Man, it sure is quiet with Jeff gone. Except for that damn squeaky toy Lucy obsessively plays with.

I’m usually the one that leaves — trips to different parts of the world, jaunts to L.A. The experience of being the one left behind is not what I anticipated. When do you go to bed? What time do you wake up? Who forces you to get going? Who is there to talk (or not talk) to? No, Steve, these are RHETORICAL questions, so there will be no answer following them … so don’t freak out about that horrible, trendy sentence structure. 😉

The guy is coming tomorrow to clean the carpets. It’s about time. I’ll go on an extra-long walk with the dogs while he does his work. And then I’ll come home to a quiet house again. Even watching movies isn’t quite as fun when you’re alone, is it? Damn, now I *really* feel isolated up here!

Things could be worse. I could be Martha.

I have added an RSS feed to my site.

Why?

Jesus, if I could answer that, I’d be… well, Jesus.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to present a LONG but THRILLING TALE of VAST MONETARY SAVINGS.

Over the last few months, I have been slowly collecting the manga series Lone Wolf and Cub. I collected the first English release in college, but then the company printing the series went bankrupt, and, it turns out, they were butchering the series anyway with malevolent editing, evil translation, and questionable investment in shady foreign bond markets. Or something.

Each book in the new, properly-translated series is about $10, thus my slow pace of acquisition. To make matters more difficult—and here is where the true geek in me comes out—the publisher of this new set has changed their logo twice, and has included their new logos on the later printings of the books.

The set design is very nice as a whole, so me being all into style and looks, I wanted to make sure all my copies of the books had the same logo. The old one being the one I started with, that’d be the one I’d need to keep collecting. This has become a problem with the lower volumes since they’ve been reprinted several times already with the new logos.

I know. It’s sad. But it’s also understandable, right? Right.

After striking out on finding volumes 5 and 9 yesterday during lunch, my last hope for the day was to go to Virgin on Sunset. It was walkable from where I yoga-ed and dinner-ed last night, so I took a stroll, and to my incredible surprise, they had volume 9 there with the old logo! I’d still have to find volume 5, but at least I had one less to hunt down.

I thought of buying a couple more volumes, too, but I wanted to give my money to independent stores instead of a huge company, and I knew it’d be simple to find the later volumes with the old logo. So I took my one lonely Lone Wolf to the counter, and the droopy-eyed lass there blooped it with her laser scanner. The $9.95 book rang up at $2.75.

The manager was called over for a chat, wherein Droopy eyes said all the comics had been ringing up with a steep discount all day. The manager determined that if the book was in the system at that price, I should get it at that price.

This was it! My chance was here! Tiny independent comic books stores be damned! I dashed back to the manga shelf and grabbed every remaining volume of the series I needed, minus one that was damaged. I felt like a dork carting 15 books to the checkout in the hopes they would all ring up at $2.75. But droopy eyes was nice, and understood completely.

I watched the register display as each book was scanned in. Bloop. $2.75! Bloop. $2.75! Bloop bloop bloop. $2.75! $9.95! $2.75!

Oops. Okay, so I could settle for one— Ah, okay, two books at full pri— In the end, three of the fifteen were full price, but the remaining 12 were $2.75. Still a bargain by anyone’s standards. Instead of paying over $150 during the next few months for fifteen books, I got them for $64. With only two more now to find. Holy cow.

I felt triumphant! I felt lucky! I felt like Visia and Expressium Americanae, the gods of commerce, had, for once, smiled down upon me! I bow low to them.