He presented this lovely to me in a soft case, complete with neck strap, tuner, and a fistful of picks. All three of my sisters can play very basic guitar (and as of last night, also very basic Guitar Hero, heh), as can my mom, so I walked away with a big pile of guitar books. Liz lent me her electric guitar and amp for quite a while, so I'll have a chance to practice both types. Here's a bad picture of me with my new instrument:
Just to clarify, I'm not taking up guitar because Guitar Hero has diluded me into thinking I can play. But I was raised on music and it's about time I got back to it. I started piano lessons (woo, Suzuki method) when I was a wee lass, then clarinet in middle school and finally concert choir in high school. In college I was too busy with... well, with everything, to do anything musical except sing along with the radio. Once I started playing Guitar Hero I realized how much I missed playing music, in a sense. So I hinted that I wanted to start playing in earnest and look what it got me!
I've got my work cut out...
Posted on December 26, 2006 @ 9:57 PM | 3 comments
Comments:
Oh hot!
I got R a banjo a few years ago... he can't do much with it yet but a lot has been going on, so he just hasn't had the practice time.
By 
Lazy Lightning, at
5:22 AM, December 27, 2006
beautiful instrument! I want a piano...but I think I will have to do a lot more than hint at it to actually get one. I miss just sitting down at one to "play" and I wish I could improve my skills from where I left off back when I didn't want to sit still and practice. I would like my future children to have the means to learn piano too. Good luck with the gee-tar learnin'!
By 
sometrouble, at
8:15 AM, December 27, 2006
That's so cool! I got Ryan a guitar for Festivus as well, and he's starting to know the joys of achy, hardening fingers.
Made me pick up my ol' git-fiddle, and it's amazing how you forget how much pleasure you can take in it.
Cool, Kat! Nice guitar. . . I like the rosewood (looks like rosewood.)
By , at
4:58 PM, December 28, 2006
Wonderful day with family and quite the Christmas "haul." I got a gee-tar! Now I can learn to be a Rock God in real life, mweehehee! (Well, OK, at least I have something to do for the rest of the week :-)
Posted on @ 12:42 AM | 1 comments
Comments:
Merry Christmas rockstar!!
How did our lovely tree get decorated? Why, with a little help from some friends, of course. (And Jeff, who took the photo):
Posted on December 19, 2006 @ 10:07 PM | 3 comments
Comments:
It's beautiful! What's with the little blue boxes? :-)
My cats would have those windowsill lights down. They'd have ripped off half the branches and hell, probably pulled the tree over too. They'd have eaten all those bows and ribbons by now (or at least chewed the hell out of them)... but, BUT! You wouldn't have any dead needles on the floor (they'd eat those, too). Give thanks for tame, obedient Rupert!
By Lazy Lightning, at
12:29 PM, December 20, 2006
We love our well-behaved cat!
And the little blue boxes are from Tiffany's... from Justin's grandpa. I have no idea what's inside. It sort of goes "thunk" which worries me, because if it were jewelry it wouldn't do that.
By Kat, at
2:20 PM, December 20, 2006
Merry Christmas!
One tradition in Japan is that all girls who turn twenty during a given year dress up in bright kimono on Seijin No Hi(Coming of Age Day) and visit special events and local shinto shrines. Because Meiji Jingu is the largest and probably the most important shrine in Tokyo (and maybe because it's near Harajuku), it's the place to go.
Unfortunately for me, I didn't turn twenty the year I lived in Japan. I turned 21. Booorinnnng. But my host mother decided that before I left I should get a chance to be dressed in furisode (the fancy kimono) before I left. When Justin came to visit she rented and adorned me in a lovely kimono, complete with updo.
Naturally, we had to visit Meiji Shrine. It was the only time I felt like I outshone the cosplayers on the bridge between the station and the gate to Meiji... but I couldn't get more than five feet without someone stopping me to take a picture. Right as we arrived, Justin took this photo of some people who had wanted/were taking pictures with me:
What you can't see is that I'm holding a book behind my back that one of those old women took from the rolling suitcase and graciously handed over. It was completely in Kanji and I had no idea what it was.
