Does This Count as Spring?

Green, gray, damp and dreary. I imagine this is what Seattle is like. Kobe was like this sometimes too.

Just wanted to take the dog for a walk and sing along to the iPod by myself but had to stop for a chat with the neighbor out for her jog, then the lady in the minivan asking for directions to a house for sale in the neighborhood. Had to greet all the passersbys and talk to the little boys playing lacrosse. For solitude I'm going to have to head out into the mud. Hope the weather's all right tomorrow.
Today's soundtrack by Cracker.
I Want Everything and Low

A Friend in Need

Dear friends, readers and folks who just happen to float in on the tides,
I have a favor to ask you.
It's not for me but for a great and very talented friend of mine who has saved my sanity in some dark and stormy times. Read his letter below and do what you can to help out.

Here's the deal: I entered a national competition in
The Japan Times Photo Contest and 3 of my entries
(count 'em t-h-r-e-e) made the first cut. To make the
second cut, readers (viewers) have to vote for my
photos.

The top 20 vote getters make the 2nd cut. So please go
to this link:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/ads/photo/

Click on "Vote for your favorite photograph."

Click on "Outside Kanto"

Then vote for #44, #48 & #49.

There are many other good photos there, but please
vote for those three. Two of the three they printed
are too dark. After you vote, please foreward this to
EVERYONE on your mailing list and ask them to vote for
#44, #48 & #49 in the "Outside Kano" catagory. I'll be
sharing the prize money with everyone who votes for
me, so...Let's Rock. I thank you, my mother thanks
you.

Michael (a.k.a. Bubba) Sta-boo

It'll take you 2 seconds. You'll get to see some very cool photos of Japan. You'll be helping out a friend and earning lots of good karma. And if you happen to vote from more than one email address, I'll never tell.

Birthday Ramble

Hmm, so the birthday is here. Wish I had time to reflect on the past year at leisure, but leisure doesn't really fit the schedule these days. Insta-reflection mode tells me that the past year has been spectacular and everything has worked out even better than I imagined. What's not to like? I even got to start the day with birthday greetings from near and far (see the comments. Thanks K! and Bob, but you're near not far).
I figure it's also my dog's birthday because we adopted him on May 18 and he was roughly 10.5 weeks old, which by my math means he could share my birthday.
I'm used to sharing a birthday. Kate was a year younger than me to the day, but she exited the realm 10 years ago. We had the same birthday for 27 years together. I still miss her.

Is it me, for a moment?

OK. I'm usually pretty chummy and chatty with everyone at the Dover post office, but today was a little weird even for me. I was at Eileen's window but Marty felt compelled to call me over and ask for my hand so he could put an "insured" sticker on me, which lead to a discussion as to what my value should be and whether I was liquid, fragile, perishable or all the above. Marty said fragile. Eileen said all of the above. I'd have to agree with her.
This somehow seems to me to be tied to an incident earlier this week at the photgrapher's house where he felt suddenly compelled to cross the room and offer me the potato chip he had in his hand. "Here, have a chip." I smiled and said thanks and ate the chip. What else would I do? It was cute.

One Year Ago Today...

-- was my last day of being 37.
-- I had just gotten back to Japan from Hawaii.
-- was another year I got older and Kate stayed dead.
-- was twenty days before I blew out my back spectacularly for the first time ever.
-- I was starting to say good bye to a lot of friends.
-- I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I had to do it.

I Confess

Up until this very morning I had never heard of skee ball. It came up in class as a possible translation for "ske-bo" (short way to say "skateboard") and I didn't know what anyone was talking about. They all looked at me like I was nuts and said "You grew up in northern New England didn't you?!" Yes, I did, but I somehow missed out on that particular summer arcade right of passage.

Scrambled

Do you ever have those days where you feel like you're picking up too many different frequencies at once? I think I've met more interesting people in the past week than I have in all the time since I moved here almost a year ago. For example, I spent a good three hours today with this guy and his wife. Extremely nice and cool people and a serendipitous way to meet.
I think Michael Lutin was right when he called for a head's up on a big wave coming in. Too bad I never make sense when this stuff is all happening. I can only ever figure it out in hindsight.

Tell Me Why I Don't Like Mondays

Can I just rewind and start this day over again? I've already been crabbed at for something I didn't even do and I managed to misplace the cd I needed for the quiz this morning. I've got a hard enough shell to deflect the misdirected crabbiness and I was able to grab a copy of the cd from the lab before class, but I still can't find the original cd, it's not even noon and I'm all ready to pack it in and escape. Who ever signed me up for this being an adult business anyway?