Alethea & Athena

Merry Christmas Eve!!

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 00:55:53 GMT

Today we got a beautiful Christmas card from lyschan in the mail! Thanks, lys!!

I feel like I had something else to say before going back to our Disneyland chronicling, but I can't remember what it was. Maybe Merry Christmas!! I think I was going to say that tomorrow.

Anyway, I better finish this now or it may never happen. Disneyland. Day two. We started out with breakfast at the River Belle Terrace again, and then the two of us and Leia went off to meet pixies while Han went off to find something to spend his Birthday Fun Card(tm) on. After waiting in line for what they told us would be about forty minutes (the line wasn't long, but the characters are all very nice and give you their undivided attention), it was into Pixie Hollow, where they were celebrating their Fall Revelry. And by "celebrating," I mean doing what they always do: talk to guests and pose for pictures. Only now the decorations matched the second movie more.

The first pixie we talked to was Iridessa, who, incidentally, did not have a sunflower seed on her costume. If the seed had been there, I was planning to ask her if it had any sentimental value, or some other significance that meant it looked stuck on her dress instead of being, like, a pendant or something. But she didn't, which is just as well. Instead, I took out the camera while Leia went to pose for the picture.

Iridessa immediately said, "Let me guess your talent!" And since Leia was wearing a green similar to Tinker Bell's, she guessed that Leia was a tinker, and then asked for some help with this thing she and Rosetta were trying to work out. They wanted to make rainbows with flowers in them, but the flowers just wouldn't stick to the rainbows. And they couldn't ask Tink for help, because she was really mad at them for filling her house up with saltwater taffy. I'm sure she was feeding us the answer, but I still said, "Could you use the taffy to stick the flowers to the rainbows?" And she said she'd talk to Rosetta about it. Anyway, she was very cute, and I took the idea from the Halloween photographers to just keep snapping pictures while she was talking, and some of the expressions on her face are adorable. So I have a new-found appreciation for Iridessa.

Then it was off to meet Tink. Iridessa had asked us to say hi for her, so we did, and then Tinker Bell just pulled us all in for pictures. She was also very cute. I tried to give her bunny ears, but she stood too far away from me for it to work with the angle the camera was at. Boo. But! as we left, she told us to say hi to Peter for her if we ran into him, which made us very happy. It's almost like they read our last Pixie Hollow report or something.

We left Pixie Hollow and headed to the Princess Fantasy Faire, where the line was over an hour long. They couldn't tell us whom we'd meet, either, since they're on shifts and it would probably be different by the time we got there anyway. Leia's favorite is Sleeping Beauty, and there was no sign of her around, so we decided to go meet up with Han in Tomorrowland. It was around then that Donald finally made it into the park with two new Disneyland annual passholders, whom I will refer to as Joe and Panchito. Then, after a quick ride on Autopia, it was off to California Adventure.

At DCA, everybody else wanted to go on the big roller coaster, California Screamin', so we told them we'd go play some of the midway games along the pier. We had been seeing kids walking around with the most adorable plushes of Timothy from Dumbo, and it didn't take long for us to learn that they were getting them from the Dumbo-themed midway game. In fact, this particular game is much like the one we played when the CA State Fair was at Disneyland lo these many years past, where you squirt water at the target to make something go up a ladder. In this case, the something was a clown dressed as a fireman, rescuing baby Dumbo from a burning building.

We waited while a family played the game, and then, since we had some extra points on our midway point card from last time (it also happened to be Dumbo-themed), we swiped it twice so we could play. We were pretty happy with the timing, because we were sure the two of us would get to play alone, and therefore not have to steal the toy from any little kid who might happen upon the game as well. But right as we were about to get started! a kid sat down next to us. Boo. We... didn't let that stop us, and I won the Timothy plush anyway. That's right, I stole the Timothy plush from an innocent little kid. On the other hand, his dad was carrying a big Bullseye plush from the Toy Story-themed game, so I didn't feel too bad. But I still feel a little bad.

One day we might get our group together and pay for enough people to win the Dumbo plush to go with Timothy.

Our group met up with us again in line to the Toy Story ride, and then split up again, with the Three Caballeros going off... to do something... and the two of us, Han, and Leia heading back to Disneyland for some shopping and maybe one last ride on Space Mountain. But first, we stopped for some food. While we ate, Han and Leia thanked us for coming to Disneyland with them, which seemed kind of strange, because we always feel like we're leeching off of everybody else, hitching a ride down south and all that.

We did our shopping and then realized it was too early to use our fast passes for Space Mountain. But we were all so exhausted we decided to give up and head over to Gaston's place for dinner and birthday cake (Gaston has a Southern California pass, which was blocked out on Saturday). Dinner was something that I don't know how to spell, but I suspect it was German. It was hamburger and cabbage wrapped up in sweet bread like a Hot Pocket, only the bread was much tastier than your average Hot Pocket. When Gaston was telling us about them the day before, we said we weren't sure about cabbage, but we'd be willing to try the things... until we found out that they also had onions. Onions are the enemy.

And so when preparing the thingies, Gaston minced the onions up reeeeally tiny and caramelized the crap out of them, just to make it so we wouldn't be able to taste them. I think that was really nice of him, and shows just how much he wants people to at least try something. And indeed, we did not taste any onions. He also made little baby ones for us. They really tasted good, and we each managed to finish one (little baby one), but our pickiness is deep and psychological, so we weren't able to bring ourselves to eat any more. Baby steps.

The cake was also delicious, and Han ended up giving us all the leftovers that he took home (he got most of the leftovers, because it was his birthday, of course). He had eaten too much, and so was not too keen on more cake. And then it was time for the looooong ride home. We got to listen to the soundtrack to One Man's Dream, the show we saw at Tokyo Disneyland, and as we were listening to the villains' song ("Into the Fire"), we passed a plant of some sort with all kinds of smoke or steam or something coming out of it. Han commented that between that and the music, he really got the feeling the dragon from Fantasmic! would pop out. I said that would be awesome as long as it didn't hurt us, and he concurred.

Just before we got dropped off, the Aladdin soundtrack was at its climax, and Leia wouldn't let Han give it back to us until the music was over. That made us happy, because now we feel less like we're imposing our music on people when we ask to listen to Disney soundtracks. Han always asks us what we want to listen to, but that doesn't mean he likes it. But if Leia likes it, he's outnumbered anyway.

And thus concludes another report of another fantastic trip to Disneyland. Now we're waiting to see if we have any Christmas Eve plans with family. Right now it's yes, but things have been so crazy this week that there's no telling what could happen.

Today I'm thankful for getting more Christmas cards, our adorable (and slightly ill-gotten) Timothy plush, friends who have the skill and are kind enough to make sure we really can't taste the onion-ness of the onions, still having some toffee peanuts to snack on later, and getting all our presents wrapped.

Happening stuff

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:20:56 GMT

There's currently a thread on the Honyaku Mailing List about flair vs. precision in translating that is making us very happy.

In other news, I'm taking a break from the Disneyland report in light of the fact that Stuff Happened today. It all started last night when we realized, "Hey, it's like three days to Christmas, and we've done like no shopping for presents." We had tried calling Sarah on Monday to see if she'd take us, but that day was dedicated to cleaning her apartment, and we didn't think to ask if she could take us the next day. So instead, we called Leia, because we could also offer to take her to see The Princess and the Frog, which she hadn't seen yet, and we had only seen twice. (Incidentally, the animator with whom we made the promise to see the movie five times was the lead animator on Louis, the alligator.)

(Pause for a moment while I try to remember the other thing I was thinking I might need an LJ cut for. Oh yeah, we watched the second Tinker Bell movie last night. More on that when I get to cutting stuff.)

So anyway, we called Leia. She really is so awesome to us, and we need to do something for her. It got brought up on the way home from Disneyland that we were out of food (we bought emergency rations at the park, so we've been fine, but we were cutting it close today), so when she came by, she asked if we'd managed to go grocery shopping yet. We hadn't, because Mom's super busy all week. We weren't going to ask her (partly because we're insecure grocery shopping with people), but now that she was offering we figured it's better to have food.

Han couldn't join us for the movie, because he had work stuff to do, but Leia enjoyed it immensely. Even on the third viewing, there's still stuff to notice. Athena noticed for the first time that when they show the city right as they start up the song "Down in New Orleans," there's a woman at a balcony airing out a rug that looks exactly like Aladdin's magic carpet. We'll have to watch for it again the next time we see it.

I think the main observation I have is that this movie really has too much ending. We're used to Disney movies where they defeat the villain, they have the big triumph scene, and bam! end. In this one, they defeat the villain, Charlotte almost kisses Naveen, Tiana confesses her love, Ray dies, Ray has a loooong funeral, they get married and turn human again, and then they have another wedding, and then, finally there's the end. See? Way too much ending. But still a good movie. It was all necessary, after all. Except maybe the stuff with Ray, but we've already discussed that.

It was great talking to Leia about it afterward, though, because I was like, "There was a point in the movie where I hated Naveen the first time we saw it," and without missing a beat, she was like, "Well he's a scumbag!"

We liked this one better than the first one, because they'd already built the world, so if there were any mistakes they were mostly already there. But there was the question of Terence's job. It was like, "Wait, was he the dust keeper? Or just a dust keeper? Because in the first one, he seemed like the only one, so where did all these other guys come from?" Anyway, the movie was adorable.

Athena says, "Aww, but McCartney's so cute in his playing of characters that have to cease to exist." I came up with a good, fantastically dramatic way for Disney to make these movies consistent with Peter Pan. It'll be awesome. All of Pixie Hollow dies tragically, except for Tink, who is miraculously saved. Or she's the one who caused it. Based on how things have been going for her, probably both. So anyway, everybody dies, and Tink is just completely overcome with grief. She goes to the mainland, hoping to see some fairies who were maybe helping with the seasons or something there, and that's where she finds little baby Peter Pan, who has been lost. She takes him with her to Neverland, and becomes obsessed with him, and... okay, there can be a few remaining pixies, because somebody has to comment that she's like a mother to Peter (Athena suggests the mermaids--excellent idea)... anyway, the mermaids comment that she's like a mother to Peter, and that makes her feel old, so she turns into his crazy girlfriend instead.

Tadah!

Anyway. One of the best parts about this movie was actually the outtakes. They were fantastic, and I'm going to spoil one now, because it just made us feel so happy. Fawn, Iridessa, and Rosetta are all standing in a line in the big scene at the end, and Rosetta leans over and whispers something to Iridessa, who says, "Oh!" looks down, and flicks that horrible sunflower seed off her dress. "How long has that been there?" Aaah, we love it. The different fairies talking to the owl was also awesome.

