Happy Anniversary To Us

Today is our anniversary - 3 years. I can't believe it's been that long! But we are very happy!

And especially happy with our present! We finally found a curio that was in our price range and the right size in the town of Frankenmuth, a Bavarian town an hour north of here. It's perfect and we can finally take our Japanese doll out of the box!!!

Here are a couple pictures - more on our picture link.

I passed

I passed my quals!!!

And we'll be at the Red Sox game tonight. Nothing else note-worthy to post.

Waiting in the lab

Sunday evening. Before going to our friends for a nice roast dinner, Katsu had to drop by the lab really quick to "fast the rats" so he can do experiments tomorrow. Giving me ample time for a post.

Michigan is really pretty in the spring and summer. It is really really green here. Especially after all the rain we've been having. It's quite a bit different from the meticulously watered and very nicely mowed lawns in Oklahoma or Texas. Here, it's like half the yards are errupting with flowers and weeds and who even knows what else. I am sure it has to do with the neighborhood we live in ... mostly old houses that you can distincly identify by decade - oh, that one was definately built in the 60's. I like it - a little messiness and not the cookie cutter suburban neighborhoods I've always lived in.

This has been a relaxing week ... sort of. I started my research. Which is basically reading papers, thinking, and writing equations. All by myself. And only talking to my advisor every now and then - once a week or so. I am sure it will take a little getting used to. It is so much more free-form than any job I've had before (excepting the other time I did research, but even then it was a very well-defined computer programming task) and definately more so than Katsu's research which is a 9-5 doing lab experiments kind of gig. We'll see if I like it. For anyone interested - I am researching the phase wrapping problem coming in imaging problems, especially in MRI applications, and developing a more statistical framework for solving the ill-posed problem. Exciting stuff, eh?

Church today (and yesterday) was Stake Conference. It was our first of those "broadcast" kind because we were out of town when they had one in Boston. So, all of Michigan and Pennslyvania stakes got to hear from Elder Perry, President Monson, Elder Tingey, and a sister from the Primary with a Japanese name. It was interesting ... I still don't really enjoy Stake Conference. Ward or general are more my thing. And it was interesting, because they called new stake presidency members and new bishops and counselors for one of the wards all during the adult session on Saturday night. And so on Sunday, we were with the University ward which seriously must have an average of at least one baby per family making for a very noisy meeting.

We want to take off on some small road trips this summer. Katsu's research has been a tad frustrating and he needs to get out of town and relax a bit more. And hopefully Tomo will come visit us this summer. SO that should be fun.

Another week of life

My quals are done, so it's time for another post. I don't know how I did on them ... maybe 50/50 whether I pass or fail. But, I figure it's good to do things every now and then that you are 100% completely scared of. And oral exams would definately go on the list. Especially when they are supposed to cover more material than I think I could possibly fit all in my brain. But - the key point being - they are DONE!!!

I am going to be starting my research today. Usual concerns - research ... don't you need to have original ideas for that??? Ha ha ha ... but I'm sure it will go just fine.

Last week was hard. Besides having these three oral exams, our home-teacher passed away leaving behind a wife and three Primary-age children. So, I also attended my first funeral last week. I hope the best for his wife and family. I don't know them that well beyond being the primary pianist. But there's still this strong desire to help in any way I can, which of course, everyone in the whole ward feels, so there's not much that I can do right now.

We also had our last ushering assignment last night for Dave Brubeck (sp?) which we really really enjoyed. It was busy and crowded, for the balcony, and wearing a skirt and running up and down the stairs is always a bit of an adventure and of course there's the walking home in the rain with dress shoes for a couple miles or so part. Katsu and I just sat on the steps for the whole performance - we couldn't see any of the action, but sometimes I think it is more enjoyable to just listen anyways. We really want to usher a lot next year, especially since the Royal Shakespeare Company is coming - only stop in the US - and we really want to usher that. Besides, that guy from Star Trek is playing Antony; how cool is that!

Also, I bought a new book; I know, as if I could possibly use a new book. But I had money to spend from sitting for a friend's dental boards and getting a cavity filled. So, I deserved something fun, perhaps. I bought the new Oxford Book of American Poetry. Poor Katsu has been putting up with my, "Oh, don't you want to hear this one?" or "Surely you've heard this one before" or "Oh, this poem is very funny" or "I had no idea this was actually a Sonnet!". By the way, did you guys know that Emma Lazarus's the New Colossus was a sonnet - not I.

