Shoko

Just Married!

2009-12-06T09:56:07Z

Yes, finally. ^____^

Getting Fixed Up

2009-09-12T03:44:09Z

Drywall people came today and patched up the holes that were made to find the leak. It's all looking pretty nice. Now, the areas need to get painted and one of the spots near the floor needs to have the baseboard put back in.

Stuff that we still have requests out for:
- missing screen in master bath window
- master shower stall door doesn't close properly - it swings inward, which it shouldn't
- the part in the broken fridge - we have to call GE for that, apparently
- hardware on one of the doors is mismatched, waiting for matched one to arrive

Not much left, thankfully. And the drywall guy was nice enough to patch a spot on the wall that we scraped up during the move. ^_^

House Timeline

2009-08-19T23:08:34Z

August 11
Did a walk-through of the house for a preliminary list of damages. It's a new construction, so most everything is warrantied for the first year. We found that the fireplace was scuffed up, a light switch was crooked, and a missing screen for the master bathroom window. We also spotted a dead light bulb, a missing pendant for the bedroom fan, and tape residue all over the front windows. We got a second walk-through to get a tutorial on the gadgets in the house. We have an intercom system for the 3 floors, a security system, and also a network of lights that can be controlled semi-remotely.

August 13
Signed all documents for final transfer of funds and title. Took about 2 hours going over exactly what we owed and payed for, and what our obligations would be.

August 14
Picked up house keys. The house was officially ours! We used all the locks with our keys to disable the construction company's master key. The missing fan pendant and tape residue had been taken care of. The light bulb was still dead.

August 14-17
Moving and buying temporary paper shades for the windows. Also got a ladder to reach all the windows. Spotted more defects. A plastic hinge in our fridge was broken off, the door to the garage was missing a bit of hardware, there was a gap around the lighting fixture in our entry way, and one of the lights emitted a hum.

August 17
Got Feng's brother and the moving truck for the big stuff. Then cleaned up the miscellaneous stuff, tidied up the apartment and turned in the keys. First night spent in our new home. After turning on a couple times, our vanity lights in the master bathroom stop turning on!!! We check the breakers and all the other lights work, so something is definitely wrong here, but it's late and we're tired, so we go to sleep.

August 18
Very tired, very sore. Day drags by. Feng comes home and I hear the garage door, so I go down to meet him. I look into the garage to see Feng inspecting our new garbage and recycling bins that were dropped off, and then...!!! I see a leak from the ceiling and a big puddle on the floor of the garage! I immediately think of the dishwasher I tested during the day, but there are no obvious puddles in our kitchen, which is over our garage. We call the appropriate numbers and find they can't make it out, because it's already like 8pm. We settle for turning the water on only for necessities and shutting off the main otherwise. The dripping stops after a while, so at least stopping the main worked. Frustrated and tired, we go to sleep thinking, "New, my ass!"

August 19
Plumber calls bright and early. They are located 90 min away, so it takes him a while to get here. He proceeds to cut a hole in the sheetrock on the ceiling of the garage. It's double layered sheetrock - yay for us! :P No leak there. He gouges a hole around the piping under the kitchen sink to stick in a snake camera. No leak there. He goes and measures where the leak is and we realize it's not actually directly under the kitchen. It turns out it's where the pipes run to the third floor in the wall. He cuts a hole in the sheetrock there, and voila, it's a nail from the baseboard that struck the pipe. We have good quality copper pipes, though - yay for us! :P But whoever put that baseboard in went nail gun crazy, because it was riddled with nails for like a 3-foot section of baseboard (23 nails). There were a number of other near misses and there were two pipes behind it. We're lucky we only had one hole. :P The plumber patched it up. I put in service requests for everything we've found so far, including all the holes the plumber had to make. Now, we get to look forward to visits from a bunch of contractors to fix all that. @_@

But, to end on a high note, I'm loving all the windows. I missed having sunlight and airflow in the house (apartment only had windows on one side and faced another building AND was shaded by trees), so that's been really awesome.

An Episode in the Lives of Feng and Shoko: Powered Suits

2009-08-04T06:52:55Z

"District 9" trailer plays on TV.

Feng: Are you interested in watching that?

Shoko: I don't know... We'll have to see.

Feng: Really?

