Hi. I'm writing about my usual nonsense tonight!

So I think I just witnessed the aftermath of a beetle battle. I was outside for a bit because it was starting to darken but wasn't totally dark yet, and I thought I could get a little weeding and poking around the yard done while it was relatively cooler (today was kinda hot.) I knelt down by a miniature rosebush, but when I did so I noticed a deepish hole in the dirt, about as wide as my finger, and a big black beetle rambling about nearby. And... it looked like another beetle was still down in the hole!!!! I ran inside to get my camera (wouldn't that be anyone's first reaction?) and when I came back the one beetle was a little farther off and the beetle in the hole had crept down out of reach. At first I thought they'd just been born/metamorphosed under the ground and were coming up, but when I picked up the first beetle I noticed two of its legs were half gone, and this is why I'm thinking it was a fight. A few minutes later I came across yet another of the beetles nearby! (it and the hole were on opposite sides of me, so I don't think it came from there.) I took a few pictures and then resumed my weeding, and when I looked again for the beetles I found the second one hiding under a big chunk of bark. Man, I'd be scared if I were a bug. He was totally lurking in wait for some unsuspecting critter. And that one in the hole probably was too. Killer Giant Beetles.

I always laugh at the characters in manga and anime who get all excited about hunting for beetles in the summer (like that bonus story in Dragon Girl)... but I laugh because I totally understand. Giant insects are awesome. Just look at
this guy! And this one! (the lighting's weird because it used a flash—it wasn't actually that dark out.)

(aaaaand I'm posting this like an hour after I started writing it, because I got a call from a very talkative person when I was nearly, but not quite, done.)

Finny was in Mighty Hunter mode today once again, delivering me a teeny tiny baby bird when I opened the door in the morning, and later chasing down a chipmunk while I was sitting in the yard on my lunch break (heh). I didn't realize he could outrun a chipmunk—he chases squirrels now and then but they always get away. But he kept catching this poor little one and sitting on it (and I kept lifting him off and allowing it to run off a little farther), until I managed to get him back inside the house. Then he loitered by the door waiting for me to let him out so he could resume the hunt (it didn't happen). Ah, spring.

On another subject, today I finally followed through with something I've been intending to do for months now, and now I have a shiny new apple mouse and a 1TB external hard drive!! That's amazing!!! My whole computer only has 300GB and this has over three times that! So I moved some of my lettering files to it and deleted them from my computer, and now I've got like 25GB free on my computer. I feel so freeeee~ And my mouse is so nice and agreeable, and doesn't doubleclick when I only click the button once, like the mouse I had been using would do ALL THE TIME. It was such a pain when I was lettering—I'd try to select a line to copy-paste it, but half the time (or more) it would read as a double click and immediately unselect whatever I'd been trying to select, and I'd have to try again a few times. For every line, this could happen! Or I'd try to resize the font, and it'd bump me up two font sizes rather than just one... ugh, such a pain. But now all of my woes are forgotten! Now I can focus on simply getting everything done on time.

I've got two new projects I'm working on now—one's just one volume (for the time being?); the other is ongoing and, once again, in omnibus format, so I've got two volumes of it to finish pronto! And the one volume project is the chattiest thing I've ever seen, maybe. But it's pretty. I can forgive it needing a lot of work because there's pretty.

And... I never wrote about TCAF or Toronto here. I should've, but once I got back I was too distracted by all my work and also the outside being marvelous. These distractions continue to distract me. Especially outside—I'll grab any excuse I can think of to wander out and enjoy the sun. This is a downside to having work that can only be done on a computer, and having a computer that can't be taken outside. Anyway... oh, Toronto! It was really fun (my main impression of the city was, "It's huge!") and I so enjoyed meeting and spending time with folks there. And I came back with a good assortment of comics from artists new (to me) and familiar. It really was an intense, busy, short trip—we got to the city Friday evening and left around 9 the next night; I would've loved to spend a few more days and get to know the city a bit better. (Though in spite of all the stuff we packed in the ~27 hours we were there, there was a short space of time when my brother and I had seen all we wanted to see of the comics festival and had a little while until we were meeting Ysa and friends for dinner, so the two of us sat in his car in the parking garage and watched an episode of The Joy of Painting on his laptop. And it was great. I love Bob Ross.) But on the way home, I was glad to be going home. To see my cat again, to know that I could spend the next day outside in my garden, to know the places I can get to by bike or by bus or on foot. Adventures to new places are exciting and great, but in the end I guess I like familiar things, and my city is just the right size city for me.

