Nyanko's Basket

Quick post - I'm just about done packing and will start driving to San Francisco in about an hour and a half (with a stop for breakfast at Shari's).

It's a fairly short trip - about 10 days (excluding the 2 days that I "lose" when flying there), but I'm looking forward to seeing my family again, and meeting up with friends.

Just a very quick post while I wait for my flight to Singapore to board ^^;;

I went on January 19th with some friends to the San Juan islands, which are near Puerto Rico off the coast of Washington state. It was my first time there and I'd heard about it only because it's a very popular place to go to for whale-watching. It also happens to be very beautiful and has a lot of history behind it (did you know that the English and the Americans fought over it, and one of the wars was caused by a pig?)

We didn't get to watch any whales this time (probably wrong time of the year), but we had a lot of fun and I enjoyed myself very thoroughly. ^_^

( Some pictures )
San Juan Islands

I went skiing on the 22nd and it was pretty fun, even if I fell down a lot. :P I don't have a lot of pictures, but I do have this one which I asked itsacz to take while he was off being a snow bunny.

( Skiing! )

Things were pretty quiet after that, with a lot of time being spent at work getting ready for the release of Vista SP1. I did go to Hula-Hula in downtown Seattle for a karaoke event, though, and it was really good even though itsacz couldn't make it. For one thing, I sang "Summer Nights" from Grease with one of the people from work who was organizing it and she's a really good singer. We did a really good rendition of it (and she told me I sang well, too!) and I only wish I'd brought along a camera phone or something so that I could record our singing. ^^;;

Nothing much else happened, except that I took part in Chilly Hilly on Sunday which was at Bainbridge Island. It wasn't very chilly, but it certainly lived up to the "hilly" part! After 35 miles of cycling I was barely able to walk for a few minutes, and I had to stop somewhat frequently on the route to rest my legs. It helped that there were a lot of people selling Gatorade, water and edible snacks though, and some of them were very cute. :P I have some pictures, but I'm too lazy to upload them right now so I'll post them when I get to Singapore.

Anyway, right now I'm off to Singapore (via Tokyo-Narita) for a week actually 4 days to relax, get some paperwork sorted out, catch up with my friends and go for Touch 2008. It's all about the Gershwin, baby :D

Props to anyone who gets the reference in the entry title

So yesterday I was finally able to meet my friend and have lunch with her at Village Inn, followed by a few games of bowling. ^_^ It was really fun, although both of us did rather poorly and I was wondering if having the bumpers up on our lane would've been a good idea. ^^;;

By the time we left the bowling alley, it was drizzling raining, and so I got to experience my first-ever rain in Arizona. :P The rest of the day was pretty much quiet; I was in my room leveling on CoH >_> and then went out for dinner.

Today was pretty much similar, except that I got some exercise by walking about 1 mile to a Kinko's twice (the first time to see where it was) to confirm my check-in for my flight tomorrow, since I won't have time to do it at the airport ^^;; On the way, I also ate at a really nice Japanese sushi bar/restaurant that wasn't too expensive unlike a certain restaurant in the Eastside and had a really enjoyable lunch of ginger beef.

I did end up walking about 4 miles or so in total, though, since I had the bright idea of trying to walk to the Amtrak station in the afternoon heat. >_> At least it didn't rain this afternoon~

And as proof that I really was in Arizona, I present you ( me looking rather funnily at the camera on a Sunday afternoon )

Tonight's probably going to be quiet, and then I leave for the Amtrak station at around 10 am tomorrow to wait for the shuttle back to Phoenix, which hopefully won't take more than 2 and a half hours this time. Since my flight is at 4:15 from Phoenix and the shuttle leaves Phoenix at 12 pm, that's cutting it rather close. ^^;;

And then I'll be on my way home to a pile of work mail!

Random trivia: 残念ながら分かりませんでした。