Listen to the Rain

Yesterday, sashagee and I woke up at 3:30 a.m. to the sound of Dark Side, threw on some clothes, and climbed into the car with my father to drive five hours down south before the roads got really awful. We stayed off the interstate, taking state route 47, briefly risking I-74 to cross Urbana, then took state route 130 further south. After a stop in Olney (about which more later), we kept going, looking for an even further south and smaller town, and ended up in the central park in West Salem (population 786) with maybe half a dozen other people. We watched as the light dimmed, and looked up with our eclipse glasses as more and more of the sun was covered, until the last bit disappeared and we took off our glasses and looked up at the black sun:


It was astounding. The light faded, but not in the way you're used to. We know instinctively how sunset works--the light fades in one direction as the sky lights up in the other, turning to reds and golds and purples. During the run-up to the eclipse, it faded all at once, gradually getting darker and darker as one by one the birds stopped singing. As the moon fully covered the sun, the crickets began chirping. The temperature dropped. The streetlights came on. The sky above was black but with golden light all around on the horizon, like nothing you've ever seen. I could easily understand why our ancestors took them as a bad omen or thought it was the end of the world.

That bright spot on the bottom is a solar prominence, an arc of plasma many times larger than the Earth. We could see it with our unaided eyes.

The full eclipse only lasted four minutes but it seemed longer. I stayed in Chicago for the 2017 eclipse, which was 87% coverage, but that just meant the sky got a bit darker. It was nothing like this. On the way back, sashagee said that if we won the lottery she'd want to become one of those people who chase eclipses around the world and you know what? I would too.

( Alright, back to Olney )

Went out to the L this morning and the sign said it would be there in eight minutes, which was unusual--it would have meant I had just missed one and I hadn't seen one go by on the walk to the station. It ended up being more like twelve minutes, by which point the platform was very crowded, and then when the train arrived it was also very crowded. The driver apologized, saying that she had had a mechanical problem, and then we went on our way. And after only a few stops, we stopped again, and waited, and the driver came into the car I was in and messed with something while being on the phone with someone else, and then we were told that we all had to get off because the mechanical problem was too big to solve in just a few moments. So then I was standing on a platform with a hundred other people, and the train still wasn't moving, and after consulting my phone I dashed down the platform and down the street and got on the first 148 bus that came and arrived at work an hour late and more than halfway into the section meeting.

When the bus driver pulled up and saw fifty people waiting at the bus stop he was like "What the hell happened??"

A while ago I put on Facebook "Does anyone sell a dark green dress shirt in my size?" and melliott415 suggested Suit Supply and linked a dark green dress shirt. She also said that they do custom fitting, so yesterday I went into my appointment. It only took about ten minutes--the guy assigned to me brought in a slim-fit shirt and it was too big, so he brought in an extra slim-fit shirt and other than a bit of billow in the back it fit wonderfully. I picked out the green Egyptian cotton, and said I'd like it custom-made, paid for it, and went on my way. It'll be ready in three weeks.

New wardrobe alignment commenced.

We had a lovely brunch with dinaraua and went to baby Shabbat--which was more like baby playtime since the coordinator was on vacation--but this post isn't about that!

After sashagee's parents came and picked up Laila and we finished up with brunch, we hopped on the bus and got home around 2 p.m. We had maybe 20 minutes or so to rest before we had to get out and walk to the bus. Originally, my idea for getting out to Arlington Heights was to go downtown and take the Union Pacific NW line. Then I discovered that there was a Clybourn stop, which would save us from having to take a trip downtown, and then when I put the directions in google again it turned out there was a stop at Jefferson Park, which is even easier to get to, so one quick walk and one late bus which retroactively obviated the need for a quick walk, we were on our way. We got to Jefferson Park with plenty of time, took the outbound platform, or what we thought was the outbound platform. There was no signage up on the platform, and my confusion was justified because multiple other people came up to us and asked us if we were on the to Chicago or from Chicago side. We were on the right side, though, and the train came right on time, we traveled for forty minutes, and then arrived in Arlington Heights.