So, now hoepfully it will be a fun summer. Research by day, fun by night. Maybe a few road trips. Options - Kirtland & Cleveland, Chicago, Mackinaw Island, Toronto, various other cities in Michigan or Ohio or other nearby states. Stay tuned for more updates.

Wow ... it's been a while

Wow ... I can only say that it has been a long time since I've written. Or Katsu. Ever since spring break and our fabulous trip to London, life has gotten messy. My group project for Image Processing had ... interesting group dynamics - suffice it to say that I did not get along with someone in my group. And the whole class crammed at least 75% of the work into the second half of the semester. Simultaneously, my estimation and detection class started a mad rush to get everything covered ending with a 48 hour take home exam. Icck. And my Medical Imaging lab suddenly had each weekly lab from 5:30pm - 10:30 pm at night at the hospital, making me grumpy for the rest of the week. And I have my qualifying exams (for the PhD) looming upon me next week. No biggie - if you fail, forget getting a PhD. And the funny thing is, I don't care so much about failing - i would be fine with just a Masters, but the idea of making a bad showing and embarrasing myself in these three oral exams terrifies me.

So, that's my life. And Katsu's has been busy. His experiments haven't been going so well at work and he switched over to some different ones. But honestly, I don't see how he does it. He puts all this time into the experiments, does them seemingly the same each time, and then half the time, for some unknown reason, they don't work. Ahh ... science.

So, the summer has begun - in terms of work load. No more classes. I just have my quals and then we will both be working our research jobs this summer. Hopefully it should be relaxing - no homework, just come home and play with our cat and sit on the porch and walk around the town and go to Farmer's market and try out some new meals. Should be fun.

Pictures from London

We have posted pictures from London for all to enjoy. Also some older pictures ... from Utah and from when we were dating.

http://amandatsu.dell.shutterfly.com/

Enjoy! And don't expect a real post soon because life is a mess here for the next couple of weeks.

Amanda

London

We are in London right now - surprising I know that I would take time to update our blog, but Katsu is watching a futbol (soccer) game right now that I am not really even mildly interested in with his brother and his brother:s roommate full of their Japanese interjections. So, an update is in order.

We have been having a blast (despite the cold I seem to have). It has already been a lot of fun and action packed. And I promise to post pictures when we are home. This is what we have done

Saturday - arrive. Go to Chelsea (futbol) store to buy Katsu the team stuff. See Tate Modern and the sights (St Paul and Westminster) at night.

Sunday - church in Britania ward. Then afternoon with Kiyo and girlfriend Hiroko at Victoria and Albert (decorative art museum) and the Natural History Museum.

Monday - day bus tour of Windsor castle, Stonehenge, and Bath - my absolute favorite so far.

Tuesday - See Tate Britain (British art museum), Celtic concert at a church downtown, National Gallery (art museum), and then evensong at St Pauls (that is the evening service - they sing the entire thing ... the cute little 9 and 10 year old boys and adults).

Wednesday - visit friends (Domikes) who live in village outside of Cambridge. Visit Cambridge - including King:s College Church and the Fitzwilliam (?) museum. Visit British Library.

So, you can see we are having fun. The weather is cold ... it actually snowed a bit today but sunny and not wet at all. So, it really is delightful touring weather. The English countryside is so beautiful - all green, even in the winter with cute little villages and lots of sheep everywhere. In fact, believe it or not, we actually saw a fox running across the street in the middle of London which is quite rare I am sure. London is very big and quite crowded but is so cute with little shops and restaurants everywhere and enough sights to keep anyone busy. Bath was especially lovely - I am sure my parents would love it.

So, here is our cute little travel update! Enjoy! We will be back soon ... but not without more fun!

Tired

You would think after ... let's see ... at least 17 years of taking tests, I would no longer get nervous or anxious over tests. Especially tests that I think will not be too hard or even worth worry about. Apparently, my brain hasn't gotten the memo about that one.

Instead of watching the rest of the Men's Figure skating competition last night - which was great based on the part I saw - I went to bed early at 10 to be ready for my test today. And yet, I tossed and turned worried that my alarm clock - actually 2 alarm clocks wouldn't go off. Silly, silly.

When I got to school today after walking through the freezing cold which will just colder (could they really be using the Fahrenheit scale when they projected the a low of 5 tonight or a high of 12 tomorrow!), I was tired. I felt like I had jag lag. Which is just ridiculous. It reminded me of the first few days we were in Japan. No matter how hard I tried, I would be wide awake at about 4 or 5 in the morning. We'd walk over to the Funai's apartment by 6. It was ridiculous. And though you are wide awake - it's fuzzy ... the whole world feels fuzzy. Like how the world sounds different when you yawn really wide because you can hear the sound in your body. Just like that, exactly the whole world feels that way - bathed in a weird light. I'm hoping it's not like that to or from London. I don't think I had jetlag in Paris ... and when we came home ... well, I was way too sick to remember.

