Seattle Visit - A Vacation from My Vacation?

On Thursday I bid another fond farewell to Hawaii. But it wasn't so bad because I missed Kenji and was excited to see him in Seattle. Although I left Hawaii at around noon, I didn't arrive in Seattle till after 10pm. This leg of my trip I flew on Northwest Airlines, and unlike Continental, they make you pay extra for your food. I did buy a little bit of food, but that was not enough, and I wasn't about to shell out another $5 for a crummy box lunch. So it was really nice that Kenji and his folks took me to late supper at Red Robin after fetching me from the airport. :)

Kenji and I timed our vacation to coincide with his cousin's wedding, which was on September 9th. We both arrived in Seattle on the 7th, so that meant we had at least one day to kick around at our leisure. We did a little shopping, went to see Grandma, that sort of thing. In the evening, we had a date with Kenji's high school friend, Derick and his wife, Meredith and their new baby girl. Because they had the little one, we decided to go to Red Robin again, where it wouldn't matter as much if baby cried. But she didn't cry at all - not even when I held her. That's very unusual - babies always cry when I hold them. :P I offered baby to Kenji to hold, but he just got used to holding kitty cats - babies are a whole new ballgame for him. =)

Saturday morning we arranged to meet up with our friend Tanya for brunch. Tanya used to live in Hawaii. I first met her swing dancing, at an event I went to during my first visit to Hawaii in 1999 - I don't think she remembers me from that though. Anyway she was one of our bridesmaids in our wedding. About a year and a half or so ago, she moved from Hawaii to the mainland to take care of her ailing mother. Now she lives in Seattle. We had super awesome yummy breakfast at Macrina in Belltown. I highly recommend it. :)

While we were in town, after saying seeya to Tanya, Kenji and I visited Safeco Field to go pick up tickets for the Sunday game between the Mariners and the Texas Rangers. The last time we were in Seattle, longtime Mariners slugger, Edgar Martinez, retired from the game, and we got to see it. As part of his retirement, Seattle renamed one of the streets outside the ballpark to Edgar Martinez Drive. That was in 2004. They didn't have the sign up yet, so this time we had to make sure we got a picture of it.

The wedding was in downtown Seattle, in a club on the 17th floor of a building on 4th Street or something like that. Well I'm really not sure. Anyway, from the club there was a nice view of Qwest Stadium, where the Seahawks are kicking the butts of the New Jersey Giants as I type this. (Note I say New Jersey Giants, NOT New York. Their stadium is in New Jersey, so I don't know where they get off calling themselves New York.) We could also see a little bit into Safeco Field.

The wedding itself was pretty short and sweet. I enjoyed hearing how Kelly and Mark met, and the food was good. Here they are cutting their cake, which they didn't do a very good job of shoving into each other's faces like Kenji and I did. Kenji smashed it into my face so well that I had frosting hanging off my eyelash!!!

I couldn't get anyone to dance with me, except Kenji danced with me for the very last song. :) Oh and he also danced with me for the one where the emcee calls how how many years people have been married for, until he finds out which couple has been married the longest. Turns out the couple that won was all a sham. The REAL couple was Kenji's folks, but they conveniently skipped out on the dancing. :P

And see I learn new things about my new family all the time now. For example, who knew Grandma is a pyro? Her sparkler was the only one left sparkling after everyone participated in the sparkly send-off of the newly married couple. Who knew I could use three different forms of the word sparkle in the same sentence? Anyway, don't you think it looks like Grandma's trying to light the building on fire? ;)

Sunday was our last full day in Seattle. And full it was. We took Kenji's younger cousins to the game with us, and Tanya joined us as well. It was a beautiful sunny day, but alas the Mariners did not win. So now I am two and two for this year - I saw them win twice (in Baltimore and Bahstun), and lose twice (in New York and now Seattle). Kenji had the displeasure of seeing them lose twice in New York. :( But at least we got to take this cool picture of him at Safeco Field! Also, this was Tanya's first Major League Baseball game. :)

After the game, we all went back to Kenji's folks' house for a little get together with family and friends. The food, of course, was awesome. And it turned out that another friend of mine who lives in the area was able to come join us too. I call him Celery, but that's not his real name. He's one of my friends I met via a particular internet chat room we both used to go to several years ago, before I even moved to Hawaii. His online name is Celebok, and since that sort of looks like Celery, I decided to call him Celery instead. We had met in person three times prior to this time - the last time in December 2000. So after nearly six years, it was nice to see him again.

So back when we were planning this trip, it seemed to us that three or four days was plenty of time to do everything we wanted in Seattle. But time just went by too fast. Hopefully we'll get to make it out there again in the near future, maybe around the holidays, which I can actually do this year!

Hawaii Visit - Wednesday - Bob's Moonwalk

A week goes by too quickly when you are having fun. It was fortunate for me that my last night in Hawaii was only one day before the full moon - which means Bob's Moonwalk! Normally he tries to arrange his monthly moonwalks on the actual night of the full moon, but he made a special exception for me, knowing that I would not be able to make it on the 7th.

For this moonwalk, we were joined by a columnist for the Star Bulletin, John Heckathorn. He used to work with Bob when Bob was with Honolulu Magazine. So for that particular week's column, John decided to write about Bob and his monthly moonlight stroll - you can read the column here.

