C'est le weekend!
 
Finally.  The end of the week is here.  It just couldn't get here fast enough.  I am just absolutely zapped!  but the crazy thing is, sometimes, even after I've gotten home, work still seems to follow me.  That kinda sucks. :-p
 
So, what to do this weekend?  Well, we've got tickets to go see "Cutie Honey at the Fantasia film festival! That's on Sunday though.  Other than that I just hope to unwind and relax a bit this weekend.  I don't want to exert too much of my gray matter.  Or, what's left of it anyway....

 

 

Another day, another dollar.

Yet another rip, roaring day at the office today. The usual B.S. and craziness. Everyone making demands of all of us. It's amazing that no one has gone postal yet! %-]

But other than that, I think I managed to accomplish what I was hoping for today. Of course, some stuff had to be put on hold until an a proper solution is found. :-p A bit frustrating if you've already put in a lot of hours into it.

In the meantime, I am rather exhausted! I am just about ready to zonk out! But I figure I'd write a little bit.

I've also been trying to work on building up an itinerary for next year's Japan trip. If we take 4 weeks, then we could probably get to visit more places... It's been slow going... :-/

Anyway...

And how fast is your connect? ;-)

Argh!!! I hate telemarketers... But thank goodness for caller ID. For some reason, I have been getting some unsolicited calls from chinese telemarketers. It just annoys the hell out of me! Just because I have a Chinese surname, they assume they can sell me something. These calls tend to be originating from the Toronto area and they all want to sell me long distance!!! :-p Needless to say, they almost always try to call during dinner time. :-p

Anyway, today was just one those days at work where things just keep coming at you one right after another. It was a relatively busy day but they were mainly issues about one thing or another. I kinda like dealing with issues as long as it's something that makes me think a bit.

Ho hum.....

OK.. not quite ready for bed... Neglected to mention that back in January, in the throes of wanting to spend some money, I got myself a 14-inch G4 iBook. Of course this was just some weeks before Apple announced the release of an even more updated version of the iBook. :-p Other than that, I'm quite satisfied with this little machine. At first, I really wasn't sure if I had wanted the 12-inch or the 14-inch. I had used the older 12-inch and I liked the compactness of it. But, I decided to go "big" and get the 14-inch. It took a little getting used to, but it's great. :-)

OK... Now I try to go to sleep... %-)

Finally, it's the end of the work week. However, I don't think my work is done. I've still got to go into work Saturday to finish up something I can't remotely from home. :-p Kinda sucks.

A bit stressful this week. Had to work on some stuff that the customer wanted today, but it was delivered to us somewhat incomplete. If they knew what they were testing, they would have caught this little oversight. As it was, I had to discover this little problem. Oh well, the customer, needless to say, did not get their patch today. We'll see if the escalation process yields any answers on Monday.

Got a hair appointment tomorrow as well. I think I'll go to my appointment before heading into the office. Dave has to go into work tomorrow too. Oh well, at least it's both of us.

Still trying to research some more stuff for next year's trip to Japan. I had printed out some stuff from the JNTO site for some placed in the Chubu area. Will try to print out some more stuff later.

Here's a link my brother just showed me. A cyclist he knows. Crazy things.

Speaking of crazy... Car started to start up a bit louder than usual as well as making some funny noises. Brought it to the garage Tuesday night, next day, he tells me that the exhaust pipe fell off as he was moving the car out and back into the garage. Funny it happens at the garage and not on the street! Strange luck!

Need to start planning the painting of the bathroom. Brought back a slew of color samples last week, but we haven't had a chance to go through them yet. Oh well....

*YAWN* Ok, that's it...

Not much about anything...

I woke up this morning feeling quite exhausted. I don't know why. I can't say that I have been overworked, nor have I been physically pushing myself either. Maybe it's time for another vacation. Another? Yes, we just took 2 weeks in May to jet off to bee-yoo-tee-full Hawaii. The weather could have been better, but overall, it was really nice, albeit a bit expensive. My Mastercard bill is still reminding me how expensive it was. :-p

Highlights of the trip? Well, we got to visit three of the islands: Kauai, Maui and Hawaii (the Big Island). On Kauai, I would have to say it was the boat trip to the Napali Coast. At the same time, it was also sort of the low-light because I nearly tossed my cookies because of the rough waters. :-p But the sight was spectacular! On Mauai, I think the drive up Haleakala was really nice, especially the views of the cindercones from the top. Coincidentally, that was also the day we were suppose to do the mountain bike ride down from Haleakala. :-/ On Hawaii, it would have to be the lava flows. After trekking about a mile and a half out, we got to see real, red, flowing lava. Despite the heat and the exhaustion, it was a trek well worth the physical pain. Also got to see some petroglyphs on the way down to the end of the Chain of Craters Road.

