dorchadas | Entries tagged with daily life (生活)

I Feel: relaxed
I Hear: Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker - Perfumed Eves

sashagee is feeling much better now and has taken to domesticity--to wit, she has acquired a sourdough starter and now is baking every day. Well, baking is a little bit of a misnomer. She certainly has baked several breads, apple bread and banana bread, but a lot of the sourdough starter goes into making flatbreads. She takes the discard, fries it up in a pan in butter and puts Trader Joe's everything bagel seasoning on it, and then we eat it. I put labneh from the Middle Eastern Grocery Store on it, which goes perfectly with the extra sourness of the discard. I'd honestly never thought of sourdough flatbread before, which is a little weird because of course it was the original flatbread.

Tonight begins the holiday of Sukkot, the eight-day end of the High Holy Days where we are told to dwell in a temporary structure. There's a huge variety of laws about how to build this structure--the roof must be made of plants that are disconnected from the ground, and they must be thick enough that the inside is shaded but thin enough that rain can get through, and there must be walls on three sides (but not the fourth side), but none of it applies to me because living in a fourth-floor condo there's no way I can build a kosher one. It's common to put sukkot out on a balcony but that requires a balcony that's open to the sky, since a kosher sukkah may not have a roof over it, and the balcony out back is completely roofed over. As such, tonight we're going to a picnic in Wicker Park where Mishkan is going to have a sukkah set up, so Laila and I can go into the sukkah and perform the ancient ritual of shaking the lulav and the etrog. Last year when we went Laila really charmed a older couple that was there, and I'll bet she'll do the same thing again.

I went to a wedding but haven't had the time to really write about it, so there'll probably be a backdated post showing up in a few days.

I started playing Hollow Knight again as well, and in an hour and a half or so over the last two nights I've beaten the Enraged Guardian and finished off the Crystal Peak and then gone back to the City of Tears, climbed the Watcher's Tower past the guardian knights and found the last of the Dreamers. I think that means I could technically go beat the game, but I still haven't found whatever lets me pass through those black smoke pillars or done any of the DLC stuff. I haven't even beaten the Mantis Lords! I wanted to finish this before October but I guess it is technically a spooky October game so if I finish it in the first week, that'll be good enough.

Alright, it's almost dinner time. We're going to a picnic but for Laila-related reasons we're eating first and only bringing dessert. It'll still be a lovely time.

I Feel: tired
I Hear: The Midnight - Endless Summer

Cue the Outrun music.

I had an extremely difficult time waking up this morning because it was very dark. It rained for hours last night, all in the early morning, and it was almost winter dark when my alarm went off so that I thought I had woken up at 5 a.m. I took my shower and headed outside and it was only 24° and cloudy, and while it's 28° now, the high for tomorrow is 23° and then downward from there. Next Thursday the low is 12° overnight! We were blessed to be able to open the windows for basically all of June and a chunk of July and we'll soon be able to do the same again.

I'm with

sashagee: I want a long, cool fall that slowly fades into winter. Other than this last bit of heat, summer hasn't been so bad, but I'm ready for the leaves to change. And so is Laila, since she keeps running around and grabbing piles of leaves and dumping them on her head. 🍂 Emoji Kawaii heart

The first real steps of my fashion update have begun because today, I bought a white dress shirt. This seems perfectly normal but I've literally worn only black since 2017 (only black and gray since 2015) and a lot of my friends now have never seen me in anything other than black.

sashagee suggested fall colors--black, grey, dark greens, dark orange. Going to start replacing my wardrobe with more formal clothes and fewer cyberpunk assassin uniforms. As it is, I don't want to wear them around Laila lest she attack a $350 Demobaza shirt with her pasta-covered baby hands, and at least a normal dress shirt will be easier to clean. Plus, I have the body type for it. Still going to get the occasional piece like this one, though.

Haven't played Hollow Knight in a month or so since I'm busy catching up in Final Fantasy XIV and making a bunch of additions to Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead in my spare time. But I should finish that off soon and then do one of the small adventure games I've had waiting for a while, like Technobabylon or Coffee Talk, and then get on to Trails in the Sky the 3rd. I've been two hours in since I think 2020. Or Suikoden, where I've been halfway through since 2019! I don't usually just drop games like that. It's almost like a lot of stuff happened in 2019 and 2020 that changed my habits. Funny that.

Or I should do Dragon Quest I in preparation for the eventual DQIII HD2D remake that's coming "soon." Anything that convinces them to remake Final Fantasy VI in that style.

I Feel: happy
I Hear: Corvus Corax - Die Rose

Last weekend was another grandparents' weekend, so on Friday I went down to

sashagee on Friday night and stayed through Saturday. We didn't do much exciting that day other than eat food with Laila--and I walked like eight miles between towns and back along the river while Laila was asleep--but that night was the fireworks!

Batavia has award-winning fireworks that have been going for decades. The fourth was on a Tuesday this year, so I didn't go out to the suburbs, but

sashagee and Laila did. They went to the fireworks, everyone got all excited...and then the system failed. And the backup system failed, and no fireworks went off, and everyone went home grumpy. They rescheduled the fireworks for August 5th and we planned to head back there. My parents' house is a ten minute walk from the fireworks, and

sashagee wanted some funnel cake, so we went down early to scout out a spot. From what she said about last time, there were maybe a quarter as many people as there were on the 4th, so we got our funnel cake and found a spot literally right in front of the fireworks. Before too long,

sashagee told me my parents had found a parking spot right by the barricades and suggested I help them carry the chairs, so I walked down the road until I saw them and some people sitting nearby got a cute view of Laila seeing me and starting to run to me, me running to her, and then grabbing her and swinging her around in the air. Emoji Kawaii heart

The fireworks were extra nice! No major crowds and it was easy to get home afterwards. We put Laila to bed--she was exhausted by the end--and went to bed not too much longer ourselves. The fireworks were indeed super Emoji Sad Eagle Flag

AMERICA

themed and the music didn't really blend together very well, but the actual fireworks were beautiful.

The next day after breakfast, we got into cars and drove to Morton Arboretum for the Pan-Asia Festival. It really was Pan-Asian, with the sound of an erhu greeting us as we entered and later, people performing Indian dance. The part I found most interesting, though, was the sumō. I used to go see the Fukuoka Nihon Sumō Kyōkai every year and I didn't realize there was an amateur league--with amateur competitions, since they said they were going to Tokyō later in the year to compete! We stayed and watched two bouts between the performers before

sashagee said she really needed to sit down, so I bought us boba while she found a seat--brown sugar for her, taro for me--and we sat and drank it and watched the people go by. When we were done, we met my parents and Laila, glad that Laila seemed totally unphased by the giant knot on her head she had earned from falling after running too fast down a ramp, and went home. Laila took a nap, we ate dinner when she woke up, and then came back into the city.

Certain less event variety than the old posts I used to write, but Laila running excited yelling "Ababababa!" when she saw me makes up for that.

I Feel: awake
I Hear: Rozen - Sins of Hyrule

We went to baby Shabbat in the park Shabbat morning, at the same park I've gone to Torah study in the past. They also had a Torah study there but I skipped it this time to help wrangle Laila. She needed a bit of wrangling--when the rabbi started reading a storybook (Chicken Man), she walked right up in front of Rabbi Lizzi and stared at the book and ignored the rabbi's polite requests to move away so other people and see. I felt better though when the rabbi's daughter, age 4, did exactly the same thing. Emoji embarrassed rub head

Adira was old enough to complain about not being able to see anything, though, so after that the rabbi moved backward and everything was solved. Laila even listened to the story!

Working more on that mod for Cataclysm and it's reminding me of all of those Game Developers Reveal the Nonsense They Had to Use to Make Games Work articles that come out. To pick one example, CDDA makes it difficult to determine who the other party is outside of dialogue, where the other party is the person you're talking to, because the internal scripting language developed out of the dialogue system and wasn't originally designed to handle all the uses it's being put to. However, it's always obvious who the PC is. So when I made a monster that drained the PC's stamina and health (in that order), I rather than actually doing it as a drain I set it up in code so that the monster checks the PC's stamina and health levels and then has the PC secretly use a "drain stamina/health" power on themselves. This is necessary because there's no way to set attack priority or otherwise influence monsters' AI.

I just made a telekinetic power to let people lift cars to change the tires and the way it works in the game is by summoning a jack made of telekinetic force that you hold in your inventory and can use when you work on a car. It's not the DC Metro is actually a hat but I feel like it's on the same pathway.

