PAST: What was your first paying job?
PRESENT: What do you do for a living nowadays?
FUTURE: Barring “winning the lottery,” what would be your dream job?
Short and sweet, since I was a monumental putz and forgot to do this last night. I’m just glad people keep coming back for more…
http://greyduck.net/ppf
Remember that coast trip I wrote about yesterday? Here’s what it looked like.
Don’t you wish you’d gone with, now?
Oh yeah, I keep forgetting to post this:
I don’t know about you, but I find the concept absolutely hilarious…
Gallery – Natural Beauty
It’s all a blur in my mind today, but I know I had a good time this weekend. I had several good times, really. Let’s set the Way-Back Machine, Sherman, and I’ll try to cover the highlights of the days:
Thursday: (Yes, Thursday. It’s my weekend, I’ll start it whenever I damned well please. So there.) Dinner date with Lilith. Lots of conversation both mundane and meaningful. Teasing, flirting, all that good stuff.
Friday: Work closed down early, so I took off to the Greyhound station to help Hanson-Kun greet Kylanath and ayagi. (Side note – I accidentally blew off Dalemar for this. Bad ducky.) Ended up dining… correction, nibbling fondue and waiting and then dining… at Gustav’s. On Sandy, not the other one. (Another side note – Hanson-Kun and Kylanath both have pretty good write-ups for the weekend.)
Saturday: Up way way too damned early so I could make backup tapes on the AS/400 in time to head downtown to Powell’s and meet up with Lance and Isaac. Completely on a whim I called up Lil’, who coincidentally also had the same destination planned at a convenient time. So I was saved the trouble of waiting for a bus, and granted the boon of a bit of Lilith’s company before the major part of my weekend began. She teased me mercilessly, but she does that anyway. I just keep telling myself it’s part of her charm…
After mistaking the coffee room for the magazine room, I finally met up with Isaac and then Lance. We headed to the gathering place by way of Just Be Toys (because you can’t get too many opportunities to drool over imported toy-like goodness). We learned exactly why Lance owns a Dodge Ram instead of a ground-hugging sedan.
The afternoon and evening were spent eating, drinking (no, not that kind of drinking), talking and playing console games. By which I mean Soul Calibur 2. Exclusively. As always, Raphael is my main man. I successfully defended myself against all comers Saturday, until I finally got tired of stabbing controller buttons with my thumb. Besides, a guy’s gotta sleep some time, right?
Sunday: After getting almost no sleep (so much for that idea), we piled into vehicles to journey coastward in search of a campground suitable for fine picnic dining. We took the straight shot out Hwy 26 and found ourselves at Ecola State Park. (“Eeeee-co-laaaaa!”) We took the left fork and enjoyed the view from the promontory bluff. There’s nothing quite like seeing puffy clouds scudding by mere dozens of feet overhead. It was that kind of day at the Oregon coast, friends.
Pictures were snapped, sandwiches ingested, and a few brave souls adventured down to the (barely) available beach. I wasn’t in the right shoes for such activity, sad to say. So much for getting my feet wet, eh?
My bright idea for getting some beach time for all of us involved taking that right fork. We tried, but in vain. We don’t know why the gentleman with the STOP sign and the bright orange vest was detaining vehicles along that road but we didn’t wait the half-hour it would’ve required to satisfy our collective curiosity. Oh well. We decided to pack it in and head homeward-ish.
Which would’ve been more fun but for the fact that Hwy 101 was being partially detoured through “downtown” Cannon Beach. On a Sunday afternoon. On Labor Day Weekend. Yes, you can imagine the snail’s-pace action. At one point I looked out the right-side passenger window wondering who would be walking alongside our car, only to realize it was Isaac, who’d been riding in Lance’s truck but decided to amuse himself for a minute or two. Hilarity ensued as he then jogged across the street to go grocery shopping and was almost lost to us since traffic started moving faster at the same time.
Once back on the highways I started nodding off again. Stupid lack of sleep. And I can’t really sleep in a moving vehicle or I get dangerously motion-sick. Nodding off was bad enough as it is. The trip back wasn’t all bad, of course, and the detour to Fry’s was quite welcome.
Mind you, not that I should be allowed in that building at any time. I’m very good about only buying games that are at least a year old and have been drastically marked down. No way am I spending upwards of $40 on computer games. For $20 I picked up the Baldur’s Gate 2 set (original and expansion), which oddly enough was placed just down the aisle from a $20 copy of just the original game. Go figure.
That night saw a mild resurgence of Soul Calibur 2 gaming, but generally we just all wanted to go to sleep. Those grandiose plans of being on the road by seven o’clock didn’t pan out very well, though. Heh.
Monday: We all peeled ourselves off the floors and chairs and prepared to give Hanson-Kun his house back, more or less the way we found it. Wendi drove out and brought me home so I could mind the rugrats as she did a gig. I took the opportunity to introduce the kids to Baldur’s Gate 2, which (of course) Erica mastered and surpassed the boys at after a mere hour of watching how I played it. Damn but that girl’s smart. Her big brother’s damned smart too, but sometimes Erica really surprises me. I did train Alex on how to install the game, which he did all by himself on the “little computer” and he’ll be doing for his mom’s computer at some point soon.
