Catchup Roundup

With the holidays and now a certain film festival coming up that I'm involved in through work, I haven't had a lot of time to post here lately. So, I'm still planning on a New Year's thingy in a day or two (happy New Year!), but until then, here's a little rundown of some of the things I've neglected to this point (and apologies if you've seen them already):

• Yumi's band CQA has begun selling a "fukubukuro" bag on their web site for 6,000 yen. Fukubukuro are usually "mystery bags" with a bunch of random stuff, although CQA tell you exactly what you're getting. It seems to be a pretty good deal, with two t-shirts, a beach towel, a keychain, a sticker, and a couple other little things (basically everything in their "merch" section except the bag, I think - unless that's the bag it comes in). I desperately want one, but they only take yen in cash. This is common in Japan.
  
  
  
• Ami and Yumi have recorded a new "Special" message for the new year. It seems to be wishing a happy new year and then running off some resolutions, for the most part. They talk about being lazy, eating too much, gaining weight over the holidays and putting off work until February.
  
  
  Props to them for finally switching to Flash video. At least it's platform agnostic.
  
  
• The official site has also been updated with a tiny little thumbnail version of the actual cover for the "Hiyori Hime" single. Not sure yet if it's the limited or regular version. Cute!
  
  
  
• The "Tsukimekuri" 2009 calendar sold out. So they made more, and it sold out again! Seriously, the quantities we're talking here must have been severely limited.
  
  
• I'm not seeing any notice on the official site, but Ami and Yumi appear to have been in JILLE magazine. You can see the photos at the Sumairu Puffy site.
  
  
• It's taken me long enough, but I finally got my issue of Soup CRUiSE.
  
  
  This magazine kinda sucks. Pretty conservative fashion for 30-somethings. I want to see them in KERA! (I guess they're a little too mature for it these days.)

Well, I think that's all the major stuff. I'm still looking around for a full-size version of the single cover, and I've still got my new year's post to do, so watch for that soon.