February

January was nice and beautiful ... warm all the time, no need for coats and lots of sunshine (opposed to the 7 minutes of sunshine in the previous month or something like that). Alas - it could not last and February has come. The month when it's cold outside and dark and you wake up and just want to keep sleeping and never get out of bed. So, there doesn't seem much to report. Katsu and I are both really busy. We seem to have something going on all the time. And I'm kind of tired of it. When we get back from spring break, I want to limit our social obligations to the most possible. We need more "us" time. And who can believe that spring break is so soon! We are excited about that.

And of course, our kitty Joe is still lots of fun!!! He cracks us up, mostly. He always wants to play - brings his toys over to you and just gives you this look.

That's us.

Third way into the semester

Hi. This is Katsu and this is my first post in this blog. I'd check this blog once in a while to see what secrets of our lives Amanda have been revealing to the public.

It's been busy for both of us, but that's not a news to anybody. We don't intend to be busy, but the world sometimes forces us to. Amanda and I try not to conform to the way world sees how we should be/appear successful, and since the world makes us work harder than what we think we really have to, we usually get away with not doing as much as others may. For example, neither of us have ever studied overnight. We are not lazy, we just don't do it unless it's worth it. Anyway, even then, right now we are busy.

At the end of this month, we have a research grant that is going to be submitted from my lab, so I decided that I am going to halt my project for a week and help get data for the grant. For a reason I rather not explain, today I find myself not much to do until 2pm. Thus I write this post.

I report that Amanda has been busy, mainly because her lecturers are retarded. Well, at least one of them is. As I explained before, we are both hooked into not submitting to being busy, and one way of doing this, is by doing the assignments right away. Amanda does her homeworks right away, too, but basically her lecturer (by the way this lecturer is a professor by title but by intelligence not one, therefore I classify him/her a lecturer) makes mistakes in the questions that makes the homework incomprehensible that even post-docs of Nobel Prize Winner (remember that Nobel Prize Winners don't actually do their work) cannot solve. For example, this moron made 9 corrections in 8 days. Do you know what this means? This means that probably your email box was filled more with his emails than the numbers of spams when you get back from your visit to China. I can't believe this incompetent moron is allowed to teach in psuedo-prestigious institution. On top of it, he gives her take home midterm over the weekend. It is going to be posted on Friday night and is due on Monday morning. Hallo~? What happen to some of us keeping sabbath day holy and use Saturday to run errands, spend time with family, prepare for sabbath? In fact we are performing service that Saturday to local middle school as Science fair judges. You can let us know that these things are happening maybe at least one month in advance? I think these professors (by this I mean, not just this moron but all professors) assume that when a student is a student, he/she is always student. We have commitments, too? I am going to shoot Cuban missile to them next time I see them pull out this crap. Oh sorry, not PC.

I used to post on livejournal, and my posts were long. You can stop reading here if you want to. I had a final this Monday and I think I did okay. The class was a female dog, and they made us come to the class on MLK day by saying "you are not required to come, but it is very important that you do", given that there were several African American students in the class. Of course everybody shows up, and the professors decides to go half an hour over, because she knows that nobody has a class on MLK day. The class content was good, and I learned a lot about things you will never care about in million years, but are useful in my currently non-existent career. That class is now finished, but now a second modules started yesterday and go till the end of March and third module go to the end of semester. I hate that word now, "module", oh, wow you are so smart, next time I am going to register for a class I am going to bring my blue encyclopedia just in case I am going to encounter some ambigiuos terminology.

We are going to London in 2 weeks and we are certainly excited. I am mostly excited to see my brother, chill out and have a good time watching Amanda excited to see all kinds of places, and buy Chelsea souvenirs. I have been saving my fun-cash for last several months (our fun-cash is $20/mos) so that I can spend it on Chelsea shirt. If you don't know what Chelsea is, go away. Anyway, I think we are going to Bath and perhaps Cambridge, too. Because we just have an abundancy of money that we don't know what to do with. Oh, and we are also planning to go to a pub and get into a fist fight with bloody hooligans about how Liverpool fans are all criminals. Amanda doesn't know about this plan yet.

In contrast to what I have said in my second paragraph, I am too lazy to correct the old link to my website on the right, so here it is: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/kfunai