jinian

I think this has more in common with "Grey Cell Green" than with "lily-livered" -- are there organ-character idioms I'm missing?

My camera is back! I guess it just needed a nice long rest to get over its dropped-on-its-face lens error. Or maybe it saw that I was looking up repair places this morning -- presence of reviews of service detection? Documentation of our Seattle slow-mo spring is on its way!

Yesterday I rescued a bunch of dormancy-defective seeds from the fruits in which they would have died, which is fun for heroic reasons and also involved lots of lighting things on fire. (To sterilize them, for totally legitimate work reasons.) Burning off slides coated with ethanol in the sterile hood causes highly dramatic gouts of flame due to the surface area and blowing air: a little dangerous but LOTS of fun.

Mighty postdoc continues to get interviews she wants, and has to do a mock teaching lecture for this one in addition to the research talk. She was VERY CLEVER and thought to ask me whether I had any textbooks she could use to get the basics of the requested topic from. Do I have textbooks! I threw in two classes' worth of relevant lecture notes from my TAships, too. We both came away from that interaction very pleased.

I get to start time lapse with double markers today: two proteins that we know interact but we don't know exactly how yet, one glowing red and one glowing green. I've been waiting for this line for years. I just hope it works well.

Wim's dad and stepmom were in Kyoto, and it doesn't cost that much to take the shinkansen to Kyoto from Nagoya. I got to take them to what turns out to be one of my favorite places, the Kyoto Museum of Traditional Crafts. There are exhibits for EVERYTHING, with some working crafters, and visitors can do surigata-yuzen dyeing, which uses a brush and stencils to make shaded designs. Here are the dragonflies I did on a handkerchief.



They later got some maples and acorns on there to keep them company. This technique is not hard, and a person could laser-cut the stencils. It does require nice, thin, impermeable paper, which reminded me of vellum. (Wim thinks mulberry paper, but I think that's more tissue-like.)

We had lunch at the building's cafe and then went to a temple. I wish I knew which one; this is what happens when you let other people plan. [Edit: Definitely Nanzen-ji; I found the ticket from going up inside the Sanmon.] Absolutely stunning leaves, even in the pouring rain.





You could climb that big gate in the background, and here's the view from above.

Oh, hey, I kinda disappeared, sorry. I did not get eaten by the zoo animals at this time. I did see bikers on Big Wheels (motor-tricycles anyway), and I did go the wrong way:



I still don't know how it happened, but I went behind that tennis center and got nowhere and turned, and then there was a whole lot of nothing. There was a guy walking down the other side of the street at one point who looked like a fifty-year-old from a rock band, and he had a dog who was clearly some mutt, not a canonical Japanese dog (usually a little Shiba Inu, sometimes dachshunds, always tidy). I liked them both immediately.

I didn't think I would ever see this in Japan:



But there was wildlife!

( Grasshoppers and butterflies, anyhow. )

I walked over a very large hill on that unmaintained sidewalk and wound up in Kitaotsubo, which I had not heard of before. Oops. To do: get a map of the entire city, not just part of it. I turned left and walked some more, and got to Uedayama, which I had also not heard of. There was an option to go left again, back over the mountain, but I went forward some more in my dead-reckoning way, and triumphed -- eventually I hit a T-junction, but with the chance to walk through a forested bit, and after that I saw a parking sign for Higashiyama something and started hearing loudspeaker announcements.

Lots of people with kids were around, always a good sign of a zoo, and I even got valuable information from one of the kids. He went up to a shrub and picked some inconspicuous flowers, then smelled them as he carried them off. I sniffed carefully and found that they were the source of the mysterious, wonderful tropical-fruit smell that I keep detecting in random places around the city. Once I knew what the bush looked like, I found out they're usually white, but these were orange:



Now I just have to figure out what their name is.

When I arrived I was very puzzled that I didn't have to pay -- this happened several times during the day, and later I found out that everything was free due to the Nagoya City Festival. Score. I walked into this:



It is, unfortunately, an old-school zoo. None of the animals really had enough space to be happy, and some of them were clearly messed up and pacing freakily. The babies, the birds, and the herps were all just fine, though. There was a lot to enjoy.

( Cut for many smallish photos )

Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.

1.


The Dyke March! The opening rally was pretty boring except for "Portions for Foxes" and the adorable rainbow-people dance number, but oh well. Lots of amazing people. Dressed as huge sparkly vulvas! Dressed as a bee! Mostly it was too cold for toplessness, but there was a bit. Note the orange barrels at right, where there's a giant streetcar-related trench in the street; an organizer was standing in it with a megaphone calling out, "I am in a hole! Do not fall into the hole!" approximately. (As far as I'm aware she did not say "hello ladies," but she should have.) The people with that rainbow flag were running around hooting and getting people to run under it, or running around them themselves.

2.


I picked and ate my raspberry bushes' first ripe berries today. It is summer.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Ten: One confession.

Stomach bug yesterday, still weak and crummy feeling today. Conveniently, I'd already taken today off so I could be at the hospital while my dad had bigger better back surgery; I didn't go, because vomiting is not a thing to add to back surgery. Mom says he's fine and in his own room now, though.

Sleeping and cautiously eating mild things is about my speed today. Also Pony Creator.

I realize I post basically the same flowers every spring, but SPRING is basically the same every spring, yet it's still wonderful.


(Columbine leaf)