Look, I knew I was gonna love this.  The trailer was amazing, and I've always loved Miles as a character (even if I'm terrible at about actually reading any of the comics).  And I'm totally here for Garbage Peter, and, and, and... I just knew it was gonna be good.  But you guys.  you Guys. 

It was so good. 
I was not prepared. 

It was gorgeous and original.  It was funny and moving and exciting. Great character design, great rogue's gallery established.   (Really great Rogue's gallery, with one I didn't see coming and TOTALLY should have)

I loved that it wasn't a just a retread of Great Power = Great Responsibility.  That's not the lesson Miles needed to learn.  Miles navigates a very different dynamic than Peter Parker (any of them) ever did.  And that dynamic is all showing and no telling.  No one ever is like 'Well Miles, let's talk about being a minority kid, and what that means.' 

Like, my nitpicks about the movie are Minimal at BEST.  And mostly that Peni Parker looks more like those early 2000's 'How to Draw Anime' books written by Americans than an actual anime. 

I wanna watch it a million more times, frame by frame to catch all the easter eggs. 

I did go buy myself a Spider Gwen gaiter for when I go out jogging. 

So Tumblr swept me away, for better or worse (let's face it, it was probably worse.  It was highly entertaining, but so easy to be passive and not create any kind of content or think myself, or feed back to anyone doing anything).  But it's clearly time to leave that blue hellhole.  I don't know how the fandom landscape will look when the dust has settled.  

So let me (re)introduce myself.  On Tumblr and Pillowfort I am KaitouKitty.  Here and on AO3 I am just plain Kaitou.  Are there other places I need to stake some ground?  I do have an Insta and a Twitter... but they're for my Brickspace Non Fandom life and I don't want to connect them.  

My current fandoms are: The Good Place, Buzzfeed Unsolved, Aggretsuko, and I can't manage to break free of Teen Wolf no matter how hard I try.  I love the Marvel U, but it went in directions that I'm not particularly interested in for fic & art. I will probably enjoy Venom when I get to see it.  I adore food shows like The Great British Bake Off, and Somebody Feed Phil, and Worth It.  I don't have cable TV and I end up watching a lot of Youtube - from Sci Show to Brave Wilderness to many Beauty Vloggers.

I knit and bake, do yoga, and have started jogging in the last year.  

So uh, Long time no see?  

This morning is not going well. I got up early, at 4:30, because I had to be at work at 6:00 am for a phone conference with Japan. As I was getting ready to pack my breakfast I saw...

It's spring.
The ants are here.

Sweet Jesus the ants were EVERYWHERE. They found the jar of locally produced honey where the cap doesn't fit quite right. I think one of the worst things about ants is that...they can think. When I screamed, the entire mass of ants froze, like if they didn't move I wouldn't see them. And when I went after them they scrambled to hide.

I hate that they think. Because it means they know I'm there. And if they know I'm there they can fight back against me.

Mostly I worry that they're going to swarm up my body and eat my eyes. I don't know why I'm convinced this is true but it is. I once lost a watch because I vaccumed up a bunch of ants, and accidentally snagged my watch, but I was afraid to pull the bag out and get it back because, again, now the ants would be ANGRY, and they would totally eat my eyes.

Anyway, I went after them with a combination of Raid Earth Options spray and bits of paper towel. The worst part was when they tried to dive bomb out of the cabinet. There were enough of them that there were audible little tak, tak, tak sounds as they hit the coffee maker and/or countertop.

I killed as many as I could, and wrapped up the jar of honey in a plastic bag, and then I had to go to to work.

At work the phone conference was only 15 min, and I never needed my Japanese skills.

Then a few hours later a coworker said "Hey, you have the boardroom at 10:00, can you switch your meeting to conference room 1?" Not a problem, my meeting is very small. Just me, a consultant, Manager Y and whoever Mgr Y thought should be his deputy. So I went into the system to reschedule a room, and when I did I got a 'Mgr. Y is out of the office' notice.

The hell? He took the day off and never told me. I had to get the consultant to drive an hour in for this meeting. It's not a total wash because we also meet with Manager Z this afternoon, and the consultant has stuff she can do in the meantime, but come on!! I only get so many hours of her time, and I'm trying to use them wisely.