Sometimes the weather is really iffy on the night of Bob's moonwalk. This night was no exception. I was driving from downtown to Triangle Park where we were all to meet up, and by Ala Moana it started to pour. But I trusted that the weather would be different over on the other side of Diamond Head, and it was... sort of. At least it wasn't raining... for the most part. And by the time we got to our turn-around point, we accomplished one of our goals for the evening, which was to watch the sun set.

Bob's moonwalks always end up at some kind of eating establishment - usually people drive to it after the walk is finished, but this time getting to the food was part of the adventure, at least it was for some of us. After watching the sun set, we headed to Kaimuki by way of Puu o Kaimuki, where we had a nice view of Honolulu (you can see the ghost of Punchbowl in my blurry photo). We also did manage to have a a couple of very brief moon sightings. The photos are less than impressive, so never mind posting them. You'll just have to take my word for it. :P

Our final destination was Big City Diner, one of the first places I remember going to eat after hiking in Hawaii when I first moved there. :) Just some more pix of me and my crazy friends...

Hawaii Visit - Tuesday - Pau Hana Time!

Tuesday, September 6th was probably the most frustrating day for lots of people on the island of O'ahu... at least it was for anyone who needed to get from town to the west side. An Army vehicle was being transported without a permit on the H-1 from Pearl Harbor to Schofield Barracks when it smashed into a pedestrian overpass right by Aiea High School. The DoT engineers declared the overpass structurally unsound, and so the State decided to close the freeway until they could remove the rest of the overpass. That of course meant gridlock, and people spent as much as eight hours sitting in traffic trying to get home! I can't imagine that... I would have to pee my pants so bad!!!

Fortunately for me, I was not a part of all that mess. At all. I was already in town, had lunch with my friend Mary Ann at Mariposa, and then went for Blondies with Bob at Waioli Tea Room in Manoa. After that was one of my favorite things - Pau Hana!

Again for you mainland people, pau hana bascially means finished work... well which in turn means go out for drinks and pupus (appetizers) at a local watering hole. This Pau Hana was actually a get together of folks who are part of GlobalPauHana.com, a social and business networking site for people who live in or have lived in Hawaii and now live elsewhere. I used to be the Honolulu "instigator", but last year I passed the torch to Alicia when Kenji and I moved to the mainland.

This time the watering hole was Palomino's, in Harbor Court, overlooking Nimitz Highway. The bar was packed, not only with Pau Hana attendees, but probably mostly with people who were trying to avoid all the traffic for as long as possible. After all, in Palomino's we had a great view of Nimitz, which is one of the main arteries that gets you west of the airport, and in this case it was a barometer for how traffic was moving.

So here are some photos - you can actually tell this one is from the end of the evening, because Miles is wearing everyone else's name tag.

I think this next photo is of course a no-brainer. Miles has to know a shot like this cannot be passed up for inclusion somewhere on the 'net...

Sometime during the year that I was away from Hawaii, the Dave's Hui on GPH got some competition from a formidable up-and-coming Gary's Hui. The two on the right are Gary and Garry, and there's Rob, I think a Gary wannabe...

Earlier in the day, I think I had stopped by an art gallery store in Ward Center, where I picked up some free postcards that were advertisements for some of the contributing artists. Since I had a book of stamps with me, I decided to write a little postcard to the folks at my workplace, telling them I was not coming back. :P Then I had all my "witnesses" sign it for me. :)

Me with Susan, one of the founders of Global Pau Hana - she lives on the mainland too, and like me, was back in town for a visit.

And me with Alicia - who instigated this Pau Hana event, her last one, too. She's not leaving Hawaii (as far as I know) - just time to let someone else step up to the plate. :)

Finally, at around 10pm, the last of us at Palomino's decided it was time to brave the traffic westward. I was on my way down King Street when Daniel called and he could hang out for a while. So just before I would have been stuck in traffic, I turned around and went to Waikiki. At just about midnight I decided it was probably ok to head home - and fortunately for me, I chose the right way. H-1 between town and Salt Lake was completely clear. Rebecca started her journey home about an hour before me, but she took Nimitz... and only arrived home about five minutes before I did!

Hawaii Visit - Monday - BBQ

Monday, Labor Day, my friend Ricksta had a BBQ at his new place - a sweet house he's renting with two other guys, right on the water in Hawaii Kai. Rick did an awesome job putting this BBQ together - thanks man for hosting and all your hard work!!!

As you can see, it was a beautiful day, and there were all kinds of people there. I knew maybe about half of them, and the other half were friend's of Rick's from paddling, work, and his housemates' friends.

Anyway it was nice and relaxing (well probably for everyone except Rick!), and there was tons of ono grindz (delicious food for you mainlanders) and just lots of talkstory. Much of the talkstory was Rebecca grilling some of our friends for details about how they go together with their boyfriends/girlfriends, ha ha ha. There we are, all the girls listening very intensely to all the details. ;)

There was also a couple there who had a little motorized kayak that they were letting folks use to cruise around the marina. I got to be the driver when Alicia, Rebecca and I went out. I was glad that I managed not to crash into anything, even when pulling back up to the BBQ.

