Category Archives: Life and Stuff

Once More Into the Seat

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I really should be disgusted with myself, but that would take too much energy.

Today was another in a long line of lazy days that occur more often than they should and also tend to occur when the weather is changing. (The weather’s been bouncing between warm, hot and cool the last couple weeks which has stolen energy away from everyone I know.)

The day started off strong with me actually getting up on time despite having gone to bed late. (This entry is being written on three hours sleep plus one 15 minute nap.) I made an omelet with ham, Mozzarella cheese and chopped fresh Japanese mustard spinach. (It was awesome, if I do say so myself.)

After that, I didn’t do much else that was productive. In my defense, I did proofread and rewrite a company brochure as a favor to one of my former karate colleagues. They make equipment for veterinary clinics so I learned a lot about their new animal ICU systems (link in Japanese) while trying to figure out, based on the English that was used, if I’d actually learned anything or simply misunderstood.

I also finished an online course that was interesting but nothing special and did the next module in another online course that I’m afraid will suddenly start seeming like work. (It’s a fiction course; long story.)

That took the better part of the morning and I couldn’t be bothered to do much of anything once that was finished. I played some games, watched an episode of A Touch of Frost, (which is, well, another post) and wrote random bits of stuff but nothing particularly coherent. I then cycled through all that again, leaving out the tv show the second time.

Besides the weather, I also know that June is coming and feel compelled to save my energy for the big push. Well, at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

There was Neither Justice nor Fairness

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I don’t remember how old I was when I had to do dishes on my birthday. I do, however, remember  the blood.

We lived in Hayden, Colorado and we still lived in a trailer in Meadow Village (more on that in another post) and my sister and I were expected to alternate dish washing nights. In this particular year, it turned out that November 16th was my dishes night and November 17th was my sister’s night.

Now, to my teenaged logic, having my sister’s dishes day fall on my birthday offered me no bonus whatsoever (not having to do dishes on my birthday was nothing special if I wasn’t scheduled to do dishes on my birthday). It was no different than her having to do dishes on Tuesday after I did them on Monday. This, again to my teenager logic, hardly seemed fair. I therefore failed to do dishes on the 16th fully expecting to not have to do them on my birthday.

However, there is no justice in the world.

Rather than be granted clemency and a “Happy Birthday, Son” I was told I had to do dishes on my birthday because I hadn’t done them the night before. This is roughly the equivalent of having someone spit on the Baby Jesus at Christmas (not really, but I was a teenager so this logic made sense).

As a counter, I offered the logical argument of “Yeah, but it’s my birthday.” and was countered with “Yeah, how ’bout that” and then did dishes.

Karma then ensued. Although I’m not sure who’s karma it was.

I was cleaning a McDonald’s (or maybe a Pepsi’s) Collector’s glass (I vaguely remember it being Superman). As I washed the inside, the glass broke apart and I cut my hand.

My mom offered parental logic along the lines of “If you bleed to death, you’re not getting any birthday cake” and then offered me first aid.

To this day I feel justice was not served. The physical scars healed eventually though.

 

Let’s Go to the Mall, Today

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When I was growing up in Colorado, one of our favorite places to hang out, despite us not having much money, was a mall. Now that I’m older, malls are great places to distract the girls and pretend we actually did something when we didn’t.

Because it’s Golden Week and because She Who Must Be Obeyed worked Monday and Tuesday and because our oldest had club, we didn’t get a chance to go out until today. (I was babysitting our youngest/writing/playing World of Tanks.) Unfortunately, our oldest had her own plans to spend money so we sent her to the big city by herself whilst the rest of us went to the mall. More specifically, we went to a new mall called LaLaPort Fujimi, built just a short drive/train ride away.

The only problem with this was, because it’s Golden Week and because the mall is new, about 12 billion people (plus or minus a few hundred thousand) were going to be there. The mall actually has “heavy traffic expected” warnings on its website and the signs were not good.

We decided to take the train and then take a bus but as soon as we got to our station, there were people standing around and signs saying “Hell if we know when the next train leaves” at the front of the station after an apparent suicide somewhere down the tracks. Luckily we only had to wait 20 minutes and also luckily, the trains weren’t that crowded.

After we got to Tsuruse Station, it was such a nice day we decided to walk the 20 minutes to the mall. After we got there, there then ensued the “where should we eat/hell if I know because I’ve never been here before” discussion that usually occurs around lunch time when we’re out. (We ended up at J.S. Pancake Cafe, which turned out to be an excellent choice.)

