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Jan. 1st, 2007 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2During the Tai-Pan Christmas party, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bluesmancd went around the room asking people the question "Frye's or Kinokuniya?" To be honest I didn't fully understand the question, and only after I said Kinokuniya and recieved a gift certificate for the Japanese bookstore, did I realize that the other option was a gift certificate to Frye's the electronics store. That would have been a nice gift, I like Frye's -- but of course, I also like Kinokuniya's, so it's not as if I made a wrong choice, or could have. ^_^
I hadn't actually been to Kinokuniya in quite a while. It's up in Seattle, South of downtown on the edge of the International District, and since I moved to Auburn, I'm usually driving to Seattle for Tai-Pan meetings or to visit friends. All of these trips take me to the North side of the city, so I haven't made any detours to visit Kinokuniya in that time.
On Sunday I got up and thought, what am I going to do with myself today? I thought of the gift certificate -- I could go use it! But then, I decided that spending money right now was probably not a good idea, so soon after all my Christmas spending. Instead, I decided to spend the day at home being lazy.
One of my idea was, of course, to try and get some writing done. But I'd talked to a friend in Second Life the night before about City of Heroes, and I was of half a mind to renew my account and try it out again. It's been a year and a half since I played that game, but I'd cancelled my WoW account back in November, and of all the online games I've played, I really did enjoy City of Heroes the most.
With that in mind, I was able to remember my account and password first for the forums, and then for the game itself. I had actually installed the game late Saturday night and ran a nearly 3 hour update patch, so I was all set. I updated my video drivers, I renewed my account and in minutes I was playing again.
Not long after, the phone rang. Now, I knew of one friend from SL who had wanted to get together this weekend, and I'd said maybe. But frankly I didn't really feel like visiting his place yesterday. I was afraid that the call was him -- so I let the phone ring. That's what I've got an answering machine for, right? After four and five rings it occured to me that perhaps the reason I'd had no phone messages since I'd replaced the battery in the machine (it died during the storm power outage a few weeks ago) was that, in fact, the message function wasn't even on.
One button press later, and I listened as my ex roommate Tom started to leave a message. He wanted to get together and hang out for New Year's.
Thirty seconds after Tom hang up, the phone rang again. Was it Tom calling back? No, it was actually the person I'd been afraid to talk to before. Yes, he did want to invite me over, but now I had a reason to decline, as I'd decided to do something with Tom.
Tom suggested we meet at Kinokuniya. Hmmm. Fate intervenes, and suggests I spend my gift card. Well, who am I to deny fate?
So off I drove to Kinokuniya, where I narrowed my choices to several Ah! My Goddess manga or an art book from an anime I'd never heard of that had an incredibly cute cover. Ah! My Goddess is the first Japanese-language manga I ever bought, on my first visit to Kinokuniya years ago (I knew nothing about it but it had an incredibly cute cover). All of these years later it remains the only managa that I still collect in Japanese, largely because I love the artwork and the English language versions don't appear for about three years after. The manga were about $6.50 each (which, as it turned out, was 65 cents cheaper than they'd been a year ago when I'd bought my last one -- the dollar has fallen vs. the yen). I was pretty certain I didn't have 31-34, so I could pick up all four of them for about $28.00 including tax. And I'd peeked inside my certificate envelope and spied a certificate worth $10.00. And I knew that I had to spend at least $7.00 inside the store, because that got you an hour's free parking (2 hours for $15.00), whereas if you didn't buy anything you had to spend $7.50 per hour on the parking itself -- how's that for a racket? Make sure you buy something, eh!
The anime art book kept calling to me though. I didn't know what it was, but they had tons of copies of it, so I knew it was very popular in Japan right now and will no doubt be translated into English soon. After much deliberation, I decided to take the manga that I did know over the anime book that I was strangely attracted to but knew nothing about. There was no question that I wasn't going to spend another $16.50 to get the anime book as well -- it was too much money to drop on an unknown commodity.
However, when I went to make my purchase, I discovered that I actually had two gift certificates for $10.00 each. Wow! That means... Tom! Grab that anime art book for me!
And thus I'm now the proud owner of an artbook from a series apparently titled The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It has incredibly cute girls, maid outfits, magic, aliens... you know. The usual mix of anime stuff that always seems to work for me. ^_^
After that we decided to eat at Gordito's Burritos. Fate intervenes again. I'd decided against going near my comic shop, on account of not wanting to go in and get my comics and actually spend money. But since we were headed that way... I went. I got. I spent. I had quite a few things waiting for me... Negima dvd vol 5, Gacha Gacha, Magical x Miracle, Battle Angel: Last Order (yay!), Fruit's Basket, Excel Saga, XxxHolic. I also picked up a graphic novel of something called Lullaby which looked like a cool comic (and IS a cool comic, as it turns out). Tom liked the look of it too, and bought a copy for himself.
After eating at Chef at Wok (Gorditos was closed), Tom wanted to hit Half Price Books. It was probably just as well that they were closed too. Then he wanted to go to Scarecrow, but I was done running around for the day, so we came back to my place and had a marathon session of Negima! anime. Tom spent the night here and left in the morning.
