She had a nicely-sized serving of mostaccoli for dinner, and seems a hell of a lot better than she did on Friday.
Next step was for me to attend to a few minor details.
While Mom was having dinner and watching her shows (Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune) I took the blade assembly from from the fan that had been in the front hall and mounted it into the housing of the fan I tripped over, thus taking a broken fan and another fan that didn't work all that well and making one good, powerful fan. I'm not kidding; the fan in the front hall appeared to have one speed, "low", even when it was on "high". Now it blows like a hurricane, though it makes approximately as much noise as one in the process.
Awhile after all that I decided I wanted something else for dinner; I'd had mostaccoli for dinner last night, and then had it again after we got home from seeing the doctor. I went to KFC and got a fill-up box.
First, though, I stopped at a BBQ shack which opened up earlier this year and got a menu, so I can perhaps try out their food. Then I hit K-Mart for a new fan to replace the one that broke Friday when I tripped over it. Then I went to KFC, and stopped to fill up the Escort on the way home.
(BTW, mileage: 301.5 on about 8.5 gallons of gas, which is 35.5 MPG, which is exactly right for that car. So the engine's fully broken in now.)
Then I watched anime while eating my food and giving scraps of chicken skin to the kitties.
* * *
As for the anime, I'm thinking I'll be dropping Zettai Karen Children from the lineup if ep 4 does not show significant improvement over the prior episodes.
I'm stating a fact: I am not enjoying this series. Kaoru is the main problem; I intensely dislike the character. I've more than had my fill of the tsundere'kko schtick as it is, and this latest version of it is no improvement.
But Kaoru using her telekinesis to throw her boss Minamoto around is not the only problem. The big boss is a complete idiot. And this deal with BABEL having a way of predicting troubles which only espers can solve is idiotic, particularly because the "espers" in question are young girls who don't/won't listen to anyone and half the time they're the cause of the problem which has been predicted.
Spoilers:
In ep 2 Kaoru's attitude is directly responsible for a situation which puts "The Children" (as she and her cohorts are called) into mortal danger. She refused to sit still for medical diagnosis after an action in which she got hurt, even going to far as to ruin the diagnostic machine with her power; and then later her power went out of control and would have killed the three girls in a helicopter crash if Minamoto hadn't thought to unlock their limiters. (Nothing is said, by the way, about the pilots and crew of the helicopter; did they live or die? Ah, who cares, right?) And this comes right after the girls disobey Minamoto's orders, causing a disaster which otherwise could have been averted if they had only listened to their boss.
But there are no consequences, no limitations, no nothin'--Kaoru isn't even scolded for disobeying orders or ruining an incredibly expensive piece of medical equipment. Oh, it's not her fault she lost control of her powers! --except that it is her fault, because she couldn't be bothered to do as she was told and lie still on a table for ten minutes.
In the latest episode, the three girls just decide to move in with Minamoto, and the useless big boss rubber-stamps the paperwork without anyone asking Minamoto what he wants.
END SPOILERS.
Ep 4 won't address any of this; it'll be more of the same--but I'm going to give the show a chance to surprise me.
* * *
Kimi ni Todoke has one ep left--just one--and that makes me sad. I'll end up watching it over again, and making DVDs of it.
The last three eps I've seen covered Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve, which also happens to be Sawako's birthday; and they're made of excellent.
I LOL at a caption in this description of ep 23:
Captioned: The last thing Kurumi saw in the alternate NICE BOAT ending.
I LOL when I saw that image the first time, while watching the ep; and then I LOL again at that caption.
* * *
I'm still thinking about making a t-shirt with the School Days title card on the front and "NICE BOAT" on the back. Kyaa ha ha ha ha ha....
* * *
Knowing--as I do--that the original manga artist who drew Kimi ni Todoke is from Hokkaido, I am thinking that perhaps KnT is set in Hokkaido. It wouldn't be the first anime series I saw that was set thus (True Tears is set in Hokkaido, I think). But Chicory is too, and seeing all the snowy scenes in KnT is kind of giving me a hankering to draw some of my own.
On the minus side, I don't believe we'll be seeing a swimsuit episode in Kimi ni Todoke unless a miracle occurs and we get another season; and I doubt that'll happen. I'm expecting the last ep to feature Sawako and Kazehaya finally becoming a couple, which is pretty much the end of that story.
OTOH: Marmalade Boy went on for thirty eps after Miki and Yuu became a couple. Then again, Miki was an angst-ridden, insecure worrywort ready to fountain tears at the drop of a hat; Sayako is physically incapable of imagining perfidy in anyone (even Kurumi!) and so she trusts people in ways Miki could not, ever, not even with megadoses of Xanax to calm her anxieties.
I'm not kidding. In MB, Yuu ended up working with Suzu as a model, and Miki got all bent out of shape over it, worrying that Yuu would leave her for Suzu, and it was a big mess.
If the same situation happened in KnT: Kazehaya ends up working with Kurumi on a model shoot; and Sawako says, "Oh! That's so wonderful!" ...and that's it.
Point is, MB had a shitton of angles, because of the impossibly convoluted interrelationships of all the characters. This image of the MB "love map" isn't very good, but I couldn't find the full-size one I saved about ten years ago:
You can get the gist of it. Forget a "love triangle"; this is a love Calabi-Yau manifold.
KnT is a lot simpler: Sawako and Kazehaya love each other, though neither knows it just yet; and Kurumi loves Kazehaya, who neither knows nor cares about Kurumi's feelings. Sawako knows about Kurumi's feelings, and cares, but is completely unthreatened by them.
I would really enjoy watching Sawako and Kazehaya continue to fumble their way together, even if they do become a couple in ep 25. There are 11 volumes of manga in Japanese release; right now there are 4 available in the US, and 5 comes out in a couple of days.
Ep 14 of the anime ends pretty much right where volume 4 of the manga does. Ep 25 of KnT was shown 3/30/2010, and volume 11 of the manga came out 6/11/10, so unless there was cross-collusion between anime and manga production, there's got to be more story to be told.
In fact, production of the anime couldn't have started after volume 9 came out in Japan (on 9/11/09) since the first ep of anime ran 10/6/09. So it seems possible to me that the anime may only run up to about volume 8 of the manga, or perhaps a bit further--and if that's so, then that leaves us 3-4 more volumes of manga which could be animated if anyone has any inclination to do so.*
Okay, Japan! Hop to it! KnT must continue!
* * *
* Assuming that the manga continues publication; and why the hell wouldn't it? KnT was popular enough a manga series to spawn a 25-ep anime series, which is not easy to manage in post-bubble
Japan. Hell, most anime series are 13 eps these days. So if KnT is brought to an end right when there's an anime series of it still being released to DVD, the marketing people in charge of that should all be fired and replaced with people who have some freaking common sense.
* * *
Man, ep 9 of To Aru Majutsu no Index--holy crap. There's only one thing that bothered me about it.
SPOILER:.dedderhs-nu teg ot deganam lyitS woh nialpxe ton did yehT END SPOILER.
Other than that one thing, it was pretty damn cool the way that story arc was resolved.
* * *
That reverse text kind of looks like Orcish from WoW. Speaking of which....