Misono

About Misono

http://danandmisono.com/

Posts by Misono Allen:

Nicknames

By in Pregnancy & Parenthood

Quite a few people have been asking us what we’ve been calling the baby during the pregnancy. Since we won’t even know the gender for at least another month or two, it’s a little early for us to start seriously considering what to eventually name the little one. That said, it feels weird to call him/her “it,” and “baby” sounds too generic. When we first found out I was pregnant, Dan just jokingly referred to it as “zygote” during the early stages. (I know — how geeky, right?)

Since then, however, we’ve been getting weekly pregnancy updates from sites like BabyCenter and TheBump as well as from Kaiser Permanente’s weekly pregnancy e-newsletter, and each give an overview of how the fetus is growing and changing that week, as well as about how large it has gotten in size. The funny thing is that these e-newsletters often use fruits and vegetables as a visual comparison of the size of the developing baby. (You can see an overall timeline here.)  We thought it was cute, and started adopting the fruit/vegetable of the week as the nickname. So the name changes every week, but it’s been fun for us to update the name weekly, and it has also been a helpful reminder of how much our baby has grown. As of Friday, it’s a lemon, at 14 weeks. Last week it was a peach, and before that a plum, and prior to that a lime, and so on….

Our conversations over the past couple of months have regularly included comments like “Has the olive been behaving?” and “The plum looks more like you from the ultrasound.” It made me chuckle the other day to get a text message from Dan saying, “I’m going grocery shopping for you and the peach. What do you guys want to eat?” We know that our nicknaming system is pretty dorky, and we’re not sure how much our unborn baby appreciates it, but we have to find some way to entertain ourselves during these long 9-10 months, right? So there you have it — this week, you can call it “lemon.”

Four Day Weekend!

By in Miscellaneous Musings Tags: , , ,

I didn’t have to go into work today, and since Monday is a holiday, it’s a four day weekend! I’m reveling my extended holiday, since I really needed it! I’ve been particularly exhausted lately and feeling really burnt out at work so this is a very welcome respite. We don’t have any grandiose plans for the weekend — but I’m looking forward to sleeping in every day and getting lots of R&R for two!

This Monday has been traditionally celebrated as Columbus Day, but in recent years, there’s been an effort for a reexamination of the past and the actions of Christopher Columbus. “Indigenous Peoples Day” may seem like a mouthful at first, but it’s worth a moment to Reconsider Columbus Day:

Whatever you decide to call the holiday, hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! 🙂

P.S. Thank you to everyone who extended their love and congratulatory wishes to us with our latest news. We have really been overwhelmed, humbled and touched by the inundation of emails, phone calls, text messages, and Facebook comments/messages over the past week from friends and family members! We can only hope that we’ll meet everyone’s expectations and become good parents. 🙂

We’re Expecting!

By in Milestones, News and Updates, Pregnancy & Parenthood Tags: , , ,

Dan and I have very exciting news to share today — as some of you may already know (or guessed), we’re going to be parents in the spring! The last couple months have been quite a whirlwind for us, and our first pregnancy has been a very exciting (and — not going to lie — at some moments, terrifying) experience thusfar.

We’d been thinking of having a family for a while now, and we’ve been preparing since the beginning of the year to hopefully have a baby by next spring. Our wish came true, and we’re expecting our first baby in early April!

The first trimester has been really rough for me, primarily because it has been so physically taxing — my morning sickness has been constant and unrelenting since the end of the first month, and I’ve been feeling nauseous for virtually every waking hour of the past two months. Keeping up with a rigorous workload and deadlines at work has only added to the exhaustion, and my lack of energy has been exacerbated by the fact that I can’t keep half of my meals down. Dan has been incredibly supportive during this time, and has been cooking all the meals (even packing my lunches!) and handling all the household chores, from dish-washing to laundry to cleaning the chinchilla cage, while I have been incapacitated. (Can we say best husband ever? ♥)

Although the first few months of pregnancy have not been a walk in the park for me, it has definitely been punctuated by some breathtaking moments, such as when we saw the heartbeat on the first ultrasound, and later when we finally got to see little hands and feet!

Here is a a picture from an NT ultrasound I took last Thursday…

Ultrasound at 13 weeks

Closeup of a hand. I was relieved to confirm that it had five fingers - no more, no less.

We have so much to be thankful for in our lives, and we feel really blessed to be welcoming a new addition to our family in half a year! We are especially grateful for all the support and encouragement from our family and friends. Thank you so much for celebrating this new chapter in our lives with us! 🙂

X Japan at the Fox Theater

By in Arts and Culture, Music & Lyrics, Recreational Fun, Videos Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

X Japan at the Fox Theater in Oakland!