I'm most of the way through Hollow Knight. I last beat Hornet in Kingdom's Edge, one of the blocker fights for a lot of people. It took me as many tries as all previous bosses put together I think, and while I looked up strategies and found a cheese one--equip charms for fast attack, thorns, faster healing, and just spam attack until you win--I'm stubborn enough that I refused to do it. I used magic and dodged her attacks and learned her patterns and eventually I did win. It's just like all that advice about never giving up.

This weekend we're going out to the suburbs for fireworks! The award-winning Batavia Fourth of July fireworks didn't happen this year because cellular network outages meant the coordinating computers couldn't actually coordinate, so everyone went to the field and spread out their blankets and then nothing happened. The town couldn't have that, so they rescheduled it for the first weekend in August. I'm not sure if it's going to be the same program and super Emoji Sad Eagle Flag

AMERICA

themed, which I don't have an ideological problem with but which would be a little weird in August, or if they're going to come up with a new program. They've had a month to do so. I guess we'll see.

While randomly scrolling through Facebook I saw an ad for a candlelit Legend of Zelda music concert put on by Fever. While I've been to multiple Symphony of the Goddesses concerts, those are all full orchestra. This is a chamber orchestra so it will be a genuinely new experience for me. I asked

sashagee about it, and though she has never in her life played a Legend of Zelda game she was excited about it, so we're going to turn it into a date night! It's in Logan Square, where I don't know what the good restaurants are but I know there are good restaurants. I'll write about that after it happens.

I Feel: relaxed
I Hear: Illenium & Emma Grace - Brave Soul

sashagee and Laila spent last night in the hospital for a routine EEG checkup. They haven't told us the results but as far as I know they didn't see anything--the next one is scheduled for January and they let them go early, so that tells me they think there's nothing to worry about.

Speaking of which, we went to another two-year-old's party last Saturday. There were a bunch of two-year-olds there, playing in the pool set up the birthday girl's back yard, and one of the things that really helped

sashagee feel better was that Laila wasn't acting any different than any of the other children her age there. She said a few words but mostly was quiet or made baby babbling noises, she was excited about the water, she played a bit with the other toddlers but in that way that toddlers play with each other, where they're kind of playing in the same space but not really playing together in any particular way. It's very cute and the interaction let us as the parents actually talk with each other. The people who complain about going to two-year-olds' birthday parties clearly don't have actual two-year-olds who will be distracted by the party. I spent some time talking with the birthday girl's father about Crusader Kings II! How is that not a good time?

I also took out a big whack of money and paid off

sashagee's student loans ahead of the upcoming restarting of payments. I say a big whack, but it honestly wasn't that much--she payed off over 90% of it herself, which is why she doesn't really have any savings. I already put some money toward her loans when we first met after she got pregnant and these are the last of time. I wanted to get them all paid off so we wouldn't have to worry about more outflows, especially since I'm pretty sure the American economy will suffer as Americans suddenly have to come up with $18 billion per month that they previously could use on other things. Some people used that money to pay off the loans while payments were paused, but a lot of people did not.

Alright, work is done. Time to take the L home.

I Feel: full
I Hear: Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu - Ne, Issho ni Kaero

We had a lovely brunch with

dinaraua and went to baby Shabbat--which was more like baby playtime since the coordinator was on vacation--but this post isn't about that!

After

sashagee's parents came and picked up Laila and we finished up with brunch, we hopped on the bus and got home around 2 p.m. We had maybe 20 minutes or so to rest before we had to get out and walk to the bus. Originally, my idea for getting out to Arlington Heights was to go downtown and take the Union Pacific NW line. Then I discovered that there was a Clybourn stop, which would save us from having to take a trip downtown, and then when I put the directions in google again it turned out there was a stop at Jefferson Park, which is even easier to get to, so one quick walk and one late bus which retroactively obviated the need for a quick walk, we were on our way. We got to Jefferson Park with plenty of time, took the outbound platform, or what we thought was the outbound platform. There was no signage up on the platform, and my confusion was justified because multiple other people came up to us and asked us if we were on the to Chicago or from Chicago side. We were on the right side, though, and the train came right on time, we traveled for forty minutes, and then arrived in Arlington Heights.

Downtown Arlington Heights is extremely suburb, with a little district of 100% restaurants right in front of the train station. The streets were all pedestrianized as well, with seating taking up most of the sidewalks and the streets blocked off from cars, so we walked around for a few minutes while we waited for

maptekar and her boyfriend to arrive. It turned out they only live ten minutes away so we didn't have to wait very long, and when they arrived we went on another walk around. When we stopped at a map, I looked at the food listings since

sashagee was pretty thirsty and I noticed a place called "Mochinut."

sashagee has been watching a Youtuber lately called Kimono Mom, a former 舞妓 maiko trainee who now is has a daughter and does Japanese food content on Youtube, and she just recently had a video about mochi donuts! I suggested we go there and everyone agreed, and we walked through a few side streets to find it on the edge of the map. There were no matcha donuts, unfortunately, but there was an ube donut, so

sashagee got that and I got the honeydew donut. My donut tasted like a glazed donut, with a nice bit of mochi chewiness, but

sashagee's did have some ube sweetness in the frosting. Donuts done, we hopped in the car and drove to Mitsuwa

If you're not familiar, Mitsuwa is an American branch of a Japanese supermarket company. Most of their stores are on the west coast, but there's one here because Chicago has a Japanese consulate, so there is a large group of Japanese natives who only live in America for 2-5 years for their diplomatic postings. There's a Japanese-language newspaper, a school that uses the Japanese curriculum for diplomat and staff children, and Mitsuwa, which has a grocery store but also a bookstore, a food court, a bakery, and a hair salon. They used to have a travel agency--it's the travel agency my parents used when they came to visit us in Japan--but it doesn't seem like they have one there anymore. We have a lot of Asian grocery stores nearby us since Argyle Street (where a lot of Vietnamese people live) is within a couple miles, but there's some items they don't have. Mitsuwa does.

When we first walked in,

maptekar pointed out the Kinokuniya Bookstore on the left so that's the first place we went, since

sashagee wanted to get some stationary. They grabbed a book off the light novel shelf and asked me what it was and then to read the Japanese title: 地上最強の男：世界へのヘビー級チャンピオン列伝 (chijō saikyō no otoko: sekai e no hebī kyū chanpion retsuden, "The World's Strongest Men: Biographies of World Heavyweight Champions") while I tried not to listen in on the aisle next door. Someone had cornered a poor shop employee and was telling his tale of woe--it sounded like he had had a falling out with his Japanese wife and she had moved back to Japan with the kids, which basically means that he'll never seen them again. Japan has no laws about dual custody and barely any family law, and it's common even for divorced Japanese men to have no contact with their children, much less foreign men--ex-Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro has no contact with his youngest son since he is divorced. I can see why the guy was talking to a book store employee about it, because the Japanese embassy won't help him and probably doesn't even see it as something that needs help. The kids are with their mother, so what's the problem, they would say. It would be too disruptive for them to change countries again. Time for him to move on.

I looked for a copy of ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 yokohama kaidashi kikō but didn't find it--no surprise, the last volume was published in 2006 so there's no reason they'd have it in stock--and

sashagee bought the English volume 2 of My Happy Marriage (the only one they had) and some thank-you cards that said "Thank you berry much" with art of blackberries and vines on them. Then we went over to the grocery store.

As I mentioned, we have a pretty good selection near us, so I was really only looking for things that we couldn't buy locally. We got shiso furikake and yuzu ponzu sauce almost right away, and in the snack aisle

sashagee found the rum raisin sandwich cookies that used to come in our Japanese snack box (and for one third the price that website is charging). The real excitement for me, though, came when I came around an aisle and saw that they had Hiroshima momiji manjū! They're the signature snack of Hiroshima Prefecture, maple-leaf shaped pastry with red bean inside, sold everywhere in Hiroshima and in a bewildering variety too. The best ones I've ever had were chocolate-coated and soaked in bourbon, and on Miyajima there are ones with apple or chocolate or custard filling, but even finding them in America is nigh-impossible. I guess you can order them on Amazon if you want to pay $5 per manjū instead of the $4 I paid for eight of them. That's only slightly more of a ripoff than the $30 that Amazon is trying to charge for 高野豆腐 (kōyadōfu, "freeze-dried tofu") but which Mitsuwa was selling for $2.39.

sashagee picked up some rice crackers and more cookies, a loaf of shokupan, mitarashi dango and a salmon riceball, and we finally went over to the alcohol section and she seized on a bottle of shiso umeshu. Then we checked out and hit up the food court.