Today I'm thankful for having a good friend like Leia who makes sure we have food, having food (so excited to have cereal for breakfast tomorrow), finding good (we hope) Christmas presents for people, that wonderful outtake in the second Tinker Bell movie, and those Reese's Select thingies.

The time has come to talk of other things

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:47:22 GMT

Thanks again for all the support, everyone. I will admit that we were hoping to get a lot of praise, but that's what you tend to need most when something like this happens. We'll need to remember that when we read other people's similar posts. Anyway, our logical sides recovered pretty quickly, but it took a lot of effort to pull the emotional sides out of their funk. And of course there's still the little insecurity whispering in the corner of my mind that everybody agrees with that jerk and now everyone hates our translations, but I'm sure we'll be able to silence that eventually, too.

But now it's time to talk of happier things!

Disneyland. So we had just finished watching Tiana's Showboat Jubilee, where we realized once again that we don't find Randy Newman songs to be as singable as, say, Alan Menken's, and then... um... well eventually we found ourselves in the Golden Horseshoe where we got delicious mint sundaes. We had to pay extra for the hot fudge, since it wasn't part of the official sundae, but what's a sundae without hot fudge, I ask you. And then we watched Billy Hill and the Hillbillies. They did not, sadly, do our favorite holiday show joke, but they did do the Elvis thing as usual. And we played the screaming fangirls as usual. And the lady sitting in front of us got snippy as occasional. At one point she turned around and said, "Pretty soon I'm going to turn around and start screaming at you," and I thought, "In the middle of the show? Not likely."

Still, I didn't feel the need to ruin her experience completely, so I toned it down. I didn't want to stop completely, though, because the rest of the audience enjoyed it, as did Billy Hill, who even told us to scream. I don't think he did that the first time we revisited them, but he seems to have done it ever since. It really makes me wonder if he remembers us from all those years ago.

After the show, we still had some ice cream to finish, so we hung around inside for a while, which was great because the Billies came out to... um... I really don't know why they came out, except for the main Billy, who said he was schmoozing his boss's kid. Anyway, we got their autographs, except for Billy Mandolin who didn't come out before we left. Billy Fiddler seemed to recognize me, because when I asked for his autograph, he said something like, "How did I know you were going to ask that?" I figured it was because of the open autograph book in my hands, but the way he said it sounded like that wasn't it. Or maybe I'm being delusional because I like to think I'm special.

Anyway... there was It's A Small World Holiday, which still had us annoyed at the nose they put on Jiminy Cricket, and Tink was gone again, but it was still nice. Oh, except that they still got the lyrics wrong in Deck the Halls. Why do they do that? As we were in line, all the shiny lights on the building suddenly went out. It was kind of creepy. They still hadn't come back on by the time we were on the ride, at which point we started clapping and chanting, "I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!" but it didn't help. They were back on when we got off though.

Other Small World line thing of note: the holiday line (which is always longer) took us by the Fantasyland Designated Smoking Area, which prompted the discussion that Gaston thinks that if they refuse to make smoking illegal, they should make it legal to squirt people who are smoking with whatever liquid is on hand (gasoline failed to be mentioned; we'll have to remember that if it comes up again).

As we got off the ride, we were mystified by the sudden appearance of sparkle-shaped lights on the It's A Small World building. The sparkles turned into snow, which turned into a crazy psychedelic show! It was really pretty trippy. Like whoa. It was neat, but we got bored with it before too long.

(While we were in the toy shop outside the ride, Donald tried to convince me that it was okay for the Tinker Bell play set to have a broom despite Tinker Bell's spoiled brattiness, and I was like, "I'm not buying it..." and Gaston was like, "Well then put it back!" Yay for puns.)

Eventually we went to Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln, which had only just reopened. I talk like I don't know for sure because it's been so long since we saw the original, but it looks like they went back to the original show, which starts out with a movie narrating stuff about Abraham Lincoln. (For a while, they had a special fancy 3-D audio experience thingie, where they told you that you were this soldier going to get his hair cut for a photograph, and because of the fancy headphones, the sound makes it really feel like you're getting your hair cut. It was really cool, but I remembered liking the original better, so it's good that they (apparently) went back to it.) It's been a while since we've been on the regular Haunted Mansion, but the first time we saw the original show, we were kind of creeped out because the narrator sounded just like the Ghost Host. This time it wasn't so obvious, but it did eventually start sounding like the same guy.

We got out of that just in time to see the parade, but we didn't get very close because of the crowds, so it was hard to enjoy it. And then everyone was pretty exhausted (except for us; we were just kinda tired), so we decided it was time to find a place to wait for the fireworks to start. This was about two hours before they did start, but it turned out to be a very good thing. Han was so flipped out by the crowds packed like sardines all down Main Street that he ended up taking my camera for much longer than I expected. (He left his at home because it was his birthday trip and he didn't want to be working. As a professional photographer, he has much heavier equipment, so it's understandable. Also, he's going stitch all the pictures he took together into one panoramic view. I need to get those to him.) It was around this time we realized how evil strollers can truly be.

There was a very magical lighting of the castle on Main Street (it was seriously like, "Oooh!") and the fireworks were about the same as they've been for the last several years (it was the holiday show; there's still a non-holiday show that we haven't seen which apparently is super awesome and has Dumbo flying in it). And then it was time to brave the terrifying crowds and make our way to the Rivers of America for Fantasmic!. When we got to Frontierland, we noticed all the water screens were up in an attempt to hide a giant dragon that was on stage. This must be the animatronic dragon we'd heard so much about. And by "so much" I mean Gaston's never seen it in action because it was never working in the shows he's seen since they got it.

When we finally found a place to watch the show from (people have figured out "fireworks first, Fantasmic! later," but they haven't figured out the secret of the light fixtures), the guy standing next to us, whose... son? I don't know, some relative of his... works on the show informed us that they had had trouble with the dragon, and if they couldn't get it worked out, they wouldn't be able to have a second show. Tragedy! Fortunately, they did get it worked out, but not all worked out, because we saw the show for the first time without a dragon. It was really interesting to see how they worked that out. It's still kind of cool, but not nearly as cool as it is with a dragon. That robot better be awesome to the extreme to justify this. If not, they might as well bring back the puppet, because that was really awesome as well.

On the bright side, we did get to see Fantasmic!. And not only that, but we got to see the upgraded crocodile (from Peter Pan) and Flotsam and Jetsam, who looked amazing and really helped the villains' part to stop dragging. It's still really sad that the dragon didn't work, though, because Leia had never seen the show before. Oh well, now she'll have something to be surprised about next time.

After the show, we were totally energized, but Indiana Jones was shut down and Han was ready to pass out, so it was back to the hotel for us (after a little bit of shopping while the crowds died down). It was just as well because as we waited for the shuttle, we realized just how much pain our legs were in. Then we got back to the hotel and went to bed.

For all our having been to Disneyland a million times before, I still end up talking on and on and on about it. Ah well, I like it.

Today I'm thankful for getting the Billies' autographs (still need Billy Mandolin, but Billy Bass was really nice and he's always been our favorite), those yummy mint sundaes, extra hot fudge, getting to see Flotsam and Jetsam, and actually finishing our column today.

Boo.

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:28:19 GMT

Ugh, I feel like we've wasted our entire morning. Not that we had any plans for the morning, but sitting around wallowing seems like the opposite of productive. Anyway, we weren't sure how to deal with the problem, so now we've come to LJ to vent about it.

Via Twitter, we found a link to this blog post on the poor state of manga translation. If you read it, you'll see that he singles out a specific translator who wrote a self-introduction using the word "awesome" three times. Thanks to our own fact-checking abilities we were able to confirm that he did, in fact, mean us. His point was that this person is obviously a terrible translator because all of their essays show that they have no flair for writing whatsoever. He also points out that he doesn't read translated manga, which means he probably hasn't actually read our translations and therefore can't really speak for their quality or the lack thereof.

So we're not sure what to do. To us, he seems like a self-righteous jerk who isn't really checking his facts. On the other hand, I can see where we've probably done the same thing on some occasions, but... I don't know, maybe it's just self-justification to say that at least we only point out specific examples of translation and don't just judge someone based on something that may or may not show their translating prowess.

I like to think that our own personal character voices aren't the only ones that show up in our translations. "Awesome" is a good example, because, while you can see it all over the place when we're blogging, we actually almost never use it when translating. Or maybe we actually do and I don't realize it because I'm so addicted to the word. Athena says she would have noticed. And we can do some searches right now.

...

...

Out of eleven entire scripts, we've found the word five times. So probably a little more than "almost never," but never more than once in the same script.

Basically we're just bummed and we're not sure if we should just let it go or defend ourselves, mainly because we have a column due today and we don't know what to write it on. The guy also calls us out on our use of fancy words for big talkers. We're not sure what we're supposed to use other than fancy words. Apparently the idea is juvenile, though, and since we're obviously very immature (as indicated by our overuse of the word "awesome"), it would be beyond our mental capacity to come up with anything better. That makes sense, though, because some of the comments talked about good ways of dealing with different dialects, and we can't imagine what those would be, either. But in our defense, he was probably talking about our column on Ayame, and I still think he turned out very well. Not that we can really judge ourselves...

Anyway. I think that's enough venting. It's never a bad idea to re-evaluate the quality of your work, so... I don't know. Later we'll come back and talk about happy things like Disneyland, which will help remind us of things to be grateful for, so I'll save the gratitude journal bit for then.

Another day at Disneyland

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:39:27 GMT

Just got back from the vet with Oreo and he's doing very well. There was even talk of taking him off of his medication... in about two months, but still!

Random thing for the day: we suddenly have Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure. We went to the Disney Movie Club to decline it as the featured title one day, and the thing where you click to respond to the featured title had disappeared, so we thought maybe we already had. Then they charged us for a movie, and we thought for sure it was UP, since we knew we hadn't declined that one yet, but it came today and was Tinker Bell. Strange. We were kind of planning to get it anyway (since we already have the first one), but we were thinking of getting it on DVD because it's cheaper that way and it would match our other one. And now we have it on Blu-ray. Ah well. At least now we can be better informed for when we finally get our chance to discuss Tink and Peter Pan's relationship with Terence at Disneyland.

Speaking of Disneyland, our trip was really fun, as always. Han picked us up at about four on Thursday (which was so weird, because it was, like, on time) and we dropped Oreo off at the Pets Hotel, then went to Target to pick up some travel supplies (Smart Water, Vitamin Water, toffee covered nuts (cashews for Han, peanuts for us)). We then went to get the other people in our party (Donald and Leia, who was taking a test while we were shopping and waiting for Donald to pack) and off we went! Leia and Donald spent a good deal of the ride down to Anaheim talking about the latest book in the Wheel of Time series, while the three of us who hadn't read them waited for various opportunities to chime in with randomness.

