Blaaarrgh!

All in the name of higher education

2007-09-26T23:00:00.000+09:00

I just signed up for Facebook. To explain folk groups. Seriously.

>_<;

Rainin' an' pourin'

2007-08-06T22:57:00.000+09:00

So... after working for four days on the application letter to beat all application letters... after we arrived home last night, the laptop wouldn't start. No power will move to anything. This... is very unfortunate. We will get the data back, but not until Wednesday. Ah, a nice relaxing weekend shattering around me like a dream upon waking. We are crossing our fingers that the Mac can actually be repaired--it could be one of three cheap things to fix, potentially.

Update: After spending every moment practically since rising being really annoyed and grumpy, for some reason chatting on the phone with my mother-in-law and eating chocolate almond chocolate chip ice cream while doing so has improved my mood immensely. Task: letter, creatively revived somehow from the sleepy brain that produced it in the first place. Yossha.

Reflections

2007-07-22T12:26:00.000+09:00

It was with a curious sense of heaviness in my chest, a kind of tightness, breathlessness, that I left the house today to go do some shopping. The utterly mundane—groceries. We eat pizza now at least weekly. It’s funny. Ironic. Frozen ones cost only half, even a third of the delivery price.

I caught myself wandering in my head, down the side street near our apartment with the temple whose bells used to sound so regularly, a gentle reminder of the time on the days when I refused to get up, sleeping in as late as I could, lounging persistently under the sheets until the futon refused to give me any more comfort.

And I realized something—I don’t wander much these days searching for hidden treasures, out of the way shops, or ancient shrines closeted secretly between a side alley and a beauty parlor. Part of it is of course due to the baby, and her rigid schedule—one cannot wander for hours, when a gap of an hour and a half is all that is allowed in leaving the house, and returning back to the quiet of the nursery again. One cannot wander freely when there are so many needs to be continually considered. One cannot indulge quiet reflection while gazing upon the passing scenery, while simultaneously checking to see that the baby has not dropped her juice, or if the sun is not too bright in her eyes. But perhaps the number one uncontrollable factor is simply that my own feet will not carry me so far—if there are wonders to be found, they are stretched out sparsely through houses that have been stretched as far apart as possible— wandering requires a car.

I find this to be a great disappointment. We lived four years relying on public transportation between cities, and either walked or rode our mama-charis for everything else. And after the first winter, skidding around on the snow, I largely gave up the mamachari for my own secure feet. Walking draws out the details, gives one an intimacy with the streets, its hidden corners, its shady groves, its mysterious grottoes.

For a time, I tell myself. For a time will I be constrained to this inactivity, this secludedness. But I am afraid, so terribly afraid that I have lost my vision, lost my feet.

I go out with a group of people I have never met before, and my husband, tired from a long day, stays home with the baby. We eat, we laugh, we go get coffee. The mood is relaxed, unhurried, unfettered by foolish things like schedules and responsibilities. For a moment, I remember what my life used to be. I recall life lived with an ability for impromptu adventure. But I have parked in a place with time limits. How very aware of me, to provide myself the means of escape should company become tiresome. It didn’t, though as I drove home, listening to a favorite song over and over again, I was struck by how very different my current circumstances are from my previous company.

In ten years, will I regard what I have written here now as infantile as I consider the things I wrote and did ten years ago now to be? Can I even acknowledge the immature past as a source of anything except lessons learned, and thank-god-they-are-done-with-now? And what of this present moment? It feels real enough, this yearning for mystery, and the persistent niggle that perhaps I should do more to reflect on the work that I swore to finish by summer’s end, and less time shielding myself from this state by creatively fantasizing. I like to think that’s how I charge my batteries. Maybe it is simply how I channel frustration.

So, I went shopping, and I did buy frozen pizzas. I also bought condoms, and felt my cheeks burn—as if somehow a person who has already borne a child has to be secretive about such things! But I spotted something in the deli, and with a sudden lightness, I had discovered a little something delightful. The tension fled. Afterward, with as little effort as opening a door, I got a video card at the movie rental place. I hardly even had to think; had I been putting it off so long for fear of miscommunication?

Good for grilling, it said. Not this time. My discovery turned into sashimi. And it was very, very good. And we watched a real movie, curled up on the couch together. It was a small, but somehow very satisfying deviation from the dull routine.

Handouzan still mocks me for my hesitance, the Yasugawa is listening to me sing the Anchor Song, and Sawayama draws me like a lure. They are far from me now, and at times, achingly so. The nighttime ride past Hikone-jo, changing with the seasons, I fly on the bicycle beneath me, and the lights on the dark water are magic; the trees wrap the place up and it is open to my imagination. I cannot forget these things. I will not.

But tomorrow, I may take up wandering again.

WHEW!

2007-04-01T02:47:00.000+09:00

The last few weeks have been very stressful, especially as we had no idea how the bills were going to get paid over the summer, and of course, the tightrope-walking anxiety about funding.

But yesterday, Security Husband landed a full time summer job, with potential extending into the school year. This week, he was told in passing that he is one of the students in most high demand to be an AI in the department. (He goes to VA week after next to defend the thesis. At last!! Wish him luck!)

That left me feeling a wee bit useless, but I received a letter today--I am an alternate for AIing in the fall, so that may pan out (as I know someone who will not be able to accept her AIship). Woohoo! I'm not so useless after all! It looks like I will also be taking Japanese in the fall, possibly, depending on the test, landing in the translation and reading course. Heaven help me. Language was supposed to be my "easy" course! >_<;!

And as of a few minutes ago, I have submitted my abstracts to present in the fall at the American Folklore Society annual meeting in Quebec (city), as part of a panel on children's folklore. I am breathless with excitement, like I have done something incredibly daring and foolhardy. Now I have to figure out funding to get me up there.

This means mega-planning for next semester, though I intend to do some gardening this summer, and taste the joys of full time child-care. Hanging out with baby will be more and more fun--she is almost crawling now.And I might have a reading list I can get through! I can scarcely fathom such things. Maybe we can even get baby into a normal schedule so she will sleep at regular times. Ideally, we can figure out day-care things, too.

