Bronx Zoo

Last Wednesday I went to the Bronx Zoo with my friend Liana. I brought Kenji's camera with me and took some pictures of the animals. Enjoy!

My Trip to Home Depot

This evening I went to Home Depot to pick up some paint for Kenji so he could finish up in the basement. If I'd gone to the one in Hanover I would have know right away where to find it, but instead I went to the Vauxhall store, because it is a bit closer to us. The Vauxhall Home Depot is HUGE! It's so big they put a map on the handlebar of their shopping carts.

So anyway, there I was, wandering around the paint section of HUGE Home Depot, looking for the basement paint. Then all of the sudden, ALL the lights went out! I'm not kidding, it was pitch black in Home Depot! About 30 seconds after all the lights went out, some backup lights came on. I was going to keep shopping, but then the lights went out again, just for a moment. Then they announced over the loudspeaker for all customers to exit the store.

I'm glad our car has the remote keyless entry. Outside the store the parking lot was dark dark dark. So I just kept pressing the lock button on my key and listened for the little honk of the horn and looked for the flashing lights.

Well I didn't get the basement paint at Home Depot. I was about to drive over to the Hanover store and get it, but then Sears was along the way and they had it instead. The End.

Diddy Kong learns a new trick!

The other Saturday ago, the day after the soggy Pirates/Cardinals game Kenji and I attended in Pittsburgh, we drove out to Ohio to visit our nephew, whom we shall refer to as Diddy Kong, for his first birthday. Kenji has already proven to be somewhat of an influence in his nephew's life, as evidenced by this face:


Yes, Kenji taught him to do that. Get'um started young... ;)

Consumer Comments

Today at work I was culling my rather large collection of consumer feedback that our company receives via email, searching for complimentary comments about our products that we can post on our site. The messages date back probably about a year and a half, and to be honest, most of them are complaints. Not that our products suck or something... I think it's just that most people aren't ever moved to send companies feedback, and if and when they are, it is because something went wrong rather than for a job well done.

However there are a handful of thoughtful people out there who take the time to tell you when they like what you are doing, and they write for no other reason than to let you know. Naturally it is a pleasure to receive these brief missives. One thing I noticed while working on this little project today is the people who tend to send these sorts of messages are women.

Of course there is no shortage of women who write to complain, but I'll be darned if I came across a single message from a man who wrote simply to say that in his book, we are on the right track. That's not to say men don't write nice things to us about our products -- they do -- but their compliments invariably are in the company of either a complaint or some other question. For instance: "I love your pies, especially your blueberry! But the last 2 or 3 pies were not so good! They seemed to not have as many blueberries as usual, just more saucy filling..." or "I love your crumblettes, they are a great product, but I don't see a recycling symbol on your packaging. Are the packages recyclable?"

Perhaps it's just a matter of statistics. I also noticed that far more of the feedback comes from women, and only a small percentage are straight-up compliments. Because significantly fewer men write to us, perhaps we simply haven't received that compliments-only message that will make up the percentage gap -- at least we haven't received it on my watch.

Best Baseball Park

This weekend Kenji and I drove out to Toledo, Ohio for our nephew's first birthday. To break up the 500 or so mile drive, we stopped for an overnight in Pittsburgh, where we planned to see a ballgame at PNC Park.

PNC Park is a relatively new ballpark, opened in 2001 or so. They did a really nice job of it, as it offers a really nice view of the city and its bridges from the infield, and has an awesome riverwalk built right into the park on the outfield side. Most importantly, PNC Park has relish, unlike some other stupid ballparks I can think of like, um, Yankee Stadium. ;)

When we got to Pittsburgh we though for sure the game would be rained out, as it had been raining pretty much the whole time as we drove through Pennsylvania. But since we already paid for the tickets we figured we might as well go and have a look at the stadium and eat hot dogs and have ice cream in a helmet. PNC Park has good ice cream too. You can get hard packed ice cream instead of soft serve if you want. And it's cheaper than the junky soft serve you get at Yankee Stadium. We had Moose Tracks, with chocolate syrup on top. :)

While we were eating out hot dogs, the rain seemed to let up, and the tarp guys started taking the tarp off the field. About an hour and half after the original game time the game started, and the Pirates whipped the Cardinals, 10 - 2. It was a really fun game because probably no more than 5,000 people were in attendance, so we pretty much had the run of the ballpark.

