Even A Little Is Better Than Nothing

Given how relatively late I went to bed last night (a good thirty minutes or so past midnight), it’s not surprising that I started my first rest day relatively late as well.  I woke up around nine-thirty, but I didn’t really feel refreshed at all.  I must be because of the heat, and while it was windy, it was obviously much hotter than usual.  That meant that Summer was once again here, or at least it’s the case for us folk living here in the Philippines.

After some breakfast (which was really a brunch when I think about it now), I set about preparing the things I needed for what I was to do today… That is, do some model painting for the Librarium Challenge.  Before I got down to business though, I added a few details to each marine (via my steadily-decreasing bits supply), mainly purity seals and holstered bolt pistols (which means I am now out of said holstered bolt pistols), before giving those additions a layer of Tamiya blue.  Only after the paint dried did I actually start on the real work…

Or I should have.  Even with the windows open, it’s awfully hard to actually do any painting in my room, so I usually also turn on the lights in my room.  I used to have a fluorescent tube for room lighting, but I had to recently change to an energy-saving bulb.  While it’s more than adequate to illuminate the room during evenings, using it during the daytime only makes my eyes tire more quickly than usual.  So really, I was only able to paint after sunset.  Annoying.

Since I couldn’t do any painting during the afternoon, I went to the gym for a bit, and did my usual one-hour routine.  I can’t say that I feel any lighter though, and looking myself in the mirror still shows all the blubber concentrated around my lower abdomen…  Ugh.  I hope that I have some progress on that front come Saturday.

Speaking of progress…  I really have to start on my rewrite.  It’s the end of February, and I’ve literally only done ten pages out of a minimum of eighty pages.  Not good.  So that means that tomorrow will be allocated to that issue.  Five should be a good target, yes?

I’m… going to try to write at least that much tomorrow.  Yeah.

Hobby Sidetracking

I know that I should be using my rest day tomorrow to start double-timing on my screenplay rewrite, but at this point I don’t think I’m in the right mindset to even try… So I won’t.  Instead, I’ve decided to just spend at least some of it on my neglected hobbies, Warhammer 40k painting and modeling in particular.  

Specifically, I want to actually start on the 5-man Devastator squad I pledged for the Bolter and Chainsword’s annual Librarium Painting Challenge.  Along with the sergeant (a vet with a power fist that was basecoated and dipped a LONG time ago, but I never got around to finishing), the squad is rounded off by a pair of Missile Launcher marines, and a pair of Lascannon marines.  Not really points-efficient, but the point of the challenge is to put some paint on unpainted models after all.

It should be fun, though once I get the marines basecoated, I’ll definitely have to shift my focus to the screenplay on Thursday. Let’s see how many pages I get out then, eh?

As for work… Ah, it’s the usual Tueday shift, meaning that, had my CS systems been working, I would have had a heck of a headache at the end of the day.  Luckily they weren’t, which meant it was just membership calls for the most part, though those calls did come in faster than usual.

What else… Hmm, let’s see.  This morning on the way to work, someone’s fingers got caught in the doors of the MRT as it closed, and not at the threshold of the doors itself, but in the moving hinges to the side.  Ouch.  The folk around the poor woman tried to get the train to stop by pressing on the emergency button close by, but the train of course kept on going, and all this was highlighted by the train operator making an indignant announcement on the PA to stop playing around with the emergency stop button.  Needless to say, many people were more than a little annoyed at this.  Luckily the woman was able to free her hand once we got to the next station, but I can how something like this might leave a lasting negative impression on her.

Oh, and finally I wasn’t able to go to the gym this afternoon.  I was just so sleepy, that I pretty much decided to nap the rest of the afternoon (and the evening — I went to bed at around four, and woke up around nine).  It’s kind of my fault though, since I did stay up late (reading Zetman, for the curious).  I’ll just have to make up for it tomorrow afternoon, I guess.

And that’s pretty much it for me today.  Hopefully everyone else out there experienced more excitement than I did, ahaha.

Day Off

(The following is a short bit that I managed to type while I was at work.  With the extreme avail times that come with Monday shifts, I had nothing much to do aside from browsing so…  That said, it’s a little short, but it’s the germ of an idea at least.  Oh, and if anyone is wondering, yes this is pretty much connected to that story that-I-never-could-begin, Puerto Corazon.)

