Category Archives: Personal

Walking, Some Shopping, Too Much Food

Leave a reply

Gluttony may have saved my pocket book today.

That said, I managed to avoid one form of gluttony, but succumbed to another.

I headed down to Shinjuku in Tokyo today to visit with old friend and former photography teacher Andy Barker. (That interview is old, but worth a read. I also highly recommend you buy his photo book Kamakura.)

We were supposed to meet at Sizzler (more on that later) but before that I took a couple side trips.

The first was to the Seikaido main store. Seikaido is an art supply store and the main store has six floors of art supplies. I was looking for one item in particular (a notebook) but they didn’t have it. Still, Seikaido is the kind of store where once you see an item, you decide you can’t live without it. Luckily I didn’t see anything I couldn’t live without. Although I did look around a bit.

I found those things, though, at my second stop, Kingdom Note. Kingdom note is a small pen shop located on the sixth floor of a narrow building on the opposite side of the station from Seikaido. It is in an especially dangerous location as it’s located near Yodobashi Camera, which has several floors of camera and computer equipment, and above Map Camera, a used camera shop and the former home of my Canon Powershot G9. There, I found some notebooks and some pen cleaning materials I’d gotten a chance to try at the ISOT.

They turned out to be cheaper than I was expecting, so I couldn’t resist buying a couple. But only a couple. I resisted the racks of pens and ink. Although I did look around a bit.

Notebooks and pen cleaning paper from Kingdom Note. I'll review them some day.

Notebooks and pen cleaning paper from Kingdom Note. I’ll review them some day.

Then I met Andy at Sizzler and proceeded to stuff myself for the second day in a row. (I skipped breakfast today, which I do not recommend on a hot Tokyo day.) Sizzler’s attraction is an all-you-can-eat salad bar that comes complete with pasta, soup, tacos and nachos. It has has a full desert bar with chocolate and vanilla soft serve ice cream, apple crisp and bread pudding (minus whisky sauce, though). For a little more they’ll bring you a couple Sliders. For Tokyo, it’s a surprisingly good deal.

It was fun to see Andy, who I haven’t seen in a couple years. We had a long chat and it ended with him taking a couple photos of nearby buildings. Luckily, after we finished the meal, I was too full to go to Yodobashi Camera and look around. Instead I went home and prevented a possible worse from of gluttony.

 

 

The Start of the Tween Years

1 Reply

I spent the day walking and eating.

I was walking and eating because today is our youngest’s birthday and because I am trapped at home, I took the opportunity to have a daddy-daughter morning and take our youngest to buy her birthday present.

Why so serious? or I'm going to make a mess that's really REALLY big.

Age 5: Why so serious? or I’m not gonna kill ya; I’m gonna make a mess that’s really REALLY big.

We walked to Ito-Yokado which is a chain store owned by Seven & I Holdings which owns 7-11 (which is all I actually understand about how that works. I’m not even sure the store is still called Ito-Yokado). The walk wasn’t so bad, even though the relative humidity is hovering somewhere around “liquid” and when we got to the store, our youngest started playing her favorite game.

The game, PriPara involves cards and fashion and actual gaming but is way too cute for me to be too interested in.

Our youngest plays PriPara. It involves fashion and timing.

Our youngest plays PriPara. It involves fashion and timing. Yes, I think her skirt is too short.

After a few rounds of the game I bought her present (a carrying case for all the cards involved in the game) and had lunch at McDonalds. We then ate way too much Baskin-Robbins ice cream. (Three scoops for the price of two. Resistance is futile.)

After that we returned home and prepared for She Who Must Be Obeyed’s return and, following a few hours recovery, went to dinner Hamburger Factory (Hamburger Koubou) which had surprisingly good hamburger steaks and, in the biggest surprise of all, actual steak.

Our youngest put down all but three bites of a large sirloin and then had room for bread and ice cream (yes, more ice cream). We all stuffed ourselves, especially as they also had something resembling assemble-it-yourself tacos on the salad bar.

Our youngest in the early stages of the sirloin. She ordered it well done. I have failed as a father.