When we returned to my host family's home, probably some time later, I asked my host mother what the book was about. She looked at it for a few minutes and told me it was a "cult thing." So I kept it and transported it back to the states with me but never once attempted to read it.
Last week, we went to a coworker's Christmas party. He'd spent ten years in Japan and had just moved to Seattle with his Japanese wife two years ago. After talking at some length, I told him about the book and brought it in yesterday for his wife to interpret.
Today he told me that she read it while they were having lunch together. He looked over and was surprised to see her crying. The book, it seems, is the eighth volume of letters collected from friends and family of the war dead enshrined at Yasukuni.
Yasukuni Shrine is always at the center of some controversy. It is dedicated to the spirit of soldiers and others who died fighting in the name of the Japanese emperor-- including war criminals. Certain Japanese and many Koreans and Chinese always protest when cabinet members, particularly the Prime Minister visit Yasukuni to pay tribute... even if it is a ceremonial gesture.
Why my host mother would tell me this book was from a cult is beyond me. Actually, I think NOW that I might be confusing THIS book with another book that either the women or someone else gave me-- a book that I might not have any more. There's a nagging feeling of confusion about the whole memory, primarily because I have no idea which case is correct. But it makes an interesting story, which is why I'm sharing it here!
Posted on @ 8:28 PM | 0 comments
Comments:
Welp, Justin and I have just registered for our SECOND marathon. Can't say I thought he'd be up for it. And with our recent weather, can't say I thought I'D be up for it either. It's hard to feel inspired to get out there and run when it's sleeting sideways. But I've been ramping my workouts back up from the post-Portland marathon lull and I finally feel like I'm at the point where I can start training again. (Plus, I just got some sweet-ass winter running tights from my hookup at the Patagonia outlet in Dillon, MT!) I've been getting in some cardio every day and weight training when I can, I just recently started feeling excited by the idea of another marathon. And well, whaddaya know, there was one right there just waiting for me! The Eugene Marathon is April 29, 2007, and training starts, uh... RIGHT NOW!
Posted on @ 7:07 PM | 1 comments
Comments:
Good luck. I am currently training for the London Ontario marathon on May 13th. Perhaps misery likes company?
Posted on @ 1:12 AM | 0 comments
Comments:
Posted on December 17, 2006 @ 10:38 PM | 1 comments
Comments:
ah, guitar hero. it's so popular nowadays!
By gleek, at
5:06 AM, December 18, 2006
1) The image links were broken in IE. Ironically, if I turned on the link borders, the borders themselves were linked but the center was empty. So to fill in the gaps and provide a compromise for both systems, I gave the href tag something to munch by placing transparent gifs of appropriate size inside. Problem solved. Wanted to do it without resorting to that, but it works. Feels like cheating tho.
2) Had to make several font-altering tags into div tags to get them to take in IE. Firefox still likes them though, so whatever.
3) Filled in white space that suddenly and mysteriously appeared at the bottom of the page by giving the footer a height attribute.
4) The links around the author images refused to hold link color and hover attributes no matter WHAT I did. They just appeared as the nauseating default 1994-blue. Solved that one by applying a special class defining border and link attributes to images and slipping it into their image tags.
5) Obviously, I swapped the nav bar to the left side and took out the vertical line. Let me know if you like it better over the other way for any particular reason.
6) I stepped up the quality of the header image and added some more dark snowflakes in the background. Tell me if it takes too long to load-- but I probably won't change anything.
7) I made a snowflake icon that should appear in address bars and tabs of browsers that support such things.
8) Updated the about page to reflect template changes.
9) Ran the code through the W3C CSS Validator and took out all the wacky bits of style.
10) It validates. WOOHOO!