Downtown Arlington Heights is extremely suburb, with a little district of 100% restaurants right in front of the train station. The streets were all pedestrianized as well, with seating taking up most of the sidewalks and the streets blocked off from cars, so we walked around for a few minutes while we waited for maptekar and her boyfriend to arrive. It turned out they only live ten minutes away so we didn't have to wait very long, and when they arrived we went on another walk around. When we stopped at a map, I looked at the food listings since sashagee was pretty thirsty and I noticed a place called "Mochinut." sashagee has been watching a Youtuber lately called Kimono Mom, a former 舞妓 maiko trainee who now is has a daughter and does Japanese food content on Youtube, and she just recently had a video about mochi donuts! I suggested we go there and everyone agreed, and we walked through a few side streets to find it on the edge of the map. There were no matcha donuts, unfortunately, but there was an ube donut, so sashagee got that and I got the honeydew donut. My donut tasted like a glazed donut, with a nice bit of mochi chewiness, but sashagee's did have some ube sweetness in the frosting. Donuts done, we hopped in the car and drove to Mitsuwa

If you're not familiar, Mitsuwa is an American branch of a Japanese supermarket company. Most of their stores are on the west coast, but there's one here because Chicago has a Japanese consulate, so there is a large group of Japanese natives who only live in America for 2-5 years for their diplomatic postings. There's a Japanese-language newspaper, a school that uses the Japanese curriculum for diplomat and staff children, and Mitsuwa, which has a grocery store but also a bookstore, a food court, a bakery, and a hair salon. They used to have a travel agency--it's the travel agency my parents used when they came to visit us in Japan--but it doesn't seem like they have one there anymore. We have a lot of Asian grocery stores nearby us since Argyle Street (where a lot of Vietnamese people live) is within a couple miles, but there's some items they don't have. Mitsuwa does.

When we first walked in, maptekar pointed out the Kinokuniya Bookstore on the left so that's the first place we went, since sashagee wanted to get some stationary. They grabbed a book off the light novel shelf and asked me what it was and then to read the Japanese title: 地上最強の男：世界へのヘビー級チャンピオン列伝 (chijō saikyō no otoko: sekai e no hebī kyū chanpion retsuden, "The World's Strongest Men: Biographies of World Heavyweight Champions") while I tried not to listen in on the aisle next door. Someone had cornered a poor shop employee and was telling his tale of woe--it sounded like he had had a falling out with his Japanese wife and she had moved back to Japan with the kids, which basically means that he'll never seen them again. Japan has no laws about dual custody and barely any family law, and it's common even for divorced Japanese men to have no contact with their children, much less foreign men--ex-Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro has no contact with his youngest son since he is divorced. I can see why the guy was talking to a book store employee about it, because the Japanese embassy won't help him and probably doesn't even see it as something that needs help. The kids are with their mother, so what's the problem, they would say. It would be too disruptive for them to change countries again. Time for him to move on.

I looked for a copy of ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 yokohama kaidashi kikō but didn't find it--no surprise, the last volume was published in 2006 so there's no reason they'd have it in stock--and sashagee bought the English volume 2 of My Happy Marriage (the only one they had) and some thank-you cards that said "Thank you berry much" with art of blackberries and vines on them. Then we went over to the grocery store.

As I mentioned, we have a pretty good selection near us, so I was really only looking for things that we couldn't buy locally. We got shiso furikake and yuzu ponzu sauce almost right away, and in the snack aisle sashagee found the rum raisin sandwich cookies that used to come in our Japanese snack box (and for one third the price that website is charging). The real excitement for me, though, came when I came around an aisle and saw that they had Hiroshima momiji manjū! They're the signature snack of Hiroshima Prefecture, maple-leaf shaped pastry with red bean inside, sold everywhere in Hiroshima and in a bewildering variety too. The best ones I've ever had were chocolate-coated and soaked in bourbon, and on Miyajima there are ones with apple or chocolate or custard filling, but even finding them in America is nigh-impossible. I guess you can order them on Amazon if you want to pay $5 per manjū instead of the $4 I paid for eight of them. That's only slightly more of a ripoff than the $30 that Amazon is trying to charge for 高野豆腐 (kōyadōfu, "freeze-dried tofu") but which Mitsuwa was selling for $2.39. sashagee picked up some rice crackers and more cookies, a loaf of shokupan, mitarashi dango and a salmon riceball, and we finally went over to the alcohol section and she seized on a bottle of shiso umeshu. Then we checked out and hit up the food court.