Our youngest, now age 10, in the early stages of the sirloin. She ordered it well done. I have failed as a father.

Now, we are all in that “What have I done?” phase of the meal when all those bad, yet tasty decisions come back to haunt you.

I now live in a house with a tween and teen. Talk about being haunted.

 

Neither Comfort nor Sympathy

Leave a reply

My job, since this morning has been both to comfort and to prevent a break out.

Our youngest is doing an overnight stay at an elementary school with a random group of people and She Who Must Be Obeyed is trying to think of 1) the various ways our youngest can and will hurt herself and 2) ways she can escape my surveillance and security system to go check on our youngest.

The overnight stay is an annual community center event for young kids where they get a chance to leave the nest a bit and the parents get to practice having the young kids leave the nest. Part of the event involves a uniquely Japanese haunted house scavenger hunt. This amounts to the kids having to got get stamps in darkened rooms from various people in scary costumes. When I’ve seen this done before the students were given flashlights and then handed cards that told them where to go. When they got all the stamps they got some sort of prize.

She Who Must Be Obeyed has, since dropping our youngest off,  tried to think of excuses to get near the school. She’s been trying to think of things our youngest forgot that must be delivered immediately. At one point SWMBO wanted to go help make and/or eat the curry and rice the students were eating for supper.

My job has been to express a modicum of sympathy whilst slapping down all the excuses.

SWMBO: What if she gets sick?
Me:  They will call us.
SWMBO: What if she gets injured?
Me: They will call us and take her to a hospital.
SWMBO: What if there’s an earthquake?
Me: We’ll learn about it at the same time she does.
SWMBO: What if the school burns down?
Me: We’ll hear about it on the news.
SWMBO: What if a meteor crashes into the school?
Me: That would be kind of cool so I’ll go take pictures of it.

I realize that none of these are, perhaps, the most comforting but as the dad in this situation my job is not to comfort or to be sympathetic but rather to express sympathy whilst hiding the car keys and She Who Must Be Obeyed’s shoes.

I’ve not yet tried restraints to keep SWMBO in the house, but we’ll see, especially because it’s bed time and I have to work tomorrow.

Some Things are Sentimental; Some Things are Just Junk

1 Reply

I have four watches, but only two work. The two that don’t work, though, have strong sentimental value and that’s a problem.

Despite my ever changing collections of stuff, I’ve never been big on watches and usually have only had one at a time. I still remember getting a Mickey Mouse several hundred years ago when I was little and a digital watch sometime in the late ’70s.

I also liked them as gadgets and went through a phase of Casio digital watches. I had a watch a lot like this one, with a built in touch screen calculator. (Note: this means to me the Apple Watch is kind of retro/old-fashioned.) I also remember, at one point, having a watch that combined both an analog dial and a digital readout (it looked vaguely like this).

Then, after my grandfather died in the early 1990’s I inherited his retirement watch, which was a Seiko 17 Jewel Automatic he got in 1979. His retirement date is engraved on the back.

I inherited it because I used to terrorize the company he worked for with my big wheel, er, I used to race around the factory floor on my Big Wheel. I’m sure that would violate at least 17 different federal workplace safety laws now and my parents would go to jail for allowing me to have access to “motorized” transportation. (Note: it probably violated 17 different federal workplace safety laws back then, too.)

The watch is self-winding and has the odd quirk, for an automatic watch at least, of actually gaining time each day rather than losing it. In fact, it gains about a minute a day and by the end of the week, if I don’t reset it, all I know is that it isn’t that time yet. This means I’m always early to places when I wear it.

I wore the Seiko until a couple years ago when I cracked the crystal and took it in to be repaired and overhauled. I then discovered it was so old it was on a Do Not Repair list. The repairman proved this by showing me the book with the watch’s serial number in a small square on one of the pages. I replaced it with a more modern Seiko 5 SNKE63k1 Automatic (that loses time each day so I have to be careful) and dirt cheap Timex Weekender for the season in which it rains.

