Heather Meadows – Page 103 – p i x e l s c r i b b l e s

What is UP?!

Thought I’d drop a quick line and tell you what’s going on with me.

1) Brooke’s wedding was beautiful, and this past weekend I saw her off at the airport. She’s coming back next month though, so it’s kind of like she’s just on vacation…especially since her apartment still looks like she lives there ;)

2) Sean got a new job. He started yesterday. So far it looks pretty good. He works my same hours, 10 to 7. This morning I got up and made us both a lunch :) Assuming things work out, we will be buying my new Yaris around the middle of March.

3) My mom’s older sister is going through a difficult time with some medical issues, so my mom is ~~flying~~ driving up there to take care of things. I’m just hoping everything will work out. I wish my aunt would move to Kentucky and live near my mom.

4) Water is dripping from the apartment above directly into Sean’s shower. I guess it’s good that it’s not seeping into our floor! The maintenance guy showed up this morning at 8 o’clock. I was still in bed.

5) I have a BIG DECISION that I have been weighing for weeks now. I think I’ve almost made it, but I’m still waiting on some information before I commit. Certain things that are happening in the meantime are making the new venture more and more appealing…

6) I love art blogs. One relatively minor goal in my life is to make enough money so that I can buy a few pieces from my favorite art bloggers.

7) Lately I have really been wanting to buy a Japanese-style hot water heater, some green tea (the actual tea, not a tea bag), and a teapot. The water heater would be the most expensive, but I’ve wanted to have one ever since I first went to Japan. It’s just that in the past few weeks, I’ve really wanted to have the option to brew a pot of green tea at work without having to microwave the water.

8) I’m getting over my cold.

Brooke is moving to a land of mutants!

Fortunately, they’re awful cute.

Well, Brooke’s leaving tomorrow

Moving to England, if you’re not in the know.

For some reason I thought I had another week before she left. My mistake. I’m not sure where I got that idea.

But because of that, the only times I’ve talked to her since the wedding have been by phone. I was thinking I’d give her a week to deal with packing and then try to hang out some.

So much for that. Good one, Heather. This is what assume does!

Anyway, I’m going over there now, at least.

cf. Detective Conan 219

I am pretty sure it’s impossible not to be a hardcore fan of Kaitou Kid.

But never fear…Kudo Shinichi will always be ichiban.

Ah, sweeps

The girl who does our news promotions videos, heretoafter referred to as Promotions Chick, has her office in a space, little more than an alcove, off the hallway leading to my second door. (My expansive office, now known as the Breezeway, offers quite the contrast.)

Promotions Chick has been working twelve-hour days to get out spots for sweeps stories, and when she’s finished she exports them to mpeg and sends them to me too. Today, suddenly, promo videos started filling my inbox.

Me (calling down the hall): I’ve got promos out the wazoo in here!

Promotions Chick: Eww, gross.

Me: (laughs)

Promotions Chick: That can’t be comfortable.

Me: I do what I can.

Bad fansubbing

I have been watching a particular anime series that is quite long. No one fansubber has subbed everything, so I have seen translations from a number of different groups.

One group had patently horrible subtitles. The English was broken and often made no sense, and pivotal vocabulary was incorrect. Names were wrong or in Chinese–apparently the translator had a Chinese version they used to translate it–and the timing was completely off.

But despite all those problems, this wasn’t the worst fansub job I’ve come across.

I’m into a different fansubber now, and this group bothers me far more than the other. Their English is fine–well written and perfectly comprehensible.

But they don’t write what the characters are actually saying!

Characters in this anime are extremely precise, but this fansubber will leave out entire sections of information. They will also add in dialogue that isn’t there. For example, a character thinking “From the condition of the body, the death is definitely due to poisoning” is subtitled, “Who is the one who committed the murder?” (This line of thought continues, “The most suspicious is that person, and there should be evidence,” but the subtitles say “There’s something about that match, I know something’s wrong.” >_<) You can understand what’s going on with these subtitles, but if you think about it, they’re telling a completely different story. A story in which the main character has hunches instead of deductions! Which is ridiculous. I liked the horribly-broken, poorly-timed subtitles with the occasional mistranslated word of vocabulary better because I could simply glance at them and use them as a reference while I listened to the Japanese. With these “perfect” English subtitles, I have to read them, listen to the Japanese, and filter out which subtitles were wrong or incomplete or added in for no apparent reason. I’m not to a point with my Japanese language comprehension that I can just watch this show raw and understand everything. I depend on the subtitles to guide me through the hairier parts. So these subtitles are driving me crazy.