Much of the food court was closed since it was almost the end of the day, but we slipped in just under the wire. sashagee, maptekar, and I went to a stall called Tokyo Shokudo that had a lot of standard-style Japanese food. I was drawn to the curry and I talked maptekar into getting some too, but her boyfriend really wanted ramen and managed to get into Ramen Santōka as the very last order. By the time we sat down every stall in the food court had shut down and most of the people had emptied out, so right after we ate, we left and went back to the downtown near the train station.

It wasn't quite time for our train yet and maptekar suggested getting a drink, but what we settled on was ice cream. We went to Kilwin's originally but while we were looking, the others all decided they'd rather get froyo, so w went to the other dessert place, which I just learned in looking it up is a local place called Berry Yo. They had the little sweetened mochi bits, which was all I really wanted. Then we went to the train station to wait for the train and...it never showed. Ten minutes after it was supposed to arrive, they made an announcement that the next train was coming in 57 minutes. Five minutes later, maptekar offered to drive us home, and we took her up on her offer. They told us about their upcoming housewarming and we said we'd keep inviting them to Shabbat brunches, we went back to her boyfriend's house, changed cars, and she drove us home, ending the saga.

We'll be back. There were too many things there we just can't easily get anywhere else not to, and it was actually easier to get to than I expected. Other than the train snafu at the end, which we couldn't have predicted, and there's also a bus that's supposed to go right by Mitsuwa from Jefferson Park as well if we wanted to take that. We just need to figure out the schedules.

( food pictures! )

Being a family man, that's where.

The High Holy Days are over and the HHD season is almost over too. sashagee, Laila, and I all went to Rosh Hashanah day service together for an hour or so, long enough to stay for part of the Torah service before Laila got too restless and had to go. She made friends with an older man sitting next to us with his two daughters and spent a chunk of time wondering at how many people were packed into the Athanaeum (filled to capacity--we had to sit in the far back corner and there were still people standing behind us). She loved all the times that we were singing and lost all interest when the rabbi started talking. The same thing happened the morning of Yom Kippur--I went to Kol Nidre myself just fine, but sashagee had scheduled two doctors' appointments on Yom Kippur day itself, one for Laila and one for her, so for most of the day I watched the service on livestream and wrangled Laila. Again, she loves singing. I think that's universal to babies.

Before the HHD sashagee and I went apple picking with my family, sashagee's family still being on vacation. I have a lot of pictures from last year, but didn't take as many this time because it was just the five of us. We didn't go out to dinner afterwards either for the same reason, though we did stay over at my parents' house for the weekend. They made us dinner and played with Laila, we relaxed, and they took us home the next day. I'm glad that we live so close to both of our parents and they get so much time with her during her cute baby months!

It's currently Sukkot (or "The Festival of Booths" if you read the KJV), but Sukkot is the worst holiday for urbanites without yards like me because we can't do any of the requirements. So we went to a picnic put on by Mishkan where Laila kept trying to crawl away to other picnic-goers and, when we went up to enter the sukkah, attached herself to an older couple ahead of me in line named Rob and Eileen. Laila gave them both hugs and tried to steal their food, standard baby behaviors. She didn't like the nuts but she did really like the nut crackers they gave her, and they were really happy to get some unexpected baby hugs.

Simchat Torah is coming up too and we're going to a family pizza party before that. I think little baby Laila will love the singing and dancing, though it'll be quite a while before she can hold a Torah.

