chu-hi and pot-pie.

fuckin' a

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 07:19:49 GMT

My boss sent me an email last night saying "FYI - You're doing great. Best hire we've made so far."

I'm ok with that. :)

working

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:59:46 GMT

That's about it these days. I work a lot.

It's better than the alternative.

scandal

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:53:17 GMT

It's not just for random fun anymore (and not just because Patty Smythe is hot).

Goodbye to You is just an awesome pop song, and I don't care if that makes me weird. I'm happy enough with my job that upbeat songs just send me into a singing / dancing frenzy.

Polar opposite of where I was a few months ago.

it's the little things

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:39:02 GMT

Breezing through 3 sets at a weight where a single set would have induced vomiting a month earlier feels awesome.

not over yet

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:45:34 GMT

I almost feel like writing again.

People I thought I'd thoroughly burned my bridges with, I'm talking to again.

Others who have been out and away, doing their own thing, are back in town and hanging out.

And I'm working (sorta). Not real paychecks yet, but padding the UI at least.

It's all a start.

why I will always love Philadelphia

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:04:08 GMT

Current headlines from Philly.com at 22:57 PDT:

Brotherly love, baby.

fucking finally

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:06:11 GMT

I got a real job. It only took three months and some change. Oh well. I have big plans for that first paycheck:

new camera

big credit card payment

keg

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:58:11 GMT

My god, midnight infomercials now sell cd compilations of songs that were on the radio when I was in high school. My first few years of college, too.

I'm getting old.

oh man

Thu, 08 May 2008 03:52:12 GMT

So here I am out in Pennsylvania, waiting for my friend Reidar to get married Saturday. Today the bride's friend Scott showed up from New York and showed us a video he threw together late last week. If you like boys in drag singing show tunes, you'll love this.

home

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:13:18 GMT

Sam and I just got home from a wonderful 5-day trip around some parts of Japan we'd never been to.

Home is relative, though. After almost four years, it will only hold that title for another 9 days.

Still not sure what's next.

dude

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:31:26 GMT

There's an Obama, Japan.

I'm half-seriously considering making a trek out there around the end of March. I should see the Sea of Japan before we leave for good anyway.

holy shit

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:26:13 GMT

Obama's victory speech in SC. Actually made me all teary-eyed.

Tマイナス一年間

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:46:00 GMT

January 20th, 2008. One year until that motherfucking war criminal who deserves to spend the rest of his natural life in a federal pound-him-in-the-ass-prison leaves office in disgrace, the worst president ever to preside over the republic.

the man can give a speech

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:19:09 GMT

Obama in Iowa:

I'm pretty cynical about just about every politician, Obama included. He's not the messiah a lot of supporters make him out to be. And yeah, he repeated himself a lot, though I can forgive that because he was speaking off the cuff and probably high as fuck on adrenaline. But some of this shit gave me goosebumps. I can't believe Bush is almost over.

Of course, unlike Obama, I don't want us all to sing kumbaya and get along. I want that fucker (Bush) to die. I want Bush and Cheney and all the rest of them to spend the rest of their natural lives in a federal pound-them-in-the-ass-prison (or even better: The Hague). I want Karl Rove to die lonely and forgotten, under the baseboard of a soiled bathroom in a poor neighborhood, with his hand in Alberto Gonzales' pants.

lol

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:12:10 GMT

My brother in law looks like a hobo.

Qoo-drivers are tasty.

Mario Party 8 is hard!

Japan is smoggy.

Sams new computer is sexy.

My cats are dumb.

That is all for now.

mmmmmmm

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 01:24:31 GMT

Hot cider, bread pudding, and sparkling wine.

Breakfast of champions (the day after Thanksgiving at least).

retching

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 04:13:47 GMT

There isn't much about Japanese cuisine that grosses me out anymore. Sam and I are even at the point where we willingly eat natto (with rice) for breakfast because, shit, it's cheap (no joke: a 4 pack costs 88 yen at my local store). It even seems like 99 times out of 100 I can handle school lunch with no problems.

