My (hopefully) one deliberate stop before seeing my family in California is to hang out with my Seattle-based buddy Hiro, who lived with my family as an exchange student and now designs video games for a living. His newest idea is a variation on the game "City of Heroes," where you play as a superhero or supervillain and go on missions. His version is called "City of Hiros," where your character and every other player you meet look like him.

Hiro's a lot of fun, even though the two of us accidentally got on an airplane and was stranded in Alaska for like three days when we met up last summer. So far the only odd thing that's happened is that we met up at the Seattle gum wall; then we went gum shopping and bought like 200 different kinds of gum. I'm resigned to the fact that some ridiculous thing or other will happen when the two of us get together, but as long as I don't end up on a plane, how bad can it be, right?

Now listening to: "Right On" by Marvin Gaye

Photo by le_don via Flickr/Creative Commons