Nonsequittal Rumblings

I’m guilty. I skipped my walk yesterday. Day 3 in to the year, and I’m already getting lazy.

But hey, I got pretty good amount of walk today – exceeding 10k. I’m feeling pretty good about it. Of course, it being so warm–in the 40’s–helps a lot too. Getting warm does come with a price – it’s melting so much snow that it’s making good size puddles on the walking paths everywhere.

Walking music of the day was Berlioz’s comic opera, Beatrice and Benedict, performed by London Symphony and Sir Colin Davis. It’s not a bad piece of music. The only thing is… I don’t know French. Not only the whole thing is in French, they throw in some dialogues. So I was listening to a few tracks of non-musical dialogues in French here and there. Well, okay… I guess it’s not going in my “favorites” folder for now.

Having almost two full weeks off for Christmas was excellent. It does make me pretty lazy. Lazy isn’t really a good thing. Just like so many thousands (or is it millions) of people in America, I’ve decided to throw in diet as one of my new year’s resolution for this year. Heck, I even got a pedometer this Christmas. Might as well put it to work. Being lazy is the last thing I need.

So… yeah, I’m now walking around with this pedometer in my pocket all the time. Since a few days ago, I’ve been using it, took it out to walks, etc, to get a feel of how much I should be walking. I decided about 8500 steps per day is a pretty good, not too difficult goal for now. The thing I didn’t know… By the time I came home from work today, pedometer already had 4500 steps on it. It’s a good thing though. By the time I get home, it’s way past sun set. It’s not most pleasant or safe to be walking at this hour for long. So… there we go. This is my tiny start for my goal of losing a few pounds this year.

And this blog is going to be one way to keep myself stick to that goal. More to come.

One of the Japanese traditions that’s still somewhat popular is seeing of the new year sunrise (hatsuhinode-初日の出, not to be confused with hatsumoude). Last year, I think I stayed up all night, then went to see the sunrise before hitting the sack. This year, I actually went to bed by 3AM and woke up by 6:30. Lucky me.

Since I drove toward east, I was planning to drive west to find a good spot to see the sunrise. The sunrise is at 7:44, and I didn’t get to leave home until 7:00. And because I live in the east side of the town, following that plan was obviously not a good idea… And thus I headed south. Man, Kansas has so much windbreak woods. It’s not easy to find a good spot in such a short time.

Another problem—it’s so friggin’ cold! 21F, with wind chill of 11F. Standing out in the cold just for fun? That’s crazy. But here it is. The moment of truth.

Several things have been going on around me this week.

First, on the fansub front.
Froth-Bite took a semi-break during the month of March – we made 4 releases during the entire month. Now, as of April 6th, we’ve already released more than double of that number already for this month, and more are on our way. The Leiji joint project has finally got their senses together, and started working on Space Symphony Maetel again. Finally released first 4 episodes again after taking 6 months break. Some of our own projects had some progress too. Then there is the new joint I’m doing with another group, Minor ja Nai. They’ve lost their translator for MAJOR. And I love that series. So it felt natural to step in and give them a helping hand. They didn’t coordinate the release effort with us very well… They released it while I was still sleeping. But oh well. We’ll live. Sounds like they will be ready with next MAJOR by this Sunday. I better pick my speed up on their project.

On to the music scene.
The leader of the jazz band I belong to has decided to make a career move. He has decided to move to Seattle. So someone had to take over his duties… I was chosen as one of those people. Even though it’s Cessna Jazz Band, there are only 6 of us who actually work for Cessna. We are minorities. Oh well. Poor Carl is brand new to the group, and he picked up co-leadership as well.

And tonight is our first gig under the new management. There are many uncertainties. Will we really survive? We’ll see.

On the different music front, I went to a first music concert in ages. Rajaton is a Finnish a cappella group. It’s a somewhat jazzy, very contemporary, fun group. It was $15 well spent. I love finding all these small, unknown gems. They reminded me of The Real Group – another a cappella group from Scandinavia. I later discovered that I’m not alone having such opinion. They have their similarities, but also differences as well. The Real Group likes to do traditional jazz standards (It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, Come Sunday) to some pop hits (Drive my car)… Rajaton likes the pop covers (Ticket to ride) and their original tunes. It’s fun to listen to all these Beatles tunes a cappella. Hehehe.

