Sailor Moon Live, Part II

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So we checked in to our actually reasonably priced, fairly fancy, right next door to the venue hotel, where I was greeted by my TV.

 
 

We rested up and then off to the venue! This is where my only complaint lays. Venue doors were supposed to open an hour before the show, the amount of people already there and in line was absolutely ridiculous. There is no way that this placed open only an hour before. We immediately got in line and waited to get to the merch table. I wanted a poster and a button. As we inched forward I grew increasingly worried.

In line, not quite so nervous yet about missing the start.

Start time was closer and closer and we were still in line. My nerves were very apparent and my partner was like, “Do you want to go to the seats? I’ll buy the stuff.” A truer hero has never existed. I eagerly climbed the stairs to our seats in the balcony level, but not before snapping a pic:

 
 

Look at him. Surrounded by Moonies in an Umino shirt. He got the most compliments actually. Everyone loved it.

I got to my seat and took in the sights. The Schuster Center is beautiful. Okay, Dayton.

Luckily, they didn’t start the show without him. The production cut the line right behind him and he was able to secure the goods and get to our seats with time to spare. We settled in and the show started.

Folks, I don’t think I stopped crying tears of absolute joy the entire time I was watching this show. Not only my love of this from childhood but my partner and I we had just finished watching the entire 200 episode series and 3 original movies. We had inside jokes about this, he has favorite characters, we shared this huge long experience together it it really culminated in this live show and I just felt so happy.

The show was a basic retelling of the first season with some changes of course, the show was in Japanese with the subtitles on the screen behind them. The songs were great, the scouts and Beryl were well cast, the effects of their powers were super cool, and after the major plot was done they just did a bunch of songs and costume changes that were absolutely adorable. They even had a section where they were like, “Hey, you can take pics and record!”

Basically it was a magical time. I was able to take some fun pics and videos, I got to be 10 years old again, and I got to share this with my partner. All in all a beautiful night. It ended much too soon, the merch line was nuts after the show so I was happy we had managed to get our bounty before the show and we retired to our hotel for the night to make the trek back home the next morning.

Once I got home I happily unrolled my poster and a happy surprise occurred! I have a gallery wall in my office and I’ve been looking for a replacement art piece for a larger frame. Scott Kurtz of PvP Online betrayed his fans via a kickstarter and I’ve had a PvP poster on my wall for years looking for something in the same size. My Sailor Moon Live Poster FIT PERFECT.

A perfect end to a perfect time.

 

VIctory!

 

Sailor Moon Live! Part I aka: DAYTON, OHIO?!?!?

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It was announced in early 2025 that the Sailor Moon, Super Live! Show was going to be touring around North America. I knew that this had to happen in my life, I must go! As a Sailor Moon fan from the original airing of the Dic Dub that aired at 6:30 in the morning before school and that I got up for….I had to go. Sailor Moon also has a long and storied history of live shows in Japan but this would be the first tour that ever left the country. There was a show in DC, I believe (it had gotten moved around because of COVID) to gauge interest and interest there was. So much so that they had to eventually add more tour dates.

I got in to an early pre-sale and was like, I would love to go to Chicago but I feel like that one might sell out and you know which one I felt wouldn’t sell out? DAYTON, OHIO. That’s right, there ended up being two entirely different shows in OHIO but not a single one in the great mitten state. It just isn’t fair. The pre-sale came and I was 100% correct in my assumption, I didn’t even have a chance in Chicago. But Dayton? Front row Balcony tickets, baby!

The Dog’s Grandmother was approached for dog sitting and she agreed and hotel reservations were made. Which, accidentally, ended up being right next to the venue, so go me.

Now we had to drive there. This was not a thrilling drive. The mid-west is notoriously flat and the straightest way there was a very old highway that went through tiny little towns. But adventure was had! Some sights (literally everything) below.

We stopped for lunch (Wendy’s, surprisingly easy to make dairy-free) and at the stop we saw a strange looking building which ended up being The Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum.

Imagine seeing this sphere in the middle of nowhere Ohio

Never one to turn down a science museum we stopped off to finish our lunch and stretch our legs in the museum. Many jokes were made about how many astronauts come from Ohio and how they needed to leave Ohio so much that they had to escape to space. The museum wasn’t the biggest but it was bigger than I had expected and it was super cute. I wonder how many field trips this thing sees a year.

One object of note just because I think it is neat that it’s all the way in Ohio:

 
 

The reason that this is neat is because…I’ve been to Meteor Crater! That was part of a big birthday road trip I took several years ago before leaving Arizona and it’s one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. Also one of the windiest.