But first, these other papers and research must get finished. Three weeks and counting??? Help!!!

But if I COULD, I would.

2007-03-08T14:19:00.000+09:00

Further questions... because I can't very well add them to the essay that now walks as undead among us... Q. To what extent does cross-cultural comparison figure into non-academic discourse? Is it used responsibly? Q.What affect do the theories and uses of CCC in academic discourse affect non-academic discourse and popular approaches to comparison? Q. Would it be correct to say that CCC is most often used to deleterious ends as opposed to positive ones? Q. Could Lévi-Strauss’s formula be taken and used to prove that myths expand spiral-wise in a Fibonacci Sequence?

Confessional

2007-03-03T14:03:00.000+09:00

Obviously, perhaps, I switched my name back to something vaguely not mine. Yes, anyone with a care will find out who I am. Do I fear to write things I fear may be watched? Well... yes, to a certain degree. For example, there can be no sharing with you all out and abroad about opinions I may have about class, and I already edit out quite a lot so I don't just use this place as a public soapbox for whining.

But sometimes I wonder how dishonest it is not to let you all know out there, those of you who are reading this to stay actually informed about us, that sometimes stuff is tough, and there is nothing I want more than a patient ear to hear me go off on one.

Lately, things have been busy, and stressful, and difficult. In some ways, I feel like I hardly have room to whine. I have people I know who are balancing what seems like a ridiculous amount of work, and I feel almost ashamed for wanting to cry and whine about how hard my life is. I struggle with a lot of resentment for people who don't seem to get how time-consuming parenting is. Especially since baby isn't the type to just go down for the night. Especially when we don't have baby in daycare, and likely won't until she hits a year. How an hour or two a day is hardly time enough for getting work done. How I am actually a really damn good student, a good researcher... if only I have the time to do it. When I have an hour to sort my thoughts, I feel like I regain some of my sanity, my enthusiasm for my subject matter... I wanted very strongly last semester to not have any exceptions made for me. I got all my work in on time, no begging for extensions. (Straight As, for what it matters in grad school.) I am trying to maintain the same attitude this semester, largely because I feel like I have fewer excuses.

But it doesn't stop me from getting really frustrated. Whether it is giving my all for a class I am not taking for credit and getting my feelings hurt over teacher favoritism, or wanting to scream at my time limitations--how can I bloody research a seminar paper if I have virtually no time to go the library? ...No one ever promised me this would be easy. I am planning on going back full time next semester, and this excites and terrifies me. In a way, I will luck out--I am going to be making a third of the courses LANGUAGE.

I am going to take Japanese. I am going to love it. Then I am going to take CLASSICAL Japanese, and love it. And maybe at some point, I will stop feeling so homesick.

Because that is the other part. The feeling of disconnect hasn't stopped. We are making some friends here, and are attending church, though our involvement doesn't feel like much yet. And the few warm days have me thinking of nothing but Japan. I miss the sweet smell of ume on the breeze, promising spring. The thought of a springtime without sakura makes me want to cry, the same way autumn without momiji felt empty. But I can't reverse time, nor can I return to the spots I left--the space I occupied is no longer available. The situation has completely changed. If I returned, say, to Minakuchi, what on earth would I do there? I know every road of that town walking. Or Hikone? The plum trees in the mysterious garden I never asked to enter, in the historical samurai house... they must be starting to bloom now. All my former students are growing up, and I am not getting to see it. But I would not return to that, either. I yearn for a place that has no place for me.

Someone once asked me if I was homesick for Japan, did that mean that I thought of it as home? ... I wish it were that simple. Like all things, it is suffused with profound ambivalence. What I miss is not what I despised when I lived there. What I yearned for here is not what makes me furious and frightened when I read the news.

At night, often as I feed the baby to sleep, I am swept away in vivid nightmares, waking dreams that reveal to me my powerlessness to protect the tiny creature who is my greatest gift. Is this a lack of faith? At such times I feel that being separated from my child would throw me into complete despair, total desperation. Is this instinct nature's way of assuring the protection of young? Will it lessen in intensity as she grows older, more capable of protecting herself? If I succumb to the fear, I will only create in her a dependency that I do not desire for her.

I am beginning to doubt my goals again. I thought this was what I wanted, to be back in school, to be studying this. But sitting in class, abstracting things which are real into theories, I grow frustrated. Was this what I wanted? Oftentimes it seems like everyone else has the right background for this work, and I don't. I don't even really know what I want to research. I have my interests. But my insights feel juvenile and unseasoned. More than ever, the question of applicability burns in me. The academy seems caught up in completely useless things. Is this some throwback to the academy as a place for the rich to find topics to fritter away their time? I feel like I need inspiration, and I need it fast, before I reject this whole pointless enterprise with a "So what?" I wanted to understand things. People. Culture. But I don't see anyone trying to understand, only make material another step again inaccessible and removed.

Some photos, at last!

2007-01-28T03:45:00.000+09:00

Pirate_Harper.JPG
Originally uploaded by t_k3ttl3.

We had a pretty crazy break (FAR too much travelling!), but now we are back to the routine of classes again! I am full of the best of intentions about posting more. But for now, pictures will have to suffice!

Adventures in Going Crazy

2006-11-29T11:08:00.000+09:00

Today was a bit out of the ordinary.

To summarize the last long while since we have posted, life has been kind of hectic between organizing baby handoffs, doing daily loads of laundry, dealing with colic and reflux, staying abreast of school things including papers, AIing, transportation to and from locations... but we did get to go home for Thanksgiving holidays, and three cheers for grad school, three cheers for state school- we left on Tuesday, and came back Monday morning. I plowed through two books, plus a sizable chunk of another, plus some odd pages of one more... while Mom and Dad watched Harper. Free babysitting-- we got to actually -go out- to a movie, our first one out since the girl was born. (Casino Royale, quite a different Bond... but I am not doing movie reviews today.)

