Whoops

Quite a heavy pushback in time for this post, since I completely forgot to write it at all. Oh well. I basically got up late, didn't do much, proceeded to watch some anime (detailed later) and then went to work. Work went surprisingly smoothly and quickly, considering it was a weekday. I just didn't look at the clock much, and also had a second break where I had to watch the Challenge 21 video about age restricted sales. Apparantly in another ASDA store some colleagues under 18 were selling alcohol without asking permission, so in my store they made sure everyone watched the video again to make sure it didn't happen there. Fair enough, and it got me off of the checkouts for a bit so I couldn't really complain. On the checkouts themselves nothing much happened really, apart from time passing, so I can't really chat about those. Sorry Michael (holy crap, I actually named someone!) you'll not get any exciting tales today either. I always find it odd when one of my friends tells me they've recently started to read my blog, since I don't believe I actually tell them where it is. Either they find it through random searching, or know of a place I go to frequently and find out through there. As such, it's almost eerie when they tell me. Anyway, to go back on track for this post, the anime I watched.

I finished Jigoku Shoujo as well as all the updates I mentioned on tuesday, though I haven't got Desert Punk or Speed Grapher yet. I watched them all mainly before going to work, so when I got back I only had the Zegapain, Soul Link and Aria the Natural updates to watch. Since there were only 3 I didn't quite feel like it, so left them be. As such I'll describe the updates I did watch to help one of my other friends from Games Workshop, who views these blog entries as 'free anime reviews'. Fair enough really. Jigoku Shoujo definitely became more unified towards the end, with a reporter actively tracking down those who accessed the Hell Correspondence web site and trying to convince them not to take revenge. The last few episodes were really good, and explained a hell of a lot (oh ho ho, I do make myself laugh with semantic wordplay) about Enma Ai. The Ah! My Goddess episode I already had. I should check more. Himawari was funny though as it was about Valentine's day, and I continue to like the series purely as it has endearing female ninjas. The melancholy of haruhi Suzumiya was an 'earlier' episode I think, since the series doesn't seem to be in order at all. Once it's completed I'll go back and watch every preview to number each episode with the number Haruhi says, which is probably the right order. That'll be interesting to rewatch then. As for Juuousei, it had disturbing revelation for Thor. Looks like his dreams are going a bit awry. Black Lagoon had more Nazi's dying, and Revi/Levi/(insert mistranslated name of female main character here) had another killing spree. Fun to watch.

Now I just have the Strawberry Panic, Zegapain, Aria the Natural, Soul Link, Ray the Animation and Naruto updates to watch then the rest are done. So then, till next time.

Lots of obliteration.

Today went exceedingly well. It all started with meeting my girlfriend at midday and going to Brighton, where we watched X-Men 3. To avoid further spoilers (in reference to the title of this post) I can only say - 'Hot Damn'. It is a fantastic movie, which actually shocked me in places. Some things I just did not expect at all. It was a great experience. After that we got snacks to eat, one of which was Pocky. Gotta love the chocolate covered mini breadsticks from Asia. After that it was back to Eastbourne and to games Workshop, whereupon I started playing Necromunda. After a short while my girlfriend decided to go home as she still felt a bit ill due to her cough, so after saying goodbye I proceeded to completely lose the first game for my Spyrer gang. Ye gods, 2 got taken out and I did no damage. One of those got -1 toughness, and the other just died permanently. Christ. I disbanded them and started again with a similar lineup. Spyrers start with around 5 men, compared to the usual 12 or so, can't buy more men once they start, and can't buy more equipent either. They do however get harsh, quickly if they survive. I lost the first game with the second band yet improved immensely, and due to that in the second game kicked my friend's arse all over the place. One model, a single Malcadon, took out 5 people alone through insane shooting. That rocked.

When I got back home I decided to watch anime, yet had to update the Soul Society forum first. In the end it took so long I didn't have much time at all, so decided to quickly write this. I still have the 22 episodes of Jigoku Shoujo and the Himawari update to watch, but now I also have the Ah! My Goddess, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Juuousei and Black Lagoon updates to watch, as well as the rest of Desert Punk to get. Speed grapher rests on the sidelines, waiting for a change to actually be set running in utorrent. I've definitely not finished getting all of Angel either, as that's currently paused for anime updates. Quite a filled download schedule then. le sigh. If only I had more time. Luckily tomorrow I'm not doing anything till I need to go to work at 2.35pm, so in the morning I should burn my way through a fair amount and hopefully be up to date-ish. So then, till next time.

Narrow victory.

An interesting morning to be sure. I worked from 9am till 1pm, and for the first 3 hours there weren't many customers at all, so it passed quite pleasantly with a moderate amount of relaxation. There were a few entertaining customers, but the most intriguing part of the morning was the sudden onrush of noise as a torrential hailstorm hit. It came out of the blue as it'd been pretty sunny, and afterwards it returned to a sullen overcast look. By the time I finished however it was sunny again, and continued to switch between bright sunshine and rain all through the afternoon. Ah, British weather. Classicly messed up. After work I met up with my girlfriend at Games Workshop and proceeded to help her learn how to play a game of Warhammer. It was a reasonably slow process as she spent a long time thinking about tactics, and I did my best to point out what she could and couldn't do, and the reasons why. My army was much smaller than hers as Tzeentch Chaos is hideously expensive, but with one unit and 2 characters I hate 3 quarters of her army, breaking it apart slowly piece by piece. However she managed to eventually crush that unit and the whole game swung. In two turns she decimated me as a small army can't lose much before it's in trouble. In the end it was a really close game, and I managed to get a 'Minor Victory' which wasn't too bad.

Afterwards she came back to mine and I introduced her to the world of Super Smash Bros. Melee. She chose Mewtwo, as she loves Pokemon, and proceeded to kick me around. It was... surprising as she'd never played before. Then she noticed I had Pokemon Colusseum and begged to play it. I simply couldn't say no, and after several hours I made the sacrifice of overwriting my previous saved game, completed with each critter nabbed, with hers. From the pure look on her face I think she was quite touched. In the end though our time together ran out, and after taking her home I decided to watch some of the huge backlog of anime I've accumulated over the past 2 days, as I didn't manage to watch anything yesterday. In the end I've so far managed to watch the latest 4 episodes of Yakitate Japan, the Full Metal Panic and Nekojiru-so (Cat Soup) OVA's, and the updates for xxxHOLiC, Kamisama Kazoku, Tsubasa Chronicle, Utawarerumono and Kiba. 11, that's not too bad considering I didn't have much time at all.

Onto description! I'll be vaguely brief since I want to go to sleep now. Yakitate had yet more amusing phoetic and semantic reactions, with several heavy puns. Without the notes I'd be completely lost. In the Full Metal Panic OVA Tessa had a 'bad day' which was pure entertainment to watch. The Cat Soup OVA made me wonder what the hell it was about. There was barely any speech in it at all (maybe 6 2 word lines?) and it was entirely abstract. Very, very strange. With xxxHOLiC it demonstrated the sheer bad karma that arises from the use of a monkey's paw, the item that's said to grant wishes. I felt quite sorry for the stupid lady who tried to use it, as she didn't word her wishes that well at all. The interference of the divine family in Kamisama Kazoku is, I believe, a strong indicator of just how much they're going to mess it up for him. I'm looking forward to it already, plus the animation style reminds me a fair bit of Eureka Seven, which can only be a good thing. Tsubasa Chronicle had yet more world hopping, this time showing that the people they know in alternate realities can be different ages too. Bit odd for Sayoran then, as family is quite important to him. The winged people in Utawarerumono demonstrated that they were the peace keepers and were very polite and kind indeed. Good allies there then. As for Kiba, he got his shard back. It rocks. Enough said really.

Now I just have 22 episodes of Jigoku Shoujo and the Himawari update to watch. Not too much then. However in 4 to 5 days I'll also have 110 episodes of Angel, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin off TV series, to rewatch. That could take some time indeed, as together they'd last 82 and a half hours if run consecutively. Well... dang. That should keep me busy. At any rate tomorrow I need to be up early to meet up with my girlfriend as we'll be going to see X-Men 3. As such I'm off to (finally) sleep, so till next time.

Happy days here again.

Today went a lot better than I assumed it would. My break at work was at midday exactly, so when I went back to work at 12.30pm I had the full 4 hour shift till I finished, which is the longest you can legally go without a break in this country. Well, damn. At least that's what I thought. For the next 3 hours I didn't have many customers at all, and spent roughly a third of my time on an empty till. That was pretty freaking nice really. The last hour was quite hectic as people seemed to remember the store was actually going to close, but at that point there was only an hour to go so the thought of my girlfriend easily got me through. After work I got to spend time with her and it was incredibly soothing. We ended up watching half of an old chinese kung fu movie, and I marvelled at the lack of motion sickness the characters had even with all the endless spinning. Then it was some crime mystery TV which wasn't too bad, even though it's not really my thing. I also helped with some conversion work. My girlfriend wanted to make a standard bearer for her demonette unit in the Cult of Slaanesh army, so I sculpted the tentacled arm and also designed the banner. Even though it's late I still need to pack my case for the game tomorrow, and with luck I'll be able to paint most of the banner for tomorrow. I certainly hope so at any rate.

