Awright!!  I am finally caught up to where I was at in lettering UraBoku when my original InDesign file self-destructed—I've got all the text laid in.  I'm even a little ahead now, since I got the script for the extra/omake pages last week. (they were translated separately from the rest of the volume, and when I got around to lettering I could see why!!!  So Much Text...!!!!!)  Next up I get to nicen up all the text, and clean all the pages.  Ohhhh so much cleaning to do.  But I'm calling it good for tonight! (nicen... spellcheck doesn't recognize that, and I must admit it looks funny written out.  but I totally say "nicen up" in my day-to-day conversation...)

In other topics, I feel like BetsuHana is exploiting my love for adorable tiny manga children, because it's running like three series full of them right now (...well, the PSME sequel's kids aren't exactly tiny, but they're still awfully cute).  Fujiwara Kiyo has a brand new series about some little yokai-looking kid, and then there's another relatively new series about three tiny vampire children who got lost in the human world and gahhhhhh the previews!  So cute!  And silly and ridiculous, which is another thing I like in my manga (apparently vampire children eat liver and dried mangos).

Anyway.  I guess I don't have anything to say about this stuff beyond "It exists!!  And it's cute!  Kya!"  Maybe in another six months when some books come out.  (that reminds me, it seems like that Taisho-series by Sakamoto Miku should be out soon...ish?  Hmmm.  It's getting to the end of the month, which means I'm checking Hakusensha's new-books schedule 5 times a day or so... we'll see what March brings.)

I've turned into an LJ-posting addict, seems like.  But... I just took a survey from Funimation and was a total fangirl for Chihayafuru (they asked about interest in a big ol' list of titles, and of the few I knew anything about, that was the only one I would consider buying... but oh, would I ever buy it!)  I know it's unlikely they'll actually pick it up, but I like to dream, okay?  So I thought if anyone else has an interest in the series (or any other series!) I'd share the link so you can take the survey too :D  I know at least a few of you are fans of Chihaya and friends!!

Now, back to... lettering!!

I did it!!  It's done (except the cover)!  126 illustrations!  DONE!  I can have my life back now!

Now, sleep.

Just five more inked drawings till I meet today's goal! (of... 17 drawings.  I got a bit behind, and rather than tacking the whole amount I needed to make up onto the next day (because that was too discouraging), I recalculated how much I need to do each day to finish in time.  I still try to finish a couple extra when I can in the hope that it'll get easier toward the end, rather than harder!)

Today's incentive to get work done was a package from Akadot, with the New-Year Hana to Yume issue!  I finally fulfilled my dream of getting a Hana to Yume calendar!! ( cut for silly fangirling )

Yesterday was grocery-shopping day at long last, and I had a bunch of non-food items on my list to pick up (we go to Meijer, which, if you're not from the area, is kinda like Target in that it sells Everything.  But it's unlike Target in that it also sells fresh produce (when it suddenly hit me one day that Target sells food but not produce, I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact)).  I got an iron (after a year+ of living on my own; I feel like a grown-up now!) and clothes hangers, because I'm always a few short, and I looked for some kind of cat toy for Finny.  I wasn't sure what he'd like, so I went with what I liked, which was a set of cute little catnip-stuffed mice.  I tossed one his way when we got home, and he was all over it!  Success!  Bwahaha!!  It didn't keep him from waking me up in the middle of the night to go outside, but oh well...

And I forgot to get eggs, and there are only two left, so I'm not sure what to do about that...

Also!  Today is estimated-tax-payments day, so I figured I better get on that.  I failed at getting them out to the mailbox in time, but I have them all ready to go for tomorrow (and I've been late many times before without getting any fees.  I think I make so little they don't even care about my piddly tax payments).  I almost couldn't find the form for my federal taxes, because it wasn't in my file of tax-stuff with everything else and I couldn't imagine where else in my messy room it might be, and it was driving me crazy because I remembered the trouble I had this past September getting the form from the library (the librarian who helped me was very nice! but I came a bit unprepared and couldn't immediately figure out what form I needed).  But then, when I'd given up and decided I'd just have to go to the library tomorrow(?) to get the form again (it occurs to me now that I probably could have printed it from home since my brother now has a printer), I walked out of my room to go get some lunch and noticed... a form-looking thing, sitting on top of this bookcase that has a ton of junk piled on it.  And it was exactly the form I needed!!  Hurray, hurray!  It was slightly amazing.

