The Adventures of Big ‘K’

Boy, blogging has been on the back-burner, hasn’t it. Well, there just hasn’t been much happening out of the ordinary.  Most of the day is spent in the shop finishing up the shamisen. All the pieces are finally made after 6 months, now I just gotta put ‘em together.

For the past month, I’ve been carving out the Tenjin (headpiece with the square whole in the middle as you can see)

Then, two days ago, I whipped up the Itomaki (I.e, tuning pegs). Boy, nice to be able to make some shamisen parts that take less than a month to make.

Even though most of my time has been taken up with that, a few interesting things have cropped up here and there. . .

We’ve been changing things around, beach-wise. You see, we normally go twice a week on two standard days. Well, recently, on the first (out of the two) day we normally go out, it was pretty cloudy and no sun was shining through so Pa and Luke didn’t want to go down. However, I insisted the it was tradition to go down! So, after a while, I got them on board. Even though it was cloudy, it was nice because there was no wind.

We decided to go again the next day (even though it wasn’t one of the two traditional days to go down) because it was sunny. Unfortunately, it was also breezy. I’d rather have some fog and no breeze than sun w/ breeze. When it’s foggy, you don’t get warmed by the sun but any heat you make from yoga (which is what we do at that time of day on the beach) gets fairly retained. When it’s windy, you have to really work hard to build up enough heat to counteract the cool-down of the wind. After that, we have Tai Chi. It’s even harder (unless you do it at a really low stance) to build up enough heat. After Yoga, I did Karate instead of Tai Chi so I could build up more heat quicker. Then, it was time to dive in! The waves were pretty rough. Not as rough as the ones in my last post but they were surfable. However, I knew from last time’s experience that I wouldn’t have been able to make it in front of the wave in time. I mean, if I hurried and spent a bit of time, I could probably, but I was freezing so I just wanted to dive in and get out (that’s the tradition). So, seeing the end of a big wave (you know, the end where it turns fluffy white and ripples forward) coming forward, I crouched down in a huddled position and the wave came over me with more force than I thought. When I got up. I saw that Luke and Pa were still walking forward to get to the brunt of the wave. I saw Pa dive in but as the wave came forward, I saw Luke turn around as the wave crashed into him. The wave did crash along the backside of his body up to his head. Even though he technically got his head wet, it didn’t get really wet. The tradition is that you submerge yourself all the way to where you can hear the bubbly “submerged,” “wet” or “ears-full-of-water” sound in your ear. Just get sprayed in the back from the wave doesn’t count!

As the 6 month tradition goes, after you dive in the water, you have a hot cocoa and a day old scone at Marinis. However, Luke didn’t get his head fully wet. We decided that he could have a cocoa but not a scone. When we biked up the wharf and entered Marinis to order, Luke asked me if we were getting two scones. I said that he didn’t “complete” the tradition. He said that most of his head got wet but I replied that it was the principle of the thing. When we got to the day-old scone bin, we saw that there was only one. That answered that! I took it. We were talking and I heard some biker buddies (not my buddies) talking and one said, “did you see a scone in that bin? Did you take it?” The other one said, “no.” Anyway, we straightened the whole thing out and he got his scone back.

As we were waiting, we heard one of the biker guys talking to the waitress. He said, “do you get many swimmers at this time of year? Has the water warmed up enough?” The waitress said, “I guess. The people who come down to the beach use wetsuits so they stay warm.” One of the biker guys said, “Not really, I saw three guys in bathing suits down there.” If you haven’t guessed, that was us. . . wetsuits are for sissies. (I didn’t say that to them of course) So, we got our cocoas and drank outside. (as the tradition goes)

I probably haven’t mentioned, but our Grandma had a recent brush with death through pneumonia. In fact, she was at death’s door. Fortunately, she managed to ring the doorbell and run away.

She a lot better now and is walking again and is getting her strength back (which, if she’s walking, is obvious I guess). She’s 95 now and over the years, has collected lots of junk. Both sentimental mementos and also more stuff than she needs. For example, 25 paper towels and 5 cans of dust spray (she likes to get a lot of a particular thing ’cause she’s afraid the store won’t carry ‘em anymore). Pa’s been trying to get her to clean out her house for years but now has put his foot down. Fortunately, when she was in the hospital, she said how she just had a feeling of wanting to clean out the extra clutter in her house. Well, that was convenient! So, she’s been back home for about a month and in the meantime, he’s been doing a cleansweep.

The house looks/feels much better now. Before, there was so much stuff, it was hard to maneuver. Now it’s soooo roomy ‘n nice. I think she likes it better too. However, there’s one bad thing about the lack of stuff in her house. Before, (when there was a lot of stuff) I would sometimes go to her house at night (when we have dinner) ’cause I wanted to get some pretzels for a sandwich. She’s easily startled and I don’t want to surprise her. I could go up and tell her I was here to get some pretzels but I find getting into a conversation with somebody just to say your in the house seems like a waste of time. So I’d would hide behind a table or rack until the coast is clear. Then, I’d get the pretzels and leave. Now, it’s gonna be harder when there’s less stuff around.

Anyway, Pa’s also cleaning up her diet too. (since healthy food [no matter how tasty] were ever on her “Top Ten,” she hasn’t eaten many in the past years) He’s been throwing out quite a bit of tasty food and extra food she had (she a little woman and thus eats very little so having two cans of a particular thing is a waste of space. Since, so far, I don’t have a weight/diet problem, I’ve been sampling what he’s been throwing out. First, it was good ol’ fudge! It was tasty chocolate, peanut and walnut fudges (or fudgi). Keep in mind, I didn’t eat the whole box mind you, just sampled a little bit of everything, to get the flavors . . . like a conissuer. Than he threw out Fat Free “Cheese Food.” I sampled a slice. I prefer real cheese personally. Later, he threw out cans of “Diet Cream Soda.” I had one. I think the non-diet would’ve been better but it did wet the whistle.

Today, he threw out a can of pickles, steak sauce, a quart of mayo and a can of Boston Baked Beans. He let me take the pickles (’cause I’m a pickle gourmet) to our house but he didn’t want me to bring the rest of the stuff back. He didn’t say we couldn’t eat it of course, we just couldn’t keep it in the house. Understandable, we really don’t need a quart of mayonnaise. Luke and made some food that would go good with steak sauce, mayo and baked beans. I made a salami sandwich with a big salad and Luke made a burrito with lettuce on the side. I made a carbonated lemon beverage to go with the sandwich. (2 lemons, pinch of salt, 1-2TB sugar, 2 cups sparkling mineral water)

While I was still making my food, Luke went to Grandmas house and came back with the beans in a bowl. He said he wanted to heat them up and also doctor it up with extra ingredients. Augh! I thought that took the spontaneity out of it! I ran back to grandmas house as fast as I could. I went to the garbage can and managed to fish out the bean can. I rushed back before he could heat up the beans and put my share back in the can.

All in all, it tasted pretty good. Filling with all the mayo.