Much of the food court was closed since it was almost the end of the day, but we slipped in just under the wire.

sashagee,

maptekar, and I went to a stall called Tokyo Shokudo that had a lot of standard-style Japanese food. I was drawn to the curry and I talked

maptekar into getting some too, but her boyfriend really wanted ramen and managed to get into Ramen Santōka as the very last order. By the time we sat down every stall in the food court had shut down and most of the people had emptied out, so right after we ate, we left and went back to the downtown near the train station.

It wasn't quite time for our train yet and

maptekar suggested getting a drink, but what we settled on was ice cream. We went to Kilwin's originally but while we were looking, the others all decided they'd rather get froyo, so w went to the other dessert place, which I just learned in looking it up is a local place called Berry Yo. They had the little sweetened mochi bits, which was all I really wanted. Then we went to the train station to wait for the train and...it never showed. Ten minutes after it was supposed to arrive, they made an announcement that the next train was coming in 57 minutes. Five minutes later,

maptekar offered to drive us home, and we took her up on her offer. They told us about their upcoming housewarming and we said we'd keep inviting them to Shabbat brunches, we went back to her boyfriend's house, changed cars, and she drove us home, ending the saga.

We'll be back. There were too many things there we just can't easily get anywhere else not to, and it was actually easier to get to than I expected. Other than the train snafu at the end, which we couldn't have predicted, and there's also a bus that's supposed to go right by Mitsuwa from Jefferson Park as well if we wanted to take that. We just need to figure out the schedules.

( food pictures! )

I Feel: amused
I Hear: Heilung - Krigsgaldr

We take Laila to the park just about every day to get some of her energy out, and the park that's closest to us is designed for babies and toddlers far more than for older kids so there's plenty of equipment for her to burn off her energy. She's taken to running around the edges of the park through the leaves, and that's led to two stories in the past week:

One

Lately Laila has taken to walking along the raised concrete border of the park, either holding onto one of our hands or by herself, and a few days ago she ran into a boy around her age who wanted to do the same thing but going the other way. They got close to each other, then very close, and then Laila--who is used to everyone who gets close to her face wanting to give her a kiss--closed her eyes and leaned in to "MWAH" the boy. With a very 😐 expression, the boy turned his face away, stepped carefully around Laila, and kept walking along the concrete border.

Two

There's another kid at the park who seems to just have a bad disposition. Twice now he's yelled "NO! NOOOOOO!" when Laila came nearby and once yelled "NO BABIES!" at her when she went over to see what he was playing with.

sashagee even told me that one time he even pulled his fist back like he was going to hit Laila, and when his father stepped in and told him that he had to apologize he started throwing a tantrum.

sashagee overheard him talking to another father at the park, saying, "Sometimes I just don't know what to do. He's just so angry."

This is a Laila story because Laila still just takes it all with a smile--she doesn't take it personally at all. Even when the kid yelled no loudly at her, she just looked at him and kept on going. She's so pure-hearted.

I Feel: refreshed
I Hear: Dimatis - Heartbeat

On Friday, which I took off because it was the first day of Shavuot, we went to the Field Museum with my parents for a couple hours so I could check out the First Kings of Europe exhibit and my mother and

sashagee could wander around the animal exhibits with Laila, and then then took Laila with them back out to the suburbs so that they could have some time with their cute granddaughter and

sashagee and I could have a weekend to ourselves!

Unfortunately,

sashagee was sick for part of the weekend, so we didn't actually do that much and she spent a large chunk of it resting. Emoji dejected

But we still managed to do some things. On Friday we went out to dinner at Uvae:

Mine is in front, with gin, creme de peche, and elderflower. sashagee's is in back, with non-alcoholic pea flower, lemon, and grapefruit juice.

We originally had seats outside but it was weirdly cold for even the end of Chicago May--wind gusting at like 13°C, far too cold to just sit outside. We saw another couple move indoors after just a few minutes outside and then we asked if we could do the same, which the waitress was happy to arrange.

I was a little worried that we would suffer the Parent Problem where on a night out without the kids we'd struggle to think of what to talk about, but we didn't. Other than

sashagee worrying about Laila being away from us, we had a lovely conversation, ate our salad and meals and drank our drinks, and wrapped up around 6:30 p.m.

Vanilla panna cotta in the back and cheesecake in the front with compote by local company Twiddly Bits.

We paid and left and I said goodbye to head to my next event--I went to Friday night Shabbat services because it was Rabbi Deena's last day. Since she had a special blessing for Laila's mikvah visit I wanted to see her off and leave a note for her, and after services ended I walked up to some of the people I knew.

yoni-labow-5693413a, once he had completed the traditional telling me his name again because for some reason he always assumes I don't remember him--maybe I give off "Who is this guy?" vibes?--invited me out to a bar with his wife

whoolia45 (the OneTable sponsor of the dinner I went to at Milt's pre-Plague Years) and some friends. I said I had to talk to

sashagee about and by

yoni-labow-5693413a's reaction I knew it was fine if she came, so I told her where we were going and she hopped in a Lyft and met us there. It was more of a bar and grill so it had live music, children playing pool, and closed at 10 p.m. so we had our one drink--I had an Old Fashioned as is my custom,

sashagee got a Lunacy beer--everyone met

sashagee finally, we got an invite to

aaronhparker's outdoor Shabbat in two weeks, and everyone got to see photos of Laila.

yoni-labow-5693413a invited us to a Shabbat dinner too, though I don't remember when it is.

Man, my posts are always filled with tons of referential links to my friends' online presence. I'd say this is a Sign of the Times but mostly it's because I don't want to use people's names unless they already put their names out there on the internet. Regardless, it's not going to get any better in the rest of this post.

Saturday we did mostly nothing while

sashagee rested and napped and I caught up a bit in Genshin Impact, but in the evening we had an invite to

lisekatevans's house for

afschifler's birthday!

sashagee was all dressed in a cute sundress and was planning to wear heels since heels are half her shoe collection but she hasn't gotten to wear them in years, but since the weather was 20°C and sunny I suggested walking. We had Some Brief Discourse™ on my suggestion but in the end we left with

sashagee in flats and walked through side streets filled with flowering trees for thirty minutes until we arrived at the party,

lisekatevans handed us some drinks, and we spent a while chatting with people and eating tavern-style pizza and tres leches cake.

Me: "Tres leches. That's Spanish for 'three leches.' "
sashagee: 🤣🤣🤣

The benefit of having a fiancée who is not Too Online is that this is the first time she's heard these jokes.

Sunday we once again mostly rested and played games, and then Laila came back in the evening and was happy enough to see us but it was clear that she had an extremely fun time at Papa and Nana's--after they left, she grabbed her toy bag and walked over to the front door while waving bye-bye at us! I can see many more grandparents' weekends in the future--Laila and my parents both are getting older and need as much time together as they can get. And I think it was really helpful for

sashagee and me too.

As the saying goes, the only real parenting hack is having grandparents who live nearby.

I Feel: energetic
I Hear: Illenium & Tori Kelly - Blame Myself

Saturday morning was baby Shabbat, where Laila was once again the most active child there. She didn't try to steal any food this time, fortunately, but she constantly wandered around, touched the guitar of the person leading the songs, and sat in the laps of a couple other mothers. The most hilarious part was when she grabbed me and wanted to go wander the halls outside, and as soon she heard the Motzi start and I said, "Laila, listen, it's challah time" she immediately turned and ran back into the room. Emoji ~ Cat smile

She knows what she wants and what she wants is food.

She was very angry at Shabbat brunch since it took us a while to order food, but when it came she was perfectly happy. And

thosesocks,

maptekar, and

worldbshiny all came!

dinaraua was set to come but caught the plague at the last moment, but hopefully she can make the next one. And I have something to order for the next time, since

thosesocks and

worldbshiny both ordered the Florentino and it looked absolutely delicious. The people complaining about avocado toast have no idea what they're missing.

After Laila's nap and dinner I said goodbye to

sashagee and Laila--Laila usually cries when I leave but this time she was watching Sesame Street and just said "bye bye" nonchalantly--and walked out to take the bus and train combo out to the Embassy Suites Rosemont O'Hare to attend a party. I don't have much to say about the party other than it was a ton of fun, but it was. Everyone said hi when I came in, people told me I looked amazing, I sat next to

gracielizabeth for a while, I talked to

staina.x about parenting,

spacedragon gave me some squid snacks which I sadly had to decline,

gmarchan gave me some discontinued Hakushuu whiskey which I absolutely did not decline. I stayed for three hours before the party finally ended and most people went out to the rave, but I didn't have a badge so I texted another group of friends. That led to talking to

redpikachu for a few minues before she had to run off and

timothy.beier for about half an hour while he caught me up on his life. I even got to see

mabown, unlike 2019!

