Monthly Archives: September 2006

So desu ne…

Yesterday we met up with the fam for breakfast in usual fashion at the cafe downstairs. However, we were really pleased to find that they have a japanese breakfast, which consisted of the most awesome green tea I've ever tasted, a piece of salmon, some japanese pickles, a little tamago (egg, cooked almost like an omelet and a little sweet), and some excellent miso. Now *that* is a breakfast. And it was good.


Following breakfast, we all piled into a big van that Larry had rented to head to the base. This van looked much like any other van, had a short nose, slidey seats, but it also had this awesome talking GPS system that we could've totally taken advantage of if any of us knew Japanese. It had this 3d navigation and showed buildings as you went down the road, something called "Carwings" which we kept wanting to turn on, and a camera and parking guide that would turn on to show everything behind you when you went into reverse. Oh and the gps also showed constellations when you turned on the headlights. Very cool.


The base was like many other bases I've been to, but it did take us awhile to get in. We had to check in at the visitors center and since we're under DefCon Fuschia, wait while they made sure we weren't threats to national security, had our pictures taken (the camera was a little uh.. short, so we had to bend our knees a bit) and were sent on our way. The EX and commissary were huge and as you can guess, much of our time was spent in the electronics section. What I found really strange was that there were representatives from the various electronics companies there, trying to get you to buy their products. There was a woman from Olympus in the digital camera section, who I thought was there to help me pick out a camera, but obviously wanted me to buy olympus. I ended up buying a Casio (yes, I know, but wait) EXZ1000, which is a 10.1 megapixel, ultra slim camera and for which I read a really good review on dpreview.com, a place that generally knows what they're doing. I picked up a 1gb SD to go along with as well, which I hope to fill up on a daily basis.


I also wanted to buy some high end cosmetics seeing that I hadn't bought cosmetics for a really long time, most of what I have is probably expired, and this sort of stuff is super cheap on the base. I headed straight to the clinique section, my preferred brand, and found a few healthy skin sorts of things but not alot of eyeshadow type stuff. So I looked around some more and was accosted by the Elizabeth Arden woman, a small japanese woman who was well made up. I am normally pretty good at getting rid of high pressure sales people, but I'm completely powerless against cosmetic sales people. I asked this woman where the eyeshadow was and she sat me down, telling me she was going to make me up. Immediately she saw a challenge in my eyebrows and shaped them up for me - which is something that I usually pay for. She put on some brow powder that actually gave me some visible eyebrows and noted that I looked like a totally different person. She hooked me up with some nice eyeshadow, liner, mascara, blush, lipstick and lip liner - and it looked good. I must admit, she did a really great job putting some colors on me that looked outstanding. So naturally, I bought all the stuff she put on me, and I'm not quite sure if I feel good about that.


Following the EX, we hit the commissary and it was so strange to see an actual American type grocery store. We did hit pretty hard the japanese drinks and snacks aisle. Although I saw some of that awesome gummy candy that I had previously bought in Chinatown, I got some other japanese candy that is square, and halfway between gummy and taffy, and is ultra tasty. After that we did some driving around, hitting some of the major sites of when Larry, his ex-wife, and my step siblings were living there. Right in front of his old apartment complex, we saw a seriously riced out car, purple, with winged doors, and some really incredible edo samurai and an eb games logo on it. As we stopped to take pictures, a well-tattooed woman waved at us, appreciative for the attention. I dunno if she was enlisted or not, but if I were a military wife (and I hope that never ever ever happens) ricing out a sweet ride would be a much better use of my time than working at the commissary. There was a stop at a small liquor store, but as it turns out, we stopped at the smallest one out of 3 on the base, and the selection wasn't all that great.


Then to the officers club for dinner, went we where we were greated by a japanese guitarist singing much of Kenny Rogers library (but no 'what condition my condition was in' unfortunately) and other songs, including Puff the Magic Dragon, and Happy Birthday for Larry, Tom, and Sean (Cassie's boyfriend) when we had a little birthday party and cake for those guys, all of which who are celebrating birthdays in the next month or two. After dinner, we all piled into the van and I gave in to the jet lag and slept the whole way home with my head on Tom's shoulder. Soon we were at the hotel.


