Yonezawa Rika "Misokon" vol. 1

I saw this manga at Book Off a couple months ago and was vaguely interested, but it was on the $3 shelf and I'm trying not to start new series before reading some of the stuff I've already got, so I passed it up. Then the other day they had volume one on the dollar shelf, so I figured why not?

The story follows Emi, a thirty-year-old restaurant consultant who's worried about becoming an old maid. The title is what jumped out at me; misokon (or miso-com, as it's oddly romanised on the jacket) is written 30婚 (kon being the second character in kekkon (marriage), so it translates roughly to something like "Married at 30"), so I like oh hey, a story about someone my age, not a highschooler. The blurb on the jacket talks about how Emi has always dreamed about getting married, but she's very passive and just waits for the man of her dreams to come along without ever doing anything about it herself.

It would be neat if by the end of the series she still doesn't end up with anyone and realises that's okay, too, though I don't know if it will go that direction. If nothing else, at least it's about her changing her attitudes and becoming a better person all around rather than simply learning how to appeal to men so that she can get married.

So far there's five volumes, so there's not a lot to catch up on, which is nice.

Yet another computer update

Well. It was working okay last night after uninstalling Norton, so I proceeded to the next step, uninstalling Symantec Live Update. After uninstalling it, I shut down my computer, as it said it needed to reboot to finish the uninstall.

Turned it on just now and the wireless is dead. So now I'm doing the recovery disks again, and will try not uninstalling Symantec Live Update and see if I can keep my internet that way. I am really, really pissed off by this. It's ridiculous that these so-called security programs should have the power to completely fuck up your computer if you try to uninstall them. However, at least with Norton itself uninstalled, Symantec Live Update shouldn't have anything to do (it gives you updates for your Symantec programs, and if I have Norton uninstalled, there are no Symantec programs to update), so leaving it on there shouldn't interfere with anything. Getting Norton itself off is the important part, the rest is just decluttering (can you believe out of the box, my 200 GB hard drive is only 86% free?).

So cross your fingers that this works.

Whatever.

I thought it was Norton, but I don't even know. I tried again today twice and still had the wireless problems regardless of what I did. It seems like yesterday's decent speeds were a fluke rather than a sign of something better. I'm doing the system restore for a fourth time now and returning it tomorrow, and they better not fucking charge me 15% for this piece of shit.

31 Days of Happiness: Day 27

Well, so much for my new computer being a happy thing. :( Instead, today I'm happy about Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo.

I first heard about Kindaichi in 1995 when I watched some of the episodes of the drama starring Doumoto Tsuyoshi from KinKi Kids. It wasn't until several years later, when the Mandarake opened in Torrance and I started really branching out in my manga-reading because they had such low prices (which now seem high compared to all the dollar manga I get at Book Off!) that I finally read the manga. I fell in love with it instantly and was really bummed to find it had ended in 2000 (I think that was actually probably right around when I was getting into them). So when they started publishing it again in 2004, I was thrilled (even though they only put out one new mystery a year or so).

I'm currently reading Yukiryou Densetsu Satsujin Jiken, which I thought was the most recent one, but I just went on Amazon and found they released two new ones (a single-volume story (many of these are two volumes) and one volume of two short stories) earlier this month. Yay. I'll have to keep an eye out for them.

Walking: "Ayu" mural

This evening we walked up to the store and I took the camera with us hoping to get a few shots. Unfortunately it was overcast and starting to get dark, so nothing came out except for one. But that's the main thing I wanted to take a picture of anyway, so the rest can be another day. :)

This is a mural right across the street from the market. I can't remember how long it's been there, maybe five years? I think it goes to the little boutique next door, but I'm not sure. Maybe it's just a random mural. Every time I see it (which is a lot), I want to take a picture, but I usually don't have my camera with me.

I wanted to photograph it for two reasons. One, it's a neat mural, and two (and this is the main reason), it really, really looks like Hamasaki Ayumi. I don't know if it's a coincidence, or if the person who painted it had her as a reference or what, but we call it the Ayu mural, or just Ayu.