All the good photos were taken by Alicia, like this yummy one taken of the marina with the Ko'olaus in the background. I guess I wouldn't mind waking up at that house every day. I don't even want to know how much it costs, thank you very much. :P

This was an unusual day in that it was the only day in which I had only one thing planned, and ended up doing only that one thing. No dancing, no night fishing, just BBQ. :)

Hawaii Visit - Sunday

Sunday we got up BRIGHT AND EARLY (especially for poor hostess Rebecca, who is most assurely NOT a morining person!) for a wonderful and muddy workout, hiking up to the Ko'olau summit by way of the Hawai'iloa Ridge trail.

I've hiked this trail before, about four years ago. The trailhead is at the very top of Puuikena Drive, a very ritzy gated community filled with gigantic, some beautiful, some simply ostentatious, homes. Among the many amenities located by the trailhead is this little workout thingy... I'm not really sure how it's supposed to be used, but jumping seemed like a good idea to me. When the trailchicks and I did the hike back in November 2002, my friend Nancy and I hopped over all the beams together (I'm the one in the silly green hat). This time I couldn't anyone to hop with me. Weenies.

Yes, more feet photos. This was when our shoes were all nice and clean and respectable-looking. Later on, they were just plain muddy. But we didn't take an after-photo, so you'll just have to use your imagination. =)


The weather wasn't the best - actually it was quite nice down by the ocean, but the summit was rainy and socked-in with clouds, as you can see by our little group picture. The sign is proof we made it to the top. :P


Hawai'iloa Ridge has a lot of really steep bits near the summit. Going up it's not so bad, well aside from how tiring it is. While we were at the summit, it began to rain. As we were descending the mountain, it began to rain harder. We saw little streams of muddy water flowing down the trail under our feet. In several places, we had no choice but to descend on all fours, resulting in hands that looked like this:


As we got closer to the trailhead, things did brighten up again. I really liked the shady places, especially this part of the trail, where the tree roots are all exposed and criss-cross everywhere over the forest floor. I'm no good with identifying most trees, otherwise I'd tell you what kind of trees these are...


The hike all the way up and back is probably around 5 miles. We followed up with burgers at the Shack in Hawaii Kai - the best kine food to top off a nice strenuous hike. :)

After the hike and burgers, I think Rebecca and I managed to sneak in a very short nap before heading back out for dancing at the Atherton YMCA. I thought that place was supposed to have been converted to lame office space... at least that was the rumor a couple of years ago. So I'm happy to say that hasn't been the case. :)

Atherton of course was followed up by ice cream at Bubbies, which was then followed up by some more night fishing at the "groin" with Daniel. We still only managed to catch little tiny fish. And I kept losing hooks... either getting them caught on a reef, or lines snapping on me when I cast. Bah. But we stayed out late enought that it made sense to watch the moon set... at 2:53am!

Visit to Hawaii - Days One, Two and Three

Thursday

To catch up, on Thursday I got up at 8am New Jersey time, finished packing and hopped on a plane that left more than an hour late at 3pm, and landed in Honolulu only a half hour late at 6:40pm, Hawaii time. Got off the plane, picked up my rental car, and met my friend Dave for supper at Sushi Locomotion in Salt Lake. After supper, Jamie and Todd picked me up and took me out to Honolulu's newest swing dancing venue, Ong King Arts Center in Chinatown. It was a really wonderful and warm welcoming with all kinds of hugs and leis tossed around my neck, followed by lots of dancing that made my jet-lagged and sleep-deprived body feel like it was drunk from the thighs down. :) And as if flying direct from Newark to Hawaii, dinner and dancing were not enough, my gracious hostess, Rebecca, our friend Dave, and Rebecca's security-guard cat, Paco, capped off the day with lychee martinis and talk-story.

I should note that Rebecca's guest bed is the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in. I think it might be one of those memory-foam mattresses or something, though I did not check under the bed sheets to find out. I think her folks bought the bed for her because that's the one they know they will be sleeping in when they come to see her. So my compliments to Mom and Dad Rebecca for a great selection of bed!

Friday

Friday morning I woke up early, around 8am and went outside for a nice walk around the neighborhood. I didn't get very far before I got the idea of trading in my rental car, a big and clunky Ford Taurus, for the smaller, economy-class car that I had originally reserved anyway. Am I weird for wanting to down-grade my rental car? I don't care; it took only two miles and one annoying attempt to park in the jam-packed Salt Lake Shopping Center parking lot to convince me that I didn't want to drive a Ford Taurus for the rest of the week. So instead I ended up with a Chevy Aveo, a little $9,000 car whose only frill was the air conditioning. That was the only frill I needed, so I was a happy camper. Or driver.

Since Rebecca works a crazy schedule, she was able to join me and some of the folks from my former workplace, HTDC, for awesome lunch at Asia Manoa. After this, I took a nice walk around Kapiolani Park.

After my nice walk, I fought typical Honolulu traffic to pick up Dave from his workplace in downtown. We went to the not-so-well attended tech trade show at the Neal Blaisdell Center. Between the two of us, we paid $4 to park, and we figure we got enough t-shirts and stress balls out of it to make up for the cost of parking. Oh yeah, there was also a vendor there who's selling a service for sending video email messages. They let us do a demo, so you can see our dorky video if you click here. Please note - I don't think it works in Safari.