After the game, before going back to our car, which we paid a premuim of $12 to park in the garage right next to the stadium, we took a walk across the Roberto Clemente Bridge and back.

Most times when I hear people talk about Pittsburgh (except for my friend Thad), they don't usually have much good to say about it. But I rather liked it, at least what I saw of it.

Vet Visits & Dry Food Wet Food Dry Food

Around the beginning of August we realized that the possibility of Kenji's job being transferred back to Hawaii might be drawing near. As such, I began researching the regulations for avoiding Hawaii's pet quarantine. The two main things we had to do was 1) have microchips implanted in Spammy and Musubi, and 2) get a rabies blood test done.

At the kitties' first vet visit to get their microchips, the vet said Spammy was getting too fat from eating dry food. This was the second time that the vet told us we should switch the kitties to wet food, so the next day we went and did it. Some changes in the kitties have followed:

Before Dry Food -- Spammy would noisily beg and beg and beg for food. As soon as the food hit the bowl, he would gobble gobble gobble, and push Musubi out of the way if he wanted to eat from the bowl she was eating from. Musubi would eat, but in a dainty, little girl sort of way, and she would not overeat. Musubi would always ask us for water. She liked to drink water out of a running faucet. Musubi would often try to anticipate when one of us might be going to the bathroom and race in there ahead of us, hoping we'd run some water for her. Spammy loved to lick scraps of lots of different fruits like oranges, pears, nectarines, plums, etc. Also, the kitties would puke maybe 2 or 3 times a week (between the two of them), and oftentimes Musubi would clean it up.

After Dry Food -- Spammy still begs for food, but he's much more patient about it. When I put the food bowls down for the kitties, Musubi is the first one to the bowl, going gobble gobble gobble. Now that Spammy is used to the wet food, he chows down a little bit too, but he usually has had enough well before Musubi is satiated. Musubi no longer begs for water. Spammy no longer cares for his favorite fruits. Oh, and Spammy has lost a couple pounds and the vet says he's a good weight now. Musubi gained a little weight, but she is still not overweight. At first the kitties puked even more than they did on dry food, but now they haven't puked at all for the last week or so.

So anyway last Wednesday we had a second vet visit to get the blood samples drawn for the rabies test. I also had the kitties get updated rabies shots, just so they could have the shots done post-microchip. When I brought the kitties in the second time, Kenji and I seemed to think that it was more likely that we would not get transferred before January, at which time Kenji would temporarily take his name off the list for going to Honolulu. But as it turned out, later that afternoon Kenji got the call that he's being transferred. So now we are all busy getting the house all fixed up looking nice for potential buyers...

But in addition to looking nice we want the house to SMELL nice... and, well, wet cat food does not smell nice. At all. So we're thinking maybe we should switch the kitties back to dry food temporarily while we are showing the house. I know Musubi won't be happy about that. I wonder how Spammy will feel about it.

Catch Up

I've been woefully negligent on keeping up with my blog. So, I will try to do some updates tonight. But the pictures won't be very good because all the good pictures are on Kenji's new Nikon D80, and he hasn't put them on the computer yet. So you're stuck with my grainy iPhone photos.

Perfect Way to Cap Off Labor Day Weekend

In addition to letterboxing and lobstahs, Kenji and I had plenty of fun in Maine with Heather², Jon, Patti, and Keisha, and all the many many kids! We had campfires in the yard and on the beach, s'mores, sparklers, silliness and even a couple of hours of kayaking on Sunday.

Monday morning, Kenji and I got an early start, leaving Kennebunk by 7:30am. We stopped in East Hartford, CT to check out Cabella's, and then stopped in West Hartford to have some Harry's Pizza. Except we never made it to Harry's. As we turned the corner from Park Road onto South Main Street, we suddenly had a flat!