So I was working in the staff room during 4th period (the one before lunch) and the tea/lunch lady (she doesn't cook it, she just takes the stuff from the town's school lunch center and dishes it out for the kids) walked in and said, "Oooooh, today's lunch is a little strange. It looks like hospital food." She actually said 病院のごはん. It was funny. Except when I actually saw what she was talking about.

There was this nasty egg soup thingy (for some reason the eggs in school lunch always make me gag) and this slimy, foul-smelling seaweed-mushroom concotion, the smell of which still won't leave my nose. Thank god I was eating with the sixth grade today and didn't have to worry about setting a good example. Eeeek.

true dat

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:01:54 GMT

Ewww

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:49:40 GMT

I just had to give the "No, son, you've gotta wash your hands even if you've only gone #1" lecture to a boy in the 3rd grade. Damned germ factories.

good lord

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:36:37 GMT

I was at work until 6:30 yesterday, and 7:30 today. I generally go in just before 8 in the morning. When I came to Japan, I thought the teachers who stayed in the office for hours after the kids left were fools. Now I'm one of them. Gah.

decisions...

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:21:56 GMT

Every year, Sam and I spend most of September and October doing nothing while our bank account recovers from summer vacation. This year, I actually had an August paycheck, so things would have been a little different, but we had to sink about $1000 into our car in early September. So we've been seeing a lot of the inside of our house, and not much else.

All that changes on October 25th, when we both get real paychecks again (our bastard employers pay 60% for August - and paychecks go out almost a month after the pay period).

We had already planned on spending some of our money on seeing Underworld in Tokyo on November 24th, and Daft Punk in early December. Now, I just found out that John Digweed is playing at Yellow on October 26th. This all starts to get expensive pretty quick, since concert tickets in Japan run $80-90 and getting into a club costs $30-40. But we still have never gone to Yellow, which purportedly has the world's biggest sound system, and time is running out.

Should we just say the hell with the cost and go?

gah

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:22:44 GMT

My 5th and 6th graders are working on a video project for English class. Actually, they finished working on it last week when we finished shooting. Since then I've been sitting on my ass doing nothing instead of editing the video, because I couldn't find the firewire cable for the DV camera anywhere. I looked at my school, Sam looked at hers, and we both looked at home. Nothing. Even though both our schools have the same cameras - Panasonic NV-MX5000 - neither of them bothered to buy IEEE1394 cables to go with them. They just have boxes and boxes of DV tapes, and watch them by plugging the camera into a TV. Lame.

So Sam and I bought a cable last year, and just trade off whenever one of us is doing something involving video. It was a great system until we lost the damned thing. Anyway, I finally went to the store last night and just bought a new one (a pain in the ass in and of itself, since the 20 mile roundtrip takes over an hour thanks to Japanese roads and traffic), and pulled it out of the box this morning at school to find out I'd bought a 4-pin/4-pin cable instead of the 4-pin/6-pin that I need to actually connect the camera to Sam's laptop. Fuck. I hope K's Denki takes returns.

oh my good fucking god

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:48:32 GMT

It's a bacon and chocolate bar. For real. I gotta find out if these people ship to Japan...

typhoon!

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:26:19 GMT

Finally, a severe typhoon is arriving in the middle of the workweek instead of on a Friday night or Saturday morning. Now I get a three-day weekend without having to take paid time off. Thanks, Typhoon Fitow!

wow, it's been awhile

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 04:48:58 GMT

I haven't posted anything longer than a sentence in a like a month. I think that's a new record. Of course, I don't have tons to write about. Sam and I spent four weeks with our friends and family back home. Our annual trips home keep us sane, but coming back to Japan after such a long stretch is always kind of disorienting. We've been sitting around the house doing nothing for a week, and I don't know if that's helped or not. I'm leaning towards not. Anyway, leaving home this time was made easier by the knowledge that we'll be back in 8 months instead of a year, and that it'll be permanent this time. I think we're finally ready for that.