What I'm up to

DRINKING! Well, at least, Rhonda is drinking iced green tea using Kirkland green tea. Yes, you read that right, Kirkland green tea - made exclusively for Costco by Ito En. It even has matcha in it. I've had it hot, and it's really good. Although drinking any iced tea, Japanese or otherwise, without any sweetener makes me wince.

WATCHING! Last weekend, flipping through channels in bed, we stumbled on Viking: The Ultimate Obstacle Course Challenge on ESPN2, and were hooked. It's a three-stage obstacle course only the Japanese could invent, complete with mental challenges (such as adding two random two-digit numbers) as well as physical challenges. It's a little like MXC on Spike TV, only the ESPN announcers give it more legitimacy (and dignity). Which it deserves, as the challenges (and, you might argue, the challengers) are totally insane. Highly recommended.

We also both really enjoyed Studio Ghibli's My Neighbors, The Yamadas. It's too easy to describe this as a Japanese "Simpsons", and it doesn't have that show's random quirkiness. It follows a typical Japanese family and while their life is fairly typical, the hiccups in their family lives are played up for high comedy. It's almost entirely appropriate for the whole family, minus one (hilarious) scene involving the teenage son buying some porn. For the most part, though, the humor is less for kids than it is for adults. It drags a little in the last half, but it's still a lot of fun. Finally, this is an anime I think even my folks would enjoy.

SURFING! to my new favorite site, Lifehacker. With the motto, "Don't live to geek; geek to live," Lifehacker supplies all the useful information to make life easier, such as how to build your own backyard deck, how to clean your garbage disposal, matting your own art or photos, and creating a false identity.

I don't really surf to this site, but Last.fm is a social networking site (think MySpace) that is build around your music tastes. You can download a plug-in that tracks all the stuff you listen to in iTunes, and it takes that data and builds charts, just like a radio station. It can let you know other people with similar listening tastes, and does an effective job of recommending other artists (since it has all that data on the users' listening habits. It even lets you generate an image file of your charts for display on your website.

LISTENING! to:





(I love that CD. Dude, can you blame me?)

What I was previously up to (6/3/06).