We pulled over onto a quiet side street and parked under some shade. A flat tire normally isn't such a big deal, except the wheels all have locking lug nuts on them... and as I removed the donut and tools from the back of the car, it became apparent to me that we did not have the key. The nice folks whose house we parked in front of graciously tried to help us by lending their Honda's wheel lock key... it seemed to fit but as soon as we applied any pressure to unscrew the nut, the key popped off. So finally we gave up and called a tow truck to haul our butts over to Pep Boys. Fortunatley they were able to take care of it. All in all the whole fiasco ate up 4 hours and about $250. But I can think of many worse things that could have happened, so I'm not going to complain.

Now I know you're wondering why on Earth the key was not in the car. Well, when we bought the car, Honda put the locking lug nuts on the car for us. They took the original lug nuts off and placed those back into the package that the locking lug nuts came in. Then they taped the package back up with some nice fat green tape that you can't see through... When I brought the car home, I thought the package contained only the original lug nuts and not the key, because I couldn't see it through the green tape. So I stored the package in the house, thinking there was no need to keep the old lug nuts in the car.

Well, we made two changes right away when we finally got home that night. 1) The lug nut key is now in the car, and 2) we got AAA.

Supper Saturday Evening

'Nuff said.

Moxie in Freeport

Our Saturday in Maine was mostly spent letterboxing with high school friend Keisha... the crazy girl who drove all the way to Maine from North Carolina! We found 5 of the 8 boxes in the Postal Heaven series. I'm not too sure why the series is named Postal Heaven because the underlying theme seems to be more about cemeteries. Oh wait, I get it now... the letterboxes are mostly planted next to or in cemeteries... it's like they're dead and gone off to letterbox heaven. Heh.

Ohyah so anyway, after finding as many of the boxes we could, the three of us continued up the Maine Turnpike and hit Freeport, where we happened to find some Moxie. My friend Robor (his name's not really Robor, he just goes by that on the intarwebs) had a conversation about Moxie about six months ago, and I'd mentioned that the one time I tried it when I was a kid, I thought it was disgustingly vile and tasted like drinking medicine. I also said I was willing to give it another try as an adult to see if my opinion had changed. Well I didn't think it disgustingly vile, but it still had a bit of a funky aftertaste that I didn't really enjoy. I'm not a big soda drinker anyway but I managed to make it through an entire can and still had a smile on my face. But that doesn't mean I'll buy another can ever again.

Chipmunk!

Ok, so I lied. I have one picture that was taken with Kenji's new camera.

This cute little chipmunk was sitting on the stone wall outside my mommy and daddy's house on the Friday morning before Labor Day. Kenji and I were on our way up to Maine to visit with some of my old friends from high school... sort of a 20 year reunion of close buddies only. Anyway Kenji and I drove up to Massachusetts on Thursday evening and spent the night at my folks' house. Then we drove the rest of the way to Kennebunkport on Friday afternoon.

When I was a little girl, I always wanted to catch a chipmunk and make it my pet. I would try to do that by slowly and quietly approaching chipmunks sitting on our stone wall. Well it never worked. Kenji only managed to get within about 15 feet of this guy, but I cropped out the rest of the photo so it looks like was right up close. :)

The Green Room

Kenji and I have been wanting to brighten the walls in our house for quite some time, especially the living room. However since we haven't had much practice painting, we thought we'd start by repainting the smallest of our bedrooms. For this I chose a crazy happy bright green! I think it's called Citrus or something like that.

So anyway, it wasn't much time after we finished that we learned that we are being transferred back to Hawaii! So we won't have much time to enjoy our new green room. But I guess we'll get over it somehow. ;)

More Yummy Pulverized Fruit

Today's concoction:

• Orange
• Plum
• Grapes
• Pear
• Blueberries
• Banana
  
• Ginger

Yesterday's was pretty much the same, except I think there were also strawberries. No photo this time because it looks pretty much the same as the ones in my previous post, except just a big deeper purple color.

With yesterday's smoothie, I used the leftovers to make smoothie pops. They are just as yummy, but frozen. If I remember to take a picture of one of the smoothie pops tonight, I will add it to this post. Oh, gee, there it is!

