We had a shitty week. One of KrisDi’s employees, at the age of 45ish, passed away suddenly from cancer, which had only recently been discovered. Her fantastic asshole of a boss responded to the news with basically, “Well, I guess you’ll have to backfill that position.” KrisDi also had a doctor appointment that included a miserable blood draw and a mammogram, and got a call the same day saying they found a lump and wanted her to come back again the next day for a biopsy. Not terrifying at all. Then, we found out our friend HB was in the ICU, and we didn’t know why.
I had a meeting with Japan on a Sunday night with high-level executives, where they had simultaneous translation. The implementation was a little awkward — a Zoom for the Japanese meeting, and FaceTime for the translation. Because there were two audio channels, I needed two pairs of headphones, which was awkward.
KrisDi found out our favorite Italian Beef place in Chicago now ships frozen, build-it-yourself kits. It was very nice.
We hosted Thanksgiving again. Because HB has been in the hospital, we invited his wife and kids so they’d be able to have Thanksgiving food without having to deal with cooking or cleaning or anything like that — they have enough going on. Everything turned out great. And Steve Harvey showed up. In a lot of places.
I had another slightly unusual trip to Japan: Although we stayed where we normally do in Mizonokuchi, we worked in Yokohama (because our hosts forgot to book a meeting room in the actual office), which is 45-60 minutes away by train. So we got to experience the Tokyo area train commute close to peak hours. One of the tips is to put your backpack on your front, so it’s more in control and you don’t slam too many people with it. I had my regular ramen on arrival, tuna bowl for breakfast one day (served by a cat robot again), and our hosts took us to the “World Beer Museum” for lunch. I had some time in the evenings to visit the three nice beer places that now exist near the hotel: Mizonokuchi Brewery (I had a nice conversation with the worker there), Mugihigeya (only six taps, but they’re good and they have cheap delicious oysters — bartender remembered me from a year ago, I had a long conversation with a local who wanted to practice his English — also, I had a chance to take a picture of how tiny many of the craft beer kegs are in Japan — this one is full, and yes, I’m holding it out in front of me), and Fujimaru (even tinier, four taps, and again the bartender remembered me from a year ago; this time he gave me a short list of beer places he would recommend if I had the chance). Although the trip was hectic (fly Monday, arrive Tuesday, work Wednesday and Thursday, fly home Friday — much more time in planes than working).
Travel travails: My phone cable broke on the plane. My flight out was delayed by four hours, even though the plane was there — but I saw one of the engines smoking while making a terrible vibration that could be felt through the floor of the airport, so I support their decision to get us a different plane. My flight back was delayed by some time — but I’ll talk about that more in the next post.
Miscellaneous
- Poland annexed our stairs
- Christmas trees
- Chilkoot outgrew his shirt
- Sunrise
- KrisDi made cake decorations for the Kettleworks Moana cast party