hospitals and handgrenades

Well shit.  I haven’t made good on that whole playing games thing yet.  It’s been a busy and hectic week so far. I have been playing quite a bit of guitar when I’ve had the chance here and there so hopefully the Wang Bangers? will have some new material soon.  We were thinking to do a 春分の日 EP but I lost my voice and was sick for a while there so it was postponed. Maybe Golden Week?

On Tuesday I had a couple decent breaks at work and was able to go to my favorite music shop in 池袋 to pick up some stuff for the guitar. I got some new strings and a strap and a couple new picks.  After work I’d planned to re-string the guitar and get it all pretty but just before I got back home I got a mail from the wife telling me that MJ’d had a seizure… well shit. That was a freaky mail to receive.  Speaking of MJ, he’s having a rough night, he was really tired so we put him to bed around 8:30.  He slept OK for about 10 minutes but woke back up and his nose was all stuffed up and he couldn’t take any milk and he’s been up playing and fighting with us about going to sleep and it’s now 11:10.  I finally shut the door and just left his mom and him to sort it out themselves after trying a bunch of things. Don’t worry, it was his mom’s idea.  Oh well, that’s why I’m here now. So, back to Tuesday. MJ’d had a pretty high fever throughout the day and I think since Monday but he seemed to be faring well. However, when the wife put him down for bed on Tuesday night, shortly after, he had a seizure she reported and after I got home, I asked if we needed to take him to the hospital because I thought it might just be a fever seizure but I wasn’t there so I didn’t know. She called the “emergency consulting line” and they suggested that we take him to the hospital so we did.  We found where the closest place open was and took the train three stops down and a taxi to the emergency room.  Then we waited.  A long time… There was one baby there that took forever!  I hope to god it wasn’t anything serious but compared to the other baby in front of us and us, that little one was in there about ten times longer… Anyway, blah blah blah, long time. So everything seemed to be OK, they gave him a　座薬 and we left.  Our taxi ride home (because now it was well after midnight) was rad.  Our driver looked like a cross between Willie Nelson and Charles Manson. Long story right?  Yeah. Well, the next day the wife went back, they did some more tests and really no great info but most likely the seizures aren’t going to be a serious problem.  Last night MJ’s fever finally broke! Then came back… and today it’s been pretty much broken (well at least not crazy high).  We’re hoping that this is all just 突発性発疹 (Roseola) and if it is then he should start showing a rash on his body tomorrow.  That will be a sigh of relief for us.  At least we’ll know what’s going on.

So, anyway, today we just hung out at home.  Played.  I tried to take some glamor pics of the guitar but not too many I actually liked.  Here’s one or two of them:

This shot you can kinda see the new strap that I got, it’s white and has Maiko on it.

Here’s the cracked part on the butt of the guitar: This is how it was when I bought it and that’s why I got it for about 1/4 the price and really I don’t think it affects the sound at all. Looks bad though.

That’s about it.  My friend has a great blog happening here.  It’s still very new, but the most recent entry had me cracking up pretty good, click on the picture for a better view (currently part of the strip is blocked by the info bar on the right in Chrome at least). Other news, other news… Well, looks like MJ’s asleep, 11:35.  Tomorrow I might be babysitting for a while because I don’t have to work until 4:20 and unless MJ is 100% the wife doesn’t want to take him to Ikebukuro but I would prefer him to be there for reasons I’ve stated before… Hope he’s feeling better.  It wouldn’t be so bad if it was the wife coming home to watch him when I have to head out to work but it’s gonna be ママ here for a couple hours alone with him…

MJ’s first 花見 and the return of wunderboy!

Ah crap, back to work tomorrow.  These single days off suck.  Especially when I’ve spent so much of my free time (after the baby headed to bed) resizing and tweaking and uploading photos.  Gotta streamline this stuff… I guess that’s only part of it.  Today was pretty great and my guitar finally arrived so I’d like to spend some more time with that and heck, even just go ahead and do the whole thing again tomorrow. I got up just before the boy got back from day care and the wife had already gotten pretty much everything for our outing ready so when MJ got back, we headed down to the river.

The skies were really cloudy when we started but just a bit after we got there they finally opened up and gave us the blue sky I’d been hoping for, I also got a touch sunburnt:

エチゴペールエール: Ar

Think that was the quickest beer review ever!

After lunch we played around for a bit by the river and I tried to teach MJ how to skip (throw) rocks and he tried to make a mess of himself: We also watched some helicopters flying overhead.  There are always helis in the area because of the base(s?) near by but they’ve increased in frequency a ton since 3-11.  Like this picture though, just wish the copters were closer.

MJ took a (super-short) nap and then we headed for a short walk, I snapped some more pictures of course: I couldn’t get a great picture from the bridge, at least not exactly what I wanted so I tried throwing two together and it turned out OK, interesting at least: I just used an overexposed and underexposed shot and slapped them together.  Looks a little HDR-like and you can see one dude in the bottom left that’s in more than one place, ha.

Finally we stopped in that same field as on Sunday and got another family picture (this time I brought my mini tri-pod so it wasn’t such a hassle to set up the shot and I brought my remote too) but this time with the cherry blossoms in the background! Shortly after we got home from grocery shopping there was a ピンポン at the door and it was (at last!) my guitar, all the way from America! MJ was excited and gave the case a big hug: And finally here’s a picture of the guitar itself.  I’ve had it for a long time and I found out that the electric part of the acoustic/electric isn’t working (even though I changed the battery) so that will require some further investigation.  The picture sucks and I had to rotate and crop it as well so I might do a little more in-depth look at it later but here he is, WUNDERBOY! Ah, done. We had some お好み焼き for dinner and what was a trip was that the package for it containing the fixin’s also contained a DVD on how to prepare 広島 style! Weird.  The boy was in a bad mood (maybe a bit under the weather) but we watched it while the wife was cooking and his mood got a little better. He was supposed to go to his grandparents’ place tomorrow but now grandma might be coming here (day care 病?).  I’d rather MJ go to their place if the wife and I aren’t here just because I don’t like the idea of him being here with his grandma alone so far from either of us in case of an emergency.  If he’s at their place, takes me 20 minutes usually or less than an hour and a half on foot.  If he’s here, takes closer to an hour usually and maybe 5 hours plus on foot…  Look at that, just had a pretty sizable shaking while I was writing that section… We’ll check on his status tomorrow morning.

We’ll probably be back down at the river this Sunday, maybe I’ll take a few more pics if it’s nice.  Hope it’s nice!