One last hurrah for my weekend was a surprise “lunch dinner thing” with Lilith and Dalemar. A couple of hours with those two over the fine dining available at My Father’s Place is the perfect way to wind up a mini-vacation, I’ll tell the world. And I even got some fun reading material out of it. (My thoughts on the Spider Robinson “Callahan’s Place” fare will appear in a later entry, mark my words.)
And that about covers it. I’m sure there are bits and pieces of anecdotal fun that I’m forgetting, and I may just make silly little entries out of them in the days to come.
So, how was your weekend?
PAST: Most of us moved around a bit as children, but most people I’ve talked to about it remember one particular place as being “home.” What was home to you, growing up?
PRESENT: What is it about your present home that drew you to it, and what makes it a great place to live?
FUTURE: You’ve won the lottery! Hooray! Now, get out there and build your dream house. And, of course, tell us all about it.
All settled in nice and comfy? Then relax, leave a comment with your answers or a link thereto, and if you link back to the PPF use the permalink provided below. Thanks once again!
http://greyduck.net/ppf/
So I’ve been making liberal use of God’s own gift to anime fans, BitTorrent. I’ve also been the recipient of considerable kindness from one of my very good friends. And so I now have what could be called the start of a decent anime collection. Since I’ve been dangerously remiss in writing here lately, I figured on making up for that with a great big mass of fanboy geekery…
Stellvia treads the oft-followed pathway I think of as “students in space.” For all that it bears a passing similarity to Pilot Candidate, it has the good fortune to actually be enjoyable and bear a reasonably interesting plot. (That would be unlike Pilot Candidate, thank you.) The fact that the lead character bears a passing resemblance to Sailor Moon and her best friend bears a passing resemblance to Washuu shouldn’t deter you from trying out and enjoying this surprisingly well-written series. The plot departs from the norm in a few nifty ways (that I won’t spoil here), and the relationships are portrayed in a way that conveys subtlety and depth. Of all the shows I’m currently following, this is the one I most eagerly anticipate new episodes of.
Onegai Twins hasn’t quite won me over yet, nor has it lost me. It’s a sequel to something I haven’t watched (Onegai Teacher) and as such seems to be treading ground I’m supposed to already be familiar with. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but that will entirely depend on the writing. One wonders at the pseudo-incestuous overtones of the show, but so far they haven’t crossed any really dangerous lines. I’ll keep watching this one and hoping that it really gels into a compelling series, rather than merely a light and amusing diversion.
Narutaru is… weird. And dark. And cheerful. And, well, it sort of defies description in a few ways. It’s certainly not for young children, no matter how much it might resemble your average “precocious pre-teen befriends cuddly little creature” premise. I’m only four episodes in and there’s already a clear thread of corruption and death running through the plot. It’s compelling stuff, however, and I’m intensely curious to see how things turn out. There are some strong hints given, but I’m not entirely sure those aren’t red herrings. Yet. My suspicion is that the writers are relying more on their ability to turn what looks like an established “type” of show on its ear than they are on truly clever plot twists. I’m willing to be surprised, however. And I will keep watching.
Chobits may not exactly be new to most anime fans, but I hadn’t seen so much as one episode until a few weeks ago. I freely admit that I wasn’t really prepared to give it a fair shake, given that it’s a show centered on a clueless perv of a boy and a brainless waif of a “girl.” I sort of gritted my teeth and plowed through the first few episodes. Something strange happened along the way. Two somethings, actually. The first strange thing is that I actually found myself laughing at some of the “hilarity ensues” setups. (You know: Boy has to teach cute(sy) girl-shaped robot how to bathe herself. Hilarity ensues. The sort of sitcom-like setups that usually make me groan in frustration.) The second was hints of a very serious underlying meaning to the series. This isn’t to say that Chobits gets all dark and dreary, but it does tackle in some prococative ways what it really means to be in love, and to be worthy of love. At the end, I found myself glad I watched the show.
Oh yeah, and Sumomo rocks. I just had to say it. The little pink imp grows on you… sort of in the way Chibi-Usagi of Sailor Moon doesn’t.
Some other shows, most of which I’m still barely started on, include RahXephon (two episodes seen, seems like Evangelion II but without the blatant Judeo-Christian religious overtones, undertones and middle-tones), Noir (what happens when Japanese storytellers pretend they’re French storytellers… mixed results, but mostly pretty damned cool), Vandread (oooh lookie, 3D-animated space combat, and lots of “battle of the sexes” material… quite fun, though) and the X TV series (I’ve seen the movie; it had better damned well outclass that utter piece of dreck). There’s also the handful of Angelic Layer and Card Captor Sakura episodes available that the kids have been enjoying over and over (and over).
All in all, this is a happy anime-fandom household lately. Hey, don’t knock the notion of having something guaranteed to bring the family together!
Just when you think you’ve got a pretty crappy, messed-up life, you find a friend who’s going through something that would reduce you to an incoherent mess if you were in their place.
Nothing I can say can match the eloquence, the depth of feeling that Jack has shown this past week. Please go let him know that we’re all pulling for him, for Susan and for Eric.
Thank you.
People’s Republic of Seabrook
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