Wonderful Husband (who is distinctly not a morning person) has been getting up at 5am this week to go to the gym. This is on the theory that it'll be less crowded than in the evenings (patently untrue) and that since he feels more awake after exercising, it's better to put it at the beginning of the day instead of the end.

Monday and Tuesday I did not go with him. This did not work well because after waking up at five, I couldn't get back to sleep. Part of this was due to the cats thinking that if one person was up, obviously the other was as well, so why wasn't I feeding them already? And when I did get back to sleep, it was disturbed.

So this morning I went with him. We'll see how I feel later.

Last night, however, after dinner we went to the Kinokuniya in the same shopping center as WingNuts. They didn't have a couple of things I was looking for, but they did have all three volumes of Otoyomegatari, the newest manga by the author of Emma. So I grabbed them and was happily carrying them around looking for other things, when Wonderful Husband pointed out the first couple volumes translated. In nice hardback editions with dust covers.

And while he will read the occasional untranslated manga (namely, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, which has never been translated and has very little dialogue anyway), it's a rare thing.

So we left the store with the first translated volume of A Bride's Story, and it is exquisite. I don't count manga toward my annual reading total, but this very definitely gets a verdict of highly recommended.

In contrast to Saturday's doldrums, yesterday was indeed a Get Stuff Done day. The pancakes for breakfast revealed that there's either something wrong with the recipe or I need to pick up some new baking powder. Given that I've used the recipe before to no ill effect, I'm inclined to think it's the baking powder....

I cleaned out the kitty box, vacuumed, took the trash out, and pulled all my back issues of Gourmet and Bon Appetit off the china hutch and stacked them on the table. I'm going to go through them and cull any recipes I really want, then get rid of them. (The Fine Cooking and Cuisine at Home magazines I'm keeping, as they have a higher interesting recipe per volume ratio.) I also tidied the stack of printouts and small recipe books I had under the hutch, culling through them as well, hole-punching the keeper recipes and filing them in the ringed notebook. In keeping with the hidden messes theme, I also tackled the messes cabinets under the downstairs phone, and the upstairs bathroom cabinets. The trashcans feasted well yesterday, shall we say. ^_^ I also took the E6000 glue to the separated parts of my favorite pair of sandals... let's see if the repair will make them useable again. And in this way the downstairs remains tidy and the upstairs slowly becomes nudged toward achieving an equivalent state... especially after Wonderful Husband worked at filing lots of paperwork away.

As a reward, we went to the bookstore before heading over to my parents' for dinner, and I now have the newest Naomi Novik book, as well as the first volume of Kitchen Princess. Which, really, I should not have been surprised that I like as much as I do... it may be shoujo, but it's about cooking, after all.... And today after work, I have packages to mail, a pumpkin to buy, and dinner to make!

I like things that inspire me and make me feel happy and full of energy. Even if it's only a silly shoujo manga. ^_^

Saw PotC2 today. Thought it wasn't quite as good as the first one, but still liked it.

Also watched Ouran 15... I think I liked the manga version slightly better, but I'll hold off on full judgement until I see how well the anime pulls off 16. Also, purchased the rest of the Ouran manga. ^_^ As well as MegaTokyo 4 and the first Clamp Campus Paranormal Investigators novel. The CCPI book is amusing, and I'll probably buy others because I happen to know that my beloved trio show up in 'em. Highlights, though, were (1) an obscure mention of a certain onmyouji, (2) the fact that a minor character is apparently a dead ringer for Hokuto, given the illustration of her, and (3) what is it with the Takamura boys falling in love with kindergarteners whilst in elementary school? Is it like a genetic trait or something?

The weather here is hot, but Wonderful Husband and I are fortunate in living relatively near the sea (onshore breezes) and having the northmost residence in our block of four semi-detached houses (no southern wall or windows). Plus when the front door and patio door are both open we have a lovely cross-breeze. I think our cat (she who has a full coat of fur) appreciates this too. Watered the garden this morning and tidied it up this afternoon, tying up wandering tomato branches, dead-heading the hydrangeas, coiling up the hose and in general putting things away. It looks much better now. And now that the kitchen is under control too, I'll probably have another glass of sun tea and work on the dining room. Maybe sew a mock-up for Rhapsody in Gold this weekend, now that I've got my machine back....

Wonderful Husband is watching Office Space on his laptop. Fortunately for my writing, he's using headphones. And laughing like Muttley, which is amusing to listen to.

Went out and raided two bookstores tonight, one domestic, one Japanese. Purchased one of the embroidery books I've been coveting. Wonderful Husband got a couple manga (including newest Hana-Kimi, which I've already read through ^_^). Kinokuniya had not only Tsubasa 11 but 12 as well, and the newest volume of Death Note and the first volume of Emma, which I've been looking for for a while! And then we went to Baja Fresh for dinner, which was not bad and their salsa verde is actually quite tasty. Tastier than the same at Rubio's which, it being right across the street, is our usual Mexican-fast-food-of-choice.

Still stuck in the weird mountains in The Novel, and have just stolen a bit of inspiration from both LotR and more importantly Fantasia (the "Ave Maria" segment). The next section should introduce the first of the dragons, and at that point I should be able to (1) close the chapter, (2) finish my writing for the day, and (3) mourn yet again that I already wrote this scene, a year or two ago, and I still have it on paper somewhere but I don't know where. But I'm at 610 words for the day so far and just over 50K total now. And nowhere near the end. Maybe somewhere near halfway, I don't know. Probably not.

Okay. Book seven of Death Note? Was TOTALLY not expecting that to happen! Right out of left field. Makes me wonder what's going to happen from now on... and hope that the writer is able to carry the rest of the series. Still, interesting ramifications....