Is That How It Works?

1. Star Trek: The Next Generation is still gnawing away at my brain cells. I'm 22 episodes into the fifth season.

I also happened to read, in the New York Times, a short interview with Oliver Sacks. He says he once visited the set of ST:TNG and met Brent Spiner, the actor who plays the android Data on the show. He told Spiner that Data was an inspirational character for many autistic people. "I don’t think he knew what to make of that," Sacks said.

I also happened to read Jaycee Lee Dugard's recent book, A Stolen Life, about being kidnapped at age 11 and held for eighteen years. In it, she talks about how she had a television set and often watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. Data was her favorite character.

Years ago when I had only a few episodes of ST:TNG under my belt, Data was my favorite character. I found him oddly mesmerizing. Now I find him creepy. His clinical detachment freaks me out a bit.

2. We had an okonomiyaki party at the studio a few nights ago. Kahori, a young woman from Japan, and her husband Aki made okonomiyaki. I made meatballs and brought the fixings for meatball subs, which Aki appreciated very much. (He ate two and took enough fixings for four more home with him.) The okonomiyaki was much appreciated, even by the most apprehensive attendee.

Talking to Kahori makes me miss Japan very much. We often talk about food and cooking, and she is surprised that I can eat a lot of Japanese foods that non-Japanese typically don't like, natto, for example, and yama-imo (sometimes called slimy potato because of its snot-like texture when it's grated).

While googling around for a link to explain okonomiyaki, I came across a page explaining the train system in Tokyo. Ah! I miss Tokyo so much. I miss the trains especially. Strange, no? It's not just the public transportation aspect of it, but even looking at pictures of the ticket machines makes me feel lonely for Japan.

3. I am still handbuilding at the studio. The pace of it has been difficult to settle into. I was a bit afraid that that would happen. Handbuilding is much, much slower than throwing, and it seems after a year of throwing to be glacially slow. It's fine. I'll readjust.

I'm working on calaveras mostly.

This is new work:



4. In three days, I'll be forty years old. I think I should feel it to be some great milestone, but I don't have that feeling at all. Thirty was big, but forty feels...expected maybe? I guess it follows in the progression of years.

Although I was having dinner with LuAnn and Chris and Dave. I asked them the age of their various longest-lived family members and it turns out that, if you go by familial longevity, I was the only one who was middle aged. LuAnn and I are the same age, but her mother is eighty and climbing, so LuAnn may now just now middle aged. Chris's mother just turned 90 so even though Chris is in her forties, she still hasn't even reached middle aged! Dave's grandfather lived to be 99 (died just a few weeks before his 100th birthday), so at 41 Dave is still almost a decade away from being middle-aged.

I don't know of anyone in my family who lived to be eighty, so I'm actually past middle age.