Tim’s Ramblings

I’m currently dog sitting my sister’s dog Forest. A 1 year old German Shepard mix…he is…precocious.

Doesn’t really listen to me. Whimpers and barks for no reason. Can’t stay still for more than…oh…2 minutes. So yeah. A 45 pound puppy.

But he does have his moments. And I also took this opportunity to try to get some actual shots of him. It was hard since…well…like I said…sitting still is hardly an option. But I managed to get a few shots.

Most are after the cut so click on the link to see the rest and and they are, as usual, linked to a larger photo. :)

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Yesterday I finally got my first opportunity to test out my new lens and also get to see my coworker’s daughter, S, (who I have known since 2) take horseback riding lessons. For those of you who work with me, you probably know who this is by now.

The weather was really nice but I guess it may have been a bit muddy outside so they did the practice indoors. That was unfortunate since the stables were pretty dark relatively speaking and it was very very difficult to get a good shot. But it was also a good chance to test the lens too. I figure I might as well use this blog as kind of a portfolio too.

The lens (Canon 24-70mm L) worked very well. The autofocus, even in low light, even using the servo, was very very fast and accurate. And with the f-stop going down to 2.4, I was still able to get decent shots even indoors without an external flash to annoy people. Granted I had to jack up the ISO a few times to 1600 just so I can shoot at 1/50 but still, you gotta work with what you got right?

Anyway, here are some of the shots that came out decently. We were there with H from work and S of course but also her new baby J who will be 2 at the end of October (!!). It was really nice seeing S taking such good care of one of the biggest horses there and it was also cool to see J totally without fear around the horses too.

Most photos are behind the cut so click on the link to see more. And as usual, each photo is linked to a bigger one.

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Yup. It’s actually called a munchkin. It’s a special breed of cats that have abnormally short legs. I mean…really really short. Like a feline version of a Welsh Corgi. Apparently there is a bit of controversy about whether this cat should be recognized as an actual breed since apparently this is basically a genetic mutation and an abnormality but…then again…aren’t most breeds like that anyway??

Regardless, a former coworker bought a munchkin cat for his wife and they asked me to stop by and take some photos. As this was my first real pet photography attempt other than the standard shots of the family pet, it was more difficult than i thought. Also I was dealing with natural light (which wasn’t much) and combined with room lighting (which didn’t help), it was hard getting the light right too. Oh, and did I mention this was a kitten? Kittens don’t stay still too much apparently…

But some shots came out well and I got permission to post them so here they are! I’m not 100% satisifed with them but hey, I still think they turned out decent! Click on the pic for a bigger shot.

Click on the link for more :)

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So, for the first time in forever, I went to the Cleveland National Air Show on Sunday. It was a beautiful day with barely a cloud in the sky and woooo boy did I get some sun. My face looks…well…looks like I was out in the sun way too long without sunscreen. Ooops…

But it was fun! I remember when I was in college, every Labor Day weekend, F16’s and stealth bombers and even the Blue Angels buzz by the dorms rattling the windows. This time, I finally got around to heading out there with a former coworker and his wife to check it out for real.

It was fun. I mean…in the end it’s just a bunch of fighter jets doing manuevers and demonstrations but there’s something about seeing them fly by and hearing and feeling the afterburners and seeing just how fast they climb and dive and everything else that makes it all so…well…COOL.

Of course the highlight is the Blue Angles. Sure you see them on TV and such but there’s something to be said about seeing it live and going “Oooooooooooooooooooh”. And though we didn’t pay for stadium seating, we were still very close to the center point so we got to see it all. Oh, and rest assured, they still played the Top Gun Anthem and Dreams by Van Halen during the Blue Angels show. Good to see somethings never change :)

I didn’t have my new lens yet but I still managed to capture some nice shots. Click on the link for the rest of the pics and as usual they are linked to bigger ones!

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Took a day off on Monday and went to the Zoo with a friend of mine for the first time in probably 10 years! It was a really beautiful day outside and we had a great time. And of course I brought my camera along so I took lots and lots of pics.

Unfortunately many of the shots didn’t come out so well… Anima photography is hard!! Like I told a coworker today, no matter how well you take shots of animals, 99.9% of the time, any shot that turns out well will either look not much different from a photo in a children’s animal book or at the very very best National Geographic. But ultimately, most will have children in them, something like a car or something in the background, or some part that’s blurry because they moved, or any other sort of flaw…

But whatever. I still had fun and a few DID turn out well so here you go! Each one is linked to one slightly larger (something close to 1024×768). Click on the like below to see the rest!