Shoko: "GI Joe" is coming out this weekend. I'm more interested in "GI Joe" than that right now!

Feng: Really?!

Shoko: I never thought I'd say that about "GI Joe", but it's powered suits! It's "Bubblegun Crisis" militarized!

Valkyrie

2009-08-02T04:36:45Z

This was actually quite good. I went in with rather low expectations, in spite of decent reviews, because of all the tabloid headlines this movie originally generated. In a weird way, it put me in mind of "The Guns of Navarone". That film, of course, ends with a certain degree of success, while we all know that "Valkyrie" is like watching "Titanic" or "Marie Antoinette". But maybe it's just the way it's more about the characters set in a time of war, rather than it being a war movie involving military action. After all, the action in "Valkyrie" is pretty minimal. It doesn't shy away from anything, but it's not "Saving Private Ryan" or "U-571".

The cast is quite impressive and it really needs to be that way for you to be able to keep all the characters straight. It's difficult to remember all the names, but that's not entirely necessary if you can at least recognize faces. And of course, to do that, the best way is to pepper your cast with well-known faces ("Oceans Eleven" also does this). The interesting thing is that this is an international cast and to a certain extent, everyone speaks their own version of English. They didn't try to homogenize everyone's English into one with a German accent. At first, it was a little odd, but I feel like you get used to it pretty quickly. In the end, it's not about the language or the accent. It's about the characters and it's just possible that the characters really did shine more for not being covered up by a German accent. Maybe I'm just buying into their propaganda, but I feel like it made the story first and foremost a universal story of people who had the will to act upon their convictions in the face of great odds. It just so happened that it took place in Nazi Germany.

Finally, the Blu-ray disc comes with a lot of extras which tell you about the real history, including interviews with contemporaries of the participants of Operation Valkyrie and the descendants of those participants. I think it would make a nice addition to any collection, except that I know I probably won't watch it over and over, simply because it is somewhat depressing. :P

Declassified Projects Roundup

2009-07-30T08:26:05Z

I am too busy to make a post for each thing right now, but I also don't want like a whole year to go by without posting about new work, since... well, I HAVE been putting out work. So I'm just going to list some of the stuff that's fallen by the wayside here. Some of it may be repeats, just because I don't want to comb through all my older posts. :P

Maria Watches Over Us (anime seasons 2 & 3)
Gurren Lagann (ongoing manga series)
Ghost Slayers Ayashi (anime & manga series)
Romeo x Juliet (anime)
Negima!? (anime & OVA)
Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea (live action movie)

====================================
Translator Babbling:
With knowledge and experience, there's a certain level of efficiency you can reach in translating, but I feel like there's a point where it's just up to your brain to chug through the material and there's nothing you can do about it. There are hot keys and go-to sites for research, but there is no easy button for the brain. I think, "Shouldn't this be getting easier with time?" but I don't feel it. I may make slightly better choices now, but there are always choices that I waffle on forever. It's like the more experience I have, the more I realize that there are more choices out there. The more I realize that, the more I understand that there are choices out there that haven't even occurred to me, but maybe if I think just a bit longer, one of those "other" choices will come to me. When that hope springs eternal, it makes me pause and pause again, ever more reluctant to "settle" for a solution. And if there's a better solution for Difficult Situation A, maybe there's actually a better way to deal with Routine Situation B, if only I try to think outside the box a bit. There's a danger to complacency, to thinking that the best solutions have been arrived at, but there's also a danger to obsessing over finding those unconventional solutions, because you become so bogged down and stubborn. Conventional solutions have their place and there is such a thing as over-thinking solutions. But drawing that line is one struggle that doesn't seem to get any easier.

The Tale of Despereaux

2009-07-28T08:54:27Z

I really wanted to like this... It's cute, the designs are great, and I have a soft spot for reworked fairy tales. But it just didn't hold together.

It's convoluted and there were a lot of elements going on at the same time, which didn't come out great in the execution. I understand it was supposed to be this story of chain reactions and things coming full circle, but that wasn't made clear until the very end. Maybe it works well written. I've never read the book. But as a film, it just felt like it was jumping from one thing to another and you lose interest when the connections aren't made clear or the connections seem tenuous.