And that was my New Year's eve! Plan for today? Same as yesterday: be lazy, maybe write, maybe play some City of Heroes (which frankly I really didn't get to do much of yesterday).
bluesmancd went around the room asking people the question "Frye's or Kinokuniya?" To be honest I didn't fully understand the question, and only after I said Kinokuniya and recieved a gift certificate for the Japanese bookstore, did I realize that the other option was a gift certificate to Frye's the electronics store. That would have been a nice gift, I like Frye's -- but of course, I also like Kinokuniya's, so it's not as if I made a wrong choice, or could have. ^_^I hadn't actually been to Kinokuniya in quite a while. It's up in Seattle, South of downtown on the edge of the International District, and since I moved to Auburn, I'm usually driving to Seattle for Tai-Pan meetings or to visit friends. All of these trips take me to the North side of the city, so I haven't made any detours to visit Kinokuniya in that time.
On Sunday I got up and thought, what am I going to do with myself today? I thought of the gift certificate -- I could go use it! But then, I decided that spending money right now was probably not a good idea, so soon after all my Christmas spending. Instead, I decided to spend the day at home being lazy.
One of my idea was, of course, to try and get some writing done. But I'd talked to a friend in Second Life the night before about City of Heroes, and I was of half a mind to renew my account and try it out again. It's been a year and a half since I played that game, but I'd cancelled my WoW account back in November, and of all the online games I've played, I really did enjoy City of Heroes the most.
With that in mind, I was able to remember my account and password first for the forums, and then for the game itself. I had actually installed the game late Saturday night and ran a nearly 3 hour update patch, so I was all set. I updated my video drivers, I renewed my account and in minutes I was playing again.
Not long after, the phone rang. Now, I knew of one friend from SL who had wanted to get together this weekend, and I'd said maybe. But frankly I didn't really feel like visiting his place yesterday. I was afraid that the call was him -- so I let the phone ring. That's what I've got an answering machine for, right? After four and five rings it occured to me that perhaps the reason I'd had no phone messages since I'd replaced the battery in the machine (it died during the storm power outage a few weeks ago) was that, in fact, the message function wasn't even on.
One button press later, and I listened as my ex roommate Tom started to leave a message. He wanted to get together and hang out for New Year's.
Thirty seconds after Tom hang up, the phone rang again. Was it Tom calling back? No, it was actually the person I'd been afraid to talk to before. Yes, he did want to invite me over, but now I had a reason to decline, as I'd decided to do something with Tom.
Tom suggested we meet at Kinokuniya. Hmmm. Fate intervenes, and suggests I spend my gift card. Well, who am I to deny fate?
So off I drove to Kinokuniya, where I narrowed my choices to several Ah! My Goddess manga or an art book from an anime I'd never heard of that had an incredibly cute cover. Ah! My Goddess is the first Japanese-language manga I ever bought, on my first visit to Kinokuniya years ago (I knew nothing about it but it had an incredibly cute cover). All of these years later it remains the only managa that I still collect in Japanese, largely because I love the artwork and the English language versions don't appear for about three years after. The manga were about $6.50 each (which, as it turned out, was 65 cents cheaper than they'd been a year ago when I'd bought my last one -- the dollar has fallen vs. the yen). I was pretty certain I didn't have 31-34, so I could pick up all four of them for about $28.00 including tax. And I'd peeked inside my certificate envelope and spied a certificate worth $10.00. And I knew that I had to spend at least $7.00 inside the store, because that got you an hour's free parking (2 hours for $15.00), whereas if you didn't buy anything you had to spend $7.50 per hour on the parking itself -- how's that for a racket? Make sure you buy something, eh!
The anime art book kept calling to me though. I didn't know what it was, but they had tons of copies of it, so I knew it was very popular in Japan right now and will no doubt be translated into English soon. After much deliberation, I decided to take the manga that I did know over the anime book that I was strangely attracted to but knew nothing about. There was no question that I wasn't going to spend another $16.50 to get the anime book as well -- it was too much money to drop on an unknown commodity.
However, when I went to make my purchase, I discovered that I actually had two gift certificates for $10.00 each. Wow! That means... Tom! Grab that anime art book for me!
And thus I'm now the proud owner of an artbook from a series apparently titled The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It has incredibly cute girls, maid outfits, magic, aliens... you know. The usual mix of anime stuff that always seems to work for me. ^_^
After that we decided to eat at Gordito's Burritos. Fate intervenes again. I'd decided against going near my comic shop, on account of not wanting to go in and get my comics and actually spend money. But since we were headed that way... I went. I got. I spent. I had quite a few things waiting for me... Negima dvd vol 5, Gacha Gacha, Magical x Miracle, Battle Angel: Last Order (yay!), Fruit's Basket, Excel Saga, XxxHolic. I also picked up a graphic novel of something called Lullaby which looked like a cool comic (and IS a cool comic, as it turns out). Tom liked the look of it too, and bought a copy for himself.
After eating at Chef at Wok (Gorditos was closed), Tom wanted to hit Half Price Books. It was probably just as well that they were closed too. Then he wanted to go to Scarecrow, but I was done running around for the day, so we came back to my place and had a marathon session of Negima! anime. Tom spent the night here and left in the morning.
And that was my New Year's eve! Plan for today? Same as yesterday: be lazy, maybe write, maybe play some City of Heroes (which frankly I really didn't get to do much of yesterday).
