January 30th, 2010
Currently listening to: "Can't Go Wrong Without You" by His Name Is Alive.
Feeling: kind of crappy
Didn't sleep well at all last night. Kaito had his 2 month checkup yesterday which meant that he started getting his vaccinations. He was doing fine until about 6:00 last night. Screaming like crazy. Didn't want to eat. It took us a while
to calm him down. He did manage to sleep a while during the night. Got up at 4 and he seemed a bit feverish, which is normal. I didn't have any infant Tylenol in the house, which was stupid. Now I know better. He's totally back to normal now
but Yuka and I are tired. Parents are coming to visit today, which is an extra
stressor. I've been cleaning all morning.
Our friend Sawako sent us a late x-mas present. Samaurai Champloo on bluray and also Hellsing Ultimate. She sent a CD of the Japanese band that toured with Eskimo Hunter while they were in Japan. She's awesome, to say the least.
January 25th, 2010
Currently listening to: Chobi crying because she wants food even though she's 2 hours early.
Feeling: sore but good
I got drunk last week and added a bunch of episodes of The Cosby Show to my Netflix
queue. Reason being, before Yuka delivered Kaito, I rented Bill Cosby Himself because I'd watched it a
billion times as a kid and I knew there were really
funny bits about giving birth and raising children. Yuka loved it. She would even watch it while I wasn't home. I told her about the TV series that he did when I was
growing up and we rented the first season. She loves it as well. We just watched
and episode in Season 2 today where Rudy puts a bunch of grapes into Cliff's new electric juicer and a giant mess explodes all over the kitchen. The way the entire family, especially Cliff and Claire handled the situation was amazing. There was
no yelling. There was noting along the lines of "Why you so stupid, stupid?" or anything close to that. I'm saving this episode in order to reference it when I come home and discover that something is broken and it's Kaito's fault. Keep a cool
head. You can be mad but you have to understand a child's motivation and curiosity.
Note to self: learn how to mix a better Screwdriver, man. Gee whiz.
January 21st, 2010
Currently listening to: the ice melting in my glass
Feeling: buzzed
If everybody snored at the volume that Kaito snores, I wouldn't have a problem with it. END TRANS
January 19th, 2010
Currently listening to: "Easy Lover" by Phil Collins
Feeling: SORE
My lungs are finally back to normal as of 4 days ago. So, being the idiot I am, I signed into Wii Fit for the first time in a month and did my full 80 minute workout. I want to die now. Luckily I'm down to my lowest weight again although I
know some of that has to do with the muscle I've lost in the last two months. Still, I can't complain. Not many people can weigh themselves after the winter holidays and be this happy.
I think I may have fixed my issues with the Facebook app for the iPhone. I logged out and logged back in. Hahahah! How's that for a network admin? I can finally post updates and make comments and whatnot without the app hanging for 30 seconds
or crashing altogether. Neato.
January 14th, 2010
Currently listening to: "Mike Mills" by Air
Feeling: I need to exercise
In an effort to improve my Japanese, I've started a simple journal for it. I'm going to do my best to improve my vocabulary and sentence structure and
slowly get kanji in there as well. I forgot what a pain it is to type in Japanese while
using Front Page. Sure it's not the most robust HTML editor around but if you know code, it's great to use.
Yuka made some doughnut-like things this afternoon. I say "doughnut-like" because they didn't look like traditional doughnuts but they tasted amazing. How you can get Japanese pancake batter, ice cream, canola oil and a bunch of cinnamon and
sugar to do that is not just science, it's magic.
January 11th, 2010
Currently listening to: Yuka serving drinks
Feeling: like I have asthma but that it's getting better.
Took Kaito to the Japanese consulate today. Yuka registered him as a Japanese citizen, which means he'll have dual citizenship until he turns 20 or 22 (I keep forgetting which). Pretty cool if you ask me. He'll have two passports as well. I
keep joking that he's going to be like Jason Borne but Yuka always responds that "his passports were all fake!" Oh well. It will still be cool. Stopped by Ginza to grab some carry out. Yuka got とんかつ and I got a special that they had for
New Years. It was a fantastic piece of grilled fish, unagi-don, three pieces of sashimi and 2 pieces of grilled mochi and a bowl of miso soup It was a ton of food. Ginza is
definitely the best traditional Japanese restaurant that we've found
in Chicago.
I'm going to try to get in the habit of keeping my journals more composed than before. I'd written some pretty crass and insensitive things in the past but hey, I was younger then and hindsight is 20/20, as they say. A lot went on with Airiel
in the last few years. The tour in the UK and Ireland was amazing. We lost a lot of
momentum when Andrew left but it was really for the best. We're still friends, although I never see him. I never see anybody much anymore because of
my financial situation and also because I'm now a father. Anyway, I've been working on songs for a new album and there are lots of plans in the works right now. I
desperately want to wash my hands of The Battle of Sealand. Honestly,
half of that album is pure shit. I gave up way too much writing power to Cory. It was a huge mistake. During the recording process, I kept
referring to the album as being "bi-polar", when I should have said "half of this is pure shit". There
are songs on there that I can't even listen to. My skin crawls. In a lot of ways it's the same feeling I got when the Stone Roses put out "Second Coming" or when Ride put out "Carnival of Light". With those I thought "really, guys? C'mon.