Then, when my father died, I inherited the Omega Seamaster 120m Calypso he’d inherited from my grandfather when he died (which is kind of odd, since my dad actually gave my grandfather the watch so technically it was a repossession). The watch doesn’t work and the repair price would be large enough that it’s cheaper to buy a working version of the watch rather than have it repaired.

The Omega Seamaster on the left and the Seiko on the right. You can see the big crack in it.

The Omega Seamaster on the left and the Seiko on the right. You can see the big crack in it.

I hang on to the old watches mostly because it’s extremely hard to get rid of sentimental things, even when they are junk. I also have a couple pocket knives like that (more on those in the future).

The other problem is how to get rid of them. Someone in the family might want the retirement watch but the band on the Omega is probably the only thing useful on that watch. Still, it’s connected to two important men in my life and I can’t just throw it away.

Or at least I tell myself that. In the end I’ll probably just give them away to some tinkerer who wants to play with them and might be able to make them work. That seems a better end than the trash bin, but that might just be an excuse to keep them around a little longer.

The new watches: the Timex Weekender on the left and the Seiko 5 on the right.

The new watches: the Timex Weekender on the left and the Seiko 5 (SNKE63k1)  on the right.

 

 

You Can’t Always Get What You Need

2 Replies

Note: this one my not be comfortable for the squeamish and/or those afraid of needles.

Well, the good news is the typhoon is slow and what rain there was hit Tokyo and not us. The bad news is I don’t have glasses. Sort of.

At long last, I headed off to the eye doctor’s today which meant braving the heat and humidity and then sweating on the paperwork I had to fill out. Because it was technical Japanese, I broke out my smartphone and used Google’s surprisingly handy Translate App which let me translate text by taking pictures of it.

I was a little annoyed as I’ve been to this doctor a few times before for eye checks and to have needles stuck in my right eyeball  to drain blood when I got a subconjunctival hemorrhage after karate. (Note: link not safe for lunch.) I’d even remembered my information card which should have made most of the form irrelevant.

 

I then got to wait half an hour for five other people to finish.  When it was my turn I kept trying to explain to the doctor that I’m pretty sure I need real glasses as I’m pretty sure my eyes aren’t evenly farsighted. The doctor sat me down and put me through a series of tests in his darkened laboratory.

Note: this is an old building with lots of older looking equipment including a couple boxes with light beams that remind me of the “Voight-Kampff” Empathy test. There’s also a doll hung by the neck from the ceiling that you’re supposed to look at when he does one of his tests. (Remember, this man once stuck needles in my right eyeball.)

The determinations were: 1) I’ve got a small cataract in one eye that’s normal for my age; 2) I’ve got presbyopia, which sounds more impressive than “trying to see as old men do” vision which is more poetic than “Old Man’s Eyes”; and 3) I should get some real eyeglasses and not just the over-the-counter reading glasses I’ve been using. I repeated that getting real eyeglasses was my goal for visiting the office and he sent me out to the waiting room to, well, wait.

A few minutes later, the cute receptionist gave my my bill, my change and a friendly “have a nice day”. What she didn’t give me was a prescription for eyeglasses or any information that would help me get them.

I returned home and told She Who Must Be Obeyed about what had happened (leaving out the part about the receptionist being cute, of course because nothing positive could be gained by mentioning it–also remember, I’m not seeing clearly). SWMBO called the clinic for clarification and was told something along the lines of I didn’t get a prescription because the doctor somehow used the store under his office (his office is on the second floor USA; first floor UK) and that they were expensive.

So, if I’m understanding this, the doctor didn’t take a chance for a kickback because, well, I’m still not sure and that’s more important than me getting a prescription for glasses. (Something like that.)

Now, I’ll try going to an eyeglasses store and see if they can fix me up. If they can’t, I’ll have to get a second opinion.

I Do What I Do They Do What I Say

Leave a reply

The only good thing about being trapped at home is I have the girls doing dishes.