So, today. Security Husband left for class, and while I was doing some quick pickup around the living room, I noticed that I wasn't seeing very well. In fact, little blurry rainbows and flickering lights took up a big chunk of my vision. I called health services, and my mom. (She's never had migraines, I thought I might be getting one. The eye clinic said it sounded like I had an ocular migraine--the visual symptoms without the killer headache. My eyes did hurt; I had a mild headache, and I was sensitive to light. But I was also tired, from fussy baby the night before, so I figured what I needed was a nap.) Then, a half hour or so later, my hand and part of my face went numb. I called health services again; they said to come in. By now, I was kind of panicky. Long story short, after an exam, and two cat scans to make sure everything was okay (something I had never thought I would undergo, kind of like CHILDBIRTH), I am... normal. Maybe the new birth control triggered a migraine of sorts. But things were kind of tense for a while. (And this bill is going to suck. But, better safe than sorry.)

As a result of the CT scan (which used a contrast substance injected into my vein so that things would show up better), I can't breastfeed for fortyeight hours. This is making Harper VERY. ANGRY. She wants to be fed the way she likes, but I am tainted. Poor baby. Poor us.

I was kind of hoping that the end result of the cat scan would show that I have telekinesis, or some other sort of super power. If my vision was acting weird, maybe I could end up with, like, the ability to see in the dark, or into some ethereal universe. Sadly, all I have is a mild headache.

Curious and curiouser

2006-11-01T04:49:00.000+09:00

So, it looks like we can't vote. We were registered up north, but missed the cutoff to reregister here. So, I called today about absentee ballots, for which the cutoff was yesterday. But it turns out that if we were at our new address since before mid-October, we had to reregister anyway because our old registration wasn't valid. So witness, we have slipped through the cracks, because ... something. And while this is mostly our fault by way of 1) procrastination and 2) ignorance, I am finding myself irked that despite being registered up north, even if I hopped in a car and drove up there four hours to cast my vote, so that I could have some voice in this remarkably corrupt political system, it would be illegal. I really think the Australian system has something going for it.

I'm not quite certain I understand

2006-10-13T12:21:00.000+09:00

PICT0024.JPG
Originally uploaded by t_k3ttl3.

So,
It's been a month since Harper has been around, and things have been crazy, though that might be an understatement. My initial goals of parallel processing an awake baby at all hours of the night and having to work on graduate work at all hours of the night seems laughable now. Last week I had daily goals of send two emails or don't fall asleep in class; I felt they were realistic. The farther one travels, the less one really knows.

Flickr

2006-10-13T12:20:00.000+09:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Do the Beasts Have Large Talons?

2006-10-02T12:05:00.000+09:00

I am too tired to be writing, too tired to be clever, too tired to really be awake.

That said, I wanted to post a few thoughts on baby-having, that differ dramatically from How I Thought Things Would Be.

I looked in the mirror the morning after giving birth, gazed at my profile, and felt like a supermodel, baggy weird stretched-out belly and everything, because I felt that much thinner.

Then the milk came. Now I am from an A cup to a C cup, and I am WONDERWOMAN.

I gave the Ravenous Beast TALONS. Inadvertently, because her claws got trimmed inadvertently to points. She likes to poke herself in the eyeballs, and into my tender feeding mechanisms. So we had to clip this morning.

Our high horse trailed along forlornly after us for two weeks, when cloth diapers prevented the cord stump from drying out. So, we used disposables. For two weeks. Our trash TRIPLED. We pay by the bag here. Ouch. The doc sawed off her stump last Thursday, so by that evening, we started our cloth adventure. Wipes and diapers. I could go into the rationale, and argue with people who use disposables, but I shall summarize with: our room smells much nicer, I get to make dirty things clean again, and it is really not as hard as people would have you believe.

Newborns are like aliens. They don't get human for several weeks, I guess. Though her experimental expressions (mostly while attempting to figure out her plumbing) can be quite funny.

Pretty much all new babies look the same. I know she has my ears. The rest is a mystery, including eye color. I would recognize her in a crowd of newborns. But I don't expect anyone to exclaim, "What a cute baby!!!" because frankly, newborns are not that cute. They are very small, and they scream to indicate all levels of want and discomfort, with two levels: On and Off.

I always swore I would never, ever use baby talk. (But it is actually very difficult to speak to someone who gives no real responses, verbal or non.)

I always swore I would never NEVER refer to myself in the third person as Mama, Mommy, or anything else. (But for some reason, perhaps because others do it, or because I am trying to come to terms with my new role, or perhaps because it touches on some weird psychological link that perhaps it will be reassuring to the baby, it has been all too easy to do.) We have never sat down and decided what we want our child to call us. We better make that decision quick, before this weird behaviour gets engrained past the point of no return.

So, we invent what is essentially pseudo-IC for the baby. I suppose everyone must do it with their children. (Given that we as humans anthropomorphize just about everything, it stands to reason that we would be even more tempted with a tiny speechless human.) It seems that she has things to communicate. Why she can look so desperately unhappy when she cries, yet not smile yet voluntarily, is a mystery to me.

Sleep deprivation is funny. I find that my processes are very much slowed. I can't think of words, can't process speech, or comments. People say things, and my automatic cultural reflex to laugh, smile, nod...(whether things warrant it or not; it is a function of politeness, no?) is off. I just stare instead, or kind of chuckle blankly, or insert some transition word that transitions to absolutely nothing.

There is certainly more to share, but I have this sinking feeling that we have just hit the two week growth spurt. Maybe I should not even try to sleep tonight. So much homework to do...

Yet!!

