One of Piroko’s favorite comics is _Beck_, the story of a small-time rock band from Japan making it big. Apparently at some point some characters end up in Seattle, and they visit this statue of Jimi Hendrix. Roko has never heard a Hendrix song in her life, but she insisted that we come visit the site, so Stefan (who we’ve been dragging around the city with us these days) brought us to see it. Meanwhile, I’ve been working, reading comics, collaborating with Jules on Project Soft Landing, and trying to enjoy my time with Roko before she has to split back to Japan for real. I should mention this. Apparently because of some visa limitation crappiness, if she doesn’t get work within the next couple of weeks, she’ll have missed her chance to get a working visa at all, and she’ll have to go back to Japan. This truly sucks, and I have a feeling the complete suckitude of it has yet to even occur to us. The good part is that it’ll be easy for her to get work and build up experience and savings so that she can come back and marry me in a couple of years. The really, really bad part is that we’d likely see each other for a total of like three weeks over the next three years. Uh, I’m 23 now. Max old.

One Saturday afternoon, Hiroko and I ended up running into my coworker Stefan at the [Tom Bihn][1] shop downtown, where I’d recommended he look for a new backpack. The three of us ended up spending the whole day together. We wandered around downtown, checked out the malls, and had lunch in this food court where I found these young gentlemen and their friend. That night we went to the midnight showing of the director’s cut of _Donnie Darko_, which I knew absolutely nothing about before entering the theater. It was one of the better movies I’ve seen, and considering what I’ve heard about the original, I feel lucky to have seen the director’s cut first. This movie has my recommendation, for whatever that’s worth. Work is awesome, but I probably shouldn’t talk much about what goes on there. I suppose that’s why I haven’t posted a lot lately; work is most of my life now, and I can’t really write about or photograph work. Hopefully I’ll get out and photograph more ridiculous crap soon. [1]: http://www.tombihn.com