It's been a month since the last update. It seems that there's a general lull in all blogs overall. Is it a sign of things to come? Or is it just that time of year?

My dad and his wife came to Perth for what was to be a whirlwind weeklong visit, but ended out turning into a gale force two week stay. He's flown in from Bali, where he's been working for the past two(?) years, and is stopping by various placing on his way to his new home in Florida. He's worked in Florida before, but this time he's going to work for a company that he owns. He figures that if he's going to be stuck working for bastards for the rest of his career, that bastard might as well be himself :P

So that was nice - got to catch up with him and Yola and shoot-the-shit, so to speak. I'm glad we got the extra week to catch up with him before he had to fly out again. The US immigration department should fuck up like that more often. Heh. It was also really nice to catch up with him on his birthday for a change.

In between being extraordinarily busy, Michele and I have had the opportunities to do various things - including celebrating our three year anniversary. We did this by dining at the Seizan. A nice place - you should give it a try sometime if you can. We had Teppan Yaki, which is Japanese for "The Chef sets your food on fire right in front of you and then expects you to eat it." Very economical, the Japanese language... The food was awesome and I can't wait to organise a group dinner there. Should be most fun.

Right next to it is a tiny little place called "The Ramen", which is a little Ramen house (duh). They're very cheap but the meals are pretty damn good. We've done some group dinners there on a few Friday nights. We should do it more often.

Another great Japanese restaurant is Tsunami, which I had the pleasure of dining at tonight to celebrate Michele's mum's birthday. The food there is simply wonderful, even if it is a little pricey. But hey, what can you expect from Mosman Park? If you get a chance, try it. It's worth it. Hell, make a point of getting the chance :P

Other random things include the flash work of Vinnie Veritas, whom I found on Deviant Art. I just love the way he puts his animations together to tell a story. If you've got an half hour to spare, I recommend you check it out. I love clicking though on Deviant Art - you can always find some amazing stuff. You can waste heaps of time there if you're not carefull.

Speaking of wasting time, I've found a bunch of new webcomics. The best of them is Orneryboy, which is about a guy with an irritable disposition, a very messy girl, and a pet zombie. I've also rediscovered Neko The Kitty, which I had lost through the Great Bookmark Debacle. Only a few more to find again.

Exams are finished, so that means that I have to gear up and redo the labs for next semester. Thankfully there's only a small amount that needs to be updated, but it's still time consuming. During the mid year break we get a chance to do training too. I've had training authorised for the following courses, which I think will benefit me when it comes to looking after the Macs:

• MacOS 101 Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.4
• MacOS 310 Mac OS X Deployment v.10.4
• MacOS 330 Directory Svcs Integration & Admin v.10.4 (Client)

I figure that if they're trying to force us to do training in something, I should at least try and make it useful. Plus I get to play with teh shinies...

In other news, my IdleRPG character seems to be steadily climbing up the ranks, sitting somewhere around 6th for now. My bash.org quote is still stuck in the Top 100 (around position 84, not that I'm counting), still showing that people will click on any old shit. All in all, not too bad.

Training has ramped up recently due to the upcoming grading. I'm trying to double grade to 1st Kyu in Jodo. This should be okay, seeing as I missed the last grading. I'm going for 4th Kyu in Iaido, and I'm not too worried about that either (unless I really stuff up on the day). Again, I missed a grading, but I haven't really had the opportunity to learn the Kata's enough to attempt a double grading. I'd have to be really impressive to actually be able to score a double grading there. Better safe than sorry.

I'm also looking forward to the arrival of my new sword bag (Weapons Case E) (Cordura Charcoal), which should get here in six to eight weeks. It's to replace my two sword bags, which are a) not big enough to hold what the hold, and b) a pain in the ass to carry around. They're a gift from my dad, who didn't know what else to get me for my birthday :P

That about it for The Life Of A Grumpy Bastard on this Sunday night. I can't think of any suitably unique way of signing this off tonight, so I'll just stop here. Bai bai.

So Christmas has once again been and gone, leaving credit debt at an all new high, etc etc. This year we celebrated with dinner at Michele's sisters on Christmas eve, and then lunch on Christmas day at my mum's house. A quiet one, for a change.

I spent this afternoon setting up and beautifying Gallery to give me somewhere convenient to shove photos. I did have an old piece of code that I used to use, but there was a large effort factor in getting things to show in the desired order (due to the nature of where it was derived from). It's pretty neat. Check it out.

A while ago, Michele and I decided that in order to "pay back" or "compensate" or "just because", we'd feed both her family and mine. That finally came to pass this last Sunday, and it seems to have been a resounding success. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food (I certainly did), and had a good time. It's been three days since the dinner Michele and I put on, and I *still* have leftovers in the fridge.

We prepared 4 dishes: Gyoza dumplings, Otsu, Sauteed Ginger Beef and Cabbage, and Brochettes de Poulet, Ananas et Gingembre. We were going to make dumplings for desert, but we couldn't find all the ingredients easily, so we decided to substitute for shop bought dumplings. Which we also couldn't find on short notice. We ended up settling for Manju Mochi (I think that's right - it's basically mochi balls with a manju filling). Even though I normally don't like red bean paste, I enjoyed it immensely ^_^.

Michele is a genius at preparation. Although we both helped each other, Michele took the lead, scheduled everything, and basically made sure that I wasn't fucking it up. We did about 3 hours of cooking on Sunday, but we did a further 2 hours on Saturday, preparing and marinating the chicken.

It only just occurred to me that I should have taken photo's of our efforts, but as people started arriving as we were still cooking, it would have been a little weird. The above links have pretty good photo's anyway, so check them out. The sites themselves are worth a look.

A recent conversation:

<michele> meh procrastinated and made friands :P
<chris> whassa?
<michele> the cake things i tell you about and that you think i'm making up :P
<chris> you made friends with cake things?
<michele> goose :P
<chris> :(
<michele> friands :P
<chris> oh! those are those cake things that you made up, aren't they?
<michele> *tickles relentlessly*
<chris> eeeeek!

The problem with my newly re-found love of coffee is that it's not good for me. I don't mean the "oh-my-god"-and-fall-over-and-die type of "not good for me", but more the "oh-my-god"-kill-everyone not good for me. I've taken to having a nice hot cup of the extra strong brew that I'm particularly fond of as soon as I've woken up in the mornings. Enter life. Ahh yes. I feel ready to face the day. Then I drive to work. This is where things start to go downhill.

By the time I'm at the office, the inadequacies of other peoples driving abilities leave me feeling what could best be described as "agitated". Then, exposure to stupid students (you know, the ones that ask us stuff), and irrational staff ("There's something wrong with your system", etc) who should know better, and by lunch time my temperament could be described as "boiling, seething, furious".

The journey between these two states of mind can sometimes be quite fun. You develop a finely honed sarcastic wit, quick to wound, etc. It really is quite a cathartic experience to vent about all those little things that you would otherwise keep to yourself. If only that state of mind would last.

There's two possibilities: 1) deflate completely, and enter a state not too dissimilar to depression; or 2) eventually explode in a roar of fury and strike out at everything and, possibly, yourself. Neither is very appealing.

So I've decided to lay off the coffee for a bit. I suspect that some of it is just because it's still a shock to the system (having been coffee deprived for so long until just recently), but also that having that much coffee that strong in the mornings is not a good thing in general anyway. So once I'm over it, I'll try experimenting with coffee later in the day, after the stressful periods of the day are over.

I will not give up coffee, I will endure.