First, Mio.

She arrived at the beginning of February.

Naturally, she’s wearing the 桜高 winter uniform.

The difference in skirt colors for the school uniform across dolls and figures amuses me a little. The Nendoroid skirts are clearly light blue (although this photo makes them look slightly grey). The Azone fabric skirts are without a doubt completely grey. I’m partial to the plaid skirt used in the original manga/4coma, anyway XD

Mio’s hair actually has highlights/halo effect painted on it, which almost gives the effect of the paint having faded rather than the shiny anime-style XD;

Nendoroids have three head parts: bangs, face/neck and hair. This is Mio without her bangs.

Mio’s bangs and hair pieces

All of the body parts that came with Mio

Some of the hands can be removed from the arms, like this.

Mio’s bass & amp

Mio playing bass

Mio’s o(；△；)/ face

Next up is Yui!

Some box shots:

the insert packaging

Yui’s stand

(kind of looks like mouse ears… XD)

The stand back has a joint so you can tilt up or down as necessary

(if you’re wondering about all the smiley faces you see on joints, the company that’s involved with the nendoroids is called Good Smile…. XD)

And here we have Yui herself, sporting the double v-pose v(^ ^)v

The three faces of (Nendoroid) Yui

All the body parts that came with Yui

Yui’s serious face XD

ギー太! (Giita~!)

Yui’s crying face

close-up of the neck joint

and finally, some pair shots of Yui & Mio together!

Something I noticed when posing them together… the stands are different!

Mio’s has a much higher back:

than Yui’s:

(together, for comparison:)

Strangely enough, Yui’s stand suits Mio better because her stand interfered with her long hair. But overall Mio’s stand is more stable and I like it better. It seems like every Nendoroid I’ve bought has a different style stand… Konata’s is similar to Miku!Kagami, but they have some noticeable differences. I applaud GS for trying to constantly improve their stands, and think they’ve nearly reached a perfect setup. I look forward to seeing how they evolve in the future. (With my first Nendoroid, Kona, I didn’t think much about the stands because her long hair helped her balance enough that she didn’t need one XD;)

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the three faces of (Nendoroid) Mio~ (I’ve got a review of her coming up soon!)

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my newly prettified monitor stand! Kona’s アホ毛 is blocking Haruhi XD; Yes, those are the Suzumiya Haruhi Pinky:st girls (although I swapped Tsuruya’s long green hair for some cute brown curls). Kona, Kagamin and Haruhi are all pointing at me, reminding me to stay on task! (well, it doesn’t always work, but. XD;; )

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This… might also have contributed to my not blogging (^^;;; ) Dragonica Online, an MMORPG that’s cute and I’d been following for a while before it opened… and then Shirayuki died on me and I was using Ai XD; But! I’m able to play now (I’ll explain later) and it’s pretty entertaining. I have a lv20 warrior girl and I’m debating changing classes or trying to see if the “hidden” classes really exist…

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Edible chalk! also known as off-brand Tums. I’ve been ordered to take them, along with another pill I think I took a photo of later. V. colorful, right? Fruit flavored XD Kind of tastes like smarties… if they were made out of chalk.

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Tiny cupcake~ one of my birthday ones! Well, technically it was made to be a seasonal (Valentine’s) cupcake, but.

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Another missed package! But this time I didn’t even know it was coming! And the tracking # was written wrong on the paper so I couldn’t request redelivery (-_-; ) It was full of Japanese snacks :9 well, mostly おっとっと XD;

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Somehow ginger ale (in particular, Canada Dry) has become my soda of choice at home. (I always get coke/pepsi while at restaurants… I don’t think they tend to have ginger ale) The redesigned cans are pretty~

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I haven’t been eating a lot of candy recently, but when I saw this at the grocery store I decided I had to try it. (Because I love pb <3) It's pretty similar to normal Reese's, just with 2x the pb. Not bad.

