C'est le jour du saint Valentine

Today is Valentine's day, so naturally I decided it would be a great day to celebrate Curt's birthday. I treated Shana and Curt to dinner. The restaurant refused to take reservations, so we had to walk in and get in line for a table. The wait was only a little over an hour, which was a lot better than some of the people who were after us.

"Why are you celebrating Curt's birthday on Valentine's day," you may be asking, "when his actual birthday doesn't even happen till Saturday?" This, of course, is because we are stupid. Still, they gave him a brownie sundae for dessert, even though it wasn't his actual birthday. This might be because we lied and said it was his actual birthday. Maybe we will all go to hell.

Oh yeah: Andrew, the Novell cafeteria does do take out, although they charge a tiny bit extra for the containers. The main problem is that Novell's campus is kind of in the middle of nowhere, so it's a pretty long trip to get down there. If you're going to go that far, you may as well eat in.

This is what I had for lunch today. It was pretty good! One of the perks of renting office space from Novell is that we get to eat food at their cafeteria. One of the downsides of not actually working for Novell is that they charge us higher prices at their cafeteria.

Coming home was an adventure today--it was snowing heavily and the roads were icy slick. There was an awful lot of running red lights going on, and nobody really minded much because they couldn't really accelerate into the intersection anyway. I was planning on going out to buy some stuff, but ended up just going home in the end.

I have to go to BYU tomorrow. The colloquium is about regression testing of software, and that's something we do a lot. Maybe it will be helpful.

Well, that's all from me. I'm off to do another page of exercises for my Japanese course and then go to sleep. Nathan's out of town, so my apartment's really quiet right now.

What a day!

I actually locked myself out of my car! I technically knew that this was possible, but it requires quite a few things to go wrong, all in a row. Well, they did. Fortunately, knowing that I'm the kind of person that locks myself out of my car, I left a copy of my car keys at my parents' place, and they ran them down to me. Thanks, parents!

Of course, I was also sufficiently brilliant to leave my company ID inside of my car just before locking myself out, so I had the inestimable privilege of wandering around the freezing parking lot for the 20 minutes it took for the parents to drive my keys down.

Anyway, after all that, I needed some cheering up, so I went and bought fish. Specifically, it was some kind of herb-crusted salmon salad. It was really good, and so I'm back in a pretty good mood. It's a pity that food's ability to put you in a good mood also makes you gain weight. Ah well, I'll try and work a little harder at the gym tomorrow.

Back in school! Sort of!

I've signed up for an independent study course at BYU. I've been wanting to learn how to read Japanese properly, and while I've been making some progress in self-study, having a structured way of learning and access to a teacher should be an immense help. My goal is to get some reasonable level of JLPT certification. I still have no idea what on earth I would do with such a thing as a JLPT certificate, but it's a way of keeping myself busy.

The course is Japanese 300. Clarissa is also taking it, although unlike me, she has schedules and grades and things. I will get a grade in the course, but I remain blissfully detached from caring what it is. There was a big section on using the course to meet graduation requirements, and I chuckled my way right over it. It's a lot more fun to take classes without the pressure--now I just have to see if I will do any of the work.

I had Italian food for dinner tonight. It was really good. But I find myself craving a cookie, and I don't have any. Such are the privations of life!