Listen to the Rain

I got a 10% raise out of nowhere yesterday!

My boss asked me to submit my timecard early, which was very odd--she's never done that before, but I thought she might be going on vacation and didn't think much of it. And then I got an email from my old boss (now boss's boss) congratulating me on my new raise given based on my hard work, proven track record, etc.

I suspect that being a man with a baby also has something to do with it, since the assumption is that men with families need that money to support them. In my case though that's actually true since sashagee is still too sick to work even if she wanted to, which she doesn't until Laila goes to school. So I'll gladly take that money and put it to good use.

We had a steak dinner yesterday to celebrate, but the truth is we already had the steak and I had planned to make it. The raise just provided a retroactive excuse. It sure was delicious, though!

As a one-year-old, Laila is no longer a little baby and so the nomenclature must change.

On Friday night, sashagee and I drove out to her parents' place in the suburbs to spend the night so that we could properly get everything ready for the party. The suburban location meant that most of my friends couldn't come--a lot of live the true city existence and so don't own cars--but weather was going to be so lovely that the backyard was certainly the best place to hold it, so we did. On Saturday sashagee and I blew up balloons, her parents hung up the "🍓 HAPPY 🍓 BIRTHDAY 🍓" banner, and sashagee baked the cake that Laila would be eating.

I had never heard of the whole smash cake thing and neither had my parents--when I asked if my father knew about it, his answer was just "No" and when I explained it, he elaborated, "...why?"--and Laila didn't really do any fun kind of smashing. She saw some food in front of her and she immediately set about doing what babies do to food--eating it. No extra movements, no fuss, pure predatory efficiency. She ate the whole thing and then spent a while crawling around the yard, with no apparent effect from all the sugar (though sashagee picked a mostly cream frosting so it wouldn't be incredibly sugary). She did stay up until almost 4:15 p.m. but the excitement from a lot of people probably led to that.

There are plenty of photos up on sashagee's instagram but here are a couple more!:

( Two pics of Laila )

Here's to many more happy birthdays in the future!

We went to the theatre.


Thirteen Days was the last show that I was going to go to before all theatre was cancelled last year, and at the time they vowed that when the Plague Year ended they'd put on the same show again. Well, the Plague Year hasn't quite ended yet but it's ended enough that they were able to put on a show, so I bought theatre tickets for the first time in a year and a half, my parents agreed to come visit and babysit Laila, and sashagee and I went for a Sunday matinee.

Thirteen Days is about the Cuban Missile crisis, like the movie of the same name, both adapted from Robert Kennedy's memoirs, though the play obtained special permission from the estate to adapt dialogue from recently-declassified transcripts of the meetings. lisekatevans played Bobby Kennedy--the play has an entirely-female cast--and did most of the narration. If I have a criticism about the play, it's that a lot of the action was told, not shown. Maybe it's because there wasn't enough recorded dialogue to come up with a satisfying script for those meetings, or maybe it's because they weren't as exciting as the meetings that we did see. I would have liked to see some of the meetings that President Kennedy wasn't present for where EXCOMM hammered out their recommendations, though.

That said, the atmosphere of the play was terrific. There was a real sense of danger in the air, at the possibility of global thermonuclear war, and even though I already knew all the historical events I was still in suspense about what would happen next. I already knew about Stanislav Petrov, and a couple years ago I read Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War and learned how close I was to dying in atomic fire before my first birthday, and the common thread of all of these is (pessimistically) how many times humanity came to the brink of a nuclear war or (optimistically) how we always pulled back from the brink. I had that in mind the whole time I was watching, especially since we only got the American perspective. As in the Able Archer incident, the Soviets had no way of knowing what was going through the Americans' minds. That applies to everyone, actually--the most memorable moment for me was after multiple discussions about a quid pro quo removal of missiles in Turkey, how the Americans wanted to remove the Turkish missiles anyway, how they'd have to talk to NATO, how they can't remove the missiles in response to the Soviets' actions because that looks like bowing to a thread, President Kennedy shouts, "We've been talking about this for a WEEK and no one has told [the Turks]?!" The flow of information was definitely much slower in the days where you'd have to wait for news to come in over the wire, and those scenes where the stress breaks through stand above the various "Mr. President, we recommend invading" ones.

The play is definitely in the "America, Fuck Yeah" mode. Since it's based on Robert Kennedy's memoir, it's about how in the face of unwarranted Soviet aggression, America's steady head and firm resolve forced the Soviets to back down and prevented war. But any changes would make it a completely different play, and it's worthwhile to present America's perspective--that's certainly what the people in those meetings believed they were doing. And with already having to cut out a lot of meetings, adding in a Soviet or Cuban perspective as well would have required changing everything and presenting an entirely different play.

