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Wasabi no wabisabi

Wabisabi: a Japanese "aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience."

Wasabi: "a member of the Brassicaceae family, which includes cabbages, horseradish and mustard."

Oz loves wasabi. When we go out for sushi, I have to make sure to get all the wasabi I want from the communal plug right away before Oz snakes the whole thing, him being a "dab of soy sauce in the wasabi" person, rather than the other way around, like a sane person. The sushi is secondary. What he really likes is the sinus hit and the feeling that the top of his head is about to shoot off.

Some years ago I'd heard, though I forget where, that most of the wasabi you get in this country is not wasabi at all, but a concoction of powdered horseradish and green food coloring. We probably haven’t had real wasabi since we went to Japan back in 2000, and even that may not have been the real deal.

I started to wonder, "What does wasabi actually taste like?"

When one has questions, one turns to Google. (Wow, their next April fool's joke should be a 404. The collective shriek would shatter plexiglass.) And so one boring evening a month or so ago, I did a little research and ended up ordering some genuine wasabi as a surprise for Oz.

I bought from Pacific Farms, but there are other sellers out there. (One place sold plants, so you could grow your own. Intriguing! But now I can't find them.) The price of the wasabi isn't so bad, but they kill you on shipping since it has to be overnighted in a cooler.

I had thought that the minimum order of six tubes was kind of excessive, until we went out for sushi this weekend and Oz consumed half a tube. Hah. "Serving size: one teaspoon, number of servings: nine." Right. More like: "Number of servings: two." That's not quite accurate, however, since he'd been taking little hits off the tube already.

So. What does wasabi taste like? Not like anything else, and not really like the reconstituted powdered kind you usually get. Wasabi is hotter and has a flavor, green, vegetal, and rather sweet. Good.

Eat, memory. The flavor reached right into my cerebral cortex and pulled up a complete set of images, tastes, and sounds from a (fabulous) meal at a sushi bar in Tenjin-cho in 1987.

Oz didn't have quite that experience, but he did start asking about the "grow your own" option.

Rain all day

I'm back in Alexandria after a nice long weekend down in Richmond. I could use more time at home. We're all snuggle deprived, Oz, the cats, and me. Weekends are not enough.

I'm still employed. Oz asked me, "Do the other trainees all talk about the day they get fired?"

"Not out loud."

The place I'm working at has pretty high turnover. It's pretty much a coin toss whether any of us will be here in a year. But everyone in my training group has made it through training and next week we're getting thrown to the wolves. We can hardly wait. I'm kind of bummed about moving out of our current office. We have a panoramic view of a landscaped park-like area and the office is toasty warm (or "hot" as the boys call it). The building we're moving to is rumored to be icy cold and we'll be put in offices on interior corridors. No windows. Just greenish fluorescent light, piles of work, and cold feet.

A recent milestone: my first bifocal prescription. Yeah. You'd think that what with the lupus I could be spared the old age stuff, but no. I get all the regular decrepitude in addition to the special decrepitude. Bonus! After hearing about buying glasses online, I'm thinking I'll try it. If the cheap online glasses don't work out, I've got vision insurance to help pay (in theory) for full price glasses. I don't mind skimping on glasses. I wear contact lenses most of the time, so I only wear glasses for about an hour a day. I've been using the same frames since 1991. I think it's time to get some new ones.

Other optics, however, are irresistible. I got a new lens, 20 glorious millimeters of wide angle fun:

Spring is busting out all over. Alexandria, being an extra hundred miles north, seems to be on a two week time lag from Richmond. Which means, I guess, that the pollen isn't going to hit till mid-May. Though I get to experience the pollen twice, I also get to enjoy the cherry blossoms and red buds for twice as long.

Sakura

Spring is here, and that means cherry blossoms!

Peak day, down on the Mall

I've lived most of my life within 100 miles of the Tidal Basin and the cherry trees, but I've never been to see the cherry blossoms. Till this year! I had the wrong date for the festival, but Oz came up and it turned out to be the perfect weekend to see the cherry blossoms. So pink, clouds and clouds of pink. Look how pretty.

29 March was also the day of the kite festival. I didn't know about that either till we heard it on the radio that morning. Kiteless, we went to the Mall and walked among the kite-flyers from the Smithsonian station down to the Washington Monument and the Tidal Basin. Oz had to be satisfied with helping a guy get his kite aloft and giggling at the little kids running around shouting, "A kite! A kite!"

The crowds were immense, but not dense, and very mellow. There must be something about kites and pink flowers …

April fool

When I left for work this morning, a cold dark rain started up as I walked to the bus stop, but tapered off to drizzle on the walk from the bus to my office.

My lunchtime walk around the block was warm and windy. I had to go around the windward side of the fountain by the courthouse or be splashed.

When I left work, a balmy breeze tried to get me to sweating under my raincoat (mind over matter) and I had to wear sunglasses. The sky was sky blue and festooned with high clouds. The young cherry trees in the neighborhood line the streets with lower, pinker clouds. How grand will they be in one hundred years?

My back door and all my windows are open. I ate cold pizza and drank my beer while watching the sun slant through the trees, through the grass, and across the head of the pink flamingo peering in at me.

Today at work we had cake and ice cream. We took a practice test and our pass rate was 100%, much higher than the team next door, to our trainer's delight. In the actual job part of the day, my research took me to the exactly what I was looking for. I read along in the file through the afternoon, ticking off my requirements as I found them, reaching the last one just when it was time to pick up my stuff and head for the bus.

Is this a joke?