I wrote before that my days of going to ACEN might be behind me, but that might not be true. I told

sashagee that the Anime Chicago people were asking me when I was going to bring her to more events, and she watches literally ten times (maybe twenty times) as much anime as I do so she is far more qualified to have anime discussions than I am. Back at ACEN 2019 I went to all the panels about translation and data analysis and tea ceremony and nothing about anime, and that's fine. There are people who go to ACEN and spend the whole weekend playing tabletop games!

On the way to Baby Shabbat we had seen that the Renegade Art Fair was taking place on Clark Street through Sunday, so Sunday after breakfast we got Laila clothed and walked a couple blocks to it. I got some more bar soap, some hot sauce--it was the Bravado Aka Miso Ghost Reaper, which led to a disaster later when I put it on my stir fry and despite my best efforts Laila took a liiiiiiiiiiiiiittle piece of broccoli off the table and put it in her mouth and immediately started wailing--and this:

Sugoi desu ne.

They're hand-painted! The owner (co-owner?) spent some time as a pastry chef and also lived in Kyōto, and while when I first saw it I was really hoping that they were wagashi I soon came to my senses--wagashi are far too fragile to be worth the risk making for sale in most of America. They're truffles and they're delicious. We had the pandan one yesterday after lunch and hopefully we'll have another one today, and

sashagee was thinking this would be good presents for my parents. My mother is not as big a chocolate fan as my father, but these are strongly flavored and I think she'd like them. Especially lychee rose, pineapple cookie, or yuzu.

I Feel: sleepy
I Hear: Edgar Allan Poe - The Masque of the Red Death

I almost never remember my dreams but the one I had last night involved zombies. That's the other part of the list for me: 1) I don't remember my dreams 2) if I do, there were zombies in them.

I ended up oversleeping by an hour. Maybe the zombies got me. Emoji Byoo dood

I've changed up my lunch lately. I used to have the same lunch at all times--chicken, egg, spinach, and two vegetables--but lately, due to repeatedly not buying the chicken in time to make it beforehand combined with a single package of chicken lasting a week in the pre-Plague Years but now I only go into the office two days a week, I've moved away from chicken. Some weeks I brought in pita, vegetables, cheese, and hummus, but lately I've settled on another salad. The AMA gave us our own branded lunchbox a while back that was a bit like a bentō box but more obviously designed for salad--there's a single big container, and then an insert over it that has two compartments and a third one with a sealable container for dressing. I didn't previously put dressing on my salad because I didn't want it to get soggy, but now I have a few to avoid that so I have a new salad: spinach, two vegetables, sun-dried tomatoes, almonds, feta cheese, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing. I can add apples to this if I want, change up the vegetables. The vinegar is delicious. I think I can stick with this salad for a while.

I went out on the riverwalk today and noticed that at long last, the restaurants down there are open, though the overpriced gelato ($7) place still isn't open. I also saw multiple couples getting photos taken by professional photographers, or people getting friends to take photos for their instagram. Everyone is hoping that spring will have, at long last, come to Chicago. It's been cold until now and we already lost out on the cherryblossoms, which started blooming during early warm weather in April and then almost all fell off in the chill that followed. Now that it's sunny and slightly warm, people are going to take advantage of it. I certainly will.

I Feel: happy
I Hear: Square Roots podcast

I said previously that it would get down to 8°C but I didn't go far enough--it was actually 1°C when I woke up today! I brought a smaller coat because the sunlight means it's going to warm up enough later that I should be able to go for a walk on the riverwalk again, but after it being 27°C on Saturday it was quite the change. I'm glad that I don't have to plan anything for this upcoming week. דער מענטש טראַכט און גאָט לאַכט, as the saying goes (der mensch trakht un Gott lakht, "Man plans and G-d laughs"). Or maybe 来年の事を言えば鬼が笑う (rainen no koto wo ieba, oni ga warau, "When you speak of next year, demons laugh"). It's a pretty universal concept.

On Sunday went to a birthday party! Laila got an invitation from the local rebbetzin on behalf of her daughter Bayla, for her second birthday, so we loaded up Laila into the stroller and walked down to the Anna & Fred Doppelt Base Andersonville house at 10:15 a.m. and arrived basically first of anyone. Bayla was very nervous at the beginning but Laila wasn't--she immediately started walking around and smiling at Bayla's grandparents and looking around the house. As more and more people arrived,

sashagee and I got pulled into separate conversations. I met someone who actually lives on our street just north of us, though sadly they'll be moving a couple miles west in two weeks. I don't remember the husband's name, but he told me about a pizza-by-the-slice restaurant called Pizza Mania very nearby that has delicious pizza. We talked about languages--the wife works as a bilingual Spanish/English kindergarten teacher--and then a German guy sat down and we talked about soccer, all the while Laila and

sashagee were drawing at the back table. Bayla eventually lost her shyness and started roaming around, and Laila made a mom very grateful to her because she sat in her lap, and then the mom's son Shimon, who was about eight months older than Laila, got jealous and wanted to sit in his mom's lap in a way he hadn't wanted to do in months. That's Laila, always bringing people together. Emoji Kawaii heart

When we left, Bayla waved and said "Bye Laila~." Both sets of parents are hoping they'll become friends with each other!

Alright, big project in so now it's back to work.

I Feel: happy
I Hear: Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon - Stage 7: Defiler of Taboos

I slept through my alarm an hour late today, but managed to make it to work on time through a quick shower and not shaving. And just like every other time I've slept in too late, I feel incredibly relaxed and refreshed. My sleep tracker shows that I didn't even wake up when my alarm went off, so I guess it's a good thing that I woke up an late (after a nice period of deep sleep) and then immediately got out of bed, ate my breakfast, and left. Laila's not going to like how scratchy my face is, though. Emoji Smiling sweatdrop

The weather is lovely now! Over the course of about two days, the temperature went from 12°C to 23°C and the weather went from cloudy to sunny. Laila didn't have to wear a coat when we went to the park on Monday and yesterday I didn't even bother bringing a coat to work. I went out on the riverwalk at lunch and while none of the businesses are open yet--the restaurants just say they'll open in "spring", which in Chicago starts in May when the cherryblossoms finally bloom--it was packed full of people eating lunch, going on walks, and otherwise enjoying the weather. It'll be back down to 8°C by next week so we have to enjoy the burst of warmth while we can. Portland already had their cherryblossoms, DC already had their cherryblossoms, but it'll still be a month or longer before we get ours. The reason Chicago summers are so jam-packed is that we pack a whole year's worth of activities into those three months.

In further news, Laila made friends with a polar bear:

My parents came out on Tuesdays as they usually do while I was at the office and picked up Laila so

sashagee would have some time for herself. They took Laila to the zoo and she had a nice time, since this time the animals were out and wandering, but what she really loved were the polar bears. My parents took a video of her laughing and giggling as this giant head that's almost as big as her whole body gets to within a few inches of her. She has no fear, which is certainly one of our problems to solve as parents. I want Laila to be brave, but not foolhardy!

Looking forward to taking her to the park today and making some stir-fry. Pesaḥ ends tomorrow night, though late enough that dinner will still be unleavened. On Friday, though, it'll probably be burgers.

I Feel: relaxed
I Hear: Kashmar - On the Shores of Frozen Lake

We had set an alarm to wake up at 8 a.m. on Shabbat morning, and I did indeed wake up when my alarm went off at 8 a.m. on Shabbat morning...and then proceeded to lie in bed for thirty minutes until I heard an excited "wah!" from Laila's room. This proved to be a mistake, because we got out the door later than we wanted to (out into the -11°C wind...) and just missed the bus by two minutes. We sat in Dunkin Donuts while

sashagee drank coffee and Laila marveled at all the donuts behind the counter until the next bus came, and then we boarded it and made the trip down to Ravenswood to Mishkan's main office for ~~baby Shabbat~~Rise and Shine.