Ohhhhh, last thing! SoreMachi 5 came out last week! And SoreMachi 6 is scheduled to be out next week! Eeeee! And v5 is #1 on JManga's bestseller list this week! I'm so proud of this li'l series. Go read it, everyone!!!

A couple things:
JManga! JManga is releasing two books I worked on next week (actually, another one I worked on came out this week). One of the books is SoreMachi 5!! Yaaaaaay!! I've finished two more volumes of the series since that one, so I can't remember what all happened in 5, but I'm sure it was good, funny stuff, as usual... Well, okay, let me take a look. Hmm. So, v5 is a bit of a weird one. There's a fair amount of surreal/supernatural stuff going on. And the last chapter is kind of epic and seemed like it took forever to letter and involved a great hunt for handwriting fonts on my part (I couldn't just give everyone the same handwriting, could I?! and it's fun to look through the different fonts and decide which one suits a character's personality/age/etc). Now I've got a list of individual handwriting fonts for any reoccurring characters who have had their handwriting used so far in the series. Hurrah, consistency!

Also at JManga, through next Wednesday you can get some points back if you purchase the first volume of SoreMachi! (and other first volumes of series that have anime.) It's only $5 to begin with, and you get 30% back, so that's like $3.50! Awesome!! Please check it out if you haven't already :D I promise, the only reason I go on and on about the series is because I love it so and want everyone else to love it along with me!

TCAF! I'm leaving tomorrow! Tomorrow!! Ahhh!! I just made some granola to take along for the car ride (after bringing some banana coconut cranberry chocolate chip cookies on last weekend's excursion, I've decided that baked goods (does granola count as a baked good? it is baked...) on car rides are a fabulous idea), and I've got dough for molasses ginger cookies chillin' in the fridge. So much yum. From what I hear, there'll be plenty of good food to be had in Toronto itself, too. Um... I'm going on this trip for comics, right...? (comics and people and food. yes.)

My brother graduated this weekend! From the University of Michigan! And we are all so proud!! So I was out of town this weekend, seeing the sights of Ann Arbor, where he's been living for much of the last four years. It was a good time, though I am just a bit regretful that I had to miss our church Coffee House that happened this same weekend... (have I written about those before? Our "Coffee House" nights are a time when anyone (who signs up ahead of time) can get up and perform a song or play an instrument or tell some jokes or recite a poem or do a skit or dance. And the rest of us sit around tables and enjoy tea/coffee/snacks and good company. They're always really fun evenings.) But we had the opportunity to go to a concert (by a group called Horse Feathers) in Ann Arbor Friday night that was quite enjoyable, and of course I wouldn't have missed my brother's graduation!

The graduation ceremony itself (on Saturday) was... a graduation ceremony. With 11,000-some students graduating, so they didn't even try to read off all the names (they had additional ceremonies for the different departments (my parents stayed for my brother's today), and those had the names read). It was outdoors, and veryvery cold, BUT it did not rain though it very well could have, so we found something to be thankful for. And once we were reunited with my brother amid the flood of people, it started to sprinkle just a little and we found shelter in Ali Baba's mediterranean restaurant. It was warm, and the food was good, and we all got a little giddy and silly and then went back to my brother's dorm and helped him clean it up a little. And then we went home, my other two brothers and sis-in-law and I. And it was good to be home.

In other news... and not particularly related to each other...
I rode my bike to church this morning! (4.6mi, sez Google Maps.) My computer was telling me it was 30º when I left, but the sun was coming out and it listed a high of 66º for the day, so I decided to bundle up and get some exercise. I think I'll do this for the rest of the summer, or at least on days the weather's decent. It's slower than a bus, of course, but then there's a fair bit of walking from the bus stop to my church, so I think that evens things out. And it's a really lovely route to bike. There are some hills, but not impossible ones, and there are a lot of pretty, woodsy residential areas along the way. I've been rereading one of my old favourite books, Magic for Marigold by LM Montgomery, recently, and her sense for the beauty of nature and the world is catching.

Oh, you know, that is just a little related to my next point—point being that I'm going to TCAF next weekend! Toronto!! (er, so they're related because Toronto's in Canada and Montgomery is a Canadian author...) I'm so excited :D I get to meet people in person who I've only known through text, and I get to properly experience Toronto (I was there with my family one summer during high school, but my memory of it is shamefully foggy), and oh, I'm sure it'll be grand! I don't know if I have more to say about that for now, but expect a few words once I'm back!!