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The base of the doll-sized dressform I bought while out XD Unfortunately I don’t really have a lot of extra outfits for Aryanna so I don’t have anything to put on it at the moment… XD;;

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Aryanna’s new wig! (Well, one of two) Yes, it is really that light. It’s much lighter than the color seemed in the photos… oh well. But the wig itself is very cool! it has two clip-on extension curls <3 <3

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おっとっと!~ They are v. similar to goldfish in the sense that they’re light, airy, crunchy snacks that are shaped like things that live in water. Only おっとっと is 10000x more tasty and the alternate flavors are also nice.

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Chinese New Year was on Valentine’s Day this year. Well, red for both, I guess XD;

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An adorable Marie notebook I bought at Narita airport before leaving Japan last time XD So cute! Came with stickers, too~

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The screwdriver Sony sent me to remove/replace my hdd with. The handle is long and skinny, which is good for removing screws on laptops. It’s also slightly magnetized <3 I get to keep it <3

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And finally, Yui arrived today! Her box is pink! ♥ (Mio’s was blue! hee hee~ { if you don’t get why that’s good, just ignore it~ }) I love that she has TWO v-pose hands… うふふふ～

Okay! More posts will be forthcoming! Promise!

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This is a bit more on par with the kinds of photos I’d normally take – Nendoroid Mio arrived on Tuesday. I want to do a specific post just reviewing her, though, so I won’t talk about that too much here. I’m amused that Yui was released first for the Azone dolls, and Mio was first for Nendoroids. Yui’s also first for Figma (which I have pre-ordered, naturally). It’s true Yui fulfills the more typical main character role, but Mio is pretty popular too XD Hard to choose, right?
As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I won’t be getting any Ritsu or Mugi figures. Although I love K-ON! as a whole, Yui & Mio are really my favorites so merch will be limited to them, primarily.

My life has been interrupted yet again by technical failures – Emi’s gone off the deep end and won’t boot, so Sony’s sending me a new hdd to replace the supposedly defective one. That may or may not solve the problem, but it’s a step in the right direction… maybe. I was surprised Sony is trusting me to replace it myself, however. Must be a cost-cutting measure. Harddrives are cheaper to ship than entire laptops, naturally.
So that means I’m back to using Ai as a primary machine (although I never quite stopped, as Emi showed signs of issues only a week or two after arrival). I love her, but her video card is just not up to some of my entertainment tasks. Like facebook flash games. Some of them become painfully slow to use and it’s almost not worth it.

I’ve also been working on my sound novel project, in bits and pieces. I suppose I should poke at nscripter code soon so I can at least play around with it and decide on the feel for the story.

the first was taken in the morning yesterday, before I left.

the second was taken this afternoon, when I disassembled Aryanna in an attempt to restring her with her current elastic.
that was a miserable failure, by the way. her strings were so stretched out it wasn’t possible to even push them to reconnect after I’d trimmed them down. so she’s currently in pieces. Well, her torso (minus head) is assembled currently (^ ^; ) somehow that one was okay.

I ordered new elastic from Luts along with other things I’d been meaning to order (the string puller and forceps were out of stock unfortunately! (T_T)), including two alternate pairs of hands, a face mask (so her faceup doesn’t get dirty in storage), silicon wig cap (to keep the wig from sliding and also to prevent [further] staining), and some pretty extras I happened to notice, like a crown headband~ (^ ^) No clothing items – there wasn’t anything I was particularly interested in, and no other dolls. I’m really out of the loop when it comes to other doll companies, so I don’t even know where to start regarding SD-sized clothing. I want to make most stuff myself, but certain things like shoes I’m definitely never going to make myself…. (^ ^;; ) I’m also tempted by a wig I saw at Leekeworld recently, but a) I need to remember what her wig color was first and b) she has three wigs already so technically she doesn’t need any others….

I have more photos from the disassembling that I might post to flickr later, and I’ll certainly take more photos once she’s been restrung properly (she’ll be able to stand~!).

