what happens when i get irritated & then get bored? i make animated gifs, apparently. state of the union address? i thought i was watching a pep rally. what a load of bollocks. ok, this 'freedom corps' he mentioned ... check out the citizen corps section. of particular interest is the neighborhood watch program:
"Community residents will be provided with information which will enable them to recognize signs of potential terrorist activity, and to know how to report that activity, making these residents a critical element in the detection, prevention and disruption of terrorism."... more
there's a flower shop near my house that had the words "funeral desings" painted on the outside for years. not funeral designs, funeral desings. when i say years, i really mean years. i remember my rick & i making jokes about it - so that would have been at least 7 or more years ago. it faded over time, so they recently repainted. they did not, however, make corrections. so now there's a nice fresh coat of paint announcing that funeral desings are still available. i wonder ... do they seriously not know how to spell designs? perhaps nobody has ever mentioned it. or did they do it on purpose? maybe it's a joke to them, as well. who knows. does it even matter? no. i just can't help being amused that they painted the same damn spelling mistake on their building again.
my father named the kitties: ramses and cleopatra. they are very cute, very affectionate, and so very rambunctious. they're into everything. it's been so long since i've been around young cats that i'd completely forgotten how curious and full of energy they are. ram had his first encounters with my cats today. he apparently met guns this morning. i didn't witness it, though, so i'm not quite sure how that went. this evening he decided to go upstairs again and met roses this time. she made that threatening cat noise at him (the meow that's almost a growl), which prompted him to turn around and run. she chased after him, quite quickly. she was probably going faster on her 3 legs than he was on his 4. they were halfway down the stairs before i yelled out her name - loud enough to startle her & get her to give up on the chase. i don't want to deal with any cat fights, and i'd be afraid that the young cats might have the advantage. roses is one tough cat, though. she may be 13 years old and have only 3 legs, but i'd be willing to bet that she could still kick his butt.
yeah, i changed it again.
the kitties are home. they were pretty doped up still when we picked them up this afternoon, but by the time we got home from hockey tonight, they were wide awake and raring to go. they're both very affectionate, but the male is more pushy about it. imagine that.
so yeah, david did join us for hockey tonight. my mom treated, saying we needed one more hockey game together before he leaves. the game ended in a tie, 2-2. there was lots of hostility, but i think a large part of it was due to the fact that the ref sucked. when the ref doesn't call penalties, the guys seem to work it out on the ice instead. then it just gets out of control. hmm, all the hockey guys are so young. take for instance the three guys on our team that i find semi-attractive. one is six years younger than me, one is ten, and one is twelve. twelve years younger than me. damn! granted, if mr. twelve-years-younger actually met me, he would probably assume me to be 5-6 years older than him (that being the age everyone seems to guess i am), but still - i'd know the truth. how depressing. perhaps i should learn to develop crushes on men closer to my age.
my parents are getting two new kitties. my mother & i went to the shelter on monday, and my mom found a very friendly 7 month old boy. we were really trying to find a pet for my dad, and once my mother sat down to fill out the paper work, we found out they were going to have to speak with him anyway to make sure he was ok with a new pet coming home, too. i went back out there with my dad today and he liked the boy kitty, too. the shelter has a two-for-one deal on cats - you pay the adoption fee for one and you can get a second kitty for $5 (for the rabies shot). there were several other kitties that we were trying to decide between and then my dad said "just get the one you want." i decided on a little girl kitty simply because she was the same age and her info card said she got along well with other cats. it turns out they're brother & sister. they made their trip to the vet today for spay/neuter and shots. my mother & i are going to go pick them up tomorrow afternoon. i asked my dad what he was going to name them, but he said "i'll have to wait until they get home so that i can ask them what they want their names to be." it will be interesting to see what he decides to call them.
... morehow about that thinly veiled statement on morality? sheesh.
random movie quote:
"he's worse than crazy, he's evil!"
david got a job offer from florida. he accepted, so he's moving this coming weekend. he's only going to be about 8 hours from here, but 8 hours is still a long way. he has family here so i know he'll come & visit, but man, i'm gonna miss him.
hockey was in cincinnati today, but it was on tv here. it was so depressing that i almost wish i hadn't watched. they were down 4-0 in the 3rd period when they finally scored a goal. of course cincinnati then scored another goal so it ended up being 5-1. poo. i wonder how busy david's gonna be this week getting ready to move. there's hockey on wednesday, and it would be fun to have one last hockey outing before he goes away. my favorite player from the past two seasons is playing this season on david's new home team. maybe i can go visit him and we can go to hockey.