Oddly, we ended up not buying anything other than lunch and a few things our youngest paid for with her allowance. She had fun but She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were underwhelmed. The LaLaPorts are a chain of malls around the Tokyo metro area and all the ones I’ve been to suffer from a certain sameness. They all have circular layouts designed to improve traffic flow and they all are well arranged through a complex scientific process involving a committee. (Not a joke, the committee was featured on local news/native advertising last week.)

The also have all the same stores.

We don’t have plans to go back, although it’s not that far away, even if we walk. There’s just nothing special about it.

Note: Fans of “How I Met Your Mother” will recognize the title of this post as a lyric from Canadian pop-tart Robin Sparkles epic “Let’s Go to the Mall” (Which manages to make fun of both Tiffany and Debbie Gibson.)

 

 

Out of a Closet and Onto the Floor

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Note: This post was edited to correct horrible mistakes.

Yesterday was Showa Day which is now officially named after the Japanese Emperor responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor but used to be disguised as Greenery Day in honor of his love of plants. Most importantly, it signals the start of “Golden Week” when three holidays and an “aw hell, let’s just give ’em another holiday here” holiday all collide in the same week.

Unfortunately for me, I’d scheduled dirty work for that Showa Day and have a bit more to do on Saturday.

Basically, at long last, I’m moving the “variety pile” and attacking the stuff inside the “variety closet” and the “variety room”. My goal was to throw away stuff I know I’ll never use and save stuff I’d like to have access to but don’t need to have out right now. I then wanted to move our earthquake kit from the floor and put it on top of the wardrobe allowing access to the rest of the kit on a bottom shelf. (Confused? You should actually see the mess and try to figure out the plan behind it.)

If I were smart, I’d basically chuck out every box I hadn’t opened in months without opening them. There are, however, a number of complications.

First, I’m not that smart.

Second, part of the reason the boxes haven’t been opened is that the “variety closet” is stuck behind the “variety pile”. This makes getting at a box a much more difficult chore than it should be.

Third, I have the hoarder’s desire to handle everything at least once before throwing it out. This triggers memories and rekindles the little spark that made me keep the item in the first place which makes me want to find a place for it or swap it out with something I don’t want to use for a while but don’t want to throw out. I did, however throw away a lot of stuff and have a bunch of stuff to donate or give away via Freecycle.

Fourth, even if I don’t experience a burst of nostalgia, I often think of a new way to use the item and justify keeping it.

Finally, there were several decisions I couldn’t make until She Who Must Be Obeyed came home. (She was working on the holiday.) I wasn’t able to finish and currently have a couple extra piles of stuff on the floor, including the trash I can’t throw away because this is Japan.

In some cases, though,  I’m actually (finally) putting the items to use. Mostly as fodder for this blog. (Pictures to follow I suspect.)

Stuffed Blind While Barely Drunk

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I’ve written before how I’ve learned to stop drinking after I’ve had too much to drink. What I haven’t learned to do, though, is stop eating after I’ve had too much to drink.

Today was the welcome party for the new teachers at the school where I work. After work I had a few hours to kill which involved me having coffee and a tiramisu at a coffee shop and doing some writing. After that it was shopping and after that a moment of ESP.

I went to a place I knew was open and stumbled across a couple colleagues. We had a couple beers and some food.

(Note: Japanese parties often have a lot of food, but that food often comes slowly. As such, I usually have a snack before I go to the party.)

Because it was “all you can drink” I set about trying various cocktails, including a fresh lemon sour (which required me to do work by squeezing the lemon and pouring it in the drink myself) and a “tomato hai” which is tomato juice and alcohol and which, thanks to soy sauce, lemon and some hot sauce I managed to turn it into something resembling a Bloody Mary. After that i switched to iced tea.

The problem was the food was surprisingly good. The restaurant’s specialty is various forms of chicken. There was chicken soup (with a creamy sauce) we had to cook ourselves and a plate of chicken bits with onion and some kind of salty black sauce.There was also an odd side trip to calamari and deep fried fish bones (which are kind of like salty crackers served with squeezed lemon).

The most addictive, though, were two dishes that resembled lemon pepper chicken which was one of my go to “I’ve been drinking” foods in Mississippi. To make matters worse, I’d had just enough alcohol to get the munchies. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that if I’d dropped some chicken down a crack in the table I’d have eaten the table to get at it. I’d normally have ordered French fries but I’d actually had those before I went to the party.

Then, right when I was full, they brought out noodles we were supposed to cook in the remaining soup. When that was gone they brought out a small dish of matcha ice cream.

Now, the funny part is, I actually feel kind of drunk, but mostly from overeating. Tomorrow I’ll regret it, but not as much as I’d regret the hang over.

