First Bon Odori of the Year

Our local area, Uraga, held a bon Odori this past weekend and Lilah and I managed to make an appearance. It was a short one because my limitations on crutches and the baby's limitations on feeding were both challenging to a long term visit, but we were able to put in about an hour or two in the late afternoon and caught some friends of ours there, Dusty and Tomoko.

As usual the baby got a ton of attention, and well deserved if you ask me. We ate some Yakisoba and drank fruit juices while we watched people and some non-traditional dancing events. It was a significantly different experience than last year's bon Odori in Mabori Kaigon, but much fun none-the-less. This Friday is the SRF-JRMC bon Odori, which I also attended last year; this year will probably be a little more meet and greet and less stay and play because of the aforementioned limitations - but this is always the biggest party of the year here at SRF, so we'll do our best to stay as long as possible. Lilah has even purchased a Yukata (summer weight kimono) and is taking dance lessons! I'll be sure to bring an empty memory card for the camera for this event!







Anyway, that's all for now. The temporary cast is coming off on Friday and I'll get my first look at the damage (pictures to follow... you've been warned.) The new crutches I've been pining for are on their way, but I won't go into too much detail on that, because this story deserves it's own post in the near future.

Take care and keep the comments coming. We love to hear from our friends and fans!

Momma don't touch my Kodachrome!

Picture Me This

I was rummaging through some of the photos I've taken with my new EOS 40D and found quite a few that I had meant to share but hadn't. So, here you go, photo's from Tokyo and Bremerton.

Wonder Twin Powers, ACTIVATE!

The recent trip to Seattle was a good opportunity (pre-Operation) to stop in and visit with Aaron and Chelsie and the new Stewart Family addition, Asher. More importantly, we got a chance to introduce the Stewart Family to our newest addition, Cadence. As I mentioned in a previous post, Aaron and I got a chance to talk cameras and I even went so far as to make a purchase of a new lens, similar to one of his based on it's exceptional ratings and amazingly low price.

These photos were all taken at the Stewart Residence. There are some other good shots to share, but these all seemed to theme together very well, a wonderful pairing of super-powers if you will.








Finally, we're back in Japan now. I'm struggling with life as a burden to someone else. Besides the pain, which the pain pills have not been very effective at muting, there's the lack of independence. Luckily I can pottie on my own; but everything from a bedside glass of water to shifting the dinner plate from the kitchen to the dinning room is impossible with both hands occupied by my crutches. And while stairs in America were somewhat achievable even on crutches, Japanese stairs are a different reality. Crawling is my only option, and luckily I have a walker for the upstairs and the crutches for downstairs because dragging one or the other up and down would again be an impossibility. So enough of my sob story. Only 15 more weeks, 2 days to go to the blessed independence of self mobility.

Mucho Meaty Footlong

Mission accomplished. It will be a huge toll on my leg - 4 to 6 months no weight bearing, physical therapy, crutches... but the first and largest and most painful hurdle is over. I was completely knocked out and don't remember much; Lilah was there when I woke up and that was the most important thing. I couldn't feel my leg or foot for the first 18 hours. I was freaking out a bit wondering if perhaps they had damaged the nerve center. But, in reality, they just had me on REALLY good drugs. Since then I've been on a variety of morphine and a slightly different version of Oxycontin. Oh, and some anti-nausea drugs as the aforementioned make me want to spew all the time. Blech.

So I have crutches and a walker and a two and six week follow up, the latter of which will be here in Seattle again. More pictures of our wonderful visit with the Stewies to follow. Speaking of which, Aaron recommended a new lens for the Cannon that I picked up and absolutely love! It's a 50 mm fixed 1:1.8 auto focus lens. I took the above photo with this new lens.

That's all for now. :j

Sleepy in Seattle

Hello, my name is Jason, and I... uh, this is so hard... I am a blogger. You know, it started out with just a few words on the screen, a picture or two. But then everything spun out of control! I started pontificating! I started just throwing all these pictures up for public adoration. It got so bad I stopped using words all together and just threw picture after picture up on the screen, expecting it to be the same.

Yeah, it's been awhile.

Well, we're back in Seattle. Sure I've been here before, but now it's "us" - the Troxel Family adventure if you will. Cadence was amazingly apathetic about the entire international flying affair. A few feedings, a few changings, a fair amount of snoozing and that was about the extent of our flight.

The big story, of course, is that I'm going into surgery this week. It's taken forever to get to this point, and I'm not particularly excited about getting bone and skin and cartilage, cut and broken and drilled and sewn. But a girl's gotta do whatta girl's gotta do. Well, no, I guess that doesn't fit; anyway, I don't have a whole lot of options besides pain and hobbling, and well, those are getting old.

Anyway, as the title suggests, here it is about 1200 am local Seattle time and I'm wide awake. The nap didn't help; but I was tired. I'm hoping that Cadence will be able to sleep; I'm not sure how many hours she's slept today, what with crossing the dateline and the plane ride and the nap. I guess we'll find out.

More tomorrow.

Celebrating One Month

And how else does one celebrate a birthday, other than to go to Disney!