Spring? What Spring? & Game Log #1

A friend was in Tokyo yesterday.  She's over to Japan for a short visit from Vancouver.  Of course, she sent a photo of cherry blossoms along with her query on when I'd be free for lunch on the weekend.  This is after I had received a photo from my sister of cherry trees in full bloom in Washington state.  I mentioned those cherry blossoms and then added I had seen a few snowflakes drifting down today.  It's early evening now and they're still drifting down but there's a bit of rain too.  As for dinner this evening, it's a meal that would do Yozan-san proud; a modest piece of fish with some string beans.  I ordered an "oo-mori" (extra size) dish of cream mentaiko pasta for lunch so I think I got my day's requirement of carbs there.

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As I now have a desktop computer, I've revisited a few games which ran on my Macbook Pro but tended to send the fans into overdrive.  They don't cause the same issues on the iMac, which has less memory and a slightly older (and slower) CPU than the portable machine, but one has the peculiar habit of crashing.

The one which doesn't crash is the slightly old title, Civilization V.  I don't so much play the game as much as I just fiddle around with it in multiplayer hot seat mode.  It's a fun little time waster but only recently did I notice an odd feature; the Great Wall of China is not a stationary.  The following screen shots demonstrate its every changing shape.

Here it is in one game while in its construction phase;

Here it is a number of turns after its completion.  Note that it has expanded to grab more territory;

And here it is a few hundred years later in game time;

I'm not sure if this is the way it's supposed to work or if it's a strange form of commentary on the real world...

Winter is more or less over...

The continuation being "...depending on where in the northern hemisphere you are".  My sister sent me a photo a few days ago of cherry trees in full bloom in Washington state.  Where I am, that's something we'll see somewhere around the end of April.

This past winter was short and brutish.  We hardly had any snow during the Christmas holidays.  Actually, there was next to none.  Temperatures were cold but not much precipitation.  Then came mid-January.  By the time of the Snow Lantern Festival in early February there was enough to ensure that snow didn't have to be trucked down from the mountains.  Needless to say, I spent many winter nights cuddled up next to my kotatsu.

So what's with the title of this little blog post?  Well it has to do with the following photograph.  I had just paid my March installment on my city taxes and thought I'd take the little path through the back of Nishijo Tenmangu Park...until I was confronted with the fact the path was mostly buried under a meter or so of snow.  To add insult to injury, the snow had melted off the part of the path which goes over a bridge.  I had seen the clear bridge first and had thought to myself, "I'll just take this shortcut", when I noticed there was no easy way of getting to the bridge.  Such is life....