You're better than this." Well, Airiel is better than that and I'm going to see that the next release is more satisfying to me. We had a lot of good times with that lineup but getting Cory out of the band was imperative. John quit as a result and
I still say it was a foolish mistake. As far as I'm concerned, Thinktank, Sugar Crystals, Red Friends, my half of You Kids Should Know Better, Mermaid In a Manhole are great. Stay, Thrown Idols and The Big Mash-up were basically ruined, although
there's enough in Mash-up without Cory singing that allows me to enjoy it still. Peoria is alright, despite the lyrics. The Release is the worst song ever in the history of Airiel. It should never have been on the album. It was garbage from
the beginning. You have to understand that if you disagreed with Cory and said "no" to anything, a tantrum ensued and everything ground to a halt. I can't count the amount of times Chris and I deployed primal scream therapy in the car to and
from rehearsals. Alright, I think I've said enough. Half of Sealand is shit but thank you to everyone who bought it in the first place. Also, sorry if
you can't seem to order it anywhere because Highwheel Records fell apart right after it came
out. One more thing: paying for an entire UK tour by yourselves a real bitch. Onwards and upwards.
January 10th, 2010 10:47 hours CST
Currently listening to: a white noise generator
Feeling: like I have asthma
Seeing as how I still pay for this domain, I might as well make some use of it. So, this journal is back from the dead! I last updated this 3 whole years ago. Oh how time flies when you're neglected. I kept things sort of up to date
via myspace, but that blog system was always rather lacking, in my opinion. That and Facebook took over so, so long, myspace.
I'll skip over 2007 and 2008. 2009 has been a rollercoaster to say the least. Finally got back to Bonaire for some Scuba diving. Yuka had a blast. Despite my family being there it was the closest thing we'd had to a real honeymoon. However,
you may recall the last time I went to Bonaire, I came back to find out I'd lost my job at Motorola. Well, the same thing happened. I got home to find out that Getty Images was laying me off after 7 years. To make things more dramatic, Yuka
took her first pregnancy test the day after I was notified and it came up positive. I guess, in a sense, I was breaking even. Having a baby at this point had been planned, after all. Being laid off wasn't even on my radar. I wish I'd found out
about the baby before I was called into the HR office. That would have been awesome.
I had surgery on my shoulder during my last month there. I'd been having weird numbness in my left arm at night and eventually had pain inside my shoulder when
lifting things a certain way. Turns out I'd torn some cartilage a little.
The surgery went well and my arm is absolutely back to normal. During the healing process, I had to sleep on my back. This was weird at first as I've always been a stomach sleeper but this
bore unexpected fruit: I determined why I got my ear
aches! Seems when I sleep on my stomach I clench my jaw and grind my teeth. This is why I have TMJ and this is why I got those furiously painful ear aches. So, again, I sort of broke even.
I only spent 1 day at Getty after my surgery. I packed up my stuff and Dave took me to the Russian Tea Time place across the street. He treated me to a couple Vodka flights and they were fantastic. I would have stayed longer but Yuka was
waiting for me at the L station. I still keep in touch with lots of people at Getty, especially Dave, DJ and Karen. I miss the place, for the most part.
Despite financial craziness, we bit the bullet and moved to a new apartment. Our street in Logan Square was really going downhill in recent months. High time to get out of there. Moving out was a major bitch. Yuka was several months pregnant
at this point and I didn't allow her to lift anything, which left 80% of the moving to me. My shoulder was basically back to normal at this point but I still favored my right arm a lot. Chris came over to help with a few things but I had
already mastered climbing down the steps using my ass while having some giant piece of furniture resting on my chest and head. Anyway, it was rough. Lost 3 pounds in the process, which was great. That may have been the result of us eating
almost nothing but rice balls and instant miso soup for every meal, though. We decided not to
separate the cats once we moved them in, in the hopes that they would view the new place as neutral ground and
therefore not attack each other. No dice.
Chobi still attacks Stella and Stella still refuses to play with Chobi. Oh well. The place is much bigger than before and they have lots of places to call their own.
Kaito (that's my son) took his time coming out. He was overdue by 4 or 5 days. Yuka was going in and out of false labor so we took walks and tried to keep our minds occupied. She woke me up at 1 AM on the morning of Sunday the 29th. Her
water broke and we got our stuff together and took off. I drank a full liter of green tea since I'd only gone to bed 2 hours earlier. That made me
jittery as hell. We blasted The Pillows in the car on the way there. She hadn't started any
contractions yet so they admitted her and she was induced a couple hours later. That did the trick and she was pushing by about 5:30 the following evening. By the way, Epidurals rule. There were no moments of Bill Cosby-isms where she
freaked out, became a werewolf or threatened to cut me to pieces or light me on
fire. Kaito popped out at 6:35 PM and weighed a full 8 pounds. He was huge. I never imagined a child this big coming out of my tiny little wife. Mom and Dad made it up to Chicago
a few hours before she started pushing and had to leave right after the delivery. Dad had 3
hysterectomies to perform the next day and the first one was at 8 AM. I definitely
recommend Prentice Women's Hospital. The place was fantastic.
Cafeteria sucked but it's a hospital cafeteria. Whatever.
