My Life

I added I few more doujinshi to the site. I’m currently going through and organizing doujinshi image files on my hard drive. I’m looking to see if there are some doujinshi I haven’t posted on here yet. I’ll need to bring back the “unknown title doujinshi” page again for those I can’t translate.

Samurai Reflections has made a Flickr gallery for doujinshi cover images. I’ll be adding any Mashou and Kayura ones to my site. (Per their tumblr post: “Everyone is free to take what they want from these pictures to keep for your own archives or use them online if you have a use for them. I don’t care what you do with them.”) Those will definitely be added to an unknown title page. So many thanks for Samurai Reflections for putting these up. Quite a few doujinshi images there that I haven’t seen before.

Finally I wanted to apologize for the lack of updates lately. My husband got notice on January 20th that he would be laid off from his job on February 10th due to basically lack of work. He had been there less than a year and per the agreement/contract he signed, my husband would have to pay back a portion of his sign-on bonus. (To come out of his last paycheck.) He also would not be getting any severance pay. The only income he would get would be $300 a week for unemployment, before taxes.

My husband’s income counts for 75% of our joint income. So I would need to somehow support the both of us on my much lower income. (Mortgage, bills for house, his car payment..) Plus my income would go down as my husband would have to go on my health insurance, unless he qualified for Medicaid or some other low cost insurance. Least to say I naturally went into a stress induced panic mode. If we had no debt we might have been able to manage to make ends meet for both of us on just my income alone. With the debt it’s impossible. I was looking into ways of how to keep our house, work with debtors about our situation, and maybe talk with someone about at what point we would have to declare bankruptcy. And of course the extreme stress made all of my heath issues worse. Quite a few of them were at a level I haven’t experienced in a looong time.

My husband immediately updated his resume upon getting the news and started job hunting. Fortunately for us, he was hired for a job. My husband did have to take a pay cut, which we kind of suspected would happen. However we should still be able to make ends meet. My husband starts his new job tomorrow the 15th.

I’m still concerned about our finances. My husband’s last paycheck will be significantly less. Plus there will most likely be a gap before my husband sees the first paycheck from his new job. Though my husband getting a job has done wonders for most of my stress. Most of my health issues have quieted down, with the exception of one that usually takes weeks to recoup from.

All in all the past month or so has sucked. And I definitely feel like I’ve lost that month’s time in regards to things I wanted to do this year. I’m struggling to get back on track. And sadly this website has been one of those things I had to put aside while I dealt with this crisis. So as I said I’m working on organizing things and hopefully getting more stuff up. Please be patient with me and thank you for supporting me and visiting my site.

I had some medical issues that came up shortly after my last website update, and they have continued for a long while. Unfortunately I’m still seeing doctors (specialists) and having tests done to determine what’s going on with me. The only things I have determined so far are:

1. My heart is fine. No blockages developing.
2. My sinuses x-rays were completely normal. (Or “grossly unremarkable” as the summary said. I think I dashed someone’s hopes of getting into a medical journal.) Which unfortunately led to the diagnosis of..
3. I am experiencing a-typical migraines. Meaning I get a sharp sudden pain on my head, or bridge of my nose, that lasts for several minutes to a half an hour then it goes away. I don’t seem to be as sensitive as other migraine suffers (yet, knock on wood). Strong smells are at least one trigger. The last time I had a migraine was after the carpets were cleaned at work. They cleaned them in the morning and used something with a very strong chemical smell.
4. No crystals in my inner ear. I was having dizzy/woozy spells. So these spells may be due to something else going on. (The dizziness was why my heart and blood pressure was also checked, to make sure that wasn’t the cause. Ruling out worst case scenario and all that.)

I had a fasting blood test done this past week so I’m waiting to hear the results sometime later this week. That should either rule in or out any other possible problems that are going on.

I still have one more specialist I need to see. However I had to put that off for a bit so I could afford the co-pay. (Between co-pays and paying for deductibles on tests, I’m going broke. 🙁 )

Being ill for this long has made me tired, and the gauntlet of tests is making me depressed. I am feeling a bit better than I was at the beginning of my illness, but I’m not 100% yet.

I’m am still planning to go to Anime Weekend Atlanta this coming weekend. I’ll be wearing this lanyard that you see below. Since I don’t have any series shirts to wear, I figured this was the only way I could find fans (or rather have you find me). Also my tag is supposed to say, “AlphaYami.” So if you’re attending, and you see me, feel free to say hello. As I’ve said I’m only attending, walking around and enjoying the convention. I only did AWA once for part of a day some years back, so I never got a feel for it. So I’ll be doing the whole weekend and seeing how I like it.

I’ll update this blog if I find out any news about my health. And again, sorry for the lack of updates lately. Getting these tests done and working my full-time job has taken most of my energy (physical and mental/emotional) for the past couple of months. I’m hoping they’ll be an end and a solution to my medical issues soon.

Update:

I found out I was low on Vitamin D, B12, and .. I’m pre-diabetic. 🙁 I have already bought a meter and supplies and I am checking and watching my blood sugar levels. The good news is that this has been caught fairly early. So if I can figure out what foods/carbs my body can tolerate, and get in more exercise, I can slow the progression. I’m lucky my husband is also a type 2 diabetic. So he’s been helping me with everything I need to do now. Otherwise I would be a complete panic-ridden wreck right now.

Now I just need time to relax and take a breather from all these doctor appointments from various specialists. I’m done being their medical guinea pig and the “one more test” to rule out something else. Every damn test, minus the fasting blood work, has been normal. So at this point I’m telling them enough is enough. If the doctor is quite certain of what I have, that’s good enough for me. Enough with the rare outside chance so let’s spend more money doing yet another test crap. (Because my insurance will, yet again, punt the cost of the test to my deductible.)

Sighs. So done with doctors for a while. I need my normal life back.

I edited all the Dark Warlord/Mashou and Kayura bios and information. I actually started updating them on March 31st. I just put the finishing touches up today.

Basically thanks to Welcome to Edo and their translations we have some extra information about these characters. We have information about what the name the providence they were born in used to be called. (Since they all changed names over the centuries.) Good for those who are just curious, have an interest in Japanese history, or fanfic writers. 😀

We also have a range of when the Dark Warlords/Mashou joined Talpa/Arago. (1563-1565) So I added possible physical ages both when they joined, and their ages during the TV series. Again they’re ranges so we don’t have precise ages. (Drat.) But Anubis/Shuten did join last (the one Mashou cassette drama confirms this), so we can guesstimate his approximate age a bit more. Look at each of their bio pages and you’ll see what I mean. I tried to make it as clear as possible.

As you can tell from this post, I’m slowly working my way out of hiatus. This past Friday was the 1 month anniversary of my father’s death and I took it very hard that night. I still have times when I mourn which leave me emotionally and physically drained. I get depressed and it’s difficult sometimes to push through that and do things that need to be done. So thank you to everyone for being patient and understanding with me.

Don’t forget, the Samurai Troopers TV series DVD collection comes out near the end of this month!

Also one final and important thing. I am doing a walk on May 30th for the National Kidney Foundation in honor of my father. (He had renal failure at the end, and years ago was diagnosed with Polycystic Kidney Disease.) It’s a fundraising walk to help get funds for the National Kidney Foundation. As such I am looking for donations for our team. (I will be walking with my husband Giuliano.) Even a donation like $5 is wonderful to give. So please give if you can to help this great cause. Thank you so much.