Tag: postaday

Gaming Fun

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"Furball with Feet" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.6, 1/60 sec, ISO3200
 “Furball with Feet” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！How’s it going?

In my last post, I mentioned that my computer got a refresh with a fast new startup disk. Because I installed a clean system, I didn’t have any of my old games on it, so I installed a couple of my favorites. However, I stumbled upon a card-type game by Blizzard called “Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft” and it looked pretty fun, so I installed it and have been playing the single-player game.

Several years ago, my friend was really into the World of Warcraft card game, and a bunch of us bought different decks and played on the weekends. It was a good time! Well, Hearthstone is pretty similar but since it’s all computer-based, you don’t have to keep track of things like health or mana points. Plus I think there are more kinds of classes and cards, although I cannot be sure since I am just a beginner.

Here’s a screenshot of the deck-building screen:

capture

And some of the gameplay:

It’s easy to learn and quite fun, so it’s a nice way to spend a half-hour or so. If you have a chance to play (it’s free), I say give it a try!

Today’s photo is of our cat, Yuzu, taking her afternoon nap on our sofa. She looks so comfy, doesn’t she?

Hope you had a nice Friday!

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

Cold Weather Food

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"Oden" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/100 sec, ISO2000
 “Oden” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！How’s it going?

Today the rain arrived and the temperatures dropped a bit. As the days get cooler, three Japanese dishes come to mind: Curry, Nabe, and Oden. We had the last one this evening, and it was delicious!

Oden is hard to describe to Westerners. It’s kind of a bunch of different things that are kept warm in a yummy broth, then served in a bowl. Typical items found in oden are sausage, hard-boiled egg, tofu, daikon, konyaku, fishcake, and potato. We like to serve it with some hot mustard on the side for some heat. And of course white rice. 🍚 You just pick what you want out of the pot and enjoy!

Oden is popular in the wintertime, and you can even find it in convenience stores in Japan, sort of like how there are hot dogs and burritos in a 7-11 here in the States. I’ve only gotten oden at a Japanese convenience store once, but I remember that it was pretty good.

Of course, our home-cooked oden is the best! Another wonderful comfort food to enjoy with family. If you have the chance to try it, please do.

On a completely different note, the system drive in my desktop computer 🖥 died this past weekend, so I replaced it with an SSD unit. I must say, it’s super-fast compared to the old HDD 💽! The boot-time is down to just several seconds… it’s one of the best “upgrades” I made to this computer, which is now over four years old, but running fast once again.

I have a second, larger hard drive in this computer to store all my data on (which I keep backups of), so I didn’t lose anything important. However, one thing that I did lose was my collection of Lightroom Presets that I collected and created. There were several that I used often, but luckily I was able to recreate them using History panel, which kept a record of past changes to edited images. (I keep my Lightroom catalog on the data drive, so it was backed up) I guess I need to add the Presets folder to my backup profile. 😃

I hope you had a nice Thursday!

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

Home cooking

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"Mapo Tofu" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/100 sec, ISO1250
 “Mapo Tofu” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！Hi, how’s it going?

Tonight’s photo is of the bowl of mapo tofu that I had for dinner. Mariko made this yummy and spicy dish from scratch, although you can buy the mapo (or mabo) sauce already prepared. It’s one of my favorite dishes.

Here in the States, many would call this type of food a “rice bowl”, meaning, a bowl filled with rice with some kind of topping. In Japan, there’s a similar type of food called “donburi” and it is just about my favorite. In particular, I love oyako-don, which is chicken and egg over rice, but I also love gyu-don (sliced beef over rice), katsu-don (pork cutlet over rice), and una-don (Unagi/eel over rice).

You could say this is a Japanese comfort food, because it is very commonly made at home. In fact, for my birthday dinner each year, I request oyakodon from Mariko, and she thinks it is a strange request because it isn’t very special. But it’s my favorite! Yummmm.

If you live in a city that has Yoshinoya, I urge you to go try one of the “beef bowls” (gyu-don). It’s so good!

