Safe and Sound in San Antonio

Well, despite our best efforts to stay in Japan, we are now here in San Antonio. I do say that jokingly, as we are enjoying ourselves so far. Mostly, that revolves around hitting all the restaurants that we've missed over the past few years.

We're getting settled in to the new house, slowly but surely. We still have no furniture other than a puff up bed and a couple of trunks that we can sit on, but over the next few weeks will get some more of the essentials, including the household we put into storage before we left the country four years ago. That will be like Christmas, since we have most of our wedding gifts in there. The best part will be the reclamation of my big, brown leather chair. Oh, how I've missed that chair. It's like sitting in a baseball mitt, but doesn't smell like sweat.

We have a small house in the back dubbed the "Cat House" after the cat playground the previous occupants erected inside. That is coming out, as in addition to it being an eyesore, it's a nostril plugging, explosively allergenic experience to go inside. I've been airing the place out for the past few days.

Yesterday was the annual "Pooch Parade" and our neighborhood was briefly infested with dogs of all shapes and sizes. We headed over to watch a bit and then joined it down the street at Mr. Smith's house. Who's Mr. Smith, you ask? Mr. Smith is the world famous toilet seat artist, as featured on Montel Williams and The View. He's a retired master plumber, and a really interesting guy. His garage is lined with thousands of toilet seat lids, each individually decorated with a different theme. And yes, he does have one with a Japan theme, and he's asked us to contribute to it which we'll gladly do.

Hopefully within a month or so, all will settle into some semblance of a routine. We went dog browsing after the parade and found a sweet mutt at the shelter; we're going to wait until we're more established before jumping into pet ownership, and hope she'll still be available. If not, though, there are certainly hundreds of other pets that need adoption. We'll find our perfect pet.

Anyway, as we get more acclimated to our lives here, we'll add more. I've got a couple of posts in the works,