Engrish spoken here

Thanks to Casey for this one —

DANGER! A dangerous toy. This toy is being made for the extreme priority the good looks. The little part which suffocates when the sharp part which gets hurt is swallowed is contained generously. Only the person who can take responsibility by itself is to play.

I haven’t laughed this hard at a website in ages. Tears in my eyes.

I got my keys!

Rough floorplan of my new apartmentJust got back home from picking up my keys for the new apartment. Pictures were taken, I’ll have them posted as soon as I can. Yay!

Okay, first ‘picture’ is up. I took a few moments to sketch out a rough floorplan of the apartment, so you’ll have some idea what you’re looking at when I get the pics put in. It’s a pretty rough floorplan, but I think I got it pretty accurate for the most part.

The delivery boxNot bad for a studio apartment — one main room, a full bath, full kitchen, and two closets, one of which is a full-size clothes closet, and even a little entryway space. I think the main room ends up being a little smaller than the single room I’m in now, so figuring out how to arrange things might be a bit tricky, but I’m sure I’ll find a way to get it all in there.

Okay — here’s as good of a tour through the apartment as I can do. Right inside the front door is a cool little delivery box, left over from when the building was originally built. Each of these boxes has two doors — one on the inside that you can see here, and another on the outside of the apartment opening into the hallway. The outside door is fixed closed now, but when these were in use, they were the drop-off points for milk, newspapers, whatever. The delivery person would open the outside door and put the goods in the box, then the tenant could take them from the inside of the apartment without ever having to open the front door. They don’t work anymore, but I thought it was pretty nifty. If nothing else, it’ll be a convenient place to store shoes.

The main roomThe main room againHere’s two shots of the main room. The first was taken standing in the door looking towards the windows, and the second was taken standing in the corner by the heater looking towards the entrance. These should give a pretty good idea of the layout of the apartment. The landlord tells me that the overall floorspace is definitely larger than the place I’m in now, but since that takes into account the entire apartment, the main room itself is a bit smaller than what I’ve got now. I think the tradeoff is more than worth it, it’ll just take a bit of work figuring out how I’m going to get all of my goodies set up in here.

The kitchenThis is a shot I put together of the kitchen. It’s the sloppiest of the stitch jobs that I made tonight, but they’re a little tricky to do, and it should work. It seems kind of funny, but I think I’m more excited about this kitchen than anything else! A good sized sink with a drainage area built in to the right, and loads of cupboards and storage space! Plus, it’s a gas kitchen, rather than electric like the place I’m in now, so that should cut down on my electric bills (as will having a steam heater rather than electric heat).

All in all, I think I ended up with a pretty good deal. I’ve got the next two weeks to move in, too, so I don’t have to make a mad rush at anything. Too cool!

Brief bits on my actual life!

First off — according to the software I use to run this blog, this is my 400th post! At least, it’s 400 since November of 2000…I’d actually been doing daily updates in a blog format before that, but as I wasn’t using any sort of backup or management system like I am now, they disappeared. Ah, well. Still not too bad of a track record so far.

Anyway. Yeah. In the midst of replying to an e-mail from my mom, I realized that while I’ve been putting a lot of links up (hey, I think they’re interesting….), any content actually dealing with my life has been pretty sparse recently. Mostly that’s just because there hasn’t been a whole lot to say, but it’s also because I’ve been posting mostly from work recently — things have been slow, which gives me time to bounce around the ‘net. Once I’m home in the evenings, I’m dealing with food, e-mail, the occasional movie, hanging out with Candice, and other such things. End result — a veritable plethora of ways for people to leave my website, but not much to make them stick around. Yeah…I’m a professional, can’t you tell? :)

So…using my e-mail back to parents as a jumping off point…here’s a brief update.

I think I’m glad you aren’t working directly for Arthur Anderson! You may still be employed after the shakedown.

True — but where? Timing is actually somewhat amusing, to tell the truth. When I first signed up for this assignment, Xerox asked (as Andersen was prompting them to) if I could commit to a year. I figured I could do that, so said yes…at this point, that decision seems to have definite pros and cons. On the plus side, I ended up in a position that survived the post-9/11 fallout, and as of yet haven’t had to jump into a job market recently flooded with 20,000 ex-Boeing employees. The downside is that I’m daily more frustrated with the fact that after nearly 10 years I’m still ‘pushing the green button’, and am more and more looking forward to the end of the year timespan so that I can see if I can find something else (it’s that silly semi-overdeveloped sense of responsibility you and I share kicking in again…I said I’d do the year, therefore I’ll do the year :) ). The upshot? I’m starting to wonder if Andersen will last long enough for me to finish that year I promised them….

SPELLING WORD FOR THE WEEK: Column: you have the hard part, the silent N, but get carried away with LLs.

Yea, yea, nag, nag.

:) I wondered about that, but hadn’t looked it up yet. I’ll work on getting that one down. Overall I think that among you, dad, and the school system, I manage to do a fairly credible job with the English language (at least, when I write more than just a simple short blurb) — but even I do have a few areas I consistently mangle. But hey — at least I’m consistent, right?

You must be terribly busy in the mornings at work, since many of your posts are put up between 9 and 10 am.

We’ve been so dead recently. I’m just glad they let me play when things are slow…though this may end, soon (the slow time, not the ability to bounce around the web), I think we’re in the proverbial ‘calm before the storm.’ At least, something about working at a top-5 financial/tax firm with less than a month before April 15th would seem to indicate that things might get a wee bit busier soon. ;)

It’s been COLD, but beautiful recently. Mornings between -10 and +10, afternoons in the 20’s, but clear as can be.

As I’ve mentioned before in the past, I really do like winters in Alaska. As long as they’re on the other side of a window, and I’m next to a fireplace. The prettiest days are the ones that you just don’t want to be outside in.

At least, sane people don’t want to be outside in that weather ;).

Other than that, nothing major going on at the moment (hence the lack of more personal substance on the site for a bit now). I’m still waiting on the call from the landlord to get into the new apartment, and am hoping that that comes through in the next day or so. And, all around, life pretty much progresses, as it is wont to do (snicker…no, I’m not dad’s kiddo…not at all).