Electric Ladyland

this and that

had a party over the weekend and there was much celebrating.  it's great having a bunch of people you really like all hanging out together getting along sparklingly well and eating good food in your kitchen.  yum. 

saturday was for recovering from friday.  finished a book that i didn't really end up liking all that much (bangkok 8).  now i can move on to something else and hopefully it'll be a bigger hit.  this is part of the ongoing cleaning project, actually -- i'm tackling my pile of unread books one volume at a time. 

yesterday, sunday, was for getting back on track at the gym and wandering through the rain to see why we fight at the angelika.  thought-provoking movie.  you should go see it.  kind of like preaching to the choir as far as i was concerned since i never believed the administration's argument for war (WMD?  spreading "freedom?"  rooting out them evildoer types?) but there was much more depth in coverage than i'm used to seeing on film.  bravo to the people who put it together.

today i just slogged through chore after chore.  after chore.  and some more.  at work and at home.  not exactly scintillating or exciting but it had to be done.  and now i'm on top of my stuff.  but i hope tomorrow's a little more exciting than today was.

did read a very interesting NPR retrospective piece on the challenger disaster yesterday.  didn't know that some engineers had predicted the o-ring failure and watched their worst fears realized.  took my image of NASA down a couple of notches.  i still strongly support space exploration, though.  astronomers recently discovered an earthlike planet right here in the milky way.

oh, almost forgot the latest hot stove news:  we got coco crisp.  not the breakfast cereal, the outfielder.  i'm in favor of that.  we're going to have a very different red sox team take the field this spring.  don't know how i feel about that.  jury's out, 50/50. 

sons of electric donkey-bottom... promoters of data protection?

john cleese is touting a backup webinar.  i love it!

danger for the omnivore

it happened ... i finally succumbed to the lure of netflix.  my first DVDs arrive tomorrow.  *shudder*

it's not like i haven't been busy with the movies as it is lately.  this past weekend i saw brokeback mountain, the constant gardener, and in the mood for love -- all excellent films.  now i'm going to watch everything i can't find online or at my local blockbuster, which seems to get lamer every time i stop by.  is it just me or do they have more candy and less movies every time i go?  i can only wolf down so many junior mints, people!

anyhoo...  i thought after a productive saturday my sunday would be just for lounging around but it turned out that what i most wanted to do was clean some more.  i think i spent about 6 hours in total scrubbing this, dusting that, reorganizing this, junking that...  and home just keeps on feeling more agreeable and welcoming every time i have another pass-through with the cleaning.  my reasoning was that now that i'm doing calligraphy again and japanese study sessions with my partner will start up soon i should take advantage of the flex time to get my environment all in gear.  it has made a solid difference and i know it'll be a pleasure to bask in the ambiance here while practicing my calligraphy or crunching that japanese.

been back into food lately too, moderately but in a focused way.  right now i'm all about making sandwiches with seasoned patties from whole foods.  last week was beef patties with gorgonzola and sundried tomato on slices of kalamata bread with red lettuce and fresh tomato.  also tried out laguiole cheese (from the same area where they make the knives) on whole wheat baguette slices last week and that was delish.   had a couple of amurrrican breakfasts involving sunnyside eggs, those baguette slices (ok ok, a little frrrench amurrrican), and peppered cured bacon.  rrrmpffhl.  and as for wine, i bought a bottle of woop woop (aussie shiraz) on impulse the other day and that turned out to be a bunch of bombastic fun. 

so i'm back in omnivore mode, soaking it all up. 

and believe it or not i've been following the canadian elections.  no i'm not bored and yes i'm still american, i promise.  looks like the conservatives will be waltzing into office because the liberals got caught with their hands in the cookie jar -- not good.  NPR did an interview with rick mercer, who does a news parody kinda like the daily show for the CBC.  if you don't know his stuff you may want to check it out.  quote of the day from conservative candidate stephen harper:  "canadians can disagree but it takes a lot to get canadians to intensely hate something or hate somebody and usually it involves hockey."

speaking of sports, all through this hot stove season i have been following the sox.  theo leaves, we get josh beckett, damon steals christmas, arroyo signs for 3 years, theo comes back... it's like a see-saw here in red sox nation.  personally i'm not high on the idea of tavares joining the club because he's a head case and not likely to brighten up the clubhouse.  on the other hand, i could see arroyo and beckett getting along quite well.  can anyone tell me why we let mueller get away?  and what's with this no-center-fielder-no-leadoff-batter-situation!  and as for the shortstop it's ok that we let renteria go but why didn't we just keep cabrera in the first place?  that kid was magic.

