Aqua Regia

Catching up with the first eight episodes of season six, I've fallen in love with Winx Club all over again.  It's funny, I'll go through these periods where I don't think about the series at all and feel like it doesn't mean much to me anymore, but then I'll watch a few new episodes and everything "Blooms" Haha, I went there back to life again.
( Season Six spoilers below, obviously. )
I'm so curious where things will go from here.  Here's hoping Nick gets their act together and airs the rest of S6 soon.

Also, are we getting any Jakks dolls in the US for S6?  If not, I'm going to go bankrupt importing the Italian Bloomix designs.

And also, I may have just bought a few more of the old Giochi dolls.  I found a seller in the US who had several of them for a really good price and just couldn't stop myself. XD

I haven't rambled about my collection in quite awhile, so I thought I'd detail a few bits here.

First off, I have finally taken the plunge and picked up some glass shelving units! It all started when my brother gave me an awesome display case for Christmas. I pretty much immediately earmarked it for my Masters of the Universe Classics collection, as the shelves are only around 12 inches tall. Perfect for action figures, but most doll lines (including Monster High boys) would have trouble fitting. Unfortunately, the shelf is still at my parent's house because it was too large to fit in my car (aside from the fact that I'd have a hell of a time moving a glass shelf by myself - can anyone say shattered glass mess?) But after that, Mom, Dad, and I made a little trip to IKEA, where I finally had the chance to see a display case that they sell in person. At only $65 a piece, I picked up two of those. They have at least 16 inch high shelves, which will even fit a Gene or Tonner sized doll! All three shelves should be arriving the last weekend of February when my family plans to come up and visit.

I'm not sure what to use the two IKEA shelves for yet. I'm thinking about one for my Winx collection (finally an excuse to debox my Simba Winx!) The other will probably go two Monster High, at least in part. I have a ton of MH stuff still in the box simply due to no display space. However, I'd still like somewhere to display my Jewel Riders and/or Dragon Flyz. Maybe I should have bought a third IKEA case. XD Well, once I get everything situated, I'll be sure to snap a few pics.

In terms of overall collecting trends, things are looking pretty much the same

Action Figure wise, I subscribed to Club Eternia, so it's monthly MOTUC for me, yay! The only problem there is that it's becoming a space issue, and I haven't even deboxed everything yet. Other lines include Young Justice (I WILL get everything to build that Collect and Connect Hall of Justice. It's going to be awesome), adding Justice Leaguers off of Ebay here and there, and continuing the new Thundercats 2011 line. I saw they released a six inch Cheetara, so now I'm tempted to get that scale as well, but I need to draw the line somewhere, and the 4-inch line simply has better character selection (I just picked up King Claudas!) I pick up the occasional DC Classics character, but now that that line is basically defunct, I'm not sure what's happening there.

Doll wise, things are in a bit of flux. I've decided to scale back my Barbie collecting a good deal. I'd like to try and keep to to Ken stuff as much as possible, but of course I enjoy the media tie-in dolls like Star Trek as well. I just think I'm going to have to attempt being a bit more ruthless in what I pick up that's Barbie related.

I'm anticipating the new Winx from Jakks Pacific to be out this year, since the show has been revived in the U.S. on Nickelodeon. Hopefully the upcoming Toy Fair will have a bit more information regarding this. Whether or not I end up getting them is really going to come down to character selection and sculpt at this point, however. I own Winx dolls in three different scales from three different manufacturers. Do I really need to add a fourth series of Winx dolls? If they produce more of the boys than Sky and more of the Trix other than Icy, I'll probably be sold even if I don't like the sculpt as much as the other three lines. If it's mostly retreads, I'll probably pass though.

Monster High. Oh, Monster High. I love this line, but it drives me crazy at the same time. Half of 2011 was basically a crapshoot in terms of finding anything, so I'm hesitant to jump in again full force. I actually never picked up Dead Tired or the Classroom dolls because there was so much coming out, and I didn't think I'd have time to hunt for everything. Go figure those were the easiest dolls to find. It eventually just started to become a bit of a chore and really not fun (can anyone say still trying to find a basic Abbey without resorting to Ebay scalpers? Thank goodness the word on the street is that they're doing a second run of her to drop around May). That feeling was mollified a bit when I was able to snag Skull Shores, the three new girls (Toralei, Nefera, and Operetta), and part of Sweet 1600 in January. But still, I want to be able to walk into a store and find a reasonable selection. If Mattel can do this with Barbie, they should be able to do it with MH.
So I'm thinking of scaling back on what I pick up going forward for this line. New characters are an obvious must buy, and anything of the guys I'll continue to get, but I'll probably be evaluating each sub-line going forward more stringently. My general rule has been all or nothing with each sub-line, but perhaps I'll start breaking that if there's only one or two dolls in a sub-line that I really like.

