Apparently summer makes me feel like translating. On Saturday I did two episodes of Moebius (thirty-three and thirty-six), another one yesterday (thirty-eight), and am at seventeen minutes out of twenty-four on episode thirty-nine now. I feel productive. It's positively unnatural. Time for bed.

"Stuffed to the gills" as in packed with things as wot need doin', not as in I've been overeating....

( Today's To Do List )

So yesterday while retreating from Ikea, having purchased the pepparkakkor (gingersnaps) that will form the base of the pumpkin cheesecake for Thursday (yes, we are going fancy this year; one pumpkin cheesecake and one pumpkin pie), the radio ad said the word "Reventon." My ears promptly pricked up and actually paid attention to the rest of the ad, which is from the Los Angeles Auto Show, going through next weekend. They have the Lamborghini Reventon there. It is, in fact, the $1.8 million car's North American debut, even if they don't have the Tesla (very nice, relatively expensive new electric car). I, of course, am planning to go. This is not at all helping my desire to write fic, which currently I am having to tamp down with lots of yelling of "Must cook dinner! Must sew baby quilt! Deadlines! Ask me next week!" ^^;; (Said baby quilt, before anyone starts fishing, is for a friend, not me.) I also have translating UM 20 on my plate for this week. Not helping is finding out one key detail which changes rather a lot of the emotional landscape in Twin Terrors, and having the characters in Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger actually talking to me again.

The heat turned down a little today... or maybe that's the fact that Wonderful Husband moved the fan into the workroom today, where we spent most of the day. But this meant I was able to write. Hallelujah! I'm one scene and possibly a transition scene from finishing this side story. Also finished up the edits for Moebius 10 and Wonderful Husband incorporated them. So we're set for Saturday's release bar any additional feedback.

Ended up going to Ikea today, in search of a new desk chair for Wonderful Husband and checking out their options on my quest for a spice rack. Alas, we found nothing in either of those areas that either of us wanted. We did, however, discover, that they have finally started manufacturing a CD/DVD storage unit in the style of their bookshelves (of which we have four). Unfortunately, it does not seem to be available in the same color as our bookcases. *rolls eyes* Guess we wait until it is?

Edits for UM6 finished far later than they should've been and sent off to timer/typesetter.

Skipped dance class tonight, but at least the headache has finally gone away.

hoshikage sent me more TFs G1 ficbit and it was wonderful! Even if ending in her trademark Very Evil Place. She is, after all, the Evil Fanfiction Writer.

Wonderful Husband has proposed going to see HP5 movie tomorrow evening after we go get wristbanded at the bookstore to purchase the HP7 book! For the record, I have no intention of staying up all night to read it. In fact, given that I have the wistful notion of maybe going to see Transformers (again) and/or Waitress this weekend, I may not read it for a while. I should probably read it before SDCC, though, I guess?

Have poked another PoV out in the TFs ('07) movie fic, and need to poke more at and get arranged the (long in progress) TFs G1 fic.... I suspect that seeing the movie again may well help with one or both of these. ^_^

Happy Freedom From Our Evil British Oppressors Day! Except for me, who is kind of married to one and actually likes being conjugally contractually bound to him. ^_^

So today, having gotten something like a blissful eight and a half hours of sleep, I woke up and translated HICBC's summaries for UM episodes 1-3, and then decided I should start doing what I actually needed to be doing today. Which was baking two berry pies, washing and putting away what seemed like a metric ton of dishes, making jello, making salsa, washing more dishes, and bleaching the kitchen sink. Then Wonderful Husband and I went over to my uncle's for a Fourth of July pool party (this being the destination of the aforementioned pies). Not having a swimsuit, I took along the Summoner dress and quite contentedly sat there in the shade, sewing the first fifteen lacing eyelets while everyone else splashed about. I also got an object lesson in why one does not mix inhaling marijuana with drinking vodka. I came home before the fireworks started, dropping my mother at home along the way (no, she was not the aforementioned object lesson, she was merely not feeling well), put away laundry, purchased a wedding present for Armida (yes I know I still need to post pix of the wedding dress... I'm kind of holding off to see what pictures I can take at the wedding Saturday since my construction shots are not so great) and cracked open the Special Edition disc of Kamen Rider Kuuga.

Episode 50 of Kuuga is a short (five minutes, maybe?) that basically opens with a disclaimer that this is a bonus/omake the cast and crew did just for the hell of it. It is... quite interesting, shall we say. Fortunately for the price I paid for it, the disc also has episodes 1-2 in movie format with the option of subtitling the Grongi speech into Japanese. Ahh, if only the TV episode discs had that option....

