So, I got email from my sister letting me know that my blog's comment-submit process was broken. This must be what my mystery fan referred to in his kind message to me this morning.

It turns out that I'd introduced a bug into my comment-processing mechanism the other day. It's fixed now, but I really can't apologize enough. The poor guy tried to submit his "you're a jackass" comment 11 times, and after it failing through no fault of his own, you certainly can't begrudge him the subsequent "you suck" he tacked on.

My sister tried [...]
View full post »

This by far is the most funny email message I have ever received:

The lack of a subject line almost got this message blocked by my spam filter, but luckily it got through.

I think it's a great testament to my writing skills that someone who knows me only from my various writings can so well and truly know me. The only part of the message that gives me pause is the comment about the "blog form" not working -- which form, and what's not working? I need more details...

(I've elided the name and [...]
View full post »

The sun rose at 4:49 this morning here in Kyoto. Ugh.

It was the first time so far this year that the sun rose before 5:00am. Unfortunately, it won't be the last -- the sunrise gets steadily earlier until it hits 4:42am and stays there for most of June. It won't rise during the 5:00 hour again until late July.

The picture to the right is from my GPS unit, which can compute the theoretical sunrise/sunset data for any point on earth. The point in question today is my apartment.

All this early sunrise stuff is [...]

I used to love garlic, but I think that all changed this morning when I woke up leaking concentrated garlic extract from every pore of my body.

Yesterday while relaxing with a beer, I enjoyed a snack best described as "corn-nut garlic". Cloves of garlic deep fried and turned into big puffy crunchy snacks, very much like hyper-seasoned corn nuts. They were strong, of course, but no more than a good garlic potato chip or other well-seasoned snacks.

I didn't have too many of them, though -- maybe a third of a 120-gram bag (a total [...]

After Anthony woke up from his afternoon nap, he wanted to do some cooking play with me. He had something specific in mind, suggesting:

(Jouzu is 上手, Japanese for "skillful")

It was so precious (and, for that matter, on target) that I immediately took a moment to write it down just as he said it.

(In the end, I think my pretend food was pretty pretend tasty... after all, what good is an imagination if you can't use it to better yourself 🙂