2006-09-20T14:12:00.000+09:00

Okay, So, the baby has arrived. Kate sent out a mass email, though some of you that read this blog may not have received the email, specifically if you have never emailed Kate. After much deliberation over names we have come up with the name Harper 久音 Schramm Kelley, or Harper Hisane Schramm Kelley. We've had some confusion about the name; we wanted a name that had conotations of seeking and speaking truth. I've put up some pictures on our flickr account, if you care to see. Also, much thanks to David Bytewerk for the matress; unfortunately, we did not know where to get in touch with you, so you get public mention. I know I have not been posting much on the blog, a lot of that has to do with moving and still working on my previous Master's thesis, while at the same time starting another Master's program. For those of you that are interested, the Master's thesis can be summed up as this: you can't trust the government, nor the companies that say you should trust them. Here is a novel way that they can take your information. Even in the presence of mitigation techniques, this novel way performs at least as well previous techniques, and without the presence of mitigation, performs about 125% better than previous techniques, within the confines of the experiment. Anyway, Harper is sleeping soundly, so I will seek sleep myself. I hope to be able to maintain my own posts more regularly in the upcoming year, though you may see a spin-off site that deals with research issues, not quite certain yet. TK

NOT YET DANGIT

2006-09-14T10:55:00.001+09:00

For all the inquiring minds, today is d-day, plus THREE.

But honestly, with us as parents, could this baby arrive at 40 weeks precisely? HARDLY LIKELY.

We, uh, still haven't decided a name. Not even really a shortlist. But that is because we are stubborn and refuse to simply name things we LIKE, if they are hugely popular (and in all likelihood, this is why they come to mind so fast--because they have been in the top three baby names for the last, oh, ten years). This goes for things like Autumn and Emma and Nevaeh (just kidding--that ranks as one of the worst names of all time, so far as I am concerned. Just know Symbiote is gonna have a BEST FRIEND named that... ouuuuh...) Or names that happen to coincide with names of friends' sisters (Fiona), or cool names people we know have ALREADY CHOSEN for their babies/children (Naomi, Emi, Sora, Romy, Ellie--which sounds a bit too much like grandchild #1, Eli).

No, suggesting names is probably not helpful, unless you possess The One Name That Will Inspire Us.

For the record, "hisa" in part of the middle name we had decided we liked WAY before Hisahiko was born, and definitely before the name was announced. So THERE, imperial princebaby.

Long live the melamine sponge

2006-08-16T22:44:00.000+09:00

So, the mapreading skills still need work. But I don't actually get us lost EVERY time I navigate. We made it to the closing on time. (It's a complicated city, full of one-ways, and the bypass versus the highway...)

The owners, it turns out, are cool people. We may hang out in the future, even! We did lunch, discussed the previous renters, were relieved to hear that cleaning had been done. Then it was time. Time to enter the field. We did not realize the madness that would ensue.

The renters, it seems, did not know actually how to clean well. We saw vacuuming had been done, and threw our plans for flea poisoning out the window. There could be no worries. But for the carpet... we went in with a steam cleaner, and discovered the living room carpet to not be a shade of dark tan/maroon, but a very nice sort of light beige/cream. Long live the melamine sponge! Long may you scrub our floors, walls, door frames! Hoorah for white floors, not grey! Hurrah that the apparent water damage to the bathroom was simply corner lint that had never, ever been scrubbed!

We cleaned with a fervor that may have been... fanatical. Obsessive. But we have always felt(even when renter ourselves) that a new apartment/house/garage/whatever, when you move in, should look as new as it possibly can. This is what the housing deposit is for. This is what cleaning services do. This is the way we scrub the floor, early in the morning.

So we have reclaimed the house, inch by inch, from people who did not keep it clean. We have scrubbed the scuffs from the walls, we have spackle to fill in the nail holes, we have peeled away the layers of greasegrime from the kitchen, the soapscum from the bathrooms, and even narrowly avoided death when Lysol mixed with The Works (the sudden appearance of whisps of white smoke from the toilet bowl was a pretty good indication that the vent should stay on and the bathroom door CLOSED.)

And now, a word about dogs. I shall endeavor not to say I despise dogs, despite allergies to them. I don't believe I do hate them, or other furred pets. I think I actually like them. But... there is care for dogs (which can expand to other pets) that is necessary. One is cleanliness. If the dog is not clean, do not let it roam around where it will make all your carpets smell of dog. A clean dog is pleasant to smell. A dirty dog is not. Homes that smell of dog, that are littered with dog hair, are not pleasant places to be. Two is humane treatment. Do not lock your small dog in a garage for days at a time when you are out of town, or are too lazy to care for them. The accumulated bodily functions and further animal smell contaminate the walls, floor, and ceiling, and bleach alone has not yet succeeded in removing it (though the floor must be sterile, now.) And finally, and here is probably the most important... if your dog has fleas, for the sake of your family, your small children, and your animal, get rid of them. Spray the house. Do not live in squalor surrounded by as many fleas as populated homes in the Middle Ages. The people that move into the flea-infestation that you created through your carelessness will want to kill you, especially after spending several days nursing itch paranoia and slathering on calamine lotion.

Flea foggers appear to work quite well. Nothing like poisoning the place where you sleep. Where your child will sleep. We moved our stuff in on Monday, and Mom and Dad helped us re-vacuum, reclean, and unpack through Tuesday. There is remarkable progress, though we only have space for roughly half our books on bookshelves. It also seems strange to be setting up the stuff of a person we have never met, have not yet named, who we simply do not know apart from her movement. We also have more pots and pans and plastic storage things than even I thought was possible. So, if you are someone who needs a few things like this, we might have a special present for you.

And finally, a few thoughts on pregnancy. I am in month 9. The final month. I don't feel big, but then I catch a side-on glimpse of myself in a mirror or shop window, or see my shadow on a wall, and think, "Dang! How much farther out can my belly GO?!" I think I understand now why it lasts for nine months. You need all of it to get used to the concept of actually being pregnant, and dealing with all the emotional baggage attached to how concept and reality are not at all similar. Then you need to deal with how having a child doesn't turn you into some freako suburban soccer parent, and how all those must-haves, and must-dos, are in fact choices. I didn't want to be pregnant. I would not have chosen it. I would not have blithely gone skipping into some parental dreamworld. It has been a process all the way of resistance and questioning, anger and anxiety. And I don't know that I will love my child at first sight, like everyone keeps insisting I will. BUT. I know that I am suffused with an increasing sense of curiosity. A sense of curiosity so strong about what this creature will look like, how they will be, how we will handle raising her... and this curiosity stirs a sense of protectiveness in me that does not rise on a usual basis; it inspires me to think beyond mere education. It is a curiosity so strong that it could be love, I think. I have this mine/not-mine, me/not-me kicking around which we are going to meet, and we will be strangers/not-strangers. She is us and not us. We have so much to learn, so many adventures to embark on.

