Category: general

Their menu is so easy!!!! @_@ After laboring for four freaking days on Wife Saver (Belair Rd.), I have to say, I would kiss the feet of Schlotzsky’s corporate officers if I could.

Also, “To All Tha Dreamers” is fantastic music for data entry. (I’m afraid what will happen when people start showing up at the office, because I’m tapping my foot, bobbing my head, jerking my shoulders around, and otherwise bopping in my chair, as if I actually knew how to dance. I’m, like, totally frontin’.)

I can’t get over how cool the new ED, “To All Tha Dreamers”, is. It is way too cool for you, that’s for sure.

I just finished watching it, and I have to say…I am totally impressed. The voice acting was amazing, and they got just the perfect voice for Ryoma. This release was on par with the dubs shown on Cartoon Network. Maybe even better, because sometimes professional dubbers speak in monotone, or use the wrong inflection.

My favorite part was the way Sasabe sounded almost exactly like The Cheat’s version of Strong Bad. I also especially liked how they did the opening and ending theme songs.

Download the episode. It’s fantastic.

Aaaaaaaah, Aeron.

I think this is pretty cool. It’s inconvenient (not to mention expensive) to wear a kimono, but they are beautiful and part of Japan’s heritage. It’s nice that women are encouraged to wear them every now and then.

I’d like to have my own kimono someday…

AikenOnline has a piece about the lingering effects of the chlorine released at the Graniteville train crash. It’s well done, including discussions of other similar wrecks as well as the opinions of “chlorine experts” (who, in my opinion, seem to want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that everything’s A-OK).

rita_llodys@yahoo.co.uk

The National Lottery
P O Box 1010
Liverpool, L70 1NL
UNITED KINGDOM
(Customer Services)
Ref: UK/9420X2/68
Batch: 074/05/ZY369
17th, October 2004.

WINNING NOTIFICATION:

We happily announce to you the draw (#960) of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY/MERSEYWORLD,online Sweepstakes International program held on Saturday 5th March 2005.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number: 56475600545 188 with Serial number 5368/02 drew the lucky numbers: 06-19-24-26-27-49(bonus no.), which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.ematch 5 plus bonus.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of £528,279 (five hundred and twenty eight thousand, two hundrend and seventy nine pounds sterling ) in cash credited to file KTU/9023118308/03.

This is from a total cash prize of £5,282,794 shared amongst the first ten (10) lucky winners in this category i.e Match 5 plus bonus.

All participants for the online version were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 unions, associations, and corporate bodies that are listed online. This promotion takes place weekly.

Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our European booklet representative office in Europe as indicated in your play coupon.In view of this, your £528,279 (five hundred and twenty eight thousand, two hundrend and seventy nine pounds sterling) would be released to you by any of our payment offices in Europe.

Our European agent will immediately commence theprocess to facilitate the release of your funds as soon as you contact him.

For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential till your claim is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize. This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program. Please be warned.

To file for your claim, please contact our fiduciary agent:

Ms.Rita Lloyds
Email:rita_llodys@yahoo.co.uk

You can go to our online result site to confirm the value of your winnings and also get a prize breakdown:-

http://www.lottery.merseyworld.com/archive/Lott20.html

Goodluck from me and members of staff of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY/MERSEYWORLD.

Yours faithfully,

Rita K. Lloyds
Online coordinator for UK NATIONAL
LOTTERY/MERSEYWORLD,
Sweepstakes International Program.
Open 7 days 8am-11pm.

——————————————
Use o melhor sistema de busca da Internet
Radar UOL – http://www.radaruol.com.br

I’m sure a lot of European lotteries use Brazilian email accounts…nice date on the email, too.

I also like how it links to a page that doesn’t exist on a server that does have a lengthy page detailing the rash of email lottery scams that have popped up of late.

Cloudmark SafetyBar, Block Fraud!

Eric Burns has written a great piece on artists who completely miss the point of their medium by going for the hidden meaning. Bravo.

Luke has an interesting clip blog post up entitled “Regarding biblical interpretation“, which points to a rather scary website. I think the guy who makes the scary website might be a little off his rocker, but the points about translations of the Bible still stand.