i've made it to jan 3rd in my scanning of stuff from my trip to japan. that means i have 5 days left to go. actually, it's a little more than that because i haven't even finished that whole day of the 3rd yet. i'm all excited about making this little travel journal thing, but the drudgery of scanning & cropping photos is a load a crap.
since it's now january, i figured i should finally post these photos of poohead in his antlers & santa hat.
my hair is redder & shorter
yay hockey! aeros won, and virta got a hat trick. hooray! i think attendance was close to 10,000. that's an unusually large crowd. i bet it was a season-high. there was actually a line to get into the arena and then we had to wait in another line to get our mascot bobble head (which rules, by the way). it was boy scout hockey night. there were a lot of boy scouts, but i don't know if that's why the crowd was so big or if everyone was just hoping to get a bobble head.
i got my puffers today, but i got a different species than i had originally planned on. i bought five peruvian puffers. they're just as cute, though, don't you think? yep, i think so. they're also supposed to be pretty mellow, so that's good news. i also bought four harlequin rasboras for my 29-gallon tank. i only had one left and i think he was lonely.
i'm beat.
random movie quote:
"wait a minute. nice boys don't kiss like that."
"oh yes they fucking do."
i was going to write earlier, but then the cable modem went all wonky. i'd been scanning stuff from my trip to japan for a couple of hours, and i thought "how typical that the cable modem should quit working now." all appears to be fine now.
in that couple of hours spent scanning & cropping & resizing stuff, i only managed to get through new year's eve. this means i still have about a week to go. sheesh. i haven't given much thought to how i want to lay it out or anything. i suppose that the scanning will be the most time-consuming part of this project, though. once i actually start building the diary, it should move along pretty quickly.
i forgot to mention this, but when i returned from japan, my other brother had a gift waiting for me. i now have mr. pink. yay!
... moresomebody from the us department of justice (usdoj.gov) visited this site after typing [ "stupid jokes" van halen ] into the search box at google. it's good to know that mr. ashcroft & company are on top of things.
hmm. i think i'll write more later.
...
ok. i'm just editing this to say that i won't write more later as it is now later and i'm tired. so it's sleepytime for me.
bollocks to SSH and SCP/SFTP. i cannot transfer anything where i want to transfer it. "there are programs out there like cuteftp pro that support this." well that's great because cuteftp pro is so cute that it requires a pc. poowah. i suppose i could always upgrade to OS X. then i could solve my whole SSH/SCP/SFTP problem. one of these days. for now i'll have to find another place to put all my junk up on the web, because having junk on the web is so very important, you know.
i finally got over my jet lag. lots of sleeping did the trick.
... morehooray! my scanner still works. it got flooded last june, you know - along with everything else. it sat on the floor back then, and by the time i thought about rescuing it, it was already under water. i'd not yet attempted to use it until tonight. i went and dug out the cables & stuff, hooked it up, and it's all happy! of the computer equipment that was flooded and i've since tried to use: zip drive made it, cd burner did not make it, scanner made it. some other stuff hasn't been hooked up yet, so the working status of that lot is yet to be known. i'm so very happy that my scanner works. now i can make a proper travel diary with photos. not tonight, though. one photo will have to do.
me & tatsuhiko // new year's eve
911 lounge, in roppongi
argh. i'm still so very tired, and now i'm also ill. blah blah blah, and that's all i have to say about that.
i'm back again. 2nd entry. i'm hoping the jet lag will go away soon. please bear with me. i haven't gone back to sleep yet, and i have discovered vh1 classic and all these old videos are bringing back so many memories. sometimes it's a good song and i'm happy, sometimes it's a bad song and i'm cringing (or laughing), and sometimes it just makes me think of something that doesn't really have much to do with the song anyway.
i'm all messed up today. i guess jet lag got me, big time. i feel like i don't even know what i'm doing. that is why i will not write much. i feel like i'm drunk or something. very fuzzy, dizzy, disoriented. my sleep last night lasted from 2am until 5pm today - but it was fitful as i kept dreaming and waking up. very weird dreams, too - what i can remember. i hope it doesn't take too long to get back to normal.
random movie quote:
"what the hell is that?"
"i've been to vidal sassoon."
"you mean you actually paid for it?"
so ... i'm home now. i will definitely miss japan, but it's good to be home. i missed all of my animals very much. also, i didn't fully realize it until i got on here tonight, but i think i also missed my computer. my brother's computer was convenient and nice to have available, but argh, i hate windows. why does every windows user that i know always have some sort of issue with their computer? speaking of computer issues, the keyboard problem here seems to have mysteriously fixen itself while i was away, so that's good.
when i checked in at narita around 2:15pm today (yesterday), they said my flight was overbooked and they were going to put me on a continental direct flight instead. i'd get home nearly four hours earlier, since i didn't have to fly all the way to atlanta and then back again, so that was fine with me. they told me to come back at 4pm to get my boarding pass. at 4pm, though, i was told i'd be on my original flight(s). sitting on the plane, being tired & all cramped up in small coach class seats, watching your plane fly several hours out of the way on the little screen overhead can be quite frustrating.