So, things I did not get to do today: (1) make pickles, (2) make zucchini bread, (3) garden work, (4) finish translating UM10, (5) iron work shirts, (6) sew other 14-15 eyelets, (7) see any of the current-release movies in my queue, especially Transformers. These all go on tomorrow's list along with "edit UM4." However, I have dance classes tomorrow evening, so at most I'll be able to complete one, maybe two. --#

Last night Wonderful Husband and I jaunted back to Long Beach and had dinner with people before they disappeared off to points distant. It was all rather cordial. There was sushi. Then we came home and I hammered the remaining edits into UM4 and went to bed. Wonderful Husband subsequently hammered the edited script into what he'd timed, sent that off to the rest of our merry little band, and came to bed himself. Unfortunately by that point it was 1am, and the cat has, in the last week, begun ignoring the "wakeup/breakfast time is 7am, no sooner" rule. Grr... stupid cat. I was groggy enough that tea did not get made this morning. However, cereal woke me up enough to do a bit more work, so I'm up to 10:22 now on UM9, and hoping to finish it tonight.

I find, oddly, that aside from the "goddammit what the frick are you saying speak clear Japanese please!" moments, translating is actually making me appreciate the individual episodes more. Even ones that initially seemed a bit silly start to gain depth, and some, of course, are made of pure undiluted awesomeness. Is this because putting the effort into understanding them and rendering them in English makes the works feel a little like they're "mine" too? Or is it because I'm more correctly understanding what the characters are saying and thus what's going on? Probably some combination of both, plus a feeling of satisfaction at having completed a task that I assigned to myself. I think actually releasing episodes increases my sense of satisfaction, too... I feel better about the two and a half episodes I've got translated early on in the series, the ones that are currently undergoing editing and slated to be released relatively soon, than I do about the four episodes I have translated later in the series. Since they're so far off, maybe releasing them doesn't seem "real" yet? We certainly didn't have the actual "project" in mind when I did those, and certainly no releasing mechanism set up yet.

Now I just need to figure out whether or not I want the "Green Goddess" dictionary for a birthday present, or an electronic version thereof, to attempt to save a bit of wear and tear on those who edit my scripts. And I need to set one of my kanji dictionaries, the superfluous one, on the Goodwill pile...

Did not get very much done last night... got Wonderful Husband and younger sister to give me votes on a couple of the fabrics for the Summoner, and made the sleeves work. For one of them this involved piecing the fabric as I was not going back to the store to get more. But they are cut out and sewn and I have the fabric for the red ironed and the pattern piece prepped and ready to cut out when I get home. So tonight I need to sew like mad!

What I did do was my feedback for UM3, which ate up lots of time, since I have to watch the editing version on Wonderful Husband's computer and I have a very hard time typing on his split/ergonomic keyboard, so I had to write everything down longhand and then type it in on my computer... this, combined with the loss of sewing time, made me cranky and nitpicky. ^^;;

Today is Wednesday. Tonight I am going to:
--(make dinner)
--cut out and apply the red to the sleeves
--cut out, sew, apply, and cord the gold trim
--sew in the sleeves and finish them
--sew in lacing holes
--cut out, sew, and sew in the placket
--get Wonderful Husband to pin up the dress's hem for me
--make red and gold piping for the dress front
--pin the finished hem, sew it.

With much help from sandpanther, I whacked the number of problem lines in UM 4 down from ten to two today. I also cleaned the kitchen (with help from Wonderful Husband), made sun tea, stripped and remade the bed, took care of most of the laundry, baked two pies for my father for Father's Day (baking note: even if it's White Whole Wheat flour, it's still whole wheat and needs some regular white flour to lighten up the crust; still, not bad results), and ran through UM 6. All the way through UM 6. There are currently ten problem lines including the next-episode preview and the MebiNavi. Go me. *thud*

Inspired by koshka_the_cat's always-amazing productivity, I spent this evening cutting out a chemise out of the cotton batiste I bought a while back. This involved locking the cat in the downstairs laundry/bathroom. Fortunately she didn't spend the entire time making a fuss about it. If I can pull this off, eventually I can use the undergarments both for historical costuming and for cosplay. I have Emma costumes in mind... (that is, the anime/manga of the name, not the Jane Austen novel or any adaptation of it).

I put on DVD episodes 29-30 of Ultraman Moebius to be soothing background noise while I worked. This didn't work quite as well as hoped, as I chanced to glance at the screen and was immediately captivated. I've never really appreciated the differences in video quality until you start getting down into nth-generation VHS copies (a sad thing for the daughter and granddaughter of television engineers to say), but all I could think was "My GOD, it's so clear!"

But it is well past my bedtime and Wonderful Husband is actually abed before me, so off I go. Tomorrow I shall recount to you all the tale of The Work Computer That Worked Fine When I Left Thursday Afternoon But Had Somehow Become A Paperweight Come Tuesday Morning. 'Night~~!