A little lighter (2)

..and the thing was so small you couldn't believe it!

Just kidding (read the title of the post again).

Two posts in one day (even if one of them is just a picture I found and really liked). I really need to get a life!

As much as I enjoy writing the more serious stuff, I'll limit it. If I need more, I'll consider another blog with a theme.

My insomnia has flared up again. It could be tied into the heat, humidity, etc., but I've had less than 13 hrs. of sleep in the last three days (and more than half of that was in a chair). None of that has been in a stretch of over two hours. On the plus-side, alcohol consumption really drops when you wake up punch-drunk! ;-)

(That was written last night. I actually got a decent night's sleep last night)

Yesterday's original plan was to go to a kind of an organic farmer's market event held by a company we often catalogue order from. We've been there before and loved it (the place more than the event). It's in a beautiful location next to a river at the base of the central mountain range on this island. The problem is that it takes more than two hours each way. Between Taka's busy week and my lack of sleep, we just blew it off. When it cools off a little, we'll head out that way and maybe do a little riverside picnic. It really is a beautiful place.

This is what the outdoor part of the restaurant looks like. It's from their website (I don't know any of these people).



The outside (from the front) looks like a large Pennsylvania-style barn. Do a Google search on Alishan and you should find a lot more.

We woke up to a power outage this morning that included water. You would have laughed to see me sitting in the office by a computer with no power trying to figure out what to do with my morning. You probably would have laughed less at the mood around here when we were trying to get everything reset after the power came back on. The phone took about an hour and several flare-ups of temper. I shouldn't complain though, it was the first time in four years that the power has more than flickered off then back on.

We knew it was a neighborhood-wide event because of the people living behind us. There's kind of a dead-end ally behind our building that we share with some houses. Three or four individual homes all filled with the same family. Old-school Japanese. They were really freaking over what to do for lunch because it was almost 12:00. They were more concerned over not being able to have lunch right at 12:00 than they were over the power outage, because "Hey, it's 12:00. Where's lunch?!". The power was back on by 11:50, but they had already rushed off to a restaurant.

The power was out less than two hours. I'm gladder than most because I've spent something like five times that cooking and freezing stuff over the last few days. Insignificant compared to what's going on elsewhere in the world, but never underestimate my ability to make the life of everyone around me miserable when I'm pissed off.

It's actually kind of cool and breezy today. I think I'll head out to the stores before the rain hits.

Too late. The skies just opened. Just the thought of going out is enough to bring on the rain. Maybe I ought to do a tour of drought stricken areas...