Miyu shivered, and opened her eyes.  She found herself staring up at her reflection, on the mirror installed on the ceiling above her.  She sat up, the blanket covering her falling off her naked frame.  Beside her, an older man lay snoring, in the same state of undress.

Miyu stared at her bedside companion for a moment, and frowned.  She quietly slid out of bed, and padded towards the shower, pausing briefly to pick up her panty, which lay discarded on the floor.  Her brassiere, similarly tossed aside, lay close by.

She walked into the shower stall, and turned on the water, full-blast.  The water that came out was cold, and she shivered in response, but Miyu made no move to adjust the temperature.  For a long time she just stood there, eyes closed, and let the water wash over her.

Then, she opened her eyes.

It was time to go.

A few minutes later she walked out, one of the hotel’s towels wrapped around her shoulders.  She was still topless, but she was not wearing her panty at least.  As quietly as she could, she began to pick up the rest of her clothes from the floor.

She quickly and quietly got dressed.  Instead of giving her long fall of brown hair the usual brushdown, she just ran her fingers through its length, just enough to get rid of the tangles.  She then tied up in a long ponytail.

Miyu looked at herself one more time in the mirror that stood just opposite to the bed, then nodded.  She picked up her handbag, and walked in the direction of the door.  She slipped on her sandals, and was about to open the door when she stopped.  She stared back at the man lying on the bed, still unaware that he now had the mattress to himself.

No, we can’t have that, she thought finally.

Miyu dug through the contents of her handbag, and eventually produced a small pouch.  She dumped its contents, rose petals and dried herbs, unto her left hand.

“Ας περάσει την εμπειρία της βραδιάς από τη μνήμη, μέχρι τίποτα δεν παραμένει,” she whispered, as she crushed the herbal mix she held. “Σαν ένα όνειρο, μισή ματιά και ποτέ δεν θυμόμαστε.”

With that, she blew the fragrant mixture from her hand.  The petals and herbs floated preternaturally over to where the man slept, and settled over his sleeping form.

Miyu dusted off her hands and, with her handbag cradled in one arm, exited the room.
  

Distracted For The Day

It’s my rest day today for the week, and as usual I had the choice to devote it to either either schoolwork (stuff related to screenplay writing), hobby-related stuff, or simply just resting in my bed.    Since I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to do any rewrites on my screenplay, and it was simply just wasteful to just laze around in bed all day, I chose the second option.  I didn’t do any drawing this time though, nor worked on my usual coloring projects, and instead indulged in manga-reading.

And I’ve been doing a lot of that over the past week or two. Otaku no Musume-san aside, I pretty much blitzed through Mangaka-san To Assistant-san To,  D-Fragments, Mysterious Girlfriend-X, and today’s Ubel Blatt.  Not too surprising I suppose, since I do get engrossed in what I read, and as a (admittedly clumsy) writer it does count as research for possible ideas (though likely not one my classmates nor my teachers would approve of).  Now if I could only properly make use of said new ideas.  Oh well…

As a result of bingeing on Ubel Blatt, I pretty much had to ditch my usual gym session this afternoon.  On the bright side, I think I’ve managed to curb my appetite somewhat for the day, so even though I didn’t do any exercise I think I compensated somewhat by not going over my set caloric intake.  Bananas were involved, as usual.

Tomorrow it’s back to work, but hopefully I can still keep that intake under control, and still have enough energy at the end of the day to not pass out once I go through my usual routine at the gym.

Ah, and I’ve once again overheard my father talking quietly over the phone today.  The topic was fairly ominous, with talk of radiation and chemotherapy.  I’m worried that it was nanay on the other line, and since she’s already experienced problems with tumors and whatnot (she’s had some growths removed from her cervix already), it’s not that short a leap to think about cancer.  I just hope it isn’t, as the family has enough stuff to worry about, especially with my sister’s wedding so close…

For some reason, I’m afraid that my dreams tonight won’t be as restful.  It’s a minor blessing then, that I don’t really remember what I dream about… when I have them anyway.