And the last thing is just a little related to TCAF too: I got my hair cut today! And those things are related because my hair was getting looooong (nearly two years since my last cut), and while I was enjoying the fun things that can be done with long hair, I think of "me" as a person with short hair, so I want to have "my" hair when I'm meeting people in person for the first time. So there it is. And now I'm "me" again :D

So, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but a lot of my most memorable, vivid dreams involve landscapes, trees and nature and the sense of a whole world around me. They're often places that are familiar to me (my parents' yard, for instance), but through a dream lens that makes everything different and unrecognizable (though I do recognize it in the dream) and surreal. And I love this—as often as I can, I go to my computer as soon as I wake up and write them out so I can remember, and whenever I go back and reread my descriptions (as vague and down-to-earth as they are), my mind brings back that image from the dream world.

On that note, I placed an order for some manga at Kinokuniya last week, and a box arrived yesterday, and of course first thing I did was flip through the first SekaIchi kanzenban (I only ordered one, so far—saving the rest so I can qualify for free shipping again next time I make an order). Today I finally got around to taking the plastic and stickers off the rest of my books, and slipping the obi inside the main coverslips so I can see the cover illustrations unobstructed (it's quite a process!), and thus did I come across the inside cover-flap illustration for Akatsuki no Yona v7, and I was hit with this world of dreamy-pretty and couldn't get over it. So here, I need to share it with you.

( ♥ )

*makes an 11:11 wish that this series might come out in English some day (and that I might get to work on it?)*

I don't know if this entry will make sense or mean anything to anyone but me, but I just had to write it out anyway. So, enjoy :D

Wowwwww, I met all three of my deadlines this week! (just. Also, cool! I can update lj in html mode (rather than rich text mode) and it doesn't display the text to gross monospaced type anymore! hurrah!) I had something due Sunday (Easter, of all days... I got as much as I could done by Saturday night (which meant I was up till 3:30am and slept right through my alarm and woke up 28 minutes before church started. we were only 5 minutes late though!)), and another thing due Tuesday, and the last thing due yesterday. And now I've got two weeks till my next deadline (SoreMachi!), and four till my next-next (Durarara!!! (the first two exclamations are the title, but the last one is my own))! So much tiiiime!

So this morning when my editor asked if I'd help her clean some pages if I had time, I wanted to shout, "Do I have time?? Oh my goodness, I have time! Wow, what a delightful thing it is to have time again!!!" But I just said "sure!" And then I cleaned a few asides off some pages of very pretty manga. Hurrah for pretty manga♥ (it was interesting, too, because all the screentone and effects for this title are added digitally (which makes replacing it soooo much easier), and one scene I was cleaning had a bunch of tiny tiny people (like, stick-figures) in a landscape, and when I zoomed in I realized there were only like three separate shapes of people, and they were just repeated over and over to fill the scene. Hmm, that's quite a run-on sentence there, lys. Yep, it is.)

One more thing making me happy lately: mangoes. I got a bag of 6 of them from the discount rack (just $1.50!) and they are soooooooo good! Like, it's unreal. I'm eating it and I think, "How is it even possible for something to be this delicious right off a tree???" And yet mangoes are that delicious. Amazing.

On that note, I'm going to eat lunch and go outside and do things that aren't work! I can actually have a life!!

I am eating a salad of dandelion greens I foraged for out in my yard.  This is what one must do when one has not been grocery shopping in a couple weeks and one's supply of fresh vegetables is getting low (and starting to look funny...).  But it's nice to know I have that option!

Normally I probably would not be quite so desperate for vegetables, and especially salad, but I recently learned how to make a really awesome salad dressing, and now I want salad all the time just so I can use it.  I have had a hard time finding a dressing I really loved and was able to use—good ol' ranch is easy on the tastebuds, but I have to avoid dairy, and vinaigrettes are usually too sweet for me.  I used to make do with italian, but most of the time those just have strong flavours without being particularly good-tasting.  This one I've fallen in love with is made from miso paste—I got the recipe from a Japanese cooking class.  I'll share the recipe in case anyone else is looking for a good way to dress up their salads!

2 Tb miso*
1/2 tsp powdered mustard (or bottled, if that's what you've got)
up to 2 TB honey
1/4 c (brown) rice vinegar**
1/3 c mild flavoured extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp toasted sesame oil (optional) (but I strongly recommend it)
I also like to add a couple cloves of garlic, crushed, and grate some fresh ginger into it.

To combine everything, an immersion blender works beautifully (and if you use one you can just chop the garlic in medium chunks and let it do the rest), but you should be able to get it all thoroughly mixed with a whisk too (start by mixing the miso/honey/mustard).  Pour some over your salad of choice and enjoy!  (I love it with a plain leafy salad, topped with any combination of roasted beets, roasted tofu, toasted almond slices and toasted (unsweetened) coconut flakes. by the way, if you decide to toast your almonds and coconut flakes together, give the almonds a good head start, because the coconut will toast really fast.)