Last time I was at Rise and Shrine, Laila spent the first half of the service very nervous and only really got into it around the halfway mark. This time we didn't even arrive until the halfway mark, so Laila spent all the time hanging around us. She only got braver once the actual service ended, the singing stopped, and the people thinned out. Then she latched on to

rabrams210 for hugs and ran around for a bit before it was time to go. By the time we left, it was 11:20 a.m. and

sashagee was pretty hungry, so we walked down the street to a place called Early Morning Delight for brunch. Shabbat brunch is not really a thing the way Sunday brunch is--generally, Jews go to each others' houses on Shabbat rather than out--but I like

sashagee's suggestion that we make it a tradition to go out for brunch after Rise and Shine. Especially if we find more places like Early Morning Delight. Before we even ordered, they brought us out a churro cake slice with nutella and fresh strawberries, which Laila absolutely loved, and then:

2023-03-18 - Early Morning post-services brunch

The fruit cup came with the omelet without me needing to order it! Now that's service. Emoji ~ Cat smile

It was very good, much better than the Greek omelet I got a couple weeks ago where I asked them to remove the gyro meat and it turned out that gyro meat was all that was holding the omelet together. This was the artichoke omelet, with artichoke, roasted tomatoes, spinach, caramelized onion and goat cheese, topped with pesto. It was delicious (which was good because every other omelet on the menu had was treif) and I ate the whole thing. We got a children's quesadilla set for Laila and she ate most of one quesadilla and took at least one bite out of each of the other. She obviously had to make sure they were all just as good as the first one.

With brunch eaten, we took advantage of already being in Ravenswood to go to the Chicago Vintage Fest March Market a couple blocks to the north. Right inside, we found a Thai woman selling jewelry who was happy to hold Laila while

sashagee picked out a little purse and some barrettes for her, and we bought them before looking around more. It was mostly clothes, which definitely wouldn't fit me and which

sashagee wasn't that interested in, but we did get a set of iron butterfly sculptures that we can hang out on the back! At that point it was approaching 1 p.m., so we waited for the bus, it was a ghost bus, we started walking to the L when another bus came, and we caught that bus and a second bus and made it home and put Laila down for her nap.

Near the end of her nap I noticed that

thosesocks had messaged me very early in the morning about not having any plans, and after some consulting with

sashagee we had an impromptu Shabbat dinner of leftover chicken nikujaga with hamantaschen for dessert. We all got Laila hugs, I talked with

thosesocks about how we'll both be working downtown about three blocks from each other, and everyone went to bed a bit happier.

The next day

sashagee wasn't doing super well, so we spent most of the day relaxing and playing with Laila. As I wrote in the baby update, Laila's latest new obsession is drawing. She'll go over to her play area, look down at the paper, and then look over at us while making the baby draw sign and saying "doraw? doraw?" over and over again. She did that a big chunk of Sunday, and I got a video of her drawing with a black marker. Like abba, like daughter. Please ignore that I used the black marker because she drew so much that the other markers temporarily weren't working.

Monday always feels a little like the weekend is leftover for me since I work from home, but because I had to work we didn't have big plans. The biggest plan was take Laila to the park, where she hadn't been in weeks, because the weather see-sawed up to 10°C and it was sunny out, so just after work we got Laila all dressed up and walked to the park where we saw Rabbi

jonathanposner613 and his daughter Baila! Baila was very shy--

jonathanposner613 said she's going through a phase where she's extremely leery of men other than him or her grandfathers--but we chatted with him a bit. I mentioned that I hadn't immediately recognized him because his beard had gotten much more magnificent since the last time I saw him at the Mishkan baby group. Laila and Baila didn't interact but--Laila reached out to Baila once or twice but Baila didn't respond--but I was talking to

sashagee about how cute it would be if they became friends. They're the same age, their families go to Mishkan, Laila's name means "night" (from Hebrew לילה), Baila's name means "white" (from Yiddish ביילא)... but one thing having children teaches you is that the blank slate theory is completely nonsense. If they want to be friends, they will.

I Feel: tired
I Hear: The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast

We spent most of this weekend at the grandparents' houses, at my parents' house on Shabbat and then at

sashagee's parents' house on Saturday night and Sunday.

sashagee went out with my parents around noon on Friday, and I stayed behind to finish the workday, vacuumed, did the laundry, wiped down the counters, emptied the dishwasher, and otherwise did all the pre-Shabbat cleaning, then I got on the train, went downtown, and took the express Metra out to the suburbs and arrived just in time for dinner. Pot roast. Delicious!

We didn't go anywhere or do anything particularly special while we were there except hang out with the grandparents and give them Laila time, but Laila had a lovely time! She was so excited that she had a hard time taking her naps but then didn't want to go to sleep because she would have missed out on the excitement. That meant that she spent a bunch of the visit tired, and when we finally got home on Sunday she fell asleep for an hour and then woke up and cried for two hours because she absolutely did not want to be alone. When I went into sing to her, she clung to me like I was a sinking ship and cried when I tried to hold her prone in my arms instead of letting her hug my neck. She finally consented to be put down in the crib but demanded I keep a hand on her head, and if I tried to move it away she reached up to grab it back Emoji Kawaii heart

After fifteen minutes of singing בשם השם to her she calmed down...or so I thought, because she started crying basically as soon as I closed the door.

sashagee went in there after a bit and that did the trick--Laila fell into an exhausted sleep around midnight and

sashagee wasn't long after her. On Monday she had a much better time.

I'm nearly done with my psychic powers mod for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and currently having to deal with more bugs. The ones that I can't solve myself are:

I'm trying to make a teleporter power that warps space so that enemies' movements draw them toward a central point, but the function to move monsters is bugged. My current idea is to make a fake 'enemy' that will pull everything nearby toward it, but that's reliant on being able to make a summoned monster that other monsters will ignore.

Telepathic powers work on zombies because there's a whitelist for which targets spells can affect, but no blacklist. That means when I set HUMAN as a possible target for telepathic attack, formerly-human zombies--who are tagged both HUMAN and ZOMBIE--are eligible. This is unfixable without me personally adding a blacklist function to the game.

On the other hand, I was playing last night and discovered a feral psychic in the wild, so I know that my attempt to add them to monster spawn list worked! It was a pyrokinetic who proceeded to throw fire everywhere and set the hospital I was trying to loot on fire, so that was exciting! I'm also in the boring numbers-adjusting part of the game. "Oh, I think [Ψ]Fountain of Flames does ten percent more damage than I want, and [Ψ]Stutterstep lasts too long" blah blah blah. The boring-but-necessary part of game design.

Yesterday, I went out to lunch with

aaronhparker, who's taking a trip to Japan in April and wanted some suggestions of where to go. Unfortunately, his group's itinerary isn't set in stone beyond being in Japan yet, so I really could only provide the most general advice. I told him that if he had to go three places, he should go to Tōkyō, Kyōto, and (of course) Hiroshima, especially talking up Miyajima. I mentioned Kiyomizu-dera and Arashiyama in Kyōto, too, and when he talked about hiking I told him about Matsumoto. We only met for a bit over lunch because we both had meetings to go back to and I feel like I didn't provide much actionable advice, but I did suggest that we meet up again when he has a better idea of exactly where he'll be. I should be have more advice then.

Alright, back to this unknown physician project. At least I can tell right away that "Dr. Sages Webmaster" and "Dr. Northwest Hospital" are not real people.

I Feel: tired
I Hear: The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast

In a striking change to most years, the weather has not plunged like 30 degrees after the new year and the weather report even shows that it's above freezing for the next week! On the one hand it's nice to be walking to work and not have to button my coat--the universal sign that winter has arrived--but on the other hand a warm Chicago winter is not exactly an encouraging sign for the global temperature mean. Nonetheless, it's supposed to be 5°C today so maybe I'll take a walk along the river at lunch.

We finished all of our 年賀状 (nengajō, "New Year's Cards") this week--we were waiting on a few addresses. In Japan, 年賀状 are strictly formal without much personalization at all. They have a few set phrases offering good wishes for the new year, you stamp your personal seal on them by the dozen, and drop them in the mail. The mail carriers pick them up and hold them during the month of December and then deliver them in a blizzard--something like two billion 年賀状--on New Year's Day. They're premade and all you need to do was address them, and in past years that's mostly what I did, though I did translate the Japanese on them for the benefit of the mostly non-Japanese-speaking recipients. This year,

sashagee wanted the absolutely cutest 年賀状 out there, so I presented her with a few candidates and she went with this one:

The year of the rabbit! It doesn't include the rest of the standard text, usually something like 旧年中は大変お世話になりました。今年も宜しくお願い致します。 ("You have been of great assistance to me in the last year and I look forward to our continued good relations in the new year"), but I suggested that we modify the tradition a bit and put photos on our family on it. I'm certainly never going to send anyone a Christmas card but there is social value in updating your friends on how your family looks, so I put a photo on there from our trip to the arboretum and

sashagee wrote a simple good wishes standard message (shades of the standard 年賀状). I ordered fifty of them and that's usually more than enough for my purposes but this year we ran out! Next year we'll have to order a hundred since we're sending 年賀状 to

sashagee's family and friends now which expands the circle of recipients by a lot. Next year, I'll be writing 年賀状 for a while at the end of December. At least two people working on them makes it faster.

