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wednesday, thursday
Feb. 5th, 2011 02:06 pmWednesday was an unproductive productive day, if that makes any sense. I got a big salad from Whole Foods for lunch, and drove up Redmond Way until I found an office store (Staples, by the Trader Joe's) and got ink there to make my printer work again, which, fortunately, it does. In the meantime I also did laundry, moved the desk thingy into the other room (but didn't build it myself because the directions said not to), and did some more job-hunting stuffs. I eventually did go for a walk, though truncated it because it was already 4:30pm and I was a little bit afraid of walking on the roads after dark around here where there are no sidewalks.
I picked up Mike from work, and we cooked tortellini here, and then we built the desk thingy, by which I really mean he did most of the building and I just found parts and watched. Unfortunately, after building it and looking at the room layout I realized I really want it to be on the other wall and switch it with the dresser, and we still have a hutch to build for the desk as well, so we'll do that later and switch and all.
Thursday was a really fun day! I got a ride with Mike up to MS in the morning and then bussed into Seattle. The first thing on my list of things to do was to go play Pop'n'Music, so I went to Gameworks and did that for a while until I ran out of the $5 or so credits I had, so like 4 games. It's really nuts how old Pop'n 14 really is; on the one hand I get to play some older songs I hadn't played in a really long time, but on the other hand there are no .5 increments on timing and a lot of other modes don't seem to be there (like Expert Random).
I debated lunch a bit and then decided on Westlake -- got thai noodles and then sat at the table writing for a while -- I wrote a birthday card to my brother (his birthday is Sunday) and also wrote two letters to my JHS back in Japan, I'd been meaning to send them something for a bit. One was just a card about Mariners fanfest, I figure some of the kids will enjoy that.
But when I went to the postoffice it was super-crowded, so I punted on that and just went up to Ballard, since it was almost 2pm by then.
(One side story: there's free wi-fi by Borders on 4th, and you can just hang out on some couches in the lobby outside to use it, so I stop in there sometimes to check my email on my phone since it doesn't have net. One of those times there were these two clearly homeless women sitting on a bench just kind of loitering there. A security guard came in and kicked them out, and the one lady was just like "What the hell, why are you throwing me out into the cold to catch pneumonia? Why can't I sit here? Look at all these other people sitting here, also clearly not buying any books or coffee or anything, like this chick [she motions at me] fiddling with her cellphone, why can she stay here and not me?" The security guard's just like "Come on, you know why you're not supposed to be in here," and basically throws her out. It was a little odd.)
Anyway.
The 15 and 18 buses are getting rerouted off of 1st avenue this weekend, so there was a lady down at 1st and Union handing out fliers about this and telling people about all the changes, so I got one too. My bus was kinda late so she talked to me for a while about the renovations on the viaduct and all that stuff. I ALSO noticed, oddly, that the Lusty Lady or whatever it was called down there by Harbor Steps seems to have gone out of business -- I mostly remember seeing their little marquee headlines when I'd be waiting there for a bus after the Mariners games in the past.
Got to Ballard, went to the post office there, no line whatsoever. Mailed my cards. First-class simple to Japan works out to like $2.92 or something like that. Of course, I don't really have mailing addresses for most of my friends in Japan...
Went to the Ballard House. Jess was home, but Carl was out fixing his flat tire on the car, so I hung out for a while... Jess had to take the two male dogs to the groomer, so I tried to distract Sherlock, the other dog, while she did that. Mostly, I just sat on the couch with Sherlock for like 10 minutes. She's such a cutie, but she seemed all sad that everyone else was going out and she wasn't. Then I went up and started hunting through Carl's closet for some of my stuff (I basically have been storing a whole ton of stuff in his closet for the last 4 years while I was in Japan, since he lives in my old room in the house). The good part is that I could find my Karaoke Revolution discs really easily, and my JPS2 with slightly more effort. The bad thing is... I have a LOT of stuff in there. I'm not sure how much of it I really want to keep. I'm feeling very meta about stuff lately, like, stuff weighs you down, getting rid of it is a good idea, most of this stuff I haven't even seen in 4 years so what the hell? But then I see a lot of things I saved for memory's sake and it's hard to toss them.
