Category Archives: stuff

My “default”. Just general stuff about what’s going on with me, or that doesn’t fit any of my other pigeon-holes.

Poor Victoria

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Yesterday morning, after ignoring it for a bit too long, I finally took my female kitty Victoria to the vet. She had turned into nothing but skin and bones while I was gone, and I was trying on my own to bring her back thinking that she had just gone on a “hunger strike” because she missed me.

Well, turns out she was chronically dehydrated, has a serious bladder infection and potentially other ailments. The wonderful doctor (Dr. McFarland at The Cat Doctor and Friends, Santa Clarita) took some tests and was actually glad to see the infection because it was something treatable. She stayed overnight at the kitty hospital for treatment and recuperation and I’m on my way to see her this morning and listen to the prognosis. The initial outlook was that she does have a better-than-50% chance of recovering, but she is getting old (my cats are both 15-16). It’s kind of expensive getting her treated, but what else can I really do right at the outset? It would be sad, but if she has to be put to sleep, so be it. I guess I’ll know in a little while and be able to post news later…

Last night at The Bengal Club, we played a new WW2 air combat game, Check Your Six hosted by New Robert. It’s sort of like Blue Max with much faster, ore powerful planes (that also tend to get shot up and die a LOT quicker). I guess it was kind of fun, but it will take a lot more than that intro game before I decide. Then again, I really don’t need to get involved in yet another gaming period and rule set. In fact, as I was telling Matt as we carpooled home last night, since my focus is turning more and more to Japan, I seem to be really struggling to maintain any interest in gaming at all.

In a way that’s good: it should spur me on to even greater efforts to clean up my gamers clutter and eBay with a vengeance. I’m also going to be well and truly ready for the HMGS convention this coming November to sell big-time at the swap meet.

Random Stuff

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The problem with me blogging at home versus blogging when I was in Japan, is that my regular life isn’t really…all that interesting.

I’ve been trying to find work (not particularly successfully yet), do stuff on the computer, get on a regular weight loss/fitness routine and that’s kind of it. I’m still not over the post-KJapan malaise yet, though it’s not nearly as pronounced as it was two years ago. In my head I’m all for selling everything, packing up and moving there, but the “anchors” are already there and that—coupled with my general laziness—are making progress really slow and almost purely academic at this point.

Yesterday was kind of fun, though. I’d told my Mom & Dad about my new favorite restaurant (Cowboy Cantina out in Canyon Country), so they said they wanted to come out and give it a try. They did yesterday for lunch and brought Julie, Kyle and Jacob with them. Me and the boys went down to the pool and swam for a bit (believe it or not, it was the FIRST time I’ve been in my building’s pool since I moved in in December ‘06), played pool in the game room and then we all went to lunch. Afterwards, the kids played a bit on my PS3—it was fun. I told the boys that they should come and stay overnight sometime so we can work on building their train models I brought them from Japan. Maybe they can do it next week before school starts.

So other than that, my normal life slides by. Things should really change, though…

Back to Blogging

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So I’ve been home from Japan for about two-and-a-half weeks now, but haven’t posted anything online to speak of. I need to remedy that, and resolve to blog more often.

The most interesting thing that happened after my return, is that I seem to have started losing weight. I’ve lost a little every day since I’ve been home except one (that is, before last night’s food-orgy at the Rat’s Lair in lieu of wargames night—I’m still refusing to acknowledge what the scale said this morning and will only enter my weight later tonight after a bike ride, workout, and less eating…). This is a good sign (the weight loss, I mean). I really need to do something to keep it going.

The previous couple of entries I actually wrote today about earlier events. I shouldn’t do that, but there you are. I’m spending the rest of the day inside working around the house, on the computer and WILL FOR SURE get some eBay items up in my store. I rode my bike for about 45 minutes today and will go down and use the gym—for the first time since I moved in here. Gotta make up for last night’s indiscretion.

So stay tuned for better blogging (yeah right—how many times have i said THAT…)

Notary (Nope) and The Rat’s Lair

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Today was my all-day Notary Public training class out at the new College of the Canyons’ Canyon Country campus. It was something I signed up for back in May thinking it would be a good skill and certification to have in m “bag of tricks” of things I could do to generate income.