We got to Anaheim and checked in to our fancy hotel--the Hyatt Regency, which we got for only $50 a night, thanks to Price Line Negotiator (you have to sing it like they do in the commercial; thanks, William Shatner!), and then it was late and we wanted to be in the park about when it opened, so off to bed we went.

The hotel had a free shuttle to the park, which of course was very crowded first thing in the morning (the shuttle, not the park). We gave up our seats to some families with small children, so we were standing for the whole ride, which I only bring up because first the shuttle stopped at another hotel to pick up more guests, and then the driver said, "That was our last stop, and now we're on our way to Disney World. ...But I don't think you want to be standing for 56 hours straight, so we'll go to Disneyland instead."

It was Han's birthday trip, so he got to call most of the shots, and he wanted to go to California Adventure first thing, but DCA always opens after Disneyland, so we went to have breakfast at the River Belle Terrace, where I had a Mickey Mouse pancake, and we all (except Leia, who didn't have pancakes (but ate some of Han's)) managed to almost empty out the little syrup container despite it having been full when we sat down.

...I'm getting a little too detail-oriented. I'll skip the Haunted Mansion (where Han guessed correctly that those metal things outside the entrance were boot scrapers) and Pirates of the Caribbean (where we met Gaston, who returned Athena's hat, which had been left in his car back in September) and move on to the Jungle Cruise, because I always like to write down the more unusual jokes. This time, our tour guide told us that the Bengal tiger can jump over twenty-five thousand feet. From an airplane. ...Only once, though. He also commented that the elephants really do have good memories, because they always remember to show up when he's there--and they're in almost exactly the same places. As we passed by Schweitzer Falls, he said, "We're coming up on the famous Schweitzer Falls. ...We'll go over the falls later."

Then we got to the African bull elephant, which he guaranteed us were so rare we'd only see one of on the entire trip. The second African bull elephant was a polar bear. The hippo part was the same (the tour guide says the hippos are very dangerous, but only when they're wiggling their ears and blowing bubbles, which of course they're now doing, so s/he takes a gun (with blanks) and fires into the air to scare them off), but I want to tell about the one tour guide Han and Gaston keep telling us about. She was only able to tell this joke because it was her last day there, but it was hilarious (though also very wrong). She pointed out the hippos and said they were so close to extinction there were only seven of them left in the whole world. Then she went, "...five, six, seven, eight..." BLAM! "Seven left in the whole world."

Incidentally, there was a time when the tour guides weren't allowed to use guns at all, so that part tended to be really boring, except when we had a tour guide who did something like the one we had once who said, "If you listen carefully, you can hear them calling out to each other... ... ... ... HEY MA!!"

I think we headed to California Adventure after that. Did we do anything interesting in California Adventure? Right. We went on Grizzly River Run, but when we were in line, we passed by the traffic control guy (telling the stand-by line to wait while the fast pass line goes on ahead and such), who gave us a quest! He handed us a card thingie with a little loopy cord thing and told us to give it to one of the guys at the front. We were pretty excited, because when that kind of thing happens, you either launch an exciting quest to save the world, or you get a really cool item (because you're already on a quest to save the world). We didn't get anything though. But the ride was fun. We got Just Wet Enough.

On Toy Story, we were pretty happy to finally unlock some of the secret high-scoring thingies, but our hand-eye coordination is bad enough that it didn't do us much good. But I did get my highest score ever (which was not very high, but also not entirely low, so it's all good).

We went to the Animation Building, where we got Part 2 of our Quest! The guy at front handed us a card with the time written on it, and when we came out, we were to hand it to whoever was stationed out there so they could find out how long people tend to spend inside. Unfortunately, we only had time for Turtle Talk with Crush before we had to rush off to catch Tiana's Showboat Jubilee. I really wish we could have spent longer in there for that, because that's one of my favorite buildings of all time. Turtle Talk with Crush wasn't even that fun. There was an amusing bit when a theatre geek asked him what his favorite musical was. He was like, "What's a musical?" so they explained and then he asked if there were any about, like, the ocean or something he could relate to, so the girl said that they recently made one of The Little Mermaid, and he was like, "I thought mermaids were, like, a myth. Like, manatees or something. My friend Sebastian keeps telling me about them..." I think he said something about not believing him, but then he described him as a little red Rastafarian dude with a short temper, and that amused me greatly.

So anyway, we went to see Tiana's Showboat Jubilee, which was pretty fun. They start out with a parade down New Orleans Square, singing "Dreams Come True in New Orleans," then the parade gets on the Mark Twain (the Rivers of America steamboat), which comes to the center area to "Going Down the Bayou," and then they put on a show, where they sing all the other Princess and the Frog songs, with a little bit of dialogue to tie everything together. But they don't give away anything from the movie except for the songs (which were edited a little to give fewer spoilers). They even had Dr. Facilier show up and sing his song, even to the point with, "You're changing, you're changing," etc. whatever, at which point he leaves. Naveen is still human, and he just kind of shrugs it off with like a, "What a quack!" and Tiana and Louis come back to sing "Dig a Little Deeper."

We were a little worried at first, because Louis wasn't playing a trumpet--he was just dancing--and Louis seems surgically attached to that instrument, so that would have been completely out of character. But they did give him a trumpet, so it all worked out. They also had guests on the showboat helping with the show, and we were so jealous of them. But at least we got to watch the show. If we were in the show, we wouldn't have gotten to see Naveen nearly as much.

I think that's enough for now. More reporting tomorrow.

Today I'm thankful for it waiting to rain until after we walked home with our pizza, having tortillas to make into small pizzas, our home teacher being kind enough to drive us to the vet today, getting Athena's hat back, and yummy chili burgers at the Taste Pilots' Grill in California Adventure.

Back

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:40:38 GMT

We've been back for almost a day now, but too tired to write much. Well, sort of. Part of the lack of updating comes from hanging out in the living room with the kitty. We felt so bad abandoning him for two and a half days. When we went to pick him up this morning, he refused to leave his kitty cottage. We're not sure if that's because he was mad at us or if it's because he had such a good time he didn't want to leave. There were at least two other kitties at the hotel with him, so maybe he enjoyed the feline company.

We felt even worse when we brought him home, then turned right around and left him again to go to church. But church was pretty awesome, as always, so of course there are no regrets. Now he's been following us everywhere, except the not entirely rare times he would race to the kitchen to see if we would give him some yummy food. And he tends to sit on Athena's lap, thus immobilizing her, because he is big and we are not only weak but tired. And also saps.

Anyway, I think I'll start the official trip report tomorrow, because even though it's the same old Disneyland, there's always something new and exciting to report about. But not today, because we're tired.

Today I'm thankful for having a great time at Disneyland, having Oreo safely back from the Pets Hotel, having a new Christmas DVD to watch (Mickey's Christmas Carol was on sale at Disneyland; we might have just been like, "We already have Muppet's Christmas Carol," but we like Mickey's version too, and, more importantly, this DVD has "The Small One" on it, too), having lots of toffee peanuts (though apparently now they're called "butter crunch peanuts" for some reason; they taste exactly the same as toffee ones though), and Han giving us the leftover birthday cake.

Heading out

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:25:20 GMT

Now is the nervous time right before a trip when we wonder, "Do we have everything!?" I think we're good.

Last night we got to go to IHOP and try the gingerbread pancakes. It was pretty exciting. The pancakes were good, but we realized once again that too much gingerbread without anything else is not usually a good idea. Next time: more whipped cream. Or chocolate syrup. That could be awesome.

Anyway, while we were sitting in the living room earlier today, there was a loud knock at the door. Our apartment is not generally a very loud place, so it took me off guard and I shrieked a little. We think that probably has something to do with the person outside the door shouting, "UPS!" To let us know that he wasn't a creepy stalker or whoever we were afraid of.

But I actually knew it was the UPS guy! Because DC Comics sent us a tracking number a week ago and when we tracked the number, we learned our package was scheduled to be delivered today. I was especially happy that the UPS guy showed up before we left for Disneyland, because we look forward to our DC gift every year and it would have been sad to miss the delivery.

We couldn't wait until Christmas to open them, so instead, we waited until we were both done brushing our hair (which is what we were doing when the UPS guy arrived). This year, they sent us each a handmade Moleskine notebook. They have leather covers with the DC logo on them (of course), and the pages are blank, so we can write down or draw whatever inspiration may hit us with.

Seriously, it's like whoever picks out the DC gifts every year is totally in tune with our brains, because this is only a couple of weeks after we decided we need to develop our talents and try to be more creative. And notebooks, especially notebooks with blank pages, are really good for that. We can use them for whatever we want! And after that Comic Con panel where Glen Keane (Glen Keane!!!) asked to make sure that everyone had their sketchbooks on them (and we didn't, because we don't really consider ourselves "artists" in the drawing sense (we hope to someday be producers)), it'll be nice to have a book on hand like that. We're super excited to take them with us to Disneyland and... probably leave them in the hotel room because we don't want to get them dirty or lose them or anything. Maybe one of the guys will bring a backpack we can carry them around in. My fanny pack is just too small. But we can definitely use them during the drive and in the hotel and stuff!

We're not so good at writing down ideas and stuff yet, but we have to start somewhere, right? And this is the perfect gift to get us started! Thanks, DC!

Today I'm thankful for two more awesome gifts from DC, the UPS guy arriving with them before we left, having tried gingerbread pancakes, Anaheim being warmer than Fresno, and getting to go to Disneyland soon!!

The icon says it all.

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:55:10 GMT

Yesterday was pretty eventful. It started out kind of yay!, then it was a little aww, and then it was like WOOHOO!!

Monday night was the ward Christmas party, complete with dinner. We were prepared to be taking home some leftovers, since we figured we'd probably need them. But there weren't any leftovers for us to take home. At least not any we would be able to eat. That was a little unusual, since every time we've gone to a ward dinner when we were poor and in need of food, there has been food for us to take home. We didn't even get anything like a random box of cereal in the white elephant gift exchange.

We had high hopes that that meant we'd get some money.

Lo and behold, when Athena got the mail, there was a check in it! Yay! It wasn't any of the ones that were late, but it was still money, so we were very grateful. The only downside was that it was smaller than the ones we've been waiting for, so, while we'd be able to pay bills and buy food, we might not get to go to Disneyland. So that was kind of "aww."

We made arrangements to go to the bank, and then we sat down to watch some anime. While we were watching the first episode of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, there was a knock at the door. It was UPS, with one of the checks we'd been waiting for! Woohoo! Now we can afford to go to Disneyland!