Some of the story elements also felt very abrupt. How Roscuro's character changes seemed really sudden and convenient, for example. And while I understand that the narration was there to give it that storybook feeling, some of the narrated segments felt a little slow and affected, which did nothing to draw me into the film. It just felt like a story going through the motions, without that special spark that can make or break the telling of it.

I did check out the extras and it was interesting how they chose to record the voices. I think it also explains why the chef and Boldo were some of the best scenes; those two seemed to be having the best time of any of them. And watching the deleted musical segments made me glad they didn't use them. :P

Death Race

2009-07-25T08:05:52Z

Post-apocalyptic Mario Cart, basically. Just another brutal, bloody, explosive action film. A lot of the vehicles are rather hard for me to distinguish from one another, so the action was a bit confusing. The plot is simple and also pretty simpleminded. Good enough to view once, but nothing to linger over.

I wish they made the swords and shields viewer vote-controlled, though. That way, they could tamper with it once in a while without it being an obvious case of authorities rigging it.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-24T09:03:24Z

It had its moments, but it felt kind of slow. There was a lot of character stuff that was moved towards resolution, I guess, but I never felt particularly gripped by it. It really feels like it's just setup for what's to come and it doesn't actually stand all that well on its own. It will probably work better as a whole, once the rest of it gets out there, but that's going to be a while. :P

An Episode in the Lives of Feng and Shoko: Will we be up?

2009-07-22T06:28:00Z

It is 11pm.

Feng: Do you think we'll be up in 4 hours?

Shoko: No. We better not be!

Feng: Hmm... I think we'll be up in 4 hours.

Shoko: Why?! We should go to sleep before that!

Feng: But I want to play something, so once I start playing, I'll stay up...

Shoko: Wait, why do you need to be up in 4 hours?

Feng: The strawberries will be ripe in 4 hours. And I need to decide whether to plant strawberries or the pumpkins, which will be ripe in 8 hours.

Shoko: You're going to schedule your time around a Facebook app?!?!?!

Feng: :3

Shoko: I have to post about this so everyone can laugh at you...

The Duchess

2009-07-19T10:01:28Z

Probably one of the most sedate period pieces I've seen in recent memory. It's a bit slow and lacking a certain flare. The character that Ralph Fiennes plays is possibly the most intriguing part of the film. It walks a strangely fine line that I'm still not sure what to make of. The rest of it is fine, but nothing spectacular. Even Keira Knightley's King Arthur, with its many flaws, had more spark and entertainment value. So I have to regrettably say that this film was something of a disappointment.

Push

2009-07-18T00:56:11Z

Predictably in a class similar to Jumper, though I think Jumper was the better of the two.

Push is an interesting world and I've never watched Heroes, but I think the premise is pretty similar. Which is to say, it's set in the modern world where normal people have specific powers, but a variety of powers, and then there are organizations out to harness and control those people. In Push, we see 9 kinds of powers which are listed here. The film is titled after the "pushers" who can basically plant thoughts in people's minds. And because of this, you're always wondering if what the characters believe to be the truth are actually true. So the world is pretty complex and holds a lot of potential.

However, the plot itself barely hangs together by a thread. A lot happens, in particular towards the end of the film, that plays kind of like a heist in a heist movie, where you only see at the end how exactly they pulled it off. And while you're technically sort of clued into how they pull it off, you never get that clarity and satisfaction of going, "Ah! That was clever!" They show you A and they show you B, but you don't quite get to see the journey from A to B. It feels rather glossed over. And there are a couple other plot points that don't really hang together, so it's a bit frustrating.

So in the end, the cast was fun, the world was interesting, it definitely had its moments, and it was worth watching once, but I'm just as glad that I didn't shell out for this in the theaters and it's not something I'd be interested in owning.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

2009-07-16T21:05:09Z

We watched the first one a while back and it was ridiculous, but it had a certain heart to it and some good funny moments. I feel like this one went too far and kind of lost it. The funniest moments were already in the trailers and the whole thing felt a little slower and dragged out. Maybe the difference lies in the fact that the first one is still relatable. We've all had cravings at odd hours, even if we may not have gone quite to such lengths to satisfy it, and we've all experienced some kind of grueling process that resulted in a worthwhile reward. I don't think many of us have had to be fugitives from the law. :P

Other thoughts:
- the weed girlfriend is not funny, I don't get it, it's just long and boring
- however, Neil Patrick Harris always steals the show (and makes me want to go back and watch Doogie Howser)
- I wanted to see more of punk goth Harold

An Episode in the Lives of Feng and Shoko: Cash

2009-07-11T07:53:23Z

Not really watching, but with "Deep Impact" on TV on the TNT HD channel, it's on its last leg. As the reporter girl chooses to spend her final moments on Earth with her father, she makes a mundane confession:

"When I was 11, I stole $32 dollars from your wallet."

me: *laugh* (I'd forgotten about that moment of levity in the otherwise serious scene.)

