shut up and let me see your jazz hands

1. I got my third Graze box in the mail today! Which reminds me, I posted these reviews on instagram and tumblr but completely forgot to post them over here, so have some snack reviews:

( Three snacks under the cut! )

2. I remembered to start my new book club book! I posted about this round's book over on tumblr and will probably talk more about it here in my Wednesday Reading post.

3. I started watching Shingeki no Kyojin and am really enjoying it so far (though not as much as Hataraku Maou-sama, which is the awesomest). I will probably read the manga, too, at some point.

1. My mom's birthday is next week and I've been meaning to get her some books but keep not thinking about it when I'm actually at the computer. Tonight I remembered and finally ordered them, and while I was at it, got myself a new wiimote and nunchuk, since I'll be sending the old Wii ones to Irene along with the Wii (she was going to take it in her luggage, but there ended up not being room).

2. Speaking of finallys, I also finally got my new iphone stand thingy set up. I have been wanting a stand for ages because I facetime with Irene several times a week and it gets really annoying to hold the phone the whole time (and sometimes my hand hurts), so now I will just be able to set it on the table and not worry! She had bought me one and brought it with her, but since I wasn't actually calling her while she was here and plugging it in involves getting under my desk, which I didn't want to do, I hadn't set it up yet.

3. TWO people called in sick today at work, both of them scheduled for the same shift (it's not so bad if one person calls in sick in the morning and one person in the evening, but both at the same time means there is only one person left). I called the three people who weren't working today, but my hopes weren't high, so I was resigned to spending my last several hours of work on the register once we were down to one cashier, but someone did call and say they could work! (And it was the person I almost didn't call because I thought it was so unlikely she'd say yes. She's an older lady who only wants to work like 15 hours a week and so far has said no every time she's been asked to work an extra day or stay even an hour or half hour extra.) So while I did have to spend more time than usual helping at the registers today, it wasn't as much as I'd feared and I did manage to get a fair amount of work done at my desk.

4. I've been playing Super Mario World tonight and wow, it looks so old! It's weird because even though it's a newer game than SMB 1, 2, and 3, for some reason I remember those better. Maybe I played them more? I remember being super excited about SMW when it came out and reading all these magazine articles before the SNES's release. I'm sure I played it a lot when it was first released, but I guess I didn't go back and play it much later? idk. Anyway, I don't remember anything. Also having just been playing New SMB Wii U means that I get confused about what I can and can't do a lot. ^_^;; Can't butt pound blocks. Can't flutter with Yoshi. Can't wall jump. Some of these things can be deadly when you think you can do them and then you can't. :p I also feel like I have no goal when there's not the three big coins to collect. I'm like, okay, I'm just going through the level, but not doing anything. Having the goal just be "get to the end" is weird. I'm not used to that anymore.

5. New SMB Wii U is also super awesome and fun, though. It's also really short and easy? I mean, Mario games generally are pretty short, but this seems easier than the Wii one. I beat the cloud world tonight, which means there's just Bowser land left, and while there are still coins to go back and get, there's not a ton. Most were easy to get the first time through. (I know for sure I've completely finished worlds 1 and 2.)

1. I am really, really loving the Wii U. Way more than I thought I would. I knew I would love Mario (how could I not?), but I didn't think I would actually love the system. I thought the controller looked silly and unnecessary and clunky and figured I'd totally ignore it in favor of the regular wiimotes (which I'm not super fond of, either, tbh), but I LOVE IT. I love being able to do stuff on the controller like use the wii shop or poke around Netflix and even watch Netflix or play a game on it without turning on the TV at all. And it's actually really comfortable to hold.

2. Ugh, even though I didn't actually take any time off work (just rearrange my days off) somehow it feels like I didn't work for ages and have tons of work piled up. How can so much work be piled up when I worked the same number of hours as usual? (Well, yesterday I did take off two hours early, but only two hours!) I know it's a combination of having to do a lot of cashier stuff recently, plus all these internet outages we've had, combined with a bunch of extra work coming in such as price changes for what feels like every product in the store, but my inbox is just really ridiculous. I did manage to get a good chunk taken care of today, and organised what's left. Tomorrow is a big delivery day (which means more invoices to add to the pile), but there's not anything particular I need to do, so hopefully I should be able to just sit down and concentrate on all this backlog.

