After the drama of late, today was a much-needed break. The sun was shining and my cat now walks, so I can’t complain. (Well, Maxi now walks sideways—I guess when you tend to fall towards your right side it’s easier to stay upright by walking towards your right—but she purrs and doesn’t seem to be in any pain, so it’s close enough for us.)

Lunch today was going to be A&W, but my new favorite burger joint has suddenly vanished without a trace. The Chevron on 9th Street is now simply a Chevron again. Since we didn’t have much money for lunch (A&W was one of the cheaper places to get food), we had to fall back to cheeseburgers from Burger King. Not bad, but not terribly good, either. At work I’ve been able to keep my scanning fairly current, but that’s the only area that looks good. Every time I think we’ve bottomed out in how dysfunctional we can be, we dive even further. People seem to have given up on maintaining any pretense at all of being caught up, or even capable of getting caught up. Perhaps Marin and I should use our l33t business skillz and try to figure out a better workflow for the office…or else we could be lazy and watch some more anime.

Speaking of which, we finished off Strawberry Eggs over the last two nights. The subtitle track for the show actually includes honorifics (“Hibiki-chan,” “Amawa-sensei,” etc.)—something which is almost never done. I mean, if you’ve seen it, imagine seeing “Shinji-kun” and “Fuyutsuki-sensei” in Evangelion’s subtitles…it would just be weird. Or, maybe not—I didn’t notice the honorifics at all. I could try to pass that off as proof of my increasing Japanese l33tness (I vaguely recall it being a real issue with others Back In The Day), but I suspect most would believe it attests more to a lack of attention to detail on my part. The show was average, in the large-grouping sense of first-class/average/garbage, but for an average show was better than average. It really squandered the excellent opportunity it had to comment on gender roles, though, which was disappointing for me. (This, despite the fact that I didn’t really expect it to deliver in that regard.) The ending—as typical—featured peoples’ opinions changing in the extreme in a short period of time for dramatic effect. Though it’s overused as a storytelling device, I don’t know that rapid changes in opinion are necessarily inaccurate, at least in the context of Strawberry Eggs…if you aren’t really sure what you think, I could understand how you might be easily swayed from one extreme to another in a short period of time.

And there I go, talking as if the people reading this have seen the show. Bah.

I’m still surprisingly tired, despite getting a good deal of sleep last night, so I’ll call it quits for now. I haven’t forgotten that I still owe y’all a tale of my Seattle Trip at some point, but for now you’ll have to make do with photographic evidence. Yes, I’m in these pictures. Despite what commentary the PA guys give, y’all would best be advised to remember that I don’t belong to Seattle’s dork population—though I will admit to being saddened that the photographer failed to capture on film Andy flashing his right hand rule. I’m sure Andy is disappointed as well.