Actually, scaling back will hopefully happen a bit across the board. I simply need to be more choosy in what comes home with me. Not only for space issues, but I have tons of stuff from 2011 I haven't even deboxed yet. I almost need time to process all that before I move forward with getting much of anything this year.

Anyway, hopefully I can do a non-toy related post soon!

Twenty-Ten was a strange year – a year filled with periods of frenzied activity followed by periods of lax restlessness. I think this facet of real life spilled over to my toy collecting as well, as I seemed to go through spurts of buying and inactivity. Three major lines dominated my collecting this year: Monster High, Masters of the Universe Classics, and Barbie/Ken.

So while basically the first half of the year was pretty devoid of collecting, early summer was a huge month for Ken, Barbie, and similar-sized friends. I used some graduation money to reward myself with some items from the summer sale and a small line I’d been eyeing for a long time (One Modern Circle). Once I started thinking of some of them as characters from a story I’ve been kicking around a long time…well, I started on a quest to get a doll of every major character. XD

Late Summer/Fall saw the debut of Monster High, a wonderful line that I didn’t originally intend to get so caught up in. However, the attention to detail combined with unique characterization and stories for each character in their journals and the webisodes really won me over. The “core line” of eight is definitely my favorite, but newer lines are great as well!

Around the same time that Monster High came out, I ordered Prince Adam and Orko from Masters of the Universe Classics (MOTUC) online, which sent me on a quest to get the rest of the MOTUC for the year. This is such a fun line of figures (it helps that there are several great cartoon series out there for it), and I’m stoked that it encompasses all the eras of MOTU – mini comics, original line, 200X line, Princess of Power, and New Adventures! I also purchased the subscription for 2011, so definitely looking forward to one or two new great MOTUC figures every month in the coming year.

Firsts for 2010 included my first 1/4 scale doll (Tonner Zatanna in October), first Barbie playline purchase (the first wave Fashionista Ken in February), first MGAE products (Bratz Boyz Cameron and Dylan over the summer), first Integrity Toys purchase (NuFace Lukas) and the first time I’ve actually started collecting a line from the ground up as it’s being launched (Monster High). It’s also the first time I’ve really experienced an online retailer (Matty Collector). 2010 also saw no new Pullips/Taeyangs or Winx joining the collection, which felt a little strange. So 2010 could be said to be a year where the scope of what I collected really expanded, but older lines saw little to no growth.

Two Packs were very prevalent among my purchases this year for whatever reason: Deuce & Cleo, Harley Barbie and Ken, Toy Story 3 – Made For Each Other, Speed Racer Speed and Trixie, Vintage Repro Campus Spirit Barbie and Ken and Campus Sweet Shop Midge and Alan, Mary Poppins Jane and Michael, Bratz First Date Braden and Yasmin, Beauty and the Beast Mattel, He-Man vs Superman, Skeletor vs Lex Luthor.

And now for the Top Ten Dolls of 2010!

( See who made the cut! )

Looking forward to in 2011:
1. Ken’s 50th Anniversary!
- Three guys in the next Barbie Basics line!
- My Favorite Ken Vintage Repro
2. Further amazing and creative lines from the Monster High corner.
3. First LIV boy.
4. Four new ladies in MOTUC (and Bow!)

And then I'll be on my way to my new place (and job!)

Packing has pretty much been a nightmare. I've been tripping over boxes for days (like OMG, fourteen boxes of books). Packing up my library seriously took forever, because I was also sorting at the same time. My parents offered to let me leave my bookcase here full, so I picked books I wasn't likely to read any time soon (or had already read recently) and filled it up.

Dolls and figures took forever too. I layered the loose ones in plastic totes using towels in between for cushioning. Though with the Pullips and Taeyangs I dug out their original boxes and repackaged them for stability's sake. Boxed dolls were packaged various ways into large cardboard boxes (so glad to find an old giant computer monitor box!) Those were all loaded into my car tonight, since I didn't want them to be in the moving truck with the rest of my stuff. I would be crushed to find them damaged from the heat. Not all the dolls and toys are coming either, but most of them. And Dawn of the Dance Cleo should be arriving at the new place sometime next week. Heh. I needed a trial order.