After we went to the bank, we went to dinner with Mom and Steve and his kids, but we didn't have time to go grocery shopping, because my visiting teachers were coming over at seven. They showed up and we had a wonderful time talking about translating and languages and stuff. One of my visiting teachers grew up in Canada, speaking Spanish until she got into kindergarten, where she spoke French, and then her family moved to Georgia (the state, not the country) when she was ten and started learning English. Pretty incredible.

And then! they gave us a gift bag with chocolate dipped pretzels, a candle ("don't eat it," we were instructed), and socks! See, my other visiting teacher is the bishop's wife, and one time we were at family home evening, discussing how cold it was that day, and it got brought up that we don't wear socks. We don't even know why exactly, just that somehow in the course of our laundry, they get lost. It probably has a lot to do with our lack of clothing organization. Athena also thinks it got brought up that we don't get out to buy socks very often. So Sister L. remembered us talking about that and she bought us like ten or twelve pairs of nice socks! And just in time to go to Disneyland! Wow!

Not only that, but she remembered us talking about how we've been waiting and waiting and waiting for our checks, and it suddenly hit her when she was leaving (we think to come visit last night, but we don't remember) that she had like two-thirds of a loaf of bread that neither she nor the bishop was likely to eat. So she put it in her car and was able to give it to us last night, so the fact that we weren't able to go to the grocery store ended up not being a problem! Double wow!

Fittingly, the visiting teaching lesson this month is on compassionate service, and the quote Sister L. focused on was this one from President Uchtdorf: "In the end, the number of prayers we say may contribute to our happiness, but the number of prayers we answer may be of even greater importance." Teaching through word and example. We really need to remember this lesson.

Today I'm thankful for finally getting that one check (still waiting on the other one, but that's okay for now), getting to pay our bills this morning (we were so excited about that one), getting to go to Disneyland, getting to go to IHOP and try gingerbread pancakes! (finally a limited time offer we can go check out!), and having lots of nice socks! And awesome visiting teachers!

Let's review.

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:31:19 GMT

I've been rethinking my opinion of The Princess and the Frog, since I realized that something I'm always wishing people would realize is that just because somebody doesn't like something doesn't mean it's poorly done. Just because I don't like a character, for example, doesn't mean that the character is poorly created or unrealistic. So the second time we saw The Princess and the Frog, we were able to be a little more objective and pick things apart and figure out what we didn't like about it, and think about whether it was a matter of storytelling problems or if it was just a matter of our own personal preferences getting in the way. And now that I'm done ranting about other things, I think we can type up a more detailed review.

I was thinking I would do this by character. Let's see if that works.

Tiana
I have very mixed feelings about Tiana. To be honest, when we watched the Dreams Come True special that highlighted this movie the week before it came out, we kind of got the impression (which we may have imagined) that John Lasseter was implying that she is vastly superior to all those vapid airhead Disney princesses we've had before. Since we love all the Disney princesses (though sometimes Athena doesn't care for Jasmine, and Pocahontas kinda gets on our nerves, but I'm not sure she counts (then again, she is a princess of sorts, so why wouldn't she?)), we were insulted and so I wasn't ready to adore Tiana as a character. Then someone said outright that she's vastly superior to all the past Disney princesses, thus setting me off on a fault-finding mission. I'm getting over it, but I am going to list her faults first, because it's better to end with compliments.

Anyway, I think there's a potential problem with Tiana in that she had to "fix" her man, and a lot of women seem to get the delusion that they can fix their deadbeat boyfriends. I have this imagined idea that everyone thinks of Tiana as this great, wonderful role model, and she does definitely have role model potential, what with her work ethic and practicality (she totally saved Naveen and Louis from like a million dangers just in one verse of "When I'm Human") and powers of observation. But on the other hand, she might come across as a little holier-than-thou sometimes ("When I'm human, at least I'll act like one♪" (Though to be fair, she was hanging out with Naveen at the time)). I think when the Fenners told her she couldn't have the restaurant after all, and then she fell and all the food fell on her, she didn't show enough emotion. I wanted to really see her despair (I can be sadistic, it's true), and I was kind of disappointed not to. Maybe she's just the type to not be very emotional, which is understandable, but less entertaining to me.

On the other hand, she is adorable. Her character design is great. And I like that she's not perfect--they keep telling her she needs to learn that there's more to life than work. I do sometimes get annoyed when people say they want to see heroes fail (why can't they always choose the right?), but I think it's important that they're not perfect at first. Otherwise there's no room for learning and growing, and then the audience has no opportunity to learn and grow through them. Despite how other people seem to feel about the other Disney princesses, we think she fits right in.

Naveen
Naveen is fantastic. Only not. When he first showed up, I was like, "Ooooh, handsome and fun-loving! Nice!" Then Lawrence pointed out that he was a deadbeat, and I was like, "Hmm, I don't know about this guy... But he's cute, so at least I like him as a character." Then they were singing "When I'm Human," and I haaaated him as a person. Still entertaining as a character, though. But I really hated him. I was like, "I hope they decide to be really original and have Tiana end up with somebody else!" (Celeste tells me that's not so original these days, thus proving how lacking our movie knowledge is.) But then he changed to be worthy of her, and he was soooooo cute and sweet and lovable. I always like a guy who's willing to face his fears (getting a job) to protect the woman he loves.

Charlotte
Charlotte was pretty awesome. We were a little surprised that she didn't turn out to be jealous and evil, but pleasantly so. She was cute and funny, and they did a really good job of capturing the fangirl spirit. On the other hand, I worry that the public will think she represents the past Disney princesses, who supposedly do nothing but sit around waiting for princes to come and get whatever they want all the time. Having Tiana right there as contrast doesn't help. But someone like Charlotte was totally necessary for the story, and we really like her a lot. We did wonder why it was that Tiana turned into a frog upon kissing Naveen and Charlotte didn't, but we have two theories. First, Tiana was what Naveen needed (Diiiiig a little deeper♪) in order to be a decent human being and become worthy of not being a frog, and they were destined and all that. Second, and (I think) much more likely, he didn't kiss Charlotte back.

Dr. Facilier
He was a very intriguing villain, which is why we wish we'd gotten more information on him in the movie. I mean, he hints at his debts when he goes to ask for shadows to get Naveen back, and he says it outright right before they get him, but we still feel like we don't really understand his whole deal. Or the significance of the amulet. I feel like there must be a deleted scene where he goes to his friends on the other side to get the amulet, where we learn all about his debt and more about who he is and stuff. I just feel like there are too many questions about him. And when he tells Lawrence, "Now I'm reduced to going to my friends on the other side," we think it would have been much more dramatic if he had just said, "Now I'm reduced to going to my friends." We all would have known which friends he was talking about, especially since he clearly doesn't have any other friends. But we loved the way he was animated and all the stuff with his shadow, and Keith David did a fantastic job with the voice. He was fascinating, and I think it would have been nice to get just a liiiitle bit more about him.

Louis
Oh, Louis. For some reason, despite being perfectly alright with an alligator being able to play the trumpet with no lips or opposable thumbs, I have a really hard time forgiving the fact that burrs were penetrating his thick scales. It must be the sympathy pain, I guess. Burrs are kind of scary when you look at them too close. We didn't like Louis. We felt like he slowed down the story, even though all the seemingly useless things he did tended to work toward the next plot point: getting Tiana and Naveen more tangled up led to Raymond joining the party, his slowing them down to get the burrs out of his butt gave them time to have dinner and let Tiana give Naveen a purpose in life, etc. Athena says she could probably forgive him if he hadn't been the reason for yet another song preventing us from getting to see the characters interacting more. On the other hand, the idea of an alligator learning trumpet on the bayou and trying to join a jazz band is quite hilarious.

Raymond
I like to call him by his full name, because I like the Cajun accent. I so want to watch all his scenes and steal his colloquialisms for some Kansai dialect character somewhere in a translation. I really love how he calls Tiana "cher."

Ray actually caused what I think was my biggest problem with the movie. I don't mind him dying, that's just drama. It was at the funeral, though, when the clouds cleared away and there he was with Evangeline. Now, I'm a romantic, and I think normally I would be all happy for him and "Awwwwww♥♥♥!" that he got to be with his true love. But I'm also pretty religious, and the only other event I know of with an obvious new star in the sky (probably from having been deprived of "It's a Wonderful Life" as a child) is the birth of Jesus Christ. And I just didn't think Raymond, awesome as he was, merited that. Even Mufasa didn't get an obvious star in the sky, and they even say in that world that the stars are the kings of the past. In Hercules, it worked because he got a constellation, and they still worked with the rules for stars in Greek mythology. In The Princess and the Frog, Tiana even gives the scientific definition of stars for the real world. Though I guess one of the messages is that stars are more magical than that, but still. I do think it was amusing that now Timon can brag that his star theory was correct after all.

So anyway, the new star thing had me like, "Oh, what?" and then it went right into the wedding. I think if the star thing had worked for me, it would have been like, "Oh, yay! Raymond gets to be with Evangeline, and now we can have Tiana marry Naveen." But since I was like, "Oh, what?" I wasn't in the mood for a wedding, and that didn't quite work for me, either. Plus the funeral scene kind of slowed down the ending. It was kind of like, "Climax! ...depressing denouement. Oh wait, we're happy now! Aaand finale."

As for Raymond himself, though, loved him very much. He was funny and helpful and Jim Cummings has always been a brilliant voice actor but I don't know if I would have realized it was him if I didn't already know Jim Cummings was in this movie as someone.

Okay, I'm done doing it by character. Let's see. I want to keep working out why this movie didn't click with us as well as we wanted it to. It was actually very very good, it's just there were some personal preferences that got in the way. First there was the music. Randy Newman seems like a great person (we saw him on The Colbert Report), but we've never really been able to get into his music. I think there's something about it that, for me, keeps me on the outside, and that might be voluntary because it doesn't fit my tastes. And it's partially because of that that I didn't feel like I was able to go inside the world of The Princess and the Frog like I do with all the other Disney films. (I tend to feel like more of an observer than a participant with Pixar stuff, too, actually.) It was especially apparent during the frog hunt scene. We tend to zone out during action sequences, except for Disney movies for some reason. Maybe because they don't spend as much time on action sequences in animated movies. But I think it might also have to do with the music keeping us inside the movie.

The scene where Tiana's father talks to her about their restaurant seemed a little off somehow. Athena figured out that it's because the way they're sitting on her bed looks like they just sat her down for a Talk, but the conversation itself sounded more like they had been talking for a while, and everyone would already be comfortable and stuff. Or they would have been in the middle of something like washing dishes.

