A Weird Pre-Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! For my beloved I got an elongated ADA 18" high Kohler toilet... how romantic! I got and installed it on Tuesday and it took way longer than all the videos I watched had led me to believe. One reason is because I tried using Fluidmaster's Better Than Wax toilet seal instead of a wax ring for the seal and spent well over an hour trying to get it to fit right, but no matter what I did I could not get the toilet to sit flush with the floor, it always had some wiggle to it. So I eventually gave up with that and tried Korky's Wax-Free gasket, another wax-free alternative. This thing worked great, fit just right the first time with no wiggle. Then another thing that slowed me down was that the 9" water line we had didn't reach the tank so I had to go to the store and pick up a 16", but when I got home and tried to hook it up I realized I had picked up a sink faucet water line. I had definitely been in the toilet repair area when I picked it up so someone must have just thrown it in the wrong box when they went to put it back, thus I had to go back to the store, return it, and buy the right one.

Yesterday turned out to be a weird day. At 4AM our power had gone out, and we knew the exact time because when it happened the alarm on our UPS battery backup started wailing like someone was trying to kill a bag full of angry cats. There's supposed to be a way to turn the alarm off but it doesn't seem to work so I just turned off the UPS. I had noticed it was snowing outside before heading to bed and in the morning everything was covered in like 10 inches of snow. Also, the giant oak tree, which was more like two oak trees attached at the base, had fallen over. So no more oak tree :(. It hit and crushed the metal dog run fence in several spots but I can't see if it did any damage to the wooden fence further back as there's too many branches in the way.

Due to all the snow, Treese couldn't get to work so she got to have a snow day. Unfortunately, the power outage lasted until 5pm so it wasn't the most enjoyable snow day. It was really cold so we tried to keep bundled up and used the gas fireplace for heat which we haven't used in a long, long time (after taking out the fake fire log of course). We also used that fire to cook some canned raviolis since our gas stove doesn't function without power, which is a terrible design flaw. Who designs a gas stove to not work without power? It was around 5PM when the power finally came back on which was nice because it was beginning to get too dark to do anything. Once the power came back our living room clock started making a loud buzzing sound from inside, not like an alarm but like there was something wrong, so I unplugged it. I plugged it into a different outlet but the buzzing persisted. I tried to set the time but it was unresponsive so I think it's toast. Also, the cooling fans in our NVR got really noisy so I think I'll have to replace those. I haven't noticed any other problems yet so hopefully that's it.

ふんふん なんだかいいにおい, Page 2

The second page of the Japanese children's book ふんふん なんだかいいにおい is:

おおいそぎで ごはんを たべると どうなりますか。
さっちゃんの くちのまわりは たまごのきみで くわんくわん。
てのひらは いちごジャムで べたべた。
エプロンは とりのスープで しみだらけです。

The first line is "Ooisogi de gohan wo taberu to dou narimasu ka" and I know all those words except "dou narimasu" which apparently means something like "what will happen". So that sentence is "What will happen if I eat a meal urgently?" and the next three sentences appear to be the answer. The second line is "Sacchan no kuchi no mawari wa tamago no kimi de kuwankuwan". Here "kuchi" is mouth and "tamago" is egg but I don't know "mawari", "kimi", or "kuwankuwan". According to the Internet, "mawari" means "around" but "kimi" has different meanings and "kuwankuwan" is a complete mystery. The next two sentences don't get any easier, something about strawberry jam on hands and soup on an apron. I didn't expect a children's book to be this challenging!

Memrise Update

Memrise, one of the apps I use for Japanese language practice, recently did a major update. This update introduced a rather annoying bug where instead of showing the translation of a kanji it just shows the kanji itself, thus, no way to know what the kanji means! This update also sees the removal of a feature I really liked which was that when typing an incorrect translation of a given English sentence in Japanese, the app would show the correct Japanese and then underneath would show what you had typed and highlight the part that was wrong. Now it no longer shows what you typed. One change I do like is that they finally fixed the Speed Review so it's now possible to finish. Before this update it would give you less and less time on each screen until finally you had like one second to read the English then read all four choice boxes of Japanese and choose the right one. That was tough for individual words but for screens with complete sentences it was impossible. I couldn't even do that if everything was in English, there just wouldn't be enough time to read the choices. Now you get the same amount of time on each page and so for the first in over a year I was able to complete a speed review.