When I did get back home it was quite late, so I had no time to watch any anime at all. I basically updated the forum and then came here to post. I have to watch - the remaining 22 episodes of Jigoku Shoujo and the updates for Yakitate Japan, Kamisama Kasoku, xxxHOLiC and the Full metal Panic OVA, whilst I still have to get the Himawari and latest Yakitate Japan updates, plus another OVA called Cat Soup which is apparantly Alice in Wonderland on LSD. Sounds interesting then. Since I've not watched anything I'll have to leave it here, and I'll be off to ready my army case and get a banner made. Till next time.

Screen time.

It wasn't a pleasant working day. Not pleasant at all. Since I didn't have company with my girlfriend after work to look forward to my morale was vaguely low. Not only that but I started off doing other people's tea breaks. Not too bad I guess. However after that I was put on the express tills for an hour or so. It was constant hell. Complete and utter customer hell. There was nothing wrong with the actual people apart from the fact that there were far, far too many. Oh ye gods. Far too many. After that I was thankfully placed on a normal till as they listened to my request. Even then it was hellishly busy and so I didn't enjoy the day at all. Not only that but my afternoon break was over an hour late. It started at 4.18pm instead of 3pm. The cafeteria had therefore closed before my break, and didn't reopen will 4.30pm. However as my afternoon break is 20 minutes by the time it opened I didn't have enough time to actually buy anything worthwhile to eat. That vexed me mightily. After work as my dad and step mum had gone out for the evening I caught a taxi home. That wasn't too bad, as the driver had a sense of humour, so that broke away some of the general stress of the day. I also got to warm up leftover chinese food and burn more DVD's for my friends. Gotta love a varied and exciting life eh?

As for anime, I actually had some to watch today, which certainly helped to cheer me up. I got through the first 4 episodes of Jigoku Shoujo, the next 5 episodes of Burst Angel (which means I need to wait for more to be ripped), the latest 2 episodes of Blood+ and finally the updates for Fate Stay Night, Witchblade, Strawberry Panic and Ouran High School Host Club. 15 episodes, a happy improvement from yesterday's bleak supplies. Jigoku Shoujo is certainly interesting with the whole prospect of Hell and contracts. It may not be a new concept, but it's done well. The only complaint I have is that some part are incredibly repetetive. The same animation is used in the first 4 episodes where she sets out into the human world in her coach, and of course the lines she says to the client and victim are always the same. As such I feel I'll watch it to see what specifically happens to the people involved instead of whatever she does. Burst Angel had more mutating monsters, which was certainly slightly odd. Fun to watch, but odd. (Spoilers ahead...) In Blood+ Riku snuffed it. Diva got to him and introduced her blood. That's not good for a Saya-based constitution. The emotional blow this'll give Kai is probably one that'll affect him for a good long time, like the death of the genetically created female vamp who became friends with him.

Another name was revealed in Fate Stay Night - Gilgamesh the Archer class. No wonder he had so many noble phantasms, which almost seems like cheating. Still, it was a very cool episode. Though Shirou can only 'image' items and therefore only make copies of stuff he's seen or knows about, he can make copies of some pretty powerful items. Witchblade had more busty and scantily armoured fighting, which was entertaining to say the least. It explained a bit more as to why Witchblade has to always fight. The killing lust is incited by the suit and upon the act of killing the bearer feels pleasure. It's practically operant conditioning then. Insanity inducing? Perhaps. Strawberry Panic was a strangely purposeless episode about a lent, misplaced and borrowed umbrella. Odd, but there you go. The last episode I watched, Ouran High School Host Club, developed really well and showed the King of the club and 'poor' girl get on well, eventually, only to have it ruined by a very easily misinterpreted set of actions. Poor guy, he rarely has any luck. Now I just have more Jigoku Shoujo to watch when it downloads. It'll probably be done by tomorrow, which means when I get back from my girlfriend's place I'll be watching a fair amount. Guess that's it for now, so till next time.

Quick day.

Not much happened today, as college was quite short. I went in for psychology first thing and had half an hour of psychologically termed hangman, then we were let out. The next lesson was english and we had half an hour of general pictionary and then were let out. So I got out of college at 11am. It was indeed a very short day. As such I went to Brighton again pretty early, as I'd seen Gravitation volume 3 there yesterday. Since my girlfriend had been looking for it I asked for it to be put aside to check with her if it was the right volume. Since it was I bought it today, then came home. For the next couple of hours I wasted time alternating between listening to music, reading various magazines and typing up more narrative for my character Latenter on the Soul Society forum. In the end I wrote 5 pages out of 15 for him in order to gain 1 of the 3 skills I'm aiming for. It certainly helped to pass the time. I also popped onto MSN and to my surprise my girlfriend signed on not long after I did. As such we talked for several hours before she had to part, and I went back to music. I listened to a fair amount of music, in that I managed to listen to all 3 Lord of the Rings soundtracks in a row, as well as a Lordi album and 3 Bloodhound Gang albums. Quite varied then. As you can guess it was a largely productive day.

My anime fix barely got sated at all today. I managed to watch the update for Air Gear. That was it. Seriously. A single measly episode. It basically followed the main guy around for a bit and focused briefly on the supporting characters. There wasn't any matches or fights, but there were a few funny bits so it wasn't bad really. Currently I'm getting the next 2 episodes of Blood+ and the Full Metal Panic OVA. I also intend to get the Speed Grapher and Jigoku Shoujo series soon, since the animes have been coming a little bit too slow for my liking. Not only that but as I'm on study leave I'll no doubt have more free time, as I won't spend every waking moment studying. I'll not even start for another week as I intend to appreciate 'half term'. As such with the time I usually spend watching anime I went through my Warhammer chaos army and selected set elements to make into a 2,000 point army to face my girlfriend on monday after I work a few hours to keep ASDA happy. In the end I managed 1,999 points as I had nothing to get which was only a single point. I wasn';t able to include a few things but it was still nice getting some of the better elements in. However as I'll be teaching her how to play, as she has a 2,000 point army of her own, I need to be careful. fter all, I'd rather her have a fun game than have one of us utterly get crushed. I'm already looking forward to sunday when I can see her again. Till next time.

The animag fix.

Today was certainly short. I was up as usual for a college start of 8.50am. It was supposed to be lesson, 2 hour gap, lesson, home at 1.05pm. English language was basically a few tips for the exams and a long debate about what to do tomorrow for the last ever lesson. It was settled on a game of extended pictionary I believe. During the big gap I had in the middle of the day I played Magic the Gathering. I had my life-draining Orzhov deck against my mate's card-discarding Dimir deck. I completely floored him, ending the game on 24 life whilst he had none. He did manage to get rid of a fair few of my cards, but I still had 27 or so left in my deck at the end. All in all quite a solid victory then. It was quite interesting seeing almost parallel effects of my deck with to do with discarding cards. Had he got a better hand the game could easily have gone the other way, and as it was he still managed to make me discard some of my best cards. After that it was psychology, which started at midday. I arrived late at 12.05pm. The class was let out at 12.08pm. Quick class really. The teacher said there was no point in us staying if it was our last lesson as we could do the simple question sheet at home. That quite helped really. I could have gone home a couple of hours earlier had I known, but oh well.

Since I had enough spare time I decided to go to Brighton to check on dave's Comics. They did indeed have the newest issue of NewType USA reserved for me, so I duly bought it. Though they still didn't have the 10th volume of Bleach in which I'd ordered almost 2 months ago they did have volume 7 of Hellsing on the shelf. As I'd nabbed the first 6 rather cheap I figured buying one at normal price wouldn't hurt, so I bought that too. Other than that I didn't really do any other shopping. I went into david's Books and glanced at the Magic the Gathering cards but it wasn't really anything more than cursory. I ended up going home pretty soon after that, and managed to get home at 2.10pm. Had I finished college at 1.05pm as I expected, I would've got the 1.35pm train, got to Polegate at 2.10pm, and arrived home by 2.24pm. That's how fast I was in Brighton, I was still home earlier than I normally would have been. Naturally the moment I got in I read Hellsing. Jeebus, it's damn cool. I ended up reading it twice, as the Mercenaries are rather unfortunate which leads to Seras going true Vampire and inflicting a royal beatdown on the Nazis she encounters. Very cool indeed, even though she sustained horrendous injuries. As the manga got me in an anime mood (as always) I ended up reading NewType USA and discovering I was already following most of the showcased 'currently airing in Japan' anime. As such I updated the Soul Sociery forums then went to watch more anime.

It was a bit of a shame but I didn't have much to watch at all. 2 episodes of Yume Tsukai and the updates for Bleach, Naruto, Himawari and Witchblade. Yet again only 6 episodes which is a shame. I'm sorely tempted to download Jigoku Shoujo now in order to have a full series to watch. Admittedly I still have 5 episodes of Burst Angel to watch but as they're soft subbed they take longer and I'll want to watch them all in a row. Yume Tsukai was as quirky as ever with the dreams, and a recurrent theme of love is emerging, as all the dreams are focused on that in some way or another. The Bleach filler wasn't too bad as it wasn't painful to watch, just not as good as the manga. naruto however was painful. They had Shino laugh due to a weird poison, and it completely obliterated much of his character. It's almost enough to warrant mourning. Himawari had more ninja escapades, this time with the ditzy ninja girl doing her best to infiltrate a mansion. Good thing those traps weren't overly lethal... Witchblade seemed to be more of a development episode as it lacked any fighting. A bit odd as the second episode contrasts with the first a fair bit, but it was still interesting to watch.

