This is inspired by Boudica's list of what have you done.  Tova mentioned that she had a lot of other cool things that weren't on the list that were pretty cool.  I know there are a lot of interesting people here on JU, so come on!  What have YOU done?  Share! It doesn't have to be ten.  It could be more or less.   1.  got married in Hawaii 2. got my blackbelt in jujitsu (included practical test and essay written in Japanese) 3. been in some...

It's been a really long time since I blogged here.  I just posted an article about my trip to Thailand.  It was a pretty long blog but doesn't go into a lot of detail about other stuff I've been doing. The last couple months have been crazy busy.  I went home for almost three weeks at the end of October and beginning of November.  It was great to be in Calgary and to see family and to attend the 2008 World Fantasy Conference.  I was really lucky it was being held in m...

  Trip to Thailand I’m pretty lucky. For the past 5 years I have gone to Thailand in November. My husband and his buddies play in a 7’s tournament (7 on the field, 7 min half) in Patong on Phuket. I insist on going along for a number of reasons. Mainly, I want to go to Thailand, too. The first three years I never went to a game. I sat on the beach (didn’t like being hassled by the Thai guys because I was sitting by myself), went to spas (very ni...

Pastry Units Eaten: 2 (ok... well improving anyway) vegetable units: 2 (um... ok?) meat/fish/tofu units: 3 caffiene units: 2 (or do I add 1 unit for each espresso shot added...) Actual caffeine units:4 (grande has two shots, plus extra shot.... 3x2... but divided with husband... so three... but he didn't really get to drink much because he was driving....  yeah... 4 should be right) good television units: 1 (just during dinner and this is the 50th time to watch "Ocean's...

My birthday is in two minutes. I kind of wanted to have a large party, but then when I started to organize it, I realized that doing so was going to be full of disappointments and irritations so I wisely opted to have dinner with my husband only. That will be 98% guaranteed to be a really nice evening. The 2% is just in case of things like stepping on dog poo or twisting my ankle or getting salmonella.  Remote possibilities as I only give it a 2%.  Since it is 1 a.m. in the morning,...

I was thinking how blah this summer seemed.     I had a lot of projects that I wanted to do this summer.  I started a walk on Tokaido last year.  It is the road that connected Kyoto to Edo (now Tokyo).  I have two blogs for that trip even though it's still not complete. www.estelloproject.blogspot.com is the blog of a clay character I created.  The first entries are of Estello's experience on Tokaido.  The more recent entries are just stuff I did. &n...

Between my house and the neighbor's house there is a huge weed.  It's almost next to our front door.  It's about a meter tall with huge leaves about the size of dinner plates.  We haven't pulled it because it's on the neighbor's side (although the space between our houses is only about 50 centimeters) but we don't know our neighbors that well.  I'd like to pull it, but my husband says he wouldn't like people messing on his property, so we shouldn't either.  Fair enough. ...

I just bought a Coke in a glass bottle.  It's a special promotion thing for the Beijing Olympics.  It's not the best deal in town, but I love soda from a glass bottle. It was great!  I drank it as soon as I got out of 7-11 and had it finished before I got home.  It was 250mL I think.  Not too much. I can never drink soda straight from a can, particularly cola.  It's icky and the carbonation is too harsh.  I can sometimes drink it out of a plastic bottle, ...

I went to Hakeijima/ Sea Paradise Aquarium last week.  I really enjoyed it.  I shut off the flash and took lot of photos.   I was looking closely at the photos  and thought something looked weird about one.  When I took a closer look, I noticed lines like one would get from a plastic cast.  The lines can be seen on the back leg and around the toes.    Did the aquarium put up a fake frog?  Am I wrong? Maybe they had a sign up admitting to the ...

I was really excited!  The new chair I bought online just arrived.  I was a little annoyed to see that the box was small enough that some assembly was going to be required for this chair.  Not a big fan of assembling my own furniture, but since I am only slightly useless in this department I decided to grit my teeth and get through it.  After all, I just need to follow the instructions.   Except there are no instructions.  Now I have several pieces of an offic...

Last night I dragged my husband to see Mummy 3 .  I had read a few reviews that panned the movie, but I really liked the other two.  See?  I obviously don't have very high expectations.  Then I thought, "hey, lots of other people have seen the movie and how bad can it be?" Answer:very bad.   I think the premise had some promise.  I enjoyed the idea that the setting was in China.  I like that Alex grew up to be an adventurer.  That's a no brainer. &n...

Today I got a pedicure from a bunch of fish! I went to Sea Paradise, a big aquarium in Yokohama.  One part of the rest areas has a cafe with a spot where you can get a pedicure from Dr. Fish!  For 1000 yen (about 10 dollars) you get tiny fish to nibble the dead skin off your feet for 10 minutes.   I had seen this type of pedicure on TV and at a beauty and spa show.  I was pretty excited to try it.  The fish are about 3 to 4 cm long and not very big.  My ...

I've been interested in doing isolation shots and still life for a while. I was really interested in using a light tent to do some of the work. Way too much money, though. I wanted to shoot fairly large objects, say a vase instead of a watch, but the light tents I was interested in ran to 350-500 dollars.  I've been reading a lot of photography web sites. Favorites are studiolighting.net and strobist.com . If you haven't checked them out, you should. One of the valuable lessons ga...

I love my cakes, cookies, chocolates and ice-creams.  I love to eat them while drinking a nice, rich coffee with milk.  If it's a chilly day, I want a hot coffee (or latte or misto) and if it's hot, I want an ice coffee (or latte or blah, blah,blah).   This makes me very happy and it makes me feel really content. I especially love this when I can have these treats while reading a book on my balcony bundled up if it's chilly and wearing loose, ugly clothes when hot. Now enter th...

My iMac crashed.  It's still under warranty but I have a lot of work that I wanted to save.  The irony is that I was grabbing a disc to back up work when it crashed. It's really annoying.  The service people are great so far and I'm taking it in this afternoon.  I have to take a taxi to get there.  Blah.   I feel really blah and not just a little stressed out.