We unloaded all of our stuff into our room and sorted through our loot. Following that, I went to bed almost immediately, but Tom and others stayed up a little bit. I guess Cassie, Sean and Zack (Lawrence's friend) went out to some clubs. Tom missed hooking up with them and went on a walk by himself and subsequently got lost. Since the crime rate is soooo low here, it's not a big deal for a tall, blonde haired blue eyed kid to walk around late at night carrying lots of technology on him. Me, I caught up on my sleep and hope to be having some late night adventures of my own in the near future. But right now, I need to work on my homework. *sigh*


09.30.06 6:04pm(3 comments)

Shut-up kudasai

So we made it to japan safe and sound, but Tom and I both found out that we don't know how to say "shut up" in Japanese. I guess shut-up in ASL will have to work for now. We also need to translate "stop sucking so bad."


The flight was great - all 13 hours of it. We had some mixups with Northwest, but had it all work out in the end. Business class was awesome - they hooked us up with excellent meals, booze, snacks, and those personal video things where I watched some bad airplane movies. Oh yeah, and we got to see the debian boot screen on the inflight info system, although Tom didn't get a picture of it in time. We both did some sleeping in this fancy automated chairs that folded almost out into beds, although Tom had a better time of it than I did. My chair seemed to be slanted down, so when I folded it out flat, I kept sliding and that made it hard to sleep. We landed, made it through customs, met up with my mom and rode the bus to the hotel without event. Oh, except I put my contacts in with my spare contacts in the case and they fused together. I've been able to get my script faxed to me, so hopefully I'll be able to pick up some contacts. I've got my glasses, but I just see so much better out of my contacts that I'm going to make an effort to get some replacements.


After a little gathering with the family for dinner (at an american restaurant? wtf?) Tom and I headed out into the wild for some wondering around and eventually some bieru and noodles. Very tasty and lots of fun. Next time we bring a phrasebook and make it a little easier on ourselves.


Okay, off to bed. Yes, it's almost 1 am here (don't forget, kristyland is still in EST).


Oyasumi nasai

09.29.06 10:45am(7 comments)

Vacation mode…

So I'm leaving the country for 2.5 weeks tomorrow and I have a million things to do. The only thing I want to do is nothing at all. Mostly I need to finish up a few things at work - run a few reports, write a website rfp, upload and describe some files, all of which I think I can accomplish today. I also need to get copies of all of my 'in case it got stolen' info, buy a guidebook to have a friend who lived in Japan circle stuff for me, work on my japanese, PACK MY LUGGAGE, buy some travelers checks and exchange money, get my perscriptions around so that I don't run out of happy pills in Japan (oh god), print out all of the info like itineraries, numbers, reservation info, get all my school stuff together so I have everything I need when I am working on that stuff on the plane, wash the doggie toys and blankets, get all the dogs info together, get a document that will allow our friends who are taking care of Ruby and Sybil while we're away to use my pet credit account at the vet if they need to, get doggie medicine and care into a document, and keep looking for some comfortable walking shoes, and if I have time, make a small purse for the trip that I can take in and out of my backpack easily and sling across my body for easy access to cell phone, wallet, etc.


So you can see why I'm a little stressed.


I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Oh well, ready or not - right?

09.27.06 5:51am(2 comments)

Japan, Baby, Japan – WOOO!

If you didn't already hear, Tom and I are going to Japan September 28 - October 14th on a family vacation that has been in the works for at least 4-5 years. Also going are my mom and step dad, my step brother and his friend and my step sister and her S.O., so it'll be one helluva hootenany with the tri-B's (insert my last name, insert step family's last name, also a B, bunch) overseas. My step dad was stationed there for a few years and the two step siblings that are going were born there, so it's good that we'll have someone who knows the culture and my step siblings are really excited to see where they started out.


Of course, Tom and I are excited too. Awhile ago, I took a Japanese class at Owens, so I'm going to get out the ole hiragana flash cards and my copy of "Japanese for Busy People" and study up. On the way there, I'll be trying to teach Tom some of the language as something to fill the time of the 18 hour flight to Narita. Yes, 18 hours on a plane. S'alright, it's be a double decker 747 that we're flying on.


