Tis the season...

...to be sick. At least that seems to be the way it always is for me. It seems like I've been sick a lot lately, and I can tell you I'm sick of it! Between migraines and the worst bout of stomach flu I've had in at least five years, I've been barely existing for awhile. But now I seem to be back to normal, for a little while at least. Let's keep our fingers crossed. I managed to stay healthy during Christmas at least, and I've managed to avoid the cold going around our office this week.

Christmas was a lot of fun and, though I had a hard time getting into the spirit of things this year, I ended up feeling far from scroogey during the holiday itself. Mom was moved to tears with her presents and Dad and I got to go out for awhile on Christmas day to utilize our new toys: a GPS and digital camera. We had a wonderful Christmas dinner and even went to two masses on Christmas eve. That was good considering I didn't make it to church the weekend before because I was too busy puking my guts out.

I had Monday off from work, so I got together with neowolf and lizalou and we rented Kronk's New Groove. It was hilarious, by the way, and right up there with the first movie, so I highly recommend it. The only part in it that was really iffy was Yzma's strangely out of place song. Otherwise, it was awesome. I need to see it again though to remember the quotes. We also spent some time completely revamping our graphic novel concept. That went really well and we made a lot of progress. I'm excited to get to work on it again.

This week has been a little stressful at work considering the bosses are out of town and things that have been sitting on the shelf for months have a tendancy to come up and rear their heads when the bosses are gone. So, it's been a bit hectic trying to get everything taken care of for the clients. But the week's almost over now and we have monday off...whew. It's been nice though because I went out to eat with my fellow artist earlier in the week and wandered around the River Market. That was a lot of fun and that BBQ sandwich was awesome. Then, today, I went out to eat with the G man and Big Bold D at the Thai place down the street. I've had some good eatin' this week. Especially when you throw in the pizza we ordered for lunch/dinner on monday. I need to be careful or I'm going to start gaining weight again.

Boy, this is a boring post, isn't it? Just my everyday boring life... I'll try to be more exciting next time. :)

Here, I'll leave you with a picture from the chapter of Fruits Basket I just read. It made me weepy and I was surprised by Shigure. I never can nail him down... but I guess that's why he's such a fun character. But I'm still weeping over Kyo... Wah!

Shock Therapy

It's rare that I talk about American television. I talk about Lost occasionally, but that's about it. Thursday is my TV watching night with my main girls, theCallowQueen and her roomie. We watch Apprentice, and Alias and Lost from the night before. I have choir rehearsals on Wednesday nights so my Lost watching schedule is difficult.

Anyway, it's no secret that Alias has been disappointing me big time over the last season and a half. I have been disgusted with the shallow plot, the half-assed way they tried to "wrap up" the Rambaldi plot which had been my main interest in the show from the beginning and the degradation of the characters into two dimensional mindless zombies. In the case of Nadia, she actually did become a zombie. Nevertheless, I continued watching while Vaughn died unnecessarily (perhaps very necessarily for the heartbroken actor) and Weiss left and Sloan played a regurgitated plot role and Marshall became nothing more than the comic relief. I was sad, but it had become tradition to watch Alias. This season I found myself not minding the new characters too much. I even thought Tom was pretty cool though I realized it was unlikely that we will ever see his backstory. But, for the most part, I've learned to prepare myself for disappointment with the way Alias is now.

Last week's episode was pretty fun with Sark's reappearance. He brought back some of the flavor fo Alias as it used to be. And then there was last night's episode. I thought they were going to pull another one of those, "Oh you thought he was dead, but he's really alive. Ha ha" tricks that they've pulled almost every time someone dies. But instead, they brought Michael Vartan on the show only for an episode that dealt with Sydney's memories of Vaughn and forced her to say goodbye to him. It was touching and sweet and made me remember just how cool the show used to be. The scene in which Sydney "threw her cell phone into the Pacific...twice" I enjoyed especially. I think that psychological stuff like this is one of Alias' strengths (and one of my personal interests) so I enjoyed seeing Sydney take a jaunt through her mind even if it was forced upon her by some evil doctor and even if her lips were so puffy they looked like they were going to eat her face. Vaughn was the old Vaughn I loved before he suddenly--at the beginning of the season--had a prior life, another name and an obsession with Prophet 5. (All I have to say about Prophet 5 is that it better have something to do with Rambaldi, even though that will make it even more of a plot regurgitation.)

So, I was really enjoying the episode--especially the return of the hardball Jack and his interaction with Rene who has a very similar style--and then, in the last thirty seconds, it went from really good to OMGWTF?! Irina Dorevko, spy mommy as she is lovingly called by many an internet Alias fan, showed herself as the one who was holding Sydney captive and ordering the doctor to sift through her memories. It was a complete surprise. There was such a hullabaloo last season about the actress being unwilling to come back on the show, but they finally got her for the last several episodes. Still, I didn't expect her to come back again, at least not without a bit of warning. It was awesome! She is so cool. Even if she is after her own grandbaby.

So, then we watched Apprentice. And I had my second shock of the evening, this time an unpleasant one. I had loved Randal all throughout the show and I was really torn between him and Rebecca at the end. I wanted both of them to be hired, and I really thought the Donald would do it. Then, as the show went on, Randal acted very out of character from what I expected. He was disrespectful to Rebecca and rather cut throat. I was surprised and very disappointed, but I can only think that he was influenced by friends and family during his break from the show to stop being a nice guy and make sure he won at any cost.