My plans for the next half week are going well. Though I won't see my girlfriend on saturday I'll still see her on sunday, as well as monday and tuesday. That rocks quite a bit, so I'm looking forward to the incredibly extended weekend, due to study leave. That wraps up everything pretty much, so till next time.

More exams.

Sigh. I had no lessons at all today, and could have got the morning off. However, I had 2 sociology exams. Therefore, no morning off. Well damn it then. That annoyed me slightly, but in the end I did some revision before the exams anyway. It actually came in useful, s 4 of the names I revised I was able to put in the various essays. The exams themselves were as boring as hell, and worse than the actual sociology methods exam. I didn't think that was possible. Both exams were an hour and 15 minutes, and had 6 questions in, marked at 2, 4, 6, 8, 20 and 20 respectively. I had almost a 5 minute gap between each question and still had 15 minutes at the end through which I slept. Ye gods. To me the questions weren't challenging at all. This is probably was because they were AS questions, and most of my studies are focused on A2, the next year up which is naturally harder. A2, now those I can find vexing, heh. After the exams I just went home after chatting to a few people, and chilled out for 2 hours before work. I actually enjoyed work today, as for the first 3 hours I just stood around and repositioned items on the shelves to make them look tidier. Seriously. When I did manage to get home I was thankful for yet more rest, then duly started to watch the customary anime.

I didn't manage much however as I still felt slightly tired. I watched the update for School Rumble 2nd Term today as I didn't get time yesterday after the post. There was also the first episode of the series Yume Tsukai, which is about a family who are termed Yume Tsukai (shock, horror, surprise) that effectively exorcise dreams that manifest in the real world. The first dream in the starting episode was created by a lesbian's unrequieted love. Some strange stuff. However it wasn't too bad, so it looks like I'm following yet another series. That makes 'quite a few' now. The Kamisama Kazoku episode I saw yesterday wasn't too bad. As my mate said the animation wasn't exactly amazing, but it was passable. The whole family structure was pretty funny for me, and since I tend to finish series I start I figured I may as well keep watching it. Even if it gets worse it'll still kill time. Hell, I still watch the Naruto fillers, and they've inlicted more damage to my inner child than any form of atomic-based weapon could. Other than that I've not really watch any anime at all. I did read the Gantz and Mahou Sensei Negima manga updates, and I have to admit Gantz was a lot cooler when Kei knew what was going on. After the forced memory loss of everything to do with Gantz when he chose to be let free from the game, which includes a lack of knowledge about his long term girlfriend who happened to die and was brought back (also with the associated memory loss), he's a bit of a wuss. Exactly like at the start of the manga then. Hmm. Oh well, he's the next target for a group of vampire killers, so that's gotta be interesting. As for anime I have to watch, I should be able to see the second episode of Yume Tsukai as well as the Himawari update, finally. Excellent stuff then. Till next time.

Revision, kinda.

It was a vert short day at college today, as my first lesson was at 1.50pm. I went in for english language, then immediately after had psychology and went home. The lessons themselves weren't too bad, but again not much work was done. It was mostly note taking and similar small tasks. It seems like the teachers have caught on to the universal lack of motivation that each student has, and has cut down on the work accordingly. After I got home it was practically straight to Games Workshop after setting up a few torrents. When I got there I actually used the House Rules I'd gained to make my own Necromunda House, which I still have to type up the background for. The gang uses the superbly cool new Vostroyan models. Anything that looks like a cross between a Russian and a Nazi simply looks cool regardless. The gas masks and rebreathers look especially nice. I selected which weapons were available, which skills were the base skills and so forth, then played against one of my mates who was using custom Shaman rules with his band of Ratskins. In the end we decided to make it a form of campaign with us two and another mate who's tempted to collect the Van Saar House. At any rate the game was incredibly bad for both of us, as my leader managed to take one of my own juves out of action, crappy shot that he is. In the end my mate's team routed as a fair few had been laid low by wildly inaccurate shots from my forces. Quite fun to play, and we both did reasonably well in the after game sequence. I also got to see more of my girlfriend, so that brightned my day considerably.

Once I got home I spent several hours chatting with my dad and step mum, effectively procrastinating. I really didn't feel like doing sociology revision for the two exams I have tomorrow. In the end I finally got some done, where I read roughly 10 sides of paper containing various sociologist names, such as Bowles and Gintis, Keddie, Goode, Chester and others such as Bordieu and Parsons which I already knew. In short therefore, boring stuff. Since it took up some time this post has had to be rolled back on the Blogger clock in order to fit it to the right day, and I've not watched any anime yet. I plan to watch the 2 updates for Tsubasa Chronicle and the updates for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Disgaea, School Rumble 2nd Term and the first episode for the new series Kamisama Kazoku which is about a family of gods and the son who vows to make a girl he loves fall for him without using his powers. Though my mate with the Ratskins (a fellow Otaku) said it wasn't overly good I'll watch it anyway just in case I like it. Plus it's more anime to watch, which is a good thing. As my dinner is now ready and anime beckons I shall be off. Till next time.

Just in time.

Not too shabby, I noticed the clock before it hit midnight. Quite convenient indeed. I almost too lost in anime and music to notice the time. Anyway, on with the post. College today started at 11.25am, and only as I had tutor otherwise it would have been midday. I only had the two lessons english language and psychology, and work only really went on in english. Psychology had no motivation in the class whatsoever, and only two of us, meincluded, asked a question about the task. As no one else bothered the morale almost visibly dropped, and we were dismissed early. Unfortunately it was 10 minutes too late for me to catch the earlier train, as there's only 2 an hour, but I did spend some free time playing Magic the Gathering. One of my friends, who got constantly kicked around by the Orzhov deck, got a Dimir guild deck. It works almost exactly like the Orzhov, but through discarding the opponent's cards rather than stealing life. The creatures and enchantments are incredibly similar, and beating him is now down to who's fastest - my life leeching or his forced discarding. Quite a harsh set of matches. The games had 4 people, and I managed to win one and 'lose' the other as time ran out and I had the second highest life total, not the highest. All in all it was an enjoyable set of games.

I did indeed manage to watch anime today, but not much comparatively yet again. It was basically another episode of Burst Angel (I'm savouring them as they're soft-subbed...) as well as the updates for Juuousei, Aria the Natural, Kiba, Soul Link, and Inukami. That was followed by the Demonbane OVA and first episode of the new series. 8 episodes in total then. Burst Angel had more mecha goodness, not to mention the femme fatales involved. In Juuousei they skipped ahead just under 4 years which aged the main character substantially. He looks more like a young adult rather than a 15 year old, but on the plus side he looks a good deal more like a leader. Aria continued to be quite airy, which is probably the best way to describe it. Kiba had a bit of an unfortunate development where Zed got his shard, the ultimate wind being which he has yet to work out, stolen. Well, damn. The spaceship of Soul Link gained another ally from the previous attackers as mainly a cause for survival. In times of necessity quite a few alliances are forged. As for Inukami, well, it was just as silly as the first episode. If not more even. The last things I watched, Demonbane, seemed to be another overly generic mecha-and-magic series, though the ideas of living Grimoires isn't too bad. That they fuse their power with a person to create an untimate mage does however fit in the 'seen before' category quite obviously though. Oh well, it's yet another new series to watch. As that rounds everything up, till next time.

Another happy day.

Yet another day of work, so theoretically bad. However the first 3 hours of the 6 were remarkably empty. Though I was serving customers all throughout, there were reasonably large gaps inbetween them. Though quiet, the frequency picked up as it went into the afternoon. Even so, the morning was therefore adequately relaxing. Ther afternoon was slightly more hectic, but nowhere near as bad as it's been before, so my back pain was merely 'moderate' rather than 'oh dear schweet Jeebus...'. After work though was another blissful evening with my girlfriend. Seriously, she's incredibly nice to be with, and it's really comforting to be around her. We watched another film, Flight of the Poenix if I remember the title correctly. Basically a plain full of oil workers crashes in the desert and nasty desert-things happen, through which they try to survive. It was a good film, with a few funny twists about one of the people. From no trust to grudging trust, then complete trust, back to no trust again before a slight faith. Quite entertaining, plus I got to watch it hugging a beautiful girl, so that obviously improves it no end. If I used emoticons in blog posts I'd have a large smile here right about now. After that we watched some early episodes of Naruto as she's working her way through them. I'd almost forgotten how cool Zabuza could be, heh.

After I arrived back at home it was a querstion of updating the Soul Society forums once more, before moving on to a small amount of anime. I watched the updates for Good Witch of the West, xxxHOLiC, Fate Stay Night, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Ouran High School Host Club and another episode of Burst Angel, which leaves me 6 more. Though 6 episodes isn't much compared to what I usually watch, it's not bad considering I got back kinda late. Good Witch was certainly interesting as it showed Roux infiltrating the academy by essentially being a cross-dresser. Odd, but there you go. xxxHOLiC continued to be intriguingly cool. This time it onvolved a plant and something buried underneath it. Watanuki completely demonstrated his inability to regard Doumeki as an equal, even though he got saved by him. Quite a stubborn, if well rounded, guy then. Fate Stay Night showed just how much Shirou cared for Arturis, also known as Saber. It's a bit of a pity that saber, as a Servant, feels that she must fight and preveil and ignored nearly all other aspects of life in doing so. Hopefully she'll come round. it's probably obvious that she will, as I've gone through the game endings. Higurashi continued to be freaky, which was a good thing. Anime horror is better than real horror for me. The Host Club continued to be eccentric, showing how the characters have bonds with each other. Lastly, Burst Angel had more of the damn cool mecha, and a hell of a lot of death threats for the new cook guy. Seriously, that has to count as bad luck. At any rate I'll be off to sleep. Till next time.