Our final complaint is that it felt a little slow in the first half. We were spending so much time on music and singing that we weren't spending a lot of time with the characters. It's kind of strange, though, because the songs are there to help us get to know the characters, and yet we felt like they were preventing us for getting to know them. I'm not sure exactly why that is, but it probably had to do with impatience for... something, I don't know.

But the second time we saw it, we didn't need to be impatient to learn anything, because we knew all the stuff and we knew we'd see it, so we were able to enjoy it more.

Anyway, I feel like the review was mostly complaining, but we did like the movie. We were really excited to see it the second time, and we're really excited to see it at least three more times like we told Eric Goldberg we would when we happened to meet him at Comic Con. And the more we talk about it and analyze it, the more we realize how carefully the story was constructed and everything, and the more we like it. Or something. And do I even need to say that the animation was amazing?

Whew, I knew that was going to be long.

Today I'm thankful for companies that send out checks promptly (got money today, but neither of our delinquent checks), having money to go deposit, finally finding that last dressphere in FFX-2, only needing three more percents to get 100, and bundt cake.

Still truckin'

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:07:25 GMT

No money yet, but we're still optimistic. Han just called and suggested a few options that would require less money on our part (including staying with Gaston, which of course was Gaston's idea; it's nice to feel wanted). We actually kind of suspected we wouldn't get any money today for a couple of reasons. First, we had more than enough Rice Krispies for breakfast this morning. It's kind of amazing, because yesterday we thought he had less than we did this morning. And things like that don't happen unless you need them to.

The other reason is that the ward Christmas dinner is tonight, which means more free food, and we'll probably get to take home leftovers. It was kind of funny this morning, because we were like, "I'm not sure if we'll get any money today. We're getting free food tonight." I don't know, maybe it's only funny to us.

Anyway, the lack of money today doesn't have us any more stressed out than usual (I mean usual for the last couple of weeks), which is actually only a little stressed out, because we're good at distracting ourselves. The only effects of no money that present themselves regularly are the inability to buy food and the potential inability to go to Disneyland, and we just don't think about those too much. I don't know if it's because we're so picky that there isn't much food that we like or what, but we never really did spend much time thinking about food. In many cases, we'll stop eating at a meal not because we're full, but because we're bored and ready to move on.

On the other hand, we do prefer to have some kind of very sweet thing to eat on a semi-daily basis. We've really been feeling the lack of chocolate. Of course that might be that chocolate can help reduce stress, which we've had a little extra of lately. Anyway, that's what brought about our experiment of last night. We're running low on milk so we needed to make sure we had enough for cereal this morning, but we desperately wanted chocolate. So! we took the Hershey's hot chocolate recipe off the side of the container, only we doubled everything you put in before the milk (cocoa, sugar, and water, with a dash of salt) and added just one cup off milk (checking again, the recipe calls for four). And we put it in the refrigerator to cool over night. (Inability to drink hot drinks is just another factor that adds to our disinterest in food.)

And so for snack time this afternoon, we had what pretty much amounts to liquid chocolate bars. Soooooooo good.

That plus our lack of motivation to improve on the pizza recipe (or, y'know, try to do something not from scratch) is what helped me realize why in Japan they tend to differentiate between ryouri (cooking) and okashi-zukuri (making desserts).

On a completely different happy note, today we got Christmas cards! One from phoenix_melody (thank you!! we love the sparkles!), one from DC Comics, and one from CMX (which was just like the one from DC only with different signatures, but felt nicer because we recognized the names). On Thursday, we got an e-mail with a tracking number from DC headquarters in New York, too, so we're pretty excited to get that!

On the other hand, I'm a little sad we haven't been able to do anything Christmas-y for anyone else. Boo. Oh well, I'm sure we'll work something out.

Today I'm thankful for getting happy Christmas cards, evidence that people want us at Disneyland, liquid chocolate bars, not running out of food (or opportunities for free food, in some cases) before our money comes, and getting to work on Happy Cafe today.

Cooking

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:34:29 GMT

We are attempting Cooking. The original plan was to go to Mom's place for dinner and video games, but there have been issues and Mom's not feeling up to company. When she called, I was like, "Yeah, sure, okay." And then I told Athena about it and she was like, "Then how are we going to eat?" I'll go into those details later, but first the conclusion: I called Mom and she brought the ingredients over and now we have a pizza in the oven. Not that the cooking is all that fancy, since the sauce comes from a jar and the crust comes from a mix, but it's a lot more cooking than what we normally eat. Baby steps.

So we've been waiting for a couple of checks for a long time now. I believe I mentioned that on Thursday. It's been pretty bad, but we've been managing to get by. In all these weeks of having to figure out how we're going to eat, feed our cat, ~~buy movie tickets,~~ pay our bills, etc., all the while checking the mail faithfully every day to see if one of those checks may have finally arrived, there have only been two instances of breaking down into tears.

First came on the fifth, when we found our check did not come, and therefore we didn't have rent money. At all. Rent is a really big important thing, after all.

The second came this morning, when Donald came to talk to us about Disneyland. I may have mentioned that we're planning to go this weekend for Han's birthday. But Donald knew we've been having problems because our money hasn't been coming, and he suggested that we might have to stay home for our own good. (He did at least say we'd be missed.) He's absolutely right of course. But take away my food and I'll deal. Take away Disneyland... It was just too much. (If that does happen, at least we won't have to worry about Oreo, though.)

So today was a day for needing of chocolate, and fortunately the bishop was still doing tithing settlement, and there was still some See's candy around. Athena asked the bishop if we could each take a chocolate, and they were soooo good. The bishop's wife is my new visiting teacher, so we've been talking a lot, and the bishop is a freelancer, too, so she completely understands where we're coming from. It's nice to have someone really understand that we're not just being irresponsible. Maybe a little irresponsible with The Princess and the Frog. But still.

We may attempt doing something with the Hershey's cocoa we still have plenty of, but we're not sure what. I'm sure we'll come up with something. And now the pizza's done, so it's time to go.

Today I'm thankful for Mom being kind enough to bring us food ingredients (which are also food, technically), extra chocolates from the bishop, people who really understand the situation, still having three days to get a check before deciding whether or not we're going to Disneyland, and finding a new dungeon in Final Fantasy X-2.

Good stuff

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 02:10:58 GMT

Our poor kitty has been left on his own so many times and for so long these last couple of days. After the movie yesterday, we went to a quad-stake service project. We were putting together kits for kids at the hospital, and since we didn't have that many kits to assemble and there were a ton of people there, it was over super fast. But we ran into a friend of Leia's who is also an anime/manga fan and her sister, and we ended up talking and talking and talking long after the event was over. Mostly about Disney, actually. It was kind of an obsessing over various things involving Disney day.

After we finally got back, we had to go to bed early, so we could wake up early so we could go to the temple! We're not very good at going to bed early. But the temple trip was awesome. We had fewer people there than usual, but when we got started, the first girl did a bunch of baptisms, and somebody said, "Hey, how many has she done?" they realized she'd done forty, and they asked her if she could go on to fifty, and she was like, "Yeah!" So we were all going to do fifty names each, but there was another group scheduled for eleven-thirty, so we had to stop short. But it was awesome anyway. And after that we went to In-N-Out and had neapolitan milkshakes which were amazing.

Then! we went to see The Princess and the Frog again with Mom, Celeste (and husband), and Sarah. I was really worried, because when I called Mom last night to see what the plans were as far as that went, she asked us if it was thumbs up or thumbs down, I said, "Overall I would give it a thumbs up," in a tone of voice that was a little hesitant. But it was true, we do give it a thumbs up. We decided we'd give it an eight, and we just hesitate about it because we wish it was a ten. So now that Mom knew we were hesitant about it, I was worried she wouldn't want to see it anymore, because she refused to see UP just because when Sarah saw it, all she said about it was, "UP was sad!"

But when I called after we went to the temple, we learned Mom was still wanting to see it, so off we went! And Mom really loved it. Everyone else really loved it too, so we ended up upsetting Sarah with our typical picking apart of the movie afterward. All we were doing was trying to figure out why we didn't love the movie as much as we hoped to. Ah well.

Incidentally, we did enjoy the movie more the second time, which is definitely good considering how we felt about Tinker Bell the second time we watched it. We're also very excited to see the Princess and the Frog show they have going on at Disneyland right now! It won't be long! ...before we leave Oreo all alone again. Sigh. Hopefully he won't mind the Pets Hotel as much this time.

Today I'm thankful for getting to talk to new friends, the awesome temple trip we had this morning, getting to see The Princess and the Frog again, getting to try neapolitan milkshakes, and being home with our kitty.

Duh duh-duh DUH!!! (<--fanfare)

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:23:19 GMT

Okay, so I think I figured out why we didn't get to see The Princess and the Frog those two other chances that were available before it hit regular theaters. We just have too high standards for Disney movies. Not that our standards are higher than they should be, but higher than they can be to come home and not be listing all the things that need fixing.

Let me start out by saying it was a very good movie. It was very good, and in the end, we enjoyed it immensely.

Oh right. Because of matinee prices, we were able to just barely get in, and thanks to a phone call from the girl I tried to visit teach last night (but failed because she has a giant house with a giant yard and a locked gate, and no one noticed me and my companion to come let us in, and when we tried calling her to let her know we were there she wasn't picking up her phone and neither of us had the house phone number), we managed to get a ride and we saw the movie and it was amazing.

Only not as amazing as we think it should have been. And here I am supposed to be telling everyone to go see it to support hand-drawn animation. But go see it, seriously! Just because we're nit-picky doesn't mean it's a bad movie. Prince Naveen alone I think is reason enough to see it. He's a very good character, and even dynamic! Wow! (Not that I think that dynamics are rare in Disney characters, just that dynamics are good in characters in general.) And! he looks like a mix between Prince Eric and Hercules, who are two of our favoritest Disney heroes!

Dr. Facilier was played by Keith David, who also played Goliath in Gargoyles, and it was amazing, because his Dr. Facilier (aka Shadow Man, which is really a pretty cool villain name, I think, but could also be kind of cheesy depending on how it's done, but I think they did it well here) voice is nothing like Goliath. And every time we've heard Keith David in anything, including the one live action thing we've seen him in (War Games with Matthew Broderick), he sounds exactly like Goliath. It even took me a while to confirm, because I saw his name in the cast list, and I was like, "I bet he plays the voodoo doctor guy," but then he was talking and I was like, "I don't know, it doesn't sound like him..." but it was totally him. And it was funny because Goliath has this voice you think of as being deep because he's a gargoyle and stuff, but when Dr. Facilier sings, he's totally not even a bass.