Hi all.

How would you design wings for a monster truck with the body of a(n older-style) VW beetle?  With a ladybug theme.  I don't know if I want to go with something fluttery, or something actually built of metal, or where on the body of the vehicle to have the wings sprout out of... 

Gotta say, I think I drew some pretty rad lookin' trucks today.  I might finally be breaking through my "ugh cars trucks i hate them yuck" mental block!  Still got like 70% of the drawings to go though (38/126 drawn).  But there's a truck that reminded me of Celty, and the cute and fun-to-draw old beetle car, and a hot dog mobile... so it's kinda fun.  Slow going, but hopefully with repetition I'll be able to draw them faster!

Oh man, I think my life is being eaten alive by work. It's already Thursday... wait? No, it's only Wednesday, but tomorrow's Thursday, and that means I really gotta go do some Christmas shopping and stuff. Today I managed to buy groceries, at least, so I have things to eat that are green and alive. (On my shopping list I had about 5 things, but one thing was "produce" which in my mind meant "ALL THE PRODUCE." I found kumquats and okra in the discount section! Score!!) (Although I just realized now that the dinner I made tonight (chickpeas and rice noodles with a curry tomato sauce) didn't use any of my new groceries. Oh wait, it had cilantro! Nevermind!)

Also today I cleaned out some stuff in my fridge. There was weird stuff in there—moldy pickles(?!), petrified grapefruits and limes... And one of the shelves was falling down, so I had to fix it. I found a maybe-still-edible coconut from August, so I cracked it open and cut it up and threw it in the freezer, because I didn't feel like deciding whether it was truly edible or I was just fooling myself. Now I've got an empty coconut shell! It didn't crack in half, so I can't make horse sound-effects, but it did crack with a nice roundish hole, so maybe I can make it into something. You know, sometime when I'm bored and have nothing else to do, ha ha ha.

Speaking of (not) being bored with nothing to do!! I've reached the point in my current project (a series I've mentioned here before) where everything is totally hilarious and awesome. I don't know if it's because of the manga itself or my state of mind while working on it (for some reason, I often end up working crazy long hours late into the night with this project) but it frequently seems like the funniest thing in the world to me. Have you all read volume 2 yet? It's waiting for you! With my favourite scene in the whole series (so far)!!

Well, I guess I should sleep. What in the world, it's 2am?? When did that happen?

Quick question for y'all (whoever feels like answering it):


What do you call this thing?  I know what I call it, but I came across it being called something else I'd never heard of, and I'm wondering if my family's just weird or something.  So tell me!!

In other news, Alice is DONE!!! for now, and I'm working on lettering something else, and then I've got another two books to letter, and also I have not even touched Monkey Monster Trucks and I said I'd have that done by January 14th, whoops.  I should get started on that...  And as it gets close to Christmas, I've got all kinds of social activities planned.  Hooray!!!  It may get crazy, but I'm looking forward to it!

Tonight is dinner at my parents' and decorating their Christmas tree :D  I put mine up on Friday, after finally locating the missing legs of my mini tree in a random box of books or something.  My mum gave me some more lights, so I relit the whole thing since there was a big unlit chunk in the back last year when I didn't have enough lights.  It's happy and bright now!!  And it's loaded with ornaments on every possible branch.  That's how I like to decorate my tree.  Also, Finny hasn't attacked it!!  Good job, Finny.

I've been reading manga about red-haired princesses lately. The first thing that struck me was how rather odd it was that I could think of two examples of currently-running manga about red-haired princesses (plus a third about a red-haired pharmacist who has the affection of her country's prince). Is it a trend? Maybe I'm just overthinking it: surely there are plenty of other fantasy series featuring princesses with other hair-colours. The red just gets mentioned because it's unusual.