I'm still working on my psychic powers mod for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and last night I spent two hours trying to solve a problem. I decided to make the starting Teleporter profession an "Imperial Terran Navy Liaison," a psychic from an alternate dimension where Earth has an interstellar empire who got dumped on post-apocalyptic Cataclysm Earth after a jump drive accident, so I thought I would give them a hypertech gun that was standard issue in their home reality, balanced by virtue of never being able to reload it. Easy, I thought. Cue hours of "invalid ammo type" errors and me frantically scrolling through documentation, loading up a Teleporter and finding the ammo type was "0 Null", reading existing documentation and examples of guns and trying to figure out what was wrong, searching through the Discord and Reddit, the classic woes of computer programming. And sure, JSON doesn't involve math or formal logic, but it does involve proper semantics being extremely important, and something was missing.

In the end, I solved it by writing these four lines:

 {
    "type": "ammunition_type",
    "id": "mom_fusion_ammo",
    "name": "B47 fusion shot",
    "default": "mom_fusion_ammo"
  }

The problem was while I had defined the ITN B47 Fusion Pistol, and the magazine that goes in that pistol, and the physical ammo that's placed in that magazine, I hadn't made the definition of that physical ammo as an ammunition type--it was just an item with type AMMO, not an ammunition_type. Emoji Byoo dood

As soon as I put in that extra definition, all the errors went away. At least for the other error I got (teleporter's "attune to location" ability not working) it was because I had assigned the same id to two different things. That ammo problem...ugh.

As my father often says, the more you know about computers, the more surprised you are they ever work.

I Feel: happy
I Hear: Gather Together podcast

On Saturday we went to Shabbat morning services for the children's service, which is held in a separate room. The content was a little different this time--previously, Rabbi Deena did a kiddified version of the main shaḥarit service, with child-appropriate versions of the Shema, Amidah, and so on. This time the services were led by one of the Mensch Academy staff, so there were way more songs about animals celebrating Shabbat. When Rachel asked for feedback about what sort of animals would be celebrating, she got a lot of very loud animals like dinosaurs, lions, tigers, and dragons (Oh my!) until she specifically requested something else. Laila wasn't super into the service--instead she spent most of the time wandering around, dodging in between the kids pretending to be lions and snakes, all with a smile on her face. She kept wandering off, sneaking away across the room to the window, and then trying to sneak outside the circle we were all sitting in to make it to the door. Fortunately, as a baby she is not particularly sneaky and everyone was watching out for us.

She went over and sat in another mother's lap and

sashagee told me that she had tears in her eyes when she was saying she really needed baby cuddles, so I'm glad Laila is bringing joy to everyone! Emoji Kawaii heart

Now I understand the parents' dilemma--I want Laila to grow up, to see what she loves and what she hates, to watch her navigate life, but also right now, when I pick her up and she smiles and puts her arms around my neck and then tries to steal my glasses...

But time does not stop.

"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."
-Genesis 8:22

On Sunday, we went to Maison Marcel--

sashagee's choice--to meet

dinaraua for brunch. I hadn't seen her for three years, not since my Chanukah party in 2019 where "Xanuka" came in second in the poll of "how best to transliterate חנוכה (since then I've grown to prefer "Xnvkh," the better to reflect the Hebrew Emoji ~ Cat smile

), but we didn't actually do that much catching up. She's a huge fan of my Facebook Laila-related content, and I also wanted a chance for her to meet Laila, so most of the conversation was about Laila. We did talk about what we'd been up to the last three years, and

dinaraua mentioned the fun of growing up in a Kazakhstan like how the ovens had no child-safe knobs so her parents would sometimes find her turning the flames off and on (and starting to fill the room with gas). She told us to invite her to everything and that she'd be happy to watch Laila to give

sashagee a break, and

sashagee took her up on it. She'll be over on Sunday while

sashagee is sketching out some murals for Laila's room, so Laila doesn't get the bright idea to draw on the walls.

I ordered the ratatouille shakshuka, because I have to get any shakshuka at a restaurant we go to. Next to that is Laila's overnight oats:

Cheese everywhere, the way it should be.

I Feel: tired
I Hear: Arty feat. Chris - Together We Are (Original Mix)

Back at the office now after a week off (and working from home yesterday). It's honestly been very rough, since

sashagee hurt her back on Monday and couldn't do much looking after Laila, or really much anything, at all, so she spent most of the week icing and heating her back and taking naps while I did the work of the home, cleaning up after Laila, taking her to the park during the sudden burst of warm weather--it had been below freezing but climbed back up to 12° during the day--until she was feeling better. On Wednesday my parents came over in the morning and we all went to the zoo on probably one of the last good weather days this year to go. Laila was more interested than the last time she went because the weather was warmer and so the animals were active, but she really got into watching the seals. One of them came right up to the glass and they were nose to nose for a bit, but the seal sadly swam away before my father could get a picture.

Thursday we woke up and took the train out for two days at the grandparents' houses, Thursday at

sashagee's parents and Friday at mine. I'm used to a standard turkey dinner at my parents' house, so Thanksgiving dinner was exotic--veggie lasagna and...well, that's mostly it. They also made ham (which I don't eat) and scalloped potatoes (which I don't care for), but fortunately lunch was the real star of the day. Whereas dinner was a bit simple, lunch had a vegetable platter, a cheese platter, smoked salmon, olives and an olive tapenade, grapes, and some pork product I don't recognize. A lot of it was left over from lunch, so I took olive tapenade and veggies with my lasagna and filled out my dinner with that. The best part for Laila other than seeing her family, though, was when bubble wrap was taped to the floor:

Friday we went to my parents' house for a more traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, mashed potatoes, pie, stuffing, and all the stuff I've eaten every year for literally forty years. Hey, if it works, why change it? Emoji kawaii flower

Saturday after Shabbat ended we met

worldbshiny for frozen custard at Lickity Split, since it is the most wonderful time of the year--maple custard season. I got maple custard with crushed waffle cones and butterscotch and held Laila on my lap while

worldbshiny and

sashagee chatted, and this outing revealed that the time of us being able to just blithely bring Laila along to friends' events is slowly but inexorably marching toward its end--Laila used to be fine just hanging out on our laps, but now that's boring. When I was done with my custard Laila lost all the patience her little baby body could hold and started demanding to be let down, so I didn't really get to participate in most of the conversation because I was holding Laila's hands while she was marching around. I didn't mind because Laila is the cutest baby in the world, but also it would have been nice to talk to

worldbshiny more!

Going back to the office this week made me understand why so many parents are happy that the school year starts up again. I loved spending all that time with Laila but by necessity, all my time was time spent with Laila. Later in the week when

sashagee was feeling a little better I could redirect Laila if I had to do some dishes or clean a bit, but otherwise if I wanted to even go to the bathroom I had to put Laila in her crib because otherwise she'd wander off and get into things. This is, of course, why modern life for parents is so exhausting and alienating, because there's never a dull moment when there's a curious baby who wants to get into anything.

sashagee spent some time volunteering at a hospital in Ghana and told me that the women in the nearby villages had rotating care systems, where all the children would be watched by one person while the others worked or did chores and they'd switch off who looked after the children. The only thing similar we have is that both sets of grandparents live nearby, and they're generously willing to drive into the city to watch Laila when we ask. But it's no substitute for a community, and we have a society that's specifically built around destroying social bonds.

We still had Thanksgiving together with both families, though, so some traditions survive.

I Feel: happy
I Hear: Xenogears - Flight

Blah blah hard to find time to write blah blah.

We've been taking advantage of Laila's youth and easy distractibility as long as there's food around to try to go to friends' for meals, since she's not old enough to get bored when adults are talking about grown-up things. On Saturday,

bunnydelfuego invited us over to a combination Havdalah/birthday celebration, so we took Laila and grabbed a bottle of wine on the way. When we got there, Laila was fascinated by the layout of their apartment--unlike most Chicago apartments (and our own condo) which are a long corridor with rooms along their length,

bunnydelfuego and

benjieweiss's apartment is laid out in a square. Laila was fascinated by this, and she spent quite a while just crawling or walking through doors in a circle trying to find out where the "end" was. Emoji Kawaii heart

sashagee and I traded off watching Laila while the other sat at the table and engaged in grown-up conversation. Laila spent a lot of time in the bathroom touching the tile or the fuzzy bathmat, briefly met Nugget--the rabbit in residence--and gave everyone hugs. We ate gyōza and bruschetta and drank gin punch and got Laila home in time for bed!