At any rate...I'm kind of afraid to do anything else now.

1. The first programmed station on your radio is NPR. And it's not just for Car Talk either.

2. Your wardrobe is starting to have a lot of Lands End in it.

3. You start to crave vegetables.

4. You think 'Gee, I need to do laundry tonight so I have something to wear when I visit my parents' instead of 'Yay, I can haul all my laundry to my parent's place and do it there.'

Help! I need something ridiculous and childlike, STAT!

Did anyone borrow my copy of 'Ancient Inventions?' Giant Doorstop of a book, looks like this?

Back from Japan where much work and shopping was accomplished.  It felt really good to be useful, and to know that my Japanese hasn't faded out.  I'm just as sharp as I ever have been. This has been a huge worry since I can go two weeks at my job without having to use any language skills.

I am glad it only lasted a week though, since I was about ready to kill my coworkers by the end of it.  But it's a shame we had to go right home and I couldn't find time to visit with Soranokumo, or anyone else I still know in Japan.  We had one day of play...and I did get some shopping done, but I had to play tour guide so it wasn't really a good time to slip away and go find doujinshi or anything.

But I did get the one thing I really wanted to but couldn't on my last trip, which is an itunes gift card so I can get some new Japanese music.  Which of course means I'm hoarding it and spending all my time on youtube trying to figure out which songs to get, since even 5000 yen isn't going to buy very much. 

All this means that I ended up finding out that one of my favorite Japanese groups, Rip Slyme, did the ending theme for the Japanese dub of Spongebob Squarepants.


You're welcome.

Happy birthday m_steelgrave !

May this year double everything that was good, and halve everything that was bad.

What a rollercoaster morning. I packed a delicious lunch (sage roasted chicken with glazed turnips and apples) got in the car, and Kate Beaton was on the radio!! I was so excited. I made viking hands.

And then I got to work to find out that the phone conference with the customer this afternoon...it's not a phone conference, we have to go there.

My coworker who's also in the meeting came by while I was making oatmeal, and I was so surprised that I poured all the water into the oatmeal packet. Luckily I had another packet at my desk, so all was not lost.

I've been ranting a lot lately...and I'm not done yet.  I have a few more coming up.  But I'd like to take a break to share something good.  I had to go to Chicago for work on Wednesday, and I managed to slip over to Mitsuwa, the big Japanese shopping center they have, which has it's own bookstore.  And though they didn't have any of the Maru books (sadface) they did have the new Arakawa Hiromu manga 'Silver Spoon.'

I can't think of the last time I was this charmed by a manga.  I mean, I adore 'Stepping on Roses' but half of my enjoyment is the overtop ridiculous melodrama.  Silver Spoon is just plain good.

It's a 'Slice of Life' manga that takes place at an agricultural high school in Hokkaido.  The protagonist, Hachiken Yuugo, is a total fish out of water here.  He's basically spent his whole life studying, and now he finds himself totally unprepared for all the manual labor and animals and everything that all the other students are pretty used to. 

It's got all of the Arakawa sense of humor, and I kept laughing out loud when... for instance Hachiken thinks he's stumbled on a group of guys looking at a porn mag...but they're really looking at a catalog of cows for sale.  Or his reaction to finding out that chicken eggs and chicken shit come from the same hole. 

But what really impresses me is the pacing.  Of course, Arakawa is a HUGE name at this point, but it's still refreshing that the manga doesn't lead with a monologue of who Hachiken is and why he's ended up all the way in Hokkaido.  At the end of the first volume we know that by the end of middle school Hachiken was basically burnt out from all the studying and juku, and looking to escape from his home life.  But we don't yet know anything about that home life.  And since all he's done is hit the books, Hachiken hasn't taken the time to really find out what he wants to do, and so now he's looking to figure out what exactly his dream really is.  And I can tell these things are going to unfold slowly, and that's a good thing.  Too many manga front load too much, then have problems when they need to figure out what happens next.

I really hope this one does well, and that it gets an official translation.  And maybe an anime or live action adaptation >.>

Little Big Planet music is good for cleaning your house to.