Kamakura, Ueno, & Nagano, oh my!

Well, it took a while, but we finally found a new baby sitter. Her name is Jenny and she's great. I got her number from a cousin of hers (not sure if they're really cousins) that we used once when we were still staying at Oakwood. We were not overly impressed with Jenny's cousin, but as I said, Jenny's really good so we are looking forward to a few more evenings out between now and the end of our stay.

Our first break from Robbie was on a Friday evening in late January. We went to go see a band, The Presidents of the United States of America, who happened to be playing a show across the street from my office! Unbelievable, eh? They delivered a solid performance, but it was _far_ too short. Now following Phish, String Cheese Incident, Keller Williams, Yonder Mountain String Band, et. al., will definitely spoil you for going to see more hmmm... "focused" acts, but PUSA was a bit ridiculous. They came on at 6:00 and quit at 7:00. Sharp. They disappeared for about 2 minutes, then came back on and did a 23 minute encore.

Yes, that's right, the show was over at 7:25... and the tickets cost about $67 each! Grrr... but putting things in perspective, since all of PUSA's songs are 2-3 around minutes long, we got to hear about 35 songs plus a bit of banter, and their playing really was solid. As an added bonus I suppose, since the show was so short, Sarah and I ended up going out afterward and enjoying some peaceful and quiet time together over cups of Tulley's coffee and ice cream. Yum!

Our next foray into the realm of babysitter was a couple of weeks back when we went to go see Revolutionary Lane... not so much of a date movie as it turns out. However we finished up the night at Outback for some good ol' American food that more than made up for our movie selection.

Hmmm... I guess I haven't really talked about Kamakura, Ueno or Nagano yet. My bad -- instead, here's a gratuitous pic of Robbie:



What you can't see in this picture is that I am also wearing a pair of similarly silly glasses. And yes, that was intentional.

Note the igloo tent in the back ground. We got it at Ikea sometime early this year and Robert is absolutely in love with it. He goes in, tucks himself under a blanket, and looks at books. The tent is sitting on a round rug in front of our living room's window-wall, and it's got a bunch of pillows that he's moved inside as well. I figure Robbie must be naturally predisposed toward appreciating one of my favorite activities: camping. I can not wait until he's old enough to take out into the wild. In the meantime, a buddy of mine from work has just purchased a car and we're looking forward to heading out for day hikes with he and his daughter Kiyera in the spring.

Next time I'll get to Kamakura, Ueno and Nagano, I promise.