This weekend we're going out to visit my family again, since my world-traveling veterinarian sister wanderluster_kp will be world-traveling basically through the end of the year afterwards and it's the only time we have to get together. It'll be a big Thanksgiving dinner except spooky--well, not really, since my parents decorate for fall and not for Halloween. We do have costumes planned though, and we'll be taking Laila trick or treating!

Alright, Laila's asleep so I can get some real work done without her trying to crawl under my desk to look at all the cords and flashing lights.

After the highs of the eight month baby update and the lows of the nine month baby update, I'm happy to come back with good news again!

We spent yesterday and this morning at my parents' house, partially so sashagee would be able to go to her parents' house to water their flowers, but mostly so my parents could get a lot of Laila time in without any other tasks interfering, like the painting they've been doing the last few times they've come over or installing the baby gate (still on hold since it's not easily reversible). They even got extra time because we dropped her off with them when we first arrived and used some money they had given us for Valentine's Day to go out to dinner at a local restaurant that, by coincidence, my parents had themselves gone to on Thursday night. It's called "Oak + Swine," but they had brisket on the menu so that's what I got (sashagee got pulled pork, because it's not like I'm going to make it at home).

In further tangentially-related baby news, we finally got all our forms of address sorted out--I'm אבא (abba, "dad") and sashagee is mamá, my father is pápa--as I called my grandfather and my father called his grandfather before me--and my mother is nana.

Back to the baby, Laila is crawling! She's not quite at the level of zooming around but she's beyond the initial tentative steps she was taking last month. After her medication made her a silent baby (except for the 'roid rage roaring), she's speedrun the babbling gamut and is now back to where she should be--including saying "nom nom nom" when she's eating to remind herself to chew. Just today, when I went in to wake her up from her morning nap she was sitting in her crib and clicking her tongue over and over again. I wonder if she'll be disappointed that English (or Japanese, or Hebrew, or French) doesn't have any click consonants. I did it back to her a bit, but I'm not sure she really took it to heart.

And in other news, she's trying to stand up!


I haven't managed to get a picture of it, but she's made it even further to this, to up on one knee. For over a minute at a time. She's getting ready to start running everywhere and giving sashagee some real exercise!

Saturday morning, we woke up earlier than usual, showered, and got dressed to prepare for the day's events--sashagee's parents had offered to come into the city, pick all of us up, take us out to their house in the suburbs, and watch Laila to give sashagee and I some time to go on a date! I suggested going to Geneva and walking around the shops, since I haven't been there in years and certainly not since the Plague Year began. After arriving and making sure Laila was all set up, that she was fed and changed and calm and we wouldn't be leaving a screaming sad baby with sashagee's parents, we borrowed their car and set off:


The first priority was finding food. sashagee still can't eat anything too spicy and doesn't want anything that causes gas--Laila had an extremely bad day after the farmer's market dinner on the 10th and it turns out it's because sunchokes can cause gas--and also we didn't want a contemporary American deal because that's where we were going for dinner, so we skipped a few restaurants until I noticed a place called Egg Harbor tucked away in the back of a courtyard plaza. It's a local breakfast chain (and also in Georgia? ) that had a lot of omelets and skillets and so on. That's usually a downside, because American breakfast food is full of either pork, mixed milk and meat, or both, but as soon as I saw they had shakshuka I new what I was getting. It was good, with chunky tomatoes and slightly spicy, and I even appreciated the English muffin they paired it with after sashagee suggested that the English muffin pockets would efficiently carry the shakshuka to my mouth. They paired it with jam so I didn't do that, but maybe in the future I should.

After we were done eating, we went over to Graham's so sashagee could get some coffee. There were very few people in masks--I'd estimate around a third or less, including a third or less of the staff at the stores we went to--and almost every store had a sign saying that masks were optional for vaccinated patrons. I've been fully vaccinated for months but sashagee just got her first shot a couple weeks ago, so she kept her mask on whenever we were indoors. I went by staff practices--if the people working at the store weren't wearing masks, I didn't either.

