A tawdry update

My trip to Seattle this weekend was excellent. It was good to see konomaigo again, though I should like his health not to pick on him so. I also saw K-san for the first time in quite some while. I was up there for the two of their housewarming and saw many other familiar faces too though long absent. I also got to renew ties in an old friendship and perhaps initiate a new one. All good things. Their house, for the record, is fabulous— it's been a long time since I've fallen in love with a place so, if even I hit my head on their basement's ceiling more in two days than in two weeks of Japan.

I'm discovering that I derive great joy from buildings constructed in such a way as to draw ambiguity between the "inside" and the "out". Their house had many such points, like the crumbling-brick wall in the dining space, the mud room off the kitchen where the birds lived, and at the base of the stairs into that fateful basement. I also noticed this when I visited another new friend's house where they have a breakfast nook that extends like a peninsula from the kitchen and a doorway out into the side yard (from the hallway leading into the kitchen) through which you can look back into the windows of the breakfast nook. And again in an underground cafe in Kyoto that gave the feel of some darkly veranda with green vines battling mortar to hold the walls.

The night afore we headed up, there was a game night which was also great fun. So on the whole I deem the weekend a success. Though is has been painfully long since me and the alluded to object of my desires have talked. Without alluding further, I'm plotting times on the morrow to remedy this. Now, alas, my throat is become sore. I hope it will be nothing lasting.