For my last weekend I spent it packing, going to Hoopfest, seeing a great comedy show and crying (as stated previously). Packing and cleaning are about as fun as anyone can imagine so I’ll let you all ponder how awesome it was for me on your own time. My family came out for the weekend for a special goodbye weekend to Spokane and as a surprise Father’s Day gift for my dad that my brother and I went in on – seeing Brian Regan live and in concert, but more on that later on to HOOPFEST! It was amazing. I loved watching all the three-on-three games and taking lots of touristy pictures of Spokane all in a tizzy. I listened to some live music, drank some cheap beer and cheered on random strangers to victory. I walked around with my dad, brother and a couple friends to watch all the festivities. It’s events like Hoopfest that make me glad I lived walking distance from downtown. I cannot imagine even trying to drive in that mess. I also got a little more familiar with North Monroe Street, which I had always avoided walking on before because of it’s proximity to the courthouse and the numerous bail bond and “antique” shops that lined it.

After Hoopfest my family and I went to the INB Performing Arts Center to see the show. It was great, Brian Regan is one of those comics who I’m glad I got to see live. I did get all fired up when during a bit about octopuses a girl in the audience shouted “it’s pronounced ‘octopi’” … no it’s not, it’s octopuses. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “octopus” is derived from a Greek word, not a Latin one, therefore it does not get a Latin pluralization. If you do feel weird about saying “octopuses” (as I sometimes do depending on the maturity level of  some of my friends) say “octopedes.” It’s a lot less common, but still more correct than octopi. Other than that, it was a great show.

I had my last day at work today and it wasn’t exactly what you would expect from a last day at work. When I showed up there was quite a hullabaloo going around because in the wee hours of the morning the office next to ours had a sprinkler head break and flood the office. Our office had some water damage, but it was mostly to the caprets and our storage area. No computers were hurt. Unfortunately the office that got ruined was a small multimedia production company and it has (most likely) lost tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

Of course due to the flooding we had cleaning crews in the office ALL DAY and these horrible giant fans whirring for hours. I still haven’t gotten over the 8 hours of blaring fan sound and had to step outside a number of times to get away from it all. Other than that the day was quite nice, I had a little mini party with pastries and my bosses got me a book of Engrish.

I really am going to miss working there. It was such a fun place to work and the people there were really cool. But I have no time to mourn the past because now it’s timeto sell all my furniture. Anyone want to buy some rugs or TV stand or chairs? I have them!

This hasn’t been easy for me the past couple weeks. I’ve wanted to shout this from the rooftop, or get nauseous and throw up on my shoes. This is a big deal for me and I never quite know how to say big announcements so I’m just going to do it.

Last November I applied for a job to work over in Japan and I will be moving to Japan at the end of July.

I didn’t want to post anything earlier because I hadn’t given my notice at work and I wanted them to hear it through me and not through happenstance or rumor. But I’ve given my notice and am ready to be open about my decision to leave a job I love.
I am going through the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program and I will be teaching in one of the schools in Kahoku City（かほく市） in Ishikawa Prefecture. I’m incredibly excited and incredibly nervous at the same time. It will be hard to leave all of my friends and family (again), but this is something I want to do to better myself and to learn more about a country I have strong connections to.

Right now, I’m going on a year-long contract with the possibilty to extend it if I see fit. I’m mostly going to hit the books and get stronger in my Japanese. I want to get a higher certification than what I qualified for in 2003 in my language ability so a lot of this will be studying and speaking Japanese. Also, I will be attending this super-sweet Cat Festival my city holds in August where people dress up like cats. Why do they dress up like cats? Because a philosopher named Kitaro Nishida liked cats.

For the next few weeks I’ll be blogging about preparing for Japan, talking about what clothes or shoes to buy and how to prepare for a year abroad.

I love you all! Thanks for your support.

Or rather is snowed for about an hour on Friday. But here are some pictures of Saturday of Pica trying to figure out what all this white stuff is. He’s gone outside in the snow a couple times, but promptly decieds he doesn’t like it and meows at the window to come back in. Then he contemplates it from his lookin’ spot as showcased below. Also I threw in a photo of Pica holding a teddy bear just for fun (it’s his mauling bear). (more…)

As I listened to the presidential debate last night, I couldn’t help but think back a year ago when WSU was a favorite for hosting the vice presidential debate in Spokane. Instead of being proud to host such an honor, WSU made an incredibly stupid move and said it was a presidential debate or nothing. For some reason, maybe it was the fact that we’re a school of 18,000, maybe it’s the fact that we don’t have a prestigious reputation, maybe it’s because WSU was biting the hand that wanted to feed it, but we lost it all, but don’t take my word for it, here’s what Tate told The Seattle Times:

“We had an offer to host the vice presidential debate, but we decided, with the focus we had right from the beginning of getting one of the three presidential debates, that we were just not in the position to accept the vice presidential debate.”

The last vice presidential debate was watched by more than 43 million viewers according to the same article.

Administrators shook it off saying no one would care about the vice presidential candidates anyway. But since Sarah Palin entered the picture, is WSU just kicking itself. She’s blogged, reported on and talked about more than McCain and though I disagree with her on almost every political platform I can’t deny that the girl’s got moxie.

If I was a betting (wo)man I would bet that the vice presidential debate is going to be watched by even more people this year than previous debates, if only for our desire to hear how Palin will dig her way out of not knowing anything about foreign policy.

