Sunrise Chronicles

This past week at work went about the same as usual. Friday was a holiday, which meant we couldn't do our training, so all of the trainees spent the day back in passenger baggage.

Immediately after work on Friday, I caught a plane to Seattle for a gathering of the members of my World of Warcraft guild. Over twenty of us attended. Friday night we went to a restaurant that's famous for its large omelets--your choice of 6 or 12 eggs. One of the guys there actually finished the 12-egg omelet complete with a pizza-sized plate of hash browns and toast. (He didn't feel so great afterward....)

On Saturday we all headed to our hosts' house, where we spent the entire afternoon (and well into the night) talking about mostly Warcraft. We did have one activity: a Loot Piñata with our guild leader's character's face glued onto it. It was all in good fun, of course, and he got first crack at bashing the piñata. ...Then the piñata got its revenge...

I got back on Sunday afternoon, just in time to do laundry.

I'll start out with a little story that goes all the way back to the beginning of training. Our first day, no one brought any lunch, so we all went out to eat at local restaurants. That evening, foreseeing many days of bringing my own lunch, I went down to the grocery store and picked up a set of disposable plates and forks.

When lunchtime rolled around the next day, I happily whipped out my supplies and settled in for a leisurely meal. As it turned out, a number of other people had brought lunches as well...but not all of them remembered to bring utensils. I wound up handing out about four forks to those in need. I figured they had learned a good lesson, and everyone would remember to bring their utensils after that.

Of course, things rarely go so smoothly. Since that time, I've gotten one or two requests for forks every week, the most recent being just this past Friday. One of the other class members dubbed me the "Fork Fairy."

Our class has finished up the pest identification section, and now we're learning the rules about what our authority is and which forms we need to fill out to cover any conceivable incident. The trend of giving us WAY more study time than necessary has, unfortunately, continued. Even giving us extended lunch and bathroom breaks and letting us leave a half hour early, one of the instructors has had to resort to playing games with us to keep us occupied after we've finished everything on the schedule.

We still can't wear our uniforms because we're waiting on two last people to get their shirts. Hopefully we'll be able to make the switch by Thursday or Friday. Next Monday at the latest.

I got a bit ticked off at my roommate last weekend. While I was in my bedroom using my computer, she invited some classmates over and cooked a meal for them. That part was all well and good. After they finished and left, though, I went out into the kitchen to find that my frying pan, which I had bought in California and brought all the way over here in my suitcase, had developed a number of scratches in the non-stick surface. Clearly my roommate used it in preparing the meal, but didn't know how to take proper care of it. I was ready to bawl her out for it, but she didn't come back that day until after I had gone to bed. Instead, I decided that I would just keep all of my cooking supplies in my closet and only bring them out to the kitchen when I was using them.

I'm also frustrated with the hotel's housekeeping staff. Not only do they come on days they aren't supposed to (my roommate and I signed up, in writing, for Monday/Thursday service, and I've reminded the front desk THREE TIMES since then), they do all kinds of things that range from weird (such as occasionally leaving my sink and bathtub drains closed) to downright annoying (such as washing the bathroom sink soap dishes by putting them in the dishwasher) and even slightly dangerous (such as jostling the electric heating elements on the stove out of their slots when cleaning and not putting them back). The worst thing they've done is that, while cleaning my room on one of the days they weren't supposed to be doing it, they took my personal hand towel. As soon as I came back from training and realized it was missing, I reported it to the front desk, with a full description to distinguish it from the hotel towels. (Aside from being somewhat white, it doesn't even look the same. It's half the thickness, for one thing.) That was a week ago, and they still haven't found it. I'm just afraid someone on the housekeeping staff thought it was "defective" and threw it away, and now they don't want to admit it.

