Archived Smirk

Saturday afternoon, we decided that it was time to head down to Body Manipulations and get our ear-pierces stretched. For those of you not initiated into real piercing, when you get a normal ear piercing, it's at about an 18 gauge (really small hole&#41. The problem with these small ear piercings is that they rip your ears because an 18 gauge wire is about the thickness of a cheese slicing wire (hence the practice among the pierced of calling those done-in-the-mall piercings "cheese slicers"&#41, and that there's really not anything interesting that you can put in them. Once you hit 8 gauge, you can stick all sorts of neat things into your ear: eyelets, lucite or glass plugs, wood or bamboo plugs, and claws or talons. So, over the last year or so, Janet and I have been stretching the hole(s&#41 in our ears. On Saturday, we planned to stretch up to a 6 gauge. So after waiting almost 30 minutes in line because all of the new students in town this weekend, and dropping down over $150 in new jewelry, we went in for the stretch. The process of stretching is simple. The piercer sticks a cone shaped taper into your ear until it stretches to the appropriate size, and then inserts the new jewelry. I am now sporting a small-diameter circular barbell, and Janet has two new talons dangling from her ear.
After we finished with the stretching, we decided to try a new sushi place that opened up down the street… Warakubune. It's the first time we've ever been to one of those sushi-boat places, and I have to say that it was quite fun. Hiroshi, the head chef selected his fish well… and the squid was out of this world. The concept of a sushi-boat place is like going to dim sum: if you see something that you like coming by, you grab it. When you're done eating, they count the plates to determine the bill. The fish was good, the atmosphere was nice, the chef was friendly, and we'll certainly be going back to Warakubune sometime soon.