Next, we met up with some HTDC and other folks at Longhi's at Ala Moana Shopping Center for "yooj", which is HTDC's term for going out for drinks and pupus after work. :)

Following yooj, I have to thank Vivian for introducing us to Spices, a relatively new restaurant in the University area of town, on King Street, just a few doors up from Kokua Market. Vivian insisted we go try all their ice creams, and I'm glad we did! If I were smart, I would have written down all the flavors we tried - they are so unusual and you're not likely to find them anywhere else. My favorite was the Pineapple-Basil (who would guess that could be good?!?). Dave's favorite was the one with hot pepper in it. Viv likes the Jasmine. No one really liked the Durian, but I was happy to have tried it. I think it is an acquired taste, because I did try several spoonsful of it, and it did become slightly more appealing after each one. I think there was also Lavender, and the other two flavors were not unusual - Chocolate and Banana.

So you'd think that after all this, our day would be over already. But no... Dave and I parted with Viv after our ice cream experience and picked up our fishing buddy, Daniel, for a little night fishing over at the "groin" in Waikiki. Thad joined us too. We didn't catch much, just a few little tiny fish that we threw back.

Saturday

It's nice to wake up here to the sound of palm trees blowing in the breeze, and look out the window and see sunshine and blue sky.

Today's schedule of activities was not so packed. I met up with Rick, Alicia, Tom/Kevin, Bex, Dave and Jade for Dim Sum at Fook Lam in Chinatown. The food there is always so ono, and
the company a lot of fun. And it seems that this is the first time I bothered to use my camera. And I have to thank Alicia for making me a CD of all the photos she took - I've included some of those here as well. I love the sesame-covered balls that they snip in half with the scissors which makes them look like little fledgling pac-men waiting to be fed tasty ghosts.


For some reason, my friends like to take pictures of their feet. Can you tell which pair of legs belong to me? I'll give you a hint - my legs have seen very little of the New Jersey sun during the last year:

So anyway, following dim sum, I didn't really have any particular plans, other than to go dancing later in the evening. So Dave and I decided to hang out and talk story for a while at the park on Sand Island, then got some Jamba Juice at the new Moanalua Shopping Center. There are no Jamba Juices in New Jersey, at least that I know of. And it's not exactly convenient for me to go to the one that is in NYC.

After a nice little afternoon nap at Rebecca's, my hostess returned from work and we met up with my friend Rob at Spices - this time for dinner, not ice cream. Suffice it to say, dinner was quite yummy, but best of all, Rebecca and I managed to talk Rob into joining us for some dancing over at the Kahala (formerly Mandarin). It was a wonderful night of dancing - so many people there. The large turnout was due to this being the final performance of Betty Loo Taylor's jazz trio at the Kahala. I was just happy to have been there for this one last time.
It seems that after the Kahala changed ownership, some renovations where made to the lounge area. These renovations resulted in hotel guests being able to hear the music from their suites down on the far end of the lounge areas, which in turn restulted in complaints against all that "damn jazz" late at night. Weenies.

From the Martyzone

I figure that anyone who actually reads this blog on a regular basis is getting tired of seeing the same old post I made about a moth ago. Since then I took a trip to Hawaii to visit friends, and then went and met Kenji in Seattle where we attended his cousin's wedding. I have all kinds of photos, but I haven't had all kinds of time to post any of them yet. And since my friend Tiffany is going to pick me up in about an hour to go to a dance, I still don't have time to post them now.

But I haven't done a Martyzone posting in a while, and that's easy! This week, he closed his newsletter with this very pressing question:

Why does inhaling helium make you sound like a cartoon?

They Can't Eat You!

I was researching web hosts today for my job, and as a result of my search, I came across Go Daddy CEO Bob Parson's 16 Rules for Survival:

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we're in our comfort zone. I hear people say, "But I'm concerned about security." My response to that is simple: "Security is for cadavers."

2. Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time it's attempted. Just because what you're doing does not seem to be working, doesn't mean it won't work. It just means that it might not work the way you're doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn't have an opportunity.

3. When you're ready to quit, you're closer than you think. There's an old Chinese saying that I just love, and I believe it is so true. It goes like this: "The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed."

4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of "undefined consequences." My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, "Well, Robert, if it doesn't work, they can't eat you."

5. Focus on what you want to have happen. Remember that old saying, "As you think, so shall you be."

6. Take things a day at a time. No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don't look too far into the future, and focus on the present moment. You can get through anything one day at a time.

7. Always be moving forward. Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.

8. Be quick to decide. Remember what General George S. Patton said: "A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow."

9. Measure everything of significance. I swear this is true. Anything that is measured and watched, improves.

10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate. If you want to uncover problems you don't know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven't examined for a while. I guarantee you problems will be there.

11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you're doing. When you look at your competitors, remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space, looks like a peaceful place.

12. Never let anybody push you around. In our society, with our laws and even playing field, you have just as much right to what you're doing as anyone else, provided that what you're doing is legal.

13. Never expect life to be fair. Life isn't fair. You make your own breaks. You'll be doing good if the only meaning fair has to you, is something that you pay when you get on a bus (i.e., fare).

14. Solve your own problems. You'll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you'll develop a competitive edge. Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: "You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others." There's also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently. It goes like this: "A wise man keeps his own counsel."

