I have successfully corrupted Mark just the right amount. He laughs with me at the Mac/PC commercials. We discuss why Apple is better. (God, I love that man.)

The other day, against all better judgment, we finally bought the iMac we had been coveting for the past couple of years - the very computer that caused us to jointly decide to skip birthdays this year, so that we could gift it to eachother on Christmas. It is beautiful.

Even Amaris likes it. (Almost as much as she likes her slippers. And being a nudist.)





Happy Columbus Day! Mark has today and tomorrow off to celebrate Columbus Day. I'm not sure exactly how we are "supposed" to celebrate this holiday, but my goal is to go to "American Village" (which I am pretty sure is Japan's way of making up for us having Chinatown, Little Tokyo, etc back in the 'states.) and explore the pretend American culture. That seems appropriate, right? American Village has a huge slow moving ferris wheel and I am told that if you ride it at night you get a beautiful view of the island.

Yesterday we went to a tug of war festival in Naha and that was pretty cool... Well, from what I could see. Apparently the rope is gigantic and such. But there were so many people that the rope was pretty much unviewable - unless you are Mark, who insisted on grabbing hold of the rope and "helping," later on he climbed on top of it and "rode" it, but I missed that because he was so swept up in the crowd. By the time the rope was the main event, we'd had lunch and Amaris was tired and bored and ready to leave. But up until then we had a fun time exploring the area - lots of shopping and such. We saw Habu Sake for the first time, which was totally creepy, and I literally had nightmares about Habu snakes last night.

No matter, Amaris had a good time hanging with her favorite couple of Cassidys - apparently that is a highly popular name, as two of our friends here in Okinawa have daughters named Cassidy. Amaris enjoys both of them. And she enjoys saying "Cassa-ee!" - so much that whenever one of them is brought up, all we hear about from her is "Cassa-ee!" over and over again until she falls asleep and/or forgets about the mention. So she had a fun time hanging out with them at the tug of war thing yesterday.

And Ronald. And just so you know, that Ronald is NOT in front of a McDonalds (Makoro Donoro's, if you're Okinawan). He was chained to a bench outside of a store that sold all sorts of ethnic novelty foods. Everybody can go ahead and expect MRE-style Taco Rice for Christmas from us this year. Taco rice is the shit. And it is extremely popular in Okinawa. For good reason! They have it packaged like astronaut (or US troop - whichever you are in the mood for) style food packages for sale there. Holy awesomeness.

Clearly from the photos above, I am still in pajamas. I need to remedy that.

But before I do that, please enjoy this photo of the fizzing crazy shrimp cocktail we had with our lunch yesterday at Sam's Anchor Inn.