We had a pretty slow day for the most part. We got up early as usual and spent the morning mainly just cleaning up from last night’s party. The princess laid down for her nap and the wifey and I ended up passing out even before she did. We got a good couple hours of sleep in, which was really nice.
We took a quick walk out to the lot today and found that the foundation has really been coming along. Most of the concrete with the exception of a couple of places has been filled. Here is a picture from last week and one from today for comparison:
Last night was our annual Halloween Party. It wasn’t a huge amount of people but man did we go through some alcohol. We exhausted a little over two cases of beer and a metric ass ton of liquor.
It was a whole lot of fun though. Just so many good people. I already can’t wait till next year. When we get the house up, we are definitely gonna have to find some more opportunities for celebration (read getting drunk).
More photos here.
Thanks for the tag Shaz. No really, thanks. I mean it. Not being passive aggressive in the least bit here.
5 things I was doing 10 years ago:
- Living in Nagoya and learning Japanese
- Getting drunk nightly
- Playing in my first band in Japan
- Hitting on and then dating my now wifey
- Leaving the now wifey back for the states and being sad
5 things on my to-do list today:
- Go Halloween shopping
- Put up Halloween decorations
- A bunch of super-secret computer crap
- Edit and put a new picture up on Deviant Art
- Give the princess a bath
5 snacks that I love:
- Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
- Marble cheese on Triskets
- Agesen (fried rice crackers)
- Pringles
- Peanut brittle
5 things I would do if I was a millionaire:
- Give to charity
- Drink a lot
- Become an enourmous, pompous asshole
- Lose it all in one way or another
- Recive a portion of it back through step one
5 places I’ve lived:
- New Bern, NC (USA)
- Raleigh, NC (USA)
- Cary, NC (USA)
- Nagoya (Japan)
- Tokyo (Japan)
5 jobs I’ve had:
- CD Shop
- Barista
- Radio DJ
- Hospital Food Service
- Programmer
5 people I punch:
Source photos taken by Maggie and myself.
The wifey and I went out to Yokohama this Saturday. Her uncle had passed away one year back and they were holding a dinner in remembrance of that. It was held in a pretty nice French restaurant and I quickly remembered why bringing babies to nice restaurants is usually not a very good idea. We had our own room, so the princess could run around and cause trouble without it being too much of a big deal, but I bet the waiter was crying after he saw what she did to the tablecloth (laugh).
That night we met up with some friends for a BBQ and Sunday was pretty much just shopping and whatnot. Last night, Masato and Emi dropped by for a beer or two which was a lot of fun. It’s been too long since we’ve gotten the chance to hang out and chat.
The princess had another photo shoot this week. Looked something like the above. This may be the last one for a while though. We will see I guess.
We went out for a quick walk to the lot before work the other day and it looks like things are progressing with the foundation. For some reason though, we have yet to see any people actually working on it. It’s kind of scary actually, because we are going at times that you would assume people would be there — typical working hours, you know? It’s like we have ghost builders or something. Rather exciting.
Went in for band rehearsal on Wednesday and we had a pretty good night. Finished up one new song, started working on another which has a lot of potential, and had a good talk afterwards over beer. We have been in a bit of a rough spot for the last week or so but I think we managed to get ourselves back on the same level again. We also had a consensus on changing up our direction a bit, which I think will probably be for the best. More on that I’m sure will be coming as it materializes.
The wifey and I went out for a walk this morning and they were having a festival (”Shinagwa Yumesan Bashi 2008″) so we dropped in for a bit:
There was an artist there drawing portraits for charity at the Lawson booth named Yusuke Tanaka. We watched him do a few people’s and they were just horribly cute so we had to get one made as well:
Construction on the house seems to be coming along:
And we even managed to go to Santouka for lunch yesterday for the first time in forever (probably my favorite ramen shop here — simple, but really, really good):
Let’s see, what else…
Oh, I went to a friend’s party on Saturday, got ripped, missed my last train home, and ended up coming back at like six in the morning with a hangover and cold to go along with it. Still feeling rather rotten today, but at least the hangover is gone I suppose. I ended up meeting an Australian guy who just got into Japan that night on the train and he tagged along with me to the party. It was a lot of fun though. Lot’s of cool people.
Lorne and Maggie came over the other day and made us some quesadillas:
Ended up looking something like this:
They were very yummy. And even better, the wifey and I didn’t have to do anything but sit there and get drunk. And I’m pretty sure I drank more than you are supposed to for a weekday.
More pictures are here.
Speaking of Maggie:
This is her cutting a quesadilla fabulously. Because she is fabulous like that. And now, she even has a fabulous blog. Go give her some love.
Continuing on…
Here is the princess teaching me how to read:
And the construction for our new house’s foundation:
And the princess “preparing for her closeup”:
The photo shoot went kind of how I expected it to (according to the wifey anyways; I was at work). She was supposed to hug a stuffed animal for one picture, which went well for all of maybe five minuets. After that, she would just slam the fucker on the ground whenever it was handed to her.
Anyhow, she already has another photo shoot lined up for next week. I’m getting the feeling that her work schedule is going to become even busier than mine at this rate.
I have found myself getting a bit overwhelmed with everything I have going on these days so I took about an hour to try to get myself organized today. My day was pretty much full of meetings with the exception of that one hour so I figured it wouldn’t hurt using it considering I probably couldn’t get much else done with it anyway.
I’m trying something a bit new this time. I have set up myself some goals for the coming months and some progress markers. However, I have purposely balanced them out so that the work that is involved in getting them done is all very, very different. I’m hoping this will allow me to have some freedom to fluctuate from task to task depending on my mood, but at the same time help me to stay on track and remain productive.
Chances are I will give it up in about a week like I usually do, but that’s fine too I guess. At least I’m trying something new. Besides, I always get crazy motivated when I get everything on paper and out of my mind — at least for the first few days. I figure a few days of getting a lot done is a hell of a lot better than nothing.
By the way, one of my new rules is that ANYTHING that falls outside of the plan I have gets thrown to the side in a queue somewhere that I can look at only after I get done with what I have committed myself to. Obviously there will probably be exceptions to this, but as a general rule that’s what I’m going for this time. Hopefully it will help keep me more focused because one of my biggest problems seems to be with concentration. My mind just spins faster than my body can move and it has always been that way. Hopefully this “brain dump” will help balance everything out a bit.
I passed the 200 post mark without even noticing it. That’s pretty big for me. I have been blogging in some form or another for ages now. This is probably the longest I have ever written in once place though. I’m kind of surprising even myself here.