It's currently getting great reviews and runs through the end of the month.

Well, this is definitely some of the biggest news I've ever posted about:


Laila Rose (from לילה, "night") was born at 4:02 p.m. May 13th.

Originally, sashagee and I were just going into the hospital on Wednesday because she wasn't feeling well. She had a headache and was starting to get spotty vision, and while she had an appointment later that day with the midwives she didn't think she should wait that long, so I took the afternoon off and drove her to the ob/gen triage at the hospital like the midwives had suggested if anything seemed out of the ordinary. When she got there, they did standard intake, put her in a room, and then hooked her up to a fetal heartrate monitor. That caused a huge flurry of activity because the baby's heartrate was around 110--very low for babies--and didn't have much variability, so several nurses ran in and started prepping, a doctor came in, and just as she was explaining the risks of an emergency C-section to sashagee, the baby's heartrate recovered back up to the ~140 you want it at.

Obviously they couldn't send us home after almost scheduling an emergency surgery, though, and since Laila was one day overdue anyway they decided to induce labor. sashagee was originally going to do a natural birth--we got a preview of this later in the evening when we heard a woman screaming somewhere down the hall and then, about twenty minutes later, a baby crying--but once her contractions started she almost passed out multiple times, so she opted for an epidural. That caused another flurry of activity because after administering the epidural, her blood pressure and the baby's heartrate both dropped, so more nurses came in, a doctor came in and started once again prepping for an emergency C-section ...and then everything went back to normal again. With the epidural in, she was even able to get some sleep, while thosesocks kindly came to pick me up and drive me back to our house to pick everything up that I had left behind when I thought it was a simple doctor's visit.

They started the second stage of inducing labor around 3:40 p.m. on Thursday, and after 15 minutes of pushing, our daughter was born healthy! I ended up assisting with the labor, helping a nurse hold on to one of sashagee's legs while she pushed. I admit, before we went to the hospital I was worried that I'd be squeamish about the birth, but I wasn't. I watched part of the placenta come out, followed by Laila's head, followed by the rest of her body in a rush, and I'll remember for the rest of my life the nurses laying Laila on sashagee's chest as sashagee cried and said "She's perfect."

Laila almost immediately went for the boob, so she and sashagee had a bit of bonding time, then I got to hold her while the nurses checked sashagee and cleaned her up, and then they took Laila over to be weighed (3500g exactly, much to the nurses' surprise, about 7 lbs 11 oz) and measured (19 inches), and then while my parents came to visit--my father took me back to the house to shower and eat, since sashagee got a bunch of meals but I got nothing--they moved her to the new mom and baby section where we spent the next two days. That was the less-exciting part, where they did tests, sashagee fed Laila, I slept on the inflatable/pull-out couch thing, and sashagee healed while they made sure nothing serious went wrong with either her or Laila. After the last test came back clear, showing slightly higher-than-normal new baby jaundice but nothing serious, they let us go and we came back home with our newborn daughter! It's been a bit rough at home caring for her without the nurses to ask for advice and help--she refuses to even be in her bassinet for more than a few minutes, even when I'm actively cooing at her and holding her hands to show her that I'm still right there--but I know there's an adjustment period and I'm determined to adjust!

I'm a father!!

Bonus picture of Laila showing her resemblance to Kirby :

Just a brief note (I have more I'm writing that'll come later), but if you want to see sashagee's maternity photos, she posted some of them on her instagram here!

A couple days late to this news, obviously, but we have a coronavirus vaccine and it works.

Back in April I was very skeptical that this would happen, I think for good reason. The fastest previous vaccine had taken years. Less than ten percent of vaccines under development ever make it through trials and are approved. Yet here we are, with not just one vaccine but multiple vaccines. That's even better, because there's greater odds that if someone can't take any particular vaccine due to health concerns, one of the other vaccines might work for them.

They put music over footage of the first shipment of vaccine being wheeled into a hospital:

This works quite nicely. pic.twitter.com/KsGzWkm4Cl

— Matthew Podszus (@matthew_podszus) December 15, 2020

The top tweet is here, with the NBA on ESPN theme, though there are quite a few examples in the thread.

Given what we knew in April, I still think I was right to be skeptical then, but I'm glad I was wrong. We still have some months of restrictions in play as the vaccine is rolled out and we try to figure out how likely people who've been vaccinated are to spread the plague even if they aren't affected by it--latest results are very promising--but the end is in sight, and much sooner than a lot of people (and me) expected.