Mayhem

2006-08-10T10:45:00.000+09:00

We have been a bit silent lately. Here are the updates, as they be. This course of life never did run smooth.

There have been some rather scary family/extended family health issues over the weekend. But it looks like everyone is doing all right, and will make good recovery.

Following other things, in no particular order...

Preparations for baby--moving right along. Have had two baby showers, now, and now possess a cartload of pink things. People, people. You are gonna feel like dingyheads if this kid turns out to be a boy. Dagu-chan has promised us a onesie that reads: "THIS ROBOT IS PROGRAMMED TO DESTROY CAMERAS." It will be refreshing, very. I have returned what pink has had gift receipts. Little has. I have gone and bought baby stuff, and it feels to me to be a bad omen to have so much crap prior to the baby actually being here.

Preparations for house closing--picked up a load of cleaning supplies for this weekend, which marks our grand house-cleaning-prior to move. (We are going to do a precautionary flea treatment on the carpets, as the former renters had a dog.) Also have been tag teaming phone communications with banks, agent, utilities, insurance, moving truck rental, and... yes, every day there is a new surprise, a new panicked series of phone calls to someone, or a series of someones.

Preparation for moving. Boxes everywhere. I have thrown away most of my childhood, as well as gotten rid of all my notes from college. Dad was shocked (he still has some of his). I would have kept them, but I have nowhere to put them. Mom wants me to get it allll out, including old toys. She is anti-clutter, and right now the house is crowded with our stuff that has been in storage, plus Grandma's stuff, plus my brother's stuff in the garage, the closets, the back rooms, the bathrooms... Can't blame her, really, but I guess I had always thought some stuff would stay with my folks, to, you know, bring out when our kid is older, and they can see the ancient items in context. But if Mom and Dad retire, they won't be living here. Which will be strange, but provided housing goes with the job.

Preparations for school: this, oddly, seems like the least of our worries right now. In fact, we are flying high because we found out today that SecHus got another boost in funding... he will be an AI. (Assistant Instructor.)

SecHus is actually heading out to VA the day after we finish moving everything, which means I will be going back home with my folks until the weekend, in case of unexpected baby arrival. Not that it is a worry, but dang. 36 weeks, ya de.

A muddle at midmorning

2006-08-01T21:59:00.000+09:00

The blog is interesting, in that it is rather like the tip of an iceberg, occasionally manifesting those things that we think about, giving hints about the life we lead, or highlighting bursts of inspiration or frustration that we deem necessary to share, or have time to write about.

It also seems relevant that because of the broadness of the audience, we try to keep the personal ranting down—this isn’t a diary, after all, and despite plenty of times when it would be appropriate to mention conflicts with or concerns about people as they do affect our lives, it seems inappropriate to air all that in a more or less public forum. But for those who read this blog as a key into what we are up to, is that dishonest? A way of creating a perfectly edited world where nothing might be too difficult for a reader to handle? Or in the end, is that just malicious gossip?

Lately, Security Husband and I have been exposed to more televised American news (and tv in general) than we have in the past four years combined. More than anything, it has served to dishearten us. By the end of most days, I am weary, angry, and saddened from the sheer folly of politics, the stubborn abuse of selfishness, the self-righteous soapboxing of ignorance. I was eager in previous months to return, to work for change somehow, however I could. That desire hasn’t changed—the challenge is to make it spring from hope and not anger. I am freed from the constraint of distance, I can dare to take risks that may backfire, offend, or alienate. I can make those risks personal, even when worry almost cripples me to make them. Because I have to try, and deal with the consequences as they come, without fear.

We are both bracing ourselves for adaptation, constant adaptation, in the upcoming days, weeks, months, even years. There are changes we expect, and I know there are things I want to focus on, things I want to do… and to do them, there are activities I shall have to pare back, or withdraw from entirely--things which have become habitual, unproductive, and only rarely enjoyable as recreation.

But aside from all that… We are eager to be on our own again, to resume life as we know it, with our own schedule and lifestyle. Living with my parents the last two months has been nice in many ways. Connecting with family (and extended family) again has been good, educational, interesting, and depressing in turns. The notions of obligation and familial ties rather put me in mind of this huge, medievalesque clan-village of people, as I struggle to remember the names of his cousins, and which aunt belongs to which grandparents, and who lives where, and which cousins are part of which family… and knowing that we are all weirdly connected through this web that runs not along lines of personal attachment or common interest, but something more strange, that can ignore such things entirely and be unchanged. Lot of holes in this analogy: family as such is not something I have devoted much thought to, but have been frequently lately.

Food for Thought

2006-07-16T21:57:00.000+09:00

Food for Thought: The Language Police and the Quesadilla

Thanks, AWAD newsletter, for alerting my attention to this article. What gave me pause was: "Hundreds of towns and half of the states, spending millions of taxpayer funds, have created legislation that makes English the official language."

This seems to me to be nothing more than a fear-based knee-jerk reaction to diversity. I suppose "hundreds of towns" still makes a minority of towns, but -half- the states? If this is true, it disgusts me. Sure, I think communication is necessary, and I taught English abroad for four years, ostensibly give kids tools to communicate with when they travelled abroad. However, as I was also representing a foreign culture, I had the opportunity to dialogue with and enrich the experiences of numerous people, including myself. By demanding one language as official, I believe we give ourselves an excuse to dismiss the diversity in the American immigrant culture, because then there is no pressure on us as an English-speaking majority to attempt to learn other languages or understand other cultures--all the responsibility for that falls on the immigrant. Failure to dialogue, then, really is failure to communicate.

Do I advocate teaching English in school? Yes, largely because most Americans can scarcely read or write in their native English to save their lives. Kids are graduating high school and moving on to college without any ability to write coherently, show critical thinking, or even show grammatical competence. In most places in the US, too, English is still necessary to succeed, but how does resisting bilingualism or multilingualism make Americans any less stupid?