Smoothies of the Day

Yep, today's smoothie came out yummy too. Kenji was home when I made it, so he asked for a small one. Hence the big smoothie and the little smoothie. Inside:

• 6-8 strawberries
• 1 pear
• 1 nectarine
• 1 orange
  
• 1/4 inch ginger root
• 1/4 - 1/2 cup blueberries
  

Smoothie of the Day

On every day since Monday I have been making a fruit smoothie for myself. The first one was super yummy so I blogged about it. I thought perhaps I would blog about any new ones I make that actually taste good. The ones I made on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I didn't think were all that special so I didn't blog about them. One I tried putting oranges in with a little bit of orange zest; that came out too bitter. Yesterday's had too much ginger in it. Another one I experimented with adding some spices, but decided I was a little heavy-handed with them. But today I think I got my smoothie just right:

• 1 carrot, peeled
  
• 1 nectarine, peeled & seeded
  
• 1 orange, peeled & seeded (no zest!)
• 1/4 inch of ginger root, peeled, minced and pounded to death
• 1/2 cup blueberries

Yep. Stuck everything in the food processor (thanks again MomM) and pulverized it all. Yummy. Perhaps next time I'll remember to take a picture before it's gone!

Tubing on the Delaware

Last Sunday Kenji and I drove out to Frenchtown and rented innertubes from Delaware River Tubing for a nice relaxing five mile float down the Delaware.

I've wanted to go tubing down the Delaware for a couple summers now, but never got around to it I think just because I kept forgetting. But recently I came across a letterbox clue that informed me of the fact that there is a hot dog stand floating in the river between Frenchtown and Stockton, and that was pretty much all I needed to decide that we were going to go tubing.

We never found the letterbox, but we did find the Hot Dog Man. Of course he's impossible to miss as that's where hundreds of other tubers, kayakers, rafters and canoers all stop for their lunches. Kenji and I each had a cheeseburger, a lemonade and a bag of chips.

Between lunch and floating, the overall trip from start to finish took about three hours. The Delaware is a nice wide river, but there were many places where its depth was only a foot or two, and I doubt we encountered many, if any, places where the water was over our heads. There sort of were some rapids, but not really... instead I would say the water just got bumpy from time to time, but most of the time the river looked like this. :)

888

I have a few minutes before it's time for me to go deliver books for the library to elderly folks around town, so I thought I'd post something since it is 8/8/8 today.

8/8/8 began with Kenji picking up my friend Lex and me from the Newark Penn train station. Last night Lex and I took the train into NYC to go dancing at Frim Fram, and our plan was to return to the Orange station, where Kenji would pick us up so we wouldn't have to walk the mile home. On our way in, we lucked out and got a free ride into the city since the conductor walked past us three times but never collected the money that we had in hand for him.

However on the way out, we overpaid our fare, since it does not cost as much to go from NY Penn to Newark Penn as it costs to go to Orange. We left the dance with plenty of time to make the 11:49 train to Dover, purchased our one-way tickets, and then discovered that our train had been cancelled! The next train to our destination wasn't scheduled for almost another hour (by the way, as I type this, it's now 8:08 on 8/8/8 :) ), so we consulted with Kenji and decided it was best to catch the 11:42 train to Trenton, which makes a stop at Newark Penn. So, after all was said and done, by the time we got home, it was just after 12:16am, which was the time our original train was scheduled to get us back to Orange anyway. :)

Yummy Smoothie

Last Thursday I stayed over in NYC visiting my friend Vivan, who is in town for the summer visiting her parents. On Friday morning Viv made a fruit smoothie for us, made from random fruits and berries they happened to have around the kitchen, and some soy milk.

Anyway that inspired me this afternoon to play with the food processor sent to Kenji and me by Mom M for our anniversary this year. Here's what went into today's (will be the first of many) smoothie:

• 1 pear
• 1 nectarine
• couple handsful of blueberries
• about an inch of ginger root, peeled, chopped and smashed with a mortar and pestle
• 6oz vanilla yogurt

It came out super-yummy! I especially liked the ginger. Yumm yummmm yummmm!