On the bright side, the new Warcraft expansion comes out this Thursday. My guild has been making a last effort at clearing the current raid instances, and we had an exciting weekend of progress. We got as far as killing Brutallus, the second boss in Sunwell Plateau, the hardest 25-person raid in the current game. (Granted it is far easier now than when it was first released, but still, not everyone can do it.) I'm just sorry that the hotel wireless connection is laggy and unreliable. (I disconnected three times during our successful attempt on Brutallus, so I wasn't much help.) A group of us here that play Warcraft are planning on going out together to purchase our copies of the expansion. It's kind of a shame that we can't take any days off to play, but I'm sure the first couple days will have a lot of lag and server crashes anyway, so we won't be too far behind.

My big news this week is that I received word from CBP that I passed my interview. Yay! Now I'm just waiting on Homeland Security to finish the background check. Goodness knows how long that will take.

Aside from that, I've been playing a lot of Warcraft. For one thing, my guild finally defeated the main boss of Mount Hyjal, Archimonde, a couple weeks ago. That was quite thrilling. We're hoping to keep making progress in Black Temple while we still can.

You see, there will soon be another Warcraft expansion, called Wrath of the Lich King. The expansion will introduce a lot of new content, making most of the old stuff obsolete. Most people estimate that the expansion will be released in late November, though a firm date hasn't been given.

One of my brothers was lucky enough to have been randomly selected to participate in beta testing the expansion, and he has been letting me try out some of the new content. I made a new type of character called a Death Knight. The Death Knight characters start out having been corrupted by the Lich King to be evil, but they are eventually redeemed and welcomed back by their race leaders as heroes.

So far I've mainly done the introductory quests, but I'm starting to get a feel for the playstyle. Unlike some classes that only need to push buttons for one or two abilities, the Death Knight has a lot of different abilities to juggle.

I had a great time at wednesday_10_00's birthday party this weekend. Both photoash and mereflair attended, and we sat around chatting and eating more food than was good for us and playing with kitties. It's too bad the weekend couldn't have lasted longer.

Today I was surprised to receive a request for an interview for a position at the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois. I applied for the position nearly two months ago, so I hadn't expected to hear anything this late. My parents like that it's a lot closer to Michigan than California, particularly since I already have a brother living in Chicago. They think my main concern should be for how well the salary compares, though.

On Sunday night, my guild did a "timed" run of the 10-person raid instance Zul'Aman. The way this instance works, the first four bosses each drop one piece of loot just for killing them. If you kill them within a certain time limit, you get an extra reward for each one. They get progressively harder, so while it is fairly easy to get the first timed reward, the third is quite challenging, and the fourth is attainable only with high levels of skill, coordination, practice, and gear. We have been able to get the third reward most attempts, but Sunday night was the first time we successfully attained the fourth.

The fourth reward is a special mount called the Amani War Bear, and I was lucky enough to win the random roll for it. It was an exciting occasion, and I hope we win more bears on future attempts.

My trip to DC went reasonably well, though there were a couple of disappointments. We started by driving there last Monday, arriving at our hotel, the Washington Hilton (where Ronald Reagan was shot) in the early evening. The first thing we noticed about our room was that it was far--and I mean FAR--from the elevators. The hotel has two wings, shaped vaguely like one of those stylized V birds that show up in drawings. The elevators are in the "body" of the V. Our room was near the tip of one wing, literally half a block away (megory paced out the distance).

The next thing we noticed was that our room was small...and this is an assessment coming from a person used to Japanese hotel room sizes. It also had no refrigerator. (Friends of megory's, both with diabetes, complained to the hotel that they needed a refrigerator for medical reasons, to no avail.) Before coming, we had been told that we would have free internet, but it turned out that they charged $13/day for service to the guest rooms (which is more than the $10 we were charged in Tokyo, for comparison). The wireless service in the hotel lounge charged by the hour. I decided to boycott such "service" and just go without for the week.

We noticed upon entering the room that they had left a letter informing the guests that they would be testing the fire alarm system the next day. That night, at about 2am, the fire alarm went off. We found out later that someone had pulled the alarm falsely, but at the time, no one evacuated because everyone thought it was part of the drill. What was worse than the alarm, though, was the hissing, crackling intercom system that was left on for about ten minutes while the hotel tried to figure out if it was a real fire or not.

