Almost our old apartment...

Last night I came across this video on YouTube - I actually even know the guy who made the video, heh. We used to live one floor above and two units over from this apartment.

Gaffer Tape Wallet

Back in 2002, I had my wallet (and whole purse) stolen at a swing dance at the Kapiolani Park bandstand. The next day I was telling some of my chat friends about it, and one of them suggested I make a new wallet out of duct tape.

Well I didn't have any duct tape, but I had a nice big roll of black gaffer tape that my friend Christopher gave me as a going away present when I moved away from Connecticut. So I made a nice black wallet out of gaffer tape, and it served me well for five years.

My black gaffer tape wallet would still serve me well, except I saw some nice pretty bright colors of gaffer tape at the art supply store. All of the sudden I wanted a funky colored wallet. First I tried a pink one with velvet that had smiley faces crushed into it. But the smiley faces became uncrushed when I had my wallet in my back pocket while swing dancing. Also, the velvet was purple and I didn't like the way it clashed with the pink gaffer tape.

On Saturday I finally bought another roll of gaffer tape - this one's bright green. So now I have a funky pink and green gaffer tape wallet, with zig-zags and tiny hidden triangles. :)

Snuggle Cat

Birthday Dinner

We had a real nice dinner tonight at our favorite Indian restaurant, Moksha in Edison. It's the place our friend Gretchen introduced us to back in November during Diwali. Gretchen's friend Rex waited on us, and he took real good care of us. We had the Amaravathi Kodi (chicken) for an appetizer, and the Nellore Chapala Koora (fish curry) with coconut rice for our meal. We also tried samples of some of some of their other dishes, all of which were yummy. And we had their Orange Blossom and Fruit Punch drinks, both of which were really yummy. We were going to order dessert but then Rex brought out ice cream with a candle stuck in the top for my birthday, so that was a nice surprise. :)

More car trouble?

Ok, so I was just out doing my usual every-other-Friday book delivery routine, when somewhere around the time I crossed the intersection of Eagle Rock Avenue and Pleasant Valley Way, my not-quite-year-old Honda Fit began to make the most wacky-ass noise I've ever heard! It was a very loud, varying, but mostly high-pitched metal-on-metal scraping sound - sometimes squealing, sometimes clattering, but mostly a cacophony of sound that you generally do not want to hear coming from your car - ever.

When I noticed it, my first thought that something screwy was happening with my iPod so I shut the radio off, but to my dismay the sound was still there. Then I hoped it was the car next me making that sound, but that car passed and the sound remained.

So I pulled into my next stop - the sound continued though the frequency reduced as the car slowed and then stopped as I came to a full stop. As I stopped that first time after the noise began, I did hear a sort of a twanging sound, as if something just broke free of something else. Stepping on the gas while in neutral didn't produce the sound, so it must be something that depends on having the wheels in motion.

I got out of the car, dropped to my knees and looked underneath as best I could, but I couldn't detect any loose metal dangling things. I tried to look inside the wheels at the brakes as best I could - didn't see anything unusual. There was no smell of burning brakes, no sign of anything leaking.

So I delivered my books for this stop, took one more look under the car for leaks and such, and then continued gingerly along my way. As I backed the car out of the stall I did not hear the sound, but as soon as I turned the wheels and began to move, it came back loud as all get-out.

I proceeded along slowly, rolled down my window to listen some more... I'm not entirely certain, but the sound seemed to be coming from the front of the car. At my next and final stop, I checked under the car again, and this time I also tried pushing on all four corners of the car. Pushing on the left-rear sort-of produced a sound that could be part of what I was hearing while driving. I should note that in addition to the rate of speed, the noise also seemed to depend a bit on the road condition as it responded to small bumps in the road. Also, the noise seemed to get especially loud when turning the wheels.

Anyway, I know I wasn't just hearing things, because people did stop to look at me as I drove by. Heh how embarrassing.

After my last delivery, I went back to the library and dropped off all the returned books. At that point it was no more than a mile to get home and I figured I could endure the squealing for a couple minutes more.

But about half-way home, as I slowed down for a stop sign, the squealing magically went away before I stopped. And it stayed gone for the remainder of my drive home.

So what the heck was that noise?? I'm quite sure I didn't run over something that would have got caught up in my car and I certainly didn't hear anything fall off the car as I approached that stop sign. Anyway, I made an appointment for first thing tomorrow morning with Honda to have them check it out. I suppose that if they can't reproduce the sound they aren't going to have much luck finding out what made it. But there is a recall issue that I was notified of recently, so maybe they can at least take care of that if they can't do anything about the noise that doesn't seem to be there anymore.

So this is where all the cars go...

...that get towed in New York City.

