Skip to main content

A Feast

Nine o'clock on Sunday morning and I'm strolling into my neighborhood association meeting, thermos of coffee in hand. When the chairman called me last week he said it would go until noon, so I figured I better bring supplies. I'm so glad I did. They provided hojicha, which is basically the same as chamomile tea except meant to be thirst quenching. Not great for boring meetings.

I knew this was going to stretch the limits of my focus and attention, and knowing the demographic of the attendees (the average age was probably around 76) there was zero chance there was gonna be coffee. I am also addicted to my Aeropress coffee maker. It makes a perfect cup of coffee. And every day is a new chance to improve upon it. So I showed up with a freshly pressed thermos of goodness and gave my full attention.

The meeting was over by 10. I still had coffee left.

Most likely due to the fact that they can't find anyone else to do it, I was pre-selected to be the vice-chair of the neighborhood association with some other duties attached. I was texting Eri the whole time and she was telling me to tell them to shove it. I'm paraphrasing of course, but that's basically what she meant.

As of next April I am the unqualified vice-chairperson of our neighborhood association who has already stated to the chairman that I will do my best to wiggle out of any major events and responsibilities.


Eri's sister and her husband and daughter came over for lunch and ended up staying until early evening. They even napped. Everybody did. I went for a walk.

And they brought food - bento boxes of a local delicacy, salmon rice with cod roe. Eri made pork and vegetable soup. It was a feast.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I  absolutely should not  be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sendai vs. Tokushima

Osamu said he had to go pee, and I make it a habit to believe him most of the time. Another habit I have is taking him to go pee, much of the time.  When we came out of the restroom I decided it was time for a beer, so with Osamu holding my hand we waltzed over to the food concession and I was checking out the selection, and the prices. Seven hundred yen for a draft beer. I had a feeling. It was only 500 for a whiskey cocktail (whiskey with water on the rocks) but I wasn't about to be that much of a derelict this early with my four-year-old son in tow. The tickets were free, the seats aren't bad, might as well spend seven bucks on a beer. The problem was that the dude next to us with his little boy about the same age as Mumu-chan loudly and with braggadocio you don't often see in these parts ordered a Blue Hawaii snow cone for his kid. I heard this and panicked. Last weekend at Michinoku Park I got a Blue Hawaii snow cone for Osamu and he loved it.  I looked down at my l...
1 comment
Read more