Favorites

I watched what has to be one my favorite movies of all-time last week. It inspired me to share some of my favorite things.

The movie is The Razor's Edge with Bill Murray. I believe it was his first serious movie role. It has been universally under-rated, but I would recommend it to anyone. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I haven't read the book. That's not always a bad thing to say of favorite movies, but I think I'll be adding the book to my "Must Read" list.

Food always comes up in questions on favorites...esp. with me. The problem is that it fluctuates so much and so often, that it's difficult to talk about except in the context of "right now". Restaurant-wise, there is this little Thai place in Ginza that Taka and I really like. It looks like a total dive...unless you've been to Thailand and realize that the owners must be very proud of what they've achieved. It's clean and very authentic. The food is just fabulous. We don't tell too many people about it because it's also very small (and they seem to do pretty good business without our endorsements). We have to be careful of what we order because of our diet. Neither their Japanese or English is good enough for special requests. They do have a picture menu that includes Japanese translations along with the Thai though. Everything we've ever had there has been fantastic. Their green papaya salad is like something served at a very good street stall on the streets of most any city in Thailand and their curries are to die for. If you like sweating your way through dinner, this place is for you! Most everything that we can have is pretty hot, but the flavors are brilliant.

I don't even know what to say about music. My tastes are so eclectic, I wouldn't know where to start. As I type this, I'm listening to Radio Paradise (www.radioparadise.com). Very eclectic, commercial-free and by far my favorite when I'm sitting at the computer (which is more often than I care to think about). A glance at their playlist will give you an idea of just how eclectic (and commercial-free!) they are. Recent iPod selections have ranged from Bob Marley to Avril Lavigne (damn the French and their spellings), Bare Naked Ladies to Fine Young Cannibals to Pink Floyd to Tom Waits, Ben Folds, Counting Crows...the list goes on, and that's just the short-list.

Beer is my favorite drink of choice. I love Ichibanshibori from Kirin. Their Autumn beer, Aki Aji, just came out. It's only sold for about two months. Most years, that's my favorite by far. Last year, I didn't esp. like it. This year it's pretty good. Beer from other (Asian) countries I like includes Bintang and Shingha. I also like vodka&cranberry in the summer (most vodka's are off my allowable foods list though because they are filtered through bone ash). I won't even get into the fact that cranberry juice is almost ¥500/liter ($20/gallon) when you can find it. On a hot day, I enjoy dark rum and pineapple with a splash of coconut milk and good Margaritas...which are damn near impossible since whatever company that was licensed to sell Cuervo Margarita Mix in Japan folded without selling the damned license. I am also a bit partial to Southern Comfort on the rocks.

Have I mentioned that one of my very favorite things is following the news (and letting it totally engulf me with astonishment, anger, frustration, disbelief, excitement and sometimes even joy)? This is a bit like one of my other favorites (drinking) in that it's best enjoyed in moderation...but what fun would that be?

Favorite Deep Thoughts (attributed to Jack Handy):

-If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

-It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.

-When I die, I would like to go peacefully, in my sleep, like my Grandfather did. Not screaming and yelling like the passenger in his car.

-I love to go to the schoolyard and watch the children jump and scream, but they don't know I'm using blanks.

-When Gary told me he had found Jesus, I thought, Yahoo! We're rich! But it turned out to be something different.

-Of all the imaginary friends I've had, I don't think there was one that I didn't end up having to kill.

-Probably the saddest thing you'll ever see is a mosquito sucking on a mummy. Forget it, little friend.

-If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.


Well, that's all the favorites I can handle in one post.

little-known holidays

Today was a holiday that I had completely forgotten. It's celebrated more in some areas than others, but seems to be a pretty big thing in Shibamata. I guess the literal translation would be: Be-Tolerant-of-the-Terminally Rude-Obnoxious-and-Just-Plain-Stupid-or-Stay-at-Home Day. I think the more acceptable translation would be something like: Saturday. Granted that today was in the 90's (pretty hot!) and 92% humidity (damned humid!) might have had something to do with it...or at least how I perceived things.

SIDE NOTE: I'll always try to convert temperatures, weights, money and the like into something easily understandable by both family and friends. ;-)

It's not really a joke when I say that my iPod and the Kirin Company may have actually saved lives today (not to mention run-in's with what passes for the law around here).