Debeso ya.

2006-07-12T10:20:00.000+09:00

Well, I know that last post mentioned pictures which would be up soon. We have them off the camera, and onto the external hard drive. They will be coming. Just not today. In fact, probably not this week at all, unless I can figure out how to use flickr. Or SecHus gives me his password. Which, considering I can't even install new programs on the mac without fetching him to put in the fiftyplus character password... may be unlikely.

Tomorrow we drive off to fetch our things from Japan in Indianapolis. This is something I am looking forward to, because stuffed into a box with kitchen appliances is our sen-en kakigori maker. Just gotta find some syrups somewhere, and I will be back to fighting the 95 degree heat forecasted this weekend. This is good, because an interesting side effect of the pregzors has been heightened heat exhaustion capacity, apparently. Fresh air, STAT! Have had to flee midchurch on two different Sundays, because I nearly fainted. (And I have passed out in church enough in the past. Don't need to stop mass now by vomiting in the pews or falling down at the communion rail like a drunken manatee.)

Big News. We have made an offer on a house. An actual house. It has a yard, and a garage. HOLY CRAP. I feel so adult now. Except, perhaps, an adult might have a job. Which we don't, and my Awesome Chance at a Job That I Was Totally Qualified For part-time at IU... didn't pan out. I suspect it had mainly to do with political reasons, such as not having prior existing connections with the department. In all honesty, since it looks like I will have to take at least two classes to mount up enough credits to get that federal student aid money, maybe we'll just float by on student loans the first year, or at least the first semester. And I don't think I am actually physically, mentally capable of handling two classes, baby, and part-time job, no matter how mighty I believe I am.

I think the thing that worries me the most about failing to get this part time gig was that now that I have returned to a country where I can communicate freely with its residents and expect to be treated like a skilled individual, I don't think I will be. Everyone I seem to meet or talk to has horror stories about themselves or people they know who are treated as little more than robotic automatons at their work, and not as human beings at all. Companies try to cheat them out of contractual benefits, workers comp, and well, this may be pretty standard selfishness on their part, and pretty par for the course, but it pisses me off something fierce. Do I think they deserve better? Hell, yeah. It isn't just to be respected for one's intelligence or experience, but also to be respected for your position, however humble, as a person. Since when is treating a person like a person a freaking OPTION? And this issue is echoed in national politics as well. Since when is a contract that a government has signed and sworn to uphold optional based on someone else's country? This "debate" about upholding the Geneva Convention is beyond ridiculous, and watching politicians lie barefacedly on the news is really disheartening. Apparently the wage differences now between employees and company heads is now again as disparate as it was during the Gilded Age.

Anyway. Thursday we head off to GR to enjoy three days of swimming and reading in an air conditioned hotel. Or rather, I do. Security Husband is attending and speaking at a conference at Calvin on communications theory. I am very proud of him, even though I don't get to actually watch him do his thing (no free passes for spouses, what a pity!). In a way, this is his first big chance to be representative of his field as an academic, and I'm really glad he has this opportunity. He will be part of a panel discussion on how his field (along with several others) relates to CT, so he doesn't have to be an expert on CT like a lot of the other people there. We are looking forward to hanging out with friends in GR, some of whom will ALSO be speaking at the conference, and some of whom we have not seen for a really long time.

Symbiote update: Genki. She is very active, but never on cue. Anyone who buys pink frilly things will be outcast from my presence. We have a baby registry at babiesrus.com. We have purchased a ton of books involving multilingual education and child discipline/parenting stuff. Part of this may be to help assuage our growing fear. Definitely makes me question techniques I used to use at work. Still processing material. More updates on reading material later.

“So much for the working address of the blog.”

2006-06-23T23:28:00.000+09:00

So much has happened in the past month or so, it seems absurd to try and summarize.

The entire month of May got sucked down by preparation for The Return. Suddenly stricken with the notion that we might be seeing people for what would be the last time, our social calendar swelled to bursting. We made it to a Ring Side Horfars show. We spent Golden Week discovering some local delights—like Ryotanji, ancient zen temple, only a twenty minute walk from the apartment. We ate matcha ice almost every day. The last two weeks, I think we ate out almost every night—and not just because we gave our fridge to Daggu-chan a week before we moved out. We also had a six-day visit from Tim’s folks, which proved interesting, not only for the break it provided as we hit tourist spots we had not been to before, but because I think for the first time, there was a sense of familiarity, of things fitting into our historical understanding of Japan. The little introduction to the Sengoku Jidai I was reading made visiting Ginkakuji and Nijo-jo and seeing the Aoi Matsuri that much more fun. It was also a matter of creative exploration, too, I suppose—I wanted every detail to stick in my mind, every breath of the atmosphere.

We made it to Shigaraki, too, and unfortunately did not pick up a good-sized tanuki for our future yard/doorstep. I regret this. Testicles are underappreciated here, especially oversized lucky ones. We did, however, supplement our ceramic plate collection, as well as replace our nice teapot—the lid was a casualty during moving, and though we superglued it back together, the two pots we found to replace it are quite nice.

I think we have found our collector’s niche. Teapots and, possibly, teacups. Tea accessories apart from cha-no-yu things, well, I suppose I will know the yes or no of that if someone gets us something truly bizarre. For the first time ever, we both found ourselves obsessed with making sure we picked up things we’ve been talking about getting for ages. Cramming four years’ worth of wants into a week is not really recommended, as it makes repacking hell.