Then, the moment of truth came: Randal was the new Apprentice. But then the Donald mentioned hiring Rebecca also, as I had expected. I got excited. I clenched the blanket I was huddled beneath and held my breath. And what did Randal do? He completely lost all of my respect and stabbed Rebecca in the back. She may not be perfect, but few people deserve the abuse everyone put her through. It was disgusting. I'm also peeved at the Donald for just letting Randal decide whether or not to hire Rebecca. I mean, who's the boss here? I really feel no desire to watch the Apprentice again. I'm soured on the whole show.

So, last night was a rather traumatizing night for me with all the shocks. I'm not sure why they affected me so strongly, but it was certainly exhausting. I get way too into my television, don't I? This is one of the reasons why I watch so little TV. The main reason, though, is that most shows on TV right now suck. But every now and then you find a little jewel.

So, how many weeks until we get a new episode of LOST?

Angel Test

This test from lizalou42's site was far too perfect considering my previous post. I got the same result as she did... Hmmm....


Guardian

Class: Archangel
Alliance: Light

You are a caring soul and somewhat of a people
person. You are very concerned about others and
about the world around you. You like connecting
with people and always want to be of help. As a
guardian your role would be to watch over the
human souls on earth and help them when they
are in trouble.

Your Angelic Name: Raphael


Which Warrior Angel are You and Whose Side are You On? (With Anime Pics)
brought to you by Quizilla

Angelic Inspiration

I've recently noticed that the subject matter of most of the reading I've been doing lately has dealt with angels and demons and a war between heaven and hell. The scary thing is that I didn't even make the connection when I chose which books to read. Is it something subconscious, I wonder...? Perhaps it has something to do with the number of shojo manga which use this subject...

Whatever the motivation for my reading choices, I recently finished Wish, a short, four book series by CLAMP, my favorite group of collaborative ladies in the manga industry. This is an older series of theirs, made before their style matured into mediocrity. The plot centers around a misfit, airheaded angel named Kohaku and her desire to repay a human's kindness with a wish. As can be expected from the first chapter practically, Kohaku eventually falls in love with this human named Shuichiro and this causes all kind of havoc in heaven and hell. But Kohaku isn't the first one to break the taboo. Her mentor and one of the four Angel Masters has also fallen in love with someone she shouldn't, a demon, and the son of Satan no less. It's a tangled story of forbidden love and before the end of the story, the threat of an all-out war between heaven and hell looms on the horizon. In classic Clamp fashion, hints of shonen ai creep in at various points through the story, and heaven has an incredibly cute bunny for a messenger.

One of my favorites aspects of Wish were the omakes at the end of each book. I wish that CLAMP had time to make omakes for their later series. I adored them in Rg Veda, and they were fun in Wish as well. I would love to see them in Tsubasa and xxxHoLic. But alas, they are too busy for their own good. And too busy to finish X... but that's another story entirely.

Speaking of X, the other angelic series I've been reading lately has a major apocalyptic theme centering on the year 1999. I can't help but make the connection between the two. Angel Sanctuary is one of those series I've looked at countless times in the bookstore and considered buying, but I didn't actually decide to pick it up until the art book came out in English and I couldn't resist the beautiful, tragic artwork. I've seen the OVA twice now, and enjoyed it quite a bit though it's rather confusing. The books are barely less so because the story moves rather quickly and involves quite a bit of mythology--even the manga-ka admits she had to cut out more of the plot than she would have liked due to space constraints. Still, I'm enjoying the story a lot despite Kaori Yuki's strange affection for incestuous love quadrangles. She often talks about how weird her tastes are, but I love her even more for her attitude about it.

The story of Angel Sanctuary is a bit more complicated than Wish, but it also involves forbidden love and taboo among angels. There is also an impending war between heaven and hell as well as intrigue among the angels. Heaven is painted as much less righteous in this story, and many of the angels are more corrupt than the demons. Now that I can finally read through the series in order (I had bought the first book and books 4-6 months ago but held off on buying 2 and 3 because they didn't match in design, but I finally decided to buy them anyway, even though the numbers on the side were reversed out of black boxes instead of white on black), I also have the opportunity to get addicted--which I have done. Thankfully, I already own a number of the books, so I shouldn't be stuck on a cliffhanger for awhile.

I don't know if any of the readers of my blog (if there are any of you still out there) will really enjoy this post, but perhaps there is someone out there who will do a search for one of these series and find my brief reviews of them helpful... Otherwise, it's still kind of nice for me to have a record of what I've read.

New Faces New Places

So here I am, sitting my desk in our new office finally updating my blog (in between bites of leftover spaghetti). Between the packing and the moving and the unpacking and the drama and the new people and the last minute hot projects... my work life has been insane. Unfortunately, I've been so exhausted by my work life that my personal life has been nearly non-existent the last few weeks. Add to that the stomach flu I had a couple weeks ago and the migraine that wiped me out for the first portion of this week, and I know I have been more than a little antisocial--not by choice, though.

Anyway, I don't really feel like going into all the drama which has accompanied this move of our office, so I'll just say that we're finally settling in and it seems to be working out pretty well. The artists have a great view of the River Market from our room and up until a few minutes ago I was enjoying watching the flurries of snow fly past the windows. Then we decided closing the blinds might keep some of the heat in (our office has heating issues right now) and sacrificed the view for warmth.

We moved our office in with a PR company so we have some new faces in the office. They've all been really friendly and fun to work with so far, so it's a good thing. We're such a small place to start with that it's refreshing to have more people around.

Though I'm about ready to run up to the third floor and tell the woman who has been stomping around up there nonstop the last few days to take her clogs off and walk barefoot. I've never heard a person walk so loudly in an office. Oh boy, now she's dragging things across the floor. We really need a broomstick to pound against the ceiling.