Of course, just because a book written by people thousands of years ago was mistranslated doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist. I’m more willing to toss out religion than I am spirituality, which is why I’m agnostic, not an atheist.

I celebrated losing another pound by eating two platefuls of sinful Southern breakfast treats at

and a hugeass roast turkey leg for lunch.

Yum.

I met up with Mari and her parents at Golden Corral at 8:30 or so this morning. Chris showed up when I was finishing off my second and last plate. A good and fattening time was had by all.

After that, Chris headed out to watch a movie, and Mari’s dad went…somewhere, and I drove my car back to my apartment, and then Mari and her mom showed up in Mari’s car, and we all rode together downtown for Springtime Made in the South. (Musical cars!)

There were two booths I wanted to visit at the show. I’d seen them at Christmas Made in the South. One was the lacquerware booth where I’d purchased Brooke’s Christmas present and a nice little black box with pink detailwork for myself. The other was a stand with art made with seahorses, sand dollars, and starfish. Wanda bought me a nice piece from there which is now hanging in my bathroom.

Unfortunately, neither of those vendors was present!

I did see a beautiful octagonal glass box with a mirrored bottom. The glass and mirror were beveled, and the glass panels also had pictures carved on them. It was all held together with what appeared to be brass. For $30, I figured it was pricy but worth it, but the lady didn’t take credit cards. I thought about going to the ATM and then going back to get it. Ultimately, though, I chose to save my money. After all, Sean and I just spent $2000 on chairs.

I also saw some really nice necklaces and earrings. Most of the jewelry booths were overpriced, but the stuff I really liked was reasonable–$18 for a gorgeous necklace and earrings set. I was so close to buying it. I probably should have.

Other than that, nothing really caught my eye this time around. I did buy an elastic hair clip thing from Mari’s “scarf people“, because they put my hair up in it and it actually stayed and I really need to do more with my hair, but that’s it.

After we were done shopping, we headed to Broad Street to find some lunch. Rain pelted us as we ran to the car, but it didn’t last long and was only drizzling when we got out again. We’d planned to go to Tap Tap, a tacos and tapas place, but it was closed, so we went next door.

I can’t remember the restaurant’s name. It’s in the space where the Dessert Shop used to be (click here to see some old pictures ;P), and it’s medieval-themed, with banners, swords, paintings of dragons, and chairs shaped like thrones. They serve some normal things, like sandwiches, soups, and baked potatoes, and they also serve…huge roasted turkey legs.

It was a fun day. But I was dead on my feet at that point. Mari’s dad came to pick get her mom, and we all went down to the Dessert Shop’s new location (which is much bigger!), but I didn’t have any dessert. Instead, I sat there and tried not to fall asleep :) Once everyone was finished, we went our separate ways, and Mari drove me home. I pretty much fell into bed immediately, and slept until around 10:30pm…at which point I got up and started working on my photo page. So now you know what I was doing all day!

Aaaaaaaaand it’s about time to head back to bed. I enjoyed today and yesterday, and hopefully I’ll get plenty of rest tomorrow so I can be recharged for Monday. Lots of work to get done next week.

Ciao!

I spent an inordinate amount of time this evening/morning adding keywords and correcting old ones in my various galleries. When I first started using keywords in smugmug, I did silly things because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to categorize my pictures yet. An example: I put “syuusuke“, “canal“, and “trail” on every single one of my Augusta Canal pictures, even though the pictures didn’t always actually contain my bike, the canal, or the trail. Another example: My Japan pictures had a “train” category assigned to all pictures taken while I was on the train, which I think is misleading, because if I click on a category called “train”, I expect to see pictures of trains. So, I changed that category name to “rail“, and then put “train” in wherever there was a picture of an actual train–although I may have missed some :/

While I was in there, I also reorganized some galleries. The biggest change is the fact that I got rid of the “Friends” category, which contained photos from Dawn and Sam’s visit last September. I moved those galleries into my “Exploring” (for the pictures from when we were in Augusta) and “Travel” (for the pictures from the day we went to Savannah) sections.

I tried to put the keyword “me” on all pictures of myself, but smugmug didn’t like that for some reason (maybe it uses “me” for the “This Is Me!” photo), so I used “moi” instead. I also updated my bio.

