Almost forgot to mention: on Friday, in the run-up to the Spumoni Invasion, I finally got back to the emissions-testing work-fare site to have my new gas-cap tested for environmental hazard. The verdict: the gas-cap is kosher. The state employee printed out a receipt for me certifying that I had finally wasted enough time and fuel and was now authorized to log onto the state motor vehicle site and spend another 93 dollars and change for the honor of renewing my jalopy for another two years.

Fuckers.

Well anyway, at least I got that out of the way. That freed me up for the rest of Friday to shop for the rest of the food we'd need and get the ribs in the oven so they could slow cook until the time of Mastandrea Arrival -- which actually occurred slightly ahead of the flight's scheduled arrival time. Sweet! We got back to Berea-Rose and feasted. See for yourself.

And here's an even better one:

Lots of great photos this weekend. But this one of Cookie and me I really like.

We wore suits today.

Cookie's first Communion was beautiful, and the festivities made all the merrier with Spumoni Squad being in town. We ate a lot of food. And we're having a lot of laughs.

The weather has been warm and enjoyable -- though it's going into the 40s tonight. That's gonna feel harsh on sun-loving Florida skin!

I heard from Steve yesterday because he's been obsessing on the utterings of homeless guy we encountered at the Met Museum of Art some 15-or-so years ago. I told him about the dream I had the other night. I was stacking the hamburger rolls and singing that old Billy Idol song: "With a Schwebel yell... MORE MORE MORE!"

Steve was amused. Which is more than I can say about Alane, who seems to think it's bad enough that I have to defile music lyrics while I'm awake.

Yes, the toilet seats... I think I can vaguely recall...

Ahhh so Tokyo was a very interesting place. Twice as busy and congested as manhattan and twice as clean. I never saw anyone cleaning the streets but here was never even a cigarette on the floor. I did get a very canal street type feeling from the overall ambient scent.
Chech this shot. This was a tight walk.---------------->
As we walked down the alley we saw smallish bodega type establishments that were maybe 10' x 6' and were nothing more than people sitting at a counter as someone cooked on that very same counter. What they were cooking? Well????? You tell me.



Well i promised to post some interesting things i saw in Japan. First ---The department stores are enormous, often 10 - 12 floors of merchandise. High end stuff too not knockoff anything. They get insulted if you ask "were these made in china?" .All sales people are dressed like they are on the runway.So we get to matsumaya dept store 5 minutes before it opened. The employees were all standing still as a gong went off twice. All of the employees than turned to the customers waiting and bow. They then open the door and all line the entry path bowed. Really cool. AND.... In the basement of each dept store is a Stew Leonard type gourmet food marketplace selling everything from shellfish to doughnuts. I actually ate one. The funniest thing was the fruit and vegetable stand guys, they would sing and holler about there freshest stuff. it was insane. It was such a different culture.

So i did have an automatic toilet in my hotel. Heated seat- deoderizer--front and back washer. This was an awesome anenity and what stunned me was the toilets i found in public areas. they were quite different.They actuall had instructions in english on the wall. How one does not shit in thier own pants is beyond my understanding. ENJOY.

I too just landed from a land of scale-encrusted food. Well, New York, at least. Had a fancy dinner there last night, then hopped a plane today to get home in time for Mojo's birthday. Both chimps are seven years old today. It will stay that way until Monday when the older chimp turns eight.

My plane landed in time for me to high-tail it over to their first baseball practice. being that I'm the team's coach, it was probably a good thing that I made it in time (there's a co-coach, so the practice would've been covered). We threw the ball around, the kids ran the bases, and once we were done we drove over to the Dairy Queen. Cookie and Mojo got sundaes and I got the Hairy Queen Disgust-o burger. I'd have eaten anything that Bazzukajoe had pushed aside, but this burger was blowjhinski.

After we ate we walked over to the adjacent driving range and hit a bucket of balls. You should've seen the boys hacking away.

Hey Joey, did the smells remind you of Canal Street, when we used to walk those back alleys to skip the fiasco of the feast?

Arty Farty? Seymore Hair? Betty is in my head all the time. I am fascinated she is so far reaching.

John after the food i have had this past week, i will have bangers and mash with you anytime.

I cannot sleep as i am still time zone confused and so i blog. I did indeed return from a trip to the land of the rising sun. It was truly amazing. My flight there connected in chicago and with an 11 hour flight to tokyo. That was a long day since they are 14 hours ahead of the U.S. I got there the next day. Coming home was not as pleasant even though i landed only 2 hours after i left. We stayed in a 4 star hotel for 6 days and had a tour guide and bus take us to every site an american tourist would be interested in. breafast lunch dinner and kimonos were all provided. I did not eat much. I was a bit more adventurous than i normally would be and i tried to be accommodating as i am aware they are an archipelago and so the staple food would be fish. WOW, i was not prepared for the array of foods or the scent. Sometimes it felt like it probably still had a hook in it. The first day we were taken to a trendy tempura place in SHINJUKU-KU. I thought how could you go wrong with tempura, deep fried anything is usually pretty good. I was mistaken. My tempura still had scaly tails sticking out of the end. There was no way i was taking a chance on what was hiding beneath. The second course was sushi.......... Several pieces still had scales on them and no matter how familiar something appeared it was not what it appeared to be. I did have few good things, not alll the food was bad but i did go to bed hungry most nights. Every time i was brought something i thought, Jenia would eat this stuff. We did have some kobe teriyaki steak one night that was amazing. And the toilets rae another story entirely. My hotel did have Johnny's favorite toilets, the automatic one with the remote control.well i need to unpack and get out the camera cord to show you. more to follow nite for now.

I hope people don't mind if I serve this when everyone comes over. And I'll talk with a Brit accent.

We got hooked up with some really great seats for today's Indians-Athletics games at Jacob's Field -- which they now call Progresso Field. But no soup. And today, with temperatures in the 30s, we could've used a nice bowl of hot soup. Gametime was pushed out for about an hour due to wet weather, and we were only a couple of innings into the game when the snow started.

But we'd dressed warmly, getting Da Chimpz into full snow-suit gear. Which still wasn't enough. By the fourth inning Mojo told us his feet were frozen and I couldn't very well argue with him since mine were too. We headed home shortly thereafter and got the meatballs rolling. Then I was off to the Cub Scout Committee meeting at the bar in town (convenient!). Now everyone's asleep and I'm next.

We eagerly await tales from Far East. That Bazzukajoe, he's Big in Japan.