15. Don't take yourself too seriously. Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.

16. There's always a reason to smile. Find it. After all, you're really lucky just to be alive. Life is short. More and more, I agree with my little brother. He always reminds me: "We're not here for a long time; we're here for a good time."

The above article is included with the permission of Bob Parsons and is Copyright © 2004-2006 by Bob Parsons. All rights reserved.

Happy Monday!

It's a lovely day today - sunny, cool and dry - and look what I found in the Whole Foods Market over in Madison, NJ!

Yay! Bubbies! Boo! It's, um, wicked expensive! But that's ok, today I shelled out the small fortune because it's a special occasion which I am not allowed to mention. ;)

Bubbie's mochi ice cream was my very first exposure to mochi ever. I had just moved to Hawaii, and I was hanging out with some people I had just met through swing dancing. They weren't even from Hawaii - just a couple of instructors who were in town from Colorado who were conducting some workshops that week. They needed a ride back from town to Hawaii Kai, so I offered to drive them. Along the way, they suggested we stop for ice cream, which of course I'm always up for. Some local person had taken them to Bubbie's earlier, and they wanted to go back there and get more mochi ice cream. So we bought a whole big container full and pigged-out when we got to where they were staying.

Day of Updates

Yep, it's been a while and I really haven't had a lot of time to update my blog even in a quasi-meaningful way. Stuff's been happening. Jobs have been quit. People want to know the status of kitty cat toilet training. I will get to all that stuff, and add pictures and even some video...

Spam learns to play fetch and goes YouTubing!

I think I may have mentioned before that Spammy's favorite toy is Stick. Stick is a long piece of white plastic that used to be the seal around a bucket of kitty litter we bought way back when we first got the kitties last year. Well he loves to play with it so much, he often wakes us up in the morning, not to get us to feed him, but rather to dangle his stick around so he can chase it!

Yesterday I was busy for much of the day doing useless stuff on the computer, like discovering Google Calendar and Spreadsheets, and checking out Kevin Kelly's really cool blog about cool tools. While I was in the midst of all this, Spammy came into the room and sat down next to me and began to meow very loudly. When I looked to see what he wanted, I saw that he had carried his stick all the way into the office from the bedroom!

So of course I played stick with him. I wiggled it around, made him chase it in circles, and then I threw it out of the room and into the hallway. He ran out of the room, picked it up, and carried it right back for me to continue playing with him. How cute is that??

As I was just about to go to sleep last night, Spammy carried his stick up onto the bed. So I threw it into the hallway for him, and he carried it back. We did that for six or seven times. Then I think he got smart and decided he didn't want to carry the stick anymore and so he put it down somewhere out reach for me.

This morning I tried to capture him playing fetch on video, and was able to get him to do a half-hearted fetch at least once. Anyway, I played around with the video for a couple hours, added a shameless promo for Mochi Kids!™ to the end of it, and uploaded it as my first video to YouTube.com. Go Spammy!

House kitties get to go outside!

Last weekend we bought a harness and a little leash for taking the kitties outside for supervised exploring. As you can see from the pictures, Spammy is all about poking around and looking at stuff, while Musubi is a bit more skiddish about it.
After her first time outside (photo below), Musubi did watch Spammy walking around outside on several occasions, from her save perch in the window. I think this encouraged her a little bit, because the next time I brought her out, she was more willing to look around at stuff.
And imagine me going all my life and never laying eyes on a cicada until last week - and there here we are again - Spammy spotted one in the grass! Well, it was pretty easy to spot this one because at the moment we found it, it was having a fight with a bumble bee. The bumble bee left and Spammy tried taking a closer look... but when the cicada buzzed it wings, it scared Spammy and he hurried away. :)
Mr. Cicada was really mixed up in the grass, so it's hard to tell what he is. But I can assure you he's not the grey thing on the right. :P

One job down, one to go...

Ok, I don't plan on quitting my Run-A-Ton job anytime soon, but two Sundays ago (or maybe it was three?), I did finally quit my Crate and Barrel job. And that's why I can spend so much time updating my blog today!

As I've said before I did actually enjoy working at Crate and Barrel - my co-workers were really nice and great to work with (with the exception of the college slacker summer hires, not to be confused with the college student summer hires who were not slackers), on the whole the customers were pleasant and friendly, but most of all, I had a nametag that said "Marsha-Marsha-Marsha" on it! Oh, and the employee discount was nice too.

I'd have to say the big downside is that having to work a weekend day is pretty stinky if you don't have to. But the biggest reason I left was because I wanted to devote more time to Mochi Kids!™ activities, which I have been able to do to a small degree - since I left C&B I've created a couple of new designs as well as some more products. One of the reasons I haven't been able to do more is that I've been working a couple of full-time weeks, filling in for the gal who normally does the accounts payable stuff while she is away on vacation. Ha, I never thought I'd be doing accounting stuff! But it turns out I'm not too bad at it. Go figure.

Mission Impossible.

It's been several weeks already since I gave up on trying to potty train the kitties.

The two main reasons were these:

• Spammy loves to play with water. When the CitiKitty hole got big enough for him to stick his whole upper body through, all he did was play when the water was clean. At least he was smart enough to wait till the water was clean.
• Musubi wanted to drink the water. When the CitiKitty hole got big enough for her to stick her whole upper body through, AND Spammy had already kicked all the water out of the water bowl before playing with the toilet water, Musubi felt she had to resort to drinking the toilet water, and therefore stopped using it to go potty.

