ilai

Friday night I attended what was ostensibly

lokiect's liberation party. But I was none the wiser until a cake came out of the kitchen bearing a number that curiously matched my current age. As I haven't had practice blowing out candles for about twenty years (surely that must be it), it took me three tries to extinguish the symbol of my steady creep toward senility. Then I mutilated and meted out the chocolate decadence, and we fraternized into the night with lambic and other celebratory inebriants.

lokiect and I led karate practice after I did some grocery shopping Saturday.

arkadiatri,

davidglasser, and

lotal wanted to do some group work, so we did some kiai, turning, and group kata exercises. We had our post-practice lunch in front of sunny W20, and afterwards

lokiect and I retired to

arkadiatri's apartment to finish up the last six episodes of Escaflowne. This morphed into an evening of screening anime music videos, which were both impressive and disturbing at the same time. In fact so disturbing that

lokiect and I had to walk home to clear our heads.... ;-)

Sunday my brother and I met up with my cousin Y, who was visiting Boston for SIGGRAPH and wanted to hang out. We made sure he had a good look at the interior of the Stata Center (without breaking any rules of course), and spent a couple of hours admiring the exhibitions in the MIT Museum. Robots and holograms and gadgets oh my! I introduced my bro and coz (yes that's a real word) to Korean barbecue, and took them around the stores in Downtown Crossing so Y could get souvenirs for his girlfriend and family. Alas, there was nothing to be found, not in Filene's Basement, not in Macy's... except for some Miyazaki soundtracks in Strawberries. My cousin was going to join his classmates for last-minute shopping at the Galleria, so we parted ways, and I enjoyed an evening of (shod) cooking and cleaning.