My sister’s in town for business, so…

No, wait, let me start again.

My lovelytalentedarticulatestylisheducatedsensiblesuccessful sister’s in town for business, and arranged to come in early so we could spend Saturday together in San Francisco, and Sunday down at my house.

Friday, while working from home, I prepared for her visit by lighting up the smoker and preparing a double batch of spicy smoked chicken thighs. I think she’d have disowned me if I’d shown up at the airport without them.

Saturday, I picked her up at SFO and handed over the chicken, then we bummed around Japantown and Chinatown for a few hours (praising the heavens that our mother was not along to see the everything-must-go final-auction-starts-at-noon Chinese antique shop), sat impatiently in the bar for several hours while the hotel prepared our rooms, and then headed out for dinner and Spamalot. Since both hotel and theater were in the theater district (which should be renamed the theater&bum district), all we needed was a good place to eat, and a Zvents search turned up Ponzu, an asian fusion place that has some delicious food. Whatever else you get there, order the kalbi beef and the fried chickpeas, and eat them together. Trust us on this one; we ordered a second helping of the beef to use up the leftover chickpeas.

After that, it was off to Spamalot, which Ticketmaster shamelessly lied about the cast of, but the touring cast was by no means a disappointment. It’s a terrific show, very Python but hip, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it came back to SF for a longer run in the future.

Inexplicably, the rows in front of and behind us emptied out completely at intermission, and we heard one of the groups complaining about John O’Hurley’s inauthentic British accent. In Spamalot. Monthy Python. Farce. They just couldn’t get past it. Either they were season-ticket-holding Serious Theatre Patrons™, or they inhaled a bit too much of the pot smoke that was drifting in from the nearby exit door, and were just friggin’ high.

Sunday morning, it was off to my house, which, for a change, was quite clean in the rooms that weren’t sealed off. More chicken was consumed, and for dinner, giant juicy Costco steaks, coated with rub and tastefully incinerated on my nuclear grill at a safe and comfortable 725°. Served with cheesy toasts and wine, life was good. Also surprisingly grownup-like, with candles and music and a centerpiece and both of our laptops shoved firmly to the side. Not at all like my usual combination of a frozen dinner and a web browser.

Dessert was the fresh peaches she brought from Chicago, sliced, sugared, and milked, on freshly-baked canned biscuits, topped with crushed Shouga Tsumami (aka “Ginger Pinch”, aka “Ginger Crack”, aka “Ohmygodthesearegoodgivememore”).

Street cred fail.

more...

I made a sandwich for dinner tonight. The label on the bread proudly announced that it contained no high-fructose corn syrup, and the sliced chicken proclaimed that it was gluten-free. When I got to the mayo, I was honestly surprised that it didn’t boast of being low-carb.

The bacon, of course, laughed and shouted, I am flavor!

I just noticed that Word 2007 offers to translate any text in your document, with a combination of on- and offline tools.

Let’s see what it does with some relatively straightforward Japanese prose, namely the first scene of Kyoutarou Nishimura’s murder-mystery story Ame no naka ni shinu…

more...

Koutarou Nanbara says:

「あのロボットオタクのお宅に女がいるなんて、あってはならんことだ……」

I’m halfway through an attempt to read the first Hand Maid May novel without a dictionary. I’m missing quite a bit this way, but I know the story well enough to fill in most of the missing pieces, and 100 roughly-understood pages are more fun than 10 carefully-translated ones. When I go through it the second time, the story will be fresh enough that stopping to look things up won’t interrupt the experience as badly. I tried to do this with the Louie novel last year, but I was missing too much grammar and vocabulary.

The tagline: “Powered by Really Cute Asians”

Out of nowhere, I remembered her first name, and Google turned up a solid link to her last name: Jennifer Collins. Sadly, her career in the circus arts doesn’t seem to have prospered enough to turn up any news since 2003. I don’t know how she compares technically to other contortionists, but as an entertainer, with a warm, funny stage presence, she’s top-notch.

WTF is this? Sherlock Bond?