<sigh>

Alright a quick update...

My Photoshop class finishes up later today. It has been alot of work but well worth it. I had ten people sign up for this first one and that netted me $1000. $580 of which went to a new laptop, but that still puts me $420 and a new laptop up. I will likely be running a new one in January and (since all the material is already preped) it should be a lot easier (provided Adobe doesn't make any insane changes in 8.0).

In addition to that I have been asked to teach some photography classes. One class for point and shoot photography (real basic stuff), one class for Digital SLR work 101 (still pretty basic but now with interchangable lenses), and one class for Digital SLR Advanced (where the real fun is with F stops and shutter speeds and all that jazz). I am thinking about running those in late November (just in time for the holidays).

My Japanese class is going well (or rather Boku no Nihongo no kurasu wa ii de yo) and I am still studying diligently for the fall Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I am taking the class with an old friend of mine who I met in the first Japanese class I took all those years ago.

Hopefully now that my Photoshop class will be over I will be able to spend some more time with my friends. I am looking forward to long lazy Tuedays spent pawning noobs.

Work is actually going fairly well. It looks like I will be getting some of my hours back since the store is picking up quite a bit. The company has decided to drop the HMO that I currently accept health care from, but it is replacing it with 2 PPOs and a CDHP that actually look fairly promising. I don't have any serious health problems so I am thinking about taking a risk and going with the CDHP which would save me over $900 a year (mmmmm that's good savings).

My friend from Japanese class (Furenchu-san) loaned me what has to be the strangest manga I have ever picked up. It is called "Apocalypse Meow" and was written by Motofumi Kobayashi. So far it is really quite good. It is set in Vietnam during the Vietnam war and it follows a group of marines who are based on the real life solders who formed the squad "Dog Sh!t One" (in the manga it is "Cat Sh!t One"). The twist? It is all anthropomorphic. The Americans are all rabbits, the Vietnamese are cats, the Chinese are pandas, the Russians are bears, the French are pigs..... no I am not making that one up, the Koreans are Groundhogs and the Japanese are monkeys. It is definitely not for children (if the name of the squad didn't give it away), it is violent and filled with foul language. The real kicker is that this guy really knows his stuff. It is filled with real acronyms and soldier slang from the era. The weapons are true to life and the action is gritty and solid. The stories are short, but well done and the main characters are believable and even relatable (no small feat considering they are rabbits). Only one problem.....they don't have thumbs or fingers....they have paws.....how do they fire their rifles?

LOL, I just read the Wiki article and found out why rabbits represent the Americans. It is based off of a pun. The Japanese word for rabbit is usagi (pronounces oo-sa-gee) but in Romaji it looks like USA GI. Here is the wiki article.

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