And that's it. Can it please be bedtime now? I'm tie-tie.
Posted on December 12, 2006 @ 10:58 PM | 10 comments
Comments:
Damn, you're good.
By Lazy Lightning, at
7:38 AM, December 13, 2006
I never would have spent so much time catering to the piece of s*** that is IE; I would have stopped at the IE detection warning and called it a day, lols. Good work mangling with it, although it looks the same to me, minus the formatting changes of course.
By Rachel, at
8:35 AM, December 13, 2006
Also, why you no have RSS? Plz RSS kthx! :)
By Rachel, at
8:49 AM, December 13, 2006
Brava!
By inkandpen, at
9:41 AM, December 13, 2006
I fixed it cos it drive me totally nuts imagining people looking at my page all messed up and thinking I made it that way. LOL. Plus, despite how much I hate IE, about 80%+ of people still use it and I don't want my blog to look crappy for that many people. :D
Rachel-- THere's a link to the RSS feed in the left sidebar near the top of the buttons. :) It's just /atom.xml if you're interested.
By Kat, at
10:14 AM, December 13, 2006
Ohay I found it, thx! Now you can finally be in my RSS'd list, wewt.
Shame on those who still use IE. Firefox = more secure, less shitty.
By Rachel, at
1:05 PM, December 13, 2006
ok...off topic question here...I know nothing about "gallery", except that you, Lazy Lightning, and Rachmicah all use it...and I like it. Is there any way I can use it without having my own domain like you all do? Could I host it on geocities or something like that? I don't really understand how it works. Please help. thx.
By sometrouble, at
1:08 PM, December 15, 2006
....
All that nerdy computer talk makes me tingle in all sorts of places
....
Really though, I envy your l33t skillz. That's hot.
By Titania, at
12:12 AM, December 16, 2006
Titania: don't you owe Paris Hilton some royalties for saying: "that's hawt"? I heard awhile back that she tried to patent that phrase, the dumb bitch. My royalties to her would be a nice, big *slap*.
By Rachel, at
4:16 PM, December 17, 2006
yay my IE links work!
hey after the holidays are we going to get to enjoy more wedding-planning-related posts and photos??
By , at
8:42 PM, December 17, 2006
I had some problems with the links in the header graphic shifting when the browser was resized, but it should be fixed now. Let me know if you see anything else messed up.
Posted on December 11, 2006 @ 11:02 AM | 17 comments
Comments:
the site looks awesome! i don't think the links work though ... or is my computer just misbehaving?
ps: don't tell me that BEAUTIFUL masthead you had before is gone foreva though ... ?! =(
By , at
10:15 PM, December 11, 2006
I still have the old header graphic and code, but I always intended it to be seasonal. :) Something new will appear after the holidays!
Let me know what operating system and browser (IE, Firefox, and version, etc) you're using where the links aren't working. And please, anyone else tell me if they're broken for you.
By Kat, at
10:20 PM, December 11, 2006
On the "About" page the alignment of the links is wonky. That's the technical term of course :)
By Justin, at
9:01 AM, December 12, 2006
Fixed. Now I need to figure out why there's a damn white bar under my footer. It's not the link code. ARGH.
By Kat, at
10:24 AM, December 12, 2006
Im looking at it with IE 6 right now, and the words in the header don't seem to be links at all for me. Also, all your sidebar content is pushed down to the bottom, below where the main content ends...but still in the sidebar.
By sometrouble, at
11:04 AM, December 12, 2006
ok...wait...the sidebar stuff is not in the sidebar...it is below the main content, and half in/ half out of the sidebar...kinda just below that vertical line separating the sidebar from the main.
By sometrouble, at
11:05 AM, December 12, 2006
Oh god... fucking internet explorer. Great. >_<
By Kat, at
11:08 AM, December 12, 2006
AGH IT MANGLES MY CSS. I hate that browser! Windows BAD! IE BAD! NoOOOO!