First we’ll start off with the one that turned out really nice.

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How’s THAT for a title?

Can’t believe it’s Sunday evening already. What happened to the weekend?

Oh yeah. Wedding on Saturday and today? Sleeping in and being lazy. Ha.

A friend from college is here until Wednesday so I took Monday off to spend time with her. Been too long! And I also really really needed the break. Seriously… It’s been a pretty rough and stressful (from a work perspective) month so, though it was nice not being in Japan this month, it was still managed to beat me up. So I was going to go to the West Side Market on Monday and then her and I were going to go to the Art Musuem but then, just now, I realized that they are closed on Mondays!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Damn.

I was looking forward to it too :( Guess we’ll find something else to do. But man…Art Museum then lunch at Tommy’s sounded so so so so good. Now I’m bummed out :(

A funny story to end this though.

On Friday I was at the rib cookoff at work when my a coworker came up to tell me that another coworker of mine, S, wanted me to call her back. I was then asked to do a pretty unique thing. She forgot 2 bottles of breast milk in a cooler in the company fridge. I was going to see her Saturday evening at the wedding reception so she wanted me to get it, keep it in my fridge, freeze the ice pack, and then bring it with me to the reception.

I asked her why should I if she can make more… But I was told that it’s just not how it works. Ok. Of course the obligatory “I’ll try not to put it in my coffee!!” joke was made. Then that joke was struck down with the response “…well…you can if you want. I tried it. It’s kind of sweet.” Right. No. At least not unless you’re my wife because otherwise that’s just weird even for me….

But this isn’t the main point I’m trying to make. A few people found out about this because either I told them or the friend who gave me the message to call S told them. And I was sort of intrigued by the reaction. When I was asked, it did feel a bit weird but I never thought “ew”. But it seemed the common reaction amongst my friends and acquaintances was “ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww”.

Really?

Why??

I mean…yeah, it came out of her but it’s not like it’s a urine sample for godsakes. It’s milk. Yes…she produced it. But her baby drinks it! You probably drank your mom’s too! Yeah yeah, some of you may drank formula. But that wasn’t YOUR choice. It was your mom’s. It even looks like milk. There’s nothing “gross” about it. It’s perfectly fine.

Yet it was a consistant “ew” response.

Weird.

Is it really yucky for me to transport 2 bottles of milk? Or am I just weird?

Though I have to wonder what my sister thought when she saw the two bottles in my fridge when she went to get a drink :)

Anyway, back to TV. For some reason I’m not really excited about the closing ceremonies… Oh well.

…so…I’m on Facebook playing Sramble or Scrabble or any of the other word games out there that I’m getting my butt kicked in when I see one of their ads along the side.

They’ve always been about dating and such. Once they had a dating thing for me about finding other hot guys. Um. No please…

But anyway, this particular one caught my eye.

Ok. First off….how can a test tell you any of this? Fine fine. It’s just an ad. Sure. Ok. I can let that pass.

But more importantly…what the HELL kind of a kiss is this?? I mean…goddamn!!

It asks if you ever screwed up a CHANCE to kiss a woman. Not if you ever screwed up a KISS with a woman. Not to mention the dude looks old enough to be the woman’s father but…yow.

Let’s take a closer look shall we?

Dear god…

She’s holding his head like she’s going to give him CPR. Even looks like she’s ALMOST squeezing his jaws open. Meanwhile he looks like he’s either about to take a big big breath or he wants to desperately tell someone a piece of food is lodged in his throat.

Come on…of all the pictures to pic for an ad about a stupid “30 Second Kiss Test”…eeeeeeeeeeeesh.

And that concludes Tim’s overthinking of stupid stuff for tonight…

Had a good time tonight at the Winking Lizard with 2 other Japanese people. One is a coworker and the other is a partner here to do a 3 month stint. Just shooting the shit. Stupid stuff while eating wings. Of course, I have a voice that carries and so does he and the coworker is not very quiet either (the coworker is a she). And of course we were talking in Japanese. I bet a few people at the bar were looking at us like “what the hell??” Ha. Good times though. I needed a night like this after such a long week already…

Conference call at 8:30 tomorrow night though. Wooooooo….. Bed or Olympics? Hmmmm….

Ahhh the Olympics. I enjoy watching swimming. Especially since I used to swim. Yes for those of you that didn’t know, I did! Really! I was in shape back then. Some day I will post a pic of myself from HS. I was a breaststroker (yes yes, laugh it up). 100 yards in 1:04:1 baby. Wooo!