I let kojih.com domain name expire… and left it expired for over a week. Ouch, that hurted when I realized it. But how wonderful is DNS caching… kojih.com continued to work until today. Yay, internet.

But I need to manage these things better. I host my mom’s e-mail address on this domain… now she’ll never have to switch her e-mail address when she switches her ISP. And it’s free for her. And it’s all made easy, because Mozilla Thunderbird is translated in to Japanese too. ….as long as I keep kojih.com up to current, that is!

Kansas legislature is considering a total smoking ban in any public, enclosed space. Finally, it’s about time.

When I visit Charleston, WV, one of the really nice thing is that all restaurants are smoke free. has said numerous times that it’s weird when the waiters ask “Smoking or non-smoking?” at restaurants in Kansas.

All restaurants have smoking and non-smoking sections, if the place allow any smoking in the building currently. But there are still many places where there are no wall or anything effective to separate the two areas, minimizing the effect of such separation. I’m sure you’ve experienced in the past too – you get seated in a non-smoking section which is still close enough to the smoking section, and you can clearly smell the smoke.

Finally, they’re considering this smoke ban.

I do feel this proposal is a bit extreme. Even banning smoking in the bars? I’m not very sure how wise that choice is to the night life scene. This is where I feel the facility or business owner needs to make their own decisions about smoking policy, not the state… Not that it matters to me too much, but crippling the business economy too much wouldn’t be a good idea.

Still, I can’t wait for the day I don’t have to worry about smoke in restaurants.

I just discovered that my hearing is far worse than I imagined, especially in the high frequency range. My left ear can’t hear much beyond 15KHz. My right ear gives up at around 14KHz! A healthy young ears are supposed to be capable of hearing up to 20KHz. Man, I’ve lost quite a bit already. I think I’m destined to lose all my teeth and my hearing.

Of course, it’s not an official test. I just tested it using heartest.exe that someone made quickly.

Or maybe it’s just a temporary thing from my music…

I know I haven’t made a single entry in 2 months. I’ve actually been thinking about dropping LJ. I may go back to my own host to run the blog. I was looking around, doing a lot of thinking, etc to prepare for this migration. But I haven’t done anything about it yet. It’s going to take some time before that happens. So before I forget, I thought I’d say something funny.

I had 3 teeth fixed today – #6, #7, and #27. That’s upper right cuspid, 1st bicuspid, and lower right bicuspid. (I had to look it up.) All within the close region of the mouth. And did they numb the area good. It’s been 2 ½ hours since ,they applied it on me, and my lips are still numb on the right side. And my appointment got done 5 minutes after noon. It was difficult to eat. I spewed some Dr. Pepper on my clothes. I dropped some lettuce out of my mouse. I couldn’t tell if I was chewing on a piece of chicken or a piece of my lip. Oy.

Anyway, that’s all done. Now the next appointment is in 2 weeks. This time, I will finally start having my missing teeth filled with bridges. They’ve been missing for couple years now. I can smile again soon!

P.S.
trying to put some lip balms at this condition feels weird.

It’s an exciting day today. Today marks the day 1 of the 2nd year of the relationship between and I.

We were talking last night how we really haven’t had major fight or anything. It’s quite amazing. It’s not that we avoid the fight or anything. If we have things that we need to confront with the other, we bring up the issue. We may leave the issue aside for a few hours sometimes – you can’t really do a good talking when you are too upset. Leaving it aside cools us off, and can talk about the issue in more civil manner. What a noble concept that is. I’m looking forward to keep up with this kind of relationship.

Cheers! for our new year!

Things hasn’t been the best between Emily and I as of late. Being so far apart always make the relationship challenging. We are now on the stretch which we’re not seeing each other for the longest period of time during our relationship – 4 months.

On top of that, there are plenty of factors that are interfering with our relationships. She is very stressed with school work. We knew even before the semester started that she has very heavy load. But now we’re facing the reality. Things are just not easy for her. I’m having the easier life of the two. But I don’t feel bright and cheery all the time. And when I’m not feeling the best, the communication between us can go in the wrong direction very quickly. Tonight was just one of those night. I was just feeling “bleh” all day – I even came home early.

But what makes me want to stay with her is that we have not had any disconnected conversation sit for long. She may not feel the best affection from me as of late, and especially tonight. But I really love her, and that won’t change any foreseeable future.

Aishiteru, Emily-san. Very much.