So Thursday night I got an excellent last-minute invitation to the Japanese Lantern Festival, at the Forest Hills cemetary in Jamaica Plain... It was a great mellow evening with me and cthulhia... I put out a lantern for my paternal grandparents, Ray Charles, and Jerry Goldsmith. It was the first time I'd thought about the grandparents in a while; I still don't have a lot of connection to any of my family besides my parents. :-/

I did silently thank them for watching over me though. I wonder if that's weird or inconsistent, but the amazingness of my life has to have come from somewhere, right? Hmm.

Anyway, I gots photos.


That's my lantern on the left, with the sunset sketch for the grandparents, and a pair of sunglasses for Ray Charles. On the right is cthulhia's... she drew some great koi for her remembrances.


The lanterns tended to clump up, as the wind was shifting directions in its gentle push. It was a pretty good night for it, by the weather's reckoning, anyway.


Some flowers by the side of the pond, with the lanterns in the background. I actually took one photo with the flash, and one without, and put them together digitally.

Afterwards, the drive home was fun too; low on gas, getting lost in JP, ending up getting on 93 down by the Blue Hills... Twice there I recognized where we were from some odd sense of familiarity ("If we see a bowling alley up here on the right, we're where I think we are, and we're going the wrong way"). To Davis, to Diesel, to sitting and sipping among the statuary, and then home well past my bedtime.

All-in-all, a fun way to turn a day great.