I'm leaving lots of my DVDs for the time being as well, though I'll reevaluate that once I see everything there. DVDs are easy to transport compared to dolls and books.

You can really tell my priorities by how I handled my clothes, though. I literally just laid them in my trunk! Whereas I spent days carefully packing the other things!

Anyway, I hope the drive goes okay tomorrow.

Well, yesterday's interview seemed to go well. They didn't offer me the job right there or anything (not that I was expecting that by any stretch of the imagination), but everyone seems nice and I'd be happy to work there if they do offer. I definitely liked the variety that the job entails - working in two different community pharmacies and doing one day a week of SNF (skilled nursing facility: aka nursing home) medication chart review. They said they're working on getting the second community pharmacy up and running at this point, so realistically it could be several weeks until I hear from this place.

In other good news, I got a call about a HOSPITAL job today. Hospital is my dream out-of-school job. This hospital is about three hours north of my current location. Kind of isolated area, but not nearly as small of a town as the last place. Heh. Target is my marker for the presence of civilization. So I go in on September 3rd to speak further with them and their staff. That's how they worded it. Is this even an interview? Better wear a suit just in case.

I also sold all four of my listed textbooks on Amazon yesterday! I only listed them the previous night! So yay for a little bit of money coming in. :)

Also, I found the Bratz Boyz today at K-Mart! So excited to finally have them. I've been checking stores for weeks hoping I'd find Cameron and Dylan. Here's to hoping them get along with the Monster High gang. XD

Big surprise! I broke my buying moratorium. Were you shocked? Me neither. XD

BUT. I did not break it for just anything. Oh no.

TONNER finally made something that I desperately HAD to have, and of course it was a Comic Con exclusive, sold through a different company, and in a limited edition of 300.

( Look behind the curtain to see this beauty! Also includes after-show toy-related blathering! )

On a completely unrelated note, I passed both of my Pharmacy Licensure exams! Now I get to wait impatiently for the Board of Pharmacy to issue me my license number.

And also a big thank-you to iyreia for the awesome souvenir from the zoo! It's beautiful! I hope to pick you up something just as awesome when I head to the Walt Disney museum soon. :)

So I know I joke about this quite often, but it seems that it really has come true faster than I ever expected: I have reached critical mass in terms of both toy display AND storage in my room. Even after doing a good bit of shifting in my closet today, I really only cleared some things off of the floor and stuck them on the shelves.

But did that stop me from picking up Frankie, Lagoona, and Draculaura today at Wal-Mart and TRU? Of course not. It's so easy to ignore your own space limitations when your standing there in a store surrounded by really awesome toys.

My collection has really gone through some explosive growth lately, and it has not been without its share of growing pains. Aside from the space issues, the Silkstone Ken I ordered on eBay appears to have been in the possession of a smoker. There was brown gunk ALL OVER his stand and shoes, and his white shirt and jacket have brown stains on them! That really, really irks me. There was NO MENTION of that in the listing, and the pics are strategically taken to minimize showing ANY of these very apparent flaws. I fully intend to replace him at some future point in time with a MIB version. But in the meantime, I need to attempt to launder the clothes and see if I can't get the stains out. ~_~ *sigh*

I may have reached the point of selling some things if I want to add any more, but in truth I am attached to everything in the collection at this point. Is that a sign of being a hoarder? I feel like it sometimes. So many books, DVDs and toys...it's just an untenable situation. So I finally sat down and made a list of the lines that I collect. This list should serve to guide me and (hopefully) keep my collection in some semblance of order and prevent it from growing so huge that it falls and kills me in my sleep.

( Here if you want to see it and a small wishlist )

Wow...I can't believe that my last entry here was on March 30th.  That just makes me all kinds of sad.

Suffice to say that the last two months have been pretty busy.  I finished my last rotation May 7th with being able to watch an awesome open heart surgery from beginning to end.  But I was definitely glad to be done with the whole rotations thing.  Doing pointless projects and hanging fliers around the hospital was not exactly the best use of my time there.  Our class spent a week back at the main campus after rotations doing a board review class, which was mildly helpful.

And May 15th, I graduated with my Doctor of Pharmacy.  And almost a month later, I still feel weird as heck when I think about it. 

In the ideal world, I would be starting a residency in a few weeks, giving me a leg up later when I would look for good jobs.  But as my last entry said, I did not match with a residency program, and am left mildly directionless.  So I have put out applications (and so far been turned down) to multiple possibly employers.  I can understand why, however.  Before I have my license, who will really want to hire me?