We didn't have a lot of time because we had left a milk bottle behind but had no idea how Laila would take to it, so we only got to go to a few stores. The first stop was when sashagee noticed a huge collection of plants in the window of a store called GROW. Still mourning the loss of all the herbs we bought, which were devoured by aphids probably blown in from nearby trees the one time we opened our windows on a windy day, she picked out a stromanthe plant for its pink leaves--it's in the office right now, the room which previously didn't have many plants. We left and went further down Third Street before I asked if we could stop in at Harvey's Tales when I saw it was a bookstore. sashagee made a beeline for the children's section and wanted to buy a copy of The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar, so our current plan is to get one more copy so we'll have three--the Japanese copy I already own, the English copy we just bought, and a French copy as well. If we can raise Laila to be trilingual, she'll appreciated it--to this day I'm sad that my father never taught me German growing up, back when he was much better at it than he is now after almost fifty years of it being barely used.

By this point is was almost 3:30 p.m. and we had been gone for three hours, so we stopped at Graham's one more time for ice cream--I got a coconut and almond ice cream malt--and checked into a store that had a bunch of small stalls because they promised a tea collection, but didn't find any tea or even the store that was supposed to sell it. Then we went back to the car and drove back to sashagee's parents' house, where we discovered Laila fast asleep on sashagee's stepmom. They said that she had taken to the bottle just fine--when they initially gave it to her she looked incredulous and screwed up her face to cry right until milk came out, at which point her eyes got wide and she devoured it all and then fell back asleep. What a good baby.

We stuck around a bit before going to Hardware for dinner:


Maybe it's because it was talked up to me so much, but I thought it was nice but not amazing. The Brussels sprouts depicted in the picture were good but not the transcendent experience I was promised--though even sashagee's father, who had expounded on their virtues many times, was a bit disappointed in them--and the smoked salmon salad I got was delicious but too heavily dressed for much flavor other than creamy dill to come through. The baked goat cheese, however, was excellent, with a pickled jalapeño compote on top of the cheese and crispy bread to put it on. Amazing.

Then we went back and sashagee's parents drove us home where she immediately collapsed into bed and I stayed up for the spectacular thunderstorm that smashed into the city around 11 p.m., an event which Laila slept through. Not a surprise, though, since it was the first day she'd had a bottle, the first time she'd been away from us for an extended period, the first time she'd spent a lot of time outside (in sashagee's parents' yard)...so many firsts. Anyone would be tired after that.

What a lovely day!

An anime convention at a waterpark? At a waterpark resort? Really?

Yes, really. And it was great.

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

I'm weirdly energized now, though I feel like I need to walk roughly a hundred miles because I'm full of alcohol and candy. I was worried about how much I would use either the con or the waterpark facilities, and I feel like I got my money's worth on both of them. I spent Friday at the waterpark, Saturday at the con, and a bunch of time at the villa. I didn't go to the rave, but you know, that's okay.

Looking forward to next year!

(Translator's note: I assume that the name Daisho comes from the 大小 daishō, the matched katana and wakizashi worn by samurai)

I just got back from maybe the only vacation I've ever taken with the purposes of just relaxing. lisekatevans invited me and some other friends up to her parents' lake house in Sand Lake, Michigan, for the weekend, so I took a half day on Friday, met her downtown at 1 p.m. with some other people, and we made our way up the interstate to our destination.

Normally I do an exhaustive account of everything I did when I take a trip like this, but almost everything we did on this trip comes under the heading of "relaxing," so I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do a photo essay instead.

Pictures below:

( Food and nature, the two things I take pictures of )

The whole office got sent home early on Friday because of the Laquan McDonald shooting trial verdict. We got an email about it stating that people who were worried about their safety could go home, and I was going to stay because I live on the far north side and don't have anything to worry about. Then the section chief went around to talk to people while I was in the stairs, and then my boss came to me and very nicely told me to get out, so I went home at 10:45.

