Found it!!

…My DS wi-fi dongle thing, that is. 😀 I bought this over a year ago, when my Pokemon Diamond game was fairly new, for the main purpose of battling + trading with a few people I met in an online Pokemon society. And I intend to do that again, though with different people this time, probably on the weekend when those with jobs/studying have the time. What I have been doing in the meantime, however, is using the Global Trade Station (GTS), something I’d never used before now.

It all started with this Feebas I traded from my sister ages ago; level 60-something (she thought it evolved through leveling!), and a sheen maxed out before full beauty had been achieved (okay, that part was my fault. I fail at poffins). I used it to breed another, more useful Feebas (now a Milotic :razz:), and decided I’d put the first one on the GTS so that other people could do the same. It could only have been on there 10 minutes or so before it got traded, and I got a Squirtle in return. Not a bad introduction to the GTS, in my opinion. 😀

I tried filling in a few gaps in my Pokedex by putting specifically bred Pokemon on offer (mainly Feebas, Eevee, Chimchar), but I can’t say I’ve had much luck with those. The one Pokemon that I do seem to be able to trade for virtually anything is, ironically, Squirtles, so that makes my first trade seem even better.

Enough about Pokemon, and on to anime. The new season is approaching fast, and it looks much better than the Winter lineup did this time last season. So what am I thinking of picking up? MADHOUSE is the clear winner this time when it comes to first impressions, with Iron Man, Senkou no Night Raid + Yojou-Han Shinwa Taikei placing first, second and third on my want to watch list respectively. Arakawa Under the Bridge comes next – I still have a lingering affection for SHAFT even after Bakemonogatari and Dancing Vampires… Then, and this one is a bit more of a guilty pleasure, I’d put Mayoi Neko Overrun. I like cats, and the character designs appeal to me.

There’s a few other interesting series besides those five, but they’re the main ones. And I’ll watch the first episodes of everything before I decide for certain which ones to pick up. 🙂

Wild Buddleia appeared!

I was back volunteering at the gardens yesterday (Thursday), but this time they had a different task in mind for me. Rather than bashing brambles, I had to prune buddleias. Which was a much easier task overall, and I sustained less injuries. And the few that I did sustain were from brambles, no doubt in revenge for last time.

So, pruning basically involves hacking the plant to bits in a way that doesn’t actually kill it. I hear buddleias are hard to kill anyway though (like they’d let a n00b with 1 day of experience near anything that might actually die);  the gardener told me that even a stick of dynamite wouldn’t do the trick. Possible inspiration for a masters dissertation there? 😛

As I said, this was easy work on the whole, and I got quite good quite quickly even if I do say so myself. However, I couldn’t help but feel that as I got better at pruning, the buddleias leveled up with me! The first one I dealt with was like a tutorial enemy – a thin scrawny looking thing with a few crazy tangled up branches, kind of what I’d imagine myself to look like if I were a plant. I tried to block that image out of my head as I cut it down to below knee height. The second one was a mid boss, similar but thicker and a nightmare to cut through. Really pushed my meager strength to it’s limits, but I managed it. The third one wasn’t thick, it was a complete mass of thin wiry branches (3-4 times the amount on the others, or at least it seemed that way) that grew out in all directions, leaving no easy way of getting to the centre of the plant. I had to prune my way through, all the time dealing with random branches whipping me in the face (lucky I wear glasses, really). This was also the place where the most brambles were growing, to make things worse. Definitely last boss material, that one. I had fun throwing it on the fire afterwards.

I won’t be back there until next Friday due to various reasons, but I do still plan on going there three days a week eventually. 😛 So I’ve got no real plans until Wednesday now, meaning loads more anime and Pokemon! With regards to Pokemon though, I think I’m nearing the limit of the number I can catch myself using just Diamond, Emerald, Flame Red and Ruby versions. Though since I dealt with the easier Pokemon first, the few remaining should keep me busy. So I guess it’s time I looked for my DS wi-fi connector, I know I have one somewhere…

So much for the end of my lazy days…

In my last post I said I’d be going back for more volunteering the next day(Thursday). That didn’t happen, because the head gardener was called away for a meeting at the last minute. I also didn’t go the day after, because my dad was off work and I had nobody to give me a lift. Apparently he’s off most Fridays at the moment, something that he didn’t mention when I specifically asked if volunteering on Fridays was convenient… bah. I have Mondays off because I only wanted to volunteer three days a week (and Wednesday is job centre day); and I can’t go in on Tuesday either because I have a job interview. Meh, at least that will be productive. 😛 When I go back on Thursday I’ll probably ask to shift my day off from Monday to Friday, because at this rate I’m not going to get enough experience to make it worthwhile.

So for the past five days I’ve been living virtually the same lazy lifestyle I was before (pokemon, anime and ridiculous sleeping patterns), though I have just started adding characters to Anime-Planet’s new character database. So at least I’ve been of use to someone, even if it’s too obscure to put on a CV. 🙂 Another good thing is that my aches and pains have gone away, so I’ll be in better condition to work this Thursday than I would have been the week before. And with the job interview tomorrow + job centre the day after, I have plenty of time to get used to the early starts too.

This has been a slow week for anime releases though, made slower still by my awful internet speeds. A lot of sub groups I’m following seem to be disbanding/dropping series too, which is a shame for us fans but they all have their good reasons. Not sure what I’m going to do about Seikon no Qwaser though, nobody is subbing the censored massacred TV rips, while the uncensored webstream’s video quality is too poor for a videophile like me. Plus I’m a bit scared to find out what exactly’s going on behind the censorship – honestly, I watch this series for the plot!

Because of the slow releases, I put most of my time towards Pokemon. Just caught the three Regi pokemon on Emerald yesterday, and used them to get Regigigas this morning. Now, if only I had Caterpie…