That's kind of what I felt like most of the day. Sleepy and lazy. I took a nap in the afternoon and the next thing I knew Sunday was nearly over!

So of course the blog post immediately preceding this one is going to be about how ebooks are still more expensive that physical books. And that I'm still purchasing and storing physical books. Of course.

Because this post is about a new eReader I received in the mail today. Kobo has a fantastic deal on their site for their Kobo mini, which is a touchscreen eReader. It's only $39.99 until July 18th, which is pretty freaking cheap. I mean, I bought my refurbished Kindle 2 for $150 a few years ago. So eReaders have really come down in price.
And they're a lot more compact. Look at that size difference! I mean, yes, the newer Kindles are small too.

Plus, the Kobo will read EPub, which is something my Kindle 2 wont do. Sure, any books I've purchased through Amazon won't work on the Kobo off the bat. But the device does read mobi files, which is one of the two (the other is .azw) file formats Amazon uses for their books.

I'm mostly just happy to have something that reads EPub files. It's a pretty popular and widely used file format and I have several books that are EPubs that in the past I'd had to hassle with converting to get to work on my Kindle 2.

As a side note, I'm looking forward to the next Humble eBook Bundle for more awesome books to read.

I mostly read fiction, but lately I've been a little on a non-fiction kick. I've run across Jon Ronson in enough interviews that I decided I had to read one of his books. The Psychopath Test was an amusing enough read that it inspired me to pick up a few others that I'd been meaning to read.

Not everything I ordered has arrived, but enough has that I can start reading the next non-fiction book. I would have picked them all up as ebooks but oddly the physical book is still 99.9% cheaper. I picked up four physical books (two haven't arrived) for the price of your average ebook. So, physical books it is!

I love this game. Have I mentioned I love Animal Crossing? Because I do. The whole idea of being able to visit someone else's town in your sleep is kinda awesome.

Chris spent part of the evening sideloading some apps on the Ouya, including the Amazon App store and Flipboard. The whole process was pretty painless. Of course, if you're using touchscreen applications but you don't actually have a touchscreen, it's hard to do some things....like use Flipboard.

I have a few Humble Indie Bundle games I'm going to pop on there this weekend as well.

And play games on it, of course!

The Ouya we pre-ordered arrived today. While I realize today is the release date, I had assumed I'd get a shipping notice today and receive the console later in the week or next week. So when we arrived home and it was on the porch - I was impressed.
The device has some nice packaging. And the device itself is very sturdy feeling. The controller even has nylon straps (which I should have snapped a photo of) for the battery trays to make it easier to pop the batteries out.
As you can see, it's a pretty small device. It takes up barely any real estate.
There are quite a few games to choose from and since everything has a free tutorial, you can check everything out without risking buying a bad game. We spent a few hours taking turns playing with the console.

Because we only ordered one controller, we decided to pair one of the PS3 controllers with it to see how it works. Not every game functions with the PS3 controller, but it is usable for some things.

Overall I'm fairly impressed. It's a nice robust console for $99 that, since it is Android, comes pre-rooted and you can sideload additional apps if you want.

The weather is a tad cooler today than it was over the weekend. It's still pretty sunny out, which always makes the day more cheerful, even a Monday.

It's day two of JAFAX 18! We visited Adam and Comfort at their table in Artist Alley.
And watched their second panel, Creating Your Comic/Manga from Concept to Publication.
We also wandered around a bit on campus. It was pretty hot out but not unbearably so. We did miss the costume contest but there were certainly plenty to see out and about as well.

I look forward to next year!

JAFAX 18 is this weekend so we headed out to the local university where it is hosted to check things out.
Adam and Comfort are guests at JAFAX this year and they're featured in the program guide. HOORAY!
They're also hosting two panels at JAFAX. The one today, Lets Make A Character, is about character creation and development.
In the second half of their Lets Make A Character panel, the audience participates and Adam and Comfort create a character on the spot based on the different personality traits the audience has provided. The whole thing is awesome and fun to watch. I'm also looking forward to their second panel which is tomorrow - Creating your Comic/Manga from Concept to Publication.

While we were there, I did noticed this year that there are a lot more commercially made costumes being worn as opposed to something homemade out of cardboard and paint. Not that there weren't homemade items, especially props, but the availability and cost for high quality anime costumes has probably shifted a bit over the years, making it easier to just buy something as opposed to crafting it.
Anyway, Leki seemed to really miss us for the short time we were gone. So excited he insisted sleeping on my chest while I checked my 3DS for all the StreetPass stuff I'd picked up from the convention.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's show!

It's Adam's birthday today! And since they're in town for the JAFAX convention this weekend, we get to hang out and celebrate!
We strolled along the boardwalk at the nearby Palmer Park...
..made a gazillion veggie skewers for tasty grilling...
...enjoyed beautiful weather on the deck for lunch....
...and set things on fire for a delicious birthday celebration!

Tonight Adam and Comfort are in town for the JAFAX convention. So we got together with Jeff and caught the latest superhero movie - Man of Steel.

There are a lot of explosions. If you like explosions, you will probably like the movie. If you think Transformers is too much, this movie may not be for you.

I was not a fan.
After the movie we hung out for a bit and played one of Jeff's boardgames, Smash Up. This game is AWESOME.
There are a whole different type of factions you can play and each player chooses two (randomly). I ended up with wizards and dinosaurs. Do you know how awesome they are? They're awesome. I'd totally play this game again.