Anyway, I think I'll stop talking because I don't want to do an LJ cut, and if I say anything else, I'll probably need one. It was a good movie, and we're really glad we saw it, and now we're even more determined to find our way into Disney. And Athena wants a Frog Naveen plushie.

Today I'm thankful for getting to see The Princess and the Frog, our friend calling last night so we could get a ride, our friend being kind enough to drive us, the service project being held close enough to walk to, and getting to hear unusual voices from familiar voice actors.

Waaaaah! (<--babylike crying)

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:10:14 GMT

The Princess and the Frog comes out tomorrow! and we don't have any money! Waaaaaaaahhhhh!!!!

It's not like we were careless and happened to run out of money at a bad time, either. We just happened to have two different companies miss an invoice and so we've been waiting and waiting for money that hasn't been coming, in the meantime using credit and borrowing and stuff to do things like pay rent and buy food. And I wouldn't be whining about it because we finally got things sorted out and both companies have told us with certainty that we can expect the money soon, but (and you may recall) The Princess and the Frog comes out tomorrow!!! Whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!!!

On the bright side, Mom says she'll take us to see it (hopefully again) on Saturday, and if we don't have any money by then she might be kind enough pay for it (especially because she would be taking the little set of twins, and she wouldn't want to be outnumbered), so we should for sure get to see it then. We were hoping to see the earliest showing of it they have here, but it's looking like we'll have to wait until at least after we get the mail tomorrow.

And now I'm worried because every time I've mentioned a limited time menu at a restaurant here on LJ, the menu went away before we had a chance to get any, and I'm like, "Oh no! What if saying I want to see The Princess and the Frog on LJ will curse us into not being able to see it!?" I don't think the universe works like that, but sometimes it's hard not to be paranoid.

I'm just so frustrated about this, because we've had two opportunities to see the movie already--first was the D23 Expo and second was the early opening at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank--but we didn't have money for either of those, either. And now we might not even get to see it on regular opening day! I was going to say, "I guess this is what we get for..." but I'm not sure what we'd get it for. Maybe for being brats about it.

See, we went to a ward activity and we were talking to one of the bishopric's wives and another girl in the ward, and The Princess and the Frog got brought up, and we were all like, "Yay, hand-drawn animation! We like it so much better than 3-D CGI!" and so of course we said, "So we're all going to see The Princess and the Frog to support hand-drawn animation!!" And the one girl was like, "Uh... I might see it when it gets to the $3 theater!" And we were all like, "WHAT!? That won't support the cause at all!! You HAVE to see it in regular theaters!!" "But I don't have any money!" "You mean to tell us you can't save up a mere $10 in the three months before the movie comes out!?" (This was about three months ago.) She did not seem confident in that ability, so we were like, "Fine! We will pay you ten dollars to go see the movie in regular theaters!"

And we're still planning to do that (assuming we can), but we were completely angrified about the whole thing. Of course, our personalities never really meshed with hers to begin with, so our not-getting-along-ness probably doesn't come from only that, so hopefully that's not why we're not getting to see the movie first thing tomorrow.

But anyway, the other thing we learned from that experience is that we probably will take it as a personal offense if anyone tells us (honestly) that they refuse to see the movie in theaters. On the other hand, phoenix_melody just said on her LJ that she's going to see it tomorrow, and we're like, "Hey, that's not fair!", which is stupid of us, because not only is it perfectly fair, it's exactly what we need everybody to do to support hand-drawn animation and get more movies out there. So yes! Go see it! Even first thing in the morning! ...but please if it's not too much to ask, please don't talk about it much? Until after we've seen it. Or at least use an LJ-cut, but you were going to do that anyway, I'm sure.

As for the not seeing it thing, this movie is getting rave reviews, and apparently is on or near the top of more than one must-see movie list, so why wouldn't you want to see it? Assuming you could. Sigh.

Today I'm thankful for "love happenings" in Happy Cafe, having more chocolate peanut butter Chex Mix (had to go to the 99 Cents Only Store, and we did have a few dollars to... matinee pricing! we might be able to see it early after all!), matinee pricing, being able to get some food for Oreo ('swhy we were at the 99 Cents Only Store), and it not being too freezing when we were out walking.

Stuff and things

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:21:16 GMT

We just found out the video of the webinar with the infamous statement by the founder of TokyoPop is up, but we don't have the patience to watch it right now. I feel like we should watch it, but... maybe later.

My fingers are so cold and stiff it's been really hard to type all day, which is a little sad, because I spent so much of today typing. But that's good because typing eventually leads to paychecks. And of course we love our job. But anyway, when we checked the weather this morning (by which I mean about nine-thirty, pretty late), it was actually below freezing! What!? That's crazy talk! And yet it's true. Our one consolation was that it "felt like" 39 degrees. Only the actual consolation is that we were inside with our heater and didn't have to deal with any of that nonsense anyway.

Speaking of being warm and inside, Oreo was snug under the blankets earlier until it was time for his dinner, at which point Athena video-recorded him emerging from under the blankets. The video is adorable, but you'll have to take our word for it, because I'm too cold to deal with figuring out how to get our computer to take videos from our camera.

Speaking of kitties, today, for lack of any other snacks, we finished off the ice cream we've had for months. (The expiration date is for this coming May, though, so I don't know if that's a cause for relief or concern.) It was really really hard, though, because we got that flavor of ice cream partly because the main ice cream is vanilla, and we wanted to have some ice cream to share it with Mimsy. But then we found out about her tongue, so we tried to save it until she got better. After we found out it was cancer, we made sure to offer her some, but she wasn't interested. Anyway, it was hard to consider eating it after that, but we figured it would be better to eat it than to throw it away. And we were desperately craving sweetness and that was all we had. Unless we wanted to eat pure sugar, which actually doesn't sound so bad.

Anyway. Last night we watched the new Disney Christmas Special, Prep & Landing. It was a really awesome concept, but we had a hard time with some important story elements. And I was thinking about going into it, but then I realized the biggest problem is also the biggest spoiler, so I guess I won't because I don't want to bother making an LJ cut.

Today I'm thankful for getting to finish off that ice cream, having an adorable video of Oreo coming out from under the blankets, being inside with a working heater in this unusually (for the area) cold weather, getting to work on Happy Cafe, and finally knowing what happened to our missing paycheck.

New forms of creativity

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:32:46 GMT

Oh my goodness, Walt Disney Animation Studios is following us on Twitter! It's probably not something to get too worked up about, but just the fact that they might actually read our tweets is very exciting. Definitely a step toward the door, if not a foot in it. And we're very glad we got up the courage to tweet at them about that special on Friday.

Anyway, yesterday we completely forgot to thank nezumiko for the snowflake cookie gift! Thanks! It's so pretty and yummy-looking!

Speaking of Christmas treats, we decided to try our hand at making Mom's classic hot chocolate recipe from right off the Hershey's cocoa box. Only we adjusted it in that we didn't care enough to add vanilla, and we figured less milk would only make it more chocolatey, so we didn't add as much. We also figured a little extra cocoa couldn't hurt. It's cooling now, because we can't actually drink hot drinks.

So last night we went to help buy gifts for some teenage boys in foster care. It was pretty nerve-wracking because we had all girls doing the shopping. We really should have thought to bring some boys along, I think, but hopefully it will all turn out fine. After shopping we went straight to our ward's Family Home Evening, where we had a lesson on developing our talents.

After the lesson, it was time for the activity, which was going to Christmas Tree Lane, a long line of houses that decorate all fancy for the holidays, and driving through it to see all the lights. It was then that I learned that there are more Christmas songs out there that I don't like than I thought there were. Oh well. It wouldn't have been an issue except that we were also reminded that sloooooooow driving with lots of starts and stops makes us really carsick.

As for the lights--some displays were really nice. But I think there's more to awesome Christmas decorating than just putting lights on everything in the vicinity. We've definitely been spoiled by Disneyland. There was one house that was like super whoa with the lights. Every surface was literally (and I do mean literally) covered in lights, and they had fireworks, and even one of those fancy billboard type things made of lights (like you find when driving the Las Vegas strip, only smaller) displaying a slide show of their family photos. I think it would be interesting if they kept it up all year, but anyway. It was fascinating to see, but definitely overkill with the lights. Also, there were a lot of the newer multicolored light strings with the deep blues and purples on them. They seem really popular, but they hurt our eyes. I was wondering if it's just us, or if anybody else has that problem.

When we finally got home, we turned on the TV while we ate some dinner, and Find My Family was on ABC. We figured why not watch it, and it was all like, "Awwwww!" And then there was a little pop-up on the screen informing us of an all new Castle! We thought they were done with new Castle for a while and weren't planning to watch tonight! So all the service and FHE stuff paid off, because if things hadn't worked out exactly the way they did, we would have totally missed it. But now we're wondering if we missed an episode... We'll have to check on that.

Anyway, back to the lesson we had on developing talents. It didn't really say anything new, just a reminder to, hey, develop your talents. And with that, and happening to read a couple of scriptures about using talents this morning, we decided to make today a "new forms of creativity" (meaning something other than our day job) day. And right after we made that decision, we checked our e-mail and had a new assignment from TokyoPop. But we had decided, and we followed through! (So far it's just been brainstorming for maybe writing a story or something, and learning Hyakunin Isshu poems, and a little bit of cooking. Later there may be piano, punch needle, and/or knitting.) It's just as well, too, because one, it's a good idea, and two, my headache from last night hasn't left, and for some reason every time we work on Happy Cafe I have some sort of unpleasant pressure in my head. So hopefully it will go away before tomorrow and we can work on Happy Cafe free of physical ailment.

Today I'm thankful for getting an assignment, getting WDAS's attention, experiments with hot chocolate, LJ gifts from friends, and catching that new episode of Castle.

Toys for Tots and up

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:30:03 GMT

We may or may not be leaving in half an hour to help some sisters from the Relief Society buy some gifts for Toys for Tots. Apparently the need is so great this year that they're not only accepting gifts for tots--they need gifts for teens, too. So our RS has a budget and we're off to get some gifts for kids in need! Or we are if we can get a ride. When we said we could go if we could get a ride, the presidency all said, "Sure!" and so we'll just see what happens. The only problem is we're getting presents for teenage boys, and as girls, it might be a little hard to figure out what they would like.

...And that was the RS president calling to let us know she's on her way! Awesome! But I'm still nervous about choosing good presents. Oh well, we won't be alone in the endeavor. So I guess I'm cutting this entry short.

Today I'm thankful for opportunities to help people, people who are willing to help us help people, confirmations that we will get paid for that last Negima! soon, lap-sitting kitties, and having our sink fixed and draining again.

