One time when I was sitting in the kitchen with my mom, my dad came in and started to make some potato salad. After he cut up the potatoes, eggs and a bit of green onion, he turns to my mom and I and asks if we would prefer mayonnaise or miracle whip; a lot or a little. My mom and I politely said, "mayonnaise, just a bit." My mom and dad make a pretty good potato salad so I was really looking forward to it. When it was served, my first impression was, "Whoa! That's a lotta mayo!" Af...

I saw this parrot one time when I was shopping at a department store. I think it was the pet section of Seibu in Shinjuku. Generally, I find department store pet shops quite depressing. But I really wanted an animal fix. I walked in looked at a few pups and kitties, looked at various and sundry rodents, as well. There was a special area for the birds and I walked in and was quite taken with a beautiful pink and grey parrot. I don't know the English name, it was called something like "...

TAKE WHAT YOU CAN! GIVE NOTHING BACK!!! -Jack Sparrow, Treasure Island I was at Karaoke last night (dang delayed action chu-hai--- an alcoholic drink) and suddenly roared this out. Not due to the chu-hi (that kicked in as I was on the train home), but just out of exuberence. Then it struck me how much I like that phrase and realized I was going to adopt it for a bit. Take it for a test spin on the road of life, if you will. Not that I have any desire to take other people's be...

I swear, try to do something nice... I am going to a wedding in Canada this summer. I want my husband to go as well but I KNOW that he has work and that he is leary about asking for time off. But when I went to buy my ticket today, I enquired about how much his ticket would be. We are not going at the same time. When I found out that there were 10 seats left of the plane around the time he can go and make it to the wedding, I booked a ticket for him to save him a seat and give hi...

I started another blog. I'm going to stay here because I like the forum style and I would miss lots of blogs here. My friend showed me her blog and she can embed video into it and so I joined it. Link This is more for my family because I can upload images straight from the computer. So if any of you were interested in seeing some of my photos, this is where you can find some of them.

I was flushing some toilet paper down the toilet after blowing my nose and my husband was getting ready to floss his teeth. In a grand flourish he began to pull the floss out of the case and finished the movement by losing his grip on the case and we both watched the case of dental floss arc through the air and plop into the toilet already in mid-flush. As it swirled around the bowl, a couple of thoughts floated to the surface of my mind. First, was it really going to go through the pi...

I burnt my toast. I haven't seen it, but I can smell it. Smells very burnt. Why am I not rushing to the kitchen to save it? Hubby was in the same room and he took care of it... after I smelled it burning from another room. I should really watch my toast once I start it. But to me, watching toast is like watching a pot until it boils. Nothing happens for a long time and then suddenly.... action! And though this is definitely not true, I always feels like a watched piece of bread never...

This weekend the sakura ,cherry blossoms, were man kai... in full bloom. And they really were stunning. The blossom laden branches always kind of remind me a bit of pale pink octopus legs waving in the wind. From a distance, the blossoms have that same kind of texture. I am apparantly the only one who has ever made this connection though. So maybe I am just weird. The usually stinky Tokyo air has been scented with the faintest hint of cinnamon sweetness that is the scent of cherry b...

So here I am scanning some slides and blogging while I'm waiting for them to be done. Really, I should be doing some math. I guess I will start that at 9. I will probably enjoy it once I get into it. I also have to make a spreadsheet tonight. Not a big deal, but I will have to pull out hubby's old laptop since my home version of XP doesn't have excel. What was I thinking when I bought this software bundle? Anyway, his OS is in Japanese. I think I remember where most of the buttons a...

A couple of months ago, I was thinking of taking in a stray cat. It was the cutest little thing. Black with warm amber eyes. He was on the street mewing pitifully and even snugged up to my legs. Pretty desperate measures for a little feral cat. I had some onigiri (salmon fish egg inside of rice) that I shared with it not having any other food and thinking some food was better than none. I did some research on feral cats on the internet to find out what to expect from taking one in, wh...

Can't sleep. Would like to. got about 4 hours and then I just kept thinking about stuff. I'm giving a test tomorrow and I'm worried I made mistakes on it. Normally, no biggie. I deal with problems if they come up. Tonight I'm losing sleep over it. I'm also trying to have another shot at having a kid. Now I'm all freaked about some photography chemicals that got on my skin (what can happen!!!!!--- I washed my hands thoroughly after but I should be wearing gloves and have MAJOR gu...

I have been planning since last May to go to a writer's conference in May in Daytona. Since I started to write seriously (as in career not topic), I have tried to make this kind of thing a priority. Everyone in my family knows this. But with bills piling up (condo to be repaired, tax re-assessment), it was getting chancy if I could go at all. Then the happy straw that broke the camels back on that one-- my sister is getting married this summer. I wouldn't be able to afford to go to Nor...

Spent about 3 hours today in Yodobashi Camera looking at photograpy equipment, bags, film, paper. What fun! Of course, can't buy most of the stuff, but even trying to make decisions of what was essential was good fun. Bought: paper, film, cheap portfolio style book, book about clay animation scoped out: buying stuff to develop film at home looked at: photo bags, tripod carry bags, digital cameras, filters and step up rings

Okay, I finally figured out how to link pictures to JU (thanks to Jamie Burnside and Little Whip), but most browsers can't read anything from the kodak ophoto. Which online photo service do you use? Do you like it? What is good/bad about it? I am anxiously awaiting your opinions!

Lots of work today and I even found time to develop a roll of film. I finally got two rolls of film onto their respective reels. The one I thought I screwed up ended up being the one that worked best. Biggest problem: I dropped the can and one reel came half out and chemical everywhere. So I have one roll of film that only has half the picture on each frame. Luckily, that was the roll which didn't wind up so well. Tomorrow, more work on the clay animation! okay, this is cheesy, ...