Yeah, so this whole “Japan extravaganza” is still happening—it’s just not happening very fast. Taking care of Grandma, Yoshi, and Calliope (mostly Yoshi, who loves marathon walks) really ate a good chunk of each day this last week. Work has been starting to expect me to actually put hours in, too (me: “huh?”), so I was feeling a bit squeezed last week.

Amusing tidbit: my dad usually feeds Yoshi and Calliope a bit of cheddar cheese (part of his breakfast) each morning. Last Sunday, the first day my folks were gone, I forgot about this—and the animals seemed a bit off all day. Monday morning I remembered, and so gave them a bit of cheese—and they did much better the rest of the day. [Sidenote to the tidbit: a slice of cheddar cheese, and a small glass of milk, is surprisingly filling.]

This evening I actually sat down to write about Day 1 of the trip (gasp!), but then discovered that my notes abruptly ended after Day 10—of 13. As I am fond of saying, my brain is an iron sieve (“first it leaks, and then it rusts”), so I turned my attention towards writing down the fleeting memories I have of those unrecorded days. If I didn’t, you would have found the end of the story rather undeveloped; now you’ll simply be able to compare my narrative to swiss cheese.

…

I’ve recently started looking into the world of RSS newsreaders, and so have—for the first time—looked at this site through the RSS feed that Movable Type so nicely sets up for me. I think I’ll have to write some CSS to accompany that feed, ’cause that was about as generic an experience as I could imagine.