Feng: Oh, yeah, I have no cash on me anymore.

me: Oh, right. I withdrew cash the other day, so I have lots. Let me put some in your wallet.

So much for the tragedy playing out on the screen...

Taken

2009-07-05T03:12:12Z

The film definitely has the imprint of Luc Besson (written by him and directed by a disciple of his). It has that trademark fast-paced brutal action, also emulated in the Bourne series. So it certainly knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat. The plot has its holes and some yeah-right moments, but on the whole, it was good entertainment, especially if you like your entertainment with a high body count.

Saving Face

2009-07-01T18:33:11Z

So, Feng got Zohan and I got this. The simplest description of this film would be the lesbian version of The Wedding Banquet. For those of you who don't know, The Wedding Banquet is about a Chinese gay guy living in America, who has to deal with his parents coming to try to match him up with a wife and it moves towards resolution from there. And in tone, the two films are quite similar. We get an inside look at Chinese society that gives flavor to what is essentially a warm family drama. If you've watched Eat Drink Man Woman, that film also has the same overall feel (though, Eat Drink Man Woman was not set in America).

In terms of the story, with The Wedding Banquet covering much the same ground over a decade earlier, Saving Face isn't particularly innovative. But it's got its own story to tell and it tells it well. And with its modern twist, it does take things to some places that are new and interesting. Plus, well-presented drama with humor like this never gets old.

The film also did something more modern with language. It mixed English and Chinese, which was quite interesting, because I've seen that kind of mishmashed use of language between my friends and their parents. If you have Chinese friends who've grown up here, chances are, if you listen to them talk to their parents, you will occasionally hear some pretty big English words thrown in there. Sometimes, it's because they don't know the Chinese word for it, sometimes, it's because the English word is just a better fit for the situation. Whatever the case, with mixed generations, especially with everyone understanding both languages fairly well, it's quite common. And this film is very true to life in that sense, freely switching between languages every couple sentences or carrying on conversations where one side speaks Chinese and the other speaks English. The Wedding Banquet didn't have much of that, partly because the parent characters were from the mainland and didn't speak much English. So, in a way, Saving Face is a half generation later than The Wedding Banquet, with the parents set in Chinatown instead of the mainland.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

2009-06-29T17:59:03Z

We went to the IMAX showing and it was actually pretty awesome. I think I enjoyed this one more than the first one. I'm not as sure that IMAX was worth the extra bucks. The sound was definitely incredible, but I feel like the screen experience wasn't all that different from a normal theater. Then again, when you can actually FEEL the sound, it becomes a different experience. I won't say that I regret going IMAX, but I don't know that I'll be seeking out every IMAX release in the future, either.

As for the movie, yes, it was long at 150min, but it kept things moving and I didn't feel like it was all that long. The action was good and the unabashed celebration of military might is probably as pure and uncomplicated as it can get. I don't know if it's because it's the second go-around or not, but I found it easier to tell the two sides apart this time. Last time, I also found some of the plot points a bit puzzling, but there was nothing like that this time.

Overall, I think Star Trek is still the better film this summer, because of its depth of character and plot. After all, let's not kid ourselves, there's nothing really deep about Transformers. But it's a great summer popcorn flick and what more can you really ask for?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/23/review.transformers.revenge/index.html?iref=newssearch

So, I should know better than to read movie reviews. But this one was just so completely off the mark, it's ridiculous. The first main point that ticked me off is that the review states that the film has "incongruous pretensions to the status of a popcorn epic". What is that even supposed to mean? It's a film that makes a great effort to go "boom" and entertains the audience as it does that. It's not like it's trying to be anything else. If the reviewer thinks the movie is trying to be deep somehow with its plot to be "epic", well, throwing in a little drama to keep the plot moving is called good storytelling, not pretension.