My Brief History of Dance

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I was watching a video today and in the background I heard the song “867-5309 / Jenny” (you don’t have to play it, it’s already in your head) and that has me thinking about cocaine.

My only experience with cocaine happened back when I lived in Hayden, Colorado. For some reason I don’t remember there was a dance in the old elementary school gym and for some other reason I don’t remember I went, which is not something I was wont to do. (To this day it requires copious amounts of alcohol and/or viable threats to get me on a dance floor.)

I vaguely remember a dance when I was in sixth grade that involved sixth grade boys standing on one side of the room and all the sixth grade girls standing on the other side. All were waiting for either 1) the dance to end or 2) a sacrificial lamb to be the first to the slaughter.

I, of course, was that lamb. Our teacher, Miss Trimble, went around trying to get people to dance. She then suddenly grabbed me and ordered me to dance. Of course, for a few minutes, we were the only ones dancing which remains a horribly surreal moment in my life, especially when one group of students applauded my sacrifice. (Something like that.) Eventually everyone danced, but I don’t remember if I danced after that.

The incident involving cocaine happened after that (I think). All I remember about that dance is that there was a mix of ages and there was a dance contest that somehow I got roped into.

Although I’m sure my goal was to get thrown out of the contest as soon as possible, what complicated that plan was my partner and I kept passing through to the next phase of the competition. At some point the song of choice was “Cocaine” (I don’t remember if it was the J. J. Cale original or the Eric Clapton cover). Thinking back, although Clapton has always claimed the song was anti-cocaine, I’m still amazed it was possible to play a song with that title at a school function.

I the end my partner and I didn’t win. I think it was cocaine that ruined it for us. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Not What I Intended At All

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I just spent the better part of an hour trying to find a couple pictures I probably took. Because I couldn’t find them, today’s post is brought to you by bad planning and disorganization.

I had intended to write about various pen cases today until I started looking for the pictures I was going to need to do it. After a relatively thorough search of my computer and extra storage I couldn’t find all the pictures I was looking for. This means a couple things:

1) I’m looking in the wrong place.
2) I need to label my pictures better and learn to use keywords.
3) I accidentally deleted the pictures.
4) The pictures don’t actually exist and I only imagined taking them.
5) I took the pictures but they sucked so I deleted them on purpose.

All of these, especially the latter two, are strong possibilities.

One of the curses of modern cameras is actually caused by their strength: because they no longer require film, pictures are cheap to take and, because you’re not limited to rolls of 24 or 36, you can fire away with reckless abandon. The trouble is, you end up getting random details of stuff you don’t know what they are:

There must have been a point to this but I didn't label it.

There must have been a point to this but I didn’t label it so I don’t know what it was.

At the time this probably seemed like a good idea but I don't remember.

At the time this probably seemed like a good idea but I don’t remember.

I now have thousands of photos to sort through on just one computer and that doesn’t count the external hard drives. If I were more industrious I’d sit down and sort and relabel them all to make the searchable.

Instead, I’ll probably end up retaking photos of all the pen cases I wanted to talk about for the post. The problem is, there’s at least one pen case that’s been been put somewhere where I won’t forget it.

That means I’ll have to search until I remember where it is.

Belated Popcorn and Half a Movie

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It was another one of those days, but in a good way.

Today our youngest insisted on going to a movie so she could use the discount coupons we’d received for some reason or the other. I used my powers of persuasion delay and whining (Example: “I went last time! I went last time! It’s your turn! It’s your turn!”) to convince She Who Must Be Obeyed to go. I pointed out that 1) the movie was in Japanese, 2) Someone would have to drive and 3) she could enjoy a nap as she traditionally falls asleep during movies (even those at home).

Oddly, this persuasion worked and She Who Must Be Obeyed took our youngest to the movie.

However, it turned out that they made it to the theater with just three minutes to spare and didn’t have time to get popcorn. (From my point of view, this means the movie sucks by default).

Later, they brought home Baskin Robbins ice cream, including the awesome (therefore doomed) German Chocolate Cake Ice Cream which gave me flashbacks of my default birthday cake when I was growing up. They also brought home the tale of woe about how they hadn’t had any popcorn and that meant the movie sucked. (Something like that.)

However, because they got back relatively late and because we’d had a hefty amount of ice cream, no one was hungry for supper. She Who Must Be Obeyed and I had a moment of ESP and we both said “popcorn” at pretty much the same time. This meant we got to eat popcorn for supper, which is one of my favorite suppers. (There was also leftover pizza, which is another favorite supper.)

