the Italian keyboard to my computer, so I could do all the accents. I'm surprised it's going so well.

We're not afraid: Photographs/weblog started after the London bombings. Fits the mood I noticed on metaquotes and my friends list.

sailormac, according to Right Stuf's catalog, Viz is releasing the first volume of Death Note in October. I spotted the first four untranslated volumes of the title in Borders today, after scooping up the next "W Juliet" volume.

China King still makes the best sweet and sour chicken (okay, chicken tempura, given I leave off the sauce) in the area. I don't get to that chain all that often, so it's a nice treat. I'm beginning to wonder if honey garlic chicken is a localized phenomenon or limited to certain styles of Chinese restaurants I don't visit. Manchu Wok sometimes has it on a blue moon.

I'm also starting to think my father was right when he said I always wound up working at places at the most "interesting times". My current assignment is overwhelmingly Hispanic/Latin American, so it was fascinating hearing the responses yesterday to the new pope.

Manga article from Eclipse Magazine: Mainly focuses on the Viz titles, including FMA and the upcoming Shoujo Beat titles.

Obviously ithurtsmybrain has had a bad effect on my anime watching. I was watching the latest two volumes of ROD TV over the weekend and decided it might be fun to crossover Yomiko Readman and Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next. What would Jurisfiction do with a Paper Master? And then I was reading "Lost in a Good Book" and one of the opening bits for each chapter comments on certain urban legends Thursday knows including that ( Spoiler? ). It sounds a lot like Mr. Gentleman in the tv series, doesn't it?

On the other hand, I still couldn't watch the first episode of ROD TV volume 4 without visible cringing. It has nearly four years, but there are some images that are burned into your brain.