And then he goes on to say the comedy thrown in there wasn't funny at all. Sure, a lot of the humor was pretty juvenile, but there were still plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Then again, I'm sure you can manage to find anything not funny if you go in determined not to find any of it funny.

Finally, he complains that Michael Bay is all wrong for this movie, because he didn't properly target the target audience. But get this, the reviewer thinks the target audience is "predominantly teens and pre-teens". Does he really think that's the audience that made the first movie a 700 million dollar blockbuster? I mean, really? He gripes that his kids "don't need to see your salivating soft-porn fantasies or your reactionary militaristic politics". The film is rated PG-13! I'm pretty sure that right there cuts out the "pre-teens" as it is.

By all means, if you hate a movie, write a scathing review. Transformers is not going to be a classic or some groundbreaking work of art, and if you feel every piece of film must aspire to be such, that's your prerogative. But come on, if you want to bill yourself a critic, the least you can do is be well-versed in your subject. And this guy has totally missed the nostalgia kick that the entertainment industry's been on for the last 7-8 years, from Robotech to Star Trek. Those productions may capture some of the teen and possibly even pre-teen markets, but make no mistake, they came out mainly to capture the people who used to occupy that demographic a decade or two ago, i.e. the coveted 18-34 year old males. And maybe it's that ignorance that ultimately got to me about this review.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan

2009-06-25T18:14:25Z

Don't look at me, Feng picked it. It has its moments, but I've never really appreciated slapstick comedy, especially when an entire film is comprised of it. The overacting just makes it hard for me to sit still. :P

However, I'd be curious to know how real the use of non-English was. I know they came up with a lot of their own terminology that they dubbed "Zohanian", but they also have a lot of actors of Middle Eastern origin in there. So it makes me wonder, was it cringe-worthy for native speakers or did they make a decent effort at it?

Street Kings

2009-06-21T01:59:32Z

If I keep getting hung up about my backlog, I'll never get anywhere, so forget about the backlog. :P

Latest Netflix rental. It was nothing spectacular, nothing bad. It has shades of Infernal Affairs/The Departed and it's also an interesting contrast to A Scanner Darkly, which also starred Keanu Reeves. It was fun to see Hugh Laurie (Dr. House) in something else, but while his character is an important one, we don't see much of him, so I feel like he didn't get enough screen time to really shake off the Dr. House image. House is so quirky and memorable, while this character was so normal, it was a bit tough to see past it.

At any rate, a decent rental if you have a couple hours you want to spend on a dark crime thriller.

What does your name mean?

2009-06-19T04:23:39Z

I went to a Quizno's today and the girl at the register looked at my credit card and asked, "How do you pronounce your name?" So I told her, then she asked, "Do you know what it means?"

Me: Yeah, I was named after a philosopher.
Girl: Oh...

I'll bet she's gotten some interesting conversation-starter type responses from that question, but sometimes, you get a bit more than you bargained for. XD

Star Trek

2009-05-11T11:03:28Z

Everything you could want in a space opera, period.

Yes, there were plot holes. But at its core is a character story and there, it definitely delivers. I hope they make another one after this.

And as a full disclosure sort of thing, I'm by no means a Star Trek fan. I've seen a couple episodes here and there from all the different series. I've seen a couple of the movies. I can recognize the most prominent characters. I know about tribbles. I recognize the Vulcan greeting hand gesture. I know that Reggie Miller reminds me of Ferengi (and not the other way around; I knew Ferengi before I knew Reggie Miller). And I know about red shirts. That's about all.

Febreze Bothers Me

2009-05-06T00:10:27Z

I've never used the stuff, but the concept of it bothers me. You spray it, it traps odors, and voila, you have a fresher smelling... whatever you sprayed. But if it traps the odors, whatever it trapped is still there, not to mention the agent within the Febreze that trapped it. I'm sure that if you were to spray Febreze on a mirror, for example, and you let it dry, it would leave some sort of residue (if it doesn't, wouldn't that mean you're paying for distilled water?). So, essentially, you're spraying layer upon layer of stuff and letting it dry on your things, each time you use this stuff... I mean, unless it becomes part of your dust problem instead of your odor problem, the odor and Febreze aren't going anywhere, right? It just accumulates there, right? >_>

We Got Married!!!