The one nice thing about the hotel was its location. It was within easy walking distance of a number of good ethnic restaurants. We had Thai the first night and tried Indian, Japanese, Mediterranean, and Ethiopian at various times during the week.

megory had to spend all day at the NEA convention (our reason for going), but my dad and I wandered around, seeing various museums and embassies and even the zoo. It was extremely hot, but still interesting. Chinatown was the one real disappointment...it consisted of a gate and some signs with Chinese translations under them and that's about it. It made Sydney's Chinatown look good.

I wrote out a whole rant in my head about the DC Metro and how poorly it compares to Japan's subways, with its non-functional escalators, ticket machines that spit your tickets on the floor, bad lighting, and stained carpets, among other problems...but at least there IS a subway system.

We got back to Michigan on Monday, where I've mostly been reading and catching up on more TV. I did venture out to pick raspberries in the backyard, though I was eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Finally, in Warcraft news, my guild has been progressing in the 25-person raid instance Mount Hyjal. Last night we took down the fourth boss, Azgalor, for the first time. We made a few attempts on the fifth boss, but we were slaughtered pretty quickly. That's going to take a bit of practice.

Fancy you should ask.

I'm currently working on packing up clothes I won't need during the next month and more books. The boxes are starting to make a small wall across my hobby room. I may need to run to the post office to buy some more boxes tomorrow.

I'm also buying last-minute DVDs and other items, such as converters for the electrical appliances I'll be taking with me.

I was a bit shocked yesterday when I got a phone call from the travel agency saying they hadn't received payment for my plane ticket back to Michigan. Oddly, during the time it took me to run to my purse and locate the receipt, the travel agent was like, "Oh, wait a minute, here's your payment. Never mind." Huh? You wait until AFTER calling me to look for it, what?

The package of information for my trip to Australia arrived the other day. Apparently everyone on the tour has to wear a hunking big ball pen on a cord so the tour guide can identify them. Anyway, at least now I know the hotels where I'll be staying while I'm there.

I'm still working on trying out new recipes while I can. It's hard when each one makes enough for 2-4 meals, and I'm just one person. I have to finish the old stuff before I can make something new, or else I won't have enough room in the refrigerator. A side effect is that it keeps me busy constantly washing dishes. At the same time, I'm trying to whittle away at my reserves of canned/dried/frozen foods before I wind up having to toss things.

I've also been spending a lot of time with megory playing Warcraft. We finally got our characters to level 70, the current highest level.

As the temperature has started dropping, it suddenly struck me that if I don't start cleaning my apartment now (to prepare for my year-end guests), I will wind up having to do it in the cold. So this weekend I made some time to straighten up in the laundry room and hobby room. I managed to pack up two boxes of summer clothes to mail back to Michigan, which gave me enough space to put away all the laundry that has been languishing on the tatami for lack of anywhere better to put it.

I think I buy too many clothes...

I also managed to sort through some of the old school supplies (some left by my predecessors) that had piled up in the hobby room. I threw out a bunch that I will clearly never use. The place isn't what I'd call clean yet, but at least it is now possible to walk across the floor to the recycling can.

After that, I treated myself to lunch at Olive Kitchen. (They have added a second flavor of coffee creamer to their selection!)

At school, the students are starting to prepare for the Exhibition that will be held Friday. We have a shortened schedule Wednesday and a half day Thursday. Originally, the Exhibition was scheduled to be on Saturday (with Monday off in compensation), as it has been every previous year. I don't know why they decided to move it back to Friday, but oh well. At least this way I won't miss this week's Gruul raid...

In other news, there is a new bulk food store called Amika opening up down the street from my apartment, on my commute route. The advertising says it has "gourmet food of the world." I'm not holding my breath hoping that it will have anything other than Chinese for foreign food, but you never know.