Jump Jive

Found this video of Cab Calloway on Sesame Street on a friend's web site:

Old Graffiti

Last Thursday was the last night this summer for Midsummer Night Swing at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in NYC. I had never been to this event before, even though we've been in NJ for nearly three years now, and the event has been happening each summer for the last twenty. So when shoechanger friend Joe Bopp said he was going into the city on Thursday, I jumped at the chance to carpool.

In addition to going to Lincoln Center, Joe planned to stop in at the Ellen Christine Millinery on 18th Street to pick up a boater hat to top off the seersucker suit he recently purchased. So instead of heading in after work, Joe planned to take the day off and hit the millinery sometime after lunch, then stop in at the Met for an hour to two and then go to Midsummer Night Swing. Fortunately I was able to rearrange my work schedule to accommodate all of this, and it was a good time.

I was fascinated by the Egyptian Temple of Dendur, which has been on display at the Met since 1978. Sadly what I found most captivating about the exhibit was how it had been defaced with graffiti dating back to the early 1800's:

I guess people have always wanted to leave their mark no matter how small and insignificant. I don't know why it never occurred to me before that graffiti isn't just a phenomenon of the 20th Century. Well, I suppose drawings on the walls of cave dwellings, petroglyphs and the like are sort of graffiti, but somehow they don't seem quite the same as carving your name and date into a wall or a tree.

Fan Fest!

Yah, I know these events are not in chronological order, but I have been neglecting my blog lately and don't wish to spend the time putting them in sequence. :)

The other weekend ago (July 12) Kenji, Tiffknee and I took the train into NYC for the All Star Game Fan Fest at the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center. It was fun to look at all the baseball memorabilia, and Fred Lynn was there signing autographs. Not that we lined up for 800 years like many people did to get his autograph... I just like him because he played for the Red Sox in 1978, back when I cared enough about baseball to actually know all the players' names. :)

Because we're in Yankees territory, I let Tiffknee be in the picture with the World Series trophy. Last time Kenji and I went to the All Star Fan Fest was in 2001 when the All Star Game was in Seattle at Safeco Field. That time I got to be in the picture.

Sasha!

Earlier this year I joined Facebook, and as a result of that I reconnected with my friend Karen, whom I met during my freshman year of college. Karen transferred to another school after our freshman year was over, and after that summer I never saw her again... that is, until last Saturday. :)

Karen now lives in northern California, and had a baby girl, Sasha, on my birthday (and the day after Karen's) back in January of this year. Last week, Karen brought Sasha out to upstate New York to visit Gramma and Grampa. So Kenji and I made the trip up there last weekend to see Karen and meet Sasha. As we were driving up there, it ocurred to me that the last time Karen and I saw each other, it was half our lives ago!

High Tech Stuff

Last Tuesday afternoon Joe and I went letterboxing, and found the box hidden along the West Essex Trail in Cedar Grove. Afterwords, we ate supper at the Pilgrim Diner on Route 23. The food was nothing special, but I got a kick out of it when we went to the counter to pay, and Joe said I should check out the graphics on the diner's computer monitor...

Very, very high tech. ;)

Battlecat Rebekkaka Comes to Visit

Or came to visit - I am woefully behind in blog-updating department. A few weeks ago our friend Rebecca, who lived in the building next to ours in Salt Lake, and who we stay with when we visit Hawaii, came to NJ to visit us. She was on the east coast for not quite a week, and two of those days she spent in Delaware with her family, and we still managed to do a whole bunch of stuff. Oh, and that fish picture was from one of the NYC subway stations.

Without doing a complete play-by-play, we had a lot of fun. The first two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) Rebecca and I took the train into NYC and visited with another of her friends who also used to live in Hawaii, Erin. I think Rebecca's favorite activity of those two days was giving away coupons from our Entertainment Books to random people on the street. While in the city we also visited the International Center of Photography Museum, had lunch twice at two different locations of Havana Central (we had coupons), had egg creams at Katz's deli, walked Erin's dogs along the promenade in Brooklyn, spent an afternoon in a lesbian bar (which didn't seem to have any lesbians in it), ate Thai food (no coupons), ate ice cream (coupons), and gave away some more coupons.

