January 31st, 2005 14:34 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Odonna" by Woob
Days until Yuka is here: 12
Feeling: BUSY

Today pretty much sucks, as far as work is concerned. People in my office are set to full-auto-retard right now.

Weekend was nice and relaxing. I got a much needed haircut after work. Then met up with Lisa and we went to Kaze, a sushi place on Roscoe. The place was one of those "fusion" restaurants. One of those places that tries too hard to be hip and original by combining two different tastes and usually fails on both. While the food itself was quite good, there were several things I didn't like. First off, the place is loud. The volume in there was to the point where Lisa and I had to nearly talk into each other's ear to be heard. They only had one hot sake and it wasn't even on the menu. They typically serve cold sake, so they only had a glass sake bottle to serve ours in. So, it was too hot to pick up and then it didn't retain heat very well. Next, the wait staff filled our soy sauce dishes without us asking. So, they're filled to the top and we didn't even use them. The sushi was quite good, because they marinade almost all of their fish. This is why we didn't touch the soy sauce. Their nigiri was a little messy because their rice was too wet and not sticky enough. But beyond that, things were pretty good and I had two servings of dragon rolls. God I love those. I went home totally full and drunk. Passed out.

I didn't do much of anything on Saturday besides play Halo 2. I managed to get to the grocery around 6:00. Chatted with Yuka for a bit. Then started watching Cowboy Beebop, the movie. Fantastic series. I can't believe I don't own any of those. Oh, when I got home from the grocery, I moved someone else's crap again. This time it was two plastic chairs connected by a broom. My car, again, remained unmolested. I am taking back my neighborhood by force.

I managed to get a lot of trash out of my apartment on Sunday. In between dumpster runs and laundry I watched episodes of Boogiepop Phantom. This series was done by the same people who did Serial Experiments: Lain. I noticed the similarities immediately. Can't say which one I like more, but I'm still leaning towards Lain. Boogiepop's plot line is linked in a neat way, such that I didn't want to stop watching in fear that I would get lost.

January 27th, 2005 15:48 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Pond Life" by Woob
Days until Yuka is here: 15
Feeling: BUSY

Oh, HELL YES.

January 26th, 2005 14:50 hours CST
Currently listening to: some Thievery Corporation song coming out of Dave's computer
Days until Yuka is here: 16
Feeling: proud

I forgot to mention something I did last night. This is important. Last night I did something that I've wanted to do since I first moved to Chicago. I moved someone's lawn chair in order to park my car. I smiled as I did it. It felt so good. Yeah, I'm sure my car has been liberally keyed by now, but you have to make certain sacrifices in life. I don't care how much time you spent digging your car out of the snow. That does not mean you own that parking space. Until I see a sign, mounted into the ground with concrete, with the City of Chicago seal on it designating that you paid for this space, I will park where ever the hell I want. Your dumpy lawn furniture is not proof of ownership. I don't know which house this chair belongs to, however I did witness one woman (who lives two house up from me) putting her 2x4 and buckets back into place after moving her car to go somewhere. So, I know who I will talk to if my car is fucked with at all. I will say to her "this is what happens when you participate in this behavior. I'm going to call the police and tell them that YOU did this. Spread the word to the neighbors."

On a separate note, I love the fact that the current junk email trend has switched from rolex watches to increasing the amount of cum I can squirt out when I orgasm. ^_^

January 26th, 2005 09:30 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" by Saint Etienne
Days until Yuka is here: 16
Feeling: crappy

Went to Kisoku with Cory and John last night. We met Cory's sister and her friend, April. Really nice place. The menu seems pretty good, but predictably expensive. Why is sashimi so expensive? I don't get it. Anyway, I had a couple bottles of sake and we were pretty loud and had fun. I hope Cory gets the bar manager job. I feel slightly hung over. I'm having a crappy day. As Dave would say, "I have a poopy diaper". One of my computers was being a retard and I installed the wrong program on a users machine this morning.

