Thank you Homeland Security!
Voting season is upon us and the general election is just a couple of months away and this article makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
USA! USA! USA! USA!
1 Comment September 18, 2006
Archives – September 18, 2006
Here Comes the Rain
This has actually been a pretty busy week – well relatively busy compared to the last 5 months and I am going to go chronologically backwards. HA! Take that you linearists!
Well, my mom retired from her job on Friday. Oh My. She’s been at the hospital for at least 20 years. To celebrate we went out with some of her coworkers on Thursday night to Yanagi Sushi – it’s supposed to be one of the best sushi places in Honolulu and I just think it’s funny that the place is now owned and operated by Koreans. The food was okay but thank goodness we went late at night and could take advantage of their late night specials because the prices are just too high there otherwise.
I took my mom to work early on Friday because her co workers were making a potluck party for her. I went in with her to eat lunch and man was there a lot of food there. She got a Koa jewelry box as a retirement present. Now, Koa is a pretty expensive wood since the trees have been overharvested – personally, I would have rather have gotten a gift card for the same amount that was spent on the box – but that’s me. Her other present though was a voucher for a kitten from the local Humane Society! Wheeeee!!!!!!! She accidentally found out about it a few days earlier and I got soo excited as soon as I found out since I have been missing the company of a cat ever since I left my babies in Portland. She also got a kitty starter kit which was nice since we didn’t have any cat stuff anymore – but the kit just consisted of a litter box, some litter, cat food and a food dish.
It was a nice little going away party and even cried a little. I don’t know if my mom really should be retiring yet, but this is what she wanted to do and she did it. There is a shortage of medical technologists here though, so if she does need to work again, she would totally be able to find a job again – heck the company she works for might even pay for her cobra as long as she promises to come back to work at least part time in like 6 months or so. She also knows the head of a lab in Las Vegas who are so short of med techs that right now they are offering 3 month temp positions paying about – get this – $10,000 a month plus stipends for food, transportation and lodging. Holy Crap! I have highly encouraged her to do this since that is a heck of a lot of money for 3 months of work and we do have family in Las Vegas so she would have people to help her settle while she was there.
But, okay, to the important part. We got a kitten on Saturday! Yay!!! My Mom and Grandma went to a luncheon for the members of the 442nd regiment and the restaurant is a couple of minutes away from the humane society. I dropped them off and then I got the important cat stuff – namely a cute collar and some cat toys.
I went to the humane society the day after she found out she was getting a kitten to check them out and it looked like all the kittens that were there 2 days before were gone already and a new batch came in. I was a little disappointed in the variety of kittens when I first went since they were all either black, dark gray or orange tabbies and a couple of those that are gray or orange and white. None of them were particularly striking to me.
But as soon as I walked in the kitten room, I knew which cat I wanted to get. We decided to call her Rain – although my mom wants to spell it Rayne – ugh Blood Rayne anyone? I kind of want to call her Mizu – which is Japanese for water since she is like the color of misty pool of water. She’s a really light gray color – almost white – but not quite. She is just adorable. I only have one shot of her because I didn’t want to traumatize her too much with the flash and because the battery in my camera died.
(Please excuse the messy toilet – but look! I added in the plunger for scale!)
She was a bit shy when we got her home, but that is understandable – she just got spayed the day before and she was a stray that was brought in just a couple of days ago actually. She’s about 8 weeks old and she is opening up quite a bit though. She slept a lot yesterday, but she exploring quite a bit now and she likes me! She purrs like a mofo when I pet her and she likes to cuddle next to me when I lie on the floor to pet her.
1 Comment September 18, 2006
Matsuken!!!!!!!!!
Today was an interesting day. My mom got tickets for my Grandma and I to go see Ken Matsudaira aka Abarenbo Shogun aka Matsuken. So, basically if you are Japanese and grew up in Hawaii, you have probably seen a few episodes of Abarenbo Shogun. This was a Japanese TV show which ran for 20 something years about a Shogun who would live as a commoner among his people and fight bad guys. There was always a big sword fight in every episode and the Shogun always looked out for the little guy.
Now that the TV show is over what is Matsuken to do? Develop his singing career of course – Duh! His repertoire consists of traditional japanese pop songs – with a slightly spanish influence. I was pretty excited to see him, not because I can understand Japanese, because I can’t really – but because of this -
OMFG!!!!!! Apparently he released this record last year and it didn’t do that great – until he came out with his elaborate stage show for it and talk about elaborate! It was like a mixture between Elvis, Tom Jones and Liberace! He wore a glittery silver lame kimono for his first song and the sparkle never ended. He changed costumes every 2 to 3 songs and they were just so over the top it was awesome. The show as a whole was okay – but it almost would have been like a bad talent show production without the fancy costumes and it only would have worked if the costumes were over the top – and these were over the top. I think the show was a little scaled down because it did come from Japan and the theater they were in wasn’t that large.
The audience was filled with all of these elderly Japanese people – lots of middle age women bringing their mothers to check the show out. It was also funny that they theater was handing out glow sticks – so there were all of these senior citizens waving glow sticks every once in awhile – how odd.
There seem to be quite a few shows in Japan that feature people singing traditional, comtemporary Japanese songs and I would wonder what kind of people would go to those shows and now I know.
September 18, 2006