My hair was everywhere. I miss that jacket. It was my favorite jacket. Vegan leather apparently starts disintegrating in 5 years. Also this was in 2017, that is nine years ago. Time isn’t real.

After the museum we made it into the hotel and got settled. It was time to get ready to head next door. Part Two next week!

 
 

Aqua, December 2023

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In the year of 1997 and music single was released: Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” was released and it changed my brain chemistry. I purchased the single on cassette. As soon as the eponymous CD came out it was in my hands. The VHS “Aqua Diary: Official Aquarium Home Video” was played so many times on my CRT TV/VCR combo. Which is how I got to see so many of the music videos as I grew up without cable and didn’t have internet access quite yet.

 

Click the Tape, someone uploaded it to Youtube!

 

In December of 2023 a miracle occurred for my 12 year old inner self: Aqua was having it first US tour. And as a full-ass adult you better believed I immediately purchased a ticket to go. They were coming to Detroit, I did not care if it was in the middle of a mid-western winter. Come hell or high snow, I would be there.

And there I was! After some difficulty with parking and finding the venue (The Fillmore, Detroit) , I had balcony seats to bask in my childhood favorite band. It was honestly one of the best concerts I’ve been to. The theater was beautiful, we had a great view, and Aqua was perfect.

 

I am the happiest, childhood dreams are coming true! And while freezing, it was fairly mild weather for Michigan in December!

 
 

Lene, the lead singer, her voice has gotten even more beautiful as time has passed. Rene has such a fantastic stage presence, and Soren is great musician. The way they edited the music videos to play in the back as they performed was so cool. They have great showmanship that they have just perfected in their other tours. The two videos below are clips of “Cartoon Heroes” and “Barbie Girl” They played so much of their catalogue of hits (which in my opinion, is basically ALL of their songs) and it was amazing.

I didn’t take too many videos or photos as I wanted to really lose myself in the experience. It was so much fun and I’m very happy that Aqua is now on the short list of live concerts I’ve been to in my life. I also purchased my first Liquid Death drink, which is just fancy water, which I didn’t know until I went to this concert and that was my only water option!

All in all it was a successful concert experience. We left during the encore to beat the traffic because this area, is like, concert Venue city and we had quite the drive back to our house afterwards. I didn’t end up purchasing any merchandise because it didn’t actually feel…special enough? It was very basic stuff and I would’ve hope for some more fashionable t-shirts or fun designed posters.

Books I read in January, 2026

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I’m really trying to cut back on screen time. Numerous timers on various social media apps (Instagram, Substack, etc.) and a Focus Mode in the Morning so I can‘t bedrot in the morning. I know it‘s a popular topic and somewhat trendy on how to cut back on the phone but it really does start to encompass your time and encroach on the things you WANT to spend time on.

I took a look at the time spent on my phone and decided that it’s enough and I have set myself up to better use my time for reading instead. I have an old Google play account where I purchased books quite a while ago so those are my “phone’ books, I have 2 kobo readers. One is set up with a stand in my bedroom for evening reading in bed before going to sleep and one is called my “Baby” book that rides with me in my purse. I have also thrifted a ton of physical books over the past few years so I have usually have two of those books next to the couch: a novel and some sort of graphic novel or trade paperback and I alternate reading those.

It has definitely helped. I read 7 books last month and I don’t think I’m going to get more than that this month (also with it being such a short month, I can already feel it ebbing away so quickly) but I am reading a long Stephen King novel and sometimes he is a monster with that page length.

I haven’t been rating my books on StoryGraph but I do track them there. It’s a great app and wonderful alternative to GoodReads.

“Soul Music” by Terry Pratchett : a reread from the past. I stumbled on to an excellent humble bundle of his books and I’ll be picking my way through his collection as the year progresses. Soul Music is an old favorite.

“Forrest Gump” by Winston Groom : I hated this. Words cannot convey the hate read this turned into. Watch the movie instead. As soon as I finished this it went into my get rid of bag.

“The Virgin Suicides” by Jeffrey Eugenides : mostly read because it gave me a good excuse to watch the film.

“Gunsmith Cats” omnibus Volume 3 By Kenichi Sonada: just rebuying my childhood but maybe this one should’ve been a bit later in life. IYKYK.

“Hogfather” by Terry Pratchett: I really wanted to finish this in December for Christmas but it just didn’t happen. We will be watching the 2 part TV movie by the end of February!

