Tonight’s sunset, particularly when viewed from the ballpark, was particularly amazing. We all felt lucky just to be there.

I decided at some past Olympics that it seemed only fitting to celebrate Opening and Closing Ceremonies with a nod to the host nation.

With this year’s Olympics being held in Tokyo, that means Japanese, and D.C. did not leave me hanging. About eight blocks away from the Burrow is Hana Market, a tiny Japanese grocery (and one-time tourism agency). After work let out, I wandered over to pick up snacks to eat during tonight’s broadcast. While I have been to Hana before, it’s either been to pick up a specific ingredient or to buy a mochi to snack on. This time I took a less strategic approach and just picked up things that looked interesting.

I came home with a bag of supplies, including:

Peach caramel corn pops, seasoned seaweed, coffee-flavored black sesame candy (I missed the fact that they were coffee), matcha Kit Kats, chocolate stumps, roasted bean snacks, and chestnut mochi served as appetizers.

Mango creamy soda, which contains 0% juice, but does contain milk. I’d buy it again.

We paused in our corner-store delights to have some actual dinner, picked up from the nearby Japanese restaurant, Sakana, that we’d never been to. Rudi ordered a roll and a sushi bento. While I considered an entree, I’ve rarely been to a Japanese restaurant that offered an entire section of vegetarian sushi/maki, and that won out in the end:

The roll at the top is tempura vegetables. The one on the right is ume shiso, or pickled plum. The one at the bottom left is kanpyo, or dried gourd. All three were delicious.

And then for dessert, Rudi and I split these two red bean paste mochis, a favorite of mine.

That’s a pretty good feast, wouldn’t you say?

Rudi and I ran some errands this afternoon. While we were out, we ended up in Petworth and opted to stop by Lulabelle’s Sweet Shop for some ice cream.

I had blueberry jasmine and Rudi had key lime pie, and they were both every bit as good as you’d expect ice cream to be on a hot July evening.

I got in the car this afternoon, intending to drive out to the library in Arlington. While I did reach Arlington, I did not make it to the library, instead finding my way to an entirely different county.

I have long argued that the highways in Virginia behave rather like some of the staircases in the Harry Potter series. You may get on a road that you’ve taken to the library any number of times, but that doesn’t mean it’s where it leads today. Tomorrow I could take that same route past the old bike shop and it will deposit me at the library without issue. But today, it chose not to. Sometimes it happens on the way back from the airport, which is in an entirely different section of Arlington. If I come back from the nearby farms with Sarah (which would be the only reason I’d take that route), if I am driving, it will send us further into Virginia, rather than back over the river to D.C. where we were headed.

It’s inconvenient, but no longer surprising. I mean to me, of course. Other people routinely seem surprised that I can’t get the four miles down a road and over a river without an unplanned detour after living in the same place for nearly two decades, but they seem to believe this remains in my control.

I’ve just learned to recognize when I have bypassed where I needed to go and look for the next place to reroute the car. I can always get either where I wanted to go or to someplace I recognize; sometimes it just takes a bit.

Yes, I know there are such things as phones and apps and gps. And if it’s super important to reach a destination in a timely fashion, I will employ such muggle technologies (or direct another party to drive). Otherwise, it’s best just to embrace the ride.