Simpler pleasures for the weekend

It's funny to realize this, but I'm actually not bored.
A while back I blogged about walking into town only to end up spending money on frivolous things to entertain myself. This was one of those weekends where I didn't spend a dime (except for a quick grocery run last night, of course). A little motivation goes a long way.

Having the Kamen Rider figures in my hands reminded me that I actually had a boxed set of the Ryuki TV series on DVD that I never watched. The original show was a 50-episodes series with a running plot (you couldn't really miss an episode) so DVD bootleg seemed the way to go (authentic discs would've cost me an arm and a leg, not to mention a lack of sub-titles and that they'd be region-locked for Japanese DVD players. Anyway...

Naturally, for bootlegs, you get what you pay for... and there were some questionable authoring technique employed. In fact, disc 4 of 6 refused to play the second half of the disc. I ended up ripping it and copying it to another DVD-R to watch the rest. And Disc 5... I'm not really sure what happened. At the time I watched part of it and somewhere along the way I think it had a skipping problem so I had a minor hissy fit and ejected it.

That was months ago.
Anyhow, Yesterday afternoon, I decided to watch Disc5 in its entirety. Still froze at one spot, but I hit the fast-forward on the remote for a moment and then it continued playing. And over the last 2 days, I took in the last 20 episodes of the series. *whew*

The final verdict? Put aside the cheapy CG work, and it's actually pretty good for a "children's show" (ok, right, "children's" programming is slightly different in Japan than it is around North America). I was pleasantly surprised at the end - the last few episodes wrapped up a lot better than I'd been previously told (popular opinion is that it's too open-ended; I didn't think so).

I also got around to sitting out on my balcony for the afternoon to read a bunch of stuff I had set aside. Finally got all caught up with my Sin City collections. Just missing "To Hell and Back" - seems like a pretty heavy volume, that one. Must've been longer than I thought out there... I got a little sunburned on my chest.

Yeah - yours truly shirtless on a hot summer day. BYOB: Bring your own barfbags. ^_^;
I've always been fairly self-consious so I never wear anything less than a T-shirt out - not even a tanktop. So natch: I have a "farmer's tan" ...I try my best to keep it under control... a bit of burn can't be helped.

Now ...gotta figure out what's for dinner... Maybe just a pack of instant noodle for tonight.