Sunday we went out to brunch with

aaron.hosek at Pauline's, a diner that's one of his favorite local restaurants. He expected it wouldn't be crowded but the lovely weather (20° and sunny) meant that it didn't matter we were late because the table wasn't ready until we got there. It was another lovely meal, though Laila got a little grumpy towards the end. The stand-out part was when she turned to the table of people next to us and shrieked, just a deafening scream (at baby scale), and when they turned to look at her she was just like Emoji ~ Cat smile

Oh!

Hello!

How are you? Emoji ~ Cat smile

Very cute but we're certainly going to have to civilize her a bit.

Perhaps uniquely, I didn't spend last night doomscrolling on the election. I have achieved zen detachment--無心 mushin, one might say--and thought that I had done what I could do and would have to let the world do what it could do. And B"H it turned out that the news is very good. In Illinois we put the right to collective bargaining into the constitution, the governor candidate who made repeated abortion/Shoah comparisons lost, and even the collar counties went Democratic which almost never happens. It turns out that the average voter is able to connect creeping fascism with the problems the country faces.

Does this mean I'm going to stop urging

sashagee to renew her passport, and stop plans to get Laila a passport? No. There's a saying that "Jews don't have roots, we have legs" and it's always good to have a plan. I remember reading a tweet from a Ukrainian back in February saying that a couple days prior she had been laughing and chatting out at a sushi restaurant with friends and now she was eating cold sandwiches and happy she had that much. Things can change very quickly.

We took Laila to the dentist yesterday and she did great! She obviously didn't like having her mouth messed with, but she didn't cry and she still gave the dentist a hug afterward! What a good baby.

I Feel: relaxed
I Hear: Wardruna - Kvitravn

There's a chill in the air and we've had to bring out the heavier coats. Right now it's 23°C and sunny outside but a couple nights ago it got down to 1°! This next week will be warmer but it's probably the last gasp of summer.

Last weekend we went out to visit my parents for dinner, since

wanderluster_kp was going to be in town and then gone for months, probably until April or June. It was basically like Thanksgiving, with a turkey and mashed potatoes and pie for dessert. We learned that Laila is truly my daughter, because just like me she hates mashed potatoes. Emoji embarrassed rub head

When some of her other food fell into the mashed potatoes, she whined and tried to pick it out instead of just grabbing handfuls like she does with other foods. I hated (and still hate) mashed potatoes too and my parents told me they had never heard of a baby who didn't like them. Well, now there's two. Maybe it's genetic.

The other thing we did was take a trip to the Morton Arboretum, since the year is waning and there's not going to be many good weekends left that aren't too cold and have good leaves. It looks like we went just before the peak fall colors but the weather was lovely and I got a lot of nice photos, especially of the Human + Nature exhibit that

sashagee really wanted to see after missing the trolls. My favorite picture was taken by someone else for us, at the piece entitled "Basilica":

2022-10-15 - Human + Nature Basilica family photo

But I took quite a few more photos:

( Arboretum trip photos )

Definitely know I'm getting older when I look forward to family trips to go leaf-viewing!

Monday evening was the beginning of שמחת תורה (Simchat Torah, "Celebration of the Torah"), the day when we finish the very last part of דברים (Devarim, "Words", Eng: Deuteronomy), and roll right through into the first part of בראשית (Bereshit, "In the beginning," Eng: Genesis), in an endless circle as we've done for thousands of years. Before that, though, is the singing and dancing. Some people hold Torah scrolls and rest of us dance in rings around them, and we did that this year too with the addition of a baby! I was a little worried that Laila would be scared or irritable, what with several hundred people packed into a room and a klezmer band playing while we danced, but she loved it. She was smiling and looking around and very happy for the first five הקפות(hakafot, "encirclements") and then she got very tired, so we left and took the bus and the L back home and put a sleepy baby to bed.

Laila did get to meet another Laila there, who was a month younger than her! Our Laila really wanted to give her a hug but other Laila was much more bothered by all the noise and people and didn't want to be touched. We definitely don't have a shy baby.

This was also the last weekend of the farmer's market. I got some more apples, pickles, eggs, and vegetables, ran into

aaronhparker and one of his friends, got more Sfera arancini for dinner and dealt with a mixup, and then went home.

Tonight, my parents are coming over to babysit and

sashagee and I are going to see Wardruna! I went with her to see KPop, so she's coming with me to see folk metal. Hopefully she likes it. Tomorrow,

meowtima is back in town for the first time after moving to Pittsburgh for work, so a few people are going to Indian food together. Then Sunday we'll be resting, because we'll probably need it.

I Feel: amused
I Hear: Alan Walker - Sing Me to Sleep

Took a while for me to collect enough of these for another post, but here we are:

( Long-delayed quotes )

I Feel: relaxed
I Hear: Sufjan Stevens - Chicago

Being a family man, that's where.

The High Holy Days are over and the HHD season is almost over too.

sashagee, Laila, and I all went to Rosh Hashanah day service together for an hour or so, long enough to stay for part of the Torah service before Laila got too restless and had to go. She made friends with an older man sitting next to us with his two daughters and spent a chunk of time wondering at how many people were packed into the Athanaeum (filled to capacity--we had to sit in the far back corner and there were still people standing behind us). She loved all the times that we were singing and lost all interest when the rabbi started talking. The same thing happened the morning of Yom Kippur--I went to Kol Nidre myself just fine, but

sashagee had scheduled two doctors' appointments on Yom Kippur day itself, one for Laila and one for her, so for most of the day I watched the service on livestream and wrangled Laila. Again, she loves singing. I think that's universal to babies.

Before the HHD

sashagee and I went apple picking with my family,

sashagee's family still being on vacation. I have a lot of pictures from last year, but didn't take as many this time because it was just the five of us. We didn't go out to dinner afterwards either for the same reason, though we did stay over at my parents' house for the weekend. They made us dinner and played with Laila, we relaxed, and they took us home the next day. I'm glad that we live so close to both of our parents and they get so much time with her during her cute baby months!

It's currently Sukkot (or "The Festival of Booths"

if you read the KJV), but Sukkot is the worst holiday for urbanites without yards like me because we can't do any of the requirements. So we went to a picnic put on by Mishkan where Laila kept trying to crawl away to other picnic-goers and, when we went up to enter the sukkah, attached herself to an older couple ahead of me in line named Rob and Eileen. Laila gave them both hugs and tried to steal their food, standard baby behaviors. She didn't like the nuts but she did really like the nut crackers they gave her, and they were really happy to get some unexpected baby hugs.

Simchat Torah is coming up too and we're going to a family pizza party before that. I think little baby Laila will love the singing and dancing, though it'll be quite a while before she can hold a Torah.

This weekend we're going out to visit my family again, since my world-traveling veterinarian sister

wanderluster_kp will be world-traveling basically through the end of the year afterwards and it's the only time we have to get together. It'll be a big Thanksgiving dinner except spooky--well, not really, since my parents decorate for fall and not for Halloween. We do have costumes planned though, and we'll be taking Laila trick or treating!

Alright, Laila's asleep so I can get some real work done without her trying to crawl under my desk to look at all the cords and flashing lights.

I Feel: relaxed
I Hear: Genshin Impact - Bustling Afternoon in Mondstadt

I'm writing this from my parents' house, where we're spending the night in preparation to go apple picking tomorrow! This is the third year I'll be going with

sashagee and the second year with Laila. It's a regular tradition at this point!

Monday and Tuesday were Rosh Hashanah, and we went as a family to services. The real draw for Laila was going to be the petting zoo featuring a goat that Mishkan's director of programs said was going to be there, so I was surprised when we arrived to find that there were no animals! Without that, the street fair had a lot of activities that would have been great if Laila were a couple years older--making paper crafts, drawing scenes from Torah, that kind of thing--but aren't so useful to someone Laila's age, so we walked around a bit, went to a nearby combo bike repair shop + cafe called Heritage Bikes and Coffee where I got some delicious avocado toast and saw a few other people who were obviously on their way to services stop in, and then went to services ourselves. Laila loved the singing but by this point she was very tired, so we stayed for about half of the Torah service and then went home to get a sleepy baby to bed.

After she woke up from her nap, I took her to the lake to do tashliḥ, the ritual casting away of our sins, as referenced in Micah:

Who is a G-d like You,
Forgiving iniquity
And remitting transgression;
Who has not maintained His wrath forever
Against the remnant of His own people,
Because He loves graciousness!
He will take us back in love;
He will cover up our iniquities,
You will hurl all our sins
Into the depths of the sea.
-Micah 17:18-19

she was so fascinated by the waves against the walkway that she didn't even try to eat the bread when I put some in her hands! Only a tiny bit, though--babies don't have any sins they need to cast away.