This is attributed to a difference in style between me and She Who Must Be Obeyed. Because SWMBO is a native Japanese she ends up complaining a lot about the girls lack of initiative. In other words, rather than telling the girls to do something she complains that they haven’t done it, hoping the suggestion and the shaming will lead to action. Some of this is cultural. The Japanese don’t like direct confrontation which leads to a lot of suggestions and complaints rather than a lot of “get your ass to the sink and do disheses”.

However, since my daughters are biracial they inherited a certain amount of sass and backtalk and stubborness from two different national gene pools. This leads to long arguments with SWMBO that end when I officially “lose my shit” at the circular and noisy nature of the argument going on next to me.

I have tried to encourage SWMBO not to take the bait when the girls are backtalking and to instead stay on message. Translation: Tell them”Stop talking to me that way and go do XYZ”. This has led our oldest to try a “What? What did I say?” strategy.

However, with me at home during the day, I’ve got our youngest washing breakfast dishes and our oldest hanging laundry in the morning and washing supper dishes at night. (Note: She has to do the latter for five more weeks because of something she did a couple weeks ago. I don’t actually remember what she did but I do remember that sass back talk and stubborness led her to try to call my bluff and that made four weeks into six weeks.)

In short, I dared our oldest to backtalk me and she did. She hasn’t done it since, though.

 

The Best Laid Plans Waylaid by the Way Side

3 Replies

Well, it was a good plan. It just didn’t account for the thing I knew was going to happen.

A month or so ago I had a health check and when the results came back they were mostly positive. My cholesterol is good as is my general health. They only glitch was my eyesight which has become increasingly farsighted. The results of the eye test prompted me to decide it was time to get some real glasses and not just the over the counter reading glasses I’ve been using.

With school now finished and only busy “work” left to do, I made plans to go to the eye doctor today and get started on the inevitable “do these frames make my butt look fat?” (something like that) eye-glasses process. I even mentioned this plan to She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Imagine my surprise then when, this morning, as I made ready to get ready, SWMBO announced she had to eat because she was going to work. I repeated my plan to her and was informed that she’d scheduled work every day this week, except, I think Friday. (Note: as my rage builds my ability to listen gets worse. It runs in the family.) Part of the rage was that this exact situation has happened before which is why I’d mentioned my plans early on and even included a couple other plans. After all, it was only my eyesight.

It turns out I was stuck babysitting our youngest in the morning. SWMBO assured me, though, I could go in the afternoon once she got back from work. I huffed and swore under my breath but adjusted my plan from “go take care of my eyes” to “sit at home and do very little and make no plans to go out”. As I figured, by the time SWMBO returned it was too late to go and get a place in line at the eye doctor’s office.

My best bet now, if I heard her right, is Friday, about the time the typhoon is scheduled to hit the main island.

 

Holidays Ain’t What They Used To Be

4 Replies

The productive part of my summer holiday usually doesn’t start until I’ve disgusted myself with how unproductive I am. Unfortunately the company I work for has complicated that.

For reasons too complicated to go into (bureaucratic rock pissing) I no longer have my summers to myself. In the old days, once school was finished and a few days of overflow were completed, I was set free for a several weeks. Luckily, I was still paid because the school where I work wanted all teachers well rested and continued to pay the company I work for even though we weren’t actually working. I would use this time to spend three or four weeks back in the USA.

Then, a few years ago, the company I work for decided that they were totally the boss of me and that if I wanted to get paid in the summers the way I had been paid for 12 years, I would have to start “working” during the summer and on any day I wasn’t actually assigned to the school. This “work” amounted to producing some kind of lesson (officially over six hours of work) and sending it in via email. Mission accomplished.

If I don’t want to have to do any busy work, or want to go back to the USA or want to have an actual vacation, I have to use paid holidays. (This, I suspect, is part of what this nonsense is all about: when teachers leave, they can get compensation for their unused holidays.)

I should also point out that up to ten days of unused leave carries over to the next year. Any more than that drops off. This means I have 30 days of paid holidays per year. The paid holidays are complicated by the company being able to assign up to 10 days. (Note: they do this based on a Clintonian meaning of “is” is interpretation of the law.)

