Shoot! My Konica-Minolta 7D went in for service this week, but it has been delayed! Part are on order. Can’t wait to get my baby returned to me.

“How do you spell ‘iCup’?” Apparently this is hilarious at elementary school these days.

Bay and Koa, but mostly Koa, are really into Mahou Sentai Magiranger and Dekaranger which features both groups of rangers. There is one part in the show when the two Magi Ranger girls, two of their enemies, and the two Dekaranger girls are all together, but the evil ones are dressed as Dekarangers (SPD uniforms), then the Dekaranger girls are dressed in the bad girls gothic monster costumes. Then, the Magiranger girls go poof and are dressed as Dekarangers. This whole cosplaying of cosplay made my head spin. I don’t want to analyze the dynamic too much. Of course all the girls are super cute, so it’s all good, as the kids say!

More links:
Official Mahou Sentai Magiranger page

Official Dekaranger page

Super Sentai Database

We’ve been trying to clean up the clutter in our house this year, and I am concentrating right now on our office. I’ve been “collecting” all of our old bills and statements for the past couple years and putting them into a big pile. It’s really ugly. But the past few days, I have been scanning them in to the computer, and the pile is going down! I’d say I have about 50 more docs to scan. Our Epson 4490 scanner can scan to pdf (even multipage) which makes it super easy. I am using the naming convention “Company Date.pdf” (“Time Warner 20071019.pdf”) then dumping them into subfolders (Utilities, House, Auto, Medical, etc.). Then the papers go into the trash or shredder depending on what they are. I am doing about a dozen per day, plus anything new that comes in. I’d wish they were all just electronic statements to begin with, but not all the companies offer a paperless option.

I need to mention that it’s inspiring to read our friend Mikey’s decluttering blog posts. Very inspiring! His house is always so clean and organized.

I decided not to bring my little GPS unit to Japan because I figured it wouldn’t be very useful since I don’t have any map data on it. Plus I could travel lighter because I wouldn’t have to bring extra batteries and charger. But now I regret that, since it would have been good to save the track data and look at it in Google Earth. For instance, I would have loved to check out the route our bus took up to the resort in Kanazawa. Oh well, next time I will remember!

Today Jeremy, May, Bay and I went to Brushy Creek Park for a little sailing. This time we went to the little point, and it was even better than the small fishing pier. The wind was great, and the boats sailed nicely. It’s most fun harassing the ducks. Oh, sorry Mikey, I rushed out the door and forgot to let you know we were going!

I think I am going to repaint the Brezza di mare. I am going to sand off the black, then paint a dark metallic grey for the under paint, then the blue wave design on that. I also sent off my Victoria Class registration form, so I should receive my sail #’s shortly! I will put the numbers on the stock sails, but I really want some good-looking sails in the future. But before that, I need to paint the hull to match the original design.

View more of today’s sailing pics (photographed by Jeremy) in my Flickr set.

Just updated with Dec 25th’s happenings!

Just updated with Dec 24th’s happenings!

Here are a few things about Japan that I just don’t get:

Crowding into an elevator when there is an escalator just over there
Sure, we are 6 floors up, but I’d rather take an escalator, where I can relax and maybe see interesting things rather than pack into an elevator with 12 other people, have to try to push my way in and out, stop at each floor and get out of the elevator to let people out, then squish back in. All the while, trying to avoid uncomfortable eye contact, and also not touch anyone lest they think I am chikan. Oh, and repeat for each floor til we reach the bottom.

Plain Mochi
dango are balls of usually rice flour, and put on skewer. I remember being at a festival and getting handed a skewer of three mitarashi dango. They looked delicious, these little balls covered with a golden brown sweet shoyu sauce. Only after I bit into it and found out that I was eating another tastless lump of dough, did I realize that it was not nearly as delicious as it looked.