The class itself seemed pretty straightforward and though there’s a lot to know and a lot of legalese, it’s not exactly rocket science. However, after sitting through the class, learning what I needed to know and taking (and passing) the two practice exams, I decided NOT to take the exam for real. Why? Well, because when you pass (which I know I would) you have 30 days to get your equipment, post a $15,000 bond and take an oath with the county and essentially get “on the clock”.

There are two reasons that compelled me to rethink this: 1) there would be an initial outlay of nearly $1,000 for everything I need by way of equipment, supplies, bonds and insurance and that would be difficult right now, and 2) if I’m allegedly serious about leaving the country for Japan within a year, what’s the point of shelling that all out on a 4-year appointment that I’ll be leaving behind anyway?

I do still have up to two years to take the test without having to repeat the class, so it could still be a possibility. I’ll wait and see how things go with the agencies I’ve signed up with and my potential employment elsewhere.

I did get done with class early because of choosing not to take the certification exam, so Matt & I carpooled down to Crag Stevens’ house in Tarzana, a.k.a. “The Rat’s Lair” for his annual Bengal Club dinner and evening of entertaining fellowship. He fed us WAY TOO MUCH, and it turned out to be a real binge. I tried to moderate what I was eating, but it was just nuts. The final coup de grace was the oversize ice cream and chocolate dessert. I really have nobody to blame but myself, but I KNOW I’ll hate myself in the morning when I step on the scale and undoubtedly see some of my weight loss progress vanish.

Craig, though, does way too much nice stuff for us. Consequently we wanted to give him a special gift and we came up with an historic British Officer’s undress cap in a case similar to the kind the Comissariat officers wore and officially named him our Comissariat. It was pretty nice. Thanks a bunch, Craig! (Just don’t ever make me have to fall so far off the wagon again, please…)

Positive Interview

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Today the big event was an interview at SMCI, one of the two employment agencies that I was refereed to by Amgen. In order for me to get back there for any contract work, I need to go through one of said agencies.

I think it went very well. I’m hoping that if not with Amgen, they’ll be able to get me some work very soon and with my experience and background, they said they shouldn’t have trouble getting me gigs at $35-$50/hour. I really hope that’s true—and soon.

In the meantime, I guess I’d better get busy searching on my own. Things are getting down to the wire. I did finally open my eBay store, though, but I’ve got to get serious about stocking it.

Little Tokyo with Company

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On Sunday, my sister Cyndi mentioned she’d like to go down to Little Tokyo to shop for a wedding present or something, so today I met her and my niece Julie down there. We had lunch at Zencu Sushi then hit the shops. I of course didn’t really need anything, but ended up buying yet another bento box at Rafu Bussan—this one is really cool and even came with a nice little thermal lunch bag to carry it in.

It was the first time my niece had been down there, and she seemed pretty excited by it all. She’s the one who ended up eating sushi for lunch (which she loves) and in fact ate Tako (Octopus) for the first time. We ended the afternoon doing some grocery shopping at Mitsuwa and eating tasty cream puffs at “Mister Beardy-Head” (actually Beard Papa’s) before catching our respective trains home.

Getting Ready…

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Hi there!

Long time no post (as usual…).

I’m using a brand-new (to me) journaling program called MacJournal to create and post this entry. It’s a pretty neat little program that lets you combine all your written journals together in one place, publish to blogs (like Blogger), encrypt things you want to keep private, have as many journals as you want—and even publish podcasts and include video. Maybe it’ll spur me to keep a better record of my life and publish more regularly to this blog.

(Yeah, right…)

The “Getting Ready” part is that I’m preparing to leave for Japan in 3 days. I’m going back to study for another month at KSU followed by 10 days vacation. My goal is to really be able to converse better in Japanese. I’ve also got it in my head to look for employment there and during the vacation time to hop over for a quick visit to South Korea.

Of course, I’ll be keeping my journal and posting photos—and hopefully even podcasts and video this time—religiously, but not using this blog or this swell new program but rather my usual iWeb tools (sigh…)

Be sure to check out the happening regularly over on my personal website:

[NOTE – Original blog was shut down in June 2012. All entries have been recreated here on this blog.]

SO then—not that you’ve bee reading anything here regularly anyway, but you definitely won’t read much here until I get home at the very end of July!