delta – Whimsy. Tacos. The DMV.

Today is Pepper Day!   While Nano Poblano is only in November, Pepper Day is the 22nd day of every month, so it's extra Peppery!  Post something today.  A blog, a photo, a poem- anything at all! Tag it PepperDay!  Enjoy, and Happy Peppering!

I didn’t intend to take a two-month break between the last post and this one, I just didn’t have anything I really felt like writing about. It’s not for lack of content though- I was fairly busy through March and April.

First of all, there was so much movie and tv action. Shows I love like The Flash came back, Marvel’s Falcon and the Snowman started up, and we got movies like Godzilla vs Kong, the four-hour Snyder cut of Justice League, Raya and he Last Dragon, and Coming 2 America. All in all, it’s been a good few months to be stuck without a lot to do. Speaking of which…

I attended a bunch of virtual lectures. Profs & Pints is an organization that gets professorial types to lecture about various topics in bars, hence the name. Most lectures are 60-90 minutes and conclude with a question and answer period. Since lockdown began, they’ve moved online, which allows you to watch interesting lectures about fascinating topics from home. There was a really neat one about Krampus back in December. I’ve attended lectures about Persephone, about social media, about sexual deviancy, about introductory Irish, about the history of pinball, and more. Each lecture is $12, with forever-replay. That link again: https://www.profsandpints.com/online-talks, and there’s one tonight about the 1814 Burning of Washington, which promises to be super neat.

I went through a bunch of dentistry. I don’t think anyone cares about the details. Let’s just say that the whole process was stressful and expensive, but that’s dentistry for you.

I flew again! Specifically, I went down to South Florida for just a few days. Flying was different now, but also reassuringly the same as always. Delta has been blocking off their middle seats, which made for a less crowded flight, but my return was on Jetblue and that plane didn’t have middle seats. The Florida visit gave me a chance to see my mom and my siblings, and I spent some time with my best friend. There was even a hockey game (Panthers beat the Redwings handily.) The trip was also supposed to be timed for the unveiling of my dad’s headstone, but those plans didn’t pan out so I’m going back for a lightning-fast weekend toward the end of May. There was even the briefest of visits to the beach, which is now required since I don’t live in Florida anymore:

I visited the Silverball Museum. On the Florida trip, I ticked another box off on my long-standing list of places I wanted to check out. The Silverball Museum is a pinball and vintage game museum in Delray Beach, Florida, but this museum takes the form of a playable arcade. All the machines are set to free play, and admission to the museum allows you to play anything you like. They have all kinds of amazing vintage pinball games from the 1950s to the present. They also have game cabinets with MAME setups that include all kinds of early 1980s arcade games. I played much pinball, some skeeball, and enough Joust to prove that I remembered how.

I ran a 5k. DC Fitness did the “HerStory 5K” on March 20th, and I ran it. It was a virtual 5k so everyone ran their own path and then submitted the results later; I was something like 144th. And by “ran a 5k,” what I really mean is that I ran>fastwalked>ran>gasped>wheezed>ran some more>gasp-wheeze-grunt>fastwalked>ran a bit… and so on. My endurance has suffered from being inside for most of the last year. I want to enjoy running, but honestly, I don’t enjoy it at all.

I finally saw the Cherry Blossoms in peak bloom. I’ve been trying to see the cherry blossoms in peak bloom for years. Either I’ve missed them by a few weeks, or I’ve been unable to travel to them like in 2020. I even missed the cherry blossoms in Tokyo by just a few weeks. After years of just missing them, I finally managed to see these things in person. All it took was living less than three miles from the Tidal Basin.

