utenzi

According to the Chinese, today is the first day of the year. And since about a quarter of the Earth's population is living in China (1.3 billion strong!) their opinion has to count for something. Maybe a lot. And it means more each and every year. In any case this is the year of the rabbit. The branch is 卯 Mǎo. Whatever the hell that means. According to Wiki there's no apt English translation. At least I know what a rabbit is. :-) I work with several Chinese people and I received two New Year presents which are pictured here. I've had some types of mochi before and it's okay---the hot shredded radish worries me though. I'll try it---but I suspect it'll not like me. 恭喜发财 : Often mistakenly assumed to be synonymous with "Happy New Year", the usage of this phrase dates back several centuries. The first two words of this phrase have a long historical significance. Legend has it that the congratulatory messages were traded for surviving the ravaging bea...

I know a lot of people have a bias against Wal-mart. My message to them: Get over it! For those of you that don't mind doing business with good ole Wallyworld, they have some movies on special right now. There's 10 pre-release films that they're selling for $10 each with free shipping. Pretty sweet. I bought 4 of them as you can see to the left. At 10 bucks, why not? I also bought Season 1 of The Big Bang Theory . The second season is a better deal 'cause there were more shows (17 episodes versus 23) and it costs the same but I saw each episode at least twice due to all the reruns last year. The show wasn't as popular the first year, so less reruns, and so those episodes will be a little fresher for me. The cost savings versus Amazon.com on Big Bang was only something like $2 but the 4 movies cost about $7 more on Amazon, so the total savings was $30 minus the$4.48 for local taxes. And each movie is shipped free as soon as it's released. Sweet. If it wasn...

I don't know if that title will encourage folk to visit or scare them away. I think I'm quite safe in guessing that it's not the kind of title that will entice nature lovers. I guess that was a mistake on my part. 'Cause the pecker in question is a Woodpecker! I know. It's not much of a surprise now since you've got that big picture up there of a Red-bellied Woodpecker. This is the first one I've seen visit my bird feeder. They're a little more oriented to wooded areas and I live in the middle of a huge unwooded area that used to be a cow pasture. The only woods around are trees that we homeowners have planted. Mostly Bradford pears. Isn't that a lovely pecker? I took something like 30 pictures of it but the damn thing kept moving around so much that only 5 of them turned out okay. She hung around that bird feeder in the top picture the most but she kept trying to insert her beak into the center section. My guess is that there were insects of some ...

Last night I had to work past 7pm but I compensated today by leaving by 4pm. As a result, I was able to drive to Wal-mart when it wasn't terribly busy and score my prescription drugs with a minimum of waiting. I'm probably going to try the generic Ambien tonight and see if it works for me. It'd be great to be able to stay asleep for more than the 4 or 5 hours I usually get. I picked up a couple of DVDs from the library this morning. While someone else took out Chaos Theory between the time I looked it up online and when I got there, I did get American Gangster and Mad Money. Gangster stars Denzel Washington so no doubt it'll be quite good--and it's almost 3 hours long! Mad Money probably won't be that good but I do like the cast (Diane Keaton, Ted Danson, Katie Holmes, and Queen Latifah) so it was worth checking out. I did something at Wal-mart today that I'd never done before. Never, ever. Curious? Well, it's not all that earth shattering. I bought ba...

It was a weird night. First of all, it started off with me working past 6pm--which is anything but normal for me. (new post-doc started today so I wasn't able to get my work done until she was all set up and I'd ordered all the supplies she could think of--and she could think of a lot, I kid you not) Then when I got home I tried to watch some television to free up some space on my DVR but fell asleep before long. Upon waking I had this freaky need to have honey butter sandwiches--which was a bad thing 'cause having just returned from being away for two weeks, I didn't have any bread in the place. Solution? Wal-mart road trip!! And the concept of more Xmas candy at clearance prices certainly didn't hurt. Well, that's the reason for this cute little face to the left. Wal-mart had advanced their sale to 75% plus off and so the little reindeer was only 72 cents. I couldn't resist that darling fuzzy face at that price. Unfortunately the candy was long gone excep...

I just love candy. I just love sales. And I really, really love clearance sales. That said, when you combine candy and a clearance sale--well, let's just say I go hog wild. And if you think that infers that I can be a pig, well--keep it to yourself, thank you very much. The picture to the left might lead some to think I'm a candy hog, but it's more that I love good values. Really. Wal-mart had all their Christmas stuff--including candy--at 50% off or more. I picked up over 50 pounds of candy today. Including more than 40 pounds of Hershey Cordial Cherry Kisses. God I love those. Thanks here to Shephard who first made me aware of those little morsels of delight. Even the Santa tray and bowls were on sale ($1.75 and $4.25 respectively) and the ladybug vibrator was practically free. Don't ask. I stocked up on all kinds of candy and even got some Xmas wrapping paper, programmable Xmas lights and those more practical things--but my heart belonged to the candy. As always. I...

I made a run last night to Wal-mart around 8pm. There were a few items I needed and the gas station near there has lower prices and my tank was near empty. It gave me something to do while waiting for Life to come on at 10pm. Unfortunately I was seduced by the dark side once I entered the store. Chocolate specifically and candy in general. I just wasn't able to withstand that powerful siren call of sugar. Just look at what I got! Talk about a potential sugar rush. And some nice prices too. Those Hershey bars are 8 ounces, not the typical 5 ounces and Wally World has reduced the price recently to $1.25. That's only $2.50 a pound! I bought 8 but I suspect before the week is over a few more will find their way into my candy storage area. Like 20 or 30. *shiver* I don't like chocolate all the time but when I go through a chocolate phase--I can eat a pound everyday for a week or so. Food Lion had a 2 for 1 sale on the 5 ounce bars last week and I picked up 6 and went through...

Most of last week I was having really bad headaches. Now I always have sinus headaches to one degree or another but these headaches felt different. I think I narrowed down the reason for them to it being related to dry air. Yes, dry air. I've heard other people complain that dry air would give them headaches but it'd never happened to me before but after having horrendous headaches last Tuesday through Thursday I went to Wal-mart and picked up a $25 humidifier. It's a cute thing with a water tank that holds something like 3 or 4 liters of water and uses heat to create the mist. It also has this little cup in which you can put smelly stuff to scent the mist. I'm using eucalyptus. Anyway, this seems to be working well. Last night I woke up 4 times with a headache and each time I leaned out of bed, over the humidifier, and breathed in the steam directly for several minutes and the headache went away. It's like magic! The negative part of all this is that I really can...