On the more positive side:

Another care package from Taka's family today. We have so much stuff, we're talking about dishes we can prepare over the weekend to freeze for later. Taka is making gyoza tonight (half are vegetarian and half are with shrimp). She's cooking now and can't stand my hovering on one of the few occasions she makes use of my kitchen. Don't get me wrong. She's a fantastic cook. It's just that with our schedules such as they are, the kitchen has been my realm for a while now and I get a little...well...I hover.

I learned a new phrase today that worked great. I'll likely forget it in about no time flat because 1) Hey, this is me! and B) I will only be able to use it a maximum of once a month or so. It's, "San mai oroshi, onegaishimasu.". I can also possibly manage, "San mai oroshi onegai dekimasuka?". The first more or less translates to: "Filet that into two pieces please." and the second one is, "Can you (Is it possible) to filet that into two pieces (for me)?". One is for the fish store near here and the other for one of the supermarkets. As we only eat fish maybe once a week and even then in really small quantities, who knows when I'll get to use it again. It worked well enough today though.

...Back from dinner.

It was beyond great. We had half the gyoza parboiled, then fried in the same pan with soy and sesame oils. When they're done, the gyoza get dipped in a combination of soy sauce and rice vinegar (with a drop or two of some Chinese pepper oil I forget the name of) as you eat them. The other half were boiled and served in a bowl with just a little of the water they were cooked in and some ponzu. Taka's combination of ingredients for the gyoza filling tonight were the best we've had to date. We also had a salad of boiled eggplant topped with shiso, myoga (which I knew as a food item, but found out tonight is the bulb of a ginger plant), shredded grilled saba (a kind of mackerel) and finished with ponzu.

As you can tell. My rant at the world phase has ended by more than a little. A bit of relaxing, some left-over dishes to be washed, a little watermelon and then it'll be a fast shower and off to bed. Not really as bad a day as the beginning of this post lead you to believe.

Weather wizard

Today I found myself walking around Shibuya mid-afternoon in the scorching, blinding sun. Ever the weather wizard, I was without my sunglasses, wearing long pants and carrying an umbrella. If I had been wearing shorts and a t-shirt with my shades on, it would have been snowing.

I was right about the typhoon though. Not much more than some heavy rain and a bit of wind. The day after a typhoon is almost always very hot and sunny. The main up-side is that the air is usually very clean. All the usual Tokyo crap they call air is blown away.

The reason for my attire was a combination of the fact that I had just come from a job and that it was still a little breezy and looked like rain when I left the house this morning. Still, it's gotten to the point where people I work with thank me for bringing an umbrella, which pretty much guarantees no rain.

Typhoon's a'comin'

Ha! Three apostrophes in what would be counted as two words on my new gig (not that anything but "typhoon" would actually be considered a word). There's been a lot to getting started on that, but I think most of it has been worked out. I'll know more in a few days. I'll keep you (all one of you, based on the comments section) posted as things evolve.

There is a typhoon coming. It should hit here later tonight sometime. In the meantime we have calm periods interspersed with heavy rain and gusty winds. Right now it's just rainy out. I don't think it'll amount to much. It's not a very strong typhoon and actual landfall is pretty far from here...even if it is supposed to then head straight for Tokyo.

I've said it before: Earthquakes terrify me. I really hate bad weather...but violent weather is cool! I've gone to the beach during hurricanes and even went for a walk during the worst blizzard in Maryland's recorded history (in Ocean City). I've been known to go for a walk when typhoons are at their closest. Believe it or not, I'm not totally reckless. I don't want to be hurt or worse. I am very careful of blowing material, etc., but there's just something about the violence of severe weather...

Tonight's probably won't be worth a walk.

Taka's gone till tomorrow night. Whoohoo! It's a running joke with Taka and I that every time she so much as stays out late, I have a wild party here and get everything back to the way it was before she returns. Her biggest kick out of that is the image that I think I can even gather enough people for a wild party (let alone convince them to come here).

Tonight, of course, there's the typhoon, the lack of party money (or more acurately, motivation), and most importantly, the fact that I have to be out of the house before 8:00 tomorrow morning. Speaking as a voice-over artist and narrator, I can say confidently that late nights and alcohol are really big no-no's on nights before early jobs (and that does seem to be age related).

Is it maturity or just age that makes a quiet night at home sound good? My last all-nighter in Roppongi was mostly spent with a headache waiting for the first train...what ever happened to the Steve of yesteryear that would have been looking for that club that specializes in the 5-9 a.m. crowd? *sigh*

Anyway, time to make dinner.

