Yesterday we had a nice Valentine’s Day at the house. Nothing fancy, just a couple gifts and a nice dinner. I made some roast beef using tri-tip roast, and it turned out pretty good. It’s the simplest thing to make, but really tasty! Just coat the outside of the roast with fresh cracked pepper and salt, and garlic powder if you want (we didn’t), put it in a 425°F oven until the internal temp reaches 135°F, take it out of the oven and let it rest a bit, then slice and eat! Mariko made a great asparagus dish with fresh garlic and balsamic vinegar, and we also had homemade sourdough bread that her manager baked.

For gifts, Bay and Koa gave Mariko a Hello Kitty card. Bay wrote “Happy Valentines Day” and “Bay Koa Papa” on it. We also gave her a cookbook that she is very happy with (yokatta!). Mariko gave me some new pajamas, which I wore to bed last night. My old ones were getting kind of ratty, with the left cuff falling apart. Anyways, it was a good Valentines Day!

I finally took the plunge and got a new iPod a couple days ago. My old Creative Nomad Jukebox 3 served me well (and still works great), but it was time to upgrade so I could use all the neat iTunes features. Plus, Mariko is always saying how dasai my old mp3 player is. The Nomad will continue to be used for home stereo use since it has dedicated Line-out jacks for great sound quality, so Mariko is not rid of it yet!

Now, on to the new toy… It’s a black 30GB iPod, with video capability. I was at the store looking for the new 1GB iPod Nano, but the video features of the bigger iPod were amazing! The screen looks great, and the video playback is smooth. I was watching Kung Fu Hustle last night, and was able to read the subtitles easily. To bring it all together, you need to use iTunes, which is great. It’s very easy to keep track of podcast subscriptions and sync them to the iPod. I gotta admit that the combination of iTunes and iPod is really powerful. It’s all organized so neatly, although the photo implemenation is not quite there yet. But, it is light years ahead of anything that Microsoft has. I still have not scratched the surface of playlists and smart playlists yet, but luckily I have my friends Mikey and Chris to ask about anything iPod/iTunes related!

Now I am thinking about using the computer to hold lots of tv shows, which my friend Chris is already doing. I also want to try hooking my laptop to the tv, since the laptop has an s-video out. Then I can play anything that we have in our iTunes library and/or hard disk on the tv. It’s great since we are using a wireless network, because things become so portable. Wireless iPod connectivity would be next, I suppose.

Well, we finally moved into the new house and it is great! The strong enamel paint smell is going away, with the help of a brand new Mitsubishi air cleaner, and our allergies seem to be a lot less severe compared to when we lived in the apartment.

The builder still has a lot of little things to do, but they did stain the wooden stairs and railings outside yesterday. We have found a few things wrong with the house that we didn’t catch during the walkthroughs, like a broken door knob and a loose faucet, but for the most part, it all looks good. We are really happy with the dual AC units, one for upstairs and one for downstairs. It really makes controlling the daytime and nighttime temperatures easier and more efficient.

There’s a lot of construction going on in our neighborhood, so the noise level is pretty high during the days. But, I like it so much more than living in the apartment. I’d rather hear the droning of a tractor than the voices and yells of the party crowd outside our apartment. And nevermind about the cigarette smoke and parking space disputes. Man, a lot of the apartment dwellers were real losers! In contrast to them, our neighbors are really nice and we like them a lot. Besides our next-door neighbors, we have met a couple of our future neighbors, whose homes are still being built in our cul-de-sac. They all seem nice, but none of them have kids. Looks like Bay and Koa will have full reign over the cul-de-sac for a while.

Still no Internet connection or TV access yet, but we should have it shortly!

I said it before and I will say it again… SBC IS EVIL. I HATE SBC. A-HOLES.

Last night I spent an hour in our apartment garage getting the C70 ready for the move. I emptied out all the gasoline using the carb overflow tube. It took a long time to drain 3/4 gallon thru that skinny little tube, but it was a clean operation. In the past, I used to disconnect the fuel line from the petcock and drain it into the gas can, which can be messy and smelly, but quick. The method I used last night involved removing the gas cap, loosening the drain plug, turning the fuel petcock to reserve, and letting the fuel flow into the carb bowl and out its overflow tube.

