Yesterday I had a terrible stomach ache and the unpleasant side effects so I worked at home. Today I feel much better, and so am back at work. It’s already Wednesday which is great! I can’t wait for the weekend. I want to work on the front yard by pulling up most of the plants. Then I will buy a bunch of dirt to build up the bed since much of it has washed away with the heavy rains. Mariko and I saw a really nice design last weekend, so I am going to try to imitate it, but I can only remember the general design… I don’t think I will get to do any planting this weekend, but that is fine, as long as I can prepare the bed. And then I have some time to look at more designs.

This past weekend was a lot of fun. On Saturday we packed up the car and headed down to Houston. It was about a 3-hour drive, but was nice. I like the scenery on Route 290: lots of green and many cows and goats. And driving past Kickapoo Rd. always elicits a chuckle or two. Bay had his new CocoPad to play with also. CocoPad is the Japanese Leapfrog book. We took a different route to the dim-sum restaurant that we usually go to, and it was much faster. Actually, we got lost and asked for directions, but it was still faster. It involves taking the tollway (and paying $2).

Dim-sum at Ocean Palace was yummy as usual. In addition to the regular siu-mai and har-gow, we got clams in black bean sauce, chow mein, juk, and other delicicacies. After stuffing ourselves, we walked around the attached mini-mall. It’s always interesting to see all the Vietnamese cafes and boutiques. We eventually ended up at the Hong Kong Supermarket which is huge! Bay had a lot of fun because in the back they have a big seafood section with live fish/crabs/crawfish. He even saw live eels swimming around. After Mariko bought some groceries and gifts, we got some bubble-tea and headed back to the car so we could go to our next destination which was…

Daido Japanese market. It’s a small market, but I heard it’s the only true Japanese market in the city. We didn’t actually buy anything there, but I had wanted to get a can-coffee for the drive back. I forgot, though. Oh well. After that we drove down Westheimer Blvd. to go to the Crate & Barrel. Westheimer is a monster of a street. There are so many restaurants and stores all along the sides in strip malls. We saw about five Japanese restaurants in about three miles. On the way, Bay fell asleep so when we parked at Crate & Barrel, I stayed in the car with him while Mariko shopped solo.

Next on our list of places to go was IKEA. They have a lot of cool stuff there, not the best quality, but good prices. We bought a few things and Bay had tons of fun rolling around on all the beds. By the time we left there, it was about 5:30 and we figured we should get something to eat before hitting the road back home.

We decided to go back to Westheimer and try one of the Japanese restaurants. The first one we passed was called Sasaki, but it was closed, so we stopped at the second one, Kaneyama. It was very nice inside, but we didn’t see any asian people eating there, so we were wondering how authentic it would be. I ordered oyako-don and Mariko ordered udon. They tasted just ok. My oyakodon was kind of dry, it seemed they used chicken breast and not the thigh. And there was zucchini in it too… Mariko said her udon wasn’t great either. But the sushi rolls we ordered were very tasty. I don’t think we will go back there, but it filled us up, at least. Bay was very popular with the waitresses there. They liked to hold him and play with him. One of them even gave him some Pocky!

The drive home was interesting because there were so many insects flying around. You could actually hear them smacking into the windshield. When we got home, the rear-view mirrors were caked with gnats. And there were a few big wasps stuck on the grille. It’s really pretty gross-looking.

Anyways, we had a great time and look forward to going down there again. I actually want to see the Dodgers play the Astros next time…

Last night as I was falling asleep, Cal Worthington and his dog Spot popped into my head. I have no idea why. I could see his commercials in my mind and heard his song (that goes to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”) and I really wanted to get up and fire up the old computer to see if I could find some old commercials, but it was getting way too late. Well, this morning I did a search and struck the goldmine. He’s got an extensive website, with a link to an archive of many old commercials and songs.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, Cal Worthington is a car dealer in So. Cal. (maybe other places now?) who had these great commercials with his dog Spot. But Spot was a chimp, tiger, elephant, etc. and one of Cal’s claims was that he would stand on his head to beat anyone’s deal.

So, you guys still living in So. Cal., does he (and Spot) still make commercials?

I was looking around at some of the things that my hosting company offers in their website control panel, and I stumbled onto some site statistics for takoyaki.org. One of the interesting stats is a list of the search keywords people have used in various search engines that brought them to my site. Here is a sampling:

: takoyaki
: takoyaki recipe
: takoyaki grill
: takoyaki gen
: okonomiyaki restaurant los angeles
: okonomiyaki los angeles
: funnel cake los angeles
: rent shibuya room
: chinese market in austin tx
: totoro store
: gaijin houses tokyo
: houses for foreigner japan gaijin house
: takoyaki los angeles
: japanese snacks takoyaki
: gaijin houses japan
: best dim sum in austin
: japanese cd’s
: r o slaw

I have been gathering some links for takoyaki information and recipes, so that people actually looking for takoyaki info will find at least a tiny bit of value with my site. 🙂 I will add them this weekend.

I have been doing some more updates to the site. What I have found out is that pMachine (the php/MySQL publishing program I am using) is even better than I thought. I won’t go into any details, but I will just say that it is really really cool!

I updated the Episode 1 story of my Japan life and linked it in the menu. I think the template is good, so I will use it to convert all my other old content. After that, I will figure out how to get Bay’s site going again (with the subdomain bay.takoyaki.org).

You have probably seen this website before, but I just have to post it. It’s so funny. Some of my favorite quotes of his:

“I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.”

“they are nowhere near the airport ..they are lost in the desert…they can not read a compass…they are retarded.”

[On surrenders> “Those are not Iraqi soldiers at all. Where did they bring them from?”

Enjoy!

Last night I fell asleep at 8:30 with Bay. I wanted to wake up and work on the webpage for a bit and hopefully play an online game with some friends. But I just kept sleeping all the way through to the morning. In fact, I was falling asleep as soon as I got home from work yesterday!

I had a dream last night that Mariko, Bay and I were in Hong Kong watching fireworks. It was very cool!

Yesterday I saw the first fire-ant hill of the season in our backyard. It was small, but pretty gross when I stomped my foot next to it and they all came pouring out. I forgot to put some poison on them last night. But now that Bay is running around the yard, I should really make sure there are no fire-ants back there.

I HATE FIRE-ANTS! I must win the war.

You can now buy/sell artwork thru vending machines using Art*o*mat. Pretty cool… I wish there were one here in Austin. There is one in Houston, though. Lots in North Carolina… Thanks to [url=www.sahala.com”>Sahala for finding this.