But we've got our JR passes, our cell phones have been rented (and if you want the # or the email addy for the phone, email me - incoming is free to us), everything is confirmed and Tom and I are making lists of all the things we want to see, trying to do some strategic planning to make it to all of the sites. We'll be spending a lot of our time in and around Tokyo, but we're taking a little side quest to Nagoya, Kyoto, Hiroshima, etc. If you have any suggestions of places we should go, let me know. Our first stop is Yakota, the military base, so we can buy cheap electronics and have a birthday party for all the birthday kids. Good times.


I'm working very hard trying to get over a little cold since it's considered obscene to blow your nose in public in Japan. Used panties in a vending machine - OK, blowing noses in public - NOT OK. And apparently, western toilets haven't quite made it everywhere over there, so I'll need to figure out how I'm going to handle peeing into a hole in the ground. That should be fun. Oh well, I'll be peeing into a hole in the ground in JAPAN - which somehow justifies everything.


I'll be bringing my laptop since I have to do homework and take an online midterm while over there, and of course you know Japan is well connected, so hopefully I'll be able to make some updates to kristyland. Maybe Tom and I will redo kristyland as part of our inflight activities, who knows. I've been eyeing wordpress for quite some time now, and a nice gallery to replace the mig and do auto thumbnails would be suhweet.


Sayonara suckaz.

09.22.06 7:35am(1 comment)

Bienvenidos, Bienvenue and Welcome

In high school, part of my duties of being an extra-curricular extraordinaire including my position as secretary of the French club and subsequently involved in the French and Spanish club 's yearly craft fair held in the high school. Being that I was also planning to go on the club's trip to Europe, I volunteered as much as I could possibly stand so as to get a discount on my trip (for every so many hours you volunteered you got a few bucks off of your trip - we sold candy bars too, I think). Since I've never really been one for heavy labor, my favorite volunteer activity was making the announcements in the gymnasium and on the PA system of the high school every fifteen minutes. The script never changed, so by my last year, I had it down pretty well. "Bienvenidos, Bienvenue, and Welcome to the Xth annual French and Spanish Club's Craft fair." started it out - every. single. year. And probably still does today if the event still exists. Back in my day, the even was HUGE, filling all of the hallways of the newly built high school and the gymnasium - a few hundred vendors maybe? And the people came in droves from miles around to partake in the splendor that was the biggest craft show event in west central Ohio.


Being that I also grew up in a small farming community in the rural midwest, you better believe that a majority of the wares at these craft fairs were that of "Kountry Krafts." You know, ceramic duck clothing, plastic canvas needle work, oil paintings on saw blades, and other chotchkies of a simple, down home, countryside persuasion. Sprinkled in among the masses, you would find some really incredible jeweler or a glass artisan, but those were incredibly rare, albeit diamonds in the rough.


Imagine my surprise when I went to the DIY trunk show last year and was greated with funky, trendy crafts like mustache plushies, glass marble magnets, ipod cozies, beautiful jewelry, knitting needle rolls made of velvet, silk, and one with watercolor skulls that had my name written all over it. I was breathtaken. A similar craft fair exists in Chicago and it's this weekend. I'm totally going. Hopefully they won't have any cheesy, scripted announcements every 15 minutes.


09.14.06 7:46am(2 comments)

*choir of angels singing*

llllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

09.14.06 7:01am(3 comments)

I owe my soul to the company store

This labor day weekend, I worked an additional work week, with overtime - around 60 extra hours including the extra work I did after work on thursday and friday.


I'm tired. Tom was there for the weekend, so he's tired too.


Now, we have two server racks like a real IT department instead of piling our servers onto industrial shelving, a brand spankin' new network without the legacy bullshit (never EVER follow Microsoft's upgrade path, start from scratch!), a complete rewire of our patch panel at the main office, and a grand tour of each computer on the network.


But my most brilliant move over the weekend was leaving a cup of candy at each computer with the new temp password, my number, and the network admin's number (our helpdesk guy was out due to injuries sustained in a bike / car accident) stapled to the cup. Even though there wasn't much noticable difference to the user, other than our inability to maintain application preferences and the old profile in general after microsoft gave us the double deuces and grayed out the 'copy to' button on the profile copy utility for each profile we wanted to copy, everyone loved the candy :)


Good times.


Oh, did I mention that I don't get any comp time, not even a floating holiday for labor day? Yeah, that sucks.

09.06.06 7:29am(1 comment)