I hope you ate well tonight, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

Halloween

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"Glowing Glasses" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/20 sec, ISO3200
 “Glowing Glasses” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！How’s it going?

Tonight was Halloween 🎃 and we celebrated by dressing up, having a couple of friends over, eating good food, drinking lots of wine, and handing out candy 🍬 to the neighborhood kids.

I was wondering how many trick-or-treaters would knock on the door, and was pleasantly surprised that we had so many! I’d guess that about 50-60 kids stopped by for candy, maybe more. There was one group that came by at around 6:30 which maybe had 20 or so! They were lined up all along our walkway. It was amazing!

Our friends who joined us this evening live in an older neighborhood that doesn’t have many trick-or-treaters. All the kids have grown up. So they enjoyed handing out candy tonight at our house. Lots of fun!

"Cowgirl" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/25 sec, ISO3200
 “Cowgirl” Cedar Park, 2016

As you can see, we even dressed Lani up in her cowgirl costume. It was a bit tight on her, and when she was wearing it she was pretty much paralyzed so we were able to get some good photos of her before we took the costume off.

By the way, I was dressed up like a prisoner, while our friends were dressed similarly as thieves. It was a coincidence that we were all alike. 😊

I hope you had a nice Halloween!

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

At our friends’

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"Chicken Pen" Austin, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/120 sec, ISO400
 “Chicken Pen” Austin, 2016

こんばんは！Hello, howzit?

Today we went to our friends’ house for a dinner party. As always, we enjoyed delicious food and drink and had a great time chatting with friends. It was cool to hang out in their backyard because not only was the weather perfect, but they have an awesome “Austin-style” yard with chickens, garden beds, and a sweet barbeque grill! And the mosquito coils were burning, so there was a nice natsukashii scent in the air.

"Cutey" Austin, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/100 sec, ISO640
 “Cutey” Austin, 2016

At one point in the evening, a friend had us sample some Chile Piquin (Chile del Monte) that his father grew in his garden. The peppers were very hot! 🔥 I love spicy foods, and I would rate these as a 6 on the spicy level (1-10). Good heat, and it lasted for a while – maybe 10 minutes. I had never tasted this type of pepper before, but it is definitely on my list of peppers to grow for next Spring.

"Local Brew" Austin, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/140 sec, ISO400
 “Local Brew” Austin, 2016

Of course we needed something cold to drink, so plenty of local Austin beer was drunk. Hey, it was a party after all! 🍻

I hope you had a nice weekend.

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

Deck Tomatoes

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"Deck Tomatoes" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.5, 1/40 sec, ISO3200
 “Deck Tomatoes” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！How’s it going?

Today’s photo is of some cherry tomatoes 🍅 that we grew on our backyard deck. Every spring we plant tomatoes and peppers 🌶 in our garden, but this year we also filled a couple of large pots with soil and grew a tomato plant and a jalapeño plant. The plants flourished and we harvested lots of goodies! Especially the peppers.

We have a pretty good-sized yard, with three container gardens into which we plant other veggies and herbs, but they are somewhat inconvenient because there are so many mosquitos flying around. I usually have to put on long pants and long sleeves (jacket) and frantically gather peppers while doing a little dance to keep the mosquitos away. It’s terrifying to be leaning in, cutting peppers and hearing multiple mosquitos buzzing around my ears!

So, we’ve been enjoying having the container plants on the deck. The deck is about 10 feet above the ground, so there are a lot less mosquitos, and it’s only a few feet away from the back door, so cutting some jalapeños or gathering tomatoes just takes a few seconds. I can monitor how dry the soil gets from the comfort of our breakfast room and watering them is as easy as dumping a jug of water in each pot. Also I can enjoy watching the peppers grow and ripen day by day. 😊

"Easy Access" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/6.4, 1/100 sec, ISO3200
 “Easy Access” Cedar Park, 2016

Next year I think we’ll plant more on the deck. I love spicy 🔥 food, so having fresh hot peppers at-the-ready is awesome!

I hope you had a nice day, and see you tomorrow!

おやすみなさい！ – B Barron Fujimoto