I've played a LOT of Animal Crossing New Leaf lately. This super casual, slice of life game is addictive. I loved playing it on my GameCube way back when, and on the Wii.

Mostly I just love booting up the game, talking to the animals and just get their reactions to things. Bee stings, mail sent, gifts given, and so on. And then there are the whole plethora of visitors that come and go throughout your town, like a shady fox selling "priceless art" or a turnip seller that lets you play the Stalk Market (get it?). It's adorable.

Plus they've added cool new things, like special items from other Nintendo games that you can pick up by eating fortune cookies. Who can say no to Midna's Mask?

New Leaf is as addictive as the first one I played back on the GameCube, and more portable, which is probably a dangerous combination.

I get this look a lot. I'm not sure if it means "feed me now", "follow me to the food dish" or nothing at all.

Probably nothing at all.

Yesterday my mother gave us several different types of plants, but mainly a bunch of hostas. Now, where we live we get quite a bit of wildlife. Rabbits and deer are especially keen on the plants in the yard. They've gnawed down the single hosta we have for the last two summers we've lived here. They dont kill the plant, but they certainly enjoy it.

So why not give them more to enjoy? Ok, that's not the main intent, but if it happens it happens.
So we planted several hostas in the back yard. We'll see how long they remain leafy.
We also planted a small peony (and some lilies - but I forgot to take a photo of those). Hopefully the poor little thing does alright. It doesn't look like it in the photo, but I actually did use soil and then covered everything back up with the sandy mix that comprises most of our yard.

Anyway, this will be an interesting experiment to see what survives and what gets eaten.
While we were out there, Chris discovered our whole back yard is littered with small frogs. They're not much larger than a thumbnail and they're everywhere. Once we noticed them it was hard to walk around the yard without stepping lightly and checking before each step.

We headed over to the east side of the state to celebrate Father's day with everyone. Of course, first up on the agenda was to celebrate, belatedly, my little brother's birthday. Since his birthday is in early June and I didn't get a chance to see him before today, it seemed like as good a time as any to break out the gifts...
...and the giant bucket of home-made brownies and gummy worms.
There was grilling.
And sunbathing.
After all the tasty grilled food, we headed over to Chris's dad's house to enjoy the afternoon and evening. Everyone really enjoyed the large chart my mom printed up of Chris's family genealogy, even Scot, who I didn't get a photo of.

All in all it was a good day. A long day, but totally worth it.

My work gifted us with two tickets to the Billy Elliot musical earlier this week for tonight's show.

It's been years since I've seen anything at the Devos Hall. In fact, I the only other show I'd seen there was a Tori Amos concert when I was in college and didn't even live here.
So we headed out this evening to watch the show. It was pretty good. I always enjoy watching the mechanics of a play or musical, sometimes more than the main event itself. And while I'm not a huge fan of musicals, I actually did enjoy this one quite a bit. I would never have chosen to see the show, mostly because it is a musical, but I'm glad I did.

We will certainly have to make more of an effort to catch live performances.

We both have the day off so we decided to head out to Pickerel Lake and enjoy some time walking the trails and enjoying the weather.
It's been awhile since I've been out here, so it was nice to visit and see all the wildlife again.

Heavy rains the night before have flooded the area in Palmer Park where the boardwalk is. Most of the boardwalk is above water, but there are a few stretches that aren't so lucky.

When I want to take a break from a book I'm reading, Ingress has become a great distraction on lunch. Downtown is pretty full of portals so I don't have very far to walk before there's a whole plethora of them.

Our anniversary falls on a work day this year and although Chris had the day off, I did not. So we went out to dinner after he picked me up from work and we spent the evening together.

Huzzah for anniversaries!

I don't wear a lot of jewelry. In fact, I've pretty much just worn the same necklace almost every day for the last several years. The cat really likes it. He's pretty attracted to silver for whatever reason. Anyway, he finally got a little too excited and broke the chain. I've yet to replace the chain, so I haven't been wearing the necklace.

But now I have two new necklaces to wear that are awesome and hand-made. They're by an etsy seller Surly-Ramics and they're pretty bad-ass (the dragon especially cause, well, DRAGON).

So there's slightly less pressure to fix my silver necklace and I'm excited to wear these. Which is really weird if you know me, because I don't usually get excited about jewelry.

But again.DRAGON.

Plus the other one reminds me of Grumpy Bear.

The latest Animal Crossing game is out and it's adorable. I spent quite a bit running around collecting fish and talking to my neighbors in game.
In the afternoon we headed out downtown to play some Ingress. I could lie and say it was for the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts, but we honestly spent most of the time avoiding the festival area and walking around downtown by the river.

We had a pretty good time and got a fair amount of exercise walking back and forth and all over the place.

And then I went home and played a ton more Animal Crossing.

Sometimes you spend the whole time just carrying stuff back and forth, back and forth, never noticing the danger around you. Like the human with a giant foot.

Today marks the first day of the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts. The festival is an annual event and it is primarily a music and food festival, although there are certainly other forms of art present.

I'm not a huge live music fan, so I don't get quite as excited for this event as I do for JAFAX, which is later this month, but it's still interesting to see all the different things going on. And since I work downtown, I'm able to catch a sneak peek before the official opening and some early performances.