Happy New Year

It's 5:15 am, so that should give you some indication on how I am readjusting to Japan time. We are all awake, and have been for awhile.

It was a great trip back to O-hi-o. I am even more firmly resolved never to live there again. The winters are hell. Anyone who thinks it gets dry around here in winter is deluded. My hair was a big frizz factory the whole time and Jeff's hands looked like he was washing with sand and flour. It was -11 degrees Celsius the day we left.

The novelty of the food wore off pretty quickly. I never ate so much heavy meat and starch in my life, and the only rice I saw was at a Japanese restaurant. I always went to Japanese restaurants for my birthday, and we thought it'd be fun to go to one of those "hibachi" places where they cook on your table. I think everyone who worked there, chefs included, was from the Philippines. They made huge quantities of filet mignon and lobster and shrimp, all fried in butter. The side was fried rice, also made with large quantities of butter. I could barely make a dent on my "Japanese" meal.

Anyway. There are some cool things about Cleveland. For instance, Jeff and I spent a day exploring downtown, and I was surprised to feel more of a sense of history than I do here in this ancient land. They still have old buildings, and some really cool ones. It did give me a sense of melancholy, tho, as so much of it was a ghost town. Downtown Cleveland has never really been a hoppin' place, but it was creepy how on a Saturday afternoon, we felt like it was Night of the Comet. A lot of it may have been due to the massive work going on on Euclid Ave. The Old Arcade is now mostly owned by the Hyatt. The May Company building was the most pathetic, all abandoned and sad. However, I do enjoy the old architecture, from a time before buildings were strictly utilitarian and sterile.




















































































































































Later was the Big Event. A lovely party, planned by the Cleveland Triad of Valerie, Noelle, and Jennifer, at the Wonder Bar. We were joined there by Scott, Dan, Patrick, his girl Megan, Jen Woda and her Cleveland Orchestra Calendar-boy Brian, and Kristin. Conspicuously absent (i.e., they said they were coming) were Dave Clarich and Pootsie (who still hasn't given me an explanation). I was having too much fun to take any good pictures, but you can see some awful blurry ones on flickr (see link at the end).

A good chunk of us moved on to Touch, where the DarkLord himself, Eric Freeman, works.















Ben Davis showed up, as well as the lovely Angie and her bf. Again, not many decent pictures (maybe Jen or Noelle has some?), but I do have a nice picture of Scott















and this great study of Noelle:














































The next morning we met Val at a diner near her place to meet her kitties (Kooky McEyebrow was not performing, however) and indulge in yet another hugely proportioned cheap breakfast.




















I am so not used to eating that sort of quantity anymore. Not that I ever was, really, but even more so these days. Ain't no izakaya.

We met all the Davises later for what was possibly the Most Chaotic Dinner in History. There were 13 of us in a huge Italian restaurant at Beachwood Place (an upscale mall). It was assumed that since it was a Sunday between holidays that it wouldn't be crowded, but that was a mistaken assumption. It was packed, from the lobby where we took pictures of all five Davis boys (making them look like famous objects of paparazzi frenzy),















to the staircase where we had Karen take family photos with like 6 different cameras (pissing off the people trying to get to and from the bathrooms), (I hope the others came out better than this):















to the dinner table itself (where the wine flowed freely and grandpa tried to amuse the kids by initiating a cork-and-fork catapult game). Some cute pictures though, like Matt & Karen















and Ken & Analee:















We had a trip to the grocery store. Not exciting for you, maybe, but I enjoyed it. Especially the gallons of milk, and the cereal aisle (thank you, lovely assistant Karen):





























New Year's Eve was pretty much a non-event. We hung out at Matt's house with Will, and Jeff had to wake us up for the countdown. Yeah, Dick Clark was there, at least his animated corpse was. Apparently he had a stroke a few years ago, but he's still doing New Year's Rockin' Eve from NYC. Jeezus, let him die already.










The next day (?), we met Kevin Flynn at the Natural History Museum, to give the kids a look at what Cleveland has to offer (the world-class art museum, sadly, is under a several-year renovation and is closed for the most part). There was some cool stuff. I mean that literally. There were a ton of dead stuffed things.

What does this remind you of?





















































Give up? Look here for the answer. Play it all day in your office - your coworkers will love you.

There was also a cool new planetarium. Jeff made me take a picture of the projector. Because it's cool.















I liked the real human brain in a jar:




















and this Hubble telescope photo:




















This is Kevin. He's M's godfather, of sorts. They haven't met since M was 9 months old.





















And of course, the required picture on the awesome climbing dinosaur outside:















We went to a movie. Well, separate movies for the kids and the adults. The kids saw The Waterhorse, and we saw Sweeney Todd, which was deliciously gruesome. And a musical! With Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter! How could you go wrong, I ask you? The ticket prices were almost half of what they are in Japan, but they do gouge you on the refreshment costs. But it was yet another example of American skewed sense of proportion. Here is my family with the Medium popcorn and Medium drink.




















We were greeted after the movie with this:















The roads were hellacious, so we decided that the flattest and thus safest route (i.e., no hills to slide off the road on) was to my dad's house in Twinsburg. On the way, I got a good example of how much cooler xmas lights look in the snow.















We had Chinese, and I proved yet again that I cannot stay awake for movies on the couch in Cleveland. But the couches are really comfortable. I know, I slept on a lot of them on this trip.

This is my dad's house in the morning.















This is my dad and Joyce at breakfast.















There was, naturally, more snow back out in Chesterland. It's in The Snow Belt, after all.















The boys went sledding and to Squire's Castle, while I sat in Starbuck's (housed in what used to be a bank on SOM Center), and then we made a last trip to the thrift store. I ran into Stacey Shulman, last seen as a Mayfield High School aspirin and diet-pill addict. She looked almost exactly the same and seemed to be doing fine.

All there left to do was pack up to go. Heh. Haha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Between the book, record, and thrift-store buying frenzies, and all the xmas presents, Jeff, the Pack Master, was faced with a daunting task.















Wait, there's more behind him.















He got it all into eight checkable bags and boxes. We had arrived with four.




















See more pictures, including the blurry ones, here.

So we made it back, obviously. I lost two days due to flight time (14 hours), date line crossing, and passing out on the couch almost the instant we got home. I'm still not back to normal. The kids are excited to go back to school, but are pretty crabby, having gotten up at 4:30 or so. I have already done 6 loads of laundry, and have a day of folding it all ahead of me. I need fish. It's 7:10 am.