Yep, tonight I went into the city with Joe and Liana to go dancing at Frim Fram. It was a really fun time, at least until we arrived back where we parked the car. I guess we misunderstood some signs on 28th Street... would have been helpful if the curb was painted yellow but it wasn't. Plus there were a bunch of other cars that were parked illegally as well - I supposed they were all towed too.

Originally Tiffknee was going to catch a ride home with us, but because we had to deal with finding the car and getting it out of impound, she thought it would be quicker for her to get home if she took the Path train. I'm not sure what happened yet, but I guess she missed the train, and now that I'm home, I see that Kenji is now out, off to fetch Tiffknee from the city. D'oh!

UPDATE: Turns out Tiffknee was at least able to make it back to Newark Penn Station, which is good. I'm glad Kenji didn't have to go all the way into the city. :)

Domo-kun says: Have two birthdays!

Kenji gave me this fun Domo-kun calendar for Christmas. This afternoon I looked at it because I needed to know next Tuesday's date. That's when I noticed that I have two birthdays this year. :)

More spinny stuff

So we went to that spinning class on Tuesday... then on Friday, Kenji and I tried out one of the new Expresso Fitness bikes. It's a stationary bike that has a screen attached to it that you can go on virtual bike rides. I found it entertaining because I could aim at other riders on the screen and run them over. Well, they just disappeared when I hit them... it's not like I could see them all fallen down on the ground or something. But it gave me purpose in my riding, and that made the cycling more enjoyable. :) Still I was only good for about ten minutes before I went to go walk on a treadmill instead.

Kenji played some of the other games on the bike. In one of the games he played, he collected different colored coins. Each time he found a coin, he then had to go kill the dragon of the same color. Cute! Maybe I will play that game the next time.

Spinny spinny spinny

This evening was another first for Kenji and me - we took a spinning class. Not the kind where they teach you how to make yarn. The spinning class was at the JCC fitness center, and it was in a cool, dark room full of stationary bikes, and we rode those bikes harder than I ever rode a bike before, and it was only for 45 minutes. Of course I've ridden a bike for much longer than 45 minutes. But going for a bike ride, I get to take breaks, like when going down hill, and I certainly don't push myself as hard as Howie the spinning instructor pushed us (and I'm pretty sure he went easy on us since this was the first spinning class we ever took). Twenty minutes into it I felt like I was crying but really it was just sweat running down my face. Anyway my legs hurt now, but I guess it's good for me. Kenji says he's all sore too. The End.

Seahawks Lose

To follow up on last week's Seahawks post...

Kenji says, "Another disappointing Mariners season starts tonight!"

Moar cheezburger fun...

Teh kittehz still want you to vote 4 dem...


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Vote for Spammy & Musubi!

Spammy and Musubi want this picture to be on the I Can Has Cheezburger? homepage. Click on their picture here so you can vote for them. To vote for them just click on one of the little cheeseburgers that are sitting on top of Spammy and Musubi's picture.


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kthxbai!

Kenji is a Turkey

The proof is in the picture:
Yep, so anyway today Kenji, Tiff and I went bowling at Roselle Lanes. It was fun because for a while we were the only ones there. A bit Twilight Zone-ish really.

Woo check out that form! And all the other empty lanes!

More proof of Kenji's turkey. Notice where in the 5th and 6th frames, Kenji, Tiffknee and I all got strikes in a row. That's because the lane got screwed up and wouldn't put pins back down on the lane at the end of Kenji's 5th turn. By the time the bowling alley folks fixed it, all three of us had strikes (because the system sensed that there were no pins left behind after the reset). Well we decided to keep our free strikes, and I'm glad I did since without it I probably wouldn't have made my usual goal of getting to 100 by the end of the game.


Oh, also notice that in the far left column of the scoreboard, our initials are Mr. T. Tee-hee-hee!

Seahawks Win

Note the little green gloves. Oh and the score - Redskins 14, Seahawks 35.

If the Redskins ever decided to move to the state of Washington, they wouldn't even need to change their name. Heh.

Chop-head

I intentionally lost this hangman game because I wanted to see what would happen to the little orange guy. The guillotine blade dropped down and chopped his head off! Eek!

Hau'oli Makahiki Hou!

Happy 2008! Once again we welcomed in the new year at our friend Kevin's apartment. We ate all kinds of yummy food, talked, played Dutch Blitz, and watched ancient Dick Clark on the TV. Even through all the makeup, that guy is finally showing his age. It must be about ten years since the last time I watched him on New Years Eve because I don't remember him seeming so old - I guess he's doing pretty well though for all the strokes he's had.

When we got home we found a bunch of Au Bon Pain napkins and and red ribbon on our kitchen floor. It didn't occur to me till after I cleaned it up that the mess was the kitties having their own little New Years celebration, throwing confetti and streamers around the kitchen when the clock struck twelve. Good kitties!