I should, however, probably sell off a lot of the stuff that is in there. If I'd only gone away for 1 year it might have still been relevant, but being gone so long, I'm not sure how much I need a lot of the books, games, CDs, etc anymore.
On the other hand there are a TON of photos in there. We had a good laugh going through some of my photos from the 1999-2001 range, and showed Jess some embarrassing old ones of Zach from when Zach was still big and bearded in the cslounge days. I need to figure out a way to digitize all of them, but as some of you who knew me in college recall, I always took a shitload of photos even BEFORE digital cameras, so... there are a LOT.
Carl and I went over to Blue Dog Cafe actually quite a bit before that, like at 3 or 4ish, so he could get a sandwich and I could drink chai. Then it turned out the tire his car needed came in, so he went and got it and I hunted more through the closet.
Mike came to get me in the evening and we all ended up going to Taste of India for dinner, which made me all happy because I really wanted chai there :) It was me and Mike and Carl and Jess and then Jess's friends Melissa and Rob who were living in the Ballard house basement but now moved around the corner or something like that. It was kind of interesting but I don't think I have anything in common with them. But Indian food was good! Yay. Poor Mike ended up just eating nan and rice for dinner, but whatever.
Then, home. And I could play Karaoke Revolution in Japanese, which effectively turns my PS2 into a lame karaoke machine. I mean, the music quality is kinda crappy and of course these all came out in 2003 so there is nothing newer than that, and I only have 11 discs so that's like 550 songs total, and I have to swap discs any time I want to sing something not on the current one in there, but it's TOTALLY better than nothing! Hooray. I can already see that there are some songs in there that have never been "my" songs when I was in Japan but other friends sing them, so I may have to start learning some of those. I never thought that the lack of Japanese karaoke in Seattle was going to annoy me so much, but... well, we'll see what happens when baseball season starts again. THAT is more likely to truly stick a stake into my heart.
I'll continue Friday later, it's Saturday now and we have places to go.
I picked up Mike from work, and we cooked tortellini here, and then we built the desk thingy, by which I really mean he did most of the building and I just found parts and watched. Unfortunately, after building it and looking at the room layout I realized I really want it to be on the other wall and switch it with the dresser, and we still have a hutch to build for the desk as well, so we'll do that later and switch and all.
Thursday was a really fun day! I got a ride with Mike up to MS in the morning and then bussed into Seattle. The first thing on my list of things to do was to go play Pop'n'Music, so I went to Gameworks and did that for a while until I ran out of the $5 or so credits I had, so like 4 games. It's really nuts how old Pop'n 14 really is; on the one hand I get to play some older songs I hadn't played in a really long time, but on the other hand there are no .5 increments on timing and a lot of other modes don't seem to be there (like Expert Random).
I debated lunch a bit and then decided on Westlake -- got thai noodles and then sat at the table writing for a while -- I wrote a birthday card to my brother (his birthday is Sunday) and also wrote two letters to my JHS back in Japan, I'd been meaning to send them something for a bit. One was just a card about Mariners fanfest, I figure some of the kids will enjoy that.
But when I went to the postoffice it was super-crowded, so I punted on that and just went up to Ballard, since it was almost 2pm by then.
(One side story: there's free wi-fi by Borders on 4th, and you can just hang out on some couches in the lobby outside to use it, so I stop in there sometimes to check my email on my phone since it doesn't have net. One of those times there were these two clearly homeless women sitting on a bench just kind of loitering there. A security guard came in and kicked them out, and the one lady was just like "What the hell, why are you throwing me out into the cold to catch pneumonia? Why can't I sit here? Look at all these other people sitting here, also clearly not buying any books or coffee or anything, like this chick [she motions at me] fiddling with her cellphone, why can she stay here and not me?" The security guard's just like "Come on, you know why you're not supposed to be in here," and basically throws her out. It was a little odd.)