Last Tuesday, on September 28th, I had the pleasure of seeing X Japan in concert at the Fox Theater in Oakland. I actually did not start listening to X Japan’s music until after they had disbanded back in 1997, but I’ve always liked their music, especially their powerful ballads, and have respected them as one of the most revolutionary rock bands in Japan. They reunited in 2007, albeit without their guitarist hide who passed away in 1998, and when I heard they were doing a North American tour this fall and that their second stop was Oakland, I had to go! X Japan is a legend in Japan, and their popularity is so huge that it would be impossible to see them in such an intimate venue back in their home country, where they constantly sell out their stadium tours — many of their Japanese fans have flown across the Pacific just so they can see them up close during their tour here in North America.

The concert was opened by a thrash band called Vampires Everywhere whom I neither knew about nor cared about, and X Japan didn’t take the stage until well into an hour after the concert had started, but they put on a performance that was worth the wait!

A huge thank you to Mariko, who got the tickets — we had pretty good seats: front row of the loge area, so we had a great view of the stage from above, so we could still sit and enjoy the concert without getting pushed and shoved by the hardcore fans.

X Japan!
Yoshiki takes the stage.
X Japan - "Jade"
X Japan's first performance was "Jade."
Yoshiki on drums with vocalist Toshi.
Yoshiki on drums with vocalist Toshi.
Yoshiki's piano performance
Yoshiki's piano performance
Yoshiki and Sugizo
Yoshiki on piano and Sugizo (formerly of Luna Sea) on violin.
X Japan!
X Japan at the end of the concert - Pata, Heath, Yoshiki, Toshi, Sugizo. Yoshiki said that hide was performing with them that night, too.
end to an awesome concert.
End to an awesome concert.

The set list was mostly made up of their harder, metal rock songs, punctuated by piano and violin solo interludes by Yoshiki and Sugizo. I was impressed that even though it’s been over a decade since their prime in the ’90s and all the band members are now significantly older, Toshi’s voice was still the same, and the band as a whole put on solid performances. Since I’m partial to their softer ballads, the highlight of the show (for me personally) was towards the end of the concert, when they performed “Endless Rain,” and stopped playing/singing repeatedly to let the audience sing back to them. It was really beautiful.

Here is a personal video I took of the end of the concert, when X Japan was taking photos against the crowd,  and then exited the stage (throwing multiple water bottles into the audience in the process). I was a little disappointed that they didn’t actually sing “Forever Love,” and only ran the recording of it at the end, but it was still a great concert!

In Loving Memory of Kayoko Ishizuka

By in Family and Friends Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

This morning, I learned that my friend Kayoko Ishizuka had passed away over the weekend. Kayoko, known affectionately, as “Kay” by her friends, had transferred to Virginia Tech my freshman year, and although we only spent one year together at the university, I can recall many fond memories with her. She had since gone on to pursue a doctorate degree at the Medical College of Wisconsin and was a postdoctoral student at USF College of Medicine. We had lost touch for years, but had recently reconnected on Facebook a few months ago. Kayo was one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever known, and I’ve always been certain that she was going to accomplish great things for not only herself but also for the world of science, for which she was so passionate.

Kayo was bicycling home from another late night of research at the USF laboratory in Tampa, when she fell victim to a fatal hit-and-run accident at 1:40am Saturday morning. The SUV that hit her was discovered abandoned over the weekend, but the driver is yet to be found and arrested. Kayo’s name was not made public until this morning, when one of our mutual friends who is now interning at USF happened to see her on the local morning news.

I found myself struggling to get a grasp on the whole tragedy today… and have been confronted with a host of emotions — of course, the sadness and heartbreak over Kayo’s death, as well as anger towards the hit-and-run driver — but initially, more than anything, I was stunned at how such a bright mind and spirit could be so quickly snuffed out from this world. I’ve faced a number of situations before in my life where I’ve lost loved ones suddenly and unexpectedly, but every time, it’s a shock that takes weeks and months to come to terms with. Every time, the pain and grief is fresh, raw, and leaves me feeling irreparable and helpless. Every time, I’m confronted by and reminded of the brevity of life, and I still have trouble accepting it.

For now, I want to celebrate Kayo’s life and all the ways she touched people’s lives, including my own. I want to remember her for her brilliant mind, her love of food and cooking, and her quirky, offbeat sense of humor. Reading her blog and her Twitter shows her colorful personality, her appetite for life, and her love of tinkering with and riding bicycles. In the end, I want to remember her for everything that made her uniquely her and how much of a gift it was to have her in our lives, rather than how she was taken away from us.

I will miss you Kayo…

International Street Fair 2002
Virginia Tech International Street Fair 2002

Street Fair with Kayoko
Me with Kayo, April 2002.
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