Oh well, we tried. I still think that if it were just Musubi, she would be potty trained by now. Mabye we'll try again in a year or two, when Spammy is more mature. For now, we even have had to move their water bowl to sit inside the sink in the half-bathroom, so that when he plays with the water, at least it just goes down the drain and not all over the floor!

Weird On-line Advertising

Ok, so this is one of those things that has probably been going on for some time and I only just noticed it today.

A few minutes ago, I was reading this article about how the International Astronomical Union has finally come to a decision on what defines a planet. (Incidentally, there are going to be 12 celestial bodies recognized as planets - eight "classical" planets and four "plutons".) In the article, I noticed that there are a few words that are text links. Expecting them to link to something related to the article or the particular word in the article, I was surprised to find out that they were nothing more than advertisements! If you click on the link, it takes you to the advertiser's web site. If you simply roll over the link, a little window pops up with a mini-ad from the same advertiser.

I don't know how I feel about this form of advertising. I guess it's easy enough to ignore, which is mainly what I do with on-line advertisements. But imagine reading a whole article in which many of the words are hyperlinked advertisements. That could be really annoying. And then it would be hard to determine which links are just advertisements versus links to information legitimately related to the article. Bluh.

What kind of bug?

So this evening I was making some focaccia bread (sorry, not from scratch - but it was yummy!), and as usual, while the oven was pre-heating, our smoke detector went off.

As soon as I got my hands out of the dough and reasonably clean, I went and shut off all the racket, and then made sure all the downstairs windows were wide open. While opening one of the dining room windows, I noticed a large clump of something on the outside window sill. It was the big huge bug you see here!

So anyway, I don't know what kind of bug this is, and neither does Kenji. If you know what it is, let us know. :)

Update:

Ok, fine, I did a little research and found out that our bug is a cicada. I showed Kenji the bug, and opened the screen so he could get a good look at it. Just as I shut the screen, the cicada tried to fly into our house! It scared the crap out of us and we jumped and screamed like little girlies. Well I did anyway. But I got the screen shut just in time, and Mr. Cicada just kinda bounced off it and flew away.

Amputee

This is a story of a kitty cat amputee.

On Saturday night, Kenji and I decided to move our bed from the room we had been using as our bedroom into the larger room in the upstairs of our house. The larger room was our bedroom at first when we moved in last year, but then we found that the smaller room had a better breeze to keep us cool on hot summer nights. But Kenji's folks very kindly sent us a nice portable air conditioner, which we decided it install in the larger room. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

Anyway, as we were rearranging and moving furniture, I stepped out of the room and shut the door behind me. What I didn't realize was that little Spammy was right underfoot, and when I shut the door, the tip of his tail got caught! I'm not even sure he knew his tail got caught - he didn't say a word. About five minutes later, I discovered the tip of his tail laying in the floor next to the door. :(

So we went and found Spammy and took a look at his tail - sure enough about an inch of his tail insides were sticking out the end. :(

We took Spammy to the emergency pet clinic right away (it was midnight already), and they said that because the tip of his tail had been "degloved", they would have to amputate about an inch and a half off the end so that his skin can grow back over the bone and avoid getting infected. So we had to leave him overnight and pick him up on Sunday.

Yesterday, after I got out of work, Kenji and brought little Spammy home. We made the mistake of letting him out of his box without isolating him in a room by himself first. As soon as he saw Musubi, he attacked her, screaming and yelling, and flying up the stairs after her. The bandage on his tail flew right off, and the naked little shaved and sutured end of his tail was exposed. I was finally able to capture him and calm him down. We tried to put the bandage back on, but Spammy wasn't having any part of it. So Kenji called the clinic, and they said to bring Spammy back and they would rebandage him.

I took Spammy back to the doctor by myself. Meanwhile, Kenji cleared all the stuff out of our smallest room so Spammy could live in there overnight and not climb on somthing and hurt himself. When I brought Spammy home, he was a lot more calm, but he was still very upset about having a club-like bandage on his tail, and even more angry about having a big clumsy cone stuck around his neck. He was still groggy from the sleepy drugs they gave him at the clinic, but as the effects of those subsided, Spammy's personality returned to his normal sweet self. He began to purr and roll around and ask to play with his stick.

Spammy's allowed to go out of his room now, but little Musubi is still traumatized by his attack yesterday, and wants nothing to do with him. Fortunately, she is not an aggressive kitty - she just doesn't approach him; and when he approaches her, she just hisses, growls, gets puff-tail, and backs away. This picture was taken about a month ago, when Spammy discovered that he really loves watermelon. I didn't want anyone to have to remember a sad Spammy with all his bandages and his cone-collar, so I thought I'd share this happy picture of him too. :)

So if you have pets, be extra careful to make sure they are not underfoot when you don't expect it. And get pet insurance! We were thinking of dropping the insurance we got for Spammy and Musubi, but now I'm glad we didn't. Between the emergency room visit, the surgery, the medications, and the follow up visits, this little incident would cost probably around $1,500! With the insurance, we should be covered for at least $1,000 of it, so neeless to say, we are very very glad we have it!

