• Mood: amused

This and that

I suddenly have kind of a lot of things I want to talk about, but not necessarily a lot to say about any of them. First of all, sacrament meeting was really cool today, because we had a high councilman speak, only he's not really confident in his English, so he gave his talk in Spanish, while a member of the bishopric interpreted. It was on the blessings that come from obedience, but what I thought was really neat was that our high councilmen are not all required to speak the same language (although for communication purposes, I imagine it helps to have some people who can interpret as well). He was so cute, too, like all the Japanese guests at Anime Expo--when he heard the interpreter say a phrase he thought was particularly important, he'd repeat the English version. And he said there's one language we can all speak, and that is to smile, so he hoped we'd all smile. And he was so smiley! It was awesome.

The next thing is that this morning I got a bit of a scare, when a sister in the ward called before church and asked if I could substitute in the nursery (taking care of the 18-month to 3-year-olds). Either the information that we hate children hasn't reached her, the rumors that we're awesome with kids have, or both. All I could do was say yes, so for the second hour I was in the nursery. It turned out not to be so bad, though, because there were only two kids and they were both content to entertain themselves for the most part. Meanwhile, Athena was teaching her Primary class (8- and 9-year-olds) the story of David and Bathsheba. It turned out pretty well, I hear. (Amendment: It didn't go badly.) She also tells me one of the children has a plan to get DNA from all the animals, so he can transform himself into those animals and talk to them, then change back and tell everybody what the animals are saying. Obviously, that has nothing to do with the lesson.

Also, I remembered something from our trip to Fresno that I wanted to tell everybody about, which might get me in trouble with Sarah if she finds out about this, but it's like when Mom tells the story about Athena. And now to be fair and not confusing, I should probably tell that story, too. Celeste was a newborn and we were three years old. Celeste was crying, and Athena wanted to help, so when Dad told her it was because Celeste was hungry, she suggested that Dad feed her, and he said he couldn't because he didn't have milk, so she went to the fridge to get some milk. Tadah! You just think of it like a cute toddler story and don't make the association that it's about you.

So the story about Sarah is that she was very distraught one day (when she was very young) because she had had a nightmare. The nightmare was that Mom gave a cookie to a girl from Sarah's Primary class, but not to Sarah. Snotty big sisters that we were, we were highly amused that the dream was so traumatic, but thinking about it more sympathetically, I can see where it would cause so much distress for a little girl. Still, it's kind of heartwarming to think that when she was that age, that was her worst nightmare.

Flash forward to last week, and Logan was taking a nap. I didn't witness this, so I couldn't describe the details, but it was pretty obvious (from what I understand) that he was having a bad dream. In his anguish, he cries out, "Cookie!" Like mother, like son. XD

I also wanted to talk a little about the anime we watched yesterday. Over the last few days, we've been trying out a bunch of new anime, just to see what strikes our fancy. It's not like we really need to add things to our to-do list (or to-watch list, or any to-dosomethingthattakesuptime list), but we've been looking anyway. We tried several things...DRAMAtical Murder, Rail Wars (on our home teacher's suggestion), Magi Mogi Rurumo, Aldnoah Zero, The Irregular at Magic High School...and nothing really clicked. I wasn't sure if it was because the characters/story just didn't grab us, or if it was because none of our favoritest voice actors were in any of them. Yuichi Nakamura was in The Irregular at Magic High School, but he's just a favorite, not a favoritest, and that was the one we were most interested in watching more of. Did our anime search continue because it just wasn't quite intriguing enough, or because it was clear that the majority of the cast was going to be female (and therefore no favoritest voice actors, although Kana Hanazawa is high on the list because she's pretty awesome)? I couldn't say.

Finally, we noticed Blue Spring Ride, and remembered that badtzphoto and lyschan had had a conversation about it over at Badtz's journal. And we thought, well it's shoujo anime, so even if it does look like it's more girl characters than boy characters, at least it should have a story that interests us. Then there was a boy! And he made some kind of a sound like a gasp or a grunt, and we were like, "Wait a minute." And then we've been doubting our voice actor identification skills (that tends to happen when we watch a bunch of anime with voice actors we're unfamiliar with), so we weren't sure. Then finally it got to a point where the guy actually spoke in full sentences, and sure enough. It was our beloved Yuuki Kaji.

So now once again, we're left to wonder: do we like anime for the stories, or for the pretty voices? We're going to say probably the latter. But we obviously like manga for the stories, because it doesn't have voices. Unless it does, in the form of an anime or CD drama, and that just makes it better.

Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious, we decided to keep watching this anime.


Oh, and because Athena and I randomly started talking (like as I was typing this entry) about Skip Beat! and the Love Me jumpsuit, I remembered. It's extremely important that people know this. There is an episode of Murder, She Wrote (season 3, episode 6) where a character actually wears that exact jumpsuit (only without the Love Me Section logo, of course). We were blown away. It was bright pink and everything. Oh, 80's fashion...

Today I'm thankful for neat multi-lingual sacrament meetings, second hour of church going pretty well, fun similarities between our family members, having a new anime to watch, and the mention of 80's fashion reminding me that we have Troop Beverly Hills on DVD.