I'm trying to plan out the airiel tour this morning. I'm having a minor heart attack. I want it all to happen. I want Hartfield to be with us. I want our merch to sell. I want to get our merch finished in order for us to sell it. I want a fucking band manager to do all this shit for me. Any takers? Please? Anybody? Hello?

January 24th, 2005 10:20 hours CST
Currently listening to: "My Girl" by Supercar.
Days until Yuka is here: 19
Feeling: warm and sleepy

We got a truckload of snow again. I may be starting to get tired of this. Nice when you view it from your window while playing video games, but a drag when you have to spend 30+ minutes shoveling your car to freedom. I know I've complained about this before, but what the hell is it with people leaving their crappy lawn furniture on the street to protect the space where your car just was? This is not legal. Not by a long shot. I hate it, yet I don't have the guts to do anything about it. I like my windshield the way it is, you know?

The weather kept me indoors most of the weekend. I made some pretty kickin stir-fry on Saturday. My new wok is awesome. Finally large enough to cook with where stuff doesn't go flying out. That's always a good thing. Joel came buy and dropped off my new Fender Jag. Japanese and candy apple red, baby. It's sweet. Has a mustang bridge also. It plays and sounds exactly like my other jag. This is a good thing. Nice tight tremolo too. I got on xbox live last night and played a few rounds of Halo 2 with Cory. Then we joined a party lead by my friend Dale in Philadelphia. We had a great time. 8 of use together doing big team battles. Good times.

January 21st, 2005 09:15 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Crush Me" by The house of Love.
Days until Yuka is here: 21
Feeling: old, tired and hung over

Went out to Dark Room for Brock's birthday thingy. He and Tobias have invited airiel to play there, possibly in April. We've accepted. Felt great to see people. I've been reclusive lately. I blame the weather. But anyway. People were excited to hear about Yuka and my trips to Japan. I drove Kerry over to Raw Bar, which I had never been to. Then we walked over to Smartbar. Wasn't much going on over there, really. I got home around 2 or 2:30 and passed out with my phone in my hand. I was in the middle of text messaging Yuka and I passed out. Hahahaha. I came pretty close to calling in sick just to get some more precious sleep. I don't have much going on this week except to hit the gym and pick up a little present for myself. More on that later.

January 20th, 2005 15:18 hours CST
Currently listening to: "I Miss You" by Love Psychedelico.
Days until Yuka is here: 22
Feeling: like a bad student for not doing my homework earlier

I just watched the trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake. Honestly, I'm not optimistic. Yeah, the ingredients seem great, but after watching the trailer.....I don't know. And is it me or does Johnny Depp look like a zombie Audrey Tautou? He just looks creepy. Yeah, Gene Wilder looked creepy, but not in a "I'm going to eat your brains" kind of way.

I finished Resident Evil 4 the other night. I'm already playing through it again. This time I still have all of my items AND my upgraded weapons. I am a walking war factory. This is funny. I love Penny Arcade.

Watching Yuka flip through a Chicago guide book and point out things that she wants like to see like "Double Door" and the Marina City buildings has got to be one of the cutest things ever. She's so excited to get here. I can't wait. ^_^

January 19th, 2005 09:50 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Porcelain" by The Brother Kite.
Days until Yuka is here: 23
Feeling: 32 F is a heat wave

I absolutely have to get a humidifier in my apartment. It's like a freaking science experiment in there! Petting my cat could generate enough static electricity to power a small town. Petting her in the dark this morning when I woke up was mesmerizing. It's like she's made of fireworks. I'm going to get up in the morning and find that she's stuck to my clothing.

January 17th, 2005 10:15 hours CST
Currently listening to: "In My Place" by Simon Raymonde.
Days until Yuka is here: 25
Feeling: like 6 F is not for me.

