Time to hang a new calendar

I celebrated - so far - my New Year with the monthly Eradication of The Skunk Stripe, a couple loads of laundry, scritches for Denali (the puppy downstairs), "Arsenic and Old Lace," hand sewing, a respectable pastrami and Swiss on rye with Dijon mustard from Dimitra's, some laughs courtesy of an email exchange with JAF* (who is ludicrously happy about his new duds and tends to crack me up by his turns of phrase in any event), "Animal Crackers," "Monkey Business," more hand sewing, "The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail," a glass of Barefoot Bubbly and some angel hair pasta, "Sanshiro Sugata," a slice of chocolate layer cake, and the news that Katayama-dono and Lady Jane are going to be in San Francisco next week and do I want to meet them for dinner in Japantown?

The early Kurosawa boxed set is interesting. "Tiger's Tail" was wonderful. "Sanshiro," less so, but still worth seeing as Kurosawa's first directorial outing, and containing a very sweet scene in which the hero encounters a sweet young thing in the rain who is struggling with a broken geta thong. There's still the Sanshiro sequel and "The Most Beautiful" to look at.

No more hand sewing tonight. My hands are done. For now.