There's not much else to report. I suppose I could mention that Kraft finally changed its grated parmesan cans. Up until now, they were made with a plastic cap, a cardboard tube body, and a metal base. Considering that plastic, cardboard, and metal all have to be separated into different trash containers, this was a real pain. (Personally, I just tossed the whole thing in the non-burnable trash, but I felt guilty about it.) The new parmesan can is made entirely of plastic, so I can put it in the plastic recycling bin with a clear conscience.

In Warcraft news, patch 2.3 is scheduled to be released on Tuesday. It has bunches of improvements that I'm really looking forward to, including faster leveling of alts, tracking for fishing pools, cooking quests, reputation-based ammunition vendors in Shattrath, and a new (albeit expensive) hippogryph mount. The main feature of this patch is a new 10-player dungeon, which my guild is hoping to raid this weekend.

I think I'm spoiled after having two 3-day holidays in a row. It's definitely much easier to get things done. I was able to get some extra loads of laundry and dishes done, which helps make the place seem not quite such a disaster area.

Now I just have to wait for the weather to cool down a little more so I can devote some time to cleaning out the hobby room.

This week at school (what's left of it) will be a semi-normal schedule. Tuesday is a half day, but the rest of the week is as usual. Next week, though, is back on the half-day schedule as the students prepare for the fall festival.

I designed two more Warcraft UIs this week: Heian UI and Sakura UI. I still have more ideas, but I think that's gotten most of it out of my system for the time being.

School continues to go as usual. The one big change is that the workshop on American Culture that I do Wednesday afternoons is only a semester-long class, so I have a new batch of students this term.

If you recall, the previous class (of two students) were watching Supernatural. This time I got four students, and they had heard what the first pair had done in class, so they were kind of expecting to watch videos right off the bat. Instead, I started the way that I had the first time, by having them brainstorm as many aspects of culture as they could. When they went through the list, they decided that they would prefer to study the history of American music.

I thought that was great--they were actively showing an interest in an educational topic. The main problem is that I only have a superficial knowledge of the subject, so I had to do some websurfing for ideas.

Today I started with two songs: "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Follow the Drinking Gourd." I downloaded mp3s to play in class, along with a few images (like a picture of the Big Dipper). I gave some general background of the social issues of the times, played the songs, explained what they were about, and then asked them some simple questions about their thoughts. At the end of the class they seemed to have enjoyed it, though one commented that some of the issues were depressing to think about.

In Warcraft news, my guild alliance took down Gruul over the weekend, and I got the leg armor to match my shoulder armor. (Seekrit gamer code: The winning strat was to bring in a tree druid to keep HoTs up on the tanks during reverbs.) Our guild is now ranked #15 on our server, and is among the top 5000 nationwide.

Also, I finished my second custom interface: Crane UI. (The area in the bottom right corner is for the minimap, which is invisible in the screenshot.) I'm still fiddling around with where to place things, but I'm liking this one even better than the first.

Classes resume at my school starting today. The last week of summer vacation went by rather quickly, as I spent most of my time reading and watching TV. Autumn rains moved in several days ago, bringing cooler temperatures, so it has been much more comfortable recently.

The fall schedule at school is always a jumble of strange hours as we have several national holidays plus the school festival and sports day on top of the switch from first to second semester. I'm interested in seeing what the school festival will be like this year. In previous years, when it was just the girls' school, the students were divided based on their homerooms. That is, all the "homeroom 3" students (1-3, 2-3, and 3-3, the English majors) were together on a team competing against the other teams. Last year, though, with the introduction of the Ritsumeikan students, they mixed up the homerooms, putting students in completely different majors together on the same team. I wonder if they plan on doing the same this year.

In Warcraft news, my guild has formed a partnership with another small guild to attempt killing bosses that require 25 people. Last week we took down a boss called High King Maulgar for the first time, and I won a piece of fancy shoulder armor. The next goal is to get Gruul the Dragonkiller. We've tried him for two weeks now, but haven't managed to get him below 5%. It shouldn't be much longer, though.