Maple syrup and Manga
Having a four-day weekend doesn’t seem to make me more productive. Rather the opposite, I think sometimes. Friday and Saturday I somehow managed to accomplish nothing. I’m not even sure what I did on Friday, although I seem to recall knitting more of the scarf (now beyond the point where even I’d pull it out) and finally turning the heat on. Friday night kind of sealed my fate accomplishment-wise for Saturday since I stayed up until…. oh, about 8:30 am reading some deliciously cheesy manga I found online. It’s been such a long time since I’ve gotten sucked into reading something all night long just because I felt like it. I think that more than the actual worth of the manga (called Hana Yori Dango, apparently translating to “Boys over Flowers” and one of the slightly more acceptable of the sentimental high school romance stories that are so prevalent) kept me up so late reading it.
Also it is absurdly long. From when I started, I got to chapter 99, with each having about twenty pages or so…. Only chapter 99, of 241…. I read a little more last night and guiltily snuck a few more pages in between Whitman (hey, he’d probably appreciate it) and I am only up to chapter 123. I may die this week.
I have never properly built up the ability to put down a book before I finish it. (We are, of course, talking about books read for pleasure. School reading, no problem.) All those cheap commercial books that I read while working at the library… I developed the habit of only reading them while I was at the library, because I knew that if I checked it out, I would be utterly useless until I finished the book, whenever that would be. Maybe this means that I should only ever read short books for pleasure?
The really amusing thing about Friday night is that the lad and I were supposed to get together and make dinner and such, since the roommate had ditched me and I hate being in the house alone for too long. Instead, I started reading the aforementioned manga and he, I later found out, started playing Halo. He called me in the early late night (12 to 2? That’s late, but still early for late… makes sense to me) to apologize and ask if I still wanted to hang out. I was terribly dazed from my reading and suggested that maybe we should continue our respective activities and one can call the other should they get bored. He mentioned something about checking back in at 4 am, so we amicably returned to our solitary pursuits. 4 am rolls around and I hesitate to call him because I’ve been so deeply sucked into this story. Called him anyways, because I’m so nice. He says he just has to finish this one campaign.
Someday I will learn the difference in all these gaming terms. I thought he meant that he was playing something that was going to end shortly and I told him to call me when he was done. “Ha ha,” I thought, “I will use him to stop myself from reading all night!” But it was not to be. Apparently “finishing a campaign” is playing through all the levels of the game. Just before 8, I texted him, thinking he’d finished his game and fallen asleep… but he answered right back. “Game almost finished.” So in the grey and rainy dawn, I Cavalierly (hee hee) made my way up to campus and picked him up, his campaign complete. We then proceeded to sleep until about five that afternoon. How useful. (I’ll add that he then fell asleep on the couch around midnight, the sleepy bum)
Nothing of note today. Walked to Hyperion for hot cider and eavesdropped as two dudes chatted about their girlfriends and made vaguely chauvanistic comments about women in general (“The only thing worse than going to war was getting married.”) all the while complimenting each other (“You should be a stand-up comedian!”). I refrained from doing anything violent, even when one said something about mocking women that don’t get his sense of humor “until their ovaries explode” followed by something about “they’re so easy to mess with. Like puppies.” Perhaps he was saved by my sudden mental image of him teasing a puppy until it exploded. Being the socially shy person that I am, I hadn’t made eye contact or even really looked at these two as they got in line behind me for their coffee. So it was especially satisfying to me to step back after getting my cider to see that they were two middle-aged guys, one with a gut, the other with an awkward beard, dressed in their snazzy clothes to try and look young and hip. Good luck, dudes, good luck. And a question – what man really thinks that reading Cosmo will give him a real insight into the mind of a woman that he is interested in? I thought it was common knowlege that Cosmo encourages mutually exclusive goals of snagging as many men as possible yet keeping a steady relationship going, as well as enforcing absurd body images for women. An amusing piece about the artificiality of American society’s dating rituals, but not really something that I’d go to for advice on keeping a relationship going. But maybe I’m just crazy.
…..Oh good heavens, now the mental image is of an exploding ovary puppy. I’m not even sure how that works.