Vaguely overdue.

Whoops, guess I have to roll back the clock an hour to be 'on time' for the post. Pity, since I've been on time the past couple of days... At any rate work today was tolerable. Since I have 2 breaks on saturday I can break the day down into 5 and 10 minute segments, and work my way through them to the next break. Therefore the longet I could go without a break in 3 and a half hours, the main part of the day. That's not too bad really. After work things improved as I got to see my girlfriend agaion. Though she has a cold, I ignored that and cuddled her anyway. As I'm quite resilient to illness I figure there's no problem. Mopst of the evening was spenmt watching the Eurovision Song Contest, and some of the entries were very funny indeed, in terms of how bad they were. There was however one group that was incredible - Finland's entry called Lordi. A heavy metal band, so basically unprecedented in Eurovision, they got high marks from nearly every country due to the effort they put in and sheer originality. The moment I saw them I wanted them to win, and indeed they did. They'd actually all donned daemonic outfits, bedecked in armur and such, and they basicallu looked god damn cool. I searched on torrentspy.com and there's quite a bit of Lordi's stuff on there, including their Eurovision entry recorded from the semi-finals. Rock on!

After getting home I didn't watch any anime at all, as it was already past midnight. Instead I went to the Soul Society forums and updated all the threads that required it, and went to tokyotosho.com and noticed that there were quite a few updates that had been released. Since I still have 7 episodes of Burst Angel to watch it means that on monday my day will be chock-a-block full of anime. I probably won't watch much tomorrow as I'll be seeing my girlfriend again, which is always the better option. Considering I'm fanatical about anime that's gotta show something. At any rate, till next time.

Monsters.

Most of my day was spent playing Monster Hunter. Quite an inordinate amount of it really. The sheer amount of play time on it is growing at what seems like an exponential rate, and i still can't kill the blasted Blue Yian Kut Ku. The damn wyvern is ridiculously annoying to kill, and I've failed the quest 4 times. Every time I get him to within a few hits of dead he enters frenzy mode and gets very fast indeed, thereby attacking me relentlessly. Le sigh. The next time I take him on I'll be trying a combination of pit traps, poisoned meat lures and a sword using Genprey components that has a chance to stun. If that fails then it'll be trap and lots of posion, sleep, stun, piercing and explosive gun rounds. Before that though I need to get a full set of gunner's armour, so I need 5 more iron ore. How irritating. The rest of college passed rather uneventfully, yet as it's the end of the school week I was quite happy. After all due to various exams and teaching I'll only have english language and psychology lessons next week. I start college on tuesday at 1.50pm. That's blatantly good. It will be an ultimate sleep in. In other good news, after work tomorrow I'll be going round my girlfriend's again, so I'll most likely be able to happily watch anime and generally be with her. That's always a good thing, and always makes my day a lot better.

I didn't get through that much anime today at all. Out of boredom, and for something to watch, I got the first 7 subbed episodes of Soul Link as those are the only ones that've been subbed. Yeah it's another new series, but I figure I have the time. In theory. The anime itself reminded me of Starship Operators, but not quite as dramatic or atmospheric. The plot seems fair enough so far, so it's mainly a question of seeing how the series develops. I also got the first 8 ripped episodes of Burst Angel, but only watched the first one. The rest of my time was taken up by Monster Hunter, obviously. Burst Angel certainly looks cool. Yet more mecha, and indeed zombie-mecha, action going on which can only be a good thing the way it's done in the opening episode. Quite an attention grabbing sequence really. I'll most likely watch just a few tomorrow when I get home, since I'll most likely just want to collapse in bed like I do now. The updates have been pretty sparse lately, but as it's the weekend I expect on monday and tuesday there'll be a deluge of them. That should be enough to keep me occupied. As I really feel tired I'll leave it there. Till next time.

Lots of printing.

Today I ended up printing a fair few pages. I'd found a quest and boss faq and guide for Monster Hunter Freedom, so I saved it and printed it at college. 63 pages. I also printed up a colour sheet with an almost fully A4 sized Monster Hunter Freedom picture, which makes a good cover. I started with £11.05 printing credit. The 63 pages were 5p each, and the colour page was 50p. Afterwards I checked my printing credit again. I had £11.50. This naturally confused me slightly, but after asking around it was apparantly because the art and photography students, currently doing an exam, complained that they were having to spend too much personal money just to get their projects done. As such every student in the college got an extra £5. I suppose it was a bit of a coincidence that it got credited during my print run. I naturally played the game itself and in certain areas I'm getting rather good. Against massed packs of Genprey I still tend to eventually get swamped and die, but some of the larger game I can now take out with minimal damage. The Sand wyverns, lorded over by the Cephadrome, are annoying to kill. However I now know all the moves they make as they jump in and out of the ground, so I can time it to swing my sword to whack them full in the face as they come up. It's quite satisfying seeing one crumple after a few select hits.

Though Monster Hunter took up lots of my day I still managed a game of Magic the Gathering. Out of 4 I was the second out, since the other three all exclusively attacked me. This is probably because in 1 on 1 matches my deck tends to win quite easily, and I only worry about one other deck that destroys mana. In multiplayer matches however I tend to be easy prey, so I'll probably need to alter my deck slightly to make it balanced when facing multiple people. Hopefully the extra beefiness will help against single opponents too. The day wasn't all play however, as in law there was yet another mock exam question. The sheer frequency of them has been tedious, but thankfully I will have no more. Next week I won't need to go to sociology due to the sociology exams being over and done with on wednesday, and neither will I need to go to law as next week the subjects are for module 1, which I've already taken an exam for in January. Were it not for the exams on wednesday I'd have the day completely off. I ended up drawing my last picture for Sociology on normal paper instead of the usual scribbleboard, since my teacher wanted t laminate it and keep it as a reminder of all my drawings. As such I simply drew myself, and it was one of the best pictures I've done in terms of realism and proportion. I was faintly tempted to keep it, but oh well.

The last paragraph of the post. You should know this means anime by now. I only had 5 episodes to watch. The 2 updates for Black Lagoon and the updates for Strawberry Panic, Naruto and High School Girls. Black Lagoon had Nazi's in it. Well, new and improved Nazi's with a different sign who still acknowledged themselves as Nazi's. I suppose that's the same thing, but it was pretty funny regardless. It also depicted a little bit more of just how messed up in the head Revy is. She has a very bad past indeed. Strawberry Panic actually had a bit more pressure on some of the characters, with a rather hard hitting 'charm' tactic from one of Spica's ruling student council to try and distract her. It almost worked in a vaguely worrying kind of way. Naruto was... filler. Oh dear. High School Girls wasn't too bad. My hope that they toned down the ecchiness has, for at least 1 episode, been realised. Not too shabby. However since I ran out of anime I decided to get the first 19 chapters of the Yotsuba manga, and the soundtracks for The Lord of the Tings trilogy. That should help pass some time. Plus I also have the first 7 volumes of Air Gear and whole of Death Note manga to read. I always seem to fall behind on manga... Till next time.

Yet more updates.

Another short college day, comprised of a law lesson, break, then a sociology lesson. Law was fine as it recapped stuff I needed to know, such as case names. Sociology was boring as it recapped stuff I already know, such as the whole family topic. On the plus side I managed to play yet more Monster Hunter on the train, before law, after law, after sociology and on the train home too. Nifty. I finally went up against the first Wyvern, and though it was the weakest it was still harsh. It managed to kill me twice before I floored it, and if you die 3 times you fail the mission. Very close indeed. I'm now working on the two star quests, which I intend to repeat quite a few times like the previous ones. It'll give me much needed money and should allow me to get armour that's defence 20 instead of 8. I kinda need it. By now I have 2 main weapons. I started with a bone kiris and worked it up to bone scythes, and got another bone kiris and have got that to the stage before the scythes. This is because the stage before is a single weapon and has a shield, so I can guard. Scythes are dual weapons, so they attack fast but it's impossible to defend. Therefore scythes can result in a lot of personal pain if I miss the first lunge... After college was work, and thet passed without incident. I just basically counted down the time again in 5 and 10 minute segments as always.

Anime followed work once I got home, but before that something better happened. My new DVD burner and 2GB pen drive arrived today. 2 days for delivery, that's not bad at all. I've already started filling the pen drive with stuff to print out at college, as I have lots of unused free printing credit spanning both years, and already the burner is proving itself useful. 8X burn speed is much more convenient than an old busted 4x burner. The actual anime I watched was another 3 episodes of Desert Punk, which are the last ones subbed at all, and the updates for Bleach, Yakitate Japan, Ray the Animation and School Rumble 2nd Term. All of them were pretty good, though the Bleach filler was me wonder as to what's going on in the anime creating team's collective heads. Seriously, it had more of a pure comedy series feel than actual Bleach-ness. School Rumble continued to amuse with hanai and Harima battling it out for the girls they like. Poor guys, heh. I'll have to end it there since it's getting late and I need to do a bit of revision for another mock exam question for law tomorrow, plus I want to play more Monster Hunter before I go to bed. Therefore adios to you all early. Till next time.