By Kat, at
11:26 AM, December 12, 2006
sorry, I have to conform to what they give me at work. I did manage to dl mozilla...but it annoyingly blocks out way more stuff than IE does.
The sidebar is fixed now...but still no links in the header.
By sometrouble, at
12:59 PM, December 12, 2006
Oh, I'm not blaming you. I just had no idea it was so messed up. LOL.
Fixing the sidebar was easy... the footer was still sized for the old page. What I can't figure out is why it won't apply simple text and link formatting the way it's supposed to.
That it can't get the image links doesn't surprise me. I tweaked some *completely unrelated* stuff and now it doesn't work in Firefox either. Blargh. I'll get it.
By Kat, at
1:06 PM, December 12, 2006
I just discovered by accident that the header links aren't missing, they are just showing up significantly lower than they should (for me, right above the comments link in the first post). If you click by accident in those spots, you get taken to the photo gallery, etc. I'm using Firefox 2.
Also, I just ran across this study and thought you would be interested, Kat.
By inkandpen, at
2:56 PM, December 12, 2006
Oh awesome Katie, you're right-- and they're there in IE too. Guess I'll have to turn borders back on and move em around a bit.
Thanks!
Also, thanks for the study... could have written it myself, lol.
By Kat, at
3:12 PM, December 12, 2006
i'm using IE ... not sure the version ... work computer
By , at
4:14 PM, December 12, 2006
I don't think my site works properly in I.E.
Don't care though. I put up a thing that detects if people use I.E... then tells them not to.
By Adrienne, at
5:09 PM, December 12, 2006
Can I steal your IE detection/warning code? :) I'm still going to try to get it to work but I want to put the warning there anyway.
Your site looks pretty much OK in IE-- your detection's text has a few weird symbols tho.
By Kat, at
5:48 PM, December 12, 2006
Holy 15 comments, Batman. Srsly use Firefox, problem solved. IE is so much insecure badness.
By Rachel, at
8:59 PM, December 12, 2006
Looks like you got it figured out. Yay teh transparent gif!!eleven``
I agree with Rachel, don't use IE srsly, but Kat isn't using IE. Other people are.
By Louie, at
10:42 PM, December 12, 2006
The problem is, that's not an entirely true statement, despite the occasions where I've been called out, defamed, embarrassed, humiliated, put in my place, told my feelings were invalid, and so on. It is true that I have been stretching myself thin, but aside from doing too much in too little time, this week has just had its share of really bad mojo. I've spent way too much time pissed off, shaking, sweating, and in a general state of malaise.
The funny thing is, it's also been a pretty excellent set of days. Justin and I had Amy over for dinner on Tuesday and Jeff over on Wednesday. Then Justin stayed out until almost 5AM partying with nursing cohorts (albeit while I sat up and worried). Friday we prepped and primped for our holiday party, which went off without a hitch. Yesterday Jeff helped us fetch our Christmas tree, a 7-foot Noble Fir, and erect it in our living room. Then we set to baking so that when our guests arrived they'd have snickerdoodles to munch on and Sparkling Tree Cakes to decorate.
The tree cakes were really a killer variation on traditional Christmas cookies, especially since we couldn't find cookie cutters anywhere. The cakes were easy to make and fun to decorate. We ended up with really FAT peppermint sticks that, uh, we had to ream each tree with rather obscenely to give it a trunk, but that really contributed to the hilarity of it overall.
One of our guests brought a mix for Hot Buttered Rum, which we imbibed-a-plenty while rocking out to Guitar Hero I and II. Once Justin's classmate Laura and her 2-year-old daughter joined us, we commenced with tree trimming and snowflake cutting. OK, so I made everyone create a snowflake before they left, but it WAS super cute.
We had plenty of snacks and four folks stayed over for dinner-- Justin made an awesome sausage ragu. We spent the rest of the evening drinking wine, bubbly, and schnapps while playing yet MORE guitar hero (during which I schooled them all).