Would we visit Hawaii again? Probably not any time soon. We found it a bit expensive despite the deals we got on our hotels, cars and flights. In general, food is not cheap. When we visited a supermarket on Maui, we were somewhat put-off by the price of some everyday items like orange juice. I suppose that since everything has to be shipped over from the mainland, a certain premium has to be paid for these items. So, as a result, everything else is also rather expensive. Real estate is also at a premium out there for obvious reasons. Amazingly, while we were there, gas prices had started to climb in the US and Hawaii did not have the highest gas prices. California did!

Well, planning has started for our next vacation. We're planning another trip to Japan in 2005. This time we want to go for 3 weeks. Also, Dave bought tickets for the World's Expo, so there's another reason for going. :-) We haven't come up with a firm itinerary yet. However, this time I'd like to try to make it down to Fukuoka and Beppu. We'll probably make Kyoto our homebase for visiting the Expo site in Aichi prefecture. We figure that it'd be nicer to stay in Kyoto versus Nagoya. And with the rail pass it would make commuting between Kyoto and Nagoya easier. Will have to investigate some possible destinations soon!

:-)

Ho hum....

Vacationed in Hawaii in May for two weeks. Visited Kauai, Maui and Hawaii (Big Island). It was quite interesting as well as somewhat expensive. :-p But overall, we had a nice time. It was awesome to see flowing red lava on Hawaii. Just couldn't get enough of the wild chickens on Kauai! ;-) Could do without the commercialism on Maui.

Well, if you're into Ministry of Sound, this is pretty cool: John 00 Fleming biography.

In other things, it's been a long week at work. There's essentially just two of us to do the work of 4 people. We got 3 more people to help out, but they require some training on the processes. So guess who has to train them. ME! This means not getting some work done. Oh well. As soon as they are up to speed it should be better.

The weekend is here finally! Don't really have a whole lot planned for this weekend. Maybe head over to this place called Atmosphere to see what sort of travel-weight pants they have.

I've decided to really work on a regimen to get back into shape and lose a little weight in the progress. I'm going to try to keep track of what I eat and how much. Also, if I can't cycle to work, then I'm going to use the exercise bike at home. We'll see how long I can keep this up! ;-)

Went up to the cottage last night, mainly to water some plants, but we figured that since we were up there we might as well spend the night up there. Brought the iBook up along with the Japan books in an attempt to tighten up our itinerary. I think we did alright.

Installed Blosxon and Movabletype on this machine as well. I figure I'd play around with them and see how they work out for blogging. It's not that difficult to install, but will take a little time to figure out how to customize. :-)

Ahhhhh! The weekend at last! I thought it would never come! It's just been yet another wild and crazy week at work. Sometimes I don't feel like I get much of a break in between days.

I hope to relax a bit this weekend. We'll prob go up to the cottage Saturday night. Need to water the plants, but figure it would be nice to take advantage of Dave's parents not being there. Got some ground meat out of the freezer the other day. Should be good to go for tomorrow :)

Had a discussion at lunch about just getting up and moving to another country. Abe can easily get used to the idea. He's already been in other places for extended periods for work, so it would not be a big deal for him to get up and go. For others of us, it is a bit more difficult. There's this one girl at work who took a sabbatical and went to Africa where her sister was at the time. I don't think we can take sabbaticals nowadays. You just can't guarantee that you'll come back to a job. Oh well.. maybe one day when things get better.

8-)

Well, I think I am really starting to feel old. Went to the Dave Mathews Band concert last night (free tix!). Maybe it's me, or maybe it's where we were sitting, but I found the music a bit too loud. It seems like the pumped up the volume to the point where the singer's voice was becoming distorted. I just could not make out what he was singing. Of course, not being a big DMB fan, I am at a disadvantage with regards to what the lyrics could have been!

So, today, my ears are not ringing too much, but for one reason or another, I have this stiff neck. This is too bad, because I was hoping to play softball tonight. The team won yesterday! But I don't want to aggravate this stiff neck. :-p Sux to be old.

Anyway, still counting down the days to Japan! Come the end of the week, we will have approximately 3 weeks to go!! :-D

Payday tomorrow! WOO HOO!!