I mean, the whole "We need to protect ourselves! You know how those people are!" aspect of the warnings are pretty racist, but also I'm not going to argue against going home early on a Friday. And then when I came in today, there was an email that building management closed the whole building anyway. I ended up going to the art museum with lisekatevans instead with my afternoon, and then later out to Izakaya Mita for Japanese food and shōchū. Delicious.

On Saturday I woke up early (after going to bed at 3:30 a.m.), took a shower, and then took the train out to the suburbs to visit my parents. This weekend was the Scarecrow Festival, probably my favorite cute suburban festival I've been to, and so I went out into the rain to look at the scarecrows with my parents. They weren't as impressive as previous years, and I think that a lot of people didn't even show up. The mechanical section was almost completely empty, for example, but there was this one in a tent:


The scarecrow itself shot out steam and there was a zeppelin circling in the background. Sadly, this was really the most interesting scarecrow there was. There were a couple others I liked, one designed like a butterfly and one with a scarecrow monster emerging from the corn, and one straw statue of a large wolf that wasn't a scarecrow at all but was still really neat. Not as many as previous years, though, and even the lack of crowds due to the weather wasn't enough to make up for it. I look back on the festival two years ago more fondly, but maybe that's because all of the pokemon scarecrows. Geek scarecrows will always be a draw for me.

( More scarecrow pictures )

I was staying at my parents' house, and while I was there they told me they're planning to make me a successor trustee to their trust, in a conversation that just makes me think "there comes a time in every middle-class white person's life where..."

Well, and also:

We are Sex Bob-Omb and we're here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff!

Better now than later, of course.

The UN just released a report about climate change and the capsule summary is "we're fucked." Sure, it says that decisive action can still avert catastrophe, but proto- or actual fascists are being elected all over the world and they're much more likely to go to war over resources rather than work together to fix the problem. We're not going to do anything to fix it, industrial civilization will get increasingly strained, the refuge issues now are going to seem like nothing compared to what will happen in twenty years, and while humanity probably won't go extinct, who knows what will happen to global civilization.

We are doomed and no one will save us.

That's basically been my thought process for years and really, every report about global warming just confirms that I'm right. I don't end up despairing over it, fortunately, but I can't say it doesn't affect my life. Part of the reason I was on the fence about having children for so long is because of climate change, because I wasn't sure I wanted to bring a child into a world where they'd grow into adulthood in a time of civilizational collapse. Previous generations didn't have the choice not to do that, but we do, and I think it's a pretty rational choice.

I don't know why climate change doesn't fill me with despair when so many other things do. Maybe it's because it's such a large problem that there's literally nothing I can do. No action I take will affect climate change in any measurable amount. I mean, one hundred companies are responsible for 71% of emissions. Me personally not buying them won't affect those emissions any more than me not going to see movies for years after MPAA support of SOPA kept the FCC from dismantling net neutrality, and I missed out on all the Marvel movies. Maybe it's that there's no point I can latch onto as a shortcoming in my myself, and so I am more detached from it? Or maybe it's just that the enormity of the problem is overwhelming--I can understand people being cruel to me but not the end of the world.

Happy Monday.

​Last weekend was t3chnomag3’s wedding, so we spent it in Seattle. Here’s how it went:

( Vacation and celebration )

Last weekend schoolpsychnerd and I took a vacation, sort of! We went out to Portland for faylynne and ntcomplete's wedding, and unlike the last time we were there in 2015, the weather cooperated. For Portland, anyway. It was cool and cloudy--just the way I liked it--and being next to the Willamette meant that sometimes there were passing boaters, though at least they cut the motor when they noticed that there was a ceremony happening. But everything else was lovely. I especially liked the sling that the maid of honor, faylynne's eldest sister, had rigged up to allow her new baby to participate in the ceremony.


I also loved how most of the wedding party entered to the main hobbit theme from The Fellowship of the Ring, while the bride and groom entered to an instrumental cover of the Legend of Zelda fairy fountain theme.

