Well I’ve been thinking long and hard about this and as much as I’m worried that blogging is over, I am not really over it and I’m going to try to catch up with all the blog posts that I have in draft and that I want to write. I’ve decided to not finish the Japan posts because I pretty much covered that in my blog and I’m not even sure where to start with it. I have about 12 drafts that aren’t about Japan so I’m gonna just go ahead and post them as I can.

Thanks to you who sent me emails and commented that you’re still reading

Lovely, it’s five days in to a new year and as I’m looking back I’m appalled at the fact that I have 17… SERIOUSLY 17 drafts in my blog and I haven’t published a thing. I’m so far behind on blogging about Japan and it seems to be fully stopping me from blogging anything new. I am not sure what I should do about my blog in 2010. Is it over? Should I get back on the stick? Leave the Japan trip posts for future posts? I definitely need to figure this out. Are you still out there and reading? Let me know.

I know I’m smack in the middle of blogging about my trip to Japan (it’s taking forever) but there is a list of other things I wanted to blog about so rather than wait, I’m going to just do this now.

I read on Autoblog today about an article about manu-matics, or automatic transmissions that can be shifted like a manual. To be honest, I always thought these were a bit of a waste of time until we got our MINI Cooper. My boyfriend and I both have a “car” but right now neither car is really “mine” or “his”. We take turns driving the cars… often. The MINI was the first time our wants and desires were conflicting. I wanted a manual transmission, he wanted an automatic, as he can not currently, nor does he wish to learn to drive a manual. The compromise was the fact that the MINI’s “semi manual” automatic transmission. I’ve had cars before with the semi-manual automatic that really was quite useless (to be honest our Volvo XC70’s is an example of this.), but the MINI’s automatic tranny is actually quite nice. You can actually feel the car downshift to use the engine to slow the car and the shifts with the “manual” mode are quick and exact. I almost always drive the car in “manual” mode and the only problem I’ve had is that when I first started to drive the car, the direction of upshifts and downshifts felt “backward” to me.

To shift up, you pull back on the gear lever, toward you, which to me felt backward because in my mind you move “UP” thru the gears, true you pull back to go from 1st to 2nd but you push forward to go from 2nd to 3rd. Now that being said, after driving for a year in the car, it actually began to make sense to me and I prefer it. Pulling back on the stick while accelerating feels more natural and pushing forward while braking is definitely better, that being said I wondered what the reasoning was behind the different shift patterns used by car manufactuers and apparently so did Road and Track. Today they have a story on their site [link] asking just that. They actually went and asked several car companies their reasoning. Check it out if you are curious like i was!

A few posts back, I talked about how I had some problems with my upgrade to Snow Leopard. I had set in my mind that I was going to do a rebuild of my machine. I figured it had been quite some time since I did a clean install and a hand migration of my data. It was definitely worth it as all my issues went away and it was a great chance to clear out the applications I haven’t used in forever. My MacBook is screaming on Snow Leopard now!

Yesterday, my last full day/night in Boston was quite a wonderful day, it didn’t start off so great, there was the remnants of a hurricane off the coast of Boston so my friend and I ended up geeking out at his place playing video games and doing computer stuff. It was a great day.

That evening, my friend and his partner took me out to dinner with a large group of their friends followed by a viewing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was in fact my first time and it was a blast. I’m not so sure that I’d do it again but it was hilarious. I got so much rice in my hair, down my shirt, in my pants and shoes! It was a wonderful time!

Yesterday while on the mend, I went with my friend here in Boston to pick up the latest version of Apple’s Mac OS X… OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. After a quick trip to the Apple Store, we headed over to his place to start playing around with our Macs. I chose to wait until I got back to the hotel to start my install as I wanted to do a clean install and use the Migration Assistant to move my data over.

This seemed like a good plan. I got back to the hotel pretty late, started my final Leopard backup, erased my hard drive and started a nice clean install of Snow Leopard. First thing I noticed was that the ins

This week, I had my first business trip in well over a year and I was kind of happy that it was a trip to Boston for several reasons. Firstly, I like the customer there. I’ve been back there more than a few times and they are really nice people and I enjoy working with them. Secondly, a trip to Boston means no flying. It’s actually significantly cheaper to take the Amtrak Acela train [link] than to fly. This is great news as I don’t have to drive to the airport, go thru security, it may take about five and a half hours to get there but it still ends up being less than flying. The third and most important reason is that one of my best friends lives there.

I was very much looking forward to the trip as it was toward the end of the week and it would allow me to spend the weekend as well as the evenings with him and his partner.

Well to say this week didn’t turn out as expected would be an understatement. It started off well but on Tuesday I woke with a sore throat and a low grade fever. It was hoping it was nothing but it kept gettng worse and worse. By the time I left on Wednesday it was a full blown flu. Runny nose, cough, fever, sneezing etc. I was barely sleeping and generally miserable but I was still able to get myself together enough to go out with them for dinner on Wednesday, Thursday and tonight.

Despite feeling like an incredibly bad guest and a health risk of enormous proportions, they were gracious hosts and they showed me quite a good time and even though my trip is not over, I wanted to thank them for their hospitaliy.

Last week, I bit the bullet and made a very extravagant purchase that I had considered for the last few years… I bought a Herman Miller office chair.

I, perhaps sadly, spend a great deal of time in front of my computers… and over the past 10 years I have probably bought 5 chairs. Eventually each one of them fails and has to be replaced, usually to the tune of a $100 to $200 each.

I first sat in a Hermann Miller chair at my friend Steve’s place almost 7 years ago now… and ever since then, I wanted one. Only problem is I could not wrap my head around the price. Not that I don’t think they are worth the price, I just figured who was I to own a chair that cost that much!

The latest chairs I bought last year are starting to have the cushion wear thin so this time I decided to take a second look at the Herman Miller chairs. I settled on the Mirra. It was a little cheaper than an Aeron, and I liked the Basic model very much. The clincher was that I could get one online for about 1/2 price!

It arrived yesterday, it didnt look like it would be to hard to assemble, but of course as tools and I don’t get on well, it was troublesome But it’s together and I can say that I love it. It’s very comfortable, the mesh seat just sort of makes you feel like you are floating instead of sitting… and the back of the chair is so nice and comfy! Here’s hoping it will remain so for many years to come!

Today I had my follow up appointment with my surgeon and I got some good news. They removed my stitched and I’m apparently healing very well, so well that I don’t have to wear my sling full time anymore. My major restrictions are to not lift or reach for anything. I think I can do that.

It does still hurt but at least I can type easier!

Today is my 36th birthday. Still don’t feel a day over 21, though I do think I’m starting to look older! It was a nice day… my shoulder is feeling much better and I didn’t have to work today! I woke up late, spent some time doing my Japanese lessons and then my friend Roseld came over for lunch. We went to one of my favorite sushi places for lunch and then came back and hung out at my place.

We had planned to go out to dinner but I really wasn’t up to it with the bum arm so my sweetie cooked me an amazing dinner of a huge rib eye steak, blue cheese mashed potatoes, asparagus with hollandaise sauce and olive oil garlic bread.

For my birthday, even though I had asked for no gift from him, my sweetie surprised me with Kindle. It’s not the first time I got my hands on one as we bought one for my mother on mother’s day but it’s fantastic and I love it. I’ll write a blog post about it soon.