cubs lose, cubs lose, cubs lose

oops. I meant to say that the Bears lost. It would have been nice if they'd won, but really, that was expecting too much.

Today was kanji... I have been studying a bit more and that is definately helping my quizzes... and she gave us a sheet with all the kanji that will be on the test next week. We supposedly learned 298 kanji this semester, on top of the 220 from the first book (many of which I already knew). So if I knew them all, I'd be not quite a third of the way to being fully literate. gah.

I used to really dislike the Grateful Dead, but they are growing on me. I only ever heard them on Sunday nights when we had gone to my grandma's and XRT had this thing called "The Grateful Dead Hour" on which they played lived recording from concerts. I hated it because they'd play the same song for a good 20 minutes. I never noticed when they played regular, studio recordings on the radio during the daytime, though, because it wasn't like they were playing "Sugar Magnolia"'s refrain for 10 minutes.

Tonight for dinner I decided to use up the last inch of pasta sauce and I made risotto with it, adding fennel and oregano. I cut up some garlic too, but since it didn't cook for hours and hours, the garliciness didn't really get to permeate through the sauce. Also, it was convienent to make risotto with the end of the sauce because I got to rinse out the jar and then put the water in the pan, thereby using up all the tomato residue.

I'm going to Sapporo on Wednesday for the snow festival... I will walk around and look at sculptures made of snow and ice. And then my feet will get cold. Actually, hopefully the fleece socks I bought will help prevent my feet from getting cold. I'm really looking forward to taking a shower in a full-size bathroom. That was one of the nicest things about being home, a regular bathroom with a sink attached to the wall and a separate area for taking a shower so the floor wasn't puddly all the time.

A pigeon keeps going on the balcony and landing by the door. I banged on the window really loudly a couple times and I heard my neighbors both bang on their doors, hopefully it got discouraged and went to harass some other area. The 3rd and 4th floors all have green mesh screens to keep birds out, I'm jealous. I went to the office and told them and they started talkingto each other about the mesh, so maybe other people have been complaining and we will get bird protection.