Yeah, I blogged it!

Current Mood: Esctatic

…until Campit opens! Reservations are made! Make yours for FREE camping!
http://www.campitresort.com

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!

Four hours down, eight more to go! I’m somewhere over western Canadia or maybe even to Alaska by now on my way to Japan. It’s my first real business trip in years and I forgot how much I miss it!

This will be an 11 day trip, when travel time is included. I have to install a server and some video conferencing equipment at our office in Hikone. It’s the culmination of months of work, but the equipment arrived yesterday, on schedule ahead of us, so that hurdle has been leapt over

Despite the plane being almost completely full and my ticket being purchased last minute, I was able to get an exit row seat thanks to another member of our party getting upgraded to first class and I got her old seat . At least I don’t have to crawl over people to use the restroom or wander around. Also, the guy on the aisle next to me reminds me too much like Bobby Trendy. Just sayin’

Dinner was pretty good though I somehow didn’t get a roll with mine. Whatever! At least the brownie was great.

“The Invention of Lying” is playing right now and it’s very funny! I heart Ricky Gerveise!

This time of year, at least for the last few years, just serves as a depressant.  I don’t know why.  It just does.  It’s not like I don’t love my family or anything like that, because I do.  I think it’s more that I’m just lonely.  I fantasize about doing “couple” things, but just don’t have anyone to do it with.  Instead, everything becomes a chore.  Putting up the tree, baking, cleaning, etc.  Here it is Christmas Eve and haven’t wrapped the gift we got for our parents, and I haven’t gotten anything for my nephews yet.  I won’t see them until Sunday anyway, so there’s time, but still.  I’m lazy.

I’m coming down with a cold or something too.  It started Tuesday afternoon and while a little better, I’m still sick on Christmas  At least meds help a little, at least for the sore throat.

I had more stuff I was going to complain about, but I forgot what it is.  I’m going to bed.

I remember when flying used to be fun. When you weren’t herded to the plane like cattle. When in-flight beverages were free. When you didn’t have to pay to check a bag. Those days are long behind us.

I’m flying out to philidalphia to see my sister for Thanksgiving because I oodles of airline miles and decided I could use some of them for good.

First off I had to get up at 4am because my flight from Lansing left at 5:40 and you know security is tight and degrading. I was half asleep and forgot to take my laptop out of my backpack, and also had two cans of Sweetened Condensed Milk Caramel in my bag. That earned me speciL attention at the checkpoint and apparently a second check at the gate. WTF? I come up the escalator, stand at the gate, then board. What could I have gotten ahold of in that time?!?!

At least I got my exit row seats. And my own aisles! Neither flight was full and no one was next to me. In that respect I suppose it was OK. And I got to go through the “Pink Floyd” tunnel at DTW. I love that thing. It reminds me if something out of Logan’s Run.

And I see Delta is not nearly as cheap as Northwest was. Spekalaas and coffee instead if those shitty pretzels . Coffee’s still horrible though.

Hello World!

As I so often do, and seemingly the only time I end up blogging anything, I’ve been thinking again. I know, it’s dangerous and I should know better by now, but I can’t help it.

I’m at the point where I need to make some changes in my life (again). My new plan commences over the next couple weeks. Diet, exercise, chores. Diet is first as that’s the magic key. For some reason I think I’m too fat to actually go to the gym, hence i don’t go. I need to start eating better anyway or I’ll die so I might as well start there and continue on. I plan on using Sunday as a cooking day for the week ahead and the portioning everything out. Bu stock in Gladware if you haven’t already, haha. Get myself on the right track.

Following that, I’ll start back at the gym. Even if it’s a half hour of cardio before work, it’s better than nothing. My goal is to be in decent enough shape to be able to run. Despite my loathing of running, it’s a fantastic workout and I’d get to buy a new iPod so I can track my progress and I LOVE my gadgets and data

Chores are the other thing. I’m a terrible housekeeper. I just am. I don’t think I have to be that way, it just seems like I ends up there. Like most faults, I blame it in being lonely but that cow has long been out of milk. It’s true that yes I’m incredibly lonely but that’s just how it is. Being messy isn’t going to fix that problem and would only end up getting committed to an asylum rather than a relationship. It looks like homeless people are squatting here. I’m embarrassed to have anyone over…in my own fucking house. I can’t keep up like this.

Solidified plans and chore schedules to follow.