Items received and not

Today, I got in the mail the Revolutionary Girl Utena Movie DVD I won in the Toonzone contest.

The main disc was loose in the case and very slightly scratched, but played beautifully. I thought I might be getting the regular edition of the Movie, as the Collector's Edition was released and apparently sold out several years ago, but nope, I have another virulently pink case to put with the first. I'm happy.

And since Google's been indexing this blog, I should mention that I still haven't received the DVDs I ordered from DVDSoon, and they haven't gotten back to me yet on either acknowledgement of the first missing package I reported, or the credit/refund they still owe me for the shipment they grossly overcharged me for, which I sent back at the beginning of February, and they admitted to receiving about a month ago.

Even though they've been trying to lure customers back with the promise of rebates and discounts on future orders, I'm highly tempted to just chargeback everything via my credit card company and report them to RECOL as attempted frauds for good measure. I'll write them again tomorrow, adding details of the now 2nd missing shipment and tell them so.

So, if you got here via search, wondering if you should buy from a company named DVDSoon.com, I'd strongly advise against it, or their sibling company DVDImport.com, which is run by the same unreliable people.

Astronomy Domine

Today was spring equinox.

I think that the year should be considered to start with either winter solstice or spring equinox. It seems more logical to me than going by a usually arbitrarily assigned date.

With new beginnings in mind, I signed up for a LiveJournal just now. Will contrast and compare.

"But losing isn't anything."

So, I'm a bad, bad blogger. By all rights, I should be updating every few days, boring any hypothetical readers I've yet to drive away out of their skulls.

Well, perhaps not the last, but I could have at least told you about the remarkably freakish weather we had at the beginning of the month.

What I can give you is an update on the last entry.

I won!

Not the grand prize, but first runner up, which nets me a copy of the Revolutionary Girl Utena Movie, which I already have, but that's beside the point.

Usually whenever one of my creative endeavours is selected for something besides mockery, I end up wondering "Just how bad were the other options?!"

Looking over the competition, some of them are quite good, and I kind of think the third in line should have placed higher (or lower, depending on how one reads the order they're presented in), but I definitely can't argue with the first place winner. Much better than my contribution, which gets by more on technique than substance, or even style, in my opinion.

It really does feel quite good to be awarded something on merit. Even if part of me still considers the judges' standards to be too low, and I had to find out that I'd won via a chance visit to the related Toonzone discussion forum instead of actually being informed, as I thought I'd be.

I just hope the DVD doesn't get lost in the mail.

[0] Words of wisdom from Charlie Brown, in response to "Winning isn't everything".