We've had the coldest weekend ever. I don't think it's been above 12 degrees since Thursday. I had Friday off due to an optional holiday at work. I was outside my apartment at 9 AM holding the ladder for the cable guy. I finally got myself a cable modem and got rid of SBC altogether. No more ADSL. No more land line. The only people who ever call my land line are my parents and SBC. SBC has never left one message and they call 3 times a week, at least. Calling them to cancel my account was interesting. The woman on the phone was a bit of a bitch. When she looked at my ADSL bill she said "Oh my gosh....... oh my gosh.... you were paying that much for DSL???" and I said "yeah, that's the other reason I'm dumping you guys." She explained to me that I could have been paying $30 less a month had I signed up for a renewal. "Um, I've had this ADSL line for over 3 years? What fucking renewal are you talking about?" Apparently I was being billed monthly and not yearly, so after 12 months I was SUPPOSED to have received a discount in my bill. This I never knew about. She asked why I never did that and I responded "why were you people still charging me and not correcting this problem??" She tried to get into it with me and sternly reminded her that the purpose of this call was to disconnect my service. She took the hint and closed my account. Suck my ass, SBC.

I kicked around for a few hours playing Resident Evil 4 (more on that later) and then went to Colossal to get a few airiel songs mastered. We're making an EP to sell at our shows and while we're on tour. Things went really well. It was good to see Dan again. He's a fun guy. 3 different people called me to see if I was going out. Not when it's this cold. Much better to stay in, make some beef stew, drink a couple beers and play Resident Evil 4.

Saturday I actually made it to the gym in the morning. It felt great. I'm trying to pace myself. My chest, shoulder and arm muscles are really sore since Wednesday. There's something really satisfying about eating a home made sandwich. I've been really into making my own sandwiches lately. Anyway, I didn't leave the house after that. Too damn cold. More Resident Evil 4. I cooked dinner that night. I managed to drop one of the chicken breasts as I was getting out of the george forman grill. It landed right in Stella food bowl. She was ecstatic. I was pissed. At least I made 2 and these things were massive in size. Watched The Negotiator.

I did get to cam chat with Yuka for a while and I opened one of my new bottles of sake and I tried out my new sake set. I was 90% sure that my sake bottle did not have metallic paint, and therefore would be safe to heat in the microwave. But 10% of me was recalling the time when Jeff Koffmel and I tried to make two cans of chicken noodle soup and I used a big metal pot, which sent sparks flying out of the microwave. My mom came to the rescue. She remembers my response: "It never did that before!" hahahah. Yuka explained to me that sake bottles should be heated by putting them in boiling water. Heating them slowly does something to the flavor, I guess. I'll have to try that next time.

Ok, further comments on Resident Evil 4. I think that this is honestly the direction that this series should take. It's really great. Better item management. No more item boxes (they tried that with Resident Evil Zero, but it sucked). No more tank controls. Lots of action and suspense. Even though you still use the typewriters to save your progress, you don't need ink ribbons in order to save. This has lead me to save like crazy. I mean, I think I've saved over 50 times. I don't care if this gives me an F rating or something at the end. I'm being very careful and I have every intention of replaying this game once I'm done. I'm walking through this army base full of commandos infected with parasites. I'm cautiously walking through a kitchen area that has been destroyed. Suddenly this locker bursts into flames and a flaming guy comes running straight at me. I jumped out of my fucking skin. I was holding a pistol at the time and I did what anyone in that situation would do; I emptied an entire clip into him. It was probably overkill, but the guy scared the shit out of me!

There was a section last night where I got into a mine car and had the Resident Evil equivalent of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I had to leap at the very end to avoid falling to my death but as soon I stood up I thought "I wanna go again!" I have almost all of my weapons fully upgraded. I'm actually having the rare problem of having an attaché case that is too full. Never thought that would happen. The one thing I'm now lacking is money. These upgrades to your weapons get expensive.

So yeah, my weekend was nice and relaxing. I made a nest for Stella with this super comfy blanket I have. She hardly left it the entire weekend.