Very quick post

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 04:52:36 GMT

We are back from spending a long time away from home. After church, we went straight to Mom's place and hung out playing Final Fantasy Tactics on our PSP until it was time for Sarah's birthday dinner Part the Second: Immediate Family (as opposed to in-laws). It was fun hanging out with family, but Oreo seems to have missed us very much, so I think it's time to go hang out with him.

Today I'm thankful for the wonderful brownies Mom made (we have been craving chocolate so badly the last few weeks), plans for Disneyland in two weeks coming together, getting to play FFT again, coming home to our kitty, and getting to watch Peter Pan last night.

Disney ramblings

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:25:20 GMT

Happy birthday, Walt Disney! I probably wouldn't have thought to mention it if we weren't following three official Disney Twitter feeds, but we are, so I did! I think we're going to celebrate by watching Peter Pan. It would be awesome if we could celebrate by watching our Snow White Blu-ray Disc, but we don't have it yet, because we haven't been paid. Come to think of it, our list of "things we're going to buy when we get paid" has gotten pretty long. So long, in fact, that I think some things might have to go. Sad. Snow White Blu-ray Disc, however, is not one of those things.

Anyway, we watched the Dreams Come True special about Disney animation last night, and it was pretty awesome. We're pretty sure the idea was to get people more interested in the Princess and the Frog (of course), but more importantly, hand-drawn animation. They had a ton of celebrities come on and talk about their memories of Disney movies and what they like about them and stuff. It looked like they were trying to appeal to all demographics, too, saying, "Look, all these people like it! You can like it, too!"

But what was really fascinating was when they talked to Dick Van Dyke. He talked about things like how he saw Steamboat Willie on its first run, and how one time (much more recently) he was out walking his dog and he sat down on a park bench to rest, and this little girl saw him and carefully sat next to him, then starting rocking from side to side as she sang "Let's Go Fly a Kite," and the two of them sang the whole song together! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!!!! Also, I'm super jealous of that little girl.

Whoopi Goldberg was fun to listen to, too. She told about when she took her granddaughter to see The Lion King when it first came out, and as she's watching the movie, the little girl turns to her and says, "You're not very nice in this movie, Granny!" While on the other hand, they were sitting next to James Earl Jones, with whom she really wanted to make friends. According to Ms. Goldberg, the little girl wouldn't say two words to Jeremy Irons♥ (I'm wondering if I should explain who all these actors played in The Lion King... Oh, just go watch the movie. You'll find out.)

Of course the special had a lot of information on The Princess and the Frog, so we're a little annoyed that we know so much of the story already, but we're sure it will be fantastic anyway.

The special revealed that Tiana isn't dreaming of being a princess (this doesn't make her unique as a Disney princess, incidentally--Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Pocahontas, Mulan and Cinderella didn't dream of being princesses either, but that's another rant), she's a hard worker who wants to open her own restaurant. Now, it may be a side effect of having recently finished the Fruits Basket fanbook, but a "princess" who everyone expects to want to just go find her prince but actually just wants to open someplace to sell food? Sounds a lot like Saki Hanajima's Cinderella to us. And here's the other thing--both of them (though in different aspects) are black. Coincidence?

And! the character they described as the "fairy godmother"... she looked nothing like Yuki, but! she's crazy, and has a seeing eye snake. And where did Saki's dress actually come from? Ayame. Verrrrrry interesting. We can't wait to see the movie and find out what other connections we can find! (But we don't want any spoilers! We're going to see the movie!)

There were actually a couple of downsides (other than the spoilers) to watching the special though, including missing the Muppet Christmas special on another channel (but Celeste DVRed it for us!). But most importantly, it drove us crazy. It also happened to describe our problem exactly when someone was talking about Aladdin. He wants to go to the castle and get a better life and just be awesome and stuff, but there's very little he can do about it, while meanwhile, the palace continues to stare him in the face, which is something that he can easily change but doesn't. It's all like us and Disney. We want to go to Disney and work there and be part of the magic and stuff, but we're not entirely sure how to do that (though we're not doing nothing!), and in the meantime, we keep staring at all these Disney movies that only make the longing worse. I wonder if Twitter will help anything...

Today I'm thankful for Mom and Steve loaning us rent money (still waiting on paychecks... sigh...), interesting parallels between The Princess and the Frog and Fruits Basket, Celeste recording that Muppet special for us (now hopefully she doesn't accidentally delete it before we get to her house to see it), getting to watch that Disney special, and Oreo being okay so far on just one dose of medicine a day.

And something we forgot

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:34:55 GMT

ABC's showing a special on Disney animation tonight! Watch it and see how amazing animation is!!

So about that fan translation idea.

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:30:18 GMT

I think we may finally be getting excited about cosplay again! Since we watched Shugo Chara Party and thought, "Hey, we could be Temari and Rhythm!" Or there's still the Beat Jumper and Yamato Maihime idea, plus the Lunatic Charm and Seraphic Charm idea. We'll see if we still care when we go to a fabric store and consider the work making costumes entails.

Anyway, I was going to talk more about the whole TokyoPop thing. We're still trying to get our thoughts together on this one, and it really doesn't help that we just watched a tiny marathon of Shugo Chara, after spending two hours indexing names (when we were only planning on one hour).

Let's see... First there's the question of quality. I think everyone who regularly reads our LJ has probably seen us complain about subtitles enough times that it won't come as a surprise that we don't think there's very much quality out there. To be fair, our experience with translated manga is very very limited--just a couple of volumes of Me & My Brothers and all of Negima! (already known for its not-so-great translations), and a few excerpts of whatever manga samplers we've gotten when we're bored at a convention. And Fruits Basket, since we did the fanbook.

Now as for subtitles, we've seen good ones and we've seen bad ones, and we've seen okay ones. This goes for all the anime we've watched subtitled in the last year or so, so actually fansubs aren't really included, because we didn't know enough Japanese to judge before we started watching them raw.

Based on the limited discussion we've seen on the topic, it seems like the fan opinions are varied on quality. When we first got into anime, we always assumed the fan translations were amateur at best (our friend had a fansub of the SailorMoon R movie that translated Jupiter's attack as "Sparkling Vital Pressure," and that's how we knew never to trust fansubs completely), and that the legitimate translations were best because they would make sure to hire people that are good at what they do. I think this is the ideal, and the way the world should be.

On the Honyaku Mailing List, a member actually said that the professional translators produce better quality, but the fan translators care more about the work and are more likely to do the research for obscure facts and things. That had us pretty appalled, after all the research we've been putting in to things like Hockey Club and Negima!. Some professionals care too, you know!!

Lately we've learned that some fans have a fear that the professionals will take liberties with the text, and they trust fans more because they're more likely to stay true to the original. After reading DN Angel volume one (oh yeah, we have that on our list of English manga we've read, too), we can't really blame them for that one, either. Of course, fans aren't exempt from this either. Some Flame of Recca fans may remember Recca calling one guy a Shishio wannabe? Yeah, that wasn't in the original.

The fact of the matter is, quality and liberties taken vary enough from professional to professional and from fan to fan that the variation from fan to professional thing isn't even really a factor. And the problem is, as far as we know, there's no way for fans, who know no Japanese, to tell if a translation is good or not. Okay, they can tell if it's legible or not, which is a start. But as far as accuracy and changing things, there's no way to know unless everyone learns Japanese. And then they might as well all buy their manga straight from Japan (even with shipping costs, it can be much cheaper), and then we'd have to find another job.

Speaking of finding another job, if manga companies start using fans and not paying them, and it actually works and the fans go for it, then those of us who make our living and pay our bills with translation work will be out of a job. Why pay someone for a service you can get free somewhere else? That's the biggest danger of this idea, and why we need to somehow prove that good translators should be rewarded.

So we've been thinking that we need to create a way to let fans know if a translation is accurate. It would be kind of like a review site or something, I think. We sometimes hesitate to call companies out on their translations, because for all we know, their translator worked really hard and did the best they could. Then I thought maybe we could make the review--or grading, I guess--on like a forum or something so the translators (or their supporters) could come on and defend themselves. Still... we're slow enough readers as it is, and having to read a manga twice (once for each language) would be enormously time consuming, so when I think of that, I'm like, "Ugh, never mind!"

But more and more we're thinking it's important to get people more aware of translation quality. The free market is supposed to work by rewarding those who work hard and do well, but since fans don't know who to trust and, let's face it, there are a lot of cheapskates (or poor college students) out there who mostly are just trying to get the most for their money (or no money, in some cases).

On the other hand, it's not like there will be a bunch of different translations of the same series for a fan to choose from. But if they demand quality, then the translators who do their job well will be rewarded with more work, while the ones who aren't so good will have incentive to get better. That's where our other idea comes in, the one and only way to make TokyoPop's use of fan translators not purely evil to those of us translating for a living. If the fan translators are only given really obscure titles, so as to increase interest in things that aren't already super popular like Naruto or Fruits Basket, they can use that opportunity to gain the experience needed to become really awesome translators. (We know from experience that you need experience!) Then when they get to be really good, they can be promoted to official translators and get higher profile work, that they get paid a decent amount for working on.

And that turned out to be kind of long. Hopefully it was at least coherent.

Oh right! One more thing. So we could get our opinions more in the faces of the people to whom it matters, we started a Twitter account. I can't remember why it was important to say that on LJ now, but now it's been said.

Today I'm thankful for Oreo using my wrist as a pillow (even though it does make it harder to type), being all caught up on Shugo Chara! (for about an hour and a half), finding that list of cities in Jalisco, finally finishing that batch of names (without marking all the birthplaces "Unreadable"), and that really funny Shugo Chara! Pucchi Puchi with Temari and Rhythm.

DDR night

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:34:31 GMT

We just heard last night that the CEO of TokyoPop is considering using fan translators on their previously hiatused titles, and that thought has been distracting us all day. Fortunately, Bancho-sama is strong against distractions. Anyway, it's looking like there's really not enough information to tell if this will be a good thing or a bad thing in the long run, and depending on how it's done, it could in fact be a very good thing all around, but since I have something else I want to talk about (which may be less interesting to most people, but oh well), for now I'm just going to say that we would be very very very sad if we didn't get to continue the work on Nosatsu Junkie or Elemental Gelade.

Now, as for that other thing I wanted to talk about. Last night, we had a DDR night at Mom's place! We came up with the idea a loooooong time ago, and we kept bringing it up and everyone else was like, "Oh, that's a good idea!" but it never actually happened until last night. It was kind of a shock, actually, like, "Whoa, really?"