Updates!

Well today went smoothly, considering there was an exam. I think I may have been too relaxed really. I was supposed to start revision when I got to college at 8.30am, but instead decided to play Monster Hunter for a bit. I was going to stop at 9am. Um... guess not. 10am then. Whoops.... Maybe 11am...? I ended up stopping at 12.20pm, with just 50 minutes till I had to go to the exam. My bad then. I ended up doing 30 minutes of revision and no more since it was god-awful boring. The exam itself was similarly boring. All in all out of the hour I spent maybe 15 minutes doing nothing as I'd answered the questions. Ye gods, sitting there was one of the most tedious tasks I've done in a while, and I work in a supermarket. Afterwards I went to the small part of the english lesson left, then psychology. Luckily neither involved a great deal of work, so I was able to come home relatively relaxed. After a brief stop at home I went to Games Workshop and met up with my girlfriend. It was really nice chatting to people whilst hugging her. I think I may be passing the boundary of 'fair happiness' into 'a bit too much happiness for one person' since overall everything seems rosier. Not only that but after she left I had a game of Mordheim. I lost a Dire Wolf permanently, so bought it back. My opponent, also called Chris, lost 5 in the game, 3 of which were permanent. One of those was a henchman. The other two was his leader and second in command. Cue evil laugh here. His rating dropped from 104 to 57, the poor guy. It was fantastic.

When I got home again I had the added bliss of anime. Sweet sweet anime goodness to top off a fantastic day. Though I had an exam, my girlfriend tends to make any day fantastic. I got to watch another 3 episodes of Juuousei and the updates for Blood+, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Aria the Natural, The Good Witch of the West and another episode of Desert Punk because I found episodes 10 to 13 subbed. Considering I had barely any anime yesterday, 8 episodes today is a good good thing. Juuousei continues to completely rock, with the fights and plants. Plus it's hinting at yet more subterfuge, and had a good deal of background explanation so everything is coming into sharp focus. Blood+ was yet more backstory. Not bad, but at episode 30 it could be said to be a tiny bit late for an intro, or too early for a large revelation at the end. Maybe it's just filler information to distract from a nifty finale, which is still a fair way away. Melancholy continued to have an eclectic episode sequence, but seemed to fit in with one of the flashbacks from a previous episode. What odd lexis use there... The giant cricket was pretty cool. Aria continued to be almost whimsical yet pleasant to watch, whilst Good Witch of the West took a slightly darker role. The ending to the episode, including a slight amount of disguise, completely shattered nearly all premises of seriousness. It made me laugh quite a bit. Desert Punk continued to be good, with yet more mechanoid guardian fighting action. As for what I have to watch tomorrow, I'm currently getting Desert Punk episodes 11 to 13 and the School Rumble 2nd Term update. That's another 4, so not too bad I guess. Gotta look forward to tomorrow too, I'll be getting a 2GB pen drive and 16x speed DVD burner from Aria.co.uk. Schweet. Till next time then.

Nothing's happened.

As the title indicates, not much happened at all today. In fact it was pretty barren. No games of Magic the Gathering. No running around outside. No overly exciting or unusual lessons. In fact the only thing I did today at college, apart from try not to fall asleep, was play more Monster Hunter on the PSP. At first it was hard to get to grips with and I couldn't work out why everything was so restrictive. Then I found the intro quests. Ah. After having some of the basic skills explained to me it suddenly all became clearer, and now I'm enjoying the game a lot more. When I got home I almost bought a laptop from Aria.co.uk, but eventually decided against it as I'd have the money in 2 months, and f I took the 'Pay in 9 months time!' deal I would've spent more on it that the retail price, which renders it ultimately pointless. In all likelihood therefore I'll just buy a laptop in around 2 months time. It's a bit longer to wait, but oh well. I also played some Guild Wars, but nothing much happened there either. I tried to do the mission I was on, yet no teams were being made and I couldn't be bothered to take henchmen. I also tried selling my Guild since I have no need of it, yet no one seemed to be interested despite a low price. I guess it was a largely uneventful day as a whole.

Indeed, even the anime reflects this. I only had 2 episodes to watch today, just 2. The Kiba update and The Gargoyle of the Yoshinagas first episode. Kiba finally had the Joust final fight, which made me grin more than anything. Sheer ferocity from Zed, lots of broken promises from his opponent. Yoshinagas was strange, but enjoyable. It went immediately into the cutesy loyalty bond between a Guide dog and the owner's daughter, showed how easily trust could be broken, and often it was renewed. The gargoyle itself was able to move around a surprising amount, considering it's limbs never moved... Other than that there's been no updates at all, which is almost depressing. Without an abundance of anime my thoughts actually have to focus on the exam tomorrow. I guess I'll manage a fair amount of revision tomorrow. As I've no got any more anime to watch for the moment, till next time.

No rest.

Urgh. Just urgh. The first half of today was a blazing hell. I was put on an 'express' till, i.e. 10 items or less. It was a busy day. I had no gaps inbetween customers at all. None. Zilch. The average queue size was 6 people. God. Damn. I started at 10am as per usual, and by 12.10pm I was glad to have my break. However when that half an hour of bliss ended, I was confronted with the prospect of 3 hours and 50 minutes without stopping. Constant, constant customers. Ye gods it was horrible, and I hope never to be put on one of those tills again if I can help it. Compared to those, normal tills with people who have shedloads of shopping are practically happy occasions. It was nasty, in that 'oh please let it end...' kind of way. Graaagh. Luckily I had company with my girlfriend to look forward to, and that was pretty much the only thing actually keeping me going. Without that prospect I feel I may have collapsed under the relentless bombardment of consumers. When I did get round my girlfriend's house we generally just hung out, watched some Takeshi's Castle and laughed at those taking part in it, and messed around in photoshop as always. It was infinitely better than work (which is theoretically impossible due to the nature of infinity, but what the hell, I feel like being elaborate) and I didn't want to leave her. In the end I had to of course, but I'll be seeing her again on tuesday. Interestingly it'll be after my first exam, AS level sociology. I still haven't revised for it. Hmm. I should get round to it really.

On the anime front I got a reasonable amount watched. The Yakitate Japan, xxxHOLiC, Higurashi, Karin and Good Witch of the West updates, the 9 subbed episodes of Desert Punk and the first 2 episodes of the Glass no Kantai and Juuousei series. 18 episodes isn't too bad really, considering I assumed I wouldn't have time to watch them all and would need to wait till tomorrow. In order then - Yakitate was more of a match developing episode for kanmuri, which wasn't too bad. He's taken a back seat role for too long as most of the focus has been on Azuma and Kawachi. xxxHOLiC was a vaguely strange episode about a lady who stopped wanting to use a computer. That's something I could never do... Higurashi seems to be an almost completely different story now, as the characters are all alive and it's progressing down a different path. I get the feeling that each chapter will have the same characters, same festival, but a different horror story. The ending for Karin was one of those endearing ones which made me smile. Kenta was quite self-sacrificing, in a good way. The Good Witch of the West continued the 'heir to the throne' genre which isn't that original, but the girl in question is a redhead. Therefore I'm not complaining, heh. It's a pity that only the first 9 episodes of Desert Punk got subbed, since it's a series that's great fun to watch. Desert Punk himself, or Sunabouzou to be exact, may only be a kid, but he's damn good at trickery. Glass no Kantai seems to be about a rebellion against the Imperium which has starships. Again not original, but the pirates who show up have an interesting ship, and it doesn't seem to be too bad. My favourite of the lot happens to bwe Juuousei however. Twins sent to a penal colony planet with overly carnivorous plants after their parents are mysteriously murdered. The animation quality is almost astounding, and the encodes I got were in huge resolution. Even after just 2 episodes it's already a firm favourite of mine. All I have to watch now is the Kiba update, which I'll see tomorrow, and yet another new series called The Gargoyle of the Yoshinagas, which looks interesting enough for me to get it. Currently therefore I only have 2 episodes to watch tomorrow, so I'm hoping more updates will be released. Since my rambling has gone on a bit longer than expected I shall take my leave. Till next time.

Happiness.

As my girlfriend hadn't contacted me during the week there was no invitation to go round hers after work, so as such I was feeling slightly low when I started. I had nothing to look forward to afterall. The first couple of hours passed in a frenzy with the sheer amount of people. Since the FA Cup Final match was this afternoon I assumed everyone was around in order to get home with plenty of time to spare. After asking a few customers I found I was right. However after my lunch break, whilst serving yet more customers, I got quite a large surprise. When I looked up to the next person in line it was my girlfriend with her family. She'd specifically come to ASDA, even though they don't shop there, so she could invite me round after work. You can guess that brightened up my day immeasurably, and I sailed through the afternoon and early evening. The FA Cup also helped alleviate the pressure of all the customers, and between 3pm and 4pm, the bulk of the match, it really quietened down in the store.

After work I happily got picked up by my girlfriend and family and went round hers, and watched some more interesting TV with her. Greg the Bunny mainly, with a lot more focus on Count Blah. A puppet vampire is a strange thing to watch. We also got partly through the Akira movie as neither of us had seen it for some time, and the light trails from the bikes still impress. Instead of the Magic the Gathering games I'm now used to, I ended up playing the Pokemon trading card game against both my girlfriend and her sister, as they both play. It'd been ages since I'd last played it, and as I'd been invited round at work I didn't have my own deck of 'pwningness' unfortunately. Tomorrow I will, mwahahaha. Then it was general hanging out, messing with photoshop, all the usual really, just a lot more fulfilling.

