rebootied

Interesting weekend for me: even with the wife away on a business trip, the kids were both largely angelic... but I worked hard to make it easy for them. Saturday I made breakfast for them; the boy loves pancakes and maple syrup (the real stuff) but at some point the girl decided the smell of them makes her nauseous. In the afternoon I took them and their cousin to a children's art show where they built a giant cardboard fort while I looked at a bunch of kids' work on the walls. We had an early dinner and then attended karate for two hours.

During that Saturday I managed to chalk up a number of injuries; I nearly fell down the steps again while trying to close a window on the landing. Pulling rice out of the microwave, a jet of steam opened up on one finger and gave me a searing jolt. Then I went to karate and hurried into a very bad backward roll; managed to conk my own head as well as put my 94kg weight onto my neck. Then one of my favorite black belts gave me a 10 minute clinic on resisting his joint locks, which mostly turned out to be ways to make me squeak like a bagpipe.

Everyone slept pretty well that night, though I was still paranoid about mosquitoes after that other incident.

Sunday morning, the girl rose earlier than the rest of us and helped the neighborhood kids gather and centralize newspapers for recycling. As a reward, she was able bring one of her friends over for the afternoon and play. In the evening my mom-in-law took all of us to a hotspring for a soak and dinner. This spring is about 30 minutes drive into the mountains, and has air that is more cool and clear than near our home; soaking in the outdoor tubs is something I could do for hours. Dinner was great; I had a smörgåsbord of various pickles and a little grilled fish, as well as some spicy tebasaki and some cool nihonshuu served from a chilled shoot of bamboo. Lovely. It was a great way to get all of us recharged for the week ahead of us. Only a few more days until I get my wife back.

(And in the "this cannot possibly fail" category, I'm thinking of making a hard rock band with costumes made out of steak and ribs and calling it MEATALLICA.)

I WISH I KNEW HOW TO QUIT YOU, SAUSAGE McMUFFIN WITH EGG!

I dunno if this is tasty or not, but Cracker Lasagna is a great name for a band.

(xposted to wtf_japan)

In Japan, Special K cereal is coated with brown rice syrup, making it sweet.

I am doomed.

My family just got back from a trip to San Jose, California. I very much wanted to see my local friends, but instead decided to keep the entire trip entirely focused on being with my Dad's widow and my sister's family. My two kids get to play with their Japanese family every day of the year, as they're literally 20 steps away down the block from our house, but they've only seen their single US cousin once before. We made up for some of that discrepancy on this trip, and we really got my Dad's widow into the Christmas spirit, and she helped us do the same.

My apologies to weezie13, tsanders, allera, hedr_goblin, cyclopea, toxgunn, and heaps of friends who don't have LJ accounts. I know everyone was probably busy with their own plans anyway, but I feel bad for being incommunicado about it.

The trip started off badly but became better as the week went on. ( cut for length and video )

I've just finished a package of Twinings powdered "Chai" stuff, and it does not impress at all. Maybe if I boiled some ginger down to a hefty concentrate, I could get some decent spiciness, but that's a half-measure.

Does anyone know a good DIY recipe for brewing masala chai?

[mixi] アイスな和菓子　和のしずく　季節限定「抹茶あん」が新登場: because aalfonso wants to give her his personal wa-no-shizuku. And can there be anything wrong with ice-cream wrapped in red bean paste wrapped in mochi? No? I thought not.

"A" was a vegetarian of convenience; though she commonly only ate vegetables and generally only indulged as far as eggs and milk products, she claimed "bacon is a spice" when it was time to make a good quiche.

"K" was a vegetarian of inconvenience. When a group would get together to go out to eat, she would sometimes grudgingly complain that there weren't any good vegetarian choices on the menu. We would point out that she wasn't a vegetarian; in some instances we were able to point out the steak or ribs that she had enjoyed for dinner the previous night. In those instances, just before going out to eat with a sizeable group of omnivores, she would claim to be newly vegetarian. Rather than randomly, this bit flipped with seeming relation to the size of the dinner party.