gung hay fat choy to you! also, tune in, tokyo! the pan-asian edition

i've decided that when i said this year would be better than last, i meant this year on the chinese calendar. the first month of the roman calendar has been challenging at best, but the tide is turning (at least mental health-wise) for me, so i'm celebrating the chinese new year as the start of new and better things.

but i'm not eating any moon cakes. those things are disgusting.

*****

in the ever-changing plans for our two-pronged escape during hans's birthday, the lastest development is that we're going to tokyo, and then to new york. we had been almost certainly going to puerto rico for the first segment and then london for the shorter second segment. then justin realized it would be ideal timing for seeing the northern lights, so we jettisoned london and added iceland to the itinerary. then we started reconsidering puerto rico, because we were going to see justin's cousin and his partner while we were there (and justin's grandmother might be visiting them while we would be there) and it's getting pretty obvious that i'm pregnant, but justin doesn't want to tell his family about z until after hans's birthday. next came the news that our friend randy was spur of the moment leaving for nagoya for four months for work, and he invited us to come to see him, and to come to tokyo for the weekend to meet us, so that we could sponge off his company-provided hotel for at least a couple of nights. the catch was that the schedule we'd need to meet up with him for the weekend meant missing an extra class (i was already going to miss one for the second segment); if i went to the class i was originally going to miss, the only flight i could make after class was to new york, and it matters, because we want to be wherever we're going to be that weekend by that night, so that we're not traveling the next day, which is hans's birthday. then yesterday we learned that justin's cousin and his partner just broke up, so we're off the hook there. the last hurdle to clear - i have to call my ob in the morning to make sure he's okay with a couple of 13 hour flights; if he's okay with it, then all systems are go.

justin is working on arrangements for a water baby ceremony at a temple in tokyo. that alone would make tokyo an ideal location, but i think it will also be good for both of us to be in a totally foreign place, one neither of us have been in before. my job is to work on tickets for a show in new york. i've got to get busy.

notice to justin: you may not, even once, play "tune in, tokyo!", not before, during, or after we are there. to do so will be to forfeit any chance for hotel love the one night we are alone in tokyo. consider yourself warned.

(if you don't know "tune in, tokyo!", it's a juvenile game, for lack of a better word, in which an immature male turns a woman's breasts like they are radio dials, and says as though he were radioing military messages in ww2, "tune in, tokyo!" really classy and full of humor.)

*****

justin and i had our third heated exchange in as many days on friday afternoon. it's getting a little old. but the end result is that i am telling people i want to tell about z, and he is not. happily, we have not had any more of these exchanges this weekend. i hope we're done with these things. they're tiring.