New gig

I got a new gig yesterday. Kind of sketchy as it was all done over the internet and will continue to be done so. Kind of good in that I work at my own pace, get paid based on volume and there are no deadlines (also a little sketchy). I've been told that I'm way too cynical about this though. If it works out, it's actually a pretty good fit for me.

It's writing TOEIC material for a company here in Tokyo. We'll see how it works out. It certainly matches my insomniatic lifestyle and uncertain schedule. One section of the test they've asked me to do is a piece of cake. The other requires a bit more thought and work.

The downside is that I need to do the writing in Word. I have a version of Office for Mac, but it's in Japanese. I've used it for past jobs but not in the last two years. I'm going to have to re-learn at least the basics...which will mean memorizing where anything I need is. Oh well, Taka loves helping me with this kind of stuff so much it'll be no problem........excuse me, was kind of choking there for a minute. ;-)

I just found out that Taka will be out of town on business for the night we have tickets to see Chicago. I asked a friend to go see it with me (pretty good seats too). I'm sorry that Taka's going to miss it. I've been really looking forward to it. I hope it's as good as The Producers.

Taka's also out of town tomorrow night. There's a typhoon on the way, so who knows what that'll do to her plans.

There's a new link (even though I'm really beginning to doubt anyone's really reading this blog anyway...with one seemingly anonymous exception). It's to InformationClearinghouse (ICH). My two favorite news sites are now linked.

Solved!

I think I've pretty much solved the problem of a complete computer freeze when I try to upload images to this blog. I just have to close any program that might be downloading something at the time (music :-( and Mail). Any techfreaks out there are probably just shaking your heads; but hey, with one possible exception, I don't know you anyway!

I'll be taking my lame but dependable (really old) digital camera out with me more often. I'll be able to add some photographic life (such as it is) to the blog. If this causes really long loading times for some of you...SEND ME A COMMENT OF SOME KIND!! (anything would suffice!). Feedback is appreciated!

I can't believe that this is the 12th posting to a site that started Aug 14! Somebody really needs to get a life!

We went to the Nepalese place tonight. I really liked it. Taka thought the food was mediocre. We both liked the atmosphere and staff though. I have no idea how authentic the curry was, but I now know that "Thank you." in Nepalese is "Dhanyabad". They're open for lunch and kind of near a couple of jobs I do, so I'll probably go back sometime. They also said that they'd do a dairy/egg-free nan on any non-weekend day if we call in a request a day early.



(Side Note: I have to be the least photogenic person I know)

I think I still prefer Thai curries. You just gotta love a good sweat when eating dinner. :-)

If...

Wouldn't you know that now I'm wide awake!

If I had a dime (I'd settle for ten yen) for every time I fell asleep in that damned chair, I'd have just about enough money to pay for the surgery I'm going to need for all time spent sleeping in the chair.

If waking up at 2 a.m. to a sink full of dirty dishes, two items for your wife's lunch undone, and rice yet to be made isn't bad enough, how about a roach the size of a Volkswagen Beetle casually walking up to you when you enter the kitchen to take care of some of the already mentioned? If anyone from this part of Japan tells you they've never had one in their house, feel free to call them a liar (if they were telling the truth, they're so damned lucky they probably won't know why you're accusing them anyway). They had suckers like this in Florida too, but they had some euphemistic name for them to hide the fact that they're really just huge roaches.

If washing a mountain of dishes, cooking two items (tofu steaks and a zuccini/red pepper/onion/basil kindda thing), washing and preparing rice and battling vehicle-sized insects at 2:00 a.m. with a bad back from sleeping in a chair isn't enough for you...try it after sleeping in contacs. The closest feeling would be waking to find that you had slept with sand in your eyes.

Still...

When Taka wakes up at 7 a.m. to find a clean kitchen, her bento (lunch box) done and fresh rice for breakfast, it'll all be worth it.

I just hope I'm not awake to see it!

Unfulfilled plans

We didn't end up doing anything today (I did manage the shower/shave though).

I'm not sure if it's a politeness thing or if she really wants it, but Taka says she wants to go to the Nepalese place tomorrow night when she's finished work. Sadly enough, it's all the same to me. I haven't been working enough lately to make a Monday seem all that different from a Sunday.

Dinner's gonna be some fantastic unagi (eel) that Taka's grandmother sent as a summer gift. It's pre-cooked, sauced, vacuum-packed and came with a finishing sauce and condiments. We froze what we couldn't finish. I'll make it "unadon" style. We haven't tried any of the frozen stuff yet, but it was awesome when we first got it!