Learned the meaning of the final sentence

I posted on japanese.stackexchange.com asking for help understanding that sentence I couldn't translate and received a great response from a user named Chocolate who broke it down piece-by-piece. That sentence means "Why? ... I can't tell that to Mom.", so the first page says "Sachan ate breakfast urgently. Mom always says 'please ate slowly' but today it cannot be helped. Why? ... I can't tell that to Mom." Now that page one is done, I suppose it's time to move on to page two!

Page one of the Japanese children's book ふんふん なんだかいいにおい

The first page in the Japanese children's book ふんふん なんだかいいにおい that I'm trying to read is:

さっちゃんは おおいそぎで あさごはんを たべました。
おかあさんは いつも 「ゆっくり たべなさい」 と いうけれど、 きょうは ゆっくりなんて していられないの。
なぜって‥‥‥
それは おかあさんには ないしょなの。

The first sentence (Sachan wa ooisogi de asagohan wo tabemashita) means something like "Sachan ate breakfast urgently". I understood that without having to look anything up except I don't know why the particle で is there after おおいそぎ. I struggled more with the second sentence. I knew "ゆっくり たべなさい" meant something about eating slowly but I didn't recognize the ~なさい (~nasai) conjugation. Searching the web I found that it indicates a request, like ~kudasai, but is used when talking to someone who is a lower rank than you such as a parent to a child, so that phrase simply means "Please eat slowly". I also didn't know that "と いう" means "to say" in that a person was just quoted. I did know that けれど means "but/however", きょう means "today", and ゆっくり means slowly but I didn't recognize the なんて on the end of it. Apparently it's just a word that give emphasis. Then I also didn't recognize していられないの which according to Google Translate means "cannot be helped". So the second sentence should mean something like "Mom always says 'please ate slowly' but today it cannot be helped". The third sentence starts with なぜって‥‥‥ which I didn't recognize at all and apparently just means "why". Then それ means "that" and おかあさん means "mom" but I didn't know ないしょ or なの. Apparently ないしょ means "secrecy" and なの is just an informal version of ですか, which is sort of like "to be?". But both Google Translate and Microsoft Translate give different translations of that sentence, neither has a word like secrecy in it and neither seem to make much sense in the context so I'm still not sure what that sentence means.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! We're only two days in but I hope you all got off to a good start. We went to see Aquaman yesterday, which was fine. Enjoyable for the most part, Jason Momoma was great as usual. I loved his character in Stargate: Atlantis and enjoyed every performance I've seen since then, even when the movies themselves were nothing spectacular (Conan the Barbarian, Braven). He brings an energy that makes the character enjoyable to watch and easy to get invested. That's something the DC movie universe really needs. My eyelids started getting real heavy during that ending CG battle, though, when it switched from watching characters I care about to a whole bunch of computer generated people I had no investment in fighting each other. I struggled to stay interested during that whole sequence, but up until that part I was enjoying it. I thought they did a good job with the underwater effects, the hair and the way people moved.

Last weekend of the year

We saw Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse this weekend and really enjoyed it. We also saw Bird Box on NetFlix which Treese heard everyone talking about at work, and it was fine. Not sure what all the buzz was about, we didn't think it was super amazing or anything. When it ended I head questions (spoilers ahead!).... why wouldn't the creatures go inside buildings? How did the group know that the creatures wouldn't go inside buildings, like the giant supermarket where they all took off the blindfolds once they got inside. If Gary was already infected when they let him into the house, why weren't his eyes all freaky and why weren't the birds totally freaking out like they did in the supermarket? When the rapids were approaching, why didn't they get out and walk the rest of the way. It's not like they had to keep going down the river for miles and miles after the rapids, their destination was right there. So yeah, liked it but wasn't in love with it. We also binge watched the TV show Titans this week which we enjoyed.