Just thought I'd do a quick blog while I'm waiting for a disk to burn so I can finish up this job and finally go to sleep. The cherry blossoms should be coming out with the next week and a half. I'm a little bummed that the trees on my street got chopped back quite a bit because of electrical powerlines. I'm hoping they'll still look good but I have little hope they will look as good as last year. Oh, the disk is done. Goody. Now I can get some sleep.

I've been really needing some inspiration to get out there and start working out again. The times that I do drag myself to the gym it's okay but I don't put as much into it as I used to. I'm also super careful of those suspicious knee creaks I've been hearing when doing lunges or squats so I don't use weight to do those anymore. Boxing is okay, but the classes are not well organized. I like the sparring bits (the ones I participate in are VERY low key with people I trust not to lose their...

I went to Hong Kong almost two years ago. It was great fun. It was hot and muggy and I hardly saw a blue sky but I loved the energy.

I had a sub job teaching in kindergarten today. It was at a private school and the kids are pretty smart. It was pretty fun. They are so cute and the little ones don't tire me out as much as they used to. The big tiring factor was my feet. Since I'm a sub I try to dress a bit between casual and formal work wear. Usually I wear a nice pull over, some nice pants and work shoes. Another school I sub at has a dress code of no rubber soled shoes. Today's place is more casual and I regret ...

Hubby is working late today. That means I can pick whatever movie I want for my Friday movie night on the big screen. This means I can go one of two ways: sci-fi action or chick-flick with cinematography. I was tempted by "Sound of Thunder" which I think is an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story about a time-traveler who screws up the time line by not following the rules of a dinosaur hunt. I loved that short story, but I wasn't really in the mood for dinosaurs go metro. I really want t...

A couple of years ago I went to this pet store on the top floor of a local department store. Not your best bet to get a pet (ha ha nice channelling of Dr. Suess there) but I was kind of curious about if they just sold pet food or had actual animals. I got to the top floor which was actually the roof and walked across to the little shack-type room. As I walked up to the shanty-shop I was taken aback by the fact that they were tasteless enough to have a fur welcom mat. To me that's pretty...

I wasn't going to do it, but I can feel I am on the cusp of making them even if I don't directly acknowledge that's what I'm doing. Here goes: 1. Lose 6 g. That's probably realistic. At one point in my life I would have been a bit annoyed to weigh that but now I can't be bothered to make the effort to lose more than I really need to. And more importantly, I think those 6 kg are a sign of some lifestyle changes I need to make. I used to love working out and now it doesn't fill me ...

There are times where I enjoy the DVD commentary as much as the movie. Generally, it's for a movie that I've seen a lot or one that I can stand to lose a bit of the magic glamour of the finished product. The creative process is really intruiging. When DVD commentary explains the creative or storytelling process I absolutely adore it. When the commentary consists of people back-slapping each other or making stupid comments I end up being annoyed or wandering away to do some obscure housecl...

I wish I had a picture of this. I don't. Sunday was colder than it has been for a while. A warm jacket and a scarf made it okay. But my husband gave me a sip of the drink he'd bought from the vending machine on the Yamanote Line platform in Gotanda. Drinking the warm green tea changed the focus of the energy. From standing in the cold, waiting for a train, I suddenly began to enjoy the activity swirling around me on a rainy autumn day in Tokyo.

Finally the weather has cooled off enough that I need to wear a sweater. It's still nice enough that a sweater in the evenings is enough to keep toasty. The leaves haven't started to change color yet in Tokyo. Apparently, it's in full swing up in Nikko. Maybe I will get to take a train ride and check it out next week. But with the cooler weather, two of my favorite things come into season. The first, wearing sweaters. All my favorite clothes are autumn and winter clothes. The second...

This was on my list from last year. *dacshunds running (have you ever seen the wiener dog races???? tooo hilarious. Popular breed here now. So jealous) *my chair in my study (I have a great little posture chair but I'm always in the slouchy comfy chair with laptop on lap) *view outside my study (recently there are butterflies living a life and death saga with all the birds) *hubby (he's just so cute when he's not pissing me off! ) *my photo *this chocolate almond croissant...

Although my husband does a lot to help me, there are some pretty primo instances where I get the message that I am unimportant. Particularly when it comes to immigration issues. I'm not even going to start into the green card application process he delayed on. I can't really speak about it without becoming bitter. But this month my spousal visa is up for renewal. For once in my life, I wanted to do all my application stuff with PLENTY of time. In the beginning of the month I went to ...

My feet have been killing me for about a year, but the last few weeks have been pretty bad. I can't stand for more than 5 minutes on my hardwood floor in bare feet or socked feet. I can still go jogging and my feet are just tired. Nothing abnormal. But bare feet or any shoe that doesn't have an airsole? Forget it. High heels are the worst. Not that this is a surprise but the issue is that the bones in my feet and heels hurt. Hubby is nice enough to give me lots of foot massa...

Of course, I heard all about the crazy frog ringtones when all the frenzy was going on. But crazyfrog never caught on in Japan and if it ever played on the radio here, I still would have never heard about it. Japanese radio drives me crazy because most stations play half a song and then the hosts talk most of the way through it. So okay. I heard about it and couldn't care less. Today I happened to read a book where everyone's cell-phone had the crazy frog ring tone. So now I'm curious...

I've been looking at a lot of books to learn how to make a web page. The Dummies guides aren't preferred because they are two years old now. Basically, I am going to use GoDaddy.com because it will be convenient and to start with, I will use those tools. Getting something like dreamweaver is out of the question because of budgetary concerns. I tried geo cities but am not happy with their tools. ARe the godaddy tools about the same quality? I pretty much know nothing about HTML and t...