Hopefully everything makes sense and is easy to find. Let me know if you have any suggestions! I still need to assign keywords and captions to quite a few photos, but that’s a project for another time.

So, I went to the canal trail again yesterday. I worked from 7 am until 2 pm, then decided to cut out and go biking because the weather was gorgeous, and I needed a break to steady myself. I stayed out there for hours, and went back to work for a couple more hours afterwards.

Biking was great. It was just what I needed to destress.

It only took me 15 minutes to get from the start of the trail to Augusta Water Works, where the forest trail begins. That’s three minutes off my original time. This is because I was going 14 miles per hour! I didn’t really feel like I was pushing myself overly hard, either. (I must admit, though, that I did stop every now and then to take a picture…) All that biking to work has really paid off!

Once I was at the Water Works, I stopped and took pictures of the Water Works and all the construction going on in the area, and then headed up the hill. At that point I had to decide whether I wanted to go towards downtown, or head into the forest trail.

Ultimately, I decided that I wasn’t in the mood for the long red dirt path, and that I wanted to get some pictures of the forest. So in I went.

It was beautiful in there. I was hoping to find flowering trees and plants, but instead I was met with lush greenery. That was fine by me.

You’ll find discussions of the trail and my experiences over at the gallery.

After reading this glowing review of yoga by Dalton Hammond, I am very interested in starting classes. Or something. I wonder if there’s a good class somewhere nearby?

From Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough:

“I’ve always wondered, could I have actually ever done it,” the one-time lead singer of a rock band called the Ugly Rumours, more recently prime minister, told his former bass player in an interview published on Thursday.

Unfortunately, Mr. Blair just wasn’t enough of a badass…so he had to settle for becoming a world leader.

So, yesterday I worked 10 hours. I’m not looking for sympathy, because plenty of people work harder and longer than I do, and blah blah. I’m just saying. That’s a lot of data entry. I did have a break in the middle where I had to help dispatch lunch and take phone orders, but that wasn’t really much respite since I hate doing those things. It was okay since Audrey was here, though.

After lunch was over I left to take my own lunch. I went home and had yet another frozen dinner. Those things are good for keeping me within my calorie limits! On my way back to work I stopped at R. Gabriel’s and got a smoothie and an apple. (I ate the apple this morning.) The girl at R. Gabriel’s either had a really good bra, or she just naturally has fabulous breasts. I don’t think I was successful in trying not to stare at them.

I worked until around 6:20 or so, then finally left, because Sean had called me asking about dinner. We decided on Chinese, so instead of going home I drove out to Sun Kwong on Belair. Instead of driving up Bobby Jones and taking I-20, I took Washington Road to Columbia (via Flowing Wells, because the turn onto Columbia was a mess of traffic), then drove out to Belair and turned left. I don’t know if that’s faster or not. I do know there were a lot of morons on the road at rush hour yesterday.

I guess I was hungry because I ordered way too much food. The shrimp lo mein is in our refrigerator, unopened. I had sweet and sour chicken with white rice, and Sean had the almond chicken combo with fried rice and an egg roll, and we shared the cream cheese wontons (which were faboo). While we ate we watched A Fistful of Dollars, which I had never seen, and which is a fabulous movie. We bought the boxed set of the Man with No Name movies from Amazon, so hopefully we’ll watch the next one soon.

While we watched, I demonstrated yet again my complete lack of culture:

Me: Bad, bad dubbing.
Sean: It’s hard to believe that this movie was completely in Italian before.
Me: …even his [Eastwood’s] lines?
Sean: Yeah. He had to go back in later and dub everything.
Me: …so they’re called “Spaghetti Westerns” because they were made in Italy?
Sean: Yeah. It was supposed to be derogatory, but–
Me: –but they turned out to be the best Westerns ever!
Sean: Pretty much.

I seem to miss all these things that everyone else knows, somehow. (Probably because of how I have been afraid of R-rated movies for most of my life.) Anyway, I’ve been enlightened.

After that, it was pretty much time for bed, so I went to bed.

This morning I did not want to get up. C’est la vie…but it’s almost Friday, right?