2 posts tagged “facebook”

I've been blogging status updates on my Facebook and neglecting my Vox blog.

What have I been doing?

Yesterday

Not a whole lot of happings at work. Haven't been formally introduced to my new manager or partner.

After work I hang out downtown. It's fun to be in the city during a fine summer evening. Hitomi and I went to see The Godless Girl, a silent movie at the Paramount. The story was a bit ridiculous (though it was based on research of reform schools and events of that time) and the cast were too old to really portray high schoolers. Still, the drama and action, comedy, and aesthetic qualities (editing, photography) kept it interesting.

Sunday

Sunday was Father's Day. Went to Dim Sum at Purple Dot with Tim, Mom, and Hitomi. Seems only 3/5 stars on Yelp but it's my favorite spot for Dim Sum these days. There's something entirely useless about Yelp ratings. Dropped Hitomi off at home and went to Shilshole Marina and walked around looking at ships. I could consider joining a sailing club but Hitomi doesn't seem too interested in sailing.

Made dinner. I cooked pea vines with mushrooms and garlic and they turned out fine but a little chewy. I think cutting them into smaller pieces or removing or cutting the stems would have been a good idea. Since we had a bit of lemon, used that on salmon. Put butter on it as well, don't tell Hitomi. Lemon works well to keep the moisture in, as well as oil, it seems.

Finished The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which I had neglected for too long. It's a fun game with interesting puzzles, level design, and direction but the enemies are too easy. I also found I had no use for money ("rubles") much of the time, so I would go through many dungeons, finding chests, opening them, and leaving the rubles behind. Luckily, the bosses were interesting (if not particularly hard). Ganon was hard, mostly because it was difficult to understand the controls and how to attack.

I stayed up until 2:30AM beating the game, which wasn't a good idea.

Saturday

Thought it'd be good to bike to downtown, as driving is a pain. But then the clouds looked fairly dark and the report called for rain possible. We went to see Wallace and Gromit in "A Matter of Loaf and Death" which was being played as part of a family shorts package. The other shorts varied from mildly annoying to good.

Visited with Walli from Innocente Seraphim, which we will volunteer for in August. Probably shouldn't mention why they are scouting us. As a guy, I'm not sure why I should be going to a fashion and doll convention, but Hitomi will be there so I feel I should be as well.

I went to drink tea and spent over $100 on green leaves. Seattle's Best Tea seems to have employed a tea otaku. A women comes in and claims to have lots of health troubles which she hears tea is supposed to help cure. He's more of a taster than a Chinese doctor and feels a bit reluctant making substantial health claims. And she seems uneasy about spending a lot of money on high mountain tea, which is the most expensive kind, but considering the per-cup cost isn't more than 50 cents a cup, I would imagine, still makes tea cheaper than coffee.

Although we went shopping at Uwajimaya, we ended up eating leftovers instead.

I have friends on Facebook, from many former jobs and friends going all the way back to my high school days. My sisters are on there and their friends and so on.

It's an interesting thing to see the world through the peephole that is Facebook. Yet, it makes me both overwhelmed and unhappy. I'm overwhelmed since there's so many people out there and unhappy because I seem to have little interest in developing any relationship with those people. Is it just a factor of time?

It's not a personal slight, I hope. I rarely call my father, (older) sister and I only see my friends maybe once a week.

As we're planning to return to Japan for New Year's, Hitomi was wondering if she'd see her friends. Obviously she hasn't kept up either. We won't be staying with her mother, as she doesn't have a spare futon for us to use. It's kind of sad.

Hitomi and I spent the day together, bicycling from home to Golden Gardens.

An incident: En route to Sunset Park I was honked at angrily by some old guy on 80th NW in Ballard who wanted me to pull over or more room to pass. I caught up to him at the light, got my camera phone out just in case I wanted to call the police, and there he stopped in the middle of the road. The old guy probably wanted a word with me. I decided I didn't really want to talk to a crazy old guy. But as I was "getting away", a nice lady drove by his car and shouted at him to "share the road". It makes me feel better about the world--there's drivers who sympathize with cyclists.

Putting that aside...It was nice to stroll the beach at Golden Gardens. I don't know why, but there's lots of cyclists that come to the north beach and hang out on the benches. Hitomi took a few pictures. Wind was from the north and a lot of sailors were out in the sun and chop. I picked up a strange looking piece of driftwood floating in the waves. I put it back in the water not sure why I picked it up at all.

As per usual, Ballard's farmer's market was wrapping up just as we arrived. It was late in the day to find lunch, but we had breakfast late. I haven't really kept to a consistent schedule since daylight savings ended. There's a bar called "King's Hardware" which opened up in the old Ballard Hardware building. It has a early-eighties, blue-collar dinginess to it which I like, yet its menu and beer selection is surprisingly gourmet; Hitomi likes the sweet potato fries. But to try to be true its image, they have Hamm's for only $2 during happy hour and "tall boy" Rainer beers.

Returning home, we stopped by the Dutch Bike Company, which is near the public boat launch on the ship canal. From its doors you can see people trailering in their powerboats. They sell Dutch Bicycles, which would work really well if you were communiting near a canal, but it would be a feat to climb any of the hills of Seattle, even with the internal geared hubs. Hitomi bought a colorful Dutch shopping bag that hooks on to her rack. Everything fashionbly Dutch or German seems overly cheery. They had some German lights I was interested in installing on my road bike and Hitomi's and I suppose I will once we get some wheels built.

I plan to get some Shimano dynamo hubs in Japan, the newest model they do not yet sell in the U.S., probably due to the low dollar or bigger demand from Europe. Plus a lot of pornographic comic books -- I already have a list! -- and possibly videos. And we're actually going to be going to Comike as well. I imagine I'll get a stack of dojinshi again. I'm not sure what customs might think.

And tonight I watched Code Geass, an excellent anime series. I haven't been this impressed at an anime in such a long time. The character designs, animation, style was great and the story was top quality. I'm actually thinking of buying the DVD... I haven't bought any anime DVDs in some time, either. Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2nd series has been great as well ...

And speaking of videos, we watched Kisaragi. Thank god it was subtitled at least in Japanese, since I might have had a hard time of it. I felt like all the Gyakuten Saibain I played on the DS has helped my vocabulary when it comes to murder trials, which was great for this "whodunnit" movie.