Today's Manga: Obviously, after two weeks of nothing, I found a few new ones. Future Diary 2, The Wallflower 20, Hana Yori Dango 36, Mamotte Shugogetten 5, Me & My Brothers 8, Negima Neo 2, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya 3, and Zombie Loan 6. But since that was the last of Mamotte Shugogetten and Hana Yori Dango, I also got the first books of a few new series. But I have valid reasons for all of them, not that I really need reasons. I believe it goes like this: Gestalt is by the author of Loveless, Amefurashi: The Rain Goddess is by the author of Venus Versus Virus (which I just finished the sixth book of today), Lucky Star is by the author of Lucky Star, Samurai Harem has samurais and harems, and Sunshine Sketch is four-panel comics about cute girls... I think we're all familiar with examples of why that's always good. (See above where I mentioned Lucky Star.) So there you have it. All absolutely essential must-haves for my collection. An absolute non-essential... what the hell is the deal with the new Family Guy collection? More money for fewer episodes? Hey, I may like the show, but I can also do math. I may get it along with the Death Note special from Ryuk's point of view next week, when I have a 10% off coupon as well as the $5 certificate.

Lunch at Panera... not exactly the greatest, and probably not really worth the cost either. Plus, they seem to have gotten Curt's sandwich wrong, but he's used to that by now.

Other than that, I stayed home most of the day and played inFAMOUS. I'm finally figuring out how to make Arc Lightning useful, and the infinite energy move comes in really handy when fighting some of the new, bigger enemies. Comparing notes with Curt, I've concluded that taking the evil path is DEFINITELY easier, but having reached the peak of Infamy at last, I finally realize what makes things harder on the bad guys... EVERYONE IN THE CITY WANTS TO KILL ME NOW. Women run up to me and start hurling stones, even after they've seen me kick the other women who threw stones at me to the ground and drain their life energy to heal the damage their damn rocks have done. I don't think it would kill me, unless I was a complete moron about it, but it's both distracting and annoying, and can cause me to lose my grip while climbing. When Curt's character runs through town, they take pictures of him. Also, sometimes, doing the evil thing is hard. There was a point when I needed to shoot some explosives to kill a bunch of people, but I missed the shot. I had to redo an annoying mission because I didn't want that heroic slight on my conscience. After having to redo the hardest damn mission ever because I tried to save halfway through, that was unpleasant. And the stunts are getting tricky to perform. Well, it's still fun enough to take up hours of a weekend when I should be doing other things, although I eventually got my receipts taken care of and my stuff all squared away for two whole weeks of work - minus the holiday coming up and probably one other day, due to either me being sick or just plain needing a break between all the freaking travel.

There was a bit of excitement when I heard dripping from the basement on my way out to dinner. I went down and found the furnace dripping. It looks like all that happened was that the drainage pipe slid off the drain and onto a solid part of the floor, preventing the water from draining. So it backed up and dripped out the top of the pipe instead, soaking the filter. It seems to be fine now, but we'll have to keep an eye on it.

I also found the intriguing answer to Garfield Minus Garfield known as The Square Root of Minus Garfield. This strip in particular keeps cracking me up every time I look at it. I laughed until I changed the tab, and laugh again every time I change back to it. It's sort of like xkcd made from Garfield strips, with a high proportion of mathematical jokes. It hurts to laugh. (Muscle weakness from yesterday, and possibly some stiffness from my attempts to sleep.)

There are times when I hate my life. I just thought I'd throw that out there.