Well, I just got my new toy yesterday: an iBook. It's the Spring 2002 model (so, yeah, it's second-hand). It's got the 700Mhz G3 processor, 384MB RAM, combo drive, and airport card. The package came with the airport hub and Jaguar as well! Overall, it's a pretty good deal.

We played with it a bit yesterday. Had to flash the airport hub with the new network configuration. Decided to do a clean install and away we go! :)

OK, so I'm still blogging from the PC, but soon enough I will be doing it from the iBook. It's kinda neat to be able to surf wirelessly! :D

A nice sunny Sunday morning here. Will probably go over to Jasmin Nursery with Dave's mom. See what there is on sale at this time of year. :-)

Ciao for now!

A bit has happened since last entry.

Sunday, we had to send Tama off to a happier place. She was just going down hill. Last week, her appetite for the smelly mixture of canned cat food, cat milk and baby food was waning. She was also drinking a lot and peeing a lot. Saturday, we had only managed to get her to eat once. Sunday, she just flat out refused. So we called the vet. We were lucky they were able to see her.

We brought her to the vet. The vet checked her out. She had lost at least a pound since her visit in March. He checked out her teeth and found that she had a few sores. If it was painful for her to eat, this was the reason. Dental surgery would be one possibility. However, before we even consider that route, the vet suggested a blood test to see if there wasn't anything else wrong. We said OK. We left Tama there and they would call us within an hour.

The call came and they wanted us to come in. We got there and the prognosis was not good. The blood test results indicate kidney failure. :-( This would explain her lack of appetite and drinking habits. There were options, but were they viable options? Would it have been fair to us or Tama if we tried to prolong her life? She's managed to live this long with her chronic upper respiratory problem. We both think it's time to say good bye and let her go to a happier place where she won't have to worry about getting pilled, where she can get all the attention she wanted.

It was difficult, but we saw her once last time before the vet did the deed. It was certainly a rough Sunday afternoon.

After this, I do hope it will be some time to come before one of the other guys take a turn. Finster is now 12 years old an diabetic. Jum is next at about 8. BS is about 5-6. They all seem to be in good health. We'll probably have to have BS's teeth looked at after the vet told us about how Siamese tend to be predisposed to bad teeth. BS enjoys his food. Let's hope he can enjoy it for some time to come!

Anyway... enough of the depressing diatribe.

It's 4:30AM. Is your cat being fed?

We must have one of the most fussiest cats in the world. Her name is Tama. She's a lilac-point Siamese. She's got a chronic upper respiratory infection. And her food has to be just right. :-p

Her current formula is a mixture of regular canned catfood (no beef or seafood) mixed with Whiskas catmilk and baby food (meat puree). Blend that together with a hand blender and Voila! You've got yourself instant kitty slop. Oh! It must also be at room temperature.

I would like to go back to bed now. Thank you.

We are going to Japan!

After perusing the net for cheap airefares, we finally found one where there were actual seats still available at that low, low price! When we realized that yes, indeed, we can proceed to the next step in booking the tickets, we had to discuss whether we really want to do this or not. Needless to say, it did take us all of 5 minutes to decide to go ahead and book!

And where did we find these cheap tickets? AirTicketsDirect.com It seems that they deal with consolidators for some flights. In any case, we're just glad we got these tix!

Now that we've got the tickets, we put our itinerary together. As we will be going in October, the weather should not be too hot nor too cold. It's still the tail-end of typhoon season, so there is still that chance of foul weather.

We scoured the guidebooks we had on Japan and game up with the following itinerary:

Tokyo - Hakone - Kyoto - Hiroshima - Miyajima - Tokyo

Essentially, we will arrive in Tokyo, spend the first night there, then head straight to Hakone. We will finish up the trip in Tokyo so that we won't have to worry about racing back to Tokyo from our last stop in order to catch our flight.

Hotels were a bit of a challenge. After spending an entire weekend deciding on our itinerary, we spent about as much time researching hotels. We knew that Japan was not going to be cheap. We figure that if averaged about 15,000 yen/night for the two of us, then we would be OK. In the end, we managed to find rooms that cost less than that. This brought average cost per night down to 9525 yen! That's not bad considering that we are going to "splurge" for a hotel close to Tokyo Station the first night. But the bargain rates we got for Kyoto and the main Tokyo stay more than made up for that!

Anyway, we're both quite excited about the trip. I bought a travel pack from MEC this past weekend. It's about 58 liters and comes with a removable daypack. It's not a terribly large daypack, but I think it will have it's uses. We still need to find some travel towels as the Tour Club does not provide towels (they will rent them to you). I think Black's has them. We might swing by there this weekend to have a look.

Also on our shopping list is shoes. We figure that if we will be entering a lot of places where we would be required to remove our shoes, then something that's easy to slip on/off as well as be able to handle a lot of walking will be the thing to wear! We might poke around a couple of stores this weekend as well to see what's available and affordable.

Clothes. I need lightweight (not summer-weight) pants. I don't want to buy them now as I am hoping to lose a little weight and get into reasonable shape before the trip. If we're going to be doing a lot of walking, I want to be able to handle all of that without losing my breath! I might consider getting a skirt if the occasion arises and we go somewhere "nice". I saw one at MEC that might fit the bill.

The trip there will be long. We will be flying out of Chicago on JAL. From Montreal to Chicago, it will be Air Canada (code-share United flight, phew!). It will be early in the morning (6AM out of YUL). And it will be 13 hours from ORD to NRT. I hope we will have enough to keep ourselves occupied if we can't sleep during the flight!

Seating. I called JAL to reserve our seats. Unfortunately, bulkhead and emergency aisle seats are airport controlled (prob as a result of 9/11). The JAL rep on the phone put us in row 47, but also made note that we requested bulkhead/emergency aisle seating. We'll find out when we get to the airport, I guess, if we can get those seats. I wonder if we can get upgraded if we pose as blissful newlyweds! ;-) We'll see!

Less than a month and a half to go!! Woo hoo!!!