The bean salad turned out to be excellent. That, leftover potato salad, some sauteed baby asparagus spears, and a few tomato wedges will likely go with the rice for Taka's bento tomorrow.

I feel like such the housewife...

...and he heads for the store(s).

newsaholic tendencies

I have discovered that I am a newsaholic.

That's right, "Hi, I'm Steve and I'm a newsaholic." (a "Hi Steve!" reverberates through the room). This post is just to announce my newsaholic tendencies. It will set you up for future posts that you may want to ignore if you are pro-Bush, or pro-most anything to do with the current U.S. administration though.

Side Note: As always, any post that might offend or cause excessive stress will come with a warning at the top. I can foresee three blogs in the future. One for daily stuff, one for health, food and diet stuff and one for political stuff. In the meantime, this'll kind of balance the three as I find my way.

My computer time usually starts with a check of e-mail. Unfortunately, that mostly amounts to a fast scan and faster purge of the many spams I get a day (the average is about 150/day, and even that is down from the 300/day I used to get). It sounds bad, but actually only takes me about 20 seconds. Something like 95% of my spam isn't even addressed to me. My domain name (s-martin.com) was previously owned by someone that apparently used it as an e-mail site for six people...I get all their spam. Part of my e-mail includes NY Times headlines. I just scan those, but like the food articles, the editorial and OP-ED, sections

I then go straight to Google news for a quick scan of MSM (mainstream media). After that, I head to WhatReallyHappened.com (linked on this blog with permission as: WRH). I can spend quite a while there depending on what's up in the world. I also check out a site called InformationClearinghouse.info, but haven't linked it yet because I haven't asked permission. I also like anything from dahrjamailiraq.com, but he hasn't been posting very often recently due to his speaking tour in the States.

I can kill multiples of hours doing little more than reading the news (it certainly doesn't hurt that the music in here is above average). News-wise, I tend to lean toward the fringes of what's generally accepted by the masses and anti-war stuff...but that's for another post.

This has been written over an extended period. I've been saving it for a slow-Life-day when I haven't subjected anyone to anything serious for a while. Ha! Now I can add self-delusional to newsaholic. Judging from the volume of comments, nobody really reads this stuff anyway.

Gave up on the movie idea. We're planning on the Nepalese place for dinner, but I haven't even made it as far as the shower yet. (I guess this qualifies as a slow-Life-day).

Lazy Saturday (redux)

I lost everything I just wrote while attempting to upload a photo (of course at the very end of everything I had written). I've gotta remember how much my computer hates to upload images at the same time it's downloading a music stream. Oh well! It's still pretty fresh in mind.

Today's just a lazy Saturday. Taka went out with coworkers last night so we slept in a little. Okay, she slept in...it was pretty much usual time for me.

Our weekends usually have one "relax" day and one day where we get out and do something. Tomorrow we're either going to go to Odaiba, do some shopping and catch a movie, or we'll head to Shibuya and try out a Nepalese restaurant we heard about. The restaurant ads say it's vegetarian friendly, uses no artificial chemicals (although it falls short of claiming organic ingredients) and says that their curries have no dairy products. Sounds right up our alley. I've never had Nepalese curry before.

Last night I soaked some chickpeas and kidney beans for a salad I'm planning to make as soon as I can motivate my butt out of this chair for more than another drink.

After pressure cooking the beans I plan to add some chopped basil and sage (from the garden), diced red onion, chopped tomatoes, a hint of garlic (the last of what Taka's grandmother grew organically for us), S&P, a healthy squeeze of fresh lime, olive oil and some organic balsamic vinegar. A few hours in the fridge and we'll have a healthy, summery salad!

We just got our tickets for the Guam trip. It'll be in Oct., but I'm going to refrain from actual dates as this is a public blog and I'd rather not just let the world know when we won't be home. :-) It's just four days and is really even shorter than it sounds. We arrive late the first day and leave early afternoon the last day. Still, the whole trip (including airfare and hotel) is cheaper than a visit to Taka's family. I don't know about Guam's traffic laws, but if they're the same as Saipan, this'll be me in October:

Back to the daily stuff

As promised, I'll limit the really heavy stuff to once in a while. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't love any comments you might post on those pages.

From the time of the last post through now, my time has been spent doing not much of anything. Taka is completely back to normal. Almost weird, but she really was back to 100% by yesterday morning.