So, I have been studying like mad since getting done with school in preparation for taking the first part of my boards on June 17th.  After that, I leave the next day on a vacation to Seattle until the 28th, and will hopefully take the second part of the boards a couple of weeks after getting back.  To say I am apprehensive about taking these tests is putting it mildly.  If you don't pass, you have to wait THREE MONTHS to retake, which in my current jobless state would really, really suck.  I want a good employer and some monies, please.

A few months back, I wrote a letter to myself through FutureMe.org for the occasion of my graduation.  It went as follows...

Dear FutureMe,
Wow...can you believe that you've finally made it to the end of Pharmacy School?  Does it feel like the ending of a horrible nightmare, or are you the tiniest bit nostalgic (like I know you are).
Looking back, how does it feel to have spent the last six years of your life pursuing a goal in higher education that at first you didn't even really want, but then slowly grew to kind of enjoy?  At any rate, I bet it feels fucking awesome to be done with UOP and school.
I'm writing this wondering if you'll be ready to embark on a Residency, going to work for CVS, or maybe something entirely different.  The road of life is a little foggy at the moment, so I hope the sun shines through for you and things all worked out to their best.
As you move on from Pharmacy school, don't ever let the soul-sucking nature that your career can have affect your dreaming.  Like Holly Lisle is so fond of saying, follow your dreams.  Get better at piano, write a damn novel, see the world and taste the wine of life for the first time in your life.  Don't live the sheltered, tiring existence you have for the last ten years.
And last of all, take care of yourself.  Lose weight.  Get fit.  Become fucking hot, and prove all those dickheads wrong.  It's your 10 year reunion in another four years, after all.
Cheers, and the best of everything to you.
~J, 2/1/10

On a non-graduation note, I have been really getting into Barbie Collector lately.  My collection has grown from my three Star Trek dolls to around 22 (including some vintage repros that are on their way).  This is all very surreal to me.  Not only was Barbie/Ken always the kind of "taboo" line for me to collect as a guy, but this is possibly my fastest growth of a collection EVER.  I really enjoy the history that this brand has - I mean the fact that it's been around long enough to even have vintage repros really scores points in my "sense of history" category. 

But when I pass both board examination, I think I'll reward myself with a new Pullip and Taeyang.  I haven't gotten any of them in a long time.

I placed my order for Winx in Concert Bloom, Flora, and Musa from a German seller on Ebay. Hopefully in about two weeks my Simba Winx collection (only one of each girl) will be complete. It ended up being Believix Tecna, Roxy, and Layla, and Concert Stella, Bloom, Flora, and Musa. This does it for me for the Simba Winx dolls too - though really awesome, they are just too expensive for me to get any more, I think. Except if they made any of the guys. Heh.

Though I am thinking of ordering one or two of the Giochi Preziosi Disney Fairies. I have to support any iteration of Terence, after all!

And after seeing Avatar in theaters I desperately wanted some of the figures, but couldn't find a Neytiri after searching in five stores! Five! I was so dejected after even TRU failed me. So you can imagine my squee when she was at the last store I went to on a whim (plus, she was the last one there). I looked on Ebay the day I got her and saw one going for $75! That is just crazy. I'll get pictures of those figures up sometime soon. They're too awesome to not post.

Sorry for the toy-centric ramblings of this post. Real life updates will come soon, along with the promised doodles. :)

After finishing my first week of the second rotation, I almost can't describe how much happier I am here. And "here" is a Psychiatric Hospital. XD

What it really comes down to is having an organized preceptor. Each week she has me reviewing patient charts based on specific disease states. Like last week it was patients with depression, and this coming week is patients with bipolar disorder. Also, I do a longish write up on the disease state each week.

So I not only feel that I'm actually learning things/refreshing my memory here, but my time is way better spent. I also work on specific projects - like making write-ups on the different flu vaccines that I have to present to the psychiatrists next week. Goodbye, boring-ass paper filing and standing around! The experience is really almost like night and day.

It doesn't hurt that I'm done by around 2:30 each day. :D I'll definitely be sad to see this rotation go (unlike Nuclear Pharmacy).

I still enjoy the place I'm renting, though I'm thinking of bringing a few more toys back with me. I miss having them around. I ordered the Star Trek dolls during the Barbie Dream Sale for super cheap, so it'll be nice when they show up. But now there's free shipping at Pullip Style too! I'd so order one if I hadn't just made the other sizable order. :(
Though I don't know if I'll be able to stop myself with those new Disney Fairies dolls. They have Terence, and Vidia!