2020-01-26 08:06
Busy day yesterday. ALA Midwinter was happening in Philly, so I went took the train down to spend some very rare time with work colleagues.
Spent all afternoon at the company booth in the exhibit, chatting with newly met and longtime colleagues. Booth was pretty slow, but I appreciated getting the time to socialize. It really does make a difference meeting someone in real life rather than just via Slack interactions. Especially, in this case, people that I don't ever even have meetings with.
It was a lot of socializing for me, that I normally don't do, but I think I acquitted myself well. Not too many akward silences, not just talking about work, hopefully not saying anything stupid.
Just saw the red-tailed hawk fly across my window view and land in a tall tree across the street. It's always a thrill to see him (her?, I don't know how to tell) flying, or perched.
Found out via a mostly unrelated search that Tokyopop has been putting out an English edition of Kozue Amano's Aria, the Aria: The Masterpiece edition. They are already four volumes out, which gets the manga as far as they published last time they tried to release it. Apparently the popularity of the anime boosted its profile enough. I guess I'm not following the right sources to have missed for so long that they were releasing these. I, of course, ordered all 4 right away. They seem fairly well done. They maintain the color pages (which the older English editions did not), and are packing 2 regular volumes into one, including the volumes from when it was called Aqua. There is no back material or even the little side stories and humorous commentaries from Amano included though which is a bit of a disappointment. No real extra content at all. Just the manga pages, a table of contents, and a copyright page. Pretty no frills, but at a larger size than before. Happy to be reading the series again, as it's always been a favorite, simple, charming, a bit melancholy at times. Hopefully they will actually get through the whole series (7 volumes in this edition) this time. I've only read the later volumes in old scanlations.