HTM-Hell

So back in the day, when I was a feshman in college. With my then fiance Ayumi I enrolled in a website design class at the University. Over the course of a semester Ayumi and I hammered out simple little websites which although fun were really hard to make. Well, the class ended and I had never though about nor hadn't had any interest in website design since then. The other night I downloaded a 30 day trial of Adobe Flash and following a tutorial started goofing around with that program and made some fun flash animations. That got me thinking back to my class and in my spare time I thought I would give another go at building a website.

After two days of tinkering around with HTML, ladies and gentlemen I present to you the one and only
www.kzombie.com- more zombie than you can shake a stick at. It's not much now but, over the next few days hopefully I will be able to add some fun things to it. Right now I invite you to enjoy the December 2008 calendar, look at my header and even follow a link to a current favorite website I have been frequently perusing.

I have a good friend here in Isobe who professionally designes websites and calling him up Wednesday night he came over for a few hours and helped jog my memory about how to do all this stuff. After a few minutes, I was able to piece things together. My only problem now is, what to put on that page.

Check back here and there for updates!

ABBA

It's 9:09 Friday night. I have absolutely nothing to do. I have looked at all my regular websites, I have played all my games, just not in much of a mood to do anything. I currently have ABBA Gold playing thus the name for this post. Things have been going pretty well lately. It is cold, and as a result I have pulled out my big thick winter jacket and wore it to school today. Upon entering the office today, the Vice Principal came over to me and (I think I caught a bit of sarcasm in his comment) you sure look warm. I had my big snowboarding jacket, a scarf and some fingerless gloves. Yes I was warm, yes I was comfortable and no I didn't feel dumb.

It is that time of the year. Our apartment must not have been made very well because in the summertime it gets uncomfortably hot and in the winter it gets uncomfortably cold. Actually I think a lot of that has to do with the lack of central heating/cooling in structures in this country. Our Summer/Winter ritual consists of heating/cooling the computer room and lounging in there only leaving to answer the call of nature, raid the fridge or get the door. Hershey loves winter because she gets to curl up next to the portable heater and steal a large percentage from ever reaching us. She just lays there for hours on end alternating every now and then from belly to back only getting up to use the bathroom and/or eat. Wait, that's what we do.

So in Japan the recycling laws are pretty strict. I have gotten used to them and since doing so see that they kind of make sense (like not wearing shoes in the house, showering before getting in the bathtub and washing hands after using the bathroom). Our little town has us separating our garbage I think into six different groups. On top of this after separation, you have to put the corresponding garbage into an appropriate bag and leave it down on the street the day of to be picked up. You are not suppose to put garbage down there any earlier and of course, if too late not picked up. Well the past six months or so, somebody has been totally ignoring this rule. It is not like one or two items but, things like couches, bikes, toys and most recently about twenty big bags of mixed garbage. When the garbage is picked up all this garbage is left aside with a note stuck on it reading, "we will not pick up this garbage." and states the recycling rules. I mean garbage is garbage but, when you've got and are used to a nice little organized system and a small, clean garbage disposal area you kind of get upset when the rules are not obeyed. I have included photos. The white bags do not belong.

November

So, a lot has happened in the past two and a half months since my last update. With the in frequencies of my writings I don't know if calling them updates is quite the appropriate terminology. Maybe I should refer to them as quarterly ramblings or something along those lines. Looking back at it all, not a lot really has happened out of the ordinary but, I will fill you all in nevertheless.

September brought about the return to school. I know I posted something during that month but, only commented on my current ailments at the time- which a lot like you read on this blog was me complaining about being sick. This season a funny cold seems to be going around. It starts with a scratch in your throat followed by runny/stuffy nose and a fever all ending up with a persistent cough that I have seen last for up to three weeks. In my case I think I had it all done and finished in about a week. Ayumi had it worse with a fever and sore throat for about two days. When we get sick, we tend to put on our warm pajamas and try to sweat the illness. Not rocket science but, even if it isn't doing us any good we sure are comfy.

The first week of October we had our school festival at Shima Highschool. For the past few months, about one time a week I had been meeting with my Vice Principal practicing some songs we intended to perform there. With the help of two additional teachers (one on drums and another on bass) we sang a total of five songs in front of all the students. We sang the Beatles' songs "Something", "Let It Be", The Mommas and the Poppas "California Dreaming", The Eagles "Hotel California" and another called "sora mo toberu hazu" by a Japanese band called Spitz. I have a DVD copy of the show but so far have been unable to rip it down to a format that I can send/post on the internet. I am going to see if I can track down the originals off the camera and send them in that format.

It was actually really fun and I think turned out great. The students had a great time and even sang along on some of the song parts they knew. Some kids at Suisan saw a copy of the video (via students in another band that played during the same festival) and word spread there that I have the voice of an angel. I don't know about that but, I have kids there that want to see the DVD. We'll see if we can arrange something.

Halloween came and went. For that we did a fun Halloween lesson where we watched a few Disney videos, learned about the holiday and got a special treat. For that we decorated up our classroom at school with some cheap things we bought at the dollar store and some great things Ayumi had made for her class. Tomorrow at school I will see if I can track down the video footage I made of that and post some of it here on the blog.