Once I got home I looked at the time and realised I wouldn't be able to watch much anime at all. In the end I managed The Fate Stay Night update and the two newest episodes of Blood+. Blood+ continues to rock for me, since I quite like the series and the Sif especially, and Fate Stay Night finally explained who the dude in gold was. Even though I've played a lot of the game I didn't know who he was since it's all in Japanese. That makes it vaguely harder to get plot lines.... Tomorrow I'll have the final episode of Karin to watch, the Ar-Tonelico OVA to watch, and the first 2 episodes of Juuousei and Glass no Kantai which are two more new series I'm picking up, not to mention the Yakitate Japan update. If I have luck with download speeds I'll be able to see the first 7 episodes of Desert Punk as subbed by the Lunar Anime group. However as I'm round my girlfriend's again tomorrow I may just end up watching most of it on monday instead. Oh well, suits me. Till next time then.

Wartime missions.

Not much happened today. All I really did was finish off the english language mock exam, do a sociology mock exam question, and play a lot of frisbee with several mates. I almost find it scary that I got a reasonable amount of excercise today out in the sun. Usually I'm mostly nocturnal and I rarely venture out into bright light if I can help it since it seriously stings my eyes. The mock exams themselves went well, even though I had barely any motivation for them due to the heat. All day it was near sweltering, which wasn't fun at all. I went through an insane amount of water. I spent a good deal of my free time indoors on a computer browsing various Guild Wars Factions assassin builds on a few forums. There were quite a few interesting ones, but in the end I decided to test out a build with 2 sets of 3-combos that could be used as a chain of 6. I altered it slightly for the last 2 remaining skills, but they work quite well so that's alright. At home I got to playing Guild Wars quickly, and managed a few missons and primary quests. 3 of each to be exact. I'm going through Factions a lot slower than the first Guild Wars but that suits me fine - I have more anime to watch now generally as it is. In the end I only played for 4 hours, but it was better than nothing.

As for anime updates, I managed to watch the short new episode of Binchou-tan as well as Ouran High School Host Club. Binchou-tan nicely passed the time, whilst Ouran continued to decimate the 'King's fanbase through the introduction of yet more characters. Poor guy. I currently have the Utawarerumono to watch and I'm in the process of gaining the Air Gear and Blood+ updates, but I'll most likely watch all those tomorrow since I'm feeling decidedly tired now. As my eyes are threatening to shut of their own accord I'll end the post here for today. Till next time.

Keeping busy.

I had 2 mock exams today. Well, one a half since the english language one finishes tomorrow. In english I managed to write around 660 to 670 words out of 1000, and I have just over an hour to finish tomorrow. Not too bad really, and it wasn't that strenuous. Though I hadn't prepared the pack I did at least read it last night before I went to bed, so I managed to select the relevant sources for the question quite quickly. In law it took me 32 minutes to write a question which should have about 45 minutes spent on it. If I get a reasonable grade (which counts as a high B or A for me due to University target grades) then it's obviously a good thing. It means in the real exam I'll be able to carefully plan and structure my answers without a loss in time. I'm gradually working on answering all my various exam questions faster, as more time to reread and think in an exam, the better it will be. I played several games of Magic the Gathering today. I ended up losing the first one horribly, since the 3 other players all attacked me. Vaguely unexpected. In the second game I managed to win, and I actually inflicted all bar 5 damage on the other 3, taking them out one by one. I went to 7 or so life. Risky, but I managed it. At one point I thought I'd be obliterated. The last game ended up being a draw, since to kill me my friend had to attack, and in doing so was taking 3 damage per creature due to 3 Hissing Miasma's in play on my side of the field. Insert evil cackle here.

I finally fully 'caught up' as it were for anime, as I managed to watch the Millennium Actress movie. It was pretty good and averagely dramatic. Reality seemed to blend between the actual interview, the actress' life and the films she was in. It was as if her whole life story blended with her career. It had nothing done by computer in it apparantly, as it's reputedly all done by hand. If it is then it's quite impressive, as it flowed really well. There wasn't really anything to warrant major effects, but the lighting was done reasonably well. Overall the animation wasn't to the standard of some series airing today, but it was still very good work. The Naruto, Strawberry Panic and School Rumble 2nd Term updates were also duly watched. After the good preview in the episode before, the Naruto update lacked quite a bit of.. well, action. A giant rabid dog and 1 short scene capturing it. Hmm. Strawberry Panic hinted at more background for Etoile-sama, and ow it looks like she may be a lot more lonely than she lets on. harima in School Rumble practically stole the show again, since he's one of the funniest characters. Wait, let me correct that. He -is- the funniest character for me. The sheer amount of panic on his face during the play when he discovered he'd overslept in one of the props was classic. Yes, my sense of humour can be easily sated at times. I've also started getting the DVD dual audio rips of the first 3 Karas releases. The current ones I have total 1.29 GB's, yet the one I'm currently getting, with soft subs and an extra audio stream, only total 696 MB's. Kinda odd really, so I'll have to compare the quality. That about wraps it up. Till next time.

Up to date-ish.

A tolerable day, all things considered. I read volumes 2 and 3 of Hellsing on the way to college and before my first lesson, as well as managing to lose 2 games of magic the gathering. I was using the 'bad' deck against my favourite Orzhov, and though it was vaguely galling to lose, it was great to see the Orzhov deck work perfectly. Mu mate managed to get Hissing Miasma, Pillory of the Sleepless, Souls of the Faultless, Agent of Masks and all the assorted harsh cards out in sequence. It was great to see my deck working so well, even if it kicked me around in doing so, heh. In Sociology I got another 2 exam questions back, both of which were A's. I get the distinct feeling that AS subjects are incredibly easier than A2 subjects, more than we are told. After that it was work, and 'eurgh'ness. Though wednesdays are usualy quiet, I had a constant stream of customers since only 8 tills were open out of 29, and I was one of those 8. No queues built up, but the moment one customer was leaving another suddenly appeared. The sheer amount of pain that built up in my shoulders and lower back was ungodly. Ungodly I say. On the plus side on the way to work I read half of the 4th volume of hellsing, so at least the trip there wasn't bad. It was just the work itself that irked me, heh.

Upon arriving home I thankfully began watching anime, partly as a diversion from the just-finished work, and partly to catch up. I went through all 12 episodes of Lamune and the updates for Bleach and Zegapain. The DVD Mai Otome specials, or at least the first 4, underwent my perusal too since I found the torrent for those this morning. Lamune was a really endearing series, and it was nice seeing how close the two main characters were in the first place before it gradually progressed to something more. The ending itself showed the girl's true dedication before everything improved for the pair of them into a traditional happy ending. The filler in Bleach is getting more and more 'exotic', that is to say, randomly odd. It had some fusing going on, Naruto-style. This is worrying. On the plus side Zegapain had yet more cool shooting and a revelation for the pilot guy. Yeah, I tend to be bad with names... Now he knows it's a real world he may have to think more about the things he's shooting and the consequences of his actions. Nifty really. Lasting only 3 to 4 minutes long each, the Mai Otome specials were funny but didn't take up any time at all which was a shame. It would have been good had they lasted longer. Unfortunately I still have the Millennium Actress movie to watch, yet I'll most likely see that tomorrow as there doesn't seem to be many updates. I just have to get through an english language mock exam question, as well as a law one. Bah. Till next time.

Mordheim beatdown.

College had a marked improvement today, in that I spent the morning before lesson and break time reading volume 1 of the Hellsing manga. The artwork is incredible, and both Alucard and Father Andersen look god damn cool. Seras Victoria looks nifty too, and some of the shots were she's blowing away zombies are ridiculously good. Other than that college went reasonably well. I didn't fall asleep, so I felt vaguely drowsy in english language till there was a question and answer session. I got another sociology mock exam question back too, and the mark was 17 out of 20. Yet again for no revision that's almost an unfair mark, so it looks like I'll go for a educational policy question should it appear. I hope it does. I also managed a few more games of Magic the Gathering and didn't lose. One long, long game became a draw, and the other I narrowly won after almost an hour of play. Good thing I had a free period with which to play through.

After college it was Games Workshop time. The Mordheim campaign continued, with me getting 2 games. Both were a solid win. In the first I lost a ghoul and had to buy it back, in the second I took no casualties. The first game involved me going on a rampage, taking out 5 of the 10 Sigmarite Sisters against me, with 2 permanent deaths. Insert cackle here. My Vampire caused 5 wounds against one unfortunate, yet he only had 3 attacks. It was 3 hits, 3 wounds of which 2 were critical and doubled to 4, and 4 'dead' results with a 'kocked down' as the last. That made me laugh one hell of a lot. Ironically though it was one of the 3 taken out who survived. How odd. I ended up buying a lot of equipment for my heroes and a few extra henchmen after those games, and I already have a game scheduled for next week against someone who's done the opposite of me. The guy's had a lot of permanent deaths, which is a pity. I also got to see my girlfriend, and it was really nice hanging out with her whilst I went up against others in the campaign.

