my scarflette pattern is now in the craftster crochet pattern archive! woo hoo!!

I have purchased a new purse!! FINALLY

If you will remember from WAY back last March or so I started on this road to find a bright orange purse with lots of pockets.

well - I didn't end up with orange. :P BUT I did find one that is perfect in all other regards.

Jill·E Designs makes a very purse looking camera bag. so that is what I got. It's a nylon brown bag with camera bag style dividers inside so I can arrange everything how I want it. Go take a look.

happy holidays to everyone in blogland!

We didn't end up at space15twenty again, but we did have a lovely lunch with Jane and Gerry. The boys listening (Gerry on the right, Lee on the left).



and Jane gabbing as usual (my favorite thing about her):



topics included: Jackson Pollock and his awesome thoughts on art and how suck his actual art was, Andy Warhol, Science Fiction, how the recession sucks, and many many other topics.

:)

we will be hanging with Hurricane Jane and her hubby Gerry tomorrow at Kitchen 24 and probably making our second trip to space15twenty in 2 days. Today we visited to pick up the Murakami exhibition book at Hennessey + Ingalls.

as I promised before, here are some shots of the building:







and my personal favorite shot of the day:

Took this photo yesterday while wandering around at lunch

So kimono reincarnate got tagged and invited readers to do the tag them selves, so here goes:

7 random facts about me:

1) I'm afraid of heights - even in pictures, on TV, video games and movies. My feet tingle like they are going to sleep when I see a sequence that is too long in a film or video game or on TV.

2) I hate real bees and love cartoon bees. I completely freak out if a bee is flying near me, but cartoon bees are the cutest.

3) the traditional domestic arts are not my forte - cooking, cleaning, etc. I kinda suck at all of them. Crafts, no problem, but ask me to make a cake and you are risking your digestive system

4) I have big feet

5) I have more than one favorite color

6) The women on my father's side of the family all look very similar, tall, brown hair, green or brown eyes. My grandmother, her twin, her twin's daughter and I look so similar that the only way you can tell us apart in photos is mine and my cousin's are in color and I'm wearing 70's styles as opposed to 60's like my cousin.

7) My dad is the one who taught me how to sew when I was in high school. My mom is visually impaired and cannot see well enough at that scale to sew. My dad actually learned to sew for his drama degree so showed me how to use the machine an follow patterns.

I'm not good about doing chain letter type stuff, so if you read this and want to join the fun, feel free.

And I leave you with a photo - a shot of an alley way stair case on the way from the Ebisu Tokyo metro station to Arco tower:

We were planning on going again in February to meet a friend of ours for his birthday.... But after seeing a steady slow decline in the exchange rate ($1 US to 89 Yen) we are canceling our trip.

I'm so sad.

I really had hoped to see Tokyo in the winter.

here's a funny little secret to make it all better....

I love modern Japanese toilets. No, really, I do.

They make noise so you don't have to hear your neighbors in a public bathroom, the seats warm up, and flush very quietly.

Too much information? It's ok - between my friend Becky and I - we had our whole office convinced they wanted to go to Japan just to try the bathrooms. My VP asked, when I came back from my first work trip, why Becky and I had so many pictures of toilets. I blame Becky. ;) Her brother (or some other relative) had wanted to sell them in the US and was really excited to see one in anything other than a catalog.

Here's the one in Ebisu Westin:

I have been really sick this week.

I started the week just fine, but by Wednesday afternoon I was sniffly and achy. Thursday I woke up and couldn't breathe out of my nose. Strange colors were leaking from said nose.

I had a sinus infection - AGAIN!!

I called in sick to work two days in a row, missed Disney Land with the HerShe Group, and missed out on being point on a web campaign that I really wanted to work on. I never call in sick - but I got too bad, too fast. Them's the breaks, I guess.

Pictures and pretty stuff coming soon, I promise. If I make it through the work day tomorrow with out dying and coming home early, I will be posting again.

I'm grumbling again....

I have a love hate relationship with my apartment.

I love:

- easy access to everything I want to see or visit within a 5 mile radius
- urban, it's in the heart of Hollywood
- no pet deposit when we moved in
- great neighbors
- great neighborhood

I hate:

- the maintenance guy
- that my electricity is flaky
- that my AC is flaky
- repairs in general

Let me explain... It's always our fault something isn't working. We have had long running issues with our air conditioning unit. There is a freon leak somewhere in the system. The cooling unit is on our roof and the blower and intake are actually in our apartment. Our AC has to be re-charged with Freon every year and the management doesn't want to disassemble the building to fix the leak, so they just keep recharging it and telling us all the dog hair in our apartment is clogging the system up.

The electricity in our apartment is freaky and has been for the past year - we keep blowing circuits on breakers that have had the SAME exact electronics plugged in for years. For example - our refrigerator and microwave are on the same circuit and have been for about 4 years. A few months ago, all of the sudden and on random occasions, turning on the microwave while the compressor for the refrigerator was on started tripping the circuit breaker. And of course, it's our fault for having too much stuff plugged in. Come ON, really???!!! same electronics, same circuits, four years, no problems. Not my fault!!! Your power sucks - replace our circuit box with heavier duty circuits already. But no.

Our garbage disposal got clogged up, this time my fault (I stupidly put artichoke leaves in the disposal as well as rice). no problem. the maintenance guy comes out cleans it out and we're back in business, but the sink doesn't drain very well. Eh - I live with it. Fast forward to Monday morning..... husband juices a few oranges and sticks the rind in the disposal. The sink backs up and the disposal refuses go. ARGGHH!!!!

Instead of calling maintenance, Husband replaced it. very manly manly of my techno nerdie husband ;) we bought a much nicer unit that will be replaced with a crappy (but nicer than the one had) unit when we move out. He even snaked the drain pipe!! As it turns out my clog had backed up further in the pipe than the maintenance guy thought and it was mostly plugged up anyway.

We will be doing all the maintenance ourselves from now on.

Getting an AC guy and electrician in are next on the list...