A few months back, my mother and sister came out to California to visit my brother and me. The spent about a week between Alameda and Monterey. We had a good time and it was the first time that my mom had all three of us together at one time since 1995. Just before they got here, we bought one of those outdoor fireplaces. One of my closest friends lives across the street and he has one he fires up regularly. He clears a lot of the dead trees from behind his house and usually has a go...

I miss being able to run. I was on the Track and the Cross Country teams in high school. I wasn't great, but I was good. During my senior year, I ran 17:24 on a 3-mile course during the cross country season. At my last track meet before I graduated I ran the mile in 4:57 and an hour later I ran the 2-mile in 10:52. Neither time qualified me to move on to the regional track meet, but they were my personal bests. I was a pace runner. I never sped up or slowed down greatly during a race...

Well, the people that run the housing area around here have finally listened to all the complaints and requests. The lines in and out of our housing area are crap and the base has a contract for exclusive service for cable with a crappy company (which is why we also have a satellite dish), so it looked like broadband internet service was never going to happen. But, Verizon Wireless got permission to connect a wireless network in the area. They came through today and installed an antenna on...

Todays funeral may have been my last on this two month rotation. We have two funerals scheduled before our official end date, but other NCOs will be handling them. I spent some time thinking about volunteering for another rotation, but in the end, my schedule has been too disrupted and my students are grumbling about never seeing me in the classroom. Of course, they don't complain to me, the go around behind my back and may backhanded comments to other MLIs. They have a point, though. I ...

Last night I was IM'ing with a good friend of mine in Korea. He had to take a break to look at something at work and when he came back, he mentioned something about a poorly translated phrase he saw. He then said that he gets to deal with similar stuff sometimes. We laughed about how sometimes poor language research can lead to a disastrous name like when Chevroley introduced the Nova to Spanish speaking countries (for those that don't know, no va in Spanish means doesn't go). Another that...

Last night I was IM'ing with a good friend of mine in Korea. He had to take a break to look at something at work and when he came back, he mentioned something about a poorly translated phrase he saw. He then said that he gets to deal with similar stuff sometimes. We laughed about how sometimes poor language research can lead to a disastrous name like when Chevroley introduced the Nova to Spanish speaking countries (for those that don't know, no va in Spanish means doesn't go). Another that...

I am the duty MLI this week. That doesn't really mean much. The main duty is to stay after work and lock up when everyone has gone home for the day. On MWF, quitting time is 1645 and lock up is at 1700 (4:45 PM and 5 PM for those not on military time). On Tuesday and Thursday we have study hall classes at night, so lock up is at 2030 (8:30 PM). A little before closing time, I have to go through the school house and check to make sure all doors and windows are closed and locked. I also h...

I've written before about the DLPT (language test) that military linguists have to take regularly before (you can check it out here Link ). Well, there is one other test that is administered here at DLI. It is called the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). When I was a student, we simply called it the speaking DLPT, but since then the name has been changed to OPI. As can be guessed from the name, it is a test of speaking ability in the target language (mine being Korean). Every studen...

I love 80's music (It helps that I was born in 70's). I just took an 80's music lyrics quiz over at yetanotherdot.com Link . I scored a 93. Take the quiz and let me know how you did.

It's kind of old, but it's one of my favorite pictures I've found on the net. My favorite part is that South Korea looks almost like an island off the coast of China since North Korea is so dark. Yee-ha! for NASA!!!

Found this site on a blog outside JU. It's pretty neat, though, and I thought I'd share it. I've been to all the red-colored states. create your own personalized map of the USA My world map is much less colorful. create your own visited country map They also have maps of European countries and Canadian provinces.

Another example of how wrong I can be. A friend of mine came to visit one night and noticed that one of my dogs only had three legs (we had three maltese at the time). He also noticed that we babied this dog above and beyond what he'd ever seen a person do before. He asked about the dog and I told him that one night, there was a fire while we were sleeping and if it hadn't been for this dogs barking, we'd have slept through and never made it out. He then asked if that was how the dog lo...

Another example of how wrong I can be. A friend of mine came to visit one night and noticed that one of my dogs only had three legs (we had three maltese at the time). He also noticed that we babied this dog above and beyond what he'd ever seen a person do before. He asked about the dog and I told him that one night, there was a fire while we were sleeping and if it hadn't been for this dogs barking, we'd have slept through and never made it out. He then asked if that was how the dog lo...

I was doing some random google'ing and I came across a link for JU that had Japanese written with the link. When I clicked on it, it took me to an excite.jp webpage that had everything in JU in english with Japanese written right below it. Now, I don't know Japanese at all, but I can recognize some Chinese characters (Korean and Japanese both use Chinese characters) and what I could recognize seemed to fit. For example, I saw the character for year in the title of article about the 15 year...