The anime seems to be piling up too. Since I downloaded a new series to simply fill the space I had, I have all 12 episodes of Lamune to watch, as well as the Ergo Proxy, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Himawari and High School Girls updates. I'll be watching those 4 updates tonight lest I fall behind. I'll most likely watch the majority of Lamune tomorrow after work as I'm vaguely tired now. After some exploration of the stuff on my hard drive I also found the Millenium Actress movie. I still haven't seen that, damn. I really should get round to it. If all else fails, I have thursday to watch anime as I finish college then don't have to work or go anywhere else. Thursday and friday tend to be my 'catch-up' days. Since updates beckon I'll be off for now. Till next time.

Bargain.

I nearly fell asleep in my penultimate lesson today, english language. It wasn't boring, and it was held by one of my 2 favourite teachers, yet I felt incredibly drowsy. This could be in part because I didn't get that much sleep, as I went to bed at 3am this morning. Today I intend to go to bed earlier, as I've already finished watching everything. The only reason I didn't fall asleep in psychology was that there was dictation involved, so I was forced to stay awake due to writing. Blarg. After college I decided to go down to Brighton straight away to pick up the latest NewType USA (released last week) and the Gunslinger Spawn model which has been there for over a year. I got there. No Gunslinger Spawn model. Well. Damn. On the plus side I managed to buy the NewType USA, and in David's Books I found the first 6 volumes of Hellsing. They were classed as 'damaged' since the outside edges of the pages were faintly discoloured, yet the insides were pristine white. Instead of £9 each (about $16 or so) they were only £3 each. Now that rocks. It was essentialy a 'buy 2 get 4 free' deal, so I nabbed all 6. As far as I can tell only the first 7 are around in Dave's Comics anyway, so seeing 6 in David's Books rocks. I debated about getting more Magic the Gathering cards, and I really did want to, but in the end managed to resist temptation and put them back.

When I did get home I obviously started to watch anime. Apart from the Aria the Animation and Kiba updates, I watched the rest of Honey & Clover. There wasn't a barrage of updates which surprised me as last week was insane. I guess they'll filter in during the week then. Kiba wasn't too bad, though I'm almost pining for the fight they left in suspense. I'm seriously hoping they have it next episode since it ended with a small portion of it. Aria continues to just follow the Aria company almost randomly, but it makes a break from all the other genres in a way, or is at least different enough, to be refreshing. The rest of Honey & Clover was indeed good. Everyobne was woven closely together as a network of friends, and it was plain to see that they all depended on eachother like any good friends do. Though the series was a little open that's fine, as the second season has been announced, as well as a live action movie. Those'll be interesting to see. For now though I don't have anything to watch, so I guess I can play Guild Wars Factions some more. I'll try to do the mission and possibly the next primary quest. It's either that or finish off some of the smaller quests. So then, till next time.

Contentment.

Today was moderately fun at work, and incredibly nice after work. The day started out fair enough. I asked to be put on one of the smaller express tills since I'd not been on once before. The sheer amount of customers was insane. Oh ye gods, they came in waves. There'd be no one around, then suddenly a customer would appear and there'd be 8 people in the queue. Where the hell did they all come from? It was like that for the whole day pretty much, and the only real good thing about it was that the time flew by really fast. The afternoon passed largely without incident, bar one exception. One man bought a folding tent for £4.48. However it scanned at £5.48, so I assumed that was the price and I charged him thus. He spent ages disputing the price before paying it and going to customer services as I recommended. 2 custermers later and he was back. He pointed to the little shelf sign he'd taken down, the receipt and myself and started shouting, asking aggressively why I'd charged him another £1. I was mostly surprised by this, and a customer services manager and security guard came over and eventually led him away after his shouting got louder and his behavious threated physical action. I got moved tills after that and reassured, and 9 different members of staff asked if I was ok. A few minutes later and a colleague came to tell me he'd been banned. That was moderately funny.

After work I went round my girlfriend's house, and the both of us, along with her parents, all went for a walk along the coast. That was pretty relaxing. After that it was back to hers and I helped her sister make a really strange cake. It had spinkles and icing with an insane amount of food dye. Some of the colur is still on my hands now. Hmm. On the plus side we had noodles, as well as cheese and tomato toasties, before the cake itself. It all tasted quite nice so it was a nice evening. My girlfriend also experienced a lot of sugar which her parents don't usually allow. She gets... interesting when she's had a lot of sugar. Not quite hyperactive, but very, very giggly. Exceedingly so. After watching more anime on TV the time came for me to go home, so I parted with her knowing I'd see her again on tuesday. Not too bad then.

Once I did get home I busted out the anime. As I was feeling tired I only managed to watch watch the first 12 episodes of Honey & Clover as well as the Ouran High School Host Club update and most recent 2 episodes of Blood+. 15 episodes. Considering I'm tired I guess I've done quite well. Ouran continued to be vaguely amusing as the show is beginning to grow on me, and it depicted the twins as incredibly evil schemers. Blood+ was good as it started showing more of kai's determination, as well as Saya's newfound purpose. Honey & Clover itself has a very cute style and the story isn't bad. It's based moderately heavily on real life, so there's no powers, no fights, just averagely poor students trying to get through life. All in all it's quite an interesting series to watch. I still have the Ray the Animation, Disgaea, Higurashi, Utawareumono and Tsubasa Chronicle updates to watch. I'll probably only watch the Higurashi and Tsubasa episodes before I go to bed as I feel I really need the rest. Oh well. Till next time then.

Improvements

Whoops, an overshot by almost an hour. Thank heavens Blogger allows me to change the time of the post. Work today wasn't bad at all. mostly because of a phone call this morning before I left. It invited me round my girlfriend's house after work, and I was happy to oblige. That gave me more than enough incentive to get through work. I also managed to find the Personel manager to fill in a P46 and thereby escape the evil of emergency tax for the paycheck after the next one. There's not enough time for it to affect my paycheck on the 12th, which is a pity. After work I duly went round my girlfriend's house, and the pair of us with her sister and boyfriend made custom pizzas. They were mostly cheese and fake Quorn 'ham', but one had slived crabsticks. It was surprisingly nice. After that we had garlic bread and watched a program called Greg the Bunny. It's basically a form of puppet show, like the Muppets, but with an adult sense of humour. It actually made me laugh, which I didn't expect. It also had Seth Green in it as well as the guy who plays Jim's dad in American Pie. Therefore it was a lot cooler. We then proceeded to watch the movie Lord of War, and it was a damn good movie. Nicholas Cage is a good actor and he suited the role perfectly. You had to feel pity for the guy even though he essentially became colder and calculating.

Once I got home at around 11.30pm I decided to have a short rest before doing the usual forum maintenance and reading of webcomics. Then it was the search for updates and I realised Fate Stay Night had been updates. I got that immediately and watched it. A good episode, as it hints of the connections between Sakura and Rin as well as showing Assassin fighting with Saber. Niiice. There was also the updates for xxxHOLiC, Blood+, Ouran High School Host Club and Air Gear. As such I've started to get those whilst I finish off downloading Honey & Clover. It looks like I'll have all 26 to watch either tomorrow or monday. Most likely monday since I need to get around 15 updates tomorrow. Hmm. That may take a day to do. Since tomorrow I'm going round my girlfriend's place again I won't have much time to watch anime when I actually get home. Monday will be chock a block full of shows for me. I also need to get around to playing Guild Wars Factions as I've still not done the 3rd mission. No doubt some people from this country have completed the game by now, as I completed Guild wars in a matter of days. There's also the matter of playing City of Villains as each day without it is a day wasted in the free trial. Le sigh. So much to do, so little time. Till next time then.

Finishing up.

Yet more games of Magic the Gathering today, followed by yet another sociology mock exam question. It was timed and without notes once more, which is getting tiresome. I got the second mock exam result back, and I ended up getting an A on that one too, though it was a narrow pass once more. 44 out of 60, with 41/42 needed for an A. Still, I got that with no revision so that's quite handy. Since the first exam for sociology, methods, is only 11 days away I guess I really should revise sociologist's names or something, since that's what is keeping me from getting top marks. Without names it's apparantly termed as 'personal opinion' as there's no evidence and subjective. That's quite stupid, since all a sociologist represents is another subjective opinion. Meh, oh well. Once I got home I decided to finally start up the 2 week free trial for City of Villains since I felt like actually trying it as the premise seems entertaining. It wasn't too bad really. After the 2 and a half hours it took to download the client at my max download speed I was away, creating first a Mastermind character then a Brute. The first has minions, the second has large fists. I got the Mastermind to level 2 and the Brute to level 3 purely because the large amount of damage delt with large fists and attack specials tends to kill things quicker than a minion. Not bad.

After that I decided to go with my usual dose of anime. I had 9 episodes of amurai 7 left to watch since I'd seen up to episode 17 yesterday before I went to bed. The ending for Samurai 7 was a great one, and the amount of action was insane. However my favourite character, Kikuchiyo the giant red robotic samurai, experienced a heroic end. This annoyed me however since I a) wanted him to live, and b) wanted him to make the little girl, who promised to marry him, happy (eventually after she grows up). He seemed proud to have a loved one, even if she was a bit young and his death due to trying to stop the giant capital ship by himself was quite irritating. I guess the good ending can't be for everyone then. After those 9 episodes all I have to watch is the Magical Pokan, Ergo Proxy and Strawberry panic updates, though they're not finished downloading yet. I guess I have to wait for a bit, so I'll most likely waste a load of time rereading some Bleach manga. I could read the Air Gear manga instead, but I probably won't ever get round to that in the same way that I've not read the first 12 volumes of the Love Hina manga. (The last two I read to see how the series ending was different. Very.) Since by now I'm just blathering on and my dinner's getting cold, I'll be off. Till next time.