On Friday sashagee and I went shopping in Andersonville mostly because all my knives are super dull and I need to fix that, but also so we could look at some of the shops around there and get donuts at Dollop Diner. While out, we walked into Five Elements so I could finally get some new chopsticks to replace the old ones that I've had for a decade with the lacquer flaking off, and as I was in there, the shop clerk excitedly said that he liked my mask--plain black with 危 ("danger") written on it--and asked me if I knew what it meant. I said "danger," we chatted a bit, and then when sashagee and I were done looking around and went up to the counter, he handed me this:


Apparently most customers get one with something like "beauty" or "dreams," but he said this was the most appropriate choice for me.

I did so much this weekend, everyone.

( BBQ Shabbat, Rickicles, and beach day )

Today is Purim, so I'm fasting for Ta'anit Esther, because even though I completed a tractate of the Talmud and thus am eligible for a siyyum, I did it mostly by listening to podcasts and catching Daf Yomi memes, so I don't really feel like I'm actually eligible. Tonight is the Mishkam Purim party, which was the first major Mishkan even I went to after Kol Nidre, and I'm excited! I just need to concentrate on my work long enough to get there.

What an amazing weekend!

I was surprised when Facebook told me yesterday that I divorced schoolpsychnerd a year ago. I had honestly completely forgotten that the anniversary was approaching.

...which says it all, doesn't it?

I described it a couple people as feeling like in the past, I had been stuffed in a box, and now I was taken out and I could take up space. Not even extra space, just space. schoolpsychnerd had a lot of trauma in her past, and she put in a lot of effort to overcome it, and I think she was mostly successful--more successful than a lot of people would have been. But our relationship, and my personality, still ended up bending around it due to its gravity.

I asked my therapist occasionally what had happened to the old me, pre-moving to Japan, who accepted jaiderai's invitation to travel two and a half hours to a college I'd never been to so I could meet a girl he knew and wanted to introduce me to, or who would hang out with friends after work all the time. And now I know the answer--he was there all the time, buried under everything piled on top of him. And over the last year I've pushed all that out of the way and stood on my feet. I've had a bunch of friends tell me how much I've changed, how I seem so much happier, how full my life seems now. All of that is correct.

And I can carry that hindsight forward. The reason I tagged this post 悟り is because I have a much better understanding of who I really am now, when I'm free to define it on my own terms. I remember my therapist being astonished at how much I changed over the course of the year-and-a-half we saw each other. At our last session, she told me:

"You seem really happy now. Some people never get there."

That post says I play plenty of video games, but I don't even do that lately! I've played five minutes of video games in the last month. I bought Link's Awakening the day it came out, played it the following weekend, and haven't touched it since. There's so much to do that I just don't have time.

Just look at my post for last weekend or the weekend before that for examples of what I mean. Last weekend, I very deliberately took the largest space of free time I had and filled it. I did the same thing tonight--I'm going to a lecture about architecture at a bar.

The previous chapter is definitely over. Now, it's time to live my life.

For now, anyway.

Last night was my final meeting with my therapist, who came back briefly from her maternity leave so we could have a concluding session. It was mostly me talking about some revelations I've had in the meantime (that aren't necessary to go into here), and her describing how she saw my progress over our time together, and especially when compared to the first time I saw her in 2016. She said that I was easier to talk to, that I seemed more present and less coldly formal in my interactions with her, and that I was overall happier. That it was progress that a lot of people are unable to make.

I think she's right. Not just because I feel happier--though I do--but also I've had a lot of friends tell me the same thing. I don't filter everything through ritual or particular requirements anymore, and I'm perfectly willing to drop my solitary evening plans if a friend texts or, vice versa, text a friend and see if they want to come along to whatever it is I'm doing that night. I make more plans, I go to more things, I do more. I still play plenty of video games, but I do it when I'm alone and don't make time for it. When I'm on my deathbed, I doubt my regrets will be like, "I never finished Witcher III."

I even spontaneously invited a bunch of people to Shabbat dinner tonight! No one could come, but that's understandable. We're all adults with lives. But that's something I never would have done a couple years ago without at least two weeks' planning. Of course, if I had planned further in advance, maybe people could have come, and I'll remember that for next time.

At the end, my therapist gave me a hug and said that she'd send an email when she was coming back from maternity leave to check up on me. Will I need it? I don't know--there's value in therapy even if there's nothing explicitly "wrong" with you. But at the moment, I'm happy to part with the knowledge that I've made enough progress to almost be a different person in some ways.

And now, forward.

I feel a little badly for the woman who kept looking behind her as I was walking, presumably because she thought I was following her. I was, but only because we were both going to the same place.

