Japanese Dishes

I'm been through a lot lately and although the timing wasn't the best and I have more bills than I know what to do with, I finally broke down and bought some Japanese dishes. I've wanted some for years and I was tired of waiting. There never is the perfect time really. Now I can't wait to make some rice or miso soup or something so I can use them. And I've decided every time I go to that Japanese market I'm going to buy a dish or two. I only go there about two or three times a year so I'll just slowly add to my collection.

Midnight Woes

Most of the time I'm in my apartment. It is only rarely that the apartment is empty and neither of us are home. So why is it, when home issues arise, it happens when we are not here to fix them immediately?

We left to visit friends at 4:30 and got home at midnight. I'm walking down the hall barefooted and my feet are getting wet. Major portions of the rug are a soggy mess. Also, the bathroom off the master bedroom is flooded, as well as a section of bedroom carpeting.

After a bit of investigating, we notice the living room ceiling is wet. Therefore, we are guessing maybe the issue is in the apt. over us. So I go to knock on their door hoping they don't shoot me since it's after midnight.

Well, evidentally their toilet overflowed. And judging by the volume of water it must have overflowed for hours. Usually when a toilet overflows it's right after flushing, so how could they not know their toilet was overflowing and turn off the water? I don't get it.

So we've spent the last hour picking up anything on the floor that might wick up water, like stacks of art supplies and paintings and boxes of books and paperwork. Even my guitar case was wet so I had to take my guitar out of it. And if it happened hours ago, why didn't they call the landlord? If he has to replace the carpet, where will we put all the furniture and stuff so they can rip out the old carpet? I mean how sanitary is it to have water overflowed from a toilet soaked into all our rugs and the padding under it? Eww.

Meteor Shower

There is a lot of light pollution in Anaheim, but even so I was able to see five shooting stars tonight. They were all between the moon and the brightest planet. After half an hour I was too chilly to sit outside and the motion detector lights kept going on and off, which was annoying. But at least I got to experience the earth passing through the tail of a comet.

Harry Potter Half Blood Prince Movie Review

This includes spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, you might want to go elsewhere.

I re-read the Half Blood Prince a few months ago so it's still pretty fresh in my mind. I went to see the movie today with high hopes. The special effects were certainly spectacular. But the telling of the story got lost somewhere along the way. Many parts were rushed through to the point that I'm not sure how someone who hadn't read the books already could have followed the plot at all.

Also, they made Professor Slughorn such a nice guy when in the book he was an arrogant buffoon that Harry Potter tried to avoid.

But perhaps the biggest disappointment was the final battle. In the book the whole school gets involved with the Death Eaters as Tonks and Bill and the rest of the adults on the side of good get into an epic battle inside Hogwarts. I couldn't wait to see how the movie would handle that battle. Well, they handled it by omitting it completely.

They went from Dumbledor falling from the tower, to the Death Eaters escaping from the grounds. I suppose they did that to simplify things and keep the movie the right length. But seriously, if I was the writer, I would have cried. We can only hope that the epic battle is in the director's cut but I'm kind of doubting it.

Complicated Potato Salad

This has been the trickiest potato salad I ever made. One night I boiled the potatoes but before they were done, my bf decided to make something else for dinner. So I cubed the cooked potatoes and put them in the fridge.

The next night we were both too tired to make it, but he wanted eggs in his. To me a potato salad is about the potatoes, and at most I would have put four or five in there. So after I was in bed last night he tells me he boiled some eggs for the salad tomorrow.

So today I go to make this potato salad finally, and he boiled 11 eggs. Eleven! I guess he wants a few potatoes in his egg salad. Now he hates peeling eggs, so I'm more than happy to do it. So I go to peel the eggs. I notice ice in the bottom of the bowl. So I start peeling and in 7 out of 11 eggs, there is a sheet of ice under the shell. I'm guessing you can't use frozen eggs in potato salad. So he's either going to have to live with 4 eggs in his potato salad or I'm going to have to boil more eggs. I've grown weary of the whole potato salad drama.

Blogging is Getting So Complicated

I am missing the days when you could just set up a blog and start posting away.

A few months ago Project Wonderful killed all my ads because they didn't want to be on the blog if I had Kontera, so I removed Kontera and reapplied. Then they turned me down again on my busiest blog. When I got to the nuts and bolts of why, it's because of the disclosure statement at the bottom of my blogs that I added a few days ago because Google Adsense kept asking us (I thought) to add some kind of disclosure statement. The PW people said it looks like I'm accepting paid sponsorship so that's incompatible with their program, but now I'm really confused because Project Wonderful is a form of paid compensation, so wouldn't they want the disclaimer on here? I've written to them for the fourth time this morning trying to clarify. Google said it would affect how my blogs show up in search engines if I don't add a disclaimer. I'm not a lawyer. Are the rest of you as confused as I am?

Tricky Situation

Something I saw tonight gave me flashbacks to my miserable childhood.

I was eating at a fast food place on a busy street. A white car pulls in. A man and boy get out. The boy looks to be about 13 so I'm guessing father and son. I can't hear them but I can tell the man is yelling at the boy. He makes him go in to get food. The boy looks anxious.

It takes a long time for him to get waited on because the drive-thru is busy. At that point I went to the counter thinking to make sure he got waited on so the man in the car didn't get any madder. But the boy was holding a receipt so I figured he's doing okay.

I finished eating and went out to my truck. There was a single spot between me and the next vehicle. The white car was parked a few spaces down opposite from me.
Now I can see there is a woman (the mom?) and another boy in the car. Family of four out for dinner? The boy comes out with the food. Instead of waiting for him the man jumps out. Now he's all smiles and opens his arms wide and yells out, "What a good boy come give daddy a big hug." I find this mood swing very disturbing. The boy doesn't want to do it, but he's afraid not to. He inches towards the man. The man throws his arms around the boy, who looks miserable, and covers the side of the boy's face with kisses. I sit there to see what happens next. The boy gets in and the man is now laughing a maniacle laugh. He gets in and revs the engine. Instead of backing up like a normal person to pull out, he comes flying right at my truck, swerves suddenly and dives through the small space between me and the next vehicle. I thought for sure he was going to hit me. At this point I think the guy is off his rocker or flippin' drunk. By the time I get turned around I can't see the car so I don't know which way it went on the busy street.

Minutes later I was so mad I had left my cellphone at home. I was also mad that I hadn't thought to jot down his license plate. At least in CA you can call 911 and report drunk drivers. I hesitated because I didn't have enough info for the police until the guy almost took the mirror off the side of my truck and then it was too late.

All along I could have been jotting down descriptions of the people, the car, the license number and so on.

The other problem I have is I don't trust the govt. much. Say they arrest the guy. Suddenly the family had no bread winner, and the kids end up in foster care where they get abused even more. It's hard to know what to do. But I'm pretty sure I failed.