Anyway, while I’m in my office chatting or, like now, blogging or anything else, unfortunately I can’t see the TV in the living room. And though I could use the laptop, the laptop gets really really hot and the couch is juuuust not at the right height for me to put the laptop on the coffee table and work comfortably…and the couch is too low or the TV tray is too high to use that too. So I’m in my office.

But no matter!! I have the slingbox!! Wooo! So here’s what my desktop looks like tonight while I do a bit of facebook-ing, chatting with a friend, and downloading some stuff and so forth. That in the corner there is my slingbox, and though it’s not the HD slingbox, it’s ok. It looks decent even on the HD channel. And the picture is smooth. There’s about a 1.5 second lag from the actual feed but no biggie there since I can’t see the original broadcast anyway.

So yup. With this combined with my little laptop and my TV upstairs in the bedroom, I got Olympics eveyrwhere!

Wooo!

….and no…this is NOT sad dammit! This is cool!!!

Right??

Ahh…Sunday coming to a close… Last week was what I like to call “hell week”. Bad. Bad bad bad.

This upcoming week? …probably just as. But at least this weekend was quiet and nice. Was able to sleep a good 14 hours on Friday night to Saturday…well…afternoon and that was nice.

But yes. Olympics!! Started without too much issues and is going along swimmingly! And with the combination of my living room widescreen TV, my bedroom TV, and slingbox on my desktop computer (can’t see TV from the office) and also on my tiny Fujitsu laptop, I can be doing whatever and still keep up with the olympics. Like right now. I’m cooking (pasta is cooking so thus the post) so I have the olympics on my laptop going. I will cheer on the US team…except for men’s gymnastics and the dude from Japan swimming the 100 breast. Go Japan!

Anyway, why did it scare me? Not due to the atheletes. But more from the country itself. So I should say China scares me. 19,000 participants in the opening ceremonies. For godsakes. Perfect precision making things look computer controlled. If you didn’t see it, just take my word for it. It was both impressive and also kind of scary at what a country of 1.3 billion can do. Yow.

I would rather just take a vacation for the next two weeks and stay at home watching the games but…ah well. Gotta make a living right?

…on a TOTALLY different note…went to Costco and bought a 24 pack of Propel and they replaced my lemon flavor with grape. Arg. I liked lemon!! I don’t like kiwi/strawberry! Don’t replace my lemon! Damn you Costco!!!!

…boo.

Anyway, back to cooking and the olympics!

I’m alive. I swear.

Not much has been going on lately. Been nice being home for a while for a change that’s for sure. And catching up with a bunch of friends from HS on Facebook too. Who would have thought that FB would be a mini HS reunion!

Anyway, to make up for it, here are some totally random pictures that I have taken with my camera over the past month. Why did I take them? Some are obvious…some? I was bored? Maybe? Anyway, no matter.

First off! New gum flavor from Japan!

The others are just chololates. Yup. Cola and Lime. I like them. Guys around me were not big fans though. It doesn’t TRULY taste like Cola but kinda what Cola gummis taste like.

Moving on.

Alas, now that my desk is smaller (since I’m not at the office as often) I had to take a lot of my action figures home… But a few remains! Including the 2 Ingrams from Patlabor and 2 Tachikoma figures from Ghost in the Shell. The Ingrams are Revoltechs so they have these cool joints that make them ultra poseable.

Yes. I’m almost 33. And I play with robots. So?? Hmmmm????

Moving on.

The best popcorn ever. EVER.

This is Dichotomy Popcorn from the West Side Market. Caramel popcorn with cheese. Dear god is it good. I can eat that whole bag if I wanted to in one sitting. Seriously.

Moving on.

The absolutely cutest puppy in the world.

That’s it. Just cute. CUTE.

Moving on.

Finally. For the last picture. Japan’s favorite condiment…though most of you have probably never ever heard of it before.

Kewpie Mayonnaise. Awesome. Every Japanese house probably has one. It’s the greatest. I swear it’s like a big national secret. Everyone thinks soy sauce…but seroiusly. This stuff is awesome.

It’s much smoother than the US variety and it uses apple cider vinegar and MSG so it’s sweeter too. But you can use by mixing it with soy sauce to make a paste. You can even just dip cucumber sticks in it and it’s awesome. Me? I just like it on toast. Just toast and Kewpie Mayo. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Oh, and yes…it’s just as loaded with fat as the US version. Just creamier. And tastier.

Anyway there you go.

More regular posts will start to come soon again…maybe… :)