Had gone over to Jardin Jasmin yesterday and came away with just dirt! Actually, that's probably a good thing. I've got to look into taking better care of the orchids I have before I think about getting any more plants! Anyway, we picked up a big bag of this stuff called hydroton. they're like these little marble-sized balls made of baked clay. In any case, we saw them used at the nursery for some plants that like a very moist environment. I figure they would be great for the orchids to sit on top of! It looks like they can stay moist for a while. Also picked up a bag of soil for cactus and a bag of soil for african violets. We need to repot one of Dave's plants and one of two plants I got from work needs more media.

I am really starting to like this little iBook. I think that with each day I use it, the more accustomed I become with it. There are prob still some things about the OS X environment I haven't discovered yet, but soon enough I will be an old hand at it. I really like doing stuff wirelessly. I don't know how I managed to compute from the PC desktop.

I don't think I will be giving up my desktop any time soon, yet, most of this weekend, I had been using the iBook. I've also set it up so that I can receive my email on this machine. Hope my PC doesn't get too lonely...

Anyways, it's exactly one month before the big trip!!! :) 1 day down, 29 more to go!!!!

Darn! Have to go back to work tomorrow. Even these long weekends just don't seem very long any more. I'm supposed to play softball tomorrow, but we got tickets (from John) for the Dave Matthews Band concert at the Bell Centre. Hrm... Oh well. I'm sure the team can handle things just fine without me! :D Well, hey! What would you choose? ;-)

Had a taste of moon cake today. I had bought a tin of them on Saturday. They're from HK. They're rather tasty but rather rich. No wonder no one ever eats a whole one in one sitting! These things can be deadly when eaten in large quantities! We stopped by John and Jessica's to pick up the concert tickets and I brought them a small care basket of some braised beef I made last night and a mooncake. I think Jessica will appreciate the moon cake. :D

Anyway, we tossed around the idea of going up to the cottage next weekend. Maybe see if john and Jessica would like to come along and spend the day there. It should be nice. I just hope the weather cooperates.

:-)

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!!!

Oooooh!!!! I forgot to mention that a got myself a Sony Net MD :) It's a neat little thing! Even though it's an entry model, it still does quite a bit for what it is. :) Got a back of 15 mini-discs to start off with. Now I can record a whack load of stuff from CD to MD. I like the fact that it's small, lightweight and quite compact. I think these guys are better than MP3 players! :D

Just thought I'd share this. :-))

It's finally summer here in Montreal. After a rather cold, wet spring, things have started to heat up around here. Lately, the temps have been in the high 20's, sometimes getting above 30. Of course this means that it's hot, hazy and humid. Quite to contrast to the winter temps we got this past season.

Anyway, made a trip down to Boston a couple weekends ago. It wasn't too painful. The weather could have been better, but what can you do. While it was around 30 up here, it was around 20 and pissing rain the Sunday we were down there. Didn't do too much other than some shopping and stuff.

Of course, being away meant that the cats had a break in their usual routine. Finster went to the vet for boarding while the others got checked in on by a friend. When we came back, Finster was none the worse for wear but Tama seems to be slightly off her food since we weren't around to give her her daily dose of canned food. As a result, she's lost a little wait. For a Siamese, that means she's skinnier than usual. We will have to try to entice her back to the canned food as she just doesn't eat enough of the dry kibble.

I am trying to make an effort to cycle to work. I first cycled to work last Monday when a lot of people had taken that day off (Tuesday was a holiday). It wasn't too bad. Still got to get over my fear of crossing the larger intersections. I should consider leaving my laptop at home. It was a killer ride home with that load on my back! I will see about riding in tomorrow morning. I will try to do the Mon-Wed-Fri ride in. At least that would be a start!

Started a small garden on the deck this year. It's mainly various types of plants in planters. Got some impatiens going in planters on the rails. I've got a mix of verbena, viola, geranium, oxalis, fuschia, snapdragons and coleus in some planters on the floor. Nice colorful assortment. Next season I hope to do better as far as how to plant the different plants in a btter manner.

I've also got two cherry tomato plants that Dave's mom gave me. They seem to be doing well and are starting to bear fruit! I also have a cucumber plant that's flowering now. I wonder if those will bear fruit! The cucumber I had attempted to start from seed. First attempt and they're flowering! Not a bad start. :)

Anyway, let's see how I keep up with my blog. ;-)

OK, so I have not been able to update my blog as of late. It's just been so crazy and busy at work that who has time to much else? Anyway, this morning, I decided to take a few minutes to work on this. It's not going to be very long.

Rant 1
Just WHY is the US in Iraq again?

Rant 2
*sing* I want sunshine... on a cloudy day....
OK, honestly? Can't really complain considering that the temps ARE finally above the freezing mark!

Anyway... back to the grind.

Hasta!