Relocation

Today was my first day at work at our new location, three floors down from where I’d been working in for more than a year. There’s really not that much of a difference, except for the fact that apparently we (me and the hold-overs from yesterday) weren’t assigned any stations.  As a result, we’re going have to literally fight for free stations until the allocation issue is fixed.  It’s not much of a problem yet, since today was the Monday shift, meaning few people were on duty, but I foresee trouble tomorrow at this rate.

As for my scheduling problem, it’s still not resolved.  It’s going to be an awkward next few weeks at this rate, as Workforce is standing their ground, and telling me that the only way I’ll get Saturday and Friday off is that I’ll have to look for someone to swap schedules with.  HAH, as if such a thing was easy (and I know that few would let go of such a convenient set of day offs), but all I can do right now is hope that my supervisor’s entreaties would get through to the higher ups.  Until then, I’ll just have to grit my teeth, and take those LOAs.  I just hope that my paycheck at the end of the month won’t suffer as a result.

My systems still haven’t been restored, so much like the previous days I was stuck on Membership duty.  Though it suspiciously felt like I was always first on the call queue, it’s far more preferable to answering CS calls, oh yes.

Oh, it rained today, though it never got strong enough as to overwhelm the drainage systems in my area and cause flooding.  I still had to wear a windbreaker so I could go to the gym this afternoon, but otherwise it was mostly the same.  Mmm, with the lower temperatures, it’s going to be easy going to sleep after this.

Finally, I’ve done ‘restoring’ all of the characters from the Mobage and Yuma as well.  Mami is up next, then likely the rest of the girls from the Mitakihara area.  Have to watch for memory allocation problems again though.  SAI can be so unstable at times, it’s worrying.

Recovery Status: Ongoing

As of today, I have about a week to do some work on my screenplay, so this means that my time after work, barring the usual stuff like going to the gym, will have to devoted to the rewrite.  While it’s not really required (yet) to  give the whole thing a revision, I will still have to do some work on the first ten pages, as that’s the minimum amount that’s going to be critiqued next week.  And you know me, I just love hearing my classmates tear into my work, you bet I do (note my sarcasm here).

Speaking of recovering stuff, I started on ‘fixing’ what I had left of the stampede.  I spent most of the day on one girl (Ayase), and did part of another (Akane), but at this rate (and the fact that I have to worry about my screenplay this week) means that it’ll probably be a while before I get to the point where I can actually look forward to doing the backgrounds, or generally adding new stuff to the project, instead of spending more time getting things back to how they were before the save accident.  Ugh.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering about my heel/ankle problem, it’s still stiff and painful, and I pretty much had to limp to class because of it.  It just shows how bad it is when, after rubbing Omega Pain Killer (a methyl salicylate camphot-menthol rub usually used for massages) on the affected area, I literally felt nothing, when normally one would feel a burning sensation for almost an hour.  Anyway, I’m going to pay the masseuse a visit again tomorrow after work, and hopefully things will start getting better  by Monday.

Speaking of work tomorrow, it’s another Sunday shift, meaning it’s the worst workday of my workweek, which means I better get to bed so I can better prepare myself for it.

Back To Square One

Somehow, I knew things were just going a little too well.  An accidental press of the ‘save’ button, followed by SAI stubbornly not wanting to undo the resizing that had been done prior to the save (due to its usual memory problems), pretty much torpedoed what amounts to days worth of work.  I’m seriously angry at myself now, as while I have the color schemes I want finalized, I’ll pretty much have to redraw all of the lineart from scratch, then I’ll have to fix and recolor the redrawn lineart.  That’ll likely take days again, if not weeks.  Stupid stupid, STUPID.

I’m so annoyed right now. Ugh, it’s bad enough that my left heel/ankle area is acting up (meaning some visits to the masseuse in the coming days), but thinking of all that work gone to waste makes me want to… break something.

Damnit.

Playing Hooky For Now

I didn’t go to the gym this afternoon.  My left knee was bugging me for most of the day at the office, and I was afraid that if I did my usual routine something would just give out.  And so I spent the rest of the afternoon at home, taking my first afternoon siesta for what seems to be a week.  Truth be known, before I finally dozed off, it didn’t really feel right. Just lying there in bed, I mean.  I suppose going to the gym every afternoon has become a habit of sorts, which is a good thing, since that means I can finally see things through to the end.  