The ceremony was extremely short and to the point. After a brief opening, the couple gave their vows--almost inaudible to us sitting in the back, but from what I could tell a variation on the traditional ones--and then exchanged rings, soldiering through ntcomplete dropping them when the best man handed them to him and faylynne initially trying to put the ring on his right hand. Then they kissed, the ceremony was over, and the guests all went back to the hall for drinks and snacks before the reception. I drank red wine and gin, schoolpsychnerd drank white wine and cider, and our friend aaron.hosek does not drink, but we were all united in our love for the snacks. Caprese skewers and grilled cheese shooters, with a tiny bit of grilled-cheese sandwich stuck in the top of an ounce or so of tomato-basil soup in a shotglass. It was delicious and I'm amazed that I haven't seen it anywhere else.

Inside, we took our seat at the labeled tables, each themed after a specific fantasy setting. The three of us were seated at the Tortall table, which immediately made aaron.hosek text his girlfriend. She was unable to attend due to a family emergency, but despite not really being geeky at all, she's read the Song of the Lioness books and would have instantly recognized the table title.

Then was a buffet dinner and dancing. I was initially a bit worried that no dinner preference had been specified, but schoolpsychnerd correctly pointed out that it was almost certainly a buffet. And it was, with nothing that we can't eat. The salmon and asparagus were especially tasty.

We did not dance, at least for my part because none of the songs being played are the kind I like to dance to, but the dance floor wasn't particularly well attended. There were a lot of people chatting and eating, and then speeches and cake.


I don't like most cakes, but they did look wonderful. And they were made by the maid of honor. I heard a couple people asking faylynne if her sister was a chef, and her reply was that her sister had taken a pastry class one summer.

As we left, we got a bit of a chance to chat with both of them. ntcomplete tried to sell aaron.hosek on attending PAX and mostly succeeded and both of them told us about their honeymoon in Japan and how they wanted us all to go back in 2020 when the new Ghibli Theme Park will be opened. I mentioned that was also when the Nintendo Theme Park would be open and that's in Ōsaka, far away from the Tokyo crowds. aaron.hosek suggested making the Japan trip a biannual thing and you know, that sounds like a great idea.

faylynne also mentioned that she had been practicing Japanese on DuoLingo and how shocked she was when the writing suddenly changed and she realized she had to learn another syllabary. All I could do was nod, half sagely, half sympathetically. I've been there.

She wants to get to conversational Japanese in time for 2020. I wish her good luck. She will need it.

Other things I did in Portland!:

• Stayed with my sister, who kindly put us up in her apartment's spare room!
  
• Went to House of Ramen, which featured build-your-own ramen so schoolpsychnerd and I could have porkless ramen. We got a small size bowl, also known as "the size ramen is served in Japan." My sister and her boyfriend split a regular.
  
• Went to the farmer's market and bought a bunch of cheese and smoked salmon. They also had delicious macaroon cookies but we were too full to eat them.
  
• Bought some Edo Jidai-era lacquerware at the going-out-of-business sale at Shogun's Gallery.
  
• Went to Moonstruck chocolate, which I obliquely wrote about here.

It was a lovely way to spend a weekend.

Came in to work an hour and a half early today, since I fortunately have a flexible schedule if necessary. schoolpsychnerd and I are flying out to Portland tonight for faylynne and ntcomplete's wedding on the least annoying flight I could find, which still doesn't get us into Portland until almost eleven. Fortunately, my sister lives in Portland and has generously offered to pick us up from the airport and house us for the duration of our stay.

Of course, my stomach is tying itself in knots because that's always what happens with travel. What if the rain gets worse, what if we can't get to the airport on time, what if we can't fit everything in the bag. What if what if what if. At least we have an external battery, tablets, and a Switch, so we'll have plenty to do. We can be that annoying young hipster couple playing the Switch on a plane.

At least the problems mentioned in my last post were fixed. Without warning, of course--I just came in on Wednesday and it worked fine, and then on Thursday around lunch I got an email asking if it worked. Great response time, everyone. A+. Would use again because I don't have any other choice.

Alright, back to work.