*note for gluten-free folks: find a brand that is marked GF; the soybeans are usually aged in a process that involves barley, but GF varieties use rice instead (I believe).
**I've been told you can use other vinegars in place of rice vinegar.  maybe cider vinegar?

Hi all,

Did you know that in Michigan, summer starts in mid-March?  I didn't either, but apparently it's so.  Yesterday I wore a long sleeve shirt (with two sleeveless shirts layered, but my usual has been two sweaters and a long sleeve shirt so that was pretty light) and pants and when I walked out the door it was HOT.  I had to stick to the shade for weeding the garden.  Today I wore short sleeves and a skirt with tights, and was still quite warm.  And one of my miniature irises bloomed.  The weather's been almost in the 80ºs and it's only March 15!  I can't believe it!!  I rode my bike, I took a walk... Oh, I hope this weather stays!!

I guess the warm weather is what it took to get me in the mood to read Cross Game, because I'd reached three (omnibus) volumes on my to-read shelf over the last few months and now I'm down to one (v6).  And I'm all, "Yaaaay baseball!!"  That's almost as weird as the weather.  Ah, there's just something about a good old-fashioned sports manga.

In other manga-chatter, you should all be reading SoreMachi 4 (also 1, 2, and 3)!!  It was released today!  With lots of shiny colour pages!  And more wonderful stories about our goofball highschool detective maid and her neighbours and friends.  My favourite story of this volume was about machine soba.  But I loved them all, as always.  I feel so fortunate that I was assigned to letter the series, because if I hadn't been I probably would never have picked it up, and that would've been such a shame (this is why it's important to branch out and try new things!) because I just adore the characters and the stories and the humour and the artwork and expressions and everything.  As evidenced by my repeatedly rambling on and on about it.  One of these days I'll convince you to check it out!!

(related: I bought the SoreMachi anime, as you may recall—my first anime purchase, along with Princess Jellyfish, since 2009—and I ended up just adoring Hotori's voice.  And then I was watching Bodacious Space Pirates and realized the nondescript best friend has the same voice, and I was thrilled to pieces.  And then I watched an episode of Soul Eater, after learning that Maka also has the same voice.  Hurrah!!)

So has no one on my friends list gone to see Secret World of Arrietty yet?  Or have you all gone and just not talked about it?  It's been out for three whole weekends now!  If you haven't seen it, I think you really should, because it is gorgeous.  (Ohhhh, the visuals were so nice to see in this grey winter season...)  I went yesterday (with my whole family) and I loved it, and my mum loved it too, which was especially awesome because she's a bit skeptical about these things.  But I think the natural setting won her over :D

I do want to hear what the UK dub is like, though.

After seeing the movie and losing to almost everyone at Carcassonne (Curt won), I was invited by a friend from church to go to a play someone else from church was performing in, out of town (about 1hr drive, usually).  This sounded fun, so we took off from her house, along with her daughter and her daughter's (8th grade) homework and my knitting and a few bags of leftover popcorn from their school carnival the night before.  And... we drove right into lake-effect snow.  And we got a liiittle bit lost and it turned out the address we'd mapquested didn't exist(?) and anyway definitely wasn't the theatre we were looking for.  But every time we stopped and asked for directions (also on the way back), everyone was very nice, and even when we got to the theatre 15 minutes after the play had started, they let us in most graciously and we found seats in the back and enjoyed the play immensely.  We ended up leaving a little after intermission, because the one driving didn't really want to be out super late on icy snowy slippery roads (understandably).  So it wasn't exactly a perfect success, in terms of seeing the play, but I absolutely enjoyed the evening out with them :D

And then this morning our church service was cancelled because the building had no power :(  So I've been spending a quiet day at home, knitting and reading and napping with my cat.  That's nice in its own way, I s'pose.  I just made some pretty delicious stuffed acorn squash with kidney beans and rice and dried cranberry (+ a variety of spices, as usual).

Ahhh!!

Anyone know why a hiragana あ might appear all by itself on the title page of a manga chapter focused on the New Year? (the whole illustration kinda looks like a New Year's greeting card.)  I thought it might have something to do with "Akemashite Omedetou" buuuut I have no concrete information.  Help!

Also, hi!  I was gone all weekend and then work got busy again.  In fact, this post is only for the sake of work.  So I better get back to it!