Hello there and Happy 2004! Kazuko and I just got back home from enjoying our third-anniversary dinner. We visited a new sushi restaurant in Crystal, Minnesota. The name of the place is "Wild Mint." While we were there, we enjoyed some fried mackeral i‚³‚ñ‚ÜAj baked scallopsi‚Ù‚½‚ÄAjand a ten-item sashimi dish. We were pretty pleased with the food there. I think that it is the second-best place for Japanese food that we've been to in the Twin Cities area (the best being "Origami" i...
Hey there friends! I hope that New Year's preparations are going well. I don't necessarily have anything special planned. I know that Kazuko and I will watch the "Ko-Haku" (Red and White Song Contest. (The Red and White Song Contest is a yearly showcase of popular music in Japan. It is played each New Year's Eve.) I am also looking forward to watching the "World Idol" results show. I hope that Kurt from Norway does well... Today was a good day. My wife and I drove to the bank. Afte...
Hey there. Since I am on Christmas vacation from teaching school, my wife and I have the rare opportunity to get as many errands done as possible before I have to go back to work. Looking through our various papers, my wife and I found that we needed to turn in our son's registration at the county office for a birth certificate by today. I thought that it wouldn't be so bad. Well... Wright County Minnesota (where we live) has an extraordinarily understaffed DMV office. (For some unkno...
Hello there. I hope that you're having a happy Sunday. I just finished watching a couple of hours of "I Love the '80s Strikes Back" on VH1. I usually enjoy watching that series, along with the "I Love the '70s" shows. One thing does bug me however. There is this guy on the show named Michael Ian Black. Apparently this guy stars on some show named "Ed." Now I haven't ever seen "Ed," and I have never heard of this guy outside of the "I love the..." series. The irritating thing abou...
Hello there my friends. I hope that you are all having a happy day. I had kind of a sleepy day. I slept late and I took a nap. I suppose that is why we have vacation days. It was really quite nice. I like to spend some time sleeping. Kazuko and Kenny took a nice long nap with me too. How fun! After getting up, neither of us had the energy to cook anything for dinner. I decided to run out to Taco Bell (a commercial had just come on.) When I was there, I was struck with a sudden cra...
Last night we all gathered together around the television to watch "World Idol." For those of you who don't know: "World Idol" took the winners of twelve countries' idol shows, and pitted them against each other to determine a world winner. Kelly, the original American Idol, performed on that show. Since she seemed to be a lot better than the competition, I think that the main battle will be for second place. Kazuko and I both voted for the Norwegian guy. He had the best voice, and was th...
Hi there friends. I hope that you're celebrating a happy holiday season, and that you've gotten everything that you need from the grocery stores until they open up again. My family and my parents are at my house, waiting for my sister and her boyfriend to get here from the Duluth-area so that we can open up Christmas morning presents. Yay! I wonder what I got. It seems that there is a new holiday tradition starting in America. It is an import tradition from the United Kingdom. In the ...
Hello there! Happy Christmas Eve eve to all of you. Kazuko and I have just gotten back from dinner at Perkins. I had a yummy honey mustard chicken sandwich, and Kazuko had a fish sandwich. (I had a bite of it. It seemed good enough.) The happiest news of the day is that my Christmas vacation has officially started. After two days of meetings at the school, I can finally kick-back and relax. Yay! I am looking forward to having about two weeks to enjoy with my family. As a matter o...
Hello there. Today I had meetings at my school about how we're going to proceed with our program. I thought that today was an awesome day as far as the amount of work that we got done is concerned. I am a little dubious about coming in during vacation week though... One of the themes of today's meeting (that I wasn't involved with) was the new Minnesota Social Studies standards. For those of you who aren't teachers: most states in the USA are trying to move toward standardization of...
Hello there! It is Sunday. I hope that you're having a good one. Kazuko, Kentaro, and I are here at home enjoying our Sunday. I am listening to the radio and playing with the computer. Kazuko is feeding Kentaro while watching Animal Planet on TV. There is a cute show about baby bats on right now. (I really like bats. Bats, hedgehogs, and monkeys are my favorite animals.) My sad news is that tomorrow I have to go to work. There are district-wide meetings on Monday and Tuesday. Rats...
Hey there friends. I hope that you're having a nice Saturday. I just woke up. I had a bowl of cereal. Kazuko is watching an adoption show while Kenny is sleeping. How cute. Once Kenny wakes up, I think that I will take some pictures of him to put in this weblog (his clothes are pretty cute today!) Last night, there wasn't much on television (typical Friday.) Flipping around the channels, I found "Happy Gilmore" on the USA network. Even though I have seen this movie a bunch of times,...
Hello there friends. Here we are: one day from Christmas Vacation. I am really looking forward to some time off. I will be happy to be able to spend some more time with Kazuko and Kenny. Yay! The last day at work before the holiday will be interesting. The kids have all sorts of exciting activities in their classes, so I will have to be creative with how I spend my time. Today: I will clean up after my party last night, I will visit all of my students in class to give them presents, an...
Happy Wednesday! I hope that Christmas shopping is going well for all of you. Like I had written earlier, I haven't started yet. I intend to initiate the scramble once Christmas vacation starts at school. I hope that there will be good stuff left at the stores! According to the headline, this article is about watching "Seinfeld." Sitting at home tonight, I had the opportunity to watch four straight episodes of Seinfeld (as long as I could change channels at the right times.) Watching ...
Hello there, As you may have read in my last weblog entry, I have been trying to recover from a cold. It does seem that I have turned the corner, and am getting better rather than worse. Hooray for me! All I need is fluids, rest, and time to recover. I hope that I will get better by the time Christmas Vacation starts next week! -It is really hard to be sick on my own dime. I was afforded a little time to recover today. At 4:30 in the morning, my wife received a call from the school...
Hey there friends! I hope that you're having a lovely night. Kazuko and I are just up watching television. Kenny is happily asleep in bed. How cute! My sad news is that I am currently battling a cold. I have a cough and a stuffed nose. I also just don't feel 100 percent. I suppose that looking at all this from a "glass is half-full" perspective: at least I will get this over with before Christmas Vacation rather than during. (Although I hope that I feel better by Thursday when I...