“The Prairie Wife” by Arthur Stringer: a book I thrifted and got a very good deal on which is good because it’s not making the cut on the bookshelf. It was fine but I’d rather read Laura Ingalls Wilder.

“Cat’s Eye” Omnibus Volume 1 by Tsukasa Hojo: I recently bought and watched the anime of this and fell in love with it and was very excited by the announcement that there was going to be a new release of the manga here in the states. I will be purchasing the rest as they come out and I highly recommend the anime. It has one of the best endings in my opinion.

My 2025 Website Absence

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It was a rough year.

I won’t go on and on but we lost a major patriarch of my partner’s family and then I also spent half the year caring for Gala, my beloved dog daughter. Then I spent the rest of the year recovering from having to make the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make in my entire life and I mean that. Every decision PALES in comparison to me having to let my girl go.

I’m proud of how I handled everything. I kept up most of my good habits, took time to read and create, went out and actually made friends. Honestly amazing.

I thought of the website often but I just couldn’t bring myself to actually update it for some reason. Which is funny because I don’t even need to make the blog posts, I should just keep up on posting my art projects but I don’t. Ah, well. At least I do it on instagram and then I can easily look back at stuff.

Some changes to the website: New art has been posted in several categories. New projects are slow going but I’m making time for them. An entire new section is for all of my cooking. I just love to cook and try new stuff in fun cookbooks, it is such a large part of my hobbies and life it needed its own section. I’m also going to breaking in to a new cookbook soon, so keep an eye out for new stuff there too.

A big goal of mine is to actually keep up with the website this year, so fingers crossed. I tend to peter out around May when I do try to keep up everything, haha.

The Tower

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Sometimes I feel like the universe is in on the joke. I drew the tarot card: The Tower. It’s not a great card to draw. Things are happening to you, you just have to sit and ride the ride until it’s done and then rebuild. Nothing quite so dramatic has happened but my Dad got injured and is currently convalescing in a rehab facility until he can get strong enough to come home.

Hopefully this week he’ll be home at some point but it has been a journey where nothing can actually get done and there is no changing anything and I’ve really just had to sit through this journey until it’s over.

Even though I’ve been stressed a few of my friends have been like, “you seem to be doing okay” and I’m like, “There is literally NOTHING I can do or control at this point, it is what it is”.

A big key to managing the stress is not letting my schedule go to shit. I’ve been doing so good with keeping up my goals so far for the year that I am determined to not let everything go by the wayside. Am I giving myself some grace though? Absolutely. Still tracking food but not being so militant about calories. Skipping my exercise on one day but doing both sets exercises the next day. Looking at my tasks each day and being like, what can I reschedule later in the week, what can I realistically get done on the actual day, and what can I just get rid of because it truly doesn’t matter. It’s been helpful.

Also coupling this all with work where I had to work extra because people had asked for time off. Absolutely no complaints, everyone deserves to have their days off that they ask for. Nothing we do is so important where it can’t happen, it’s just another time constraint to work within. I think I’m doing okay with it.

I am exhausted today though. I may take a nap at some point and you know, that’s fine.

Goal Tracking 2024

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I’ve been a Goal Setter for much of my life so far. It really hit a head when I joined The Geek Girls of The East Valley Meetup back in 2010 and there was a goal setting group within that meet up. Ever since then I’ve taken setting goals very seriously and have meticulously worked at achieving many of them.

A big goal was running. I was running pretty prolifically at one point and was running in multiple races. I had a half marathon a month goal and I even ran a marathon during that time.

I made a comic with my best friend, Connie, and we went to several Comic Conventions hawking our wares and the comic.

Not to mention the many reorganizing and fixing up my house and yard goals for so many of the places I’ve lived at.

Unfortunately, I feel as if this “Goal Drive” of mine has really lost steam the last few years. I had moved again, I was helping my parents out a lot, then a pandemic, and I just felt tired. Was it age? Was it life? Was it everything? Probably.

So this past New Years I sat down and asked myself…what can I do to set some goals, track them simply, and feel as if I’m getting my act together again. I’ve done so many things to track my goals before. On my phone, vision boards, check lists, fancy journals. I never really stuck with it and I felt like I had to do a new type of tracking every time I started something. So this year I made a god damned excel spreadsheet.

My God Damned Excel Spreadsheet.

