mercurydraconix: okay okay ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

I am twenty-five, and my father is no longer dying.

I am twenty-five, and my father is dead.

7:39pm 27th September 2010.

My father is dying. So it goes.

Your father has an anaplastic glioblastoma, and there are no more treatments to try. He was diagnosed two years ago, and for the most part everything has been fine. He has had several different courses of treatment. He has had chemo and radiation and surgery and experimental treatments at the NIH and for two ( Read more... )

chocolate mint or chocolate espresso?

BAKING MINDS NEED TO KNOW.

POKING THROUGH GRANDMOTHER'S CUPBOARDS. FOUND VIBE. BRAIN COMPLETELY OFFLINE.

The pros and cons of attending a wine tasting with your parents neighbors:

PROS:
My parents' neighbors are, in fact, totally fucking awesome.
They drink like maybe they have heard that it will go out of style next year, and they are committed to being ahead of the trend, which is to say: like fucking fishFREE BOOZE ( Read more... )

I popped into a 'net cafe in Sendai first thing, mostly just to kill some time before my hostel opened and I could stash my luggage there. Sendai had surprisingly few options on the websites, and the place I ended up staying was clearly run by an older Japanese couple and while it was a business, they hadn't really modernized much. I couldn't ( Read more... )

In Tokyo, I stashed my luggage again before proceeding to turn myself around crazily on the subway system and waste, oh, nearly an hour and a half. Eventually, however, I managed to make my way to Nikko, which is a little city on the outskirts, full of temples and shrines and monkeys.

I didn't actually see any monkeys. I think they're a bit ( Read more... )

Japan, like most of the world, has a thing about threes - three tallest mountains, three most famous hot springs - and at Nara, Kamakura, and Takaoka are Japan's three largest Daibutsu. Daibutsu are enormous buddha figures, usually cast from multiple pieces of bronze. The daibutsu at Kamakura and Takaoka are exposed to the air, while the daibutsu ( Read more... )