I got the Covid-19 vaccine. My state has been trucking along, and as of this writing, 40% of the adult population of Virginia has had at least one dose of vaccine. I was given the one-and-done Janssen vaccine on a Saturday, and I spent the following two days recovering. About twelve hours after the shot, I had chills and body aches like crazy. The next day I was burrito-wrapped in a blanket on and off for the entire day, just super tired and cold. I slept a lot. Each successive day after that I was much better than the previous day, and by midweek everything was completely normal again. I never measured a fever of more than about one degree over my normal temperature, but I was still sweating like crazy while I slept. The weirdest side effect was a problem with escalation changes- I didn’t go out much during the few days post-vaccine, but I did take the elevator down to the lobby to pick up food at one point, and going down my head felt like it was going to explode. All the side effects are behind me now, and now I’m just waiting for my inevitable superpowers to form. [/obligatory vaccine/X-Men joke.]

I amused myself with Photoshop. I bought some corn starch so I could try a new recipe, and the brand name of the corn starch suggested a joke that made me giggle. I Photoshopped it into reality so that I could share the laugh with everyone else. (You can see what it looked like originally over here on Amazon.)

I celebrated Rex Manning Day. It’s every year on April 8th, and you mustn’t dwell. National Egg Cream Day was also March 15th, if you’re tracking that sort of thing.

I am absolutely certain that I missed something else from the last two months, but this seems like a good place to pause.

What have you been up to for the last two months?

9/52

I did a great many things during my five weeks in Japan. There are a few last things that I wanted to do, but I couldn’t schedule everything.

I wanted to go to the Ueno Park and Zoo. I was close to it many times, since the Ueno station was a major pivot point for my metro travels during the city. I also had dinner once at the Hard Rock there. I usually try not to eat food when I travel that I could easily get back home, but sometimes you have to make an exception for the local Hard Rock.

I wanted to stay one night in a capsule hotel. Capsule hotels are all over Japan, and they’re most commonly found close to train stations. When the trains stop running, someone who has been out to Nomikai and Sanjikai might want to stay out a bit longer. If you’ve missed the last train back home, a capsule hotel is an inexpensive way to get some sleep before the morning trains start up. Each capsule is a tiny space, and the hotel will have shared bathroom and shower facilities outside of the “room.” If you’ve ever seen the movie The Fifth Element, then you have an idea of what these are like- little horizontal places to sleep without many frills. Some capsule hotels have televisions inside the capsule, and they almost always have privacy screens on the door.

by Daa Nell

I wanted to attend a Sumo match. I was in Japan during Sumo wrestling season. I thought it would be fascinating to see a match. However, many of the matches were sold out before I found out about them, and those that were not sold out were prohibitively expensive. Luckily for me, the matches were often broadcast on television, and I was able to watch a series of matches on the television in my hotel room. Sumo is really neat to watch, as it turns out, even though I don’t know much about the rules.

I wanted to attend a formal tea ceremony. There were a few places I found in Japan where I could do this, but most of them were in hotels on work-days. As it turns out, most of the people who want to attend formal tea ceremonies are tourists, which is why they were all in hotels.

That about wraps it up for my time in Japan, though. All that’s left is the flight home. I’m not one to resist a good instructional sign.

One of my colleagues in the Otemachi office gave me a day-pass to Delta’s Skyclub for me to use on my way out of town. (Thanks, Chiba-san!) Since it’s a 24 hour pass, I was able to use it to get away from the airport noise both in Tokyo and also on my layover back in the US. Tokyo’s Skyclub was better.

This is a peaceful oasis compared to the noise of the International terminal. Lots of places to sit, eat, read, or just stop for a bit.

Of course there was food and drink available.

If you have a flight longer than about twelve hours, I heartily recommend buying a Skyclub daypass- the food alone makes up for the cost of it. There were little salads, crescent rolls, fruit, and other edibles. In Japan, there was sushi. On my US layover, there was soup and meatballs.

In Tokyo, there were also little meat skewers and bananas. I enjoyed the banana… Bananas are good!

Isn’t this tiny bottle of soy sauce just the most adorable thing? It’s a tiny salty capsule of squee!

The beverage selection was fantastic.

There were even little automatic beer pouring machines that tilt the glass to get the correct amount of foam in the finished pour. Food automation is always fascinating to watch.