So much for the fever

I needn’t have worried; the fever broke overnight, and my temperature upon awakening this morning was a cool 96.3. I’ve got the occasional cough, but nothing so serious that I can’t work.

I’m now drinking orange juice. And it’s good!

I’m actually sick!

I even have a fever. It’s mild–100.9–but still.

I’ve taken some Advil, and I’m going to bed. If I’m still feverish in the morning, I guess I’ll call in ;P Hate to do that though, I get so behind…

Good one

I have been informed that there’s a woman performing a striptease on the PETA website.

Yeah, that’s a good way to get taken seriously!

(I personally feel that animals should be treated well, from the time they’re born/hatched until the time they end up on my dinner plate.)

Koi wa Thrill Shock Suspense

Koi wa Thrill Shock Suspense ties with Nazo for my favorite Conan OP song.

However…

[the video is gone now.
it was Conan doing a
very serious dance
during the opening titles.]

Would Kudo Shinichi really do that? Really?

Fortunately, there are plenty of YouTube goofs who enjoyed the little dance.

(Actually, that dance would be a good cosplay performance. You know, if you’re into that sort of thing…)

An observation

The Mouri family is always on freaking vacation! Man, I need to become a meitantei ;P

A thrill of love

As I stood at the front of the church, I was struck–hard–by the singularly beautiful moment of Brooke coming down the aisle.

“Oh my god,” I said, and then I was shuddering with sobs I fought to force back.

It wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t the loneliness I expect to feel when my best friend and I are parted by the sea. It wasn’t mourning at all.

It was amazement. It was bliss. It was my primal response to ultimate beauty.

The organ music surged through me as one of the most amazing women I’ve ever known floated up to the altar. Dorothy rubbed my back to calm me as I gasped for air, blinking back tears of joy.

My husband is awesome.

We’ve been married four years, but I still learn new things about him all the time.

Today I learned that Sean Meadows can give one hell of a speech.

I guess I assumed that because I’m terrible at giving speeches, Sean would be too–that it was just part of our personalities. Even now, I sometimes forget that we are not the same person.

“It’s your turn,” David said. Sean forced his way through the pain of his rental shoes up to the front of the room, where Brooke and David stood with champagne glasses in front of their wedding cake.

“When David turned 30, he told me he wanted to be with someone,” Sean said. “He said he was lonely and unhappy.

“As his friend, I of course had to tell him the truth. ‘You’re not going to get anywhere on that talking to me every night.'”

Sean paused while everyone laughed. Then, “I was wrong,” he said.

“Brooke and David hadn’t met yet, but one day I said, ‘Do you think David and Brooke…?’ And Heather said, ‘No.'” More laughter.

“It didn’t happen until right after Heather and I had a personal tragedy. David came to visit and they finally met.

“They didn’t waste any time.”

Sean’s speech was especially good because it complemented David’s speech quite well. I don’t know if they planned that or not. David mentioned briefly how it happened and spent most of his time (rightly) on his relationship with Brooke; that meant Sean was able to go back and fill in the gaps.

What really impressed me was the fact that Sean didn’t “write” his speech. He thought about what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it, and then he went up there with no notes and just told it all conversationally. He never seemed to fumble or forget what he wanted to say, and he paused at just the right times.

There were a couple times when I wasn’t sure if the people in the back could hear him, but that is the only problem I can think of.

I love hearing good public speakers. I never imagined that I’d married one!

(Note: Because he didn’t write his speech out, I had to write it from memory. I’m sure I got the wording wrong here and there. I wish I had managed to get it recorded with my camera, but unfortunately I had to change batteries right when Sean went up to talk ;P)

Why can’t people write?

I’m not talking about injecting voice into prose; I’m talking about spelling things correctly, using correct verb tenses, and having enough of a vocabulary to not misuse common words. These are professionals, people with important jobs, community residents who want to get their voices out there. These are PIOs for nationally-affiliated organizations.

Has it always been this way? Have I just been shielded from it by not working in large organizations or seeing dozens of horrendous news releases every week?

Japanophiles like to make fun of Engrish, and to haughtily suggest that in this 21st century, Japanese companies could surely hire a native speaker to write their copy.

But I wonder if a native speaker would truly be any better.

Look at that weird thing

I’ve added a Twitter box to my sidebar. (I also moved the search box to the top. Now I’m thinking I’d like to put the search into the header somewhere, but I’ll worry about completely redesigning my template later ;P)

Twitter is basically a quick way you can let people know what you’re up to. Now I won’t have to put one-line posts on my blog anymore!

Don’t worry; I’ll still do it. But maybe not as much?