Lost in Lualand

CDJapan Order, Delivered February 2026

As noted Last Year, some special goodies were available for pre-order in Japan, and those items were delivered to my home a week ago (Wednesday, February 4).

My twin biases in TWICE are Sana and Momo – and those women are also two of the three members of TWICE’s Japanese sub-group, MISAMO. So I do whatever I can to support Misamo, even if their music doesn’t quite match my listening preferences.

So my order included:

Misamo PLAY DVD/CD set
MISAMO visuals are the best, so I always get any DVD or Blu-ray that I can. I’ve been too busy to view the DVD. The videos will be stuck in my backlog for a while.

Warner Japan doesn’t offer much in the way of extras. The oversize box (with cover photo) includes a large (10.75" x 7.5") but thin (32 pp) photobook/lyrics book – along with a matching (same size) poster. A single, small, random photocard was included. A CDJapan-only bonus was a round compact mirror with photo back and clear vinyl case.

Misamo PLAY DVD/CD set

Misamo PLAY CD
The music CD that is included with the MISAMO DVD doesn’t have the three solo songs. How annoying. So I had to buy a separate CD to get all the recorded songs. Warner Japan, always stingy with bonuses, provided just a single, random photocard. The CDJapan-only bonus was another round, compact mirror with photo back and clear vinyl case.

As a lifelong Gunbuster fan, I had to order this special reissue:

Sound Collection of Gunbuster 3-CD set
This CD box set completes my collection of Gunbuster CDs, and I’m eager to listen to the whole thing – even though it’s a superset of my other CDs. I think there are new (to me) sound clips – and I add good ones to the sound library on Belldandy to replace system sounds. Anyway, I’m super happy to have completed my Gunbuster audio collection – a nice compliment to my complete video collection.

PDXWLF 2026 Press Badge

Things are troubled but not quite dire here. I’ve had a catastrophic failure of the external SSD that holds my Lightroom library. Normally I’d take a timeout and begin work on a lengthy rebuild. However, this happened just one day before the start of the Portland Winter Light Festival, and I’m a photographer for the festival – so I had to do an emergency restore of a 9-month-old Lightroom backup so that I could process photos starting last Friday.

PDXWLF runs for nine days (nights, actually), and I have photo commitments for six of those nights (including tonight). PDXWLF is the worst (most difficult, least satisfying) of the photography I do each year – and it’s more of a chore than anything. Even after the event is over after this Saturday, I’ll have a huge amount of photos to process. There are deadlines.

I’ve talked with tech support for my dead drive, and there is almost no hope of recovering the data. (There is a very slim chance, but I’ve studied the tool, and I’m not optimistic at all. I’ll explain on another day.) Basically, there’s nine months of work that is lost and would have to be recreated – in my spare time, of course. This includes all my 2025 Oregon Country Fair, Portland Saturday Market 2025, Portland Farmers Market 2025, Kumoricon 2025, and TWICE concert photos. 😔

In the meantime, my home library cleanup/organization is on hold. And there is a lot remaining to do.

LiveJournal Scrapbook/Photos download hasn’t received attention, either.

Maybe the only good thing is that I finished compiling a big, electronic stack of documents that I’ve sent to my tax accountant. This was right on my ideal schedule – and three weeks ahead of last year.

If I slowed down and stopped to think, I’d know how much of a mess everything is right now – so I’m not going to do that. There’s no time to be depressed. For now, I have to get ready for another photo outing tonight.