We then sat down to watch Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. This time it was my job to sit with our youngest as this is a scary movie and I needed someone to comfort me. (Strike that. Reverse it.) She Who Must Be Obeyed finished her nap and we got to see half the movie before it was bath and bed time.

I’ll get to watch the rest another day, but probably without popcorn, which means the movie will suck.

 

Namisu Nexus Minimal Fountain Pen–Good First Impressions at Long Last

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I bought a couple pens in August 2014 that were supposed to be shipped in November. I didn’t get them until this week.

Thus far it seems to have been worth the wait.

First The Wait:
Kickstarter likes to tell the public that it is not a store. Its users are not “shoppers” they are “backers” and a lot of pixels are used to explain the difference. Quite frankly, a lot of the backers disagree with this lesson in semantics (I suspect it’s the exchanging money for goods thing) and they tend to get upset when a project repeatedly misses it’s deadlines, especially after the first few deadlines have been missed.

But it’s important, if you’re going to back something on Kickstarter, to remember that if it is a store, it’s not like a normal retail store. It’s more like a hybrid of shopping, investment and gambling.

In my case I bought a pair of Nexus Minimal fountain pens from Namisu, a company out of Edinburgh. The project overshot its 10,000 British pound goal by ten times, finally finishing at over 104,000 pounds. This meant, to those of who’d backed other projects, that the pens were going to be delayed. In Kickstarter, success breeds delay. If it doesn’t, it breeds crap.

That said, my problem with this Kickstarter is that although we got a lot of backers updates, we didn’t seem to get a lot of information. The deadline was always being pushed back by some technical issue and we would get more information later that turned out to be an update telling us we’d get more information later. I was an Early Backer and wanted to know where I was in line but I never found out until I got my pens.

The Pens:

The Titanium version (bottom) and the Aluminum version (top) you can see blue ink in the threads.

The titanium version (bottom) and the aluminum version (top) you can see blue ink in the threads.

The pens themselves are very nice, with a few small quirks. They both needed a thorough cleaning and I had to tighten the nib and feed on the titanium version. Because the cap threads are at the front of the pen behind the nib–which does make it more comfortable to use–the threads fill up with ink as the pen is being filled, adding an extra bit of clean up.

Also, the cap is barely bigger than the nib which means I have to be careful when I re-cap the pen.

I’ve used the pens for the past few days and although it’s too early make any serious judgements, I think they were worth the wait. The titanium medium nib on the titanium version is surprisingly juicy and writes like a broad nib. It also had a funny squeak when I first started using it, but that’s already going away. It writes well, but the tines are slightly out of line and will need some work. The aluminum version has a steel medium nib that writes well and leaves a thinner line than the platinum nib.

The machine work on the section looks great–part of the delay involved improving the fit and finish of the pens–but they dig into my fingers if I’m not careful how I hold the pens. The threads on the titanium version need some polishing as they grind when I put the cap on and off.

I’ve already worked the two pens into my daily carry by cleaning and setting aside a couple other pens. Eventually I’ll have used the two enough to make a long term review.

Until then, I have a lot of writing to do.

Reverting Back to Sharpened Sticks

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One of the strangest things that happens to the pen and stationery addicted is they eventually revert back to using wood pencils. At least for a while.

I’m not sure what causes this phenomenon but most of us already have various versions of mechanical pencils which are sort of, almost, like pens. Moving to wood pencils therefore isn’t that big of a step.

Also, since a lot of us, especially fountain pen users, are already well lost in retro mode, using pencils gets us lost on a different level of retro. Sort of a Retro Retro.

In my case, I’ve always had a few wood pencils around in case the urge to draw and or sketch hits me.

Note: This urge occurs for about three days once every seven years. That’s one day to get the urge and go shopping; one day to actually draw stuff; and one day to find a place to store the new stuff.

Second Note: Yes, I know I have stuff on hand for when the urge hits but using it would require 1) that I remember I have it and 2) that I remember where it’s stored. Also, new stuff is better than old stuff.

For some reason, when I was making a lot of purchases from Levenger, I noticed they were selling boxes of pencils. I was most interested in the wood box they came in. (I have a thing for boxes more on that in another post) and them being stamped with the word “pencil” in six different languages. Each box had 20 pencils.

However, soon after I got them, I reverted back to using pens. Over time I’ve used almost one entire box and the other remains unopened an unused. In fact, the pencils are still in the plastic.

The last three pencils in the first box and the unused second box in the background.

The last three Levenger pencils in the first box and the unused second box in the background.

Now I hear there’s an entire store in New York City dedicated to wood pencils. Suddenly I’m feeling the urge to draw. At least for a while.