Sewing Stuff

A couple months ago, Kenji bought some short-sleeved button-down shirts for real cheap at Steve and Barry's, or whatever that store is called. Problem was that the shirts were way too long. So yesterday Kenji decided he was going to shorten them, so he asked me to show him how to use the sewing machine. This was my mom's machine, not my grandma's, a picture of which is in this blog post.

So now Kenji knows how to load up a bobbin full of thread, thread the machine and make it go! He also got to sort of learn how to make a hem. Probably not a proper hem, since I never really learned how t make one, but it was good enough for his purposes.

His Name is Glen Miyashiro

This morning I mentioned to Kenji that the next time we get cats we should name them Glen Miyashiro and Lori Yamaguchi. Frank Delima fans will understand. But we like our kitties and don't want to get new ones, so instead I decided to give Spammy and Musubi nicknames. So now i call Spammy Glen Miyashiro and Musubi is Lori Yamaguchi. :)

Fireworks Over NYC

Ten years ago today, I watched the fireworks shows over New York City. I had an unusual vantage point though - I was over the fireworks looking down on them from a plane!

Ten years ago today is the day I flew out of JFK Airport to go to Kenya for three and a half weeks. It was my first time outside of the United States, with the exception of visiting Quebec four summers earlier. On our way to Kenya, our plane stopped over in Saudi Arabia and I had to spend about eight hours in the airport waiting to connect to Kenya.

During my stay in Kenya, TWA Flight 800 was shot(?) out of the sky (did they ever come to a conclusion of what really happened to flight 800?), and a bomb was set off at the Summer Olympics. I spent a few hours in the United States Embassy in Nairobi helping someone we stayed with obtain a student visa. Two years later that building was bombed.

I got to see all kinds of free-roaming animals that you normally only get to see in a zoo, or maybe even never at all - lions, cheetahs, zebra, wildebeest, hartebeest, crocodile, hippopotamus, impala, dik dik, vultures, secretary birds, plus a whole bunch of others that I have written down someplace in a journal I had with me while I was there.

Dancing with the Ugly Dolls

This week I attended the Licensing International 2006 trade show at the Javits Center in NYC. The reason I went was to learn more about the licensing industry and how it applies to Mochi Kids!™, see what other artists are doing regarding licensing out their artwork and/or characters, figure out what next steps I need to take, and meet people who might be able to help me take those next steps.

But most importantly, I went to dance with the Ugly Dolls! I think the Ugly Dolls are hilariously cute in their ugly sort of way. It happened that their trade show booth was right next to Sonic the Hedgehog's booth. And it just so happened that I walked by Sonic the Hedgehog's booth right when the folks at Sega were celebrating Sonic's 15th anniversary. They had a little band playing music, all the Sega people were wearing blue hair in honor of Sonic, and they had a giant birthday cake that they cut up and served to all the passers-by, of which I was one. The Ugly Dolls came over from their booth to dance with Sonic and celebrate with him. So of course I had to get a picture of me dancing with them too!

I also got to play with some other fun characters, like Pikachu and Miffy! But I don't know where my Miffy picture went. When I find it, I'll post it here. There are also some other pictures of me posing with random characters and monster trucks, but my friend, Robert, took those pictures on his camera so someday hopefully he'll get around to sending them to me.

So anyway, some things I learned while I was at the trade show... Well, I already knew this one - which is that I have a whole lot of work to do to really get started. But the benefit of attending Licensing International is that I have more concrete ideas of what some of those things are.

For example, I need to beef up my portfolio of designs, including increasing the number of cetral images I have. And to go with each central image, creating background graphics and patterns, icons and border images. This is necessary to make it easier for licensees to apply my images to different types of products - some products, like t-shirts, lend themselves nicely to central images. While others, like bed linens, work better with a repeating pattern of images.

I'll also need an intellectual property attorney, and I'm pretty certain that I will want to work with an agent, to assist me with developing the brand and connecting and negotiating with potential licensees.

And I also want to add depth to the Mochi Kids! characters. Since I don't have the expertise to create animations, or the funding to hire someone who does, I'm going to start the kids off with their own little blogs. Of course the challenge I'm running into here is thinking of things the kids can post about. Unless I'm just babbling off the top of my head like I do here, I do find it a challenge to write things that require more direction. Plus the other thing they told us at one of the seminars that pertained to using blogs and other forms of digital media for marketing was if you are using a blog to promote your character, buisness, etc., "post often, post short, and always post a picture!" So I gotta try to keep the kids' babblings to a minimum, and make pictures for them to post. And my goal to start with is have the kids post at least once a week.

What I need is more time! So yes, I'll be quitting one of my jobs in the not-so-distant future... I'd say by the end of August.

Surprise Trip to Philly!

This weekend instead of the usual grind of spending my Sunday working at Crate & Barrel, I took the whole weekend off to accommodate a friend who was coming into town to stay with us. But then at the last minute we learned that my friend was not going to stay with us after all. That meant road trip!!!

We decided to go to Philly, because I'd never spent any time there before (we drove through Philly on I-95 a couple months ago when we went to Maryland, but that doesn't count), and plus it's really not that far away - only a couple hours drive. So we got up bright and early Saturday morning, had breakfast along the way at a diner near the Menlo Park Mall down by Woodbridge, New Jersey, and made it to Philly well before noon.

