It's Mr X's Birthday! Well sort of...

The strange thing about Mr X’s birthday this year is that it falls on a different day for him than it does for me. Sort of. The fact that he’s 16 hours ahead means that by the time his birthday has started in my reality, it’s almost over for him. Bizarre. So I guess this will seem more like a belated birthday post to him.

So in an effort to not miss wishing Mr X wonderful birthday wishes, I'm starting today (his birthday over there already) and I'll end tomorrow because that's his official birthday in this hemisphere.

Happy Birthday Mr X! I hope you have a fantastic day despite being thousands of miles away. I at least hope you manage to find yourself some delicious food so you can celebrate properly with some good eatin’. KFC maybe? I love you and miss you.

A bit from Mr X now

Mr X's first day after his arrival in Japan he ventured out to explore the immediate vicinity. During these explorations he hit the local grocery store to get himself something to eat for dinner. Here's the picture he sent back:

(Wontons, some sort of noodles, 'cooling grapefruit' beverage and some nuts.)

All in all not too bad, I think. He says the drink was actually quite tasty and every thing else was pretty decent too.

More importantly though, here are some pictures of Mr X's "smart toilet":

(Note the circle in the middle: This is the setting you use to wash your boobs. Or maybe it's supposed to be a picture of butt cheeks. Or both.)

I wish I had a smart toilet. How luxurious!

Hot Summer Nights

Until this month I’d forgotten how uncomfortable the nights can get in SD when you live in a place without a/c. Despite being cooler because I’m near the beach, the nights always feel overly warm and sticky. It makes for fitful sleep. With the covers on you get too hot and muggy. But shortly after you’ve kicked the covers off, the moisture cools you off enough that you wake, searching for your covers again. The process repeats itself all night. It also makes my bed look like a disaster area by morning. Pillows strewn about the room, blankets half on the bed half on the floor, the top sheet completely separated from the blanket in a twisted heap around me as I lay sideways on the bed with my head and feet hanging off the edges.

This brings back to memory some of the ways I’ve combated the hot summer nights here before:

1) Stuffing my small blanket into the freezer for a half hour or so before bedtime.
2) Taking an ice cold shower just before bed.
3) Buying a portable fan and putting it on my nightstand and setting it to blow air right at my head.
4) Taking ice packs to bed with me.
5) Buying talcum powder with menthol and powdering myself down before crawling into bed.
(Often I combined several of these things together)

As you can see, a continuous lack of good solid sleep leads to some very desperate behavior.

Dolphins

I took the day off this past Thursday because it was Mr X’s last day in the country. So we spent most of the day at the beach. We spent the morning surfing. It was perfect because the water was nice and glassy with shoulder to head high sets coming through. But the best part of was when some dolphins swam through our surf spot. When I lived here before I saw dolphins every now and again but since being back in SD (almost a year now) I hadn’t seen any yet. The coolest part was that right as they got to where Mr X and I were, a set came through and the dolphins, being the playful creatures they are, turned and caught the waves. Seeing them in the crest of the waves right next to me completely unnerved me and I wasn’t able to get into the wave so I sat back and simply watched them. Mr X caught the wave right along with the dolphins and as he was riding down the line, one of the dolphins on the wave just next to him shot right out of the water and dove back in. It was super exciting to see and it totally made my day.

The Good Book Says...

Last weekend Mr X and I joined Mr and Mrs Nye for an evening of quality entertainment in the form of a musical theater performance. We went to see the Fiddler On The Roof and it was fantastic! For those of you familiar with the movie version from way back when - the very same actor (Topol) who played Tevye in the movie played Tevye in the production we watched. I was shocked when I first found this out because I assumed that if he wasn't dead then he'd at least be retired. Not so. In fact, he was quite spry and limber for such an old fellow. Later I did some research and found out that he's 74 years old! Can you believe it?!? Regardless, he delivered a superb performance. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised since he's performed that particular role over 2500 times. (Mr X had the poor fortune to be seated next to a rather unpleasantly fragrant women so his experience wasn't quite as pleasurable as the rest of us. Plus there's also the fact that he prefers other forms of entertainment to musical theater.)