We are so grateful to everyone for your hospitality and kindness. Whether it was taking off with furniture that we could not possibly have (wanted to) ship back, or treating us to dinner, or giving us farewell gifts that boggle the mind, helping to move stuff, hanging out so we could be sane, or throwing us goodbye parties (including some of the funniest karaoke I have ever witnessed/been a part of… )

Since we have been back, jet lag and reverse culture shock has been the norm. We have mostly defeated jet lag, but I sense we will be trying to adapt for some time to the US. In Japan, we could limit our intake of US news, and give vent to frustration and anger every so often. Here, just flipping on the television makes daily ranting the norm. It really is disheartening. Most frustrating is just not knowing how to begin to try to make a difference in the face of such corruption. BUT, and this goes especially to Rafael, but to all of us who are overwhelmed , frustrated, and angry with our country’s ridiculous policies and terrible politics—the challenge still stands—whenever it is that we all meet face to face again, I hope that all of can say, “This is what I have been doing to affect change.”… instead of merely griping or expressing disgust or outrage. (That is too easy, eh?)

As I was telling Tim the other day, part of our return which is quite interesting to me is that we now live in a multi-generational household. Grandma has been living with my parents for several years (with occasional breaks where she goes to visit some of her other children), and my brother Tim and Carrie and in and out with little Eli, my one and only nephew. (Congratulations to the two of them, for surprising everyone by eloping this month!) Two days after our return, it was his second birthday, followed the day after by Grandma’s 80th. When everyone is here, that is four generations under one roof, and the dynamic is totally different from anything I have ever experienced before. We are busy making contact with loan people and have a realtor in Bloomington, looking for our own place, so we can move and get settled before school starts in August, and rather miss our own space with our own stuff, but while this time with everyone together lasts, I am trying to get a sense for it, get to know members of my family that I have never really known, new and old.

With that comes the amusing aside that most members of my immediate family seem to view our nearly four years in Japan as some sort of extended vacation, free from worry and responsibility and “real life.” I can’t argue with this, not because I agree, but because I find it so absurd as to be inarguable. I urge everyone I know to please, please, go live as an immigrant somewhere, and find how easy and fun it can be. All the time. Sure, there are new things to experience, because a whole environment is a wild departure from all that is familiar, and there are certainly interesting places to see, but… the whole world is like that. There are places dense in the arts and haute culture here, the same as there are spaces of nature, places of worship, and fields of growing things anywhere. They simply differ, and one must seek them out to appreciate them. Granted, here one is less likely to find anything over two hundred years old by simply turning a corner on the street—that is certainly something we miss—but it goes with the territory.

I think we will be shortly posting a whole lot of pictures and possibly video clips up, things that are from the last month or so. Brace yourselves.

There is so much more to say, so many more reactions to try and share, at this lull, this juncture of pathways and turning of pages.

I shall express one final thought. 飯道山, you win. All my bluster that I would master you. But you knew the whole time, and I think… I think that you do not care, one way or other. You never did.

Beginnings and endings

2006-04-28T21:09:00.000+09:00

This Wednesday marked my last day at ABC English. It was harder than expected, as mothers came (and have been coming) forward with presents. Some of these marked my first ever gifts of clothes for the symbiote. ("It's the size of a large steak now!" says my OB/GYN, and I smile, but deep inside I think, "Mmmh, steak. Yum." I don't want to think about it that way!!! More on symbiote later, because I am SURE everyone is panting or drooling to hear. ... ha.)

I spent Wednesday evening and Tuesday, too, in a state akin to shock. Separation alarms are ringing in the corridors of my mind, and unplugging myself from this chapter, midway through the page turn, (how many more metaphors can I mix in? here is one more!)- had me feeling like I was free-falling, and my wings hadn't quite figured out how to flap right yet.

I resolved to do nothing all day on Thursday. And I achieved that. Almost. Guilty at still lounging in pajamas at four pm, I took a shower, then put laundry away. One should not swear to not be productive, for I paid for this burst of guilt-inspired productivity by breaking the lid on our best teapot, after tripping over a cord with both arms full of folded clothes, covering the floor in half-consumed tea. I suggested to Tim that perhaps we should make a point of pouring tea over the rest of the carpeting in here before inspection day, just to make sure it is the same uniform shade of taupe.

But with a little time to unwind comes a certain relief. This is the best thing. Leaving my kids behind is difficult-- I never told them I was going-- and I am going to write up a nice letter in Japanese, I think, to give to all the parents and children, something that conveys my mind to them. But I heard back from IU this week, and they suggest I take the graduate colloquy course this fall. It puts me into my cohort, and will serve as a necessary basis for much to follow. It also only meets one day a week--rock on. I then, of course, made the mistake tonight of looking at all the other course offerings this fall. I think I have spent the last hour yelling foul that I can't go full-on this fall semester. Dare I try six credits? I -want- to, but I somehow doubt that such a thing is WISE. I haven't tried explaining to anyone at IU yet that I also want to try and hook up with the music department, and take a course in classical Japanese, along with some more modern Japanese. And brush up my Spanish. Seeking opportunities to do some of these things will have to wait until we are back, but I know it will become a lot more complicated after the arrival in person of the symbiote. Now is the time to act!! Quickly, before things become more complicated!!! Post-move is going to be a lot of reading on bilingual education, I think, and finding resources in the Bloomington area.

So, I waited to share symbiote news. Um. Not much. Creature started moving around in a way that I could feel a few weeks ago. It doesn't keep me up at night, yet. There is a certain alien fascination to it, though, to lie quietly as I wake up and feel it do the "I want breakfast" dance, or to lie down flat, and suddenly realize my stomach has taken on pointy contours. What the heck is it DOING!? We make an idealized personality for ourselves in our brains, and nothing can prepare us for actual arrival. I read Remember Sascha? by Ray Bradbury today; a certain insight there. I was hoping this past Monday's appointment would reveal the mystery sex of the creature... but no luck. The doctor said, "Uhh... not sure. Next time, maybe."

We have to start the irritating process of naming. Something I have looked forward to since I was a child. I name all things very seriously, but there is a part of me that feels like I shouldn't commit to something as serious as a name until I get to know the creature I am naming. Not that I expect to have a mystical mother's intuition upon seeing the creature's face, but... naming someone when I have very little idea of their personality or nature, seems... wrong, somehow. But maybe since it will share OUR natures, whatever we choose to mark our child with for all eternity or until their 18th birthday drives them to the local court house in giddy relief from long humiliation... will reflect us and it, too.