So is WSU kicking itself? Cursing that charismatic Palin for breathing life into the second fiddle position. I hope so, that’s what they get for being greedy. That’s what they get for denying Eastern Washington a chance to shine in the political stage. That’s what they get for turning down a chance to bring some prestige and recognition to the school. Sure it’s not as sexy as a presidential debate, but it’s better than no debate.

I hope next time when someone throws them a life preserver they’ll take it instead of demanding for a rescue boat.

Yes it’s been a few days, but I’ve been out living my life instead of inside sheltering my eyes from the sunlight so if you have a problem with it … then we’re still cool, keep reading, K? Since we left off I have been doing more work on my apartment, treating my cat more like a human who happens to chase laser pens with enthusiasm and working my ass off.

On the work side, I’ve been working on Flash on the side. I’ve taken home some Flash projects that we have had to work on and have been trying to recreate them. I’ve also been taking little tutorials that I can find on the net, but it’s so frustrating. I’m also going to see if I can sign up to take a Portuguese class since that lagnuage is – in my opinion – visually the sexiest of all the Latin languages. If you don’t believe me, here is the character that made me decide that:

ç

If you don’t think the cedilla is something visually appealing there’s something wrong with you. I know it appears in French and a number of other languages, but the way that Portuguese pairs it a thing of beauty.  I particularly like when it forms the suffix “çao.”

In personal stuff, long-distance relationships suck. That’s all I can say. It’s just hard not getting to see the one you love every day. It recently sucked when I got sick again and this was the first time I was alone when I was sick. It sucks because all I wanted to do was sleep and have someone make me soup and make it all better, but no. I had to make my own damn soup.

Oh and my kidneys failed again. More harsh antibiotics please.

Aside from those two things I’ve been acclimating to life in Spokane. I’m starting to learn where the bars are and am actually starting to remember them after I go to them. I’ve mostly been hanging out with people from work and going dancing or drinking or karaoke-ing. If I have several beers and several Sambuca shots later, I will forget the words to “Baby Got Back” and I will make an ass of myself.

Oh and I got a MySpace again, so prove my worth to the internet community and make me your MySpace friend.

Are you buying fake diplomas? I think you are.

The Spokesman Review published the list of purchasers of fake high school and college degrees yesterday as part of their ongoing report of the Spokane diploma mill. Among those names is a (kind of) pop star by the name of Stacie Orrico. Orrico, a native of Woodinville, Wash., purchased a high school diploma saying she graduated from Mission High School.

Oh well. At least she can sing, right?

See who else has a fake degree and may have a better job than you because of it!

So now that I’ll someday be earning a disposable income (if I can ever get money to pay these start-up bills) I’ve been wondering what I should spend my money on. Despite the wondrful thought of saving up for a new TV or computer I’ve been thinking of new ways I could use my money to help get in shape. My company has a deal with a local gym so I’ll be signing up for that once I get my first pay stub Aside from that I’ve been thinking of a couple other options to get in shape:

1. Take a dance class like jazz or belly dancing
2. Take one of those really fancy yoga classes where they make the room temperature about 100 °F
3. Join a softball league

I think my best bet may be No. 3. I used to play a lot of softball, but eventually fell out of love with the sport. For the first 16 years of my life my life pretty much revolved around it and I mean that literally. My whole family plays. Our vacations, weekends I could take the car, parties, you name it they were revolved around softball. Some of my first childhood friends and my parents best friends were all a part of the same league.

It got to a point where it stopped being fun so I decided to take my leave. I always wanted to get back into it, but just on a recreational level. I played on a couple intramural teams in college, but now I think it might be time to join a league. Unfortunately I may have to wait for next season since most leagues would be about midway through now. But I see it as a way to get back into training. I’d like to find a batting cage or something around here so I could literally get back into the swing of things. But until next year there’s always belly dancing!

My Quoteboard:

My Aunt: You remind me of that show with Mary Tyler Moore where she got a job in the big city. What was the name of that Mary Tyler Moore Show?
Me: “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”?

The Washington gas tax will go up 1.5 cents tomorrow to make the tax 37.5 cents a gallon according to the Associated Press. DOL spokesman Brad Benfield was quoted saying the tax was not going to be “real noticeable” because it’s such a small fraction of the overall price of gas.

Yes it’s true that people probably won’t notice the extra 1.5 cents because gas prices are already so ridiculously high right now, but I think people would notice if there were no gas tax at all and we weren’t paying an extra 37.5 cents a gallon for gas. The gas tax had to be created because a horse’s ass (I-831 may not have passed Congress but it passed in my heart) Tim Eyman fought so successfully to lower the price of Washington state car tabs on vehicles and putting a cap on the price of tabs at $30 even instead of paying 2.2% of the value of your car. So now we have this regressive tax that is affecting a lot of people more than the Motor Vehicle Exise Tax.

For example, my car is valued at about $5,000. If the MVET were still around that would mean I would pay $110 a year in taxes. Those who had more valuable cars obviously would pay more. Now lets break down the gas tax. Since I hardly use my car any more lets say I fill up 3 times a month. Since my car holds 13 gallons that means I purchase around 39 gallons of gas each month. and 37.5 cents a gallon in taxes, I’m paying $14.63 a month or $175.50 a year in taxes. And that’s underestimating how much I drive. If I fill up four times a month that means I’m shelling out $234 a year – more than double what I would pay if Washington still had MVET.

And if Benfield thinks that the tax isn’t really that noticeable, according to the AAA the average price for a gallon of gas in Washington is $4.34. In case doing the math is too hard, the average price of gas would be $3.97 a gallon without the tax.

On a side note: Spokane has the lowest average of gas prices in Washington’s metro areas with an average of $4.09 a gallon. I like it here.