フロントガラス越しに撮ったんで空のとこに見える汚れはつぶれた虫です ><;

Current Mood: anorak tendencies perhaps

...crossing the Montreal River, mile marker[1] 92 on the Algoma Central Railroad (on our way south from Hearst, ON to Sault Ste. Marie, ON). 130 feet up, w00t.

12 hours of traaaaaaaiiiiiiiiins. :D

[1]. Yes. It's miles.

Current Mood: enjoying the view

So I'm getting married (!!) next Friday, a week from today, in the park down the street from my house, to my best friend, after work, after WHICH, there will be a par-tay.

SRSLY.

I will be busting out The Dress. The same The Dress, that gets dragged out for job interviews, other people's weddings, speeches before Various and Sundry August Bodies. 1987 Ito Yokado special, flowered, cotton, A-line, by this point I suppose it's legitimately Vintage. It's not so often I do the Drag Thing, so it's a big deal. I will also wear the matching shoes, namely the brown suede All Stars.

Yes, I am gonna wear trainers to my own wedding. People always told me I could never do that, eventually I would conform and such, but, well, didn't happen. C'est la vie.

It's gonna be good :D

We will be ML^2 :D

Current Mood: happy

Lately I saw two instances of characters that made me laugh.

First was some Asian-looking university student was wearing a shirt that was black with white writing saying 「白人看不懂」on. It's "white people don't understand (looking at this)" in Chinese, I dimly recall maybe it's a reference to a (funny!) online skit made at the Fifth College international apartments that I saw online once ages ago, but anyway... made me think of saying "hey nice shirt!" but we were passing so quick, so, no chance.


Second is, at Cafe Kopi where I spend lots of time, by the bathroom they have a shelf with the extra fruits on it for restocking, in the shipping boxes. It's cardboard boxes with "Florida Lemons" or whatever and some art, but lots of the boxes say 「日本向け特選」prominently on the side. It means "Chosen specially for (export to) Japan" in Japanese. I suspect that of course they just print that on all the boxes for the same reason your boxes of mass-processed cookies say "REG PENNA DEPT AGR" on but I can't help but chuckling. It's all the saaaaame, guys!

Current Mood: amused

Standing on top of Etna, we are above the clouds. Nothing but lava and snow and steam coming out. Some of this landscape used to have pizza stands and ski lifts on it until 2003 when it was all wiped flat in an explosion.

If you dig even a little hole in the lava shards, the rocks are so hot you can't hold them for long. The field where it erupted in 2007, we can't go, because it's too hot to even travel on.

How did I get up there? Just as always, ( I took the bus. )

If you look closely you will notice that ( the bus is a Unimog. )
The passenger part of the bus is hooked to the business end by a flexible rubber gasket type thing, so the parts can bump around rather independently on the road. The bus also has huge chains on the wheels.

The roads are pretty much like off-roading up the passes of the Rockies in Colorado, except that instead of regular dirt, it's all lava shards. Currently toward the top, the snow is higher than the bus on both sides of the road for a lot of the way.

Coming back, half of the journey was by that same bus and the final part by ( funicular. )

I have read a lot about volcanoes recently and so it was quite an enjoyable time to see it.

Current Mood: chill of mountains

The city bus I took this morning.

Current Mood: 周りの話が何もわからん

It's almost like a real city in there.

Current Mood: geeky

That's right, the Unix timestamp (seconds since the epoch start, 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970) will roll over to 1234567890 today at precisely 17:31:30 Chicago time.

I have to admit I did sit in my office and see the timestamp roll over to start with a 9, and then later when it rolled over to 10 and added a digit.

You know you want to see the thing change. You can! At the
Cool Epoch Countdown Page!

Current Mood: enthralled

As it turns out, I am going to Italy in the springtime for a holiday. I'm hoping to see some volcanoes now that I'm reading about them (in fact reading about ones I visited on my high school trip to Kyushu I wish I could do that trip again now that I'm more knowing and serious AND having watched 「篤姫」 on TV AND read 「死都日本」 but it's a digression...)

Because I don't know any Italian language at all I've started looking up information on the internet. I honestly don't know word one, but as I'm starting from the beginning with the pronunciations and what, I realize... so many of the example words make sense when I see the meaning, because... they SHARE things with the basic gut parts of words I know from English or learned for the SAT, way back in the mists of time.

"ape" is bee and "api" is bees, but... of course, because "apiary" is where you keep your bees in English (a coworker of mine is a beekeeper and we talk of such things).

"porta" is door but of course there is "portal" in English. "facile" and "faciliate," etc. "mare" the sea, just like the "seas" on the moon... "alto" and "altitude"...

I'm used to it with characters but it's cool to see it in syllables from English.

Current Mood: curious

どんどん年取っちゃウシ… :D

Current Mood: ちょっと酔っているかな？：D

喫茶店に行ったら期末考査の勉強で躍起になってる本物学生で満杯で席がなかなか取れなくて、最初はイライラしたけど考えてみれば自分は働いている身で期末考査なんか関係なくて楽だなぁ、って思えてきてやっぱりし・あ・わ・せ :D

来週になれば私みたいな似非学生の席はいくらでもあるから…


/やっぱ一日飛ばしているのかな？まあ、明日修正することにしようっと^_^;

Current Mood: happay

I am programming at work this week. I am not writing documentation, writing design documents, drawing 30-page flowcharts from hell, trying to find out why I have no permissions to write to LDAP, trying to install various software on my computer, or trying to otherwise figure out why anyone's computer isn't working.

No. I am actually *gasp* WRITING CODE.

Finally. Back to the part of this job that's fun! In the zone! Yay.

Current Mood: consuming java, producing java

They made utterly HILARIOUS fun of Governor Blago last night on SNL, both the opening skit, and then particularly in the Weekend Update. "When ILLINOIS politicians say you're too corrupt, maybe you're too corrupt..." XD

We were all laughing quite loudly here in IL. That guy so extremely needed gone even before this latest...

Current Mood: laughing AT, not WITH

Books! Books! Boooooooks!

I finished reading a book, AND Amazon arrived to my house, so now I have more new books than I can shake a stick at! What to read first? Ah, such a quandary! A wonderful problem to have.

I also got the calendars for 2009. (But I forgot to get a daily page calendar with some nice trivia on it, so maybe I'll have to get... more books...!!)

Also happily the Amazon came by DHL this time so they left it on the porch. UPS never will do that. Stuff always used to come by DHL but the past few times it was UPS.

Now if only the magazine subscription website would hurry up and finish their site renewal so I could renew my subscriptions, life would be extra good...

Current Mood: happay

It is snowing, just lightly, big fluffy flakes from a sky that only has a thin layer of clouds so that it appears ever so slightly my favorite color of blue. Very happy weather of blue and white, which make the traffic signs look extra good. The yellow from autumn is long gone but meanwhile "PED XING" is filling in.

And of course, it is Friday...!　仕事が退けたら飲みに行くぅ…

Current Mood: happay

いつの間にかグーグルには検索キーワード補完機能がついているよね。普段は余り気に留めていないけど、今中国の漫画で見た台詞を調べようと思って「早上」を入力してみたらこんな補完候補が…　

Current Mood: amused

...then we went to Tim Horton's.

Current Mood: road trippin'