When Blogs Collide

As you may or may not have noticed, this blog has grown a bit. My wife, Riiana Doon, has decided to combine her blog into mine, instead of us having two separate blogs. She will be posting now alongside me. All the links from Animeholic, her old blog, are in the process of being moved here, we'll be going under some construction for a while so things might seem strange for a few days. We are hoping to have a fresh new look and get things organized by the new year. Expect more content, more frequently. Riiana will be doing a post soon to introduce herself to those of my readers who might not know her, and you can now find the past contents of her blog here. Hope you enjoy the changes and we look forward to blogging together in 2009!



images from: gelbooru

Snow Daze

So a few days ago it started snowing, and it finally stuck around instead of melting. I thought I'd get some pictures, unfortunately the mountains were covered in cloud when I went out to get pictures of them, so none this time. It snowed for a couple days, still have some left over but a lot of it melted today. The temperature has been just below zero for the last couple nights, during the day the it's more bearable. That would be just fine normally, but the 2nd day of snow, our gas furnace died. It didn't just go out, we had a furnace guy come over and estimate the cost, and he said we're better off getting a brand new one. We still haven't gotten it fixed/replaced yet, so we had to have our son stay over at grandma's at night until everything is taken care of. We set up space heaters and have been using the stove to keep warm for now... Were hoping to get it fixed today but it didn't happen. It's really just bad timing, as we've already done our Christmas shopping. But, worse things have happened. I really didn't even want to blog about our little crisis at all, and rather just post nice pictures of snow up. We're making due though, and hopefully tomorrow everything will be back to normal. Luckily it got warmer today and tomorrow is going to be even warmer, so things won't be so bad. I would have more pictures but I haven't been in the right mindset to get much more than this. Hopefully after the heater gets fixed we get some more snow though, it usually doesn't stay very long around here, and I really want to make a snowman with my son this winter. This wasn't enough to make a snowman, we tried. The snow doesn't pack all that well either.




One of these days I'll get some pictures of the mountains, they look great after a good snow, especially Pikes Peak. I'm still not used to living near mountains though, since we've only been out here for just over a year. I planned to take more figures outside for pictures, but my camera decided to not function properly when I got to the second figure, and then my son had friends come over and play in the yard so I figured I'll just hold off pictures until another day. I really don't care for snow too much, but it's not as common as where I used to live so I'm starting to like it more. Summer here was just thunderstorm after thunderstorm, at least snowstorms are pretty. This area misses a lot of snowfall because the majority of it gets dumped in the mountains. Where I come from, winter is a lot more harsh than here. We'll be lucky if there's any snow for Christmas at all really. I guess that's all I have to post for now. I thought about doing a series of "A week in.." or "A Day in.." posts but I'm not sure it'd be very interesting here.

Ryoko Asakura Figma

Ryoko Asakura is a character from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and this lovely Figma arrived about a week ago now. I just hadn't gotten around to taking pictures and reviewing, but she's been gracing my shelves (as you may have noticed in my last post). I got her from Hobby Search as usual, and she cost 2,261 Yen, not including shipping. She's still in stock as of the time I'm posting this, so if you like you can buy her here.






I'm pleased to say that I found no flaws in this figure. She came with 11 hands, 2 faces, one head of Taniguchi (a male character from the same series), and one knife. The knife itself could have been done better, only because the blade is a bit too flexible. I'm sure there's a good reason for that though. Ryoko took a little longer than most of my packages, US Customs held her for three days. Something told me a girl with a simple knife like this would get held longer in customs, they probably had to check her for real weapons *roll eyes* Since I don't have any male figures from the Haruhi series, I just decided to use his head in ways that were befitting of a knife wielding psycho woman.





I like how aside from the two knife wielding hands there's another extra hand included to hold the knife blade itself. This is no doubt to recreate the fight scene between Ryoko and Yuki Nagato. I was going to attempt that myself but I figured I should wait until I get Kyon too. Yeah, I'll probably end up getting him but not for a while yet. Sorry, no Taniguchi in one piece pictures from me. Anyways, Ryoko is another Figma that I suggest fans of Haruhi, blue hair girls, or crazy women with knives pick up. Until next time!




And here's a little accompanying video.

It's So Empty: Shelf Life

Today I was going to post up a photo shoot of my Ryoko Asakura Figma, but something else came up. I've been wanting a new place to put my figures other than on my very wobbly computer shelf. I've only been collecting figures since June I believe. The picture below is the now nearly empty and lonely shelf I had the figures on before.



All my Figma were on the middle shelf that Tabitha is sitting on. It seemed pretty cramped and crowded so it was time to figure out how to compensate for my growing collection, since I got pre-orders lined up all the way to April so far, I'm obviously going to need more space. Plus, as I said, that computer shelf is very wobbly. I have a son, and well, he likes to jump around and make the whole house shake when he's playing indoors (this is a trailer house we're talking about here), so must secure figures from falling to their death. Speaking of my son, he helped a little with the shelves.




The shelves aren't very pretty, nor are my walls. This is a project for another day. I planned to paint the living room walls either castle-like or perhaps just buy new paneling all together. The shelves will get touched up when I get around to it as well. You can see Yoko is hanging from the Christmas lights, waiting to snipe anyone who comes through the front door unwelcome. Also Chi is hanging out on the tree, since she has no base, and can't stand on her own. I really wish I had a better Chi figure, will be getting a PVC one in the future. I'd be extremely happy if by some crazy stroke of luck they made her into a Figma. Just looking at my shelves makes me realize how small my collection really is. I thought I was going overboard but I have tons of space for figures now. I'm willing to bet I'll be running out of space by this time next year though (if I continue the way I'm going).






The diamond shaped shelf here is the future home of my nendoroid collection, Miku from the Mixing Box is guarding it for now. Then you can see my old shelf above the Chobits wall scroll holding pictures random knick knacks and part of my manga collection. If you're wondering what that other little thing on the wall is next to the Chi wall scroll, it's cardboard cover to a fat pack from a Magic: The Gathering (collectible card game) set. I liked the artwork so it got a spot on the wall, this tends to happen, since this is a rent-to-own deal I don't need to worry about tape/nails etc in the walls.



And last of all, all my current figure boxes (minus Miku Mixing Box and a figure who shall remain nameless for now). Also, after getting annoyed by hunting for pieces of Figmas to swap in and out when they were in their original boxes.. a shoe box filled with Figma bags and spare crappy Revoltech stand parts.