hrm.  well, you see, now that the pats aren't going to the superbowl it's back to focusing on baseball.  i can sit here and chew my fingernails in worry until the snow thaws or until netflix sends me still we believe, whichever comes first.

life is good

things have been really good lately.  for a while now.  people keep noticing my smile and asking if something good happened to me.  it's just life in general that's being good to me.  started the new year off on the right note, clearing my house of useless junk and hitting the gym.  now i'm back at calligraphy and glad to be doing that again -- i missed the calligraphy and the people.  been taking it easy in my free time, reading books and watching movies.  tonight it occurred to me that i have time these days.  it just seems like there's a lot of time to enjoy living right now.  it hadn't been that way for quite a while.  rather nice now that i've got it. 

today i left astoria to do some food shopping in the city in the late afternoon and the weather was great.  felt like spring.  as the trains rolled in on the elevated track their windows glinted in the sunlight.  when we got in and started rumbling toward manhattan i could see deep blue clouds coming in as evening approached.  beautiful.  it was nice to be able to enjoy even such a simple scene as that. 

buddha and christ

most interesting passage i've read in a while courtesy of nicolas bouvier's the japanese chronicles:

"On the fifteenth of August, 1549, [Saint Francis Xavier] arrives in Japan, not knowing that Christ had preceded him by three centuries.  Actually, the Chinese Buddhists of the Middle Ages had heard about this 'Sage' of the West and had transformed him into a bodhisattva who came to Japan under the name of Inro Bosatsu and drowned with his message and his origin in the vast national pantheon.

At the same time, Christendom, having got wind of the virtues of Shakamuni, claims him under the name of Saint Josephat (a corruption of Bodhisat), and adds him, with his converter, Saint Balaam, to the calendar of saints (November 27) where he gets lost in the crowd just about as fast. 

But both sides have forgotten this exchange of politeness.  Everything will start over."

body movin

went to the gym tonight.  aaaahhhh.  i forgot just how good it feels to get some serious exercise.  is this legal?  am i allowed to do it?  cause it's like drugs!

i really did feel like i was high on something as i was walking home afterward.  got plenty of personal chores and work-related stuff done and i'm still floating.  feel great.  i'd been planning on visiting the gym tonight and i'm really glad i did.  gets the weekend off to a great start.  say -- if you have any recommendations for good songs to put on my workout playlist, do let me know!  i've already got a fairly decent playlist going but wouldn't mind adding more good tunes to it.

hysterical victims

"In my opinion today's work in the House demonstrated that from now on the wave of hysteria in which the suffragists have indulged or of which they have been the victims will be on the wane."

that came from today's "on this day..." article retrospective in the times.  less than 100 years ago people were actually saying that women demanding the right to vote were hysterical victims.  this above quote was from a woman, in fact.  a republican representative from 1915, only 90 years ago, simply quipped that the women demonstrating should have been "home where they belonged." 

that was only 61 years before i was born.  as i'm sitting here in my office working (and loving the work, i might add) it amazes me how close i am to an era in which women were categorically banned from participating in public society.  very easy to take these things for granted now.  i can vote, i can work, i can choose to venture out into the great big world.  and i'll wear the title of ms. rather than miss, thank you very much.  but this is all thanks to women who paved the way.  thank you...

pause, fast-forward

yesterday i was a total lazy butt.  didn't really make it out of bed, napped and watched dramas a lot.  lately i've been watching beach boys and toshishita no otoko.  corny as all get-out but good japanese language practice and every once in a while something new and cultural comes up, so that's how i justify the drama candy rotting my brain.  (side note:  some of the english titles of these dramas are a hoot.  one korean drama is apparently called the bean chaff of my life.  very popular among k-drama fans from what i've read online but it doesn't sound so scintillating in english, does it?) 

so yeah, curled up napping and watching dramas.  that was my yesterday.  i did it in part because i'd already worked on saturday and i knew i'd be hitting the ground running on monday, which is exactly what happened.  good thing i got in my loafing time because i'm switched back on and ready to go.  vroom.

five year late reply

in the "that's odd" department, i got a reply to a message i wrote five years ago on saturday.  the reply didn't actually say anything -- it just quoted my original message.  the sender was a former colleague of mine from my days teaching english in japan and my original email had been written while i was still in japan.  it kind of felt like getting a message in a bottle, only from myself. 

les boys bandent

oh yes!  i got email from a friend a few days ago with "the joining of two world powers" as its title and i thought it was something about world politics but no, it was about something much much better.  he said "you'll need a high-speed connection, and you'll need to wait until the middle of the video, but it is so worth it."  SMAP and the backstreet boys!  together at last!  my day is complete.

i mean c'mon!  there's this!

and this!