Anyway.
The 15 and 18 buses are getting rerouted off of 1st avenue this weekend, so there was a lady down at 1st and Union handing out fliers about this and telling people about all the changes, so I got one too. My bus was kinda late so she talked to me for a while about the renovations on the viaduct and all that stuff. I ALSO noticed, oddly, that the Lusty Lady or whatever it was called down there by Harbor Steps seems to have gone out of business -- I mostly remember seeing their little marquee headlines when I'd be waiting there for a bus after the Mariners games in the past.
Got to Ballard, went to the post office there, no line whatsoever. Mailed my cards. First-class simple to Japan works out to like $2.92 or something like that. Of course, I don't really have mailing addresses for most of my friends in Japan...
Went to the Ballard House. Jess was home, but Carl was out fixing his flat tire on the car, so I hung out for a while... Jess had to take the two male dogs to the groomer, so I tried to distract Sherlock, the other dog, while she did that. Mostly, I just sat on the couch with Sherlock for like 10 minutes. She's such a cutie, but she seemed all sad that everyone else was going out and she wasn't. Then I went up and started hunting through Carl's closet for some of my stuff (I basically have been storing a whole ton of stuff in his closet for the last 4 years while I was in Japan, since he lives in my old room in the house). The good part is that I could find my Karaoke Revolution discs really easily, and my JPS2 with slightly more effort. The bad thing is... I have a LOT of stuff in there. I'm not sure how much of it I really want to keep. I'm feeling very meta about stuff lately, like, stuff weighs you down, getting rid of it is a good idea, most of this stuff I haven't even seen in 4 years so what the hell? But then I see a lot of things I saved for memory's sake and it's hard to toss them.
I should, however, probably sell off a lot of the stuff that is in there. If I'd only gone away for 1 year it might have still been relevant, but being gone so long, I'm not sure how much I need a lot of the books, games, CDs, etc anymore.
On the other hand there are a TON of photos in there. We had a good laugh going through some of my photos from the 1999-2001 range, and showed Jess some embarrassing old ones of Zach from when Zach was still big and bearded in the cslounge days. I need to figure out a way to digitize all of them, but as some of you who knew me in college recall, I always took a shitload of photos even BEFORE digital cameras, so... there are a LOT.
Carl and I went over to Blue Dog Cafe actually quite a bit before that, like at 3 or 4ish, so he could get a sandwich and I could drink chai. Then it turned out the tire his car needed came in, so he went and got it and I hunted more through the closet.
Mike came to get me in the evening and we all ended up going to Taste of India for dinner, which made me all happy because I really wanted chai there :) It was me and Mike and Carl and Jess and then Jess's friends Melissa and Rob who were living in the Ballard house basement but now moved around the corner or something like that. It was kind of interesting but I don't think I have anything in common with them. But Indian food was good! Yay. Poor Mike ended up just eating nan and rice for dinner, but whatever.
Then, home. And I could play Karaoke Revolution in Japanese, which effectively turns my PS2 into a lame karaoke machine. I mean, the music quality is kinda crappy and of course these all came out in 2003 so there is nothing newer than that, and I only have 11 discs so that's like 550 songs total, and I have to swap discs any time I want to sing something not on the current one in there, but it's TOTALLY better than nothing! Hooray. I can already see that there are some songs in there that have never been "my" songs when I was in Japan but other friends sing them, so I may have to start learning some of those. I never thought that the lack of Japanese karaoke in Seattle was going to annoy me so much, but... well, we'll see what happens when baseball season starts again. THAT is more likely to truly stick a stake into my heart.
I'll continue Friday later, it's Saturday now and we have places to go.