The dangerous thing about it, though, is that, since the two of us and Celeste and her husband were all going to be at Mom's place around dinner time, they decided to get pizza. And since some of us can eat a lot of pizza, and Little Caesar's sells them for only $5, they decided to buy six of them. That's a lot of pizza. It didn't sound like that much, really, but it was. It probably didn't help that the little kids at Mom's place (she's been helping her neighbor across the street since his wife died and he works night shifts) weren't available to eat as much as we'd planned for them to eat. One of the little twins took a couple of bites of pizza and decided she was done. Mom ordered her to finish it, and she got this look on her face like, "She'll never catch me!" and went to throw the pizza away. Then she got a cinnamon roll. It's kind of amusing and exasperating at the same time.

And then there was leftover cake for dessert, and lots of water because pepperoni makes you thirsty, and so when it came time to actually play Dance Dance Revolution, I was stuffed. Being stuffed is kind of a rare occurrence for us, and having to move a lot afterwords is even rarer, so it was kind of an interesting experience.

The game was the same as always: awesome. But there was one time right before we selected a song when Mom's cat came along. She likes to rub up against people's legs, something that can be accomplished most easily if those people are standing, so the DDR players got the most attention. When she came up to me, she pushed a button on the dance pad that brought up a strange options screen, which we tried to get out of quickly, because the cat was still on the dance pads. We managed to get out with most of the options intact, but somehow the cat made it so that my arrows were going down instead of up. That was a pretty crazy experience. I still managed to do really well though, and I think on a couple of songs I actually did better than usual, so maybe I should play that way more often... Hmmm...

We let the little boy play a couple of rounds, and it was cute because he obviously hasn't learned that it's okay to wait sometimes. After his first song, he had gotten only about fifty-five points (average scores, if I remember correctly, are about in the hundreds of thousands), and he turned around and said, "I think I'm really good at this!" Oh, that brings back memories of playing video games as small children. When we first played Tetris, we'd get all the blocks to the top of the screen and the game would end, so we were like, "I don't know what that means. I guess it means I won!" Mom straightened us out when she got home from work that night.

Today I'm thankful for finishing our Bancho-sama translation, getting to have a DDR night, having leftover pizza to take home, having Chex Mix to eat tonight, and kitties "helping" with gameplay.

There's a snake in my boots!

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:10:08 GMT

I feel like I had something else to talk about involving Bancho-sama, but it's all been overshadowed by the fact that we spent a good twenty minutes or so skimming a list of cowboy slang to find out if the cowboys had a good equivalent of "dasai." It's really frustrating that we have such a hard time with cowboy speech, since I feel like cowboys show up in cartoons all the time, and we have watched a lot of cartoons in our time. It makes me wonder why we don't have a DVD or even a VHS with Disney's Pecos Bill on it. And I keep thinking there might be something we could use in one of the movies we have, but then I keep not wanting to sit down and review (in my head) what all DVDs we have. Of course, we could just say, "Hey, Home on the Range is kind of a Western type thing!" Maybe we should watch some of that. Hmm. (I did also think of Toy Story, but we're still a little mad at Pixar.)

So yes, there's a cowboy character in Bancho-sama. I hope that's not a spoiler. I think I might consider it to be a spoiler, depending on what it was a spoiler for. It would be one of the kinds of spoilers that if we found it out ahead of time, we'd just be like, "Aw, man! Ohhhh weeeelllll." We had to deal with a cowboy character when translating the Edgeworth Files, too, but he didn't talk too much. We actually used the exact same website we were looking through today, and it gave us the word "blusteration," which turned out to be very helpful. Come to think of it, we never got our comp copies of the Edgeworth Files. Boo. Oh well.

Anyway, my point is cowboy talk is unexpectedly difficult.

And then there was a ninja who was all archaicky, and we're like, "Ooh! We know archaic language!" But we actually don't. We know how to use "thee" and "thou," but those are informal (like the Spanish "tu" and "ti"), and there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity for them anyway. The one place where we could have used them (and it would have sounded awesome) wouldn't have worked, because he was being very formal, and thee and thou are actually the opposite of formal. I think we did a decent job anyway, but we haven't gotten to his part in our proofreading.

Then they had an intellectual type, and that was much more our speed.

Oh, and that reminds me what I wanted to talk about! We got to translate one of my favorite parts of the whole series today, only we were super distracted at the time because our SailorMoon Christmas songs CD was on "When The Saints Go Marching In," which is just so fun it's impossible not to sing along to, even when it's in Japanese and we don't really know the Japanese lyrics. ...Okay, we've actually listened to the CD enough times (it's one of two Christmas CDs we have, so it gets a lot of mileage in December) that we mostly do know the lyrics. Maybe even moreso in Japanese than in English, unless there really is only one verse in the English version, but that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, the SailorMoon version not only has a very fun chorus backup part, but when that's not going on, there's a kazoo, and that is like the epitome of fun to sing with. I don't know why, because buzzing doesn't use your voice like at all, so I end up kind of humming instead of making kazoo noises, but for some reason...

Anyway, that was fun rambling.

Today I'm thankful for fun rambling, kazoos, getting to have a DDR night at Mom's place tonight, Celeste being kind enough to drive us there, and the adorableness of Oreo hiding under the blankets but just barely sticking out his front paw so all you can see are his toes.

Attention artist type peoples!

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:39:04 GMT

Does anybody remember way back in our Comic Con report when I mentioned running into the guy from Golden Age Stories? Actually, we were supposed to mention something about some writing contest thingie they have... We should have remembered that. Anyway. He gave us a book under the condition we e-mail him to let us know what we thought of it, so I finally got around to e-mailing him back and now the Golden Age Stories people are looking into creating a graphic novel series, so he wants to know if we know anybody who'd be willing to submit an art portfolio. I figured we might as well ask, since we know some artist types.

I am looking for any ones who is extremely busy for a project of 92 comic books/10 graphic novels, about a 3 year pjct.

We are a publishing house with 26 staff trying to break into the graphic novels field.

What I am looking for is some portfolios so we could decide on style.

I do have good name writers lined up. I am just looking for a dozen or so illustrators

and while I realize that this is a long shot, we might just find the right "new talent".

Let us know if you're interested so we can work things out. For a few more details, here's their website.

In other news... there's not a whole lot of other news. Oreo seems to be doing fine. He's spending a lot of time in the linen closet, but I don't think it's any more time than usual. And then when we're done working, he'll come be excited about dinner time, and after Athena feeds him, he'll come hang out wherever we are.

This morning there was a knock on the door, and I was hoping it would be somebody with money for us (not entirely an unreasonable hope--we're expecting a few paychecks). Instead, it was somebody from PG&E, asking if we got the... I think it was "care"? discount on our bill. He said it in a way that sounded like we should be. We weren't, so now we're signed up for it, so in effect, he did give us money! Wow! Although we're not sure if we should be getting the discount, since, according to our tithing records, we might be just barely in the wrong tax bracket, but right now we kind of do need it. I think if we start making more money we'll call and cancel it early (it lasts for two years).

Later today, we went to the 7-11, but there were fire trucks and police cars outside! ...But nothing seemed to be going on at all. We think it was a car accident and people were assessing damage and getting information and all that stuff in the parking lot. But that's good, because it was kind of scary walking to the 7-11 and seeing the flashing lights and wondering what was going on.

Today I'm thankful for utilities discounts, getting exercise, king size Reesesticks, not finding ourselves in the middle of a stickup, and Oreo keeping his medicine down this morning.

Venting

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:18:56 GMT

Today has been kind of stressful, but fortunately the stress has been counteracted with the working on of My Darling! Miss Bancho. Yuuji makes everything better.

We've been having a bit of trouble with Oreo.

It all started... like on Thursday night or something, when Oreo decided he had had it with his medicine. We gave it to him, and he hacked it up. He was supposed to be on one dose a day, but we decided to only wait twelve hours, since he obviously didn't get any medicine this time. And when we tried again... he hacked it up again. So I called the doctor to see what to do. She lamented Oreo doing bad things to his health and reluctantly suggested lowering his dose to once every two days. I think I already mentioned this.

So we gave him more on Saturday morning and he was kind enough to keep it down this time, and then we weren't going to give him any more until Monday morning (today). But by then, it had actually been two and a half days since his last dose, so we weren't entirely surprised when he started vomiting on Saturday night. At first we thought, "Well, he got medicine this morning, and the weather's been acting up (something that seems to make him nauseous), so we'll just keep an eye on him." The second time he vomited, we decided not to wait until Monday, and give him some before church. By the third time, we figured it was time to give him some medicine NOW. So we gave him half a dose, then gave him a full dose Sunday morning, fully intending to give him another full dose this morning.

We did actually get him his medicine this morning, but a couple of hours early, because we woke up to more vomiting. Sigh. So we figured it was time to give him more than .9mls a day, but I thought it would be a good idea to check with the veterinarian to see if maybe we had caused some kind of disorder that needed more than a higher dose of the medicine he's already on.

I hate calling the vet, because I feel like the vets don't always listen.

So before I called I simplified my question to the best of my ability, but I don't think I succeeded because I have a strong need to Explain Things. All I wanted to know was "Oreo's vomiting. Should we just give him more medicine or is there something else we need to do?" The doctor asked for more details, and I explained everything to him, because the reason I've been switching gender pronouns for the vet is that there are actually two of them working at that location now, and the "she" is the one who has been working with Oreo most since he got back from the hospital.

He suggested raising the dosage to .9mls twice a day for three days, and if Oreo was still doing fine, drop it back to .9mls once a day. I tried to explain that we had already done that--we had him on .9 twice a day, then dropped it to once a day, and now we're having problems. I guess I wasn't clear enough that I thought his suggestion would just create a cycle of twice day to once a day to twice a day. But he made sure to remind me that, while having Oreo on this medicine for too long can do damage, Oreo might have cancer and we need to keep him comfortable. Not comforting. We do understand that he might have cancer, but we also understand that he might not have cancer, and if that's the case, we don't want to accidentally kill him.

So that had me really miffed all day, except when I was distracted by Bancho-sama. But now that we're thinking about it calmly, it's possible that he thought we just needed to give Oreo .9mls twice a day until he stabilized, and then drop it to once a day after he stops hacking up all the medicine. I still think we'll probably lower the dosage more gradually, though, unless some smart person who knows more about steroid medicine than we do comments and tells us, "NO DON'T DO IT!!"

So anyway, Oreo spent a good long while sleeping in the linen closet, and now he's here in the bedroom with us being all cute and stuff. Man I wish cats could talk sometimes.

Today I'm thankful for getting to work on Bancho-sama, the amazing Cinderella extras we got to watch last night, getting to eat chocolate peanut butter Chex Mix last night, Oreo looking very comfortable right now, and getting to borrow a book about temples from the bishop.