Manga, Dad and moving stuff
2006-09-05 - 10:23 p.m.

I'm really excited about some stuff I found online the other day.

Several years ago I was really into anime and manga (Japanese animation and comics, which is where my interest in Japanese music came from) but I've since moved away from them because there just hasn't been anything I've been interested in. Way back, there were several manga I'd heard of that I was interested in and I was hoping they'd be picked up by an America company and translated into English so I could read them, but years went by, nothing happened and I forgot about them.

So the other day kind of by accident I ended up at the Viz website. Viz is an American company that buys the rights to various manga, translates them to English and releases them here. I was browsing around the site and I found ALL of those old manga titles I'd wanted to read, now available in English! You better believe I snatched those up lickety-split. There were five different manga I wanted to get, but I only got four for now. These books are a series, so I got the first book in four different series', and that should keep me occupied for a while. :) Now I will for sure have plenty to read at the beach (if they get here in time) and after surgery. If you're curious, I got this one, this one, this one and this one. I actually have a copy of the Japanese manga for that last one. I bought it long ago when I found a website where someone was translating it, so I read it using the translation, but it was a huge pain and I never got past the first book.

My dad called this morning and I think he only intended to talk for a few minutes because when I answered he said, "I guess you have to start work pretty soon, don't you?" but then we ended up blabbing for about an hour. I got my work late today so it wasn't a problem. He did most of the talking, actually. He got on this jag about his stepfather M, who left my grandma when Dad was about 14 and who, apparently, was a total loser. Dad was telling me about some things that happened when they were living in Tennessee, and I was like, "When did you live in Tennessee??" He said they only lived there for about a year, but I had no idea he'd ever lived in Tennessee. My dad - the closet world traveler.

Dad said they'd recently had a birthday party for his mom's 80th birthday. Dad ended up missing the party though, because of some miscommunication between him, his wife and his sister. Woops. I remember Dad telling me, I thought recently, that Grandma had turned 75, but I guess that was 5 years ago now. Time flies.

N has been coming over almost every Monday to do more work on the outside of the house and sometimes some yard work. Yesterday he painted the shutters on the front of the house, then next the house will need to be painted, then he's going to paint the ceilings in the computer room and the den (covering up some water stains).

B has talked with N several times about possibly driving B's car out to Arizona when we move so we can fly, and N is willing to do it. We're planning to sell my car so we'll only need to get B's car there, and we would really, really like to fly if possible. We can fly with the cats, too, and that's going to be really traumatic for them, but it'll be a much shorter ordeal than driving all the way out there with them in the car.

So the plan is to have a moving company move our stuff, have N drive the car, we'll fly out there and get there first, then be there when our stuff and N get there and N will help us move our stuff in. B has talked to N about the three of us going to the Grand Canyon before N goes home, so that could be really fun. We are definitely gonna need some fun time after this move.

Oh yeah, and I now have a week and four days until the beach trip and exactly four weeks until my surgery!

