Not keeping up with anybody on Facebook

I have friends on Facebook, from many former jobs and friends going all the way back to my high school days. My sisters are on there and their friends and so on.

It's an interesting thing to see the world through the peephole that is Facebook. Yet, it makes me both overwhelmed and unhappy. I'm overwhelmed since there's so many people out there and unhappy because I seem to have little interest in developing any relationship with those people. Is it just a factor of time?

It's not a personal slight, I hope. I rarely call my father, (older) sister and I only see my friends maybe once a week.

As we're planning to return to Japan for New Year's, Hitomi was wondering if she'd see her friends. Obviously she hasn't kept up either. We won't be staying with her mother, as she doesn't have a spare futon for us to use. It's kind of sad.

Hitomi and I spent the day together, bicycling from home to Golden Gardens.

An incident: En route to Sunset Park I was honked at angrily by some old guy on 80th NW in Ballard who wanted me to pull over or more room to pass. I caught up to him at the light, got my camera phone out just in case I wanted to call the police, and there he stopped in the middle of the road. The old guy probably wanted a word with me. I decided I didn't really want to talk to a crazy old guy. But as I was "getting away", a nice lady drove by his car and shouted at him to "share the road". It makes me feel better about the world--there's drivers who sympathize with cyclists.

Putting that aside...It was nice to stroll the beach at Golden Gardens. I don't know why, but there's lots of cyclists that come to the north beach and hang out on the benches. Hitomi took a few pictures. Wind was from the north and a lot of sailors were out in the sun and chop. I picked up a strange looking piece of driftwood floating in the waves. I put it back in the water not sure why I picked it up at all.

As per usual, Ballard's farmer's market was wrapping up just as we arrived. It was late in the day to find lunch, but we had breakfast late. I haven't really kept to a consistent schedule since daylight savings ended. There's a bar called "King's Hardware" which opened up in the old Ballard Hardware building. It has a early-eighties, blue-collar dinginess to it which I like, yet its menu and beer selection is surprisingly gourmet; Hitomi likes the sweet potato fries. But to try to be true its image, they have Hamm's for only $2 during happy hour and "tall boy" Rainer beers.

Returning home, we stopped by the Dutch Bike Company, which is near the public boat launch on the ship canal. From its doors you can see people trailering in their powerboats. They sell Dutch Bicycles, which would work really well if you were communiting near a canal, but it would be a feat to climb any of the hills of Seattle, even with the internal geared hubs. Hitomi bought a colorful Dutch shopping bag that hooks on to her rack. Everything fashionbly Dutch or German seems overly cheery. They had some German lights I was interested in installing on my road bike and Hitomi's and I suppose I will once we get some wheels built.

I plan to get some Shimano dynamo hubs in Japan, the newest model they do not yet sell in the U.S., probably due to the low dollar or bigger demand from Europe. Plus a lot of pornographic comic books -- I already have a list! -- and possibly videos. And we're actually going to be going to Comike as well. I imagine I'll get a stack of dojinshi again. I'm not sure what customs might think.

And tonight I watched Code Geass, an excellent anime series. I haven't been this impressed at an anime in such a long time. The character designs, animation, style was great and the story was top quality. I'm actually thinking of buying the DVD... I haven't bought any anime DVDs in some time, either. Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2nd series has been great as well ...

And speaking of videos, we watched Kisaragi. Thank god it was subtitled at least in Japanese, since I might have had a hard time of it. I felt like all the Gyakuten Saibain I played on the DS has helped my vocabulary when it comes to murder trials, which was great for this "whodunnit" movie.