It was a little convenient that it rained just as I was having second thoughts.  When I heard the patter of the raindrops on the roof beside my room I thought to myself, “Ah, I guess that means I won’t be able to go today.”  And with that, I was able to sleep more soundly.

I can’t say that the little siesta has fixed everything, but my knee is feeling much better now than how it was this morning.  So it’s back to the exercise routine tomorrow.  I’m not sure how I can make up for the missed day, but the goal for the week is still to lose at least a pound, so I’ll just see about that.  Less intake, and maybe a longer session at the gym perhaps?  Who knows?

Speaking of a refreshing afternoon nap, I think today was one of those days where it was really merited.  While it would be pushing it to say that my workshift was hellish, it wasn’t exactly how I wanted to end my week.  It was nearly five full hours of nonstop customer service calls, and I was this close to exploding on the callers I was talking.  In fact I think in some ways I did, as I was rude, brusque, and generally irritated.  It was like some idiot (likely in the workforce desk) gave me priority on the CS queue.  Earth to dumbarses, I’m a merchant rep first, CS rep second, not the other way around.  If I wanted to answer CS calls all day (and I don’t) I would have gone full-time.

It was a good thing my supervisor took the hint, and had me taken off the CS queue.  For all the flak the rest of my team gives her and our team coach, it’s times like these that I appreciate the efforts she does to help us out in, even if it’s something as simple as queue reassignment.

Anyway, enough for depressing work talk.  I’ve decided on the major colors for the remaining Pleiades.  Saki will get Green, Nico will get Blue, Mirai will get pink, while Satomi will get Indigo.  As for Sumire, well obviously she’d get Violet.  That, in the very least, was obvious.  I won’t be able to do the basing tonight though, but chores aside I should be able to work on them tomorrow. 

Hah, not that anyone cares about this little fan project of mine though.

P.S. For today’s reading, I finished Otaku no Musume-San.  It’s series like these (like Change! 123! and Wakusei no Samidare ,though for different reasons) that make me question the system that Japanese producers use to decide which manga get to be adapted to anime and which don’t.  Here we have nice and completed series, and yet they never get any kind of adaptation (which would lessen problems when said adaptation catches up to a source material, which is often a problem with an ongoing source).  I know I know, an anime is meant to publicize a work, and not vice versa, but it’s kind of a waste that series like these never get any exposure as a result.

Listening To Myself Ramble

Well, that was a surprisingly frustrating few hours at work.  For a Wednesday, there were sure a lot of calls on the queue, and this time around things only started to let up sometime after ten-thirty.  I’d have relaxed, if not for the fact that customer service calls didn’t really stop coming until around eleven.  That said, it was pretty much business as usual at the office.  Hopefully tomorrow won’t be as bad, as I’d really want to end my work week without a headache.

On the hobby side of things, I won’t be doing any base-coloring on the remaining girls in the stampede tonight because, well, as I mentioned in last night’s post it’s going to be hard to do so when the subjects in question don’t even have color schemes.  Okay, that’s not exactly true: both Mirai and Satomi have set hair colors, but the thing is their costumes as puella magi don’t.  I suppose I can do things sentai-style (which makes sense, given how the magical girl subgenre has taken nods from super sentai since at least Sailor Moon), but the fact remains: who gets which color?  

The three Pleiades so far that have schema to them (Kazumi, Umika, and Kaoru) have outfits associated strongly to a particular color, in this case Black, White, and Orange.  Given the sentai example I mentioned, the obvious choices would be the remaining colors you’d expect in a rainbow, meaning Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet.  

Incidentally, in the parent series (Madoka Magica) the general scheme of the outfit usually matched the hair color of the magical girl in question: for example Sayaka’s (who had blue hair) was mostly in shades of blue, while Madoka (whose hair was pink) had a frilly number that was very very pink.  Kazumi Magica (which features all the characters left unbased incidentally) follows this somewhat, with Kaoru and Kazumi’s (whose hair colors are orange and either black or a dark navy blue, respectively) magical girl costumes featuring parts with the same hues as their hair.  