Return of the anime.

Not a bad day. Not bad indeed. I played a massive 4-way game of Magic the Gathering and came second. It was fun in that I delivered the deathblow to the 2 other losing players and put them on -1 life. I got the winner down to 5, a measly 5, before I faced the wrath of 2 Blinding Angels with no anti-flying. Well. I couldn't attack at all. That sucked, and I was placed on -1 from 29 (a slow death) but it was definitely a fun game. Other than that not much happened really. In law, my last lesson of the day, I had to write an essay for an exam problem question I hadn't prepared. As such I used my notes like the rest of the class, who also hadn't prepared, and managed to finish it in 35 rather than the full 45 minutes. That was quite nice, as it meant I was free to leave college early. Since it had been a bright sunny day it was moderately warm, so a shedload of people were milling around outside on the field. Most of them were skipping lessons too as it was a nice day. However since my eyes are very sensitive to bright light I ended up spending most of the day inside. That in itself was nice since there was a load more room. Everyone else was outside of course, apart from a few of my friends who don't go out into the light that much. I.e. fellow gamers and anime fans.

When I got home I had a lot of anime to watch, and what was even better was that I had the motivation to watch it too. I went through the remaining 12 episodes of Eureka Seven, the School Rumble 2nd Term and Naruto updates, and so far 9 episodes of samurai 7. That's 23. Not the best I've managed, but a fair amount none the less. Eureka Seven definitely got better towards the end as there was more screen time for Anemone, who finally came to become a person rather than a thing with a homicidal temper. Eureka, Renton and the kids were all slightly annoying in their own ways, but on the plus side Eureka looked incredibly cool with the whole crystalisation aspect going on. In School Rumble they finally had the cultural fair, with a few misunderstandings. Even though Harima wasn't the main focus, he still outshone the rest. The stuff he does makes me laugh time and time again, poor guy. Naruto was a bit... odd, but not the worst of the fillers. Thankfully the next filler looks promising as it's mainly about Kiba and Akamatsu being evil, so that should be interesting. From what I've seen of Samurai 7, in otherwords nearly the first half of the series, it is definitely a great watch. The fights look fantastic, and the animation is top notch. The plot's good too, and the characters all fit together in a way. I have another 3 episodes to watch tonight, which'll mean I'd have seen the first 14 of 26. By tomorrow they'll all be done, so it looks like I'll have another anime spree tomorrow too. So then, till next time.

Yet another day.

As I walked into college this morning I cheerfully, is slightly sleepily, listened to the Magical Pokan and AR Forgotten Summer OST's by Yousei Teikoku. They're a damn good Japanese group, and their music is some of the best I've heard which suits me. The rest of the day passed in a generic blur, though there was an interesting game of Magic the gathering. I was using my Golgariless Golgari deck, i.e. the bad one, and I managed to beat down my best deck, the Orzhov of nasty unfairness, without taking a scratch. Hmm. A slight turn around from the norm, and mildly entertaining. When I got home everything improved. Guild Wars: Factions Collector's Edition had arrived. It only got dispatched yesterday with an estimated time of 1 to 2 days, so they were on the best end of that scale. It rocks. The stuff you get with it may not be particularly useful, but it looks uber cool. The poster is nice, as is the calendar and cloth picture, but what I like most is the custom dance emotes in the game. having two shadow clones dance in sync with my assassin makes me smile a lot. The box also looks hella cool. Another nifty addition is the artbook. Seriously, in my opinion the character designs mock World of warcraft even though those are nice too. Some of the armoured badguys look simply BADASS.

I also managed to work my way through the outstanding anime updates. I watched the 2 Disgaea episodes and the Black Lagoon, High School Girls, Ouran High School Host Club, Bleach and Ah! My Goddess second season series updates. As the rest of Eureka Seven has been released in softsub I started getting that too, so I watched 2 episodes from there. 37 and 38. All the updates were good, especially Black Lagoon and Ah! My Goddess. In Black Lagoon the psycho girl took out 6 boat's worth of people with her guns... by jumping from boat to speeding boat. Dude... AMG continued to be heartwarming as I'm a fan of the manga. The style of the anime is almost exact to the style in the manga, only slightly older. The newest chapters look almost simplistic, but the sheer amount of detail in them is ridiculous. It's almost paradoxical, in a good way. I also found the AR Forbidden Summer album in another form. A completed one to be exact. The one I'd got was merely the openings and endings, whereas the one I found after was uploaded by the same guy who realised his mistake. Looks like I have more funky music to listen too. I've also just noticed that the first 2 episodes of samurai 7 are now ready to watch, so I'm off to watch them now. With any luck the music wll be done by the time I've finished watching them. Till next time.

Cutting it fine.

Looks like when the deadline for getting a post done everyday looms I can end up cutting it a bit fine. At any rate, news of college. In english I got the marks back on the spam exam question. The teacher stated wthat after talking with the other staff members they'd probably get B's when attempting it, but together figured a way to get an A. He talked through it, and it looked quite familiar. When we got our marks back it was out of 50, and most people got between 20 and 35. I however got 41. Hmm. 40 was needed for an A. So... I got more than the teacher figured he'd get. Now that's frikkin sweet. Practically 'Schweet' maybe. Other than that college was vaguely standard with nothing out of the ordinary happening. Games Workshop wasn't too bad either. I played a game of Inquisitor in which my Terminator faced 14 other men of various power, ranging from the grunt-level to highly powered Eldar and Inquisitors. Yeah, he died relatively quickly when I got swarmed by 7 other people in combat. That was a bit meh, but oh well. After that the Mordheim campaign had started, so I got my first game in with my undead. 2 zombies, a ghoul, a dire wolf and my necromancer got taken out, and I only killed 2 other lowly Skaven henchmen. Well, that sucked. Thankfully it was a draw as we both got 2 weirdstone shards, and only the ghoul died permenantly. Two of my heros got vaguely useful upgrades, and all my heroes got armour. Nice. I also bought back the ghoul, so that wasn't too bad.

Since I'd watched all the updates I mentioned 2 posts ago (though not sure if I previously mentioned that I'd watched them all) I made do with yet more updates. Kiba I managed yesterday after the little session, and today it was Himawari and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Not much admittedly, but I didn't feel like watching the Disgaea episodes, or the Black Lagoon and High School Girls updates, as after Games Workshop I felt pretty tired. Himawari was a nice episode. Nothing too overly dramatic, though serious enough to be interesting. Melancholy continued to rock, with the poor main character guy being treated to more and more revelations. Now all the cards are on the table I wonder how it's all going to play out. Haruhi is being portrayed as a figure of immense important, and now there's hints that she's starting to like the main male character (naturally) in her usual incredibly bossy way. With only another 4 updates to watch I caved in and decided to download another series. It's one I've seen a lot about, Samurai 7. Since it seems to be popular, reflected by the number of articles about it recently, I guess I may as well check it out. After all it looks reasonably ok and is hard subbed, so wouldn't take me that long to get through them all anyway. However that's me out of time and energy as I badly need rest. Therefore, till next time.

Singular bargain.

I slept in till 2pm today, and it was absolute bliss. The first day in about a month in which I could sleep in, and I damn well took the chance. When I got up I felt great, and it was simply nice to finally be able to just lay back and rest instead of hauling myself out of bed due to college or work. Not long after I got up, maybe 20 minutes, I decided to go to Games Workshop and so off I went in the hopes of getting a game in. Unfortunately I didn't manage that since all the boards were being used and no one else had Warhammer 40,000, but I at least managed to schedule a game against Harlequins for tomorrow. 1,500 points and the guy only has 26 models. Hmm, they may be a bit tough then... The bargain mentioned in the title was the Guild wars Factions guide book. I occasionally buy guide books to read since they're interesting for the most part, and when I saw it my 'Impulse Buy' circuit switched on and off I went. It was £12.99 or £7.99 when bought with the game. Now I'd pre-ordered the Collector's edition which the store didn't get so I'd had to buy it from the website. When I told them this they counted it as the £7.99 price, and when they swiped my card I had £7.50 saved up on it. So in otherwords I got a £12.99 guide book for £0.49. Now that made me grin for a fair while. What a markdown eh?

When I got home I went onto playing Guild Wars: Factions since the guide riled me up for a session, and I went on for 4 hours. Most of that was used up doing the damn annoying 'Mayhem in the Market' primary quest, since it was ridiculously hard. On the 8th try I selectively recruited a team made up of 7 other level 20 characters, refusing anyone lower. The plan worked, and with a balanced team we massacred the insane amounts of Afflicted in the way. Admittedly a few of us died, but compared to the previous tries it was absolutely nothing. After that I decided to watch the School Rumble 2nd Term and Utawarerumono updates. School Rumble was great as it was still focused on the Cultural festival, and all the poor people involved went through a fair bit. Utawarerumono became even more dramatic with an important character's death and what was effectively a small rebellion. Looks like war's afoot. When I noticed the time I quickly hastened to write this to make sure I didn't have to roll back the Blogger clock. After this I'll be watching all of the updates I mentioned yesterday whilst the Himawari, Kiba and Disgaea updates download. That's another 4. Not too bad, I may even have an episode or 2 done by the time I've finished all the current updates. So then, till next time.