MetaAnomie

The princess picked up yet another alien illness at daycare and promptly passed it onto the wifey, who is now hopefully at home getting some rest. I got a bit of a fever but am still functioning, which is good, because I kind of have to right now with the way work is.

Last night the princess was sitting on my lap while I was drying my hair and she noticed her shadow cast out in front of us. At first it scared her, then she was intrigued by it. She ran around in circles trying to catch it and then jumped to the ground in attempts to pounce it to death. I held out my hand, stretched out my fingers, and moved my arm up and down making bigger and smaller shapes on the flooring as her eyes just widened. I held my finger up to the light behind me, to the back of my hand, and to the shadow of my hand on the floor, trying to teach her what a shadow is and how the light creates them. She grabbed for my hand while looking down at its shadow, watching the shape on the ground shift as she moved it. “She understands,” I thought, “my little genius.” She looked up at me and smiled. Then she bit my finger.

We went out to Osaka this weekend to visit the wifey’s dad and we ended up killing some time on Sunday by going to Universal Studios Japan. In short, uh, it was probably a bit too early. We took the princess on Jaws and while she didn’t give a flying fuck about the big ass shark jumping out of the water at her, the dark warehouse pretty much did her in (she was crying before anything even actually happened). So from there we took it down a step and saw this little dinosaur show for kids: she alternated between crying and being bored. So then of course the marry go round: I put her on a horse and held her from behind but she just wasn’t having it. We eventually sat down on one of the bench thingies and she just kind of eyed the whole contraption impartially.

I suppose I better do this one being as I just got tagged from both sides by Sass and Alyson:

Wait, that came out sounding pretty bad didn’t it?

• Link to the person that tagged you
• Post the rules on your blog
• Share six interesting things/habits/quirks about yourself — anything that comes to mind
• Tag six people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs — people you would like to know things about
• Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website

1) Babies used to scare the shit out of me before I had my own.

2) I had this two week period of my life where I would wake up in the middle of night scared and run to my parents room. I actually remember this pretty vividly: it was dark but I could see things moving and floating around. I remember once, even after getting in bed with my parents, I saw these butterfly looking things flying over the bed and when I grabbed at them, they would turn into fluorescent green dust and fall away. Turns out I was tripping my balls off. My parents figured out it was some medication I was taking. What clued them in was that I would wake up at the same hour consistently (I always took the medicine before I went to sleep).

3) I never thought twice about packing up my shit and moving to Japan indefinitely. In fact, I even kind of knew I would way before the fact. It was less of a decision and more of just putting one foot in front of the other.

4) My brother and I have always been, and still are, super close, and for all the times we have pissed each other off completely (as brothers do) I have never been able to actually hit him. I got really, really close once though: we were in the car waiting for my mom and he got me so damn mad my fist balled and flew at him quicker than I could even realize I was doing it. Somewhere in mid-swing, something in my heart wavered and by the time my fist made contact, it ended up being nothing more than a light tap right in the center of his forehead — and we both busted out laughing in hysterics.

5) I have a ridiculously good memory for trivial things and can recall moments rather vividly, even if they weren’t all that important or significant. My “normal” memory is horrid though. I can’t remember names and numbers to save my life. I can go to the same restaurant 100 times and still not remember how to get there or even what it’s called, but I can still probably tell you what the napkins and silverware looked like.

6) I really miss Bojangles’.

By the way, “Meh,” is now officially in the dictionary.

And no, I’m not tagging any people dammit.

We headed out to the lot again yesterday and walked around the first floor a bit. They have pretty much all the walls up with the exception of one or two. It was pretty cool getting to walk around in it — makes it a bit easier to imagine what it’s going to be like when it’s finished.

From there we headed out to Roppongi Hills for lunch and a little shopping. Lunch was good (and surprisingly affordable) and the princess was an utter angel. So much so in fact that it frightened me: I was just waiting for her to run off and stab a waiter in the leg with fork or something if I let my guard down too much. She didn’t though luckily. Not yesterday anyway.

Today has been rather crappy and blah. I’ve just been a silly perfectionist all day meaning I got absolutely nothing of substance done. I keep telling myself I need to stop caring about shit so much, especially considering the fact that I always do so much better of a job when I’m in that mode, but it’s one of those things that I just can’t manage to keep up — like it’s hard-coded in my DNA or something (which actually, it probably is).

Fuck you DNA, seriously.

Viewable in high-definition (if you don’t mind the wait).

Just got back from band rehearsal. Looked something like this:

And I really need to get around to updating our site a bit.

I have this odd feeling that I need to make an obligatory Obama post. I get this feeling pretty much anytime something significant happens in the world but I usually just keep putting it off until the topic isn’t relevant anymore; I figure there are smarter people out there who have already said what I wanted to say, just much more elegantly. But for a change, I guess I will chime in as well:

I’m really happy Obama was elected, less for who he is and more because it signifies a change in the direction America has been going for the last eight years. It also feels really good to have most of the world on our side again — at least for now. More than anything, I’m happy he was elected not because he is our first black (biracial) president, but because something as superficial as that didn’t get in the way of the better candidate (in my humble opinion) getting picked.

This is all.

House update:

The foundation is now complete and the scaffold is up. The framing is probably going to start this week. Looking forward to it actually starting to look like a house.

I love watching the princess looking at new things because I can’t even imagine what’s going on in her head. For that matter, I can’t even imagine HOW things go on in her head. When I think, it’s always with an internal dialog. How do you have internal dialog when you don’t even have a language yet? It’s rather intriguing when you think about it.

We went to the zoo in Ueno this last weekend:

We saw some rather unfortunately named penguins:

The princess was scared by pretty much everything — even the chickens:

And she got eaten by a sheep.

Man, I had the day from hell Friday. Unfortunately, the outlook for next week isn’t looking a whole lot better. At least I got a three day weekend to enjoy. Today was especially good. We took the princess into daycare so the wifey and I could have a refresh day, and for the first time in forever, we purposely planned absolutely nothing. It was so nice. We finally got a little husband-wife time in and even managed to sleep for an extra hour. Then again, we didn’t get to sleep until late the night before so we were probably just breaking even overall.

I made Risotto tonight for the first time. Well, technically the photos above are from the second; I royally fucked it up on the first go around and being how I am, I decided to make it again. It came out much better on the rematch luckily.