M's home. I'm so happy, I kept playing Ayaka's song, Okaeri, in my head all day long.
I spent all of Wednesday cleaning the house, but I guess I had let the house go too long unattended. I didn't pass the white glove test. 
But I don't care. I'm still happy.
Here's a list of stuff she got me.
I haven't mentioned this, but for the past 5 weeks, M has been in Japan. Her mother was diagnosed with Bronchioloalveolar carcinoma, a kind of lung cancer located in the small vessels of the lungs that function in the oxygenation of our blood (I think). Apparently it is most prevalent in nonsmokers, elderly women and Asians. This makes M's mother three for three, not the kind of batting average you want when dealing with the big C.
Fortunately, they found the disease early and the doctors determined it was operable, even though she's over 80. M went to Japan to help her mother through the operation and for post-op recovery. By all accounts, the operation was successful, and we are, for the time being, relieved. The main issue now is the cost of the operation. Not that we are averse to helping M's mother out, but we did learn recently that the cost is based on a new system of health insurance in Japan.
Back in the '70s, my friends and I used to enjoy the comedy of George Carlin, who died of heart failure on Sunday, June 22. He was irreverent and represented a lot of what we thought back then.
He started out as a coat and tie comedian in the '60s, appearing on such fair as The Ed Sullivan Show. He was not run-of-the-mill but he didn't really stand out either. One of the characters he would play in his routine was the Hippy Dippy Weatherman.
"Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark tonight, turning to partly light in the morning."
Our school holds an orientation for incoming freshmen every year, and
yesterday I participated in the Major Fair, an event where new students have the
opportunity to talk to faculty about majors they are interested in pursuing. I was there with a Chinese colleague, a late 20-something, single, and attractive--I am particularly vulnerable to Chinese and Vietnamese women. We had our share of students interested in studying Japanese or Chinese, but as you can imagine, the numbers do not come close to those interested in the "popular" fields such as, say, psychology or political science. Go figure.
"Back then, it was what it was, and you learned to live with irreparable scars and injuries. Indeed,
after a week or so, my vision seemed to revert to normal. I thought it
had healed itself, as any scar would heal, and I continued on with my
merry summer of '73.
But life, as I was to learn, was neither so simple nor forgiving."
A few years later, I began to notice that I had trouble gauging depth. I had knocked over more than a couple of beers, but I attributed this clumsiness to being drunk. I mean, what else would I attribute it to? Then one day I went to Westwood to see a movie with two of my buddies, Cary and Sam. We were a little early and so we were strolling around the shops and small malls. At one point, we were going to leaving a shopping area that was on the second level. I strode forward and found myself tumbling down a short flight of brick steps. My friends rushed to my side.
"Ray, you okay?" They asked as they helped me get up. "What happened?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'm okay." I assured them as I brushed myself off. But when I looked up I was shocked. "Steps?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I fell down these steps? I don't get it. I could have sworn it was a ramp."
"Dude, if that's a ramp..." But before Sam could finish his sentence, I went up the steps down which I had stumbled. I had to see again what I thought I saw. When I reached the top of the steps, I looked down and in front of me--Huh?--was a short flight of about 5 steps. I don't get it, I said again to myself. I swear I saw a ramp. But when I took astep side ways toward the center, the steps magically turned into a ramp. "Woah!"
"Woah, what?" Cary asked.
A couple of comments asked about the corneal scar I mentioned in my last post. Well, it isn't as dramatic as Onigiri might imagine--no, I did not get stabbed in the eye like your cousin. Whew! Now that would be a story to tell. My story is much more mundane, but the effects of this "malady" are much more amusing... well as amusing as a handicap can be.
My memory is not perfect, as my regular readers know, but there are photos of me when I was around 5 years old with my right eye patched up with gauze. I vaguely remembered--and I later verified this with my mother--that the eye was suffering from an infection, and I had to wash out my eye two or three times a day. Mom would pour a solution into an eye cup, after which I would face down to place my eye socket onto it and then while holding the cup tightly to my face look upward blinking two or three times as the solution bathed my eye. I hated this ritual, which is probably why I remembered it.
Fast forward 12 years...
I have bad eye sight. I've mentioned this before, but I can only see out of my left eye--albeit with glasses or a contact lens. My right eye is legally blind. I have a scar on my cornea that prevents me from seeing anything with any clarity. If you taped wax paper on your glasses or sunglasses, you would see exactly as I do. And I mean exactly--since the scar is in the center of my cornea, my peripheral vision is alright, but I can't see straight ahead. Eyesight notwithstanding, this scar has another unfortunate affect. My left eye hurts when I'm outside. I'm not really sure why, and the opthamologists who I have asked never give me a specific answer, but I suspect that the light refracts abnormally through the scar and ends up striking the retina in an uneven distribution.
As a result, I always wear sunglasses outside during the day, even if its cloudy. And the lens has to be very dark. This often invites the jokes of students.
The other day was Father's day, but I guess I have no standing as a father anymore. I occasionally e-mail my daughter in Japan, but she hasn't responded in over a year. I have't seen her since 1999--the last time I went to Japan--when she was 12 years old. Now she has graduated from a vocational school 専門学校, moved out of the house and is living in Tokyo with her friend, according to her mother. It would be nice to talk to her, but I get the sense that she doesn't want to talk to me, especially ever since I remarried. She may come around, but all I can do is wait and see.
I also have three stepsons, but they were over 18 by the time I married their mother, Musubichan. As you might imagine, they consider me their mother's husband but not their father who died in an accident when they were young. So the bottom line is that I am, for all intents and purposes, a non-dad. Kinda sad, when I think about it.
I love tomatoes. So the current outbreak of salmonella is very disturbing. Then I heard what it was that spreads salmonella to the tomatoes: fecal matter. One possibility is that feces can be directly spread by animals when they step onto infected droppings, then tread through open fields. Indirectly, animal waste is used to create manure, and while most pathogens are killed through the composting process, some can survive and is subsequently spread when the infected manure is used to fertilize fields. Worse, some of the pathogens find their way to water sources--irrigation streams, ground water--and can infect the tomatoes that way. In other words, tomato lovers are screwed.
I swear, this is total bullshit--no pun intended
I wrote the other day about how I love to watch political talk shows. One of my favorites was Meet the Press on NBC Sunday mornings. During the 80s, I usually surfed between the shows on the three national broadcast networks--Face the Nation, This Week, and Meet the Press--but after I cam back from Japan in 1996, I watched Meet the Press exclusively because of the moderator, Tim Russert.
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