Ah. . . Well it’s been awhile hasn’t it? Oops. So what was I up to during the month of November? I can sum that up pretty quickly. I was watching anime, and my car died. Let’s start with the latter even though that episode only occupies the final week on November (and the first few days of December).
I got my car during my senior year in high school (I really don’t remember exactly when I got it, but it was probably towards the beginning of the school year so that would have been 1993). It was a 1991 Ford Mustang two-door hatchback silver in color (I always personally felt it was more grey in color but whatever). It was nice enough when I got it, and stayed pretty nice throughout the first half of my college years. In the summer of 1996 I was rear-ended by a significantly larger vehicle (like a Ford Bronco or a Chevy Tahoe, but I don't really remember the make and model). In all reality that should have been the end of my Mustang, but it was rebuilt and after a few months I was once again behind the wheel. From there the Mustang underwent a slow but steady decline as the years and miles crept up on it. To be fair I really didn’t take the best care of it either.
I think the most annoying thing I’ll remember about my Mustang was the door handles. They were plastic, and had a tendency to break during the winter. This would render the door the handle was attached to impossible to open from the outside. Usually it was only the driver’s side door handle that would break, but there was at least one time where both of the outside handles broke, and the only way into the car was though the hatchback (unless I left a window open). I’ve lost count of the number of times I had those handles replaced, and it is one thing about my Mustang I won’t miss.
My fondest memory of my Mustang happened fairly late in its life, in-other-words once it was pretty much a piece of junk. About two maybe three summers ago I was at work, and during my lunch break I drove up to the local co-op to get some food. In the parking lot there was a mother talking to one of the service station personnel, and her child was riding around the parking lot on a bicycle. The kid was around eight or so, but other then making sure I paid attention to where he was so I didn’t hit him, I really didn’t pay too much attention to either. I got my food, came back out to my car, and got in ready to drive back to work. However the kid was now riding his bike in a big circle very close to where I was parked, so I sat in my car for a bit waiting for him to ride away so I could back out without running over him. The kid seemed to have different plans as he just kept circling around behind my car, coming closer to me with each loop, until he finally had to stop before he ran into the side of my car. This got his mother’s attention, and she came over to him and started yelling. I expected her to say something about not playing around cars, but instead she admonished her child thusly, “Hey! Don’t you never never never never never ever hit a Mustang!” I did manage to drive away before I broke out into laughter.
Thanksgiving is what did my Mustang in. I made it home to my parents alright (basically a four hour drive), but on the return trip about six miles from home my car overheated, then as I was pulling over started losing power, and finally died. I let it cool down for a bit, and then opened the radiator (honestly not the smartest thing to do in a situation like that, I could have been burned pretty badly) and once the steam and boiling contents were finished spewing out I filled the radiator back up with antifreeze. I then tried to start my car, but no such luck. The engine would turn over, but it wouldn’t start. Fortunately a coworker happened to drive by and gave me a ride home. I had the car towed in the next day, and Wednesday morning (11/29) I found out it was probably a cracked head (or the head gasket). My mechanic estimated $600 – 700 dollars to repair in the best case scenario, significantly more if they found other things wrong with it once they started tearing into it. Since it was highly unlikely that my Mustang was still worth $600 I opted not to have it fixed, and instead purchased a new car. As you can probably guess my new car is pictured above. For those of you who care about such things it is a 1999 Pontiac Bonneville. My Bonneville is much nicer then my Mustang ever was, I’m just not used to it being mine yet. I still think of it like it’s a car I borrowed from somebody.
Okay that’s enough about my car, both old and new.
So have I ever been watching some anime. I’ve been on a bit of a shōnen kick through all of November and the first full week of December I’ve watched around 90 episodes of Bleach, 80 episodes of Naruto, and 90 episodes of Prince of Tennis. I’ve watched other anime as well, the first five episodes of Death Note (which seems to be classified as shōnen on Wikipedia, but I’m not sure if I agree with that, although the manga was published in Weekly Shonen Jump), the first 8 or so episodes of Jigoku Shoujo, the first 15 episodes of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, all 24 episodes of Oruchuban Ebichu, the first 8 episodes of Eureka Seven, the first episode of The Rose of Versailles, and the first episode of Space Symphony Maetel.
I had watched some episodes of Naruto, and Prince of Tennis before in English (probably about 8 episodes or so each), and I’d watched how ever much of Bleach and Eureka Seven in English as had been aired on Adult Swim by the end of October (probably about 10 episodes of Bleach and around 30 episodes of Eureka Seven). I don’t have any particular problem with English dubs, granted sometimes they can be down right painful, but usually I find them more or less tolerable. Then again when I went back and started watching these shows in the original Japanese I’m forced to wonder just why it took me so long to realize watching anime subtitled is so much more enjoyable.
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