It dripped for about half an hour, while I packed up all the tools and spare parts and removed the fragile legshield. I told the moving company that we are moving “a little moped, which is not working and is dry”, and they said that’s ok. The C70 is a bit bigger than a moped, but it is such a funky looking bike that people in the U.S. don’t necessarily think of it as a motorcycle or scooter, especially with the legshield off. They don’t really know what to think. Anyways, I hope that the moving goes smoothly!

I love burgers. But it took me a while to find a really good non-fast-food burger in Austin. I thought the burgers at EZ were good, but I guess not good enough to get me to go back there. I liked Backyard Burgers, but the location nearby went out of business. I thought I finally found a great burger at Hole In The Wall, but lately, their burgers have tasted bad… kind of chemically. Plus the waitresses there gross me out. They are often overweight, which is not necessarily bad, but when they insist on wearing tight, low-cut jeans, with tiny t-shirts to show their fatty lower back tattoos, it’s just sick…

Anyways, I finally found my burger of choice, at Cheesecake Factory. Some people don’t like the place, but I have found it to be consistently good. And the “Tons of Fun Burger” is perhaps the best burger I have eaten at a restaurant. It’s got a great sauce on it, and it is huge, with double meat and cheese! The fries are really good too, not greasy, but very tasty. Today Mariko and I went to The Cheesecake Factory for lunch, and I had to try another of their burgers, The Ranch House Burger. It was excellent as well! This one had a thick single patty, topped with bacon, cheddar, mushrooms, and chopped sirloin steak. There was a garlicky mayo dressing, and the basic lettuce, tomato, and red onion on the side. Oh man was it tasty! I am not sure which one is better, but you can’t go wrong with either. The only downside is the price. The Ranch House is $12.95, and the Tons of Fun is around $10. But, I think it is definitely worth it to indulge once in a while.

I rented the movie “Heartlands” after reading about it on a scooter messageboard, where they said the main character has a small roadtrip on his Honda Cub 50. I found the movie on Netflix, rented it, and, after having it sit on top of the dvd player for a month, finally watched it last night. It certainly has some great footage of Colin (the main character) riding around England on a red Honda Cub, but I was surprised how great the acting and story were. It is sort of artsy, sort of slow, kind of like Lost In Translation. In the middle of the movie, (SPOILERS FOLLOW) I was shocked to see his bike get destroyed by a truck, and the wreckage of the bent frame in the middle of the road almost brought a tear to my eye. Colin was pretty broken up too. 🙂

Anyways, the ending of the movie was excellent. Plotwise it works out how I wanted it to, but wasn’t expecting. And the bonus was that he goes to the Honda dealer and is offered a sport tourer that “hits 190mph”, but then opts for the same red Cub 50. The final scene is of him riding along on his Honda. Excellent movie!

One of the cool things about our impending move is that we will have access to all of our stuff again! Right now it’s in storage, and I have been missing a few things.

First, all of my old camera gear will be neat to play with. All my film stuff is in a box somewhere, and I am itching to play with my Holga toy camera. Also on the camera front, our studio lighting will be great to use again, especially getting back into Mariko’s food photography. I need to think about where is the best place to keep the lights and umbrellas!

The Nintendo Gamecube has been missed… Now that I am fully engrossed in Animal Crossing for the DS, I’d like to play the Gamecube version again.

A real toaster/toaster oven. We left our old one in our previous house, and haven’t bought a new one yet, since there is just no space in our apartment. The only way to make toast right now is in the oven, which is overkill, don’t you think?

Refrigerator with side-by-side doors and ice/water dispenser. Our apt fridge has the freezer on top, with no shelving. It’s a real adventure opening the door to it, because there is always a danger of an avalance of frozen goodies coming down, and ultimately smashing toes. The water dispenser is mostly missed by me, because tend I drink a lot of water. Also, we will have our big freezer back, which will be in the utility room. This is going to make preparing meals in advance much easier! There are lots of things we like to cook in big batches, and freeze half for later.

Speakers. We bought a nice home theater system from some good friends who returned to Japan, but the speakers are a bit weak. I have four decent speakers in storage, and I can’t wait to attach them to the Dolby Digital receiver and crank it up!

I would like to see Star Wars Episode II again (and do I dare watch Episode I?), which is also in storage.

Tools and parts for my Honda C70 will be good to have again. Not only that, but the space to work on the bike is going to be great! I am planning on tearing it all apart, so I can properly paint the frame. Should be lots of fun.

Lastly, with access to a water hose and driveway, I can finally wash our cars.