Thoughts
Today was cold and raining again, and seeing as The Wife took the umbrella, I decided I wouldn't go swimming. In retrospect this was a good idea as my brain is still spinning. In the past three days I have slept about 35 hours, and I am feeling a bit better. I go to Gambro tonight to teach my midlevel class. This will be my last week teaching for this year since final exams are coming up the week afterwards. As most of you will know Bush has just recently finished a visit to The Palace. He apparently brought along five of his own chefs. They also apparently made a huge mess out of the gardens. I don't exactly call this headline news, but it is quite amusing. I say amusing because I think our President is reinforcing the "Bad American" stereotype, while so many people are trying to reinforce the "Good American" stereotype. Unfortunately, one bad example is usually enough to remove hundreds of good examples.¹ Perhaps it is more amusing to me since I live in Japan and I feel like I'm so large and clumsy that I destroy everything around me. I know it isn't true, but occasionally I feel that way; when old ladies see me, do a double take and then cross to the other side of the road, that really hurts. Well, hurts in an amusing way, because I know, no matter how hard I try, I will never be a Japanese person, so there is no getting around it.

I'm looking for good books. If anyone that reads this has any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.

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1. The actual ratio of bad examples to good examples is actually 100:20012 or 1:200.12. Actually it isn't. I don't really know the actual ratio of bad to good examples as they relate to stereotypes.