January 12th, 2005 15:32 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Chlorine Dream" by Spirea X.
Days until Yuka is here: 28 (ok, it's really 30, but this is cool)
Feeling: busy with work (that's why I'm doing this. ;p)

Ok, I know it's 30 days until Yuka arrives, but 28 Days reminds me that I should tell you about Resident Evil 4. I got it last night and it fucking rules. It's much more action oriented than the others and the formula works very well. The non-zombie humans are really damn cool when they try to attack you, group up and call others to try to take you out. The context sensitive environments are also cool. Being able to jump out of windows to escape or push a cabinet in front of a door to buy some time is really awesome. I've been dying to leave work all day so I can go home and play more. But noooooo, I'm being good. Going to hit the gym for 45 minutes and cook dinner tonight. I've got stuff o make a basic stir-fry or I may just whip out the new George Forman. Wait, I got a new wok too. Hmmmmm the agony of choice.

January 10th, 2005 09:15 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Sonic" by The Charlatans UK.
Days until Yuka is here: 32
Feeling: comfy

I think your monitor is dirty. This will clean it.

I had a pretty productive weekend. I took Friday off and went down to Bloomington around 12:30. Had dinner with the folks, picked up my car, which is now running smoothly, and then met up with Heath for drinks. Heath is now sporting a full fledged beard. We had several rounds of drinks and had a fun talk.

I got back to Chicago around 2 on Saturday with the rest of my x-mas swag. I got rid of the old mattress pad on my bed and replaced it with TWO mattress pads. It's heaven. I then started cleaning my apartment like a madman. I'm still not done. I got rid of old food in the fridge and pantry. Then took everything out of the pantry and cleaned all the surfaces and rearranged the whole thing. I think somebody else was using our dumpster because there was wood and nails and lots of construction stuff that filled the entire thing. I've got boxes of crap on my back porch that I need to throw away once that thing has been emptied.

Practice last night fucking rocked. I can't wait for our next show. I came home and bought a ton of groceries. I'm actually brown bagging it for lunch today. Turkey sandwich, chips, carrots and a cliff bar in a genuine brown paper bag. Is this what parents feel like each morning when they prepare their kids lunch in the morning. The only thing I was missing was the can of coke wrapped in aluminum foil. ;p

I have to remember to get a case for my Sony Cybershot! It's current "case" is a wool hat. Cybershot deserves something a little less ghetto.

January 6th, 2005 09:30 hours CST
Currently listening to: "I've Got a Feeling" by Ivy.
Days until Yuka is here: 36
Feeling: blind

Ok, the vision in my left eye is all blurry, while my right one is fine. I've been thinking about getting an eye doctor appointment lately anyway. But I took y left contact lens out and it's covered in scratches. This one was brand new as of 5 days ago. What the hell. I don't have my glasses here, so I'm pretty much screwed today. Hooray!

I started playing Otogi 2 last night. I remember buying this months ago when I bought Katamari Damacy and one other game all at the same time. I haven't played the first one and I'm really wishing I had. I'm going to have to buy it because I'm pretty damn clueless with Otogi 2. Yeah, you pretty much just hack and slash your way through these levels, but you have 6 characters to chose from and there's an RPG element involved. The game is beautiful and I love the setting and the music and the style. I'm also really glad that I can play the game with Japanese dialog with English subtitles. But I want to know the back-story and I don't want to get too far in the game without realizing that I was supposed to upgrade all my crap for every character.

Ok, so I'm watching Yuka on her webcam right now and she's telling me about a Japanese quiz show she's watching. We watched one where the subject matter was vegetables and produce, which I thought was fascinating. Now they're talking about body parts and apparently, in my stupid country, women are going around wearing FAKE NIPPLES under their clothing. At first I thought that this was ridiculous and then I recall so many rock stars stuffing socks down their tight vinyl pants to make people believe they have a giant cock. Just watch the metal detector scene in "This Is Spinal Tap" to get an idea of the lengths people go to to impress one another. The look on this contestants face is absolutely fantastic. You know, the more I think about this, the more I'm in favor of it. Why the hell not?