On our way into downtown Philly, we took this photo of the traffic light. It just worked out that City Hall happened to be right behind it.

Since it was so last minute, we didn't have much of a selection of bed and breakfasts to choose from. We ended up staying at The Inn Between, which is in the University City district of Philly. The inn is one half of a pretty amazing duplex built in 1903. The owner has only been operating it as an inn since January, so I think she has quite a ways to go in getting her business up to the standard of the other B&Bs we've stayed at before. It really just felt like staying over night at some old house. The furniture was a mish-mash of styles that looked fresh from local yard sales and flea markets. Cleanliness would not pass the quintessential mother-in-law test. And breakfast was ho-hum - nothing I wouldn't be able to fix for myself. The innkeeper was pleasant to talk to though, and she had a lot of good info about things to do in Philly to impart verbally; however, she didn't have many of the free brochures or maps available that many B&Bs offer for the convenience of their guests.

One of our main objectives for this trip was to catch the Phillies' game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. So our first order of business upon arriving in Philly was go to the stadium and pick up a pair of tickets. Who knew I would fall victim to the giant black and white ghost of former Phillies pitching great Robin Roberts. I don't think he actually meant to smack me on the head, but he really oughtta watch out during his follow-through.

After securing our tickets for the Saturday night game, we headed back into the heart of Philly in our terribly hot, un-air-conditioned car. We bit the bullet and spent $7 on flat-fee parking in a garage near Chestnut Street and 7th. We were glad to have the car parked in the shade instead of on the street where it could just bake and bake and bake some more. So that we ourselves wouldn't keep baking while exploring central Philly, we ducked into a museum where Kenji met up with the venerable Ben Franklin (and some air conditioning).

I have to say that Ben's aged pretty well for a 300 year old guy, don't you think?

Next we tried to visit Independence Hall, but not unexpectedly, all tickets for entry were already sold out for the day. But that didn't stop us from wandering around and peeking into free places like the Quaker Meeting House and the Independence Hall/Liberety Bell Visitors Center, where Kenji was able to get his face on the $10 bill!

We were too cheap to go or do anything that might cost more than $20 apiece, but before we knew it we were hungry. Of course you know what that means...

...Philly Chesesteaks!

Yes, we made the trek all the way from central Philly down the Federal and 9th where the famous Pat's and Geno's cheesesteak sandwich rivalry happens all day, every day (and night).


This of course is Geno's, the flamboyant cheesesteak place. It was for that reason we decided to just take a picture of Geno's, and actualy eat at Pat's, a more simple and down-to-earth cheesesteak place, instead. Pat's doesn't use any bright colors or Hummers to attract it's customers. However their ordering process is a bit like the Sienfeld Soup Nazi. Very stressful.

After lunch, we wandered back to our car and made our way over to the Inn Between to get ourselves checked in and take a nap before going to the game. I forgot to bring my camera to the game, so sorry no pictures of Philly's version of the green monster for you.

Sunday morning we followed the advice of our hostess, and made a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On Sundays it's pay-what-you-want-to-pay day. So we paid a little bit, but not anywhere near what the normal entrance fee is. When Mochi Kids!™ takes off someday we'll go back and overpay
instead.

The museum of course is huge and even though we spent four hours there, we still didn't see everything. I can never remember the names of artists or works that I see when I go to museums, so suffice it to say there's a lot of cool stuff there. Besides, I wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone would I?

Naturally we had some photo fun outside the museum, with me trying to bring some shady releif to this statue:

And I took this picture of Kenji because he likes the color blue, and the top of the buiding behind him has blue behind all the figures, but you can't really tell from the photo:

And wherever there is a giant spider, naturally I want to be there:

After we finished with the museum, it was time for another cheesesteak. This time we drove down the south Philly to check out a place called Tony Luke's, recommended to us by my friend, Steven, who lived in Philly for a few years some time ago. I thought the bread was better than the bread at Pat's, but the meat was a whole lot more greasy. Sorry to say, but my favorite cheesesteak ever so far I got in Hilo, Hawaii of all places. I don't know why that cheesesteak tasted so darn good that time... maybe I was just super-hungry? I don't know. I would tell you what the the name of the place is but unfortunately I can't remember. I think it's in the little strip mall that is kinda-sorta near the mall in Hilo that is on the road that you take to go visit the volcanos.

Oh well, anyway I guess I'll conclude this post by saying that although the cheesesteaks didn't live up to my very elevated expectations, I though Philly was a wonderful city. It was so easy to get around and figure out how to go places that I feel like I sort of know the city already. I also enjoyed that they have a lot of buildings with crazy murals painted on the sides... two of which we managed to snap photos of here:

There was another really cool mural of some of Philly's famous musicians/singers that should be here as well. After all, it was on the wall of the building facing me while I was eating my Pat's cheesesteak. I must have been so hungry I forgot to take a picture. Oh well.

Busy-Busy

I haven't had much time lately to update my blog. Too busy working six days a week at two jobs, and then also trying to finish up Mochi Kids™ in time for the Licensing International trade show that is coming up in a couple of weeks. Anyway, just thought I'd mention that before heading off to sleep. Aloha!