A little of this, a little of that

I guess this will be a hodge podge post since the weekend quietly went by in front of the TV. I half watched the Olympics but I don't get as excited as Tetsu does and the Japanese news focuses on Japanese athletes (of course) and I don't really keep track of who is who. I guess I wouldn't even keep track of who is who if I was watching American TV. Tetsu kept going back and forth between the Olympics and the summer Japanese high school baseball tournament and I finally gave up watching TV since I couldn't figure out what we were watching at all! This is Tetsu's season. His TV viewing habits are hardly worth arguing about so I went and read a book.

Hodge podge.

Look at this cute little "frog" that Takumi gave me. Actually the family that picked him up and took him to their home when he was hitch hiking last week gave it to him to give it to me. When he showed them my blog I had just written about the frogs that were living in my garden and "since your mother likes frogs..." Well, I don't know how much of a frog lover I am but I do think this little guy made of wood chips is very clever and cute. I hope the family will visit my blog again and notice that I really appreciated their care of Takumi and the sweet gift.

Here's a hard to see picture of a wasp nest just steps into the forest from us. One of my neighbors noticed this when she was walking her dog and came to get me to warn me of the dangers lurking behind our house. You can't see from the picture but this is about the size of my head and the wasps are very busy. I don't know what we are going to do about this since it is not our forest and though I've asked around no one seems to know who is responsible for that land. I may make a trip to the police box today and at least report it. The picture is bad because for sure I'm not getting any close to it just to catch a good photo!

And here is something beautiful. My high school student Shiori (she has written for me before on this blog a couple of times about her calligraphy work.) said she was turning this in to be shown at an exhibition next month and it had to be finished this week. She had three more rows to finish. She writes this using a very fine brush and she artistically writes these thousand characters in these tiny blocks on this very beautiful washi, rice paper. Shiori-chan said that she had completed almost half when she made a mistake and had to start all over and she would be staying up all night to finish the last few rows. She tells me this as she spreads it out on the table next to the cold drinks I'd served and shooing away the cats who wanted to see what was so interesting up on the table.

"Shiori! Please put it away! All your work will be ruined if one of the cats knock over a drink or even a drop on the table seeps through!"

And here is a picture of Coo taking a nap in my quilting chair. He looks so happy and I was just getting ready to quilt that wonky house with a kitty in the window!