mad skillz! mad skillz! passed my exams today! as soon as microsoft process the results, i will officially be a microsoft certified desktop support technician… next stop, mcsa… & then, perhaps, mcad… anyway, mad skillz!

5 day weekend reduced to bullet points:

• saturday – bought bike, bought basketball, went riding, seabiscuit
• sunday – rode to ebisu, cleaned house, pirates of the carribean
• monday – cemetary visit, soba restaurant, drinking
• tuesday – studying, insanely hot thai curry
• wednesday – passed exams, played basketball

metacruft: here = tokyo
23/03/2005 @ 23:41 | 2 comments

vs

no contest.

metacruft: here = tokyo
19/03/2005 @ 23:33 | comments disabled

& now, the weather — a couple of relatively balmy days/nights recently, interspersed with brief flurries of snow & a bit of rain & general freeziness for good measure… basically, who knows what tomorrow (or even the next couple of hours) will bring… i’m half expecting your basic rain of toads at any minute…

especially for mr versace — expected e.t.a. for akachan is first week of june, plus or minus whatever the usual plus or minus is… so, rest easy for a few more weeks mr excited by-bystander…

busy — still working long hours, but it’s all good… moves toward more formal job security are, fingers crossed, appearing to gather some momentum of late… (plus, i have a five day weekend coming up, courtesy of a public holiday on monday & two days of time off in lieu…) got a couple of certification exams booked, had a couple of all expenses paid drinking parties, still enjoying the hell out of myself…

it’s a(nother) new bike — picking up my new bike on saturday… i’ve been wanting something i could commute on (& hence leave unattended for long periods of time without worrying about too much — not something i can manage to do with my stupidly expensive mountain bike…) so, i went to one of the local shops &, after annoying the shop guys by hanging around for ages & test riding almost everything they had in stock, i picked out a kona smoke… cromoly frame, no suspension, basic, solid, matt black… plus, it has the necessary mounting points to fit a baby carrier…

basketball — i’ve started playing basketball on wednesday nights with a couple of friends from work & a bunch of other guys… we’re playing pick up games at a school gym out at tsunashima, which is about half an hour closer to yokohama on my regular train line than my usual stop at nakameguro… been going for about a month now, & am just about through the worst of the assorted aches & pains… on a good night there’s up to 15 people, & we play for a couple of hours, rotating out teams & players… it’s a stupid amount of fun, even if my brain is yet to be convinced (despite the overwhelming & steadily mounting evidence to the contrary) that i’m no longer sixteen years old & certainly haven’t been training for five or six days per week over the last twenty-odd years (he says, realising that it actually has been twenty-odd years since i stopped playing)…

metacruft: here = tokyo
17/03/2005 @ 23:32 | 1 comment

if we each calmed down a little — we’d all calm down a lot…

just to clear up any lingering confusion — the ultrasound suggested quite strongly that sumie & i are expecting a girl… (sumie is, of course, doing all the heavy lifting in terms of literally expecting at this point… the role of excited bystander is, truth be told, not really all that taxing by comparison…)

metacruft: here = tokyo
07/03/2005 @ 21:32 | 4 comments

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metacruft: here = tokyo
06/03/2005 @ 10:25 | 3 comments

not much to report of late — we both have lingering colds that just seem intent on hanging around way beyond their use-by date… one of my friends got let go at work because of budgetary constraints… after a couple of relatively balmy days last week, winter is making one last assault (including but not limited to a bit of snow last weekend)… what else? i’ve been doing a bit of study & thinking about getting a new watch… oh, sumie started her maternity leave yesterday, & is wondering what to do with all of her new found free time…

i am (next to) the walrus
 

& there’s a somewhat belated pair of photos from the trip we took to somewhere a few weekends back… this would be more compelling if i could remember the name of the place we went to… as you can see, it had a seaworld/aquarium complex if that’s any help… (although i do remember driving through a town called ohara…) speaking of which, i’ve been reading joe le seur’s digressions on some poems by frank o’hara recently, which has been fun… although it’s also served as a reminder of how much i miss my books… somedays i really wish i had somewhere to put them…

metacruft: fone fotos | here = tokyo
01/03/2005 @ 23:43 | comments disabled