3. I finally got my $50 iTunes gift card in the mail today! Still not sure what I want to do with the bulk of it (and of course I don't actually need to use it all now), but I did buy Luxor, Luxor 2, and Tetris. (Which altogether was only $3. XD)

4. After the horrible, horrible heat of Monday, it's cooled down quite a bit again. I really do not want to be getting hot weather just now (or ever, really, but I know it's inevitable). The extended forecast has it in the mid to high 60s through the end of the month, so hopefully that will hold true.

5. It's my first payday with my new raise. Extra money, yay! :D (Especially yay after all the extra spending I did while Irene was here. ^_^;;)

1. My first time with zipcar went just fine. I did end up having to extend the reservation for half an hour because we ran into some bad traffic on the way to return the car, but that's only an extra $4 and I'd rather pay that than the $50 fee for being late. The car itself was pretty nice (a little small for someone as tall as Irene, but otherwise good) and it already had about three-quarters of a tank and we used a third of that, so we didn't even have to refill (you are supposed to bring it back with at least a quarter tank).

2. I got a couple shirts and Irene got some shirts and I sold some manga and CDs and we went to shops we haven't been to in ages and generally just had a nice day. I'm definitely glad we decided to get a car for the day.

3. I have work tomorrow, but only six hours and then I'll be home in the evening to spend a bit more time with Irene before her flight. Then Alexander is coming over again to take her to the airport.

1. Had a great day grilling today. Tons of leftovers. :D

2. Work tomorrow, but then I have Tuesday off again.

3. In addition to delicious meat and veggies from the grill, we also had homemade strawberry ice cream today. It was sooooo good. *_*

1. Guys, New Super Mario Bros Wii U is so awesome. *_* The graphics are just amazing, even compared to the Wii version you can really see a huge difference. The gameplay is, of course, the same old sidescrolling Mario gameplay we've known and loved for decades, but that is a feature not a bug to me. :D There is a new suit for Mario, a flying squirrel (which looks a bit like tanuki Mario SMB 3), and perhaps more? So far I've only played the first world, so I really don't know! (At one point I watched a let's play of world one and part of world two, but I didn't want to spoil myself too much so I didn't watch any more, and also that was a while ago so I don't really remember.)

The Wii U controller is pretty neat. At first I found the size off-putting, but I got used to it quickly. I like that I could play it like a handheld game if I wanted to (and since the controller is huge, the screen is much bigger than the DS screen).

I also found a tutorial on how to transfer your save files from the Wii to the Wii U, which seems more complicated than it should be, but only requires a 512 MB memory card, which I happened to have in my camera, so I don't have to go out and buy one.

2. Irene and I walked down to Whole Foods and the 99 Cent Store today. I never go to the big 99 Cent Store because there's one right on the way to work which is much more convenient (though like half the size). I also hadn't been to Whole Foods in ages because in general I find it best to avoid altogether than to go and see all the super tasty but expensive food that I can't afford to buy. :p We splurged a bit today, though, and bought four types of cheese, including a stilton with chunks of mango and ginger, which I ate almost all of already.

( cheese party! )

Since we were down by the tattoo place where Irene had gotten her ears pierced a few years ago, I wanted to stop in and get another couple holes in my ear. Ever since I had to let the second hole close up because it wasn't healing properly, I have wanted to get it redone professionally and have also been thinking about getting a third one higher up, but I just never seem to actually getting around to going out and doing it. Unfortunately when we went in the woman behind the counter said she no longer had a piercer so they just do tattoos now. :( She said she thought one of the tattoo places a little further down the street did piercings, but I didn't feel like going any further, so just gave up for the day.