Thursday we spent in NJ since we planned to drive down to Atlantic City in the evening. Rebecca loves to discount shop, and in Hawaii her favorite favorite favorite store to go to is Ross Dress for Less. We don't have a Ross near us, so I took Rebecca on a tour of other discount stores in the area like Marshall's, TJ Maxx, Daffy's, Loehmann's, Annie Sez, and I forget where else.

We finished shopping, Kenji came home from work, and we all packed for the weekend, hopped in the car and headed for the Tropicana hotel in Atlantic City. The reason we went there was that it just so happened that Rebecca's good friend from Germany, Stephan, was in Atlantic City on business. So we had a nice meal with him on Thursday night and we had lunch together on Friday.

During dinner on Thursday we learned from our waiter that there's a Ross near Atlantic City. So guess what we did on Friday while we were on our way to drop Rebecca off at her brother's in Delaware? I bet you can't guess. ;)

While Rebecca spent time with her folks in Delaware, Kenji and I continued on to go stay in Chesapeake City. This time we tried staying at the Blue Max Inn. It was quite nice - the room was larger than the one we stayed in the last two times at the Inn at the Canal. Breakfast was quite yummy, and they have a pirate guy hanging up from the second floor out in front.

On Saturday Kenji and I spent the afternoon in Annapolis, MD, mostly hunting for letterboxes. There was a series of boxes we hunted for in a park - we found four of the seven we were after. One box we found the location of but didn't manage to spot the box, and there were two more that we likely would have gotten but there were too many people around watching us, and we didn't want to risk giving away the location of the boxes. Along the way we found a basketball next to an empty basketball court, so we tried shooting some baskets.

When we were done with Annapolis, we drove to a Metro station on the Beltway and hopped on a train that took us to the new Nationals baseball stadium to see them play against the Texas Rangers. We rooted for the red team (the Nationals) but they pretty much got creamed by the Rangers. Oh well I guess we're pretty much used to that - that is, rooting for the losing team.

On Sunday, Rebecca and her brother, sister-in-law and parents all came down to Chesapeake City so we all walked around for a couple hours before heading back up to NJ. It was a really hot day so when we weren't ducking into shops for the air conditioning, we were sitting in the shade out of the sun. While we were sitting in the shade, we spotted a guy riding around on a really old-time bicycle. I don't know how he gets up on that thing, but he rode past us a couple of times anyway. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera or phone immediately handy, so this was the best picture I was able to get of him.

Rebecca took this picture of us with the Cheseapeake City bridge in the background. All the nice quality picutres in this post of course came from her camera. :)

So you'd think we had enough fun already but after driving the 120 or so miles home, Rebecca and I had one more adventure to partake in. One of my swing dancing friends, Denise, had her 40th birthday in June. So her mom threw a party for her at a restaurant only about a mile away from our house. She hired the Gas House Gorillas to play, and pretty much all of my NJ swing dancing friends were there. I think Rebecca had the most fun making up stories about me and her to all my friends. Something about the two of us being sisters born in Massachusetts and that she was naughty so our parents sent her away to boarding school in Wisconsin and who knows what else.

Go Red Team!!!

... and Breakfast

Aloha,

Marsha

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Bed...

Aloha,

Marsha

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Coupon Fairy

Aloha,

Marsha

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Jury Duty Summons :P

Aloha,

Marsha

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Hail!!!

Aloha,

Marsha

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At Dave & Diana's Wedding :)

Aloha,

Marsha

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Utterance :)

I just signed up for Utterz. I'm too chicken to post a voice or video Utterz right now, but I wanted to see what a text post would look like when Utterz sends it to my blog. :)

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Pine Creek Mini Golf

Today was a lovely day outside and we drove down to West Amwell to play mini golf. We went with Kenji's friend Matt and Matt's wife Nicole to Pine Creek Miniature Golf. It's a really nice course, complete with shade trees, a pond, fakey adirondack chairs, and a snake! We saw little snakey as he crossed the 18th hole to go for a swim in the creek on the other side. :)