I've been to Mishkan twice before, to Kol Nidre at the Vic and to the Purimspiel, but I've never been to Shabbat services before. I was a bit leery of actually going, becuase Mishkan's translations of the Hebrew tend to be a little...loose, let's say...in the past, and they rubbed me the wrong way, so I wasn't sure how well I would take to actual Shabbat services if they were handled the same way. It turned out that I had nothing to worry about.

There was a huge focus on music, with the rabbi and a group of people in the center (the more traditional style--historical the bimah was in the center, not up near the front) playing instruments and singing. A lot of nigunim (one example) between the Psalms and prayers, all of which really made it easy to get pulled in. They had that same minor-key, haunting quality that I remembered from Kol Nidre. In the past I've very strongly resisted being absorbed into nearly any group activity, no matter the context, but within a few minutes I was nodding and singing along. Once I figured the melodies out, because of course they were slightly different than the ones I was used to.

The most exciting part was the pidyon ha-ben ceremony, the symbolic "buying back" of a firstborn son from their duty of serving the priesthood. We haven't had priests or a temple in two millennia, but tradition is hard to eradicate, so the couple brought their son David and a friend who was a Kohen along, and the rabbi performed a, as she put, parody of the ceremony. She'd never done it before and admitted having to go to Chabad's website for some guidance on how it should be conducted. I say tradition is hard to eradicate, but this isn't something that's usually done in liberal Jewish circles.

I had to duck out after the Amidah to go to Starlight Radio Dreams--just this week Jewish Public Media put out a podcast entitled "Can I attend the theatre on Shabbat?" and my immediate response on seeing it was "Just @ me next time, rabbi"--but reluctantly. I really wanted to stay and hear the rabbi's discussion of Parashat Pinchas and of Tisha b'Av, but I had another commitment.

Next time, though, I'll stay through dinner.

This is the first time I've gone to a con on Thursday in over a decade, since the last time I went to Ohayocon. But Anime Chicago was having one of their monthly mixers at the hotel where the con was taking place, and I really didn't want to head out all the way to Rosemont on a Thursday night, hang out, go back home, then turn around and go back to the hotel the next morning. I had kind of resigned myself to it when RogueNire reached out and said I was welcome to stay Thursday night with her and zbrund in their friends' room, so I prepped for a long con weekend.

I also took Monday off. Going to need extra recovery time.

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

There was a lot of great cosplay I saw that I didn't have the chance to take a picture of. The NCR Ranger I mentioned up top. A group of Asian women dressed as platelets from Hataraku Saibō. A picture-perfect Violet Evergarden. A Dokukurage (Eng: Tentacruel) with a decorated parasol and ball gown to form the head and body. Solaire and a Dark Souls III Firekeeper. Banana from Revue Starlight. The Final Fantasy white mage and black mage. The various "loving father looking for missing daughter and dog" Shō Tucker cosplays. The squad of Princess Crown cosplayers with Bowsette, Booette, Tanooki Mario-ette, and Goombette who all went in separate directions just as I reached them.

ACEN is still a ton of fun, but there are definitely changes. I was talking with stephen_poon about how fewer people we know are going and it gets less and less likely that we'll run into people we know as the years progress. I didn't see ping816 or mabown or smtemp or shane.suydam at all, since mabown didn't get a room this year. I've run into theome the last few ACENs, but not this one. I hung out with all the Anime Chicago people and that was a great time, but of course it's not like it was. We are not like we were. I still see the excitement and energy I had back when I was going to Otakon in 2006 in a lot of the attendees at ACEN, but I was thirteen years younger then and I hadn't yet lived in Japan. Of course I was excited to be among my people. Now, my people are tea ceremony enthusiasts, kagura lovers, Japanese learners, and the friends I've been coming to ACEN to see for over a decade, and going to a panel that's all about how great a particular series is just doesn't appeal.

I kind of want to do a kagura panel now, but I can't imagine anyone would attend it.

Every year I gauge how I feel. At ACEN 2012 and ACEN 2014, I wasn't certain I wanted to keep coming back and only tradition kept me going. Now I’m back in the camp (ACEN) of having a great time! I’m looking forward to another great time next year, too.

That's how I started my Seder on Friday, as I was the only Jew in attendance.

Thanks to years of living in Japan, I conduct most of my life on the floor, so I didn't have people sit around a central Seder table. Instead we sat in a circle on the floor and the table was off to the side, within easy reach, so whenever we needed something I could reach over and grab it. I really liked the way it looked when it came together:


( Why is this night different from all other nights? )