2009-04-02T03:28:57Z

Well, you know, as far as the law is concerned. :P We didn't do anything special, but we've always maintained that we've pretty much been married for all intents and purposes since we got engaged back in 2001 anyway. And it was just finally expedient to make it official. Such is our sense of romance. XD

I don't personally think any of you fell for that, but Feng wanted to see if any of you would. ^_-

Renaming Sears Tower

2009-03-13T10:04:12Z

So, I read that some company is moving into the Sears Tower, which was vacated by Sears Roebuck sometime ago, and has obtained naming rights. Apparently, they think that by renaming the tower, they'll gain greater name recognition. Well, guess what? I already don't remember what they plan to rename it, it starts with a "W", I think. This isn't a sports stadium that's going to be shown on TV all the time with their name on it. If they wanted to buy advertisement for themselves, it's a pretty fail move on their part, IMO.

"Our new offices are in the ???? Tower now."
"The ???? Tower? Where's that?"
"It used to be the Sears Tower."
"Oh! You're in the Sears Tower! Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

⌐_⌐

The article also mentioned another building that's had its name changed 2 times since 1973, and is still referred to by its first name...

ps. Yes, you read that right. I said "fail move". The things gaming does to your English...

Excitement of the Day

2009-03-10T07:32:43Z

Late afternoon, I heard the fire alarm go off and poked my head out the door to see a lady carrying a small child looking a bit panicky. I assumed she was also just wondering what the alarm was about. The building alarm was going off, so I decided I should play it safe and head outside. As I was about to duck inside for my purse, the lady goes, "There's a fire, what do I do?" And I'm like, "Fire?" Silly me, I thought it was just a false alarm. The lady opens her door and I see a smoke-filled room with sprinklers soaking the place.

I was speechless for a moment. I've set the smoke alarm off often enough with my cooking mishaps, even seen a small fire or two in my pots, and they were never a big deal. I wondered what could have set a fire big enough to actually put the sprinklers in motion. I wondered if it could actually be big enough to be serious, though I immediately doubted it since the lady seemed not too scared to duck into her apartment to look at what was happening. I said something like call 911, ducked back into my own place, and proceeded to do just that, collecting my thoughts and bracing myself to make the first 911 call of my life. I got the busy signal. -_-;

Briefly, I looked at my phone in disbelief and exasperation. Then got my purse, got my flipflops, went outside, locked my door, and headed outside down the stairs. I get out to find half a dozen people already out there, but I was by no means the last one to get out. Most people had no idea what was going on until I said there actually was a real fire behind all this. And then someone from the first floor (I'm on the second floor) said they thought it was on the first floor, because the floor was soaking wet. At that point, I wasn't sure if the water was just coming from the second floor or if somehow other sprinklers in the area had gone off. Because if it was the latter, surely being across the hall, we were screwed. @_@

Presumably, the building's alarms alert the fire station, but it was over 20 min after my failed 911 call that the fire trucks finally started to arrive. I just checked, Fire Station 9 in my area is, according to Google, 1.1 miles away which clocks in at 3min. After the first truck arrived, it was when-it-rains-it-pours. From what I could tell, the first wave was two trucks, then at least one more truck and some sort of non-truck command car sort of thing arrived. Clearly, today was not a busy day for them. 20 min response time is not all that comforting. :P

I was starting to get really cold, because I hadn't grabbed a jacket. A bunch of people were pretty over it by then and headed back inside, even using the elevators. :P I wasn't quite sure if I should, but one of the apartment people came upstairs with me. I gingerly stepped over the soaking carpet in the hall, took a peek into my neighbor's unit, then went back home. All was safe. My neighbor's TV even looked safe. It looked to me, at least, like only the kitchen sprinklers had gone off, so that was nice to know. In the event of sprinklers being set off, setting one area off doesn't automatically doom your whole apartment, it seems.

The unit below seems to have not been so lucky, since the water had apparently gotten through, but I have no idea how bad it was. Our unit was completely unscathed. Even the water in the hallway had not penetrated our threshold. Pipes in the garage were leaking like crazy though. I'm not sure what that says about the sprinkler system here. But anyway, that was the excitement of the day for me. :P