If you like taking those fun online personality quizzes, head on over to Quizilla. They have tons. Some examples are:

Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
Which Of The Greek Gods Are You?
What Snack Food are You?

Well, everyone else out there who blogs seems to have already posted their new year’s resolutions, so I figure I will as well.

First and most importantly is for me to save money. In other words, don’t spend it! No more impulse buys, less eating out for lunch, etc. Also, I want to update our Quicken file each day and follow the budget. Quicken is an awesome program, and when you hook it up with your bank accounts to download the data automatically, it is really convenient too. Anyways, I want to spend at least ten minutes a night updating it.

I need to throw out a lot of stuff that I never use or look at. I am sort of a pack-rat, and that is not good. Our computer room “office” has way too many things in it. I need to throw out computer software books, old toys, magazines, etc.

Another thing I want to do this year is to take care of our yard and garden, which had fallen by the wayside. That will be difficult with the new baby on his way, but something I think I can do. I found some old pictures of when we first created our gardens, and they looked great! I want to get them back to looking like that.

Take more photos. Not just of Bay, but more creatively and artistically. I want to use my film camera more, which kind of makes me think more about composing photos. With the digital, it is just so convenient to snap of several pictures that you end up not taking the time to compose the image.

Finish restoring my supercub. I think I have all the parts now. I just need to spend the time and apply a bit of elbow grease to get that thing running! I still can’t decide on a color, though!

I’m sure I will think of more, but that should be good for now.

I put in an old Bauhaus CD (Mask, not the one above) and have been listening to it all day. It is so awesome. I remember my friends and I would listen to them in high school, then Tones on Tail, Love & Rockets, etc. But Bauhaus was always the best. In 1998 my brother came to visit me in Tokyo and Bauhaus was in town with their Resurrection tour so we decided to go. We went with my friend Masami and had a great time. Our seats were pretty far away, but the sound was awesome and it was neat to hear the old songs again, live and loud! I’m glad I finally got to see them in concert. The graphic above is the album made from from the Resurrection tour recordnings, and is one of the discs I have yet to buy. *hint*

I bought the Dragon Inn DVD today at lunch and cannot wait to watch it! I think the last time I saw it was 15 years ago when I lived in Monterey Park. This movie is so great, I think it is much better than Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Maybe it’s because I really like Maggie Cheung and Bridget Lin. The swordplay in it is fantastic, and the scenery is neat too. It takes place in the deserts of northern China, and the movie really makes you feel like you are there. Some of the action sequences are so over-the-top, but that is what makes the movie so fun.

Here’s something totally cool! A see-through toilet seat with rifle cartridges set in it. Need to add this to my wishlist! 🙂

[via Fatwallet>

…waking up in the morning and finding Bay nuzzled up against me. What a great feeling!

This weekend was a really fun one for us. On Saturday we went to Tomoko D’s beautiful new house for a sukiyaki lunch. The food was excellent as expected, and Bay had fun playing with Jamie and Casey. We started at 1pm and ended up staying there until about 7. Not all that time was spent eating, of course! After lunch we all watched “One Night Rock n Roll” (Wannai) which was really funny. Those guys are just too much! We all left tired but happy and Bay fell asleep on the way home and kept on sleeping until Sunday morning.

Sunday was cool too. We drove all the way down to Houston to do some shopping at Ikea. We didn’t know it, but it was the last day of their big sale. The parking lot looked really crowded when we drove up, and I was dreading fighting the crowds, but the store wasn’t very crowded, actually. At the checkout, there was practically no line. I think it was because they had lots of staff on hand to help the customers. There were only two things that we wanted that were out of stock, which surprised me. Our pathfinder was totally packed! We even had stuff tied to the top. Anyways, we got some great stuff, at fantastic prices. I wish that there was an Ikea in Austin, though. That marathon drive down Highway 290 is just too much… The weekend is over, but the Ikea experience will continue this week, because now I have to assemble all of the neat loot that we bought!

Before we started shopping at Ikea, we ate lunch at Todai (the self-proclaimed Mother of all Seafood Buffets), which was right next to Ikea in the Vans Skateboard park complex. The sushi there was decent, with ikura and unagi being the sushi of choice, but there was also maguro, salmon, tai, tako, etc. There were also a lot of rolls :I had to try a BLT roll, which I had never seen before. It was just ok. Other foods that we ate were shrimp and veggie tempura, mussels, ramen, lemon grass pork chops, teriyaki chicken, gyoza and shumai. We were stuffed, and Bay ate pretty good too. Oh, they also had freshly made crepes. Yum!

I was looking at some old photo “albums” on Ofoto.com and I came across this snapshot of when we first brought Miki home. This is the first time the “Angel” met the “Cat from Hell”. We adopted Miki from a local shelter when she was a kitten. Now she is much bigger than Amo, and can hold her own when the get into a scuffle.