Diary of a Network Geek

Sushi. That’s what my ex-wife used to call me. “Cold Fish.”

That’s a quote from Blade Runner, my favorite movie, possibly of all time, and it’s about one of my favorite foods; sushi, the most science-fictional food of all when Blade Runner came out. Next week Friday, the new one, Blade Runner 2049, is coming out. But, I’m sharing this today not because of the new release, but rather because yesterday was my fourth anniversary. And, not to my ex-wife, but my new wife. And, not because my blushing bride calls me “cold fish”, but because I proposed to her in a sushi restaurant.

And, what am I sharing?
The Mental Floss Visual Guide to Eating Sushi! They specifically reference “eating sushi in Japan”, but the rules are about the same here in the States, too. Or anywhere, really. Sushi, as it turns out, is sushi. My first sushi experience was in suburban Mississippi, which seemed a very brave thing to eat, considering the location, but sushi, and Japanese culture always seemed so perfectly alien and futuristic to me. I think for a Westerner, it’s the closest we can come to experiencing an alien civilization. Also, sushi was a featured food in all the most futuristic anime I watched as a young adult that it just came to represent the ultimate in exotic experiences.
Anyway, if you have been wanting to try it but a little intimidated by the idea, this guide should help ease your fears.
And, if you’re in Houston, check out Sushi Choo Choo, which is a sushi bar that features a brilliant conveyor belt that’s a very popular feature in Japan.

And come back next week when I babble about something else that may, or may not, relate to Blade Runner!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words!

By the time most of you read this, I’ll be fully irradiated and probed with God-knows-what-kind of rays.

Yes, the joy of being a recovering cancer patient is that the doctors keep close watch on you.  Today, I’m having the second of four scans I’ll get this year.  This time, it’s a PET scan, not a CT scan.  Unlike a CT scan, I don’t have to drink the barium which messes up my digestive tract for days afterward.  Instead, I’ll have an I.V. put in and get injected with a kind of mildly radioactive glucose.  Then, I get to sit quietly and contemplate my sins for an hour while the glow-in-the-dark glucose gets sucked up by my body’s tissues.  Anything that’s more metabolically active than the surrounding tissue will get a higher dose and, therefore, show up more on the scan.  The theory is that a tumor would use more of that glucose and be an easily identifiable dark spot.

And, I have to admit, the geek in me loves to see the results of this.  When I was near the end of treatment, one of my doctors showed me a side-by-side comparison of the before and after PET scans.  It was like something from the Discovery channel.  Two ghostly, skeletal images of me, in basically the same position, rotating in unison on the screen.  One with a tumor the size of a football in my lung, the other with something more like a big lime, or a kiwi.  The difference was quite startling and the pictures themselves were fairly impressive.  Sometimes I wonder at the age of technological marvels in which we live.

In any case, I’ll be fully probed and, hopefully, done by lunch.  My plan is to take my keeper for the day to a decent sushi place for lunch, since I haven’t been able to eat since midnight, the only big downside to the PET scan.  And, for a change, I’ll get the results Monday, not a whole week later, too.  Normally, I have a very long wait to find out what, if anything, they may have discovered floating around in me, so this will be a nice change.
Naturally, I’ll report the results when I get them!