Last night's dinner was: pan-fried potatoes with rosemary (from my garden), hijiki salad (a kind of black seaweed, sauteed in a little vegetable oil with carrots, lotus root and konyaku [all cut really thin and small], a bit of powdered dashi, and finished off with soybeans, soy sauce and mirin), a tossed salad with home-made dressing, green beans with enoki (a kind of mushroom), and a vegetarian version of an Okinawan dish (goya, onions, red peppers, and a scrambled egg substitute I learned elsewhere). Yum, Yum!

Goya is a strange one. An acquired taste if ever there was one. The main version around here looks like a very very deeply textured (kind of pebbly) cukecumber. It's very bitter. It's also very good for you and is supposed to greatly strengthen your tolerance to the heat of summer. It's higher in vitamin C than orange juice. I've seen it translated as "Bitter Mellon" and recently saw another translation of "Balsam Peach" (?!)


Tonight's dinner can be a bit more simple. Taka doesn't need a bento (lunch box) tomorrow. Taka usually makes her own bento (I just don't seem to make them beautiful enough), but I usually prepare all of the food that goes in it. A bento (Taka style) has rice (brown rice, of course...with or without other added grains) and four other dishes. Those four dishes should be decided not just by their food content, but by color as well. A good bento will have the rice as well as dishes of four different predominant colors. I'll take a picture of one sometime and add it here.

The less of a real life I have, the more I'll wax on about random nothingness here. As always, read at your own risk!

A Little Lighter

This is to lighten what I just posted a little.

This is a fairly recent shot of me. It was mostly a joke to send a pic to a friend that was less than an hour old (the photo, not the friend).

I'm looking older than I feel, grayer than I thought, and I didn't really get those three bull's eyes.

Commercial Agriculture and What You Eat

BE WARNED! THIS ONE IS PREACHY AND FILLED WITH ALL KINDS OF STUFF A LOT OF YOU MAY NOT WANT TO HEAR ABOUT!!!


SIDE NOTE: Check out the Link of the Day! (When I change the link, I'll delete this)


This will be the first of several posts on health and food. Mostly my thoughts and experiences with them. I'll intersperse them with posts of daily stuff too, for those of you that like that better than the preachy stuff.

Most of you pretty much know about Taka's and my diet in general. Some of you even know more or less how it came about.

It started with an innocent question to Taka. I was looking through a mail order magazine from an imported foods distributor (Taka's friend works for the company). I saw an ad for New Zealand venison. I just wanted to see if Taka knew what the word venison was. She not only knew but said that I shouldn't order it because deer have mad cow disease and are even less checked than cattle.

Ha! First of all, deer can't get Mad Cow disease. It's a contradiction in terms. Ever the smartass trying to prove his point, I went to the internet. Something like five bleary-eyed hours later I had given up meat for good.

Deer (elk, sheep, pigs, goats...and humans) all can get their own version of BSE (Mad Cow Disease). Who knows how it all started? Likely with sheep, whose version has been documented earliest and is called Scrapie. Ever the doubter of popular literature, I now fully believe that versions of this disease are rampant in the commercial food markets. Without writing a book on the whole thing, I can simplify it to this: What do you expect when you feed meat products to herbivores that are already being kept in extreme conditions?

Let's get away from all that and briefly touch on the huge volumes of antibiotics injected into every meat product you consume. Why? Easy answer: Because of the extreme conditions the animals are kept in (all necessary in today's commercial market). Any farmer that doesn't do everything mentioned so far, would be out of business pretty quick. Any correlation to this and the number of antibiotic-resistant problems cropping up in hospitals worldwide? I don't know. Can't prove a thing. Interesting though, huh?

Forget the antibiotic shots, the feeding of meat to herbivores, and the unnatural and extreme conditions the animals are kept in for a minute. Do you know that massive doses of hormones are injected into every animal product you eat? Again, this is for commercial and economic reasons. Funny though; there are many documented cases of girls having their first period before the age of eight these days. Records of the past aren't clear, but seem to show that this was very uncommon. Funnier still is the fact that this occurs in the richest of countries at a FAR greater rate than that of third world nations. Is it from the hormones injected into every meat product consumed? I don't know. No real proof that I know of. Interesting though, huh?

