MetaAnomie

Well, as of about two days ago the princess has learned to roll over on her stomach. Before, her big head kind of anchored her down so she just laid there in her crib spinning around in circles. Now she can get over rather easily. One problem though:

She can’t roll back yet.

Which is kind of odd when you think about it because logically speaking that should be the easy part. Then again, babies have a tendency to defy logic.

So while me and the wifey were standing over her crib, applauding her on her newly learned talent like morons, little were we to know of the impending doom that awaited us. She now rolls over, get’s pissed, cries, you put her back on her back, and then she just immediately rolls over and starts again.

ALL FUCKING DAY LONG.

In other news, we got our tickets back to the states this year for the holidays. I’ll be taking the fam back to NC from the 17th to the 30th of December. For anyone in the area, be sure to give me a holla (pronounced with my worst possible southern accent).

I have been tagified by Jennifer, officially robbing me of my tag virginity.

The rules: Each player lists 8 random facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 4 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

1. I’ve been to the emergency room once to have a moth removed from my ear
2. I had an evaluation when I was younger to see if I had dyslexia because I had a penchant for writing certain characters in the alphabet backwards
3. I started programming around age five, writing my first encryption algorithm (crappy as it was) at around age seven, which is an impressive way to say I was socially inept and had no friends
4. I have the highest level certification of Japanese proficiency but I still can’t order a Gin Tonic without repeating it at least five times
5. I still to this day am pulling out little pieces of glass from my head from a bad wreck I got into in high school
6. If I was reborn a female I would probably be an utter slut
7. I’m a perfectionist, and self-critical to the extent that it can be paralysing
8. I wish my baby would have been born looking less like me and more like my wife

Nic, Melina, Lucy, Jay V: Tag, you’re it.

One of the reasons we went to Osaka last weekend was for Anna’s okuizome. In short, okuizome means “first meal” and in Japan it is a tradition performed 100 days after your baby is born. Of course there is an obvious problem here: 100 day-old babies don’t eat. So, you don’t actually feed them — you just pretend to feed them.

Yes, stay with me here.

Some of the more observant people out there may have noticed the pretty, flower decorated Sea Bream in the picture above. There is actually meaning to this. Being that Japan is older than dirt, the Japanese have managed to attach a special meaning to about damn near everything. The Sea Bream is no exception of course.

Here’s the logic:

• In Japanese, “Sea Bream” is called tai (like the “Thai” in “Thailand”)
• Something that is “celebratory” would be described as omedetai
• “Tai” is contained in the word “omedetai“
• Thus, a Sea Bream must be celebratory — of course.

I remember once a couple years back, the wifey came back from a friend’s wedding carrying a massive fish. It seems that they were giving out Sea Breams to all the wedding participants. I still laugh evertime I imagine it:

“Thank you so much for coming to my wedding, and here, have a big fucking fish!”

Only in Japan would this make sense.

More okuizome photos here.

Well, I have made it a whole two days now with my new to-do list and I am actually getting a lot done. My goal is to keep it up for at least a week — that would be a new record for me.

It’s been the same ole around here these days, just working and getting chores done, band, and whatnot. The wifey is going to be out of town for a day tomorrow so I get a day alone with the princess. I’ll probably be pulling my hair out by the time she gets back, but I’m looking forward to getting some “quality time” in with her. Oh, and I think we finally got our tickets back to the states for Christmas. I have to admit though that I am not terribly looking forward to taking an infant on a 12+ hour flight. I’m sure it is going to be — um, fun.

Well, I started up a new to-do list. This time I am using a cool little piece of software called Tudumo. So far I love it! I have installed it on my USB drive so I can carry it around with me wherever I go. Being I’m the type of person that is almost always in front of a computer, I think it is going to be perfect for me. My only complaint so far is the lack of ability to create reoccurring tasks. I have a lot of stuff that I schedule over and over again, like filling out time sheets and reports, and it is a bit of a pain to have to add those items over and over again. I plan to run over the list once every morning and add schedule data for the day (from my cell phone) so it might not be much of a big deal though.

Anyhow, I wonder how many days I will go before giving up this time (laugh).

We got back from Osaka on Sunday but that post is going to have to wait for another day; I have about a million pictures to go through before then. Instead, I’ll just post an unrelated picture from a few weeks ago. Note that I am giving my best “don’t throw-up on me” face.

Yesterday was, well, absolute crap. Out of a tiring, full day at work, I think the only thing I actually managed to do was pay my rent. I have been trying to get some tickets for a trip back home over Christmas but have been having a hell of a time with the airlines. I swear, I think I go through this every year. Then again, I guess I should be getting used to it by this stage. The prices these days are unbelievably ridiculous! It makes me want to cry. Shit, I remember a time where I flew back and forth to Nagoya for under $400! OK, I’m starting to sound like an old man now so I’ll stop while I’m ahead

Anyhow, I’m hoping today is going to be a lot better but I already somehow managed to almost break my nose pulling off my bag this morning. The hardback copy of Stephen Kings’s “Blaze” (oh, that’s right, I mean Richard Bachman), contained inside smacked my face as I was pulling it over my head.

Good start, good start.

