Holiday ramble

Happy holidays! I hope you’re all enjoying yours, however you choose to spend them. It’s been a bit of a strange holiday season for me, I admit. This is usually my favorite time of year, but everything has had a bit of a damper on it this time around. This year has been like that overall, I suppose, but I’m still surprised to find myself with anything even approaching the holiday blues. It is very unlike me. I hope this year remains an anomaly, as I don’t especially wish to repeat it. I did enjoy time with family, which was a true pleasure.

Christmas Eve was a bit of a treat, including a trip to the movie theater to see Sweeney Todd, which I was alternately nervous and giddy about seeing. In the end, it was a great success. Minor quibbles aside, I thought Tim Burton presented the piece wonderfully and with great care. I may post in more detail eventually, but for the moment, I’m just savoring the experience.

Christmas also brought gifts of manga and anime, mostly Hikaru no Go, which I’ve been trying to collect, though I’ve already read them all in scanlation, and watched all the fansubbed anime. Paul got some volumes of Bleach, which adds to our collection, and I have a Barnes & Noble gift card to use, which will surely become manga. I’ve even made myself a little spreadsheet of manga I want to buy. Does this catapult me to a new level of dork? I suspect it does. Anyway, I put it online for easy access wherever I might be. It includes all the manga titles I’m currently reading, as well as a few I know I want to begin (this list is destined to grown quickly, especially since I received Jason Thompson’s Manga: The Complete Guide for Christmas). It also lists what volumes I can (and must) currently buy in English, as well as what information I have about the status of Japanese volumes. I’ve even broken them up in to three priority levels for purchase. I was right about the dork thing, yeah? Looking at the list, I’m a bit surprised how much shojo manga I’ve been getting into, but now that I’ve discovered the kinds of things I like, I find there’s quite a bit there for me. Also, I’m vaguely considering starting Naruto, which frightens me a little, but it seems like there has to be a reason it’s so popular.

Speaking of manga, I finally got volume 15 of Fullmetal Alchemist right before the holiday, and… wow. I know I say that every time I read a volume of that series, but there really is no other word that works. She just constantly thrills and surprises me. Whatever else I read, this is still my favorite manga series, without question.

We also watched a beautiful film, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Toki o Kakeru Shōjo), which I really enjoyed, and finished the Kino’s Journey anime series, which I can barely speak about. That deserves an entire post to itself, and probably will get one as soon as I feel able to share.

This post feels pretty disjointed, which is where my mind is right now, I guess. I’m hoping to spend the next few days working diligently on my own writing. I guess we’ll see where that goes.

Enjoy these days, friends, and go heavy on the eggnog. I plan to.