they say it’s your birthday / well it’s my birthday too yeah / they say it’s your birthday / we’re gonna have a good time / i’m glad it’s your birthday / happy birthday to you…

argh! met up with rob for a couple of quiet ones & some dinner last night… there we were, politely minding our own business, when we were suddenly assailed by… folk music! hell, they could have just asked us to leave…

birthday loot — papa got a brand new bag! (& a wireless bike computer…) now if lenovo could see their way clear to sending me my new laptop (yesterday i received the power supply… i’m kinda hoping they’re not planning to ship it over several days as individual parts…)

lightly (that is, very) chilled — chiba, like most of the rest of japan, is, uh, kinda cold this time of year… didn’t stop us having a great weekend though… chiaki & hiro & kanta & emma visited on friday, coco arrived friday night & went back to tokyo on saturday evening, the kids ran riot, i found a place essentially giving away bottles of johnny walker, the weather was (mostly) fine, what more could you ask for?

in which i discover, yet again, that “take a picture of me & haruki” actually means “take a picture of me, & if you can fit haruki in, great!”

in which snacks are ostensibly being fairly & equitably shared out by the older sister… a game also known as “four or five for me, one for haruki” (who has just realised that the fair & equitable distribution of snacks may not be proceeding exactly as advertised…)

in which the snack distribution situation warrants closer investigation…

the other big (depending on your point of view) news from the weekend was the purchase of hana’s first bike…

she still has a ways to go, of course, but we’ll see how it works out… i’d been thinking to get her a tricycle, & was looking at a couple of prospects when she discovered this one… i have no idea how long it will last, but it seemed like a reasonable idea…

& i’m hoping that once hana grows out of it, haruki can get some use out of it too… assuming, of course, he hasn’t eaten it in the meantime…

this was the first time we’ve been to chiba since haruki’s gotten himself mobile… he spent about a day figuring out how to go up & down the different levels between the tatami room & the lounge, & the tatami room & the genkan, but once he had it sussed he started trying to follow everyone around, which is cool… he’s also showing a disturbing propensity to pull himself upright whenever he gets a chance… it was only a few weeks ago that he started crawling, but it looks like walking might not be too far off…

oh, he’s also teething, & bites like a bastard… but yeah, he’s just starting to get into that transition between baby & little kid… it’s kind of exciting & a little sad at the same time - exciting because he’s developing more of his own personality & starting to figure stuff out for himself, a little sad just because he won’t be a baby all that much longer…

sumie points out that i never got around to posting any photos of the completed playhouse, which is now a rather impractical feature of the lounge room in chiba, so, uh, here it is…

woohoo! i’m off until the 15th — had to work today, but that’s it for nigh two weeks… we’re continuing new year celebrations at (one of) sumie’s uncle’s place tomorrow, then packing up & heading out to chiba for a few days… once we get back to tokyo, got some shopping to do, some re-organising around the house… hell, i might even go to the movies if there’s anything on worth seeing…

at some point, my new laptop should (i hope) arrive… a tiny, tiny x61 thinkpad… the thing weighs next to nothing, so the plan is to drag it around in my bag & try to get some writing done… i’m not sure how much faith i have in this plan, but still - tiny, tiny laptop… at the very least, coffee & wifi, right?

oh, yeah — & yes, dave, i might even manage finally to get skype installed on one or more of my machines…

the last four or so months in bullet points — i’m know i’m gonna leave lotsa stuff out here, but bear with me… at some as yet undetermined time in the future (possibly entering week two of my vacation) these points may expand out into longer posts with many more photos… particularly the first point, which is the one about…

• the tokyo motor show! clarence & i did the motor show thing again. can’t believe they only run this every two years. this year i took sumie’s nikon… out of close to 400 pictures, you’d think there’d be something worth posting… the new GTR was the highlight, although there were some pretty sweet concept cars too… genetically pre-determined petrolhead that i am though, i was kinda hypnotised by the dodge charger SRT8…

• hung out with the kids — i also have several hundred photos of small children (mostly our children) to sort through… i made it to hana’s sports day this year, which was fun… she absolutely streeted them in the sprint event, & i managed to frighten a number of kids from the older classes while hana & i were traversing the child + parent obstacle course…

• now where the hell is he?!? haruki is motoring about the house on his hands & knees like there’s no tomorrow… he’s a happy kid, with the possible exception of those moments when the next spoonful of nutritious baby mush doesn’t arrive at the very instant he’s finished swallowing the previous spoonful… then he gets kinda pissed.

• work — my major project for the year went live on october 1, & went off pretty well, which on the one hand was kinda nice, but on the other hand was kinda “well duh, we do know what we’re doing…” (well, you know, mostly.) it was a good year for the whole extended team i work with. lots of successes collectively & individually.

• the country estate — haven’t spent as much time at the chiba house as i’d hoped we might, what with various work & social commitments keeping us tied up in tokyo, but it’s still nice to know that it’s there when we need it… i’m looking forward to kicking back out there this weekend like you would not believe…

that’s it? you’d think four months would have held more than that… it, uh, seemed much busier as it was happening…?

it’s almost traditional — fight off hangover, round up current number of children, go to shrine… next up this year, rehashing last year’s resolutions… i suspect overwriting the 7 so it looks like an 8 should pretty much do it…

see? not actually dead, for those who might have been wondering…