The wifey and I are taking Anna for another plane ride to go see her grandpa in Osaka tomorrow. So yeah, just in case anyone is wondering, that’s where we will be this weekend.

Speaking of plane rides, I really need to try to get tickets for a trip back to the states. We really want to go back and visit the family this Christmas and introduce the princess to all her relatives, but I’m a bit worried if we are going to be able to get tickets this late in the game. Either way, I’m sure they will be atrociously expensive. I’ll just have to see what I can do I guess.

I have a lot cooked up for the next few months. We scheduled our next fit recording for the middle of December so we have that to look forward to, as well as getting the song prepared (whichever one it ends up being). We may also have another recording in January if all goes well. I still want to do some video editing and I got a pile of paperwork to cover. American citizenship, social security registration, and a passport for Anna is just the start. I also have to get my apartment contract renewed, handle my Japanese taxes, and with my luck, by the time I get everything finished, I’ll have my American taxes to do as well. Oh, and let’s not forget my visa renewal, reentry permit, and the subsequent changes I will have to make to my foreign-guy registration down at the ward office. Fun, Fun.

Why does getting old involve so much damn paperwork?

The wifey and I had a wedding to go to on Sunday which means it was also Anna’s first. All in all she did really well. We timed it nicely were we could shove a bottle in her mouth during the speeches and all was good. She did cry a bit during my speech, but then again, I kinda wanted to cry a little bit myself.

After the wedding, a bunch of people came back to my place and we all got shit-faced. We originally had three bottles of wine, but the consensus was that it might not be enough, so we picked up some more on our way home. We ended up going through nine (plus beer and other alcohol).

We took off last week for band practice so yesterday was our first day back in the studio. Our session was so fucking good I just want to wrap it up and stick it in the freezer or something. We have two songs that we are considering for out next recording: one which still needs a lot of work and one which everyone seemed split on. The first, “Lucy,” we worked on and it sounds 300% better now. It still has a bit to go but it definitely has potential. The other has been worrying me. Masato and Taka have always really liked the song but Lorne has had a rather low opinion of it. We talked it out some, made some concessions, and ended up writing a whole new intro part to slap on the front — and it sounds amazing. I think all four of us are definitely on-board now, and both songs we will definitely take. The order we are going to do them is simply going to depend on which one sounds the most solid after our next two practices. We plan on taking one of them in early December and the next soon after.

All and all life has been good. I was feeling rather shity, stressed, and hungover on Monday but the rest of my week has been remarkably good. You know, it’s one of those rare occasions were I feel like I am just saying and doing all the right things at the right times, and everything is just flowing, stuff is getting done, and I’m just — well, happy. The best part is that I actually have good things to talk about when I get home everyday. I know the wifey has got utterly sick of all my bitching the last few weeks.

Now the big question: How long can I keep it up for?

OK, take your mind out of the gutter people.

More pictures of the princess, because let’s face it, she’s much cuter than I am.

I woke up early on Saturday by a phone call from work asking me to come in and open up a door that nobody could get into. After getting ready and dragging the wifey and princess out of the house with me, I made it almost all the way to the entrance of my company when I got another call saying they didn’t need me anymore. Already being there of course, I decided to pop my head in. I met at least three people there who had access to the same door as I did. Hmph.

From there the wifey and I went to do some shopping at a sale in the area, but the princess wasn’t terribly happy and doing a lot of crying. We both had some stuff we were going to buy, but by the time we were going to try em on, I was so exhausted I didn’t even really care anymore. We ended up putting everything back and just going home.

I saw Spider Man 3 the other week and a line from one of the characters was stuck in my head. He had bumped his head and lost his memory, and in one scene he mentioned how “free” he felt. I thought it was kind of interesting. You usually think of losing your memory as a bad thing but when you consider you are also losing all your grief and all the other little crap that gets you down, it actually gets to sounding kind of nice. Of course the other good stuff you lose would more than override that fact, but I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be really cool if you could just reset all that stuff from time to time — clear the slate on all the trivial crap and just start from scratch? So after getting home, that’s what I told the wifey we should do. Just forget the rain, and the fact that the first half of our day didn’t go so well — just reset and start over.

So, I had a copy of what I thought was “Transformers,” and we popped it in looking forward to zoning out to it. The first title screen came up and it looked terribly low budget. Then the movie started and it WAS terribly low budget. And then I realized that we weren’t watching “Transformers,” we were watching “Transmorphers.” I still don’t know if I picked up the wrong copy or if the wrong DVD was in the box, but regardless, even starting from scratch we had already reached -10 in just a few minuets. And let’s face it, you just got to laugh when your day gets that stupid.

The good news is that I had a copy of “Sunshine 2057,” so we did get to watch that, although it did take us close to five hours being that we were stopping it every other minute to take care of the princess.

Minus -20 at this stage by the way.

The movie itself wasn’t bad. The effects were good, it was shot in a rather interesting way that made you half nauseous, and it was interesting enough to keep our attention — for five hours. Unfortunately I forgot to add points for that though.

Anyhow, even though our day was all over the place, it did come out good in the end. I figured out that wife kisses added one point a pop, so I ended up finishing out with a positive number.

Seriously, some days, you just got to say “fuck it.”