The other thing is that we found out approximately how much we're going to owe in taxes, and it's uglier than we expected. Fortunately, it's not uglier than we can afford, if all our clients pay us. It's only a minor annoyance, because we've been daydreaming big lately, and we were getting our hopes up about maybe making those daydreams a reality. I guess we'll just have to wait.
On the bright side, we did get about $36 back from CD Japan, so we decided to use that on a novel order. Only we didn't actually order anything. First we checked Kinokuniya's website to see what all they had of the recommendations we got, and they had everything! So we probably would have ordered the first volumes of Beast Player Erin and The Earl and the Fairy, but then we remembered that there were some novels based on some of our favorite anime/manga. And we discovered that some of them are available. And we also discovered that the website was being kind of sneaky and making us think that they didn't have the one novel when they really did. So we were thiiiiiis close to ordering it with a second one, but then!
I remembered that Yukiru Sugisaki said something about illustrating a super adorable novel for elementary school kids. So we spent some time searching her blog to see if we could find the title, and we did! And when we searched Kinokuniya to see if they had it, we got carried away to their "special order" form, and usually when we see it, we back away like a vampire from the sun! But not this time! This time, we were like, "Well, why not just fill it out?"
So we did! And then they said they'd get back to us to arrange for shipping and payment and cost and all that stuff. So we sort of ordered the super cute novel and its sequel, and we sort of didn't order it yet. We used to special order things from Kinokuniya all the time back when we lived near Los Angeles, but we've never done it via the internet before, so here's hoping it all works out. If it does, we'll be getting novels that were written for elementary school kids, which seems like a pretty good middle-ground for people who are good at translating manga but not so good with the prose.
We also watched the first episode of Beast Player Erin on Crunchyroll, and so far the jury's still out on it, but it does have Akira Ishida, so we're definitely interested. Also, the subtitles are driving us a little bit crazy.
Today I'm thankful for work going fast today, having the chance to try out Kinokuniya's special order webpage, being pretty sure we'll be able to pay our taxes, CD Japan finally putting our CD order "in shipping process," and getting most of the CDs we ordered.