In the past, because I got summers off, I would just let ten days be lost and start over with a fresh 30 days. Now, though, I’ve started to use 10 of those days to save me from having to do busy work.

That said, all the busy work does is give me the illusion of being productive. I still sit with lots of half-finished projects mocking me from their “project piles”. Eventually, I get tired of staring back at them and start doing something about finishing them. If it’s a writing project, for example, I take the radical step of actually writing it.

But first I have to do my busy work. it doesn’t take much energy. It just drains the spirit a bit and lets me ignore the project piles a while longer.

Over and Not Done and Not Rewarded Except in Spirit

1 Reply

Today I prepared for tomorrow’s classes at school which is kind of odd since school ended two days ago. Sort of.

Tomorrow I’m teaching a class for the open campus at the school where I work and I have to admit my heart isn’t fully in it. When I was asked to participate it was with the understanding that the company I work for would, in some way, compensate me for it by giving me an extra day off on a day when I wasn’t actually working (long, long story and not an exaggeration).

Instead there ensued bureaucratic rock-pissing where the company I work for told the school where I work that it would have to give up one of its “We Got Dwayne Days” even though Dwayne was actually working those days and therefore they couldn’t be given up because Dwayne had already been got. (Something like that.)

Imagine a bunch of toddlers saying “I know you are but what am I” and “You’re not the boss of me” and that’s pretty much how I imagine the discussion going.

Also imagine a rag doll of me being tossed back and forth with no one actually interested in catching it.

Also keep in mind that at no time was I actually involved in the discussion which is why I probably still have a job.

In the end I am now “volunteering” to do the class mostly because by the time I realized I was volunteering it was too late to back out of doing it. (I suspect this is a feature in the system, not a bug.) Granted, if I thought this would help me in the long run–like, say, inspiring the school where I work to become the school I work for–it would be awesome, but that’s very unlikely to happen.

That would all be fine except that, because classes are over until September, my brain has already entered summer mode. I stop shaving; I have whiskey more often; I start working on personal projects; and I start playing games more often.

And that was only yesterday.

(Imagine a slightly tipsy, slightly smelly bear working on a computer or writing with a pen and that’s pretty much what summer looks like around here. If it weren’t for She Who Must Be Obeyed being around, I might go full bear.)

In the end, I suspect I’ll do my best. I’ll also probably never do it again unless it ceases to be voluntary.

 

 

A Nap is Not a Siesta

Leave a reply

As the season of Humid enters it’s Hell phase, I find myself suddenly doing things I normally don’t do.

Although today was a light day of work, the heat from the suddenly awoken sun–we had a much cooler than normal June after a couple shots across the bow in early June–was made worse by a decision to pay for the new school building by causing suffering to those who go there. (Translation: the air conditioner is set to uncomfortable levels.)

After finishing work and doing some running, I arrived home to discover I had almost no energy. I’d gone to bed at a normal time and gotten up at my normal time but it hadn’t left me with much energy for the afternoon. After valiantly attempting to do some writing, I surrendered and went to take a nap on the couch.

Taking a nap in the afternoon is not something I normally do. The only time I ever took a regular afternoon nap was in Albania where I had little choice. The entire country shuts down in the late afternoon for a light snack and a long nap. It’s their version of a siesta. I was never a big fan of these–which is why I can’t remember the Albanian phrase for it–especially as there was no air conditioning. However, a little raki and a lot of food pretty much guaranteed I’d be taking a nap no matter how hot it was.

I also expected, as I lay me down to nap, that our youngest would arrive home and I’d have to abandon the couch which would alter the plan considerably. The couch is actually what separates the afternoon nap from the Albanian siesta. A nap on the couch is only comfortable if you’re sleepy. Also, it’s in a bright room and you just plop down in your regular clothes. For the siesta you actually change clothes and go to bed. Doing that would cause me to wake up at an odd hour and then never go back to sleep until an even odder hour.

After the nap (which lasted only a half hour, not the Albanian two hours) I could finally do some work without passing out in my chair.

I suspect this nap will become a part of my every day process whilst I’m still going to work. Once work is over, I doubt I’ll still be napping.