... morewe crammed quite a bit into one day. i think we did more walking today than we have on any day before. my feet were actually hurting on the train ride home, and it was 'crush' hour so we were all crammed into the subway cars like sardines. i eventually got a seat, but by that time we only had 2 stops to go. riding the bike home from the station nearly did me in. my brother got me some milk coffee, though, and i think the caffeine worked.
speaking of caffeine, the day i arrived in tokyo, i found a vending machine with mountain dew. that is the only time i've been able to find it while in japan. there is a serious mountain dew crisis going on over here.
see, i know next to nothing about tokyo. i'm all saying the party is in setagaya-ku, because that's what it looked like to me from the address, but actually the area is called shimokitazawa. see how that works? yeah, i'm stupid.
... morei'm surprised i'm still awake. i got up at 6:30am, which is really way too early - but you know, we had to catch the train to the other train, etc. hakone was nice. i could have spent all day at the open-air museum. (here's some info in english.) i think i took too many pictures there. i'm on my fifth roll of film now.
i managed okay with my fear of nakedness around strangers. after a few minutes you just kind of forget you're naked. the hot springs were really nice. the place we went to had about 6 different pools and some kind of cedar box thing you sat inside of and closed the lid, and also two big huge ceramic pots thing full of the hot spring water. i kind of felt like i was being boiled for dinner. after all the nice hot water all i wanted to do was sleep - but i still haven't done that yet. soon.
my brother is having a party for me tomorrow night at trocadero in setagaya-ku. we're going to have dinner and then hang out, so please feel free to drop by if you're in the area. you can meet tatsuhiko, my new style japanese boyfriend. heh, i'm so kidding, i just wanted to say 'new style japanese boyfriend'. tatsuhiko is a guy i met on new year's eve. i only wish i had a new style boyfriend. so many cute boys/men/guys/whatever all over the place, but they're always taken. even here in japan - couples, couples everywhere.
my brother's laptop mouse thing is out of control. it's just moving all over the screen on it's own and the start menu thing keeps popping up and it's driving me batty. so with that, i shall go to sleep.
i haven't gone past new year's eve in my paper journal. actually, i haven't even finished new year's eve yet. we've been doing so much each day. today we went to ueno zoo and i fell in love with many animals.
i think i may just finish out my writings and then attempt to make a travel diary upon my return home. it would probably be more interesting with photos, anyway.
we're going to hakone tomorrow. i'm still nervous about going to the hot springs and sharing nakedness with complete strangers, but considering that they don't really care at all, i don't know why i'm so nervous. public baths are just so not part of american culture.
speaking of culture, this morning we were going to go to a big department store (i forget the name) for opening - my brother said all the workers line up and bow to customers as you enter the store. so we get there and there's a huge line - down the street, around the corner, down a couple of blocks. we're wondering what the ?? so there's a thing they do on new year's with these surprise packages. you pay a set amount and you're guaranteed that whatever is in the package is worth at least that amount. if you get lucky, you might get over 10x the value. so this is what the line was for. we tried another store, too, but the lines were just as bad so we gave up and went to eat. at least 6 people were injured in the rush of the crowd at the first store we went to this morning. my brother said he read in the paper that people got trampled in another place yesterday. there's some culture for you. japanese shopping maniacs.
also, the pachinko (is that how you spell it?) parlor was quite insane.
i must sleep now as it's nearly 11pm. we have to leave here by 7:15 so that we arrive in time to catch the 'romance train' to hakone at 8:55 tomorrow morning.
i've been bad and haven't updated. i haven't even been writing in a paper journal. i must rectify that soon or else i'm sure to forget things. we've done so much in only two days and i still have nearly another week here.
tonight i am going to write everything down and perhaps then i will transfer it here. i must write about the drunk guy who ate food off the floor, all the nice people i met - i've already forgot half of their names, roppongi, the crazy irish guy in the british pub, the japanese guys who were trying to get me to say what they said was "happy new year" - but i knew it wasn't - so who knows what they would have really had me saying, all the people grabbing and kissing, the navy guy lost on the trains and the backstreet boy navy guy, the karaoke place that was really nice but all with incorrect song lyrics ... yeah, all that plus more.
happy new year, everyone.