Anyway. Two red-haired princesses. I'm about half-way through volume 2 of Akatsuki no Yona (reading in Japanese) and I just finished volume 1 of Viz's recently-released Dawn of the Arcana. (There's another thing—both titles reference "dawn"—reimei and akatsuki. I'm curious whether the two words have different connotations? Or why there are at least two different words for dawn in Japanese?) ( Okay, I'll actually talk about the story now. )

I just remembered, I had a dream this morning that took the form of manga, with panels and everything. I really thought I was reading it, but when I woke up I realized I'd never read a manga about what the one in my dream was about. Too bad; it was rather cute.

I got my new teas today!!  I've already sampled two of them, the chocolate-hazelnut one (smells amazing; the flavours aren't quite as strong as I thought they might be though) and the genmaicha (which is exactly as I was hoping it would be! I am most pleased!) and my mum enjoyed a cup of ginger-licorice herbal tea when I had her over for dinner.  And the order came with a couple free single tea-sachets tossed in, which gave me a smile :D (a green tea and a chai, which I'm sure I will enjoy.)

I spent tonight cutting up greens from evergreen trees, to be made into wreaths at our Advent craft night tomorrow at church.  My mum heads this activity up every year and always needs help getting the boughs cut into reasonable-sized chunks the night before the event, so I joined in.  Then she brought me back home, and I remembered I had some yummy three-bean chili in the fridge, and as I hadn't eaten dinner yet, and she hadn't either, I warmed that up and we both enjoyed a bowl of hot chili and a cup of our chosen teas.  It's been a while since I've had company for dinner!  I mean, I ate with other people for Thanksgiving and stuff.  But eating a meal with even one other person, in my house, is a very rare occasion.  After we ate she cleaned my stove and washed the dishes and told me I really need to get a Magic Eraser.  (I really do.)

We also talked about how I should make some curtains for my windows since they all have brackets for curtain rods (but no actual curtain rods).  (What kind of curtains look good on really tall, rather narrow windows?  All I can think of are stately drape-y materials, but I want something that looks cute, not stately.)  And we talked about how Mum would really like to make a quilt, but she can't think about that till the first of the year because this time of year is already crazy-busy for her.  And about how I should get a sewing machine.  I do often find myself wanting to put a little more effort into the decorating of my house.  It's so easy to put off actually doing, though.  Ah, me.

But tomorrow will be filled with crafting and fun, and hopefully I'll be able to put up my little Christmas tree this weekend!  And also, I am seeing Les Mis on Sunday with some folks.  The Real Broadway Cast performance and everything!!!  That should be something.  I've only seen it performed by high schoolers.  

Today I didn't feel like doing much work.  But that's not a good way to be, so I thought I should do something productive anyway.  I thought about all the things I always put off doing, and decided maybe I should clean my house a little bit.  So I vacuumed!!  There is now much less dust to be found in the corners and edges of the house.  

Then, maybe because I'd been vacuuming around it, I decided to organize my shelves and piles of children's books.  So I did that, which involved pulling most of the books off the shelves in stages and piling them around me in different stacks and putting them back in a way that made sense to me.  I organized them according to content (and creator, where I deemed this more important than content (although most of the time an illustrator tends to work within the same area, I find)), so I've got categories for books about animals that act like people, and books about animals that interact with people, and books about animals that just act like animals, and books with historical settings, and books with not quite old but not quite modern settings, and books about kids... and a whole shelf to itself of fairy/folk tales (further separated into traditional folk/fairy tales, made-up stories set in "fairy-tale" land, folk tales from different regions, classics like Peter Pan, etc.).

Oh, how I love organizing things :D  I should keep at it while I'm in the mood and see if I can still fit all my manga on the shelves in my room.  The children's books do not all fit on their alloted shelves, by the way.  And I took all my knitting and other miscellaneous reference-y books off the shelf to get them to fit, so...  I'm in trouble.  I wonder if there will ever come a day when I have enough shelves for all my books...?

Oh, one more thing!  While I was organizing, I came across quite a few books I hadn't actually read yet (terrible, Lys!!) and one of them I sat down to finally read was called Simpson and Sampson.  It was in my "made-up stories set in 'fairy-tale' land" category, written in 1941, and it's about a baron and his wife who want a son and then get two (twins!), and their sons' various adventures growing up.  I found it pretty amusing :D

(this entry tagged "cupboard attacks" because organizing bookshelves is in the same spirit as the former, even if slightly different as a technicality.)