On the way back, I passed by a bench with two old women sitting on it and an old man standing behind them, speaking some Eastern European language. They waved at Laila and I had Laila wave back, and in English they asked me a few questions about her. When they asked if she could walk, I said "almost" and held one of Laila's hands as she walked over to the women and immediately tried to get a hug. The woman Laila was hugging asked, "She is not afraid?" and I answered "No, she loves hugs," and then the man, who had leaned over to get a closer look at the baby, noticed my ✡️ necklace and said "Happy New Year"--it turned out that they were Russian Jews! Emoji Jewish with Torah

I've lived in Chicago for over a decade, but on the way back home, I experienced my first "Excuse me sir, are you Jewish?" Two young Chadadniks were hanging out on the corner, maybe trying to get people going too and from tashliḥ, and they asked me if I had had a chance to hear the shofar in shul that morning. As it turned out, I had not--we had to leave before it was blown--so they took me a bit away from the main street, we said the blessings, and the older one blew the shofar. A blessing indeed that on the day we couldn't say in services, Laila and I still got to hear the shofar.

Tuesday we mostly relaxed at home. Laila slept in until almost 8 a.m. after the disrupted sleep of the previous day, so we gave her a normal day.

Wednesday was Tzom Gedaliah, the fast in honor of the assassination of the last Jewish governor of Judea before the Babylonian Exile, which normally wouldn't be worth much comment since I just get up before dawn to eat and otherwise it's a normal day. It was not a normal day this time, however, since this Wednesday was Employee Appreciation Day and the AMA had rented out a local restaurant/entertainment center called Pinstripes. That meant there was fancy buffet food and drinks, none of which I could eat, and which I couldn't even take home because there's a health code rule that prevents takeout boxes from buffets. Emoji dejected

I did get to talk to one of my new coworkers who started a couple weeks ago when all the tables were full and she sat next to me in the stuffed chairs on the side of the room. We mostly talked about Laila and about my coworker's plan to go to Japan with her partner.

Apple picking tomorrow! 🍎🍏 I'll write about that after it happens.

I Feel: relaxed
I Hear: Stardew Valley - Summer (Nature's Crescendo)

It's back after a long hiatus! At least for this week

sashagee and Laila are out in the suburbs right now, so that Laila's grandparents and great-grandmother can see her, so when I got back from this office it was just me. And since I was just going to the farmer's market by myself, I decided to try to assemble an old-style farmer's market dinner. I haven't posted one in a while because we kind of fell into a pattern of always eating Peking Order on weeks when she was there and getting some other prepared food on off weeks--

sashagee's illness has meant that she very rarely felt well enough to actually cook, or sometimes even come to the farmer's market. Now that I'm back in the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, though, and she's feeling better, she'll be the main one to be going to the farmer's market if we want to get things before they're all sold out. I'll have to meet her there.

Speaking of being back in the office, it's been okay! The office is even more empty than before, which makes me wonder exactly how things are going to go--my division is only in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and quite a few people are permanent work from home. The entire member services division is now work from home, which is a quarter of the floor. We paid for the naming rights on the building, and I expect that the upper management are going to want to keep going into the office as often as they can, but the rest of us? I don't know. Two days in/three days out is my preferred schedule, so I'm happy that's what we settled on--it lets me spend most of my time with my family while also giving me a couple days to go downtown and really buckle down and get work done. Today I went for a walk on the riverwalk and found that the overpriced gelato place I thought had closed forever was still open! The gelateo was still overpriced, but it was definitely delicious. Emoji kawaii flower

( Food pictures! )

Slow rest of the week, hopefully. I started reading an actual book on the train to work--Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish--something I've sadly been neglecting for most of the pandemic. The beginning was really good, to the point that I'm probably going to finish it within the week. I used to read eighty books a year before the Plague Years! I don't think I'll get back to that again until I'm retired, what with a daughter to look after and sixty-percent-fewer train rides during the week, but maybe I can do half that. We can hope.

I Feel: content
I Hear: Sunmi - 사이렌 (Siren)

Security guard: "Good morning, [dorchadas]!"
Me: "Good morning!"
Security guard: "I was starting to think they didn't have you work here no more."
Me: "They sent us home for like three months."
Security guard: "Oh my G-d. "

I'm back in the office! Tuesdays and Wednesday from now until the next change happens. We'll see when that is.

( We did things over the weekend! )

I Feel: happy
I Hear: Lazerhawk - The King of the Streets

I'm forty years old now as of last Saturday! I'm an old man, finally matching the 👴🏻 emoji that

sashagee uses in her phone for me. Except not really, because I'm still in great health and people I meet all assume I'm ten years younger than I am, so I'm doing pretty well for myself. I own a home and I have a baby, so I'm hitting my so-called milestones. And I still have all my hair.

I'm not sure I'm going to have a mid-life crisis, but

sashagee says Laila was my mid-life crisis, which is as good an argument as any.

On Saturday, my parents came into town to see us--they were originally going to come the previous weekend but

sashagee wasn't feeling well--and give me my presents, which were mostly extremely-dark chocolate.

sashagee got me a neon Kirby sign Emoji Kirby cheering

, which we can put up in the kitchen area of our future home. And then we went out to eat at a local restaurant called Gadabout, which used to be a wine, cheese, and bakery specialty shop, and before that used to be an organic grocery store. I give them props for the server knowing exactly what was involved when she asked about dietary restrictions and I said I kept kosher--she told me up front they couldn't accommodate that but they'd keep the meat and milk separate--and anti-props for naming the shakshuka "baked eggs." But when it came all was forgiven:

2022-08-20 - Gadabout Shakshuka -Baked Eggs-

The potatoes were delicious too, with toasted shallots and a bit of some kind of creme on them.

My parents stayed until Laila's second nap, delayed due to the restaurant trip, and then they went home, but not before telling me that they had put a considerable amount of money into Laila's college fund. More than some people's entire college costs (but not enough to cover a single year at Penn > Emoji Uncertain ~ face

). They don't expect to live long enough to see Laila go to college, or if they have, they don't expect to have all their faculties. But they want to make sure that Laila can go anywhere she wants. As a high school student, my father got into Stanford but could not afford to go and so went to USCD. He's determined that no one in his family will have to make the same decision.

The rest of the day we took it easy so that

sashagee could rest.

On Sunday, her parents came to visit and we got food from the exact same restaurant, and I ordered the exact same thing since it was so delicious the previous time.

sashagee got a chia pudding and a chai cinnamon roll since the French toast she had ordered the last time wasn't really that great, even though she had thought she would love the horchata-based sauce it had. We didn't go anywhere or do anything exciting, just ate and talked and let Laila crawl around while

sashagee's mother held her and her father played with her, and at her second nap they left to go home--fortunately against the Air and Water Show traffic. This time, though, we did not rest the rest of the day since we had another scheduled event--ribfest!

I was a little bit worried when I first arrived and saw all the pork, pork ribs, bacon, even bacon-infused whiskey, but while waiting in line for a spot that had a brisket sandwich I noticed the rabbi was also in attendance, which made me feel better. When we arrived, we met up with some people from the Anime Club who were nearby--we had missed a house party the previous day due to the aforementioned resting--but pretty quickly got separated from them

sashagee picked a particular booth with an extremely long line. According to

spacedragon, this year was the first time back after the Plague Years, and the vendor situation was weird. Only six stalls seemed to be even serving ribs and at least one of them was out by 6 p.m. We talked to a couple in line ahead of us after Laila grabbed the man's shirt, and they said they were originally in a different line until the booth announced that no ribs would even be ready until 6:30 p.m.

The brisket was okay. Not worth the hour we waited for it. Laila liked it thought! And the ribs--if she wants to keep kosher it'll be her decision, and we're prepared for "But abba doesn't eat lots of food!" with explaining to her all the rules I follow and asking her if she wants to follow them too. We'll see where that leads.

All in all, a good birthday weekend spent with family.

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Listen to the Rain

Entries tagged with daily life (生活)

The tent in which we dwell

The last day of summer

Fireworks!

Actual events are occurring

Just a normal baby doing normal baby things

Mitsuwa Trip

Two Laila park stories

One

Two

Grandparents' weekend

ACEN and craft fair weekend

New lunch, new me?

Bayla and Laila

😴😴😴😮❗️❗️❗️❗️

Weekend Report

January grandparents' weekend

新年おめでとう

Baby-ful weekend

Thanksgiving Week

It's important to make time for friends

Fall is upon us

Anonymized Quotes VIII

Where does the time go?

"Excuse me, sir, are you Jewish?"

Farmer's Market dinner

Labor Day weekend

Happy Birthday to me!

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July 2025

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