This is for January. As you can see it’s also a pseudo-mood tracker. Every day I open this up (usually in the morning so I can recount the previous day) and color code the date on how I felt while doing each particular activity. I also built in some rest days so I can choose not to do something but it has to be thought of ahead of time and not just an emergency excuse.

I have a lot of Daily Health Goals because I’m really trying to be consistent with food and working out because I’m trying to get lean and strong. I also fell off books for awhile and I’ve made it so as long as I get 10 pages a day, I’m doing well.

It’s going to be interesting to see how my mood changes as the year progresses because right now it’s January and I’m excited to be doing this. We’ll see how I am in June.

Part of the reason I’m feeling successful currently is because I’m starting off and adding to things very slowly. Part of my goal setting problems is that I got overwhelmed because I would keep adding time for activities and there is only so much time in a day. So I’ve given my self large ranges of times to get to so if I’m feeling extra tired I don’t need to do 11,500 steps…I can do 10,000. I don’t have to do a full 30 minute workout, go for 10.

I’ve added an additional daily goal in February of bein creative for 15 minutes a day. I have a lot of projects I want to complete this year and I just need to nick away at some of them a little at a time.

I also have created both weekly and monthly goals.

Weekly goals are tracking my Blood pressure (always health), Work Website Updating, my Tarot Card Draws (see the previous two blog entries for some extra thoughts on what I’ve pulled) and a place to track my rest days and why I chose to use them.

My Burger Time Relax day was especially exciting.

I do have several monthly goals but a few were left off for my privacy’s sake. One of those goals is just getting out into the world more and you all don’t need to see where I go in my time.

I really want to push myself with cooking so I have a goal of making some Julia Child Recipes a month. At least one a month but I’m doing 2 next month because my mother is looking for a good meatloaf recipe, so I want to try Julia’s, but I also desperately want to try the flan. So that’s still happening. I finally feel that all of my dairy-free alternatives have reached a really good substitution point and feel comfortable attempting these without the true ingredients.

I’ll have to make a post about my Claire Saffitz Christmas Dinner I did and the Julia Child Recipes I’ve done so far.

I also have a couple pages on my spreadsheets on Anime I want to watch with my S.O., the art projects I want to create (there are gift ideas on it, so no pics) and even a cleaning schedule to help me take care of my house without getting overwhelmed (Taskito App will be another post, sometime soon).

It’s the end of January and I’m feeling pretty good and accomplished. I hope I can keep it up!

The Five of Cups

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I probably won’t talk about each Tarot Card Draw for the next 50 weeks but I had something to say about this one.

Apparently the Five of Cups is all about Regret, Mistakes, and Trying to Learn From the Past.

Life is long (sometimes) and there are so many choices to make. Choices that are mundane, like how much Splenda to put in your coffee or choices that are life altering, like deciding to end a relationship and the whole gamut of choices in-between.

I have made many mistakes, I have a few regrets. I got slapped in the face with a regret not too long ago (Forgive the vagueness, I’m not quite ready to talk about it) and I’m never going to get to make this better. For me or for the others that were involved. It literally is what it is, and that is all that there will be.

There is too much life to never have any regrets but when you ruminate too long or too often you start getting lost in the weeds and that does happen to me from time to time. My anxieties make my brain run too much and they don’t turn off.

What I am trying to do is to forgive myself for my mistakes and to give myself a bit of grace for my regrets. I always try to act in the best interests of all that are involved and while I don’t think in this particular case I made a mistake, I do regret how it all ended up.

 
 

New Year, New Goals

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Every year I have so many goals. Some stick, some stick for awhile then go by the wayside, and some are so lofty they never happen.

I’m trying to be very realistic with my goals this year. A lot of my problems with goals come from trying to do too many things every day and then overwhelming myself at a certain point and then falling apart.

One of my goals this year is to Draw 1 Tarot Card a week. I have a couple beautiful sets of Tarot Cards and I want to use them. I got a Tarot Journal last year and it was draw 3 cards every day and then also draw cards for the month and the year and then when the astrology sign changes, ets. etc…it was a lot. So, I’m going to do 1 card a week.

Now do I believe in their power and mysticism? Eh. But what I love to do is use them as a prompt for journaling and focusing or even just thinking of how it applies to my life currently and then I can sit with my thoughts for a bit. A little introspection never hurt anyone.

The first card that I drew for the year was THE QUEEN OF WANDS (upright). Personally, this is a great card to start off the year with, especially since one of it’s meanings is Purposeful Action…i.e. Setting Goals and Achieving them. The Queen knows how to achieve results and gets what she wants. I think this is a strong start!