3. Alexander came over in the evening and he and Irene watched me play Mario and then we ordered Thai and watched Kung Fu Panda. He went home tonight and has a thing in the morning, but then will be back to spend the rest of tomorrow and Sunday here as well. :D

4. It's so nice to have more than one day off in a row! We have plans for tomorrow afternoon and evening, but I can sleep in again in the morning.

5. I reactivated my Netflix account tonight. I have been planning to do it a some point this month because while I know that there will be torrents of Arrested Development, I really want to show my support for the new season, so I'm actually going to watch it on Netflix. (Not sure if I will keep the account going after the season ends or not. On the one hand I really don't mind paying to watch stuff since I can certainly afford $8 a month right now, but I really hate watching stuff in the browser instead of in VLC.) I decided to go ahead and do it now, though, so that we can use it while Irene is here if we want. (Though Alexander has brought his Apple TV over and Irene has a harddrive full of movies, so we may not actually use it.)

1. Once again the rain kept itself to nighttime and I didn't get wet riding to or from work.

2. Last Thursday night I did a load of laundry and the water overflowed onto the floor and also backed up in the toilet and shower (fun!). My mom's husband came over Monday to try and snake out the pipes but the blockage (most likely tree roots) was at the very back of the yard, too far for his tools to reach, so they called a plumber who came out today and fixed it. I did a wash tonight with no trouble, so hopefully that's that! (Until some more roots grow back, but that usually takes a while.)

3. This mango granola cereal I got at Trader Joe's last night is so good! I ate some last night, some this morning, and some more tonight. XD It's a pretty small box, so there's only like one bowlful left...

1. It's raining! I hope it gets done before I have to go to work in the morning, though.

2. I was hoping to be able to get some of my own work done today at work in addition to filling in for one of the cashiers, but for the first half of my day it was really busy and I had to be out at the register all the time, and that was when there were four cashiers total. I knew later on it was just going to be me and one other person, so I had thought that my time to get stuff done would be while there were more people. But then later in the evening it got really slow and I was actually able to leave the other cashier at the register alone and do some work in the office and I ended up getting a fair amount of stuff done. (And it was all backlog stuff, since nothing new comes in on Sundays.)

3. I almost forgot to do my reading tonight, but even though I'm not participating in the next round of the book club and thus it doesn't really matter if I finish today or not, I still wanted to. But luckily I remembered at the last minute and I only had a small section left, so I was able to finish my book. :)

4. I got three packages of ground beef for free. :D

1. New Community, Parks and Rec, Elementary, and Hataraku Maou-sama tonight! (Though I haven't watched any of them yet.) Thursday is definitely my busiest TV day.

2. Payday and day off tomorrow, always my favorite combination. :D

3. I'm going to Costco with my mom tomorrow and I just remembered Costco sometimes sells pillows. Maybe they will have a pillow I can buy there. So far I have not felt like going to Bed, Bath, & Beyond to look at pillows, even though it's actually fairly close to work.

4. Speaking of work, we hired a new cashier (well, she's going in to the main store tomorrow to fill out paperwork). The last new cashier we hired (last week) quit after one day because when she told her old job she was quitting, they offered her a promotion and raise, so she decided to stick with them. >_<

5. I'm thinking of joining Zipcar. I've been wanting to for years, but the thing is in my area the closest cars they have are five miles away, so in order to use one, I'd have to bike or bus quite a ways just to get the car. But I'd like to get a car one day while Irene's here so we can go to Book Off and stuff like that, and for about the same price as renting a car for one day, I could pay the initial application fee and one year membership for Zipcar, plus use a car for a few hours. And then I'd still have the year-long membership if I wanted to use a car again. So I probably will end up doing that (I'm tired now, but I might sign up tomorrow), but it really annoys me that they still don't have any cars in Santa Monica or West LA.

1. I edited my profile to make note of my username change and noticed they have fields for you to enter usernames for a ton of sites! I don't know when that was added, but I'd never noticed it before. I filled out a bunch! :D

2. I get to sleep in tomorrow!