January 5th, 2005 13:47 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Orange" by The Dandy Warhols.
Feeling: weird

So what am I doing right now, you may ask? Well, I'm watching my boss photograph the giant blister he just popped on his foot thanks to kendo practice. The sound that comes out of his camera for a timed shot is a wolf howl. It's just a weird combination of elements.

January 3rd, 2005 13:01 hours CST
Currently listening to: "Talk Talk" by Supercar.
Feeling: comfy

Happy New Year everyone. If you missed my thoughts on 2004, you can find them here. If you want to read about my latest adventure in Japan, you can read about that here.

I spent New Years at my brother's cabin in Alabama. It's near Fort Payne, which is a tiny freakin' town. We spent a good amount of time at Loews and Wal-Mart, which is always scary. One in 3 people there were extremely overweight. Not sure why I chose to notice this. The nice thing is, everyone at a register that you talk to is extremely nice. And not nice in a "bullshit" kind of way. In an odd way, it reminded me of Japan.

I flew a ERJ140 via American Eagle, which is the little sub-company of American Airlines. This is the smallest plane I have ever been on. One column of seats on the port side with two columns on the starboard side. Flying out of Chicago was rather nauseating, but all was smooth once we started cruising. Jenny and Jeremy picked me up in Chattanooga and we drove to the cabin. It's not so much a cabin in the traditional sense, as it's a nice cabin-like house in the middle of nowhere. David and Rusty really busted their asses to get this finished in time for us to stay there. There's still a lot of work left to be done. They only had running water the day before we arrived. That was also the first night they ever stayed in the cabin. The water comes from a well and smells of iron. That's probably from the pipes. It was very nice to take a shower at home this morning and get that metallic smell off of my skin and hair.

Pictures from the weekend are here.

The cabin is really very nice. They have three bedrooms and two bathrooms. I was to stay in a little bed in the loft/balcony area, but the railing wasn't finished for the balcony yet and I was a little worried abut falling. Not that I roll out of bed very often, but you never know. Having to get up to pee and plunging 25 feet to the ground in the dark is not how I wanted to spend my New years Eve. So, I slept on the couch the first night.

We went into town on Friday morning and had breakfast at Cracker Barrel. I hadn't been to one of these places in maybe 15 years. They still have that country store entrance way where you can buy everything from candy sticks, to John Deer crap. The food was awesome, though. Gave me a few ideas of how to modify my french toast. Jenny, mom, Rusty and I went to Wal-Mart and bought enough food to feed a small army. It's quite entertaining to watch a small girl pick her nose while staring in awe at the lobster tank.

Since we were finally all together as a family, we did x-mas part 2. I was so drunk, I think I wore those antlers all night. Cell phone reception was nonexistent inside the house, but once I stepped outside, I had a full signal. Weird. The water pump also like to shut off. It was just a bad switch, but I think David went out about a dozen times to turn our water back on.

New Years Eve was fun. We drank a lot and played Trivial Pursuit ver 6. I think Jeremy won because he was the only one of us who had a chance at all of getting any of the sports questions correct. That, and the rest of us were pretty much passed out. However, I was the only one who stayed up after midnight so I could call Yuka. Hehehe. Recognizing two different New Years, 15 hours apart is pretty wild. She went to a shrine for hers. Hopefully I'll get to see it and make my own wish.

I made a huuuuge batch of french toast for everyone the next morning and then we went for a hike up the river to the waterfalls. You can hear this waterfall from the cabin. It's such a cool sound. Jeremy got a little bit excited jumping over the rocks that he slipped and fell in. Everything from the waist down was soaked. \m/ We took Nelson with us as well. That's my brother's chocolate lab. He did really well, considering he's as old as dirt. That dog has got some serious fart issues. He clears the room every 45 minutes, usually.

It was nice trip. It did feel good to get home, though. Chris and Maria are coming over tonight for pizza and some Japanese study time. Tomorrow I start to eat better. Thursday I go to the gym. *sigh*