That was pretty nice... as is the fact that I've got all my Christmas shopping done, except that which requires prompt purchase before Christmas. In the spirit of the season (which, oddly, I had in droves this year) I designed a new header for the blog. No, I didn't make it myself. I'm not nearly good enough at vector art to crank that out, but I did alter the design and add text to suit. So happy holidays, and may your (and my) next week be merry.
Posted on December 10, 2006 @ 4:17 PM | 4 comments
Comments:
ohhh man I haven't gotten any shopping done yet! :(
I can't believe you guys got a tree!!! Does it look cool? I love noble firs!
By Kyle, at
5:02 PM, December 10, 2006
You're lucky that Rupert isn't interested in destroying everything you love, like Wednesday and Fry are.
We can control them somewhat while we're home and awake, but that's only about 1/4 of the day. The rest of the day, we're sleeping or at work, and they're at home, tearing apart anything that we've worked hard on. I left for 20 minutes this afternoon to pick up Ryan and they unwrapped two of the christmas presents I wrapped this afternoon.
Happy holidays... hope the good this week outweighed the bad!
By Lazy Lightning, at
5:26 PM, December 10, 2006
good times always trump the not so good. f*^)% the ****ly. do not feel embarrassed or called out. it wasn't deliberate or unfocused. no one is a mind reader.
the tree decorating was FUN!! FUN!!! FUN !!!! and the snowflakes are so WONDERFUL!! Your window is filled with winter thoughts!
Happy Holidays Everyone !!
By , at
11:00 PM, December 10, 2006
LOL, Jeff! It took me until this morning to figure out that ****ly was Weekly... I thought it was a curse word and I didn't get it. I was like "Crap...ly"? "Ass...uh...ly"? That makes more sense now. ^_^
By Kat, at
11:04 AM, December 11, 2006
Anyhoo, I made some pictures of Rupert. He hates the camera but he's so pretty I distracted him to get a few photos.
Posted on December 03, 2006 @ 8:49 PM | 11 comments
Comments:
sounds like a nice weekend. We all get to be Kristen's pretend patients for her physical assessment practice too. Off to look at Rupert's model shots...
By , at
6:28 AM, December 04, 2006
Your cat is so adorable (for some reason I couldn't type that word at all... daaorable? dadorable? dadodabe?)
Dooopert!
By , at
7:42 AM, December 04, 2006
Rumpkin pumpkin diddle dumpkin dooooooo. I heart Rupert, give him a pet and some roughing up for me. What did his food every do to him, anyhow?
By Rachel, at
5:51 PM, December 04, 2006
Rupert Rulz !! that cat is great, he could be afraid of his shadow but he has such a cool personality once he warms up and lets you into his space. ear scratch to Rupert !
By , at
7:32 PM, December 04, 2006
your last name, biznatch!
By , at
9:24 PM, December 04, 2006
Anon: ... huh?
Rachel: Those are catnip pellets! He likes to rub himself in them. ^_^
By Kat, at
11:20 PM, December 04, 2006
What a cutie!
Oh, and Ummm... YEAH, your last name, biznatch!! (WTF?)
By Lazy Lightning, at
5:35 AM, December 05, 2006
Awkward upswings of confidence make my anonymous self feel bold on the internet too. What is your last name? SAY MY NAME, BITCH!
-Anon
By Rachel, at
8:15 AM, December 05, 2006
Oh crap, I totally screwed that up, now you know who I am!
By , at
8:15 AM, December 05, 2006
That last comment was me, lols. (Pst: I R making fun of anon comment spammers.)
By Rachel, at
8:16 AM, December 05, 2006
Rupert poopert duperty-doo! ZOMGs kitty! My boyfriend is allergic to creatures of the feline persuasion so I haven't snuggled soft kitty-flesh since summertime. Give Rupert some loving for me. Guuuu he's so cute!
By , at
1:37 PM, December 07, 2006