One more thing, then I'll stop (for now). It has to do with the "protein supplements" fed to the animals you eat. Derived from meat for sure. Made in rendering plants. Where do they get their ingredients? You won't believe me, but it's a matter of record that they use any animal too sick to enter the public consumption market (and I do mean any). They also use euthanized animals from animal shelters and (I kid you not) road kill collected from animal control and highway departments. I challenge any of you to do a Google search on rendering plants and spend an hour or so wading through what you find. For that matter, check on anything written here up to this point...except the Taka story. ;-)

Wow! Heavy stuff. Feel free to comment on any of the above. I can back up pretty much all of it and go into a lot greater detail.

The next of the "serious posts" will be a lot lighter. It'll just go over all the huge benefits Taka and I have experienced over the last year and a half of our dietary changes.

Earthquake(s)

We just had another earthquake. It was a long one. On the Japanese scale it was a 4 in Tokyo. On the Steve scale (1-10, with 1 being barely noticed and 10 involving a new pair of pants), it was a high 7 or low 8.

I was iChatting with a friend when it hit. He later commented on how each earthquake feels different. It's true. Some are quick, some tend to just roll along. Some are mostly vertical, others are horizontal.

This one started slow, and went on a pretty long time. While I was standing in the doorway wondering if this was going to be the one to bring the building down around me, Taka casually got up, went to the kitchen and took down the good wine glasses while laughing at me.

Ever the optimist, I'll likely spend the rest of the day (and definitely through any aftershocks that may or may not follow) wondering if today was just a fore shock of the one that'll reduce Tokyo to rubble.


SIDE NOTE:

Taka was home to laugh at me because she's sick. Her temperature before I went to bed last night was 39.5C (103.1F).

She's pretty much been in bed for the last 20 hrs. and is a lot better now. Her temperature is back to close to normal.

Work and Travel

Traveling around Tokyo midday can be a little weird if you are used to going places only during rush hour or on weekends. Traveling midday on a holiday can be even weirder, but traveling midday on a holiday that's not really a holiday can be the strangest yet. This is O-bon. The "official" holiday is different in each town or city and usually doesn't even warrant the closing of banks or post offices. A lot of people head back to their home towns, some based on when O-bon is there, and some based on when they have a vacation from work in the city they're in.

Today the trains were a strange combination of people that seemed like they had never been on a train or in a subway station, people going about their regular workday and people just utterly lost while visiting Tokyo. Color me jaded, but there were times today that I almost wanted to just run over people that were in my way (for what it's worth, I wasn't the only one).

When I got home from work around 5:30 (shopped for dinner on the way home), I almost dropped everything when I saw (and heard) Taka in the bedroom. She came down with something. She's running a fever, feels horrible and came home from work early. Still, it's quite a shock when you think your entering an empty place then someone sits up and says something (not that I heard anything with my iPod still playing Mr. Marley).

Still in the experimental stage of all this. It's mostly diary style. Have no fear, the rants and political dissertations will no doubt show up sooner or later. I'll try to label Rants and Political Stuff so that anyone that cares to can just ignore it. :-)

Second First Blog

Today was Taka's last day of O-bon vacation. We didn't do much of anything.

At Taka's request (and my pleasure), we have worked our way through almost all of the Star Wars series during her week off. We will rent episode II maybe next Friday and see episode III at the theater over the weekend.

Yesterday (ignore time of postings...if I'm still awake, it was yesterday) was pretty cool. We woke up in time to catch the first train (5:16 a.m.) and went to Tsukiji. After walking through the market for a while, we found Daiwa Sushi. Ever since I've heard of Tsukiji, I've wanted to try Daiwa. We waited in line for something like 40 min., but it was worth it. It was by far the best sushi I've ever had. I don't think it can be topped.

I usually go to bed somewhere between 2-5 a.m. (when I don't need to get up for work). This is definitely something I need to work on if I'm ever to become a semi-normal human being. Yesterday, we went to Tsukiji, walked around the market, waited in line, ate sushi, went to Starbuck's for coffee and still made it home by 11:00a.m.! That's a new one on me.

I'll save the completely mundane and rants for future postings. Getting tired and still need to make rice and do the the dishes before bed if I want to stay married.

First Blog

Never done a blog before.

This is likely to be completely true to what's written under the blog's title. Still, it might be easier than multiple e-mails all the time.

This is a test as much as anything else. It'll basically be a daily (or so) diary that'll include random thoughts. Any posting that warrants it, will also include a Rants section. This section will be separated a bit from the rest. It'll be cathartic for me and likely sound like a lot of whining, complaining crap to most others. Read or not as you like, but take it for what it is and don't read it if you don't want to hear whatever is biting my butt at the time.

Steve