Tag: anime

I stayed up way too damn late last night so I could finish watching the end of PlanetES1, so this morning I stopped by the Terrapin and got something to drink. My usual drink is their “Grand Canyon”, which is 2 shots of espresso, a shot of chocolate, a shot of mango and steamed milk. Today, I decided to try something different and while it was good; for the sake of my stomach lining, I’m not planning on ever ordering it again. I got an Honest Terrapin Sunrise. That’s 3 shots of piping-hot espresso layered on top of a glass of ice-cold orange juice.

Naturally, I had to get this to go and to do that; they stick it in a plastic cup (since the majority of the drink is the OJ) with a lid and a straw. Personally, I think they should have used the paper cups with the sipping lid that most of the coffee drinks come in because I think the idea of the Sunrise is to slam down the espresso & chase it with the OJ. And that idea is defeated by putting a straw in the drink that bypasses the espresso and makes you drink the OJ first. As soon as I was safely back in the office, I removed the lid and started to drink the Sunrise as “God intended it to be drunk”. *grin*

It’s an unusual sensation because the OJ cools the espresso and raises the acidity of the drink considerably. Also, the espresso and OJ do start to mix into one another as you drink it. This forms a layer of slightly-warm , bitter OJ on your tongue. It’s not as unpleasant as that might sound but the Sunrise is definitely an acquired taste, which I could not recommend to everyone (unlike say the Grand Canyon which just rocks my world).

It sounds bizarre but the caffeine of the espresso combined with the vitamin C & natural sugars in the OJ really helps to wake you up. Of course, it’s been a couple of hours since I drank it and it’s beginning to wear off now, which is bad. On the other hand, I’m just about ready to head out to lunch; so I should be able to pick something else up to help me get through the rest of my head, which is good.

1A very good series that starts off weak (too much comedy/slapstickishness) but ends much stronger with several very good heartstring tuggin’ episodes. For the most part, each episode stands by itself but uses information in previous episodes to build the story. Unfortunately, the last 6 episodes or so seem to be more tightly integrated and I’m missing 22 & 23; which puts a massive gap into the story for me. This is one that I will strongly consider purchasing once it’s available in the US (my current copies are all fansubs).

We’re just returning to work after a 3 day week (hope everybody enjoyed their Memorial day) and it was sooo nice not to have to get up & come to work yesterday. Alas, I’ve to find anybody to sponsor me to live without working; so I’m back to work today. :p Not too much to report about the weekend; I slept late everyday and didn’t do very much other than that.

Friday night, Ariesna and I visited our friend Bryon (and Sekhmet and Baset and Toby-san and Cap’n Jack). We all went out to this sub-shop in Vinton that Ariesna & I had never been to and it was fabulous! They have a similar setup to the Quiznos chain, but they do a much better job. Then we went back to Bryon’s place and watched some anime. I can’t quite recall the title right now, but I’ll look it up later and add it in the comments or update this post. It was cool and I’ve bumped it higher on my playlist (at the moment, I’m watching PlanetES).

Saturday, we basically slept the day away and the same for most of Sunday. Monday, we only slept have the day away and then went out to do some shopping. I got some new shirts and a new toy, but I’m not talking about that yet because I’m going to surprise some of my co-workers with it first (and I know at least one of them reads this blog).

Muhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Back to reality and time for the reviews….

I finished reading The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint and while it wasn’t bad; there’s definitely a sense that I read this book out of order from the series it appears to be in. There were issues that somewhat came up that never got really explained and that annoyed me to some extent but they weren’t vital to the story; so it wasn’t too big of an issue. The other thing I noticed about this book is how different the writing style is from what I generally read.

Most authors that I like tend to dump massive amounts of detail on you with a shovel. Mr. de Lint didn’t do that; instead, he only gave a bare minimum of detail and spent the rest of the pages dealing with the emtions & personality of the characters. It took me a bit to get into the book; but once I really got going with it, I found it most enjoyable. Overall, I give it 3.75 out of 5 points.

Then I went ahead and read The Little Country also by Charles de Lint and found it to be a much better book. The story was much richer in detail and I found it easier to empathize with the characters in this book; as compared to the ones in The Onion Girl. It probably helps that this is set over in Cornwall and I’ve always wanted to visit the British Isles. 😀 Overall, I’d give this book 4.25 out of 5 points.

Oh and next up, I’ll be reading Elizabeth Peter’s Children of the Storm.

Ok, I might have misspelled that title but it should be close enough to give you an idea of what this musing is about. You see, I was sitting at my desk waiting for the program to finish processing some data (so I could double-check the results) when my mind started wondering and it occurred to me that we all have our own odd little sayings. Given that I haven’t anything better to do at the moment, as the computer is especially slow today); I figured that I’d share a few of mine with you. If the topic interests you, feel free to leave a few of your own sayings in the comments or post something on your blog.

  • “Just another day in paradise, wish I were there.”: I use this one alot at work when people ask me how I’m doing. It’s not that I hate my job or anything like that. It’s just that actually working for a living tends to get me down a bit. Ok, that sounds really pathetic… Ah screw it, when I was a kid there were basically 2 things that I wanted to do: be an astronaut and to have enough money to do whatever I want whenever I want. As neither one of those happened, I’m going to use them as my excuse for disliking working for a living. Don’t laugh at me too hard for my dislike of work, after all I actually do my job, rather than try to sponge my livelyhood off of the welfare system.
  • “Wassup, cheesewhiz”: To be perfectly honest, I only use this one on a particular friend of mine and neither of us remembers when or why I started it. We think there was some sort of story or incident that sparked it. The wassup is optional and may be randomly replaced with Hey, ya.
  • Raise your right hand in front of you with the middle 3 fingers extended and the palm facing you, “I’d tell you to read between the lines but I don’t think you’re that smart!” Then lower the outer 2 fingers, so only your middle finger is still extended. I use this when I’m annoyed with one of my friends and want to insult them. Ok, it’s not nice but then I never honestly claimed I was a nice guy.
  • “Soka”: This one I picked up from watching a lot of anime and I have a sneaky suspicion that I’m saying it wrong, misinterrpreting it or at least misspelling it; however from what I can tell, it basically means I understand. After watching all the anime that I have and reading the sort of Sci-Fi books I like; I would venture to say it’s similar to saying I grok you.

Well, my program just finished processing; so it’s time to get back to real work.