I threw away the candle today. 🕯 This is meaningless to most of you, but I put it here so I'll remember.
Square Roots Podcast is currently going through
Earthbound, so I'm back on my translating kick. They just went through Threed in the last episode, and there's a bit of translation I'm particularly proud of. On the way into town, there's a note on the billboard that says:
ヒンと鳴くのは馬だけどヒント出すのはヒント屋だ
hin to naku no wa uma da kedo, hinto dasu no wa hintoya da
Which literally says:
The thing that lets out a 'hin' sound is a horse, but the thing that puts out a hint is the hint shop.
"Hinhin" is Japanese for "neigh," which took me a while to figure out. But once I knew that, I had a pretty good translation that I think keeps the spirit and meaning of the line:
A horse says neigh, but the hint shop never says nay!
I'm proud of that one.

On Saturday morning I went out to brunch with
meowtima at Pauline's, which is really close to Rose Hill Cemetery. I've wanted to go there for years, and Saturday the weather was nice for once, so I walked over to the west entrance--because I didn't realize I was two blocks from the east entrance, oops--and then went through the entire grounds.
It was beautiful. Stark, with the trees still bare of leaves or buds and the grass only barely starting to revive, but with birdsong in the air and the sounds of the city fading away as I traveled further into the cemetery. The only sound was the occasional car of a mourner or someone coming to the Chinese funeral association meeting being held on the grounds, which must have been the source of the incense I smelled as I walked up Western toward the entrance. The effort was slightly spoiled by the planes flying overhead on their way to O'Hare, but otherwise it was incredibly refreshing.
森林浴 shinrinyoku may be a marketing term, but that doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.
I took a ton of pictures, but I'll leave two here:
( One symbolic, one neat )I wandered down into the Jewish section of the graveyard, looked at the mausoleums and the small stone bench with a tiny bit of moss covering part of it, but only stayed there a bit due to the noise of construction equipment over the wall. I went out the east gate, past the reconstructed graves of Civil War soldiers, and then home where I suffered from a splitting headache for an hour due to being out in the sun.

And then I played Breath of the Wild for the rest of the day.
Friday I went out to Locked Into Vacancy Entertainment's April show, a week early this month, and then out to dinner at Ukai (from
鵜飼い ukai, "cormorant fishing") with
worldbshiny and
JimMcDoniel. I wanted late-night trash food and while most of the menu was sushi, there was one chicken katsu curry option on the menu. So, I ordered it and then I got...this:
( Japanese curry? )I went over to
lisekatevans's apartment for drinks on Monday, and what was going to be a co-working space but we ended up having drinks and chatting with her roommate and never got any work done. She invited me on a trip to her family's cabin up in Michigan, which sounds amazing. I never had the opportunity to do anything like that growing up, because my family always went to visit my grandparents in Oregon, and also cabin vacations were never my parents' style. And now I'm old enough to appreciate it but not so old that I'd hate it. Just have to be careful I don't overload on sunlight and get headaches like I did on Saturday.
This week is pretty low-key. Going to dinner with
worldbshiny,
meowtima, and some people I don't know on Friday, and my Betrayal Legacy session on Saturday was cancelled because
mutantur had something else came up, so I'm free then too. Probably going to practice coding and play more Breath of the Wild, or maybe frantically finish
カニに誘われて /
An Invitation from a Crab, since I'm going to a manga discussion about it on Sunday.
I hope your weekends went well!