Interestingly enough, their friend Umika’s dress doesn’t seem to follow this–Umika has dark blue hair, but her dress is mostly white.  So, unless those dark parts of her costume are really blue (hard to tell in a black-and-white comic), then it means that, at least in the Kazumi spinoff, there’s no direct correlation between hair color and the major color of a girl’s outfit…  Which makes things much more difficult, I suppose.

So I’m basically back to the beginning.  Since I can’t rely on hair color as a reliable marker (again, kind of hard to do in a black-and-white comic), I’ll have to see which color matches which girl more, at least in my mind.  Other fanwork would have helped in this case as a kind of reference, but sadly there’s a dearth of fanart on Kazumi Magica, much less colored fanart, barring one or two examples.  Talk about having limited options.

Okay, let’s start first on the most obvious one: Saki.  The single colored piece of art I’ve found on her gave her a mostly red scheme, and if you think about the sentai example it makes sense at face value.  After all, of the Pleiades (at this point of the manga) Saki seems to take the ‘big sister’ role in the group, which pretty much means it’s as close to being the leader as one could get, which in a super sentai show means getting stuck with the red suit.  

However it would be wise to remember that while the color theming of outfits has it roots in sentai shows, Madoka Magica and it’s spinoffs aren’t sentai, and where role expectations don’t necessarily match up with a specific color (or else we’d have Kyouko Sakura as a leader figure, ahaha).  Looking at other examples found in-universe, there’s quite a degree of variance; for example, Mami Tomoe’s dress is predominantly orange, Oriko Mikuni’s is mostly white, and Claire’s is a combination of orange and violet.

All this means of course is that I don’t have to go with red, though it might be the most obvious fit.  Heck, given the general military-esque feel of Saki’s dress, I’m tempted to actually use shades of green or khaki, though given how dark her dress is in grayscale the latter might not be optimal.  The thing is though, green also seems to fit another of the Pleiades, Nico Kanna.  Well, a lighter shade of green or maybe blue perhaps, since her dress reminds me of something one would expect from a skydiver (whose repertoire of clothing can feature bright colors)…

For the remaining two Pleiades (Satomi and Mirai), I’m tempted to use some shade of pink on one of them.  Mirai has a heart theme going with her polka-dotted dress, so giving her the baby-pink theme would be so obvious (and it doesn’t hurt that she has been shown with cotton-candy pink hair), but Satomi’s already been shown wearing a (light, almost-white) pink blouse, and I really can’t see her in something yellow, though indigo could work… Decisions, decisions…

Yeah, selecting a color scheme is serious business.  It’s kind of depressing though how all this effort might be invalidated once a future chapter of Kazumi Magica gets another color spread.  Ah well.

Oh, and what about Sumire?  I’d say that her name alone gives enough hints to what color I’m going to use, ahaha.

Filling In The Gaps

What could I say?  It was yet another routine Tuesday at the office, which meant that, from around seven to at least ten in the morning the calls came in nearly nonstop.  Thankfully once it hit around ten-thirty or so the queue started to wind down, at least on the customer service side of the equation.  This didn’t mean that the merchant side of things stopped completely, but at least it was far less stressful.

I was a little surprised when it started raining hard a few minutes before I got off my shift.  By the time I got out, the street in front of the office was already flooded in at least ankle-high water.  Needless to say it wasn’t really a pleasant walk to and from the MRT station, especially since I didn’t bring an umbrella (And why should I? The forecast said nothing about rain!).  The rain had more or less blown over by the time I arrived home though, and the skies remained clear as I set out for the afternoon for my usual session at the gym.

Once I got home, I obviously set to work on giving the remaining girls in the Puella Stampede base colors… Well, at least those with official or semi-official color schemes anyway.  This still leaves about five more without base colors though (is anyone surprised at all that all of them are from the Kazumi Magica manga?), so unless the manga-ka comes up with some color spreads for the comic in the next issue of Kirara Forward, then I’ll likely have to rely on fill-in-the-blanks via Color Wheel.  May Haruhi help us all.