Decisions, loopholes, and misgivings

2006-04-07T11:12:00.000+09:00

We have both decided that Indiana University is where we are going to be flinging ourselves to. Mostly. The offer of a full ride plus living stipend from Carnegie Mellon was probably the hardest reward I have ever had to look at... and defer. Yes. Sadly, that is the only loophole we have if things go horribly wrong. I will not be able to start classes at IU this fall, but if Tim has some sort of awful experiences in the computer/bio sciences, well... if by January we know for certain that we should not be at IU, then... we can arrange another crosscountry move.

IU was supposed to be our first choice. But the more contact I had with the department at University of Oregon, the more I liked them. I had to plan out a tentative course of study and contact professors, all of whom I exchanged multiple emails with, and who were all very helpful and laid-back. Plus they have a later start date--which is good for people expecting to be recovering from childbirth most of September. But Tim didn't make it into their computer science department--nobody was interested in studying what he wanted to study. (A bonus, I suppose, that you can have something more specific to say to potential programs. But not this time.) I suppose my extensive contact with Oregon made it easy to envision myself there, eager to meet professors in person who I had only had email contact with. Writing the letter to them telling them I couldn't come was difficult. I didn't expect to have tears rolling down my cheeks as I hit "send."

People at IU have been helpful. I have gotten some responses from professors to my questions. But on the whole (and maybe this can be entirely accounted for by the sheer size of the department), my overall impression of IU at the moment, no matter how good their program, is that it is snobbish, in the horrible way that certain humanities believe they can be. This leaves me with deep, deep misgivings that I will not fit into the program. I sincerely hope this is not the case.

Maybe decision making is always hard, having to cut yourself off from potential paths. I don't know. I do know that excitement and disappointment are present in equal measure.

Experiences on the Way to the Pool

2006-04-04T17:26:00.000+09:00

I'm swimming at the Hikone Aquatic Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'd probably swim more, but the rest of the days the center is used for school practices. It has been really good for me to get out into the community. There are sometimes when normal life completely consumes you; envelopes you in the wonderful gauze of regularity. Even if your life may seem "exotic" to others, the everyday is everywhere. Sometimes the weirdest experiences can shock you out of that gauze and into clarity and recognition.

I always walk to the pool around the castle moat. Kate and I were out just the other day, and they have started to set up for Hanami. There are food booths out and some people are already out looking at some of the flowers that have started to poke out. On my walk a gentleman was coming toward me at an intersection (Intersec, making lines meet for centuries). He caught site of me and slammed on his brakes causing a tremendous squeal. Even though we both going the same direction, he refused to come closer than 15 yards. This must have been tortuous for him, as I was walking and he was on a bike. Every time he would get too close, the brakes and squeal. I would say that he was trying to alert me that he was coming, but he was coming to a complete stop, as I said, about 15 yards away each time. What a way to demonstrate to someone else their otherness, that they don't belong.

Contrast that with the conversation I had with another gentleman after swimming. He was interested in where I came from, what I was doing in Japan, where I had learned to swim. We had a fairly informal chat for 10 minutes in both Japanese and English. And so you have the dichotomy of otherness, sometimes it is repellent, other times it is an attractor. We have to leave with both, and choose which experiences are more valuable, those that set us apart negatively or those where genuine interest allows connections to be made. We must also remember these lessons for our own life. How can we reach out to "others," to make those connections and bring them to us and bring ourselves to them.

I've been busy with, you know, things.

2006-04-02T23:48:00.000+09:00

Well, I've been busy with course work and making trying to help make decisions that affect our future, but I still have some time for creativity. Bruce Schneier, a person I look up to as, dare I say it, a security professional (I'll say it, but I've been getting way too excited to move out security and into different aspects of computer science to really consider myself a security professional. Technically, I have been paid for my research on covert channels, so that does make me a professional, I guess). He has a well balanced view of realistic problems of security, that and I'm a big fan of his cryptowork. One of the papers I'm currently working on is heavily based on his paper on secure audit logs. Anyway, he's posted, what appears to be, a fun contest. He is suggesting that people come up with extremely low probability, but still feasible, terrorist attacks. As he calls them, Movie-plot attacks. You can follow the link at the bottom to get the full scoop. For those friends of ours that read this blog, if you are interested in working together, let me know, if we're lucky, there is a movie deal in the works.

It is in this spirit I announce the (possibly First) Movie-Plot Threat Contest. Entrants are invited to submit the most unlikely, yet still plausible, terrorist attack scenarios they can come up with.
Your goal: cause terror. Make the American people notice. Inflict lasting damage on the U.S. economy. Change the political landscape, or the culture. The more grandiose the goal, the better.

Assume an attacker profile on the order of 9/11: 20 to 30 unskilled people, and about $500,000 with which to buy skills, equipment, etc.

...

Judging will be by me, swayed by popular acclaim in the blog comments section. The prize will be an autographed copy of Beyond Fear. And if I can swing it, a phone call with a real live movie producer.

Entries close at the end of the month -- April 30 -- so Crypto-Gram readers can also play.

This is not an April Fool's joke, although it's in the spirit of the season. The purpose of this contest is absurd humor, but I hope it also makes a point. Terrorism is a real threat, but we're not any safer through security measures that require us to correctly guess what the terrorists are going to do next.
Link

I think I would change it to 20 to 30 semi-skilled people, but it's just a meaningless quibble.

In other news, we've made decisions and we're off to Indiana University, me to study cognitive science and bioinformatics and Kate to study folklore. I'm looking forward to it very much, one might say I'm giddy about it. I'm finishing up my Master's in computer security at JMU currently, but I have always planned it as a stepping stone for bigger things. I'm not going to say I'm starting anything, it is just a continuation of learning, but "I love it when a plan comes together." -- Col. John "Hannibal" Smith

So now I have to finish up my classes, which, at least for this semester have been disappointing, but once again, my focus is elsewhere, like preparing to defend my thesis when I get back to the states (aforementioned work on covert channels).

I usually don't post about the music I'm listening to, but, in this instance, I feel I should mention Threnody Ