Jon's Blog

Current Mood: Cool

After about 10-15 minutes I get a vision of clarity, of how things should be. I can picture how I want things to be, like arranged or decorated, or how a situation should play out. It’s not necessarily a vision of the future, but possibly just how the present would be different. For some reason watching “talking head” type videos on YouTube seems to really trigger the effect. I think it’s something to do with seeing an intimate thought or something and getting your mind into reflective mode.

Current Mood: Sad

My grandfather recently passed away. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but when my Mom called me the day it happened, I was stunned. I’d just seen him the week before at Thanksgiving and while he wasn’t feeling all that well, he still seemed to be doing OK. My mom thinks it was kidney failure. He also had Parkinson’s that seemed to be outpacing the meds he was on. He was 88 years old.

We had the memorial service last Saturday. It wasn’t extravagant and most of the family showed up along with people from church. It was a good service and he would have been pleased. The recurring point that people brought up was that he never had a bad thing to say about anyone. And I racked my brain trying to think of even one occasion and came up blank. He was a quiet man and full of love and grace. Some of the stories shared at the memorial were ones I’d never heard before, mostly from his time back in The Netherlands when he was growing up and during WWII.

One story was set during the war, when Germany easily defeated the Dutch resistance and took over the country. He was 18 at the time, but had false documents stating he was still underage, otherwise he’d have been drafted into the German army and promptly thrown to the front lines. One day he was stopped by some German soldiers who didn’t believe his papers, and dragged him to the mayor’s house to verify his ID. The mayor happened to be out at that time and when his wife answered, her face went white, but she lied and said that he was indeed underage and they let him go. If she’d told the truth, I wouldn’t be here today.

While he’ll be missed terribly, it’s comforting to know that he’s at least reunited with my grandma. But it pains me to know that I never got to say goodbye. Yes, I saw him the week previous, but I was working on my parents’ computer when my mom took him home. I didn’t know he left. So I never got to say goodbye to him.

Coming up soon!! Amazon is still my favorite place! Gift cards make great gifts.

All Amazon Black Friday deals.

Current Mood: Sad

By most accounts, I seem to be in pretty good shape.  Not physically, but as far as general life goes, I appear to have my shit together.  If that were true, I’d probably be happy.  Since that’s not really the case, I’m not.

I don’t really remember the last time I was truly happy.  It’s been years at best.  Content would be more recent I suppose, but “happy”, no.  I’m lonely.  Painfully lonely.  This time of year, when the time changes and it’s dark by 5pm, usually kicks off a deeper cycle of depression and “blahs.”  I know I’ve struggled with it for years, and at times I think it’s under control, but then other times, I just don’t know anymore.  The holidays, the darkness, the loneliness, it all adds up.  Brief outings with friends are a distraction, but then reality sets back in when I get home, and it’s blah again.  I don’t know what to do.

Lola keeps me company, but she’s no substitute for a partner in life.  And why is it that I think a boyfriend is just going to fall out of the sky?  I often fantasize about what’s it’s like to be with someone and share my life with.  I had dinner with my friend Doug on Friday and he couldn’t understand why I hadn’t had sex with anyone recently.  Um, because that’s not what I’m looking for!  Sex is not a driving force in my life.  I’m 30 years old.  I’ve never been in a relationship.

What do I have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving?  Being alive, I guess.  Honestly, I’m just in a pissy mood, once again.  It happens a lot.

I got a dog about six weeks ago. Her name is Lola and she’s a purebred basset hound. She came from Animal Control and was brought in as a stray so there isn’t much known about her, but so far she’s been wonderful. Being about three years old means she’s already housebroken and is pretty calm and not hyper like a puppy.

It’s a big change for me having her here. It’s different having to be responsible for someone other than myself and I’ll admit that that concept scared me at first. When she first arrived she had kennel cough and I was told she needed to be spayed yet, so while she was on antibiotics, she’d recover at home and then go in for surgery, so the trial period was longer than usual. After about a week, she wasn’t eating much and had the shits from the medication so she went to the vet. They took her off the meds because she seemed mostly healthy and she’d get over the rest on her own but the vet was concerned about her large spleen. If she needed ultrasounds or anything, it was going to cost a couple hundred dollars, money I didn’t have. In the back of my mind I was seriously using this as an “out” to give her back. It sounds terrible but I’ve never made a commitment like this before. I didn’t know how to share my space and my time in a permanent manner like that.

I talked to my friend Kevin about my thoughts and he said he had similar feelings when he got Gus and that made me feel a little better. I think vocalizing my concerns helped a lot too. We need each other.

Lola met her grandparents and cousins on Halloween and got along very well with them. She also tried her other costumes. She couldn’t decide between a shark, a tiger, or a pig, so we got all three. They were on clearance

Last Wednesday I finalized the adoption. Her spleen was fine and she’s healthy. The vet gave her a rabies shot on Saturday and said she’s in great shape and is exceptionally well behaved.

Now I just need to get a fence up in the back so she can run around.

Current Mood: Esctatic

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It’s Saturday morning.  Mike flew home yesterday morning so I’m on my own now.  I worked to get the video conferencing stuff set up yesterday and finally got it working, so I’m VERY happy about that.  At least part of this trip was worthwhile.

So since Pete decided to leave for the afternoon and night (WTF?!?!) and since I was busy, I had a late lunch.  Coco’s is attached to the building so I went over there.  I’d been there earlier in the week, so I at least saw how the place works.  They have pictures on the menu, and a lot of the pictures have English descriptions underneath, so ordering wasn’t too big a deal, but when the waitress is asking questions or something, I had no idea what was going on.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt so helpless.

I meant to watch Lost in Translation before I left, but got busy.  When I think back to that movie, I think I know exactly how Bill Murray feels.  I don’t speak a lick of Japanese, I don’t understand the culture, and I miss home.  The people here are all VERY friendly and helpful, but I still feel guilty for not knowing the language.  I’ve picked up a few things, but nothing more than “thank you”, “good morning”, etc.  Useful to be polite, but difficult for anything more complicated.

Yesterday at lunch when I was eating alone in a strange country in a restaurant that was almost completely empty except for one older couple, it was…difficult?  I don’t know if that’s the right word or not.  It makes you think.  I pulled out my phone to try finding some phrases, but couldn’t.  Lunch was good, but I didn’t ge the bread I thought I ordered.  Oh well.

Work is not going well.  I have three days yet, but I’m worried it’s not going to get done and then I’m fucked.

Dawn left this morning for her flight back to the States.  Everyone was immediately relaxed and thankful for that.  Essentially, everyone that works there hates here, and really for good reason.  But enough about that!

Mike, Pete and I were invited to dinner by the prefecture folks today.  We left on the train to Kyoto this afternoon and arrived early evening.  We missed the earlier train we were hoping for, so got there about 20 minutes later than we’d have liked, so we didn’t have much time to look around, aside from the area around the train station, but still, Kyoto seems to be a VERY cool city!  We wandered through a Pachinko parlor which was interesting, but even more interesting is how you get your winnings.  Since gambling is illegal, you play for a while and get the balls that you win, then you trade those for tickets.  You take your tickets and walk around to the seedy booth where you trade the tickets for some little item, based on the number of tickets.  You then take that item to another booth and “sell” that for money.  So you’re not gambling per se, you’re just making some economical trades   After that, we went back to the station to meet the rest of our party.

Once we found then (the Kyoto station is like the 5th largest in Japan), we got in taxis and were on our way to dinner.  We passed this beautiful temple complex that I think was the headquarters for something?  I can’t remember exactly, but it was gorgeous, though much of it was hidden behind the wall around it.

We arrived at this tiny restaurant and when we walked in, the counter was FILLED with dozens of dishes of various foods.  The idea was that we would try all of them to see what we liked and then we could pick what we wanted to eat.  So we sat down and the dishes started coming.  They were small sample sizes that we passed around and each took some.  All of it was absolutely delicious.  There were 22 dishes in all!  I tried things tonight that I’d only heard about and all of it was great.  We had pig feet, octopus, squid, beef, chicken, various veggies, noodles, etc.  And of course plenty of beer and sake   The final dish was a garlic rice that was just absolutely amazing!  It’s served with a sunny side up fried egg on top that you mix into the dish before serving.  I got to mix in the egg on the second portion we got   I think it was an honor.

During dinner we learned that the woman who own the restaurant, Mama, as she’s called, is the sister of the guy that makes this very famous Japanese BBQ-ike sauce.  It’s apparently available in most grocery stores in the US even, in the foreign foods aisle.  It’s the bottle with the cowboy on the label.  I’ll have to look for it when I get home because the chicken wings we had with it were awesome!  I got a picture with her

There was talk of going to the geisha district after dinner just to see them, but by the time we were finished, it was really getting late and we were all tired.  It was for the best since we had to take the train back home and that was about an hour and a half.  Still, it would have been very cool to see them and hopefully take a picture with.  Next time

But for now, I’m exhausted, and work beckons tomorrow, so good night.

Last night (Tuesday) we had dinner with the language instructors, all American except for one Japanese guy.  It was kind of a little slice of home since everyone was speaking English and using utinsils.  We went to a Japenese-French restaurant that was REALLY good!  It was another set menu so no awkward ordering   Once the beer and wine was poured, we were set to begin.  The food was fantastic!  The mushroom soup was incredible and the Kobe Beef was oh so delicious!

Then we went to Sugimoto’s.  This is a local dive bar that apparently the JCMU staff and participants frequent and have for years.  We parked the car and the ally next to the place is filled with car parts, tools, junk, etc.  I was already nervous.  Then we walked in.  The place is very small and smelled a little like motor oil and feet.  And older guy, about 60ish I’d say shuffled out from the kitchen.  Everyone greeted him and he was very excited to see people from JCMU because apparently they don’t come around much anymore.  The place has another room behind a curtain and that night there was a group of captains from the local sports teams and they were mostly hammered by the time we got there.  These kids were probably late high school at best.  A couple of them came out to chat and were shitfaced.  One was a golfer and is apparently quite good, the other was kind of translating because his English was better.

The one guy with us, Dave, who’s SO into country music that I don’t think any comment he was without a reference to some song.  He wanted to know if the CD he’d brought five years ago was still there.  Sugimoto dug out a few boxes and found it and much to our disappointment, Dave started singing along.  Then boxes of pictures and business cards came out and everyone pawed through them.  Fortunately, there was also beer brought out so at least those of us (me) that no idea what was going on could enjoy himself as well

Apparently, there was only a dirt floor in the kitchen until recently.  Since I knew that going in, I obviously scoped out the kitchen as soon as we walked in.  Since the place smelled like, as I said, motor oil and feet, my first reaction when we walked in was that the kitchen is actually set up in a repair garage!  There were some free-standing burners and the whole place just looked dirty.  Which was honestly made even funny by the enthusiasm Dawn showed by going in there and seeing him.  She’s just not the type to slum it really.

So the way this place works, is the beer and pop is in a cooler in the other room and you just help yourself and pay at the end.  So we were sitting around drinking beer and having a good time and getting more beer when needed.  Then his wife brings out some French fries, some edamame, and some weird shrimp chips, that at first I thought were pork rinds.  They were definitely interesting, but probably not something I’d seek out and make a point of buying.

After a couple hours there we headed back to the center which I was happy about since despite being a lot of fun, I was very tired.  So far, no hangovers, which I’m happy about since that just makes the next day a REAL drag.

The project is going well so far, but I may end up taking it in a different direction, depending on needs.  More updates to follow.

Current Mood: Happy

OK, first business day down. The server is up and running. I’m not sure I’m going to leave it with Small Business Server or go with straight Server 2008. In a way, SBS seems good because it integrates everything in one package, but I’m limited in what I can do because I don’t control the router to make some exclusions, which is necessary to configure SBS correctly. On the other hand, Server 2008 R2 requires a lot of manual tweaking to make it work right. I have time to decide. The drive formats are complete and I’ll play with it more tomorrow. I should have a decision by COB tomorrow and I’ll know what direction I’m taking by then.

We just got back from dinner. It was a great time! And my first time ever having sake! We started with a potato and seafood salad and Omhi beef. OMG, Becky, that beef was phenomenal. So good! Melts in your mouth. Then some shrimp with what I think was deviled crab all deep fried. Then we had some other shrimp with possibly a cheese-based sauce, deep fried, and some “mountain potatos”. These were similar to a gooey mashed potato with shrimp and scallops in it. Very tasty! Next were dumplings. These were like meatballs with some noodles on the outside. Tasty! Then some “beer food” which was french fries, some various snack items, and this really good “squid jerky”. I’m totally bringing that home. Then some AWESOME friend rice, followed by some ice cream. Excellent meal and a lot of fun!