The other event today was the arrival of my ミックミクかがみ Nendoroid. It’s Kagami in Hatsune Miku’s 「ミックミクしてあげる」 outfit, as seen in the Lucky Star OVA. This Kagamin is #62 in the Nendoroid series – I hadn’t realized there were so many now! (@_@) regular Kagamin is 28a, b & c (Comptiq, HP, and Chara)… and I think Tsukasa and Miyuki were just released not too long ago. Of course I’ve preordered Yui & Mio Nendoroids, but I’m getting a little nervous because some sites don’t seem to cut off their preorders even when they aren’t sure they’ll be able to fill all the orders they get. I suppose it’s no loss to them, if they don’t charge until shipping, if there’s not enough stock, the order just gets canceled – but for the customer, what do you do? Have faith the store you’ve chosen will come through? Place two and cancel the slower one? What if it falls through? Resort to ebay? I managed to snag HP ver Kagamin for a reasonable price (considering her popularity and length of time she’s been discontinued) on ebay, and it’s likely Mio & Yui will stay somewhat reasonable right after release, but there’s always a chance the company will end up with an unusually limited quantity, or they will just be SO popular demand greatly exceeds supply. K-ON! is pretty popular (evidenced by it gaining a second season! so excited!), but has Good Smile anticipated this? Well, one way or another those two will be mine. Ritsu and Mugi are a pass, though. (Sorry girls, one of you interrupts my OTP and the other is, well, entertaining but not my favorite.)

Listening to K-ON! music always makes me smile… and also makes me want a guitar again. We’ll see what happens there.
Tomorrow’s going to be fairly busy, I have no idea what my 365 will turn out to be.

Today I started my 365 photo challenge, which I’m doing partially for myself, and partially to support my friend who is also doing the 365 this year :D

First up is Yui, wearing (Sakura’s) kimono… which is unfortunately a little too short for her (-_-; ) I may see if I can “let it down” a bit, but I’m not sure the construction actually allows for that. Yui was unfazed and continued playing with her DS. (It’s the first time since she’s arrived that I’ve gotten her to put her keitai down… XD;)

I woke up this morning with an awful headache. Sort of an ominous way to start the new year, but we’ll ignore that for now. Might’ve been caused by mild dehydration/pressure changes in the atmosphere – it’s quite rainy today.

Stalking a certain nendoroid girl on ebay, we’ll see if I win… I’m not used to bidding but I don’t feel like shelling out or hitting up y!J auctions right now, either.

My birthday’s in about a month, and the only thing I can think to ask for at the moment is a 1.5TB external hdd, for backup purposes. I should take a picture of my growing collection of external hdds…

It’s not as though there aren’t other things that I want, but I feel weird asking other people to support my doll/figure habit. Usually I just ask for things like video/computer games (I did get Sims3 for Christmas!) or books or small electronic-related things (SD cards, batteries, cables) that I haven’t gotten around to purchasing. Somehow those feel more acceptable. I don’t feel…. ashamed? of the fact that I have dolls/figures, but rather, I realize they’re definitely not everyone’s thing and can sometimes make people feel uncomfortable. Well, I don’t collect any figures that are stuck in, shall we say, questionable poses, or various states of undress, but even without those. (Not to mention, my family already went through one phase where they bought me lots of Barbie stuff, I’m not sure they’d want to return to it, even if the purpose was different. XD;)

In short, I’m definitely back on a doll/figure kick, and you’ll likely be hearing more about them in the coming weeks.
Until my interests rotate again, of course.

On an unrelated note, I’ve finally gone back to playing KH: 358/2 Days (when I preordered & received it initially my wrist was acting up so I couldn’t play it). I quite like it, now that I’m into it. The panel system reminds me of the card system from Chain of Memories, but at least I can attack to my heart’s content in this version. (Something I really enjoy about the KH series in general is the ability to hack’n'slash my way through battles if I so choose.)
But I’ll write more about the game when I finish it.

Well, actually, that happened on Thursday, but because it’s not a 28-day ban, I thought I would wait another day.
Things are still going well, feeling pretty calm about it all, surprisingly. I think this is definitely helped by the time of year (almost my birthday!) so I have things to look forward to… haha XD But after that, we’ll see how I feel…

Today’s photo is of my favorite Pinky:st girl…. that I took during class (!!) in Japan. To be fair, the class was three hours/1x week so…
It took me a while to find an angle that didn’t show me/my camera but captured the girl in both mirrors. It’s not the perfect shot I was envisioning, but considering the circumstances I thought it was pretty good XD