Day in the Life of an Idiot

 Since yesterday was Obon at Como, I thought this morning might be a good time to go collect garbage on my parcel. It was not as bad as I expected in the main areas, but it was dry enough for me to go into the rain garden for the first time and OH MY. I picked up a literal pound and a half of garbage. 

I spent the rest of the time getting to know my area a bit better and discovered some lovely mushroom friends:


Image: Calvatia gigantea, commonly known as the giant puffball. This one was the size and shape of a baseball.

I actually initially thought this giant puffball mushroom WAS a lost baseball as my section of the park abuts a baseball field. I know that puffballs are edible, but I didn't pick this. There's not a lot of life in my little area, so thought I'd leave it for some other adventurous urban forager to discover.  There was a whole colony of much smaller ones in this same area. 

 
Image: A polypore, or shelf mushroom growing on a maple.

A handsome shelf (or bracket) mushroom, probably parasitic, as it seems to be causing the maple to "bleed" a little sap, but it's still a wonderfully strange little plant animal.  Folx that know your fungi better than I do, perhaps you know which KIND of polypore this is?  It doesn't have the right kind of markings to be a "turkey tail," so I'm just not sure.

Growing under the pines was a capped mushroom of some sort, which didn't look quite as friendly as the others to me.  Some mushrooms just look like they might kill you? But, I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, so perhaps I left something quite delicious in the fields.


Image: Scarier looking mushroom friend.

Anyway, it was a good morning to do my volunteer work, since, while the air quality sucked, the weather was okay. It was a cool 70 F/ 21 C this morning. It's supposed to get up to 100 F / 37 C by Wednesday. 

So, yesterday, my family and I went to Obon at Como. Mostly, I go for the food? The cultural part of the cultural festival is much the same every year. There's always a kumi-daiko performance, kyūdō archers, and that one group of crazy "martial artists" who use live katana blades to dramatically slice up wet bamboo rolls. I invariably run into the ONE Japanese guy I know (Shimano-sensei), my old Japanese language instructor, because he's always working the calligraphy booth.  Mason and I are huge fans of kakigōri and takoyaki and this is one of the few places you can get shaved ice (many of the Japanese restaurants in town make the fried octopus balls.)  It was kind of warm yesterday (though not scorching,) so we didn't stay very long? Plus, the crowds were intense and Shawn is immune compromised, so we didn't want to spend too much time rubbing elbows with the crowds (plus, it was hot for her in her mask.) 

As we were leaving the park, Shawn remarked that she only saw a few other people in masks and I said, "I guess we can play the 'spot the immune compromised people! (and possibly their families)' game now." Especially since, even someone like me who might otherwise mask at an indoor event is going without, outside, these days.

They did have VERY CHEAP Japanese language manga magazines for sale, but there was no furigana so there's ZERO hope of me being able to read any of the stories in these yet.


Office You Magazine for sale.

The feature manga title is Do Da Dancin'! which I have found scanlated on a pirate site, if anyone is interested just click on the link. (Or better yet feed the title into your favorite manga reader, since there are sometimes fewer ads and spyware if you go in that way, I've discovered.) At any rate, I'm not a huge shojo reader, so it's fine to have left these behind.

What about you all? How was the weekend for you?