Cucarachas

I believe the summer’s rise in heat and humidity are directly correlated to the increase in cockroach sightings at our place. I swear we’re not slovenly, disgusting people! I’ve seen several in our garage over the past month or so. But more distressing is the other place I’ve been finding cockroaches: inside my wetsuit. Eewwww! After surfing, I take my wetsuit off and clean it out with fresh water from our hose. Or rather, Mr X kindly does this for me. Then he leaves my wetsuit hanging on our back porch to dry out. At some point between the washing and the next time I go to to put the thing on (usually only a span of a few days), cockroaches have taken up residence. After the first horrifying encounter I’ve taken to shamelessly begging Mr X to do a ‘roach check’ on my wetsuit every time we head out to surf. More often than not Mr X’s inspections end up with cockroaches scurrying from my wetsuit as I hop around screeching and flailing about in disgust. I fear I’ll be forced to surf sans wetsuit during Mr X’s absence.

Everybody Loves Baseball

As an early birthday treat, I got Mr X tickets to the baseball game this past Friday here in SD. Padres vs. Rockies. I managed to get us some pretty nice seats. Here’s a picture:

The obnoxious thing is that despite the fact that I ponied up for nicer seats specifically for Mr X's birthday, my nice seats were right behind This Woman:

Her head is MASSIVE! It didnt' matter that I was in the seventh row because her head filled nearly my entire view of the important part of the field! I was constantly twisting and craning my neck and camera in order to get these shots:

I also attempted to take pictures of the “Friday Friarworks”, which are always an ocular delight:

I can't speak (write) for Mr X, but I had a lovely night.

Culinary Research

Upon news of hearing that Mr X was once again headed to Japan, I decided a trip to our local Japanese market was warranted. (Yes, we have one in SD!) Mr X was less than thrilled at the prospect of dining on Japanese cuisine again, but I wanted to go check out a few of his options for myself and I dragged him with. So off we went to the market. Here are a few of the items I sample in Mr X’s honor. He declined to participate in the sampling purely on principle – he won’t eat the stuff until he absolutely has to.

The beverage wasn’t too bad at first but it gets worse and worse with each gulp. I guess that’s to be expected when your soda is made from powdered milk and sugar.

The next was some sort of pastry with cream in the middle (cream made out of more delicious powdered milk). It’s okay unless the ratio of cream-to-bread gets too out of control because the cream can be a little too much.

This is one of the bean filled pastries Mr X was so disappointed to discover last time he was in Japan. One bite was about all I could handle.

This one is a blueberry roll thing. It was decent, actually.

They were selling all of these mixes and prepackaged things so I just grabbed one to make for myself while Mr X is gone so I can pretend that I'm there with him. Turns out I grabbed one that was actually Chinese rather than Japanese. China is close enough though, right? (And yes, I know that lemon chicken isn't that adventurous but in my defense most everything else had directions written in Japanese symbols so deciphering the instructions would have been a little too challenging. Poor Mr X will be forced to improvise when he attempts to cook over there.)

One sure thing is that if he encounters anything too awful, Mr X can always count on Pocky to come his palate’s rescue.

Another New Arrival! (Belated on my part!)

I neglected to let the world know that I became an aunt yet again late last month. The newest arrival is one Mr Owen Tucker. I have yet to see a photo of the wee one so I can't show you how adorable he surely is. Maybe someone will send me a picture though (hint hint)....

A rather severe case of Blogger's Block

I swear I'm still alive and well! I can't tell you how thrilled I am at the prospect that people might even miss my silly little posts. So as of today I'm hopping back on the blogging bandwagon. This summer has gone by so quickly, I can't believe July is halfway over already! I've gone to a few baseball games. I attended what was pretty much a Mr X family reunion in AZ. I had a fabulous cheese party hosted by Mrs Nye (and if she'd be so kind as to email me pictures, I'd be delighted to post them). This weekend Mr X and I are headed to another baseball game. Saturday we're going to see the Fiddler on the Roof (Mr X isn't thrilled but he's going to endure with class, I'm sure). Then next Friday Mr X is flying halfway across the world to Japan again. He'll be gone until September. *sigh* Bring on the chick flicks, cooked vegetables and sizzling mugs of cheese.