Been trying to troubleshoot a microsub issue on my site and have come to the conclusion it has nothing to do with my site..

I’ve subscribed to a bunch of feeds and created channels in aperture (https://aperture.p3k.io ) and the feeds FROM my site appear in monocle/indigenous but none of the other feeds at all are being retrieved by readers.. aperture shows that there are entries for various sources but nothing is showing up..

I guess something needs restarted somewhere.. but it’s not my issue (I think)

On the way home from nursery today my 3 y.o. asked “Papa, when will I get homework?”

There are times that I don’t see me in my daughter (very rare times) - most notably when she is eating and enjoying natto.. but times like these are re-affirming.

I responded, “not normally until you start school which isn’t until you are 7 y.o. in Japan. Why do you ask? Do you want homework?”

She replied in the affirmative so I’ll have a new task as homework setter once we’ve moved.. she then said she’d need a toy computer to do the homework..

So I told her I’ll make her a real computer when we move to Japan.. which made her very happy.. awww a wee geek bud is starting to grow.

Walking home from another miniature disaster yesterday and was thinking more on writing when in Japan. I’m unlikely to nab a writing side-gig without any portfolio of sorts.. so I’ll probably create a new blog to document my upcoming experience on the rural rejuvenation programme.

I thought of resuscitating my previous Japan related blog (Bushido Dreams) but that was a different time, focussing mainly around my exchange year in Okayama. I’ll still pop random Japan related posts there but for the journalling of our new lives I think a new blog is best.

.. anyway, as I was walking home the name of said blog popped into my head.. it merits explanation (so that you find it just as hilarious-ish as I).. The programme name (地域お越し協力隊) in Roman characters would be something like ‘chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai’ .. so.. the blog name will be ..

Drumroll

.. The KyōryokuTimes

.. BOOM!

.. no I will not get my jacket, I am absurdly pleases with this name.

After hours on the phone queue and a looooong chat with JAL, they were super helpful, and provisionally booked flights.. they mentioned that the kennel size for the dog was a little too big for the domestic leg in Japan so we’d need to get a smaller kennel.. her only query was what size was permissible for the first flight (Edinburgh to Heathrow, operated by British Airways).. so we called BA and they basically can’t transport any medium or larger dogs from Scotland to Heathrow.. FFS

So now we’re having to try and work out how to transport all of our luggage, a dog, a toddler and newborn to fucking London.. uggghh!

Hopefully by the end of the day we’ll have the required documents for our daughter’s registration into the Japanese family records expressly making their way to Japan.

It would be nice to have a little more clarity on how we and our dog are actually getting to Japan too, after KLM fucked us over.

The heat in this maternity room is turning my baby girl into some sort of super heater and no amount of red bull is able to fend off the rush of tiredness.. less than an hour until I’m ejected .. I hope I make it home before I pass out as the bushes around here look a little spiky..

As of about 2 hours ago our second daughter entered into the world! She is a little smaller than her big sister was but is ravenously feeding so that won’t last long. Mother and baby are both well and Papa is delighted!

Oh joy, my single purpose FB account seems to have made its way to the recommendations feeds of friends and family so I now have a steady stream of invites to reject.. I guess no-one reads profiles nowadays.

I need to focus on very regular updates to my site once we’re in Japan and maybe try to improve it’s discoverability.. not that I expect many friends will look at my site rather than perpetually send invites to an account which explicitly requests no invites, but it’ll be nice to make it more active just in case.

After a short bidding war between the first two viewers of our house, we’ve accepted a verbal offer. House went on the market on Thursday morning and hopefully we’ll have the written offer on Monday or Tuesday.

Still awaiting the arrival of our new baby, I was pretty sure she would arrive before we received an offer on the house.

First house viewings today! I really hope we get a quick offer as cleaning this big house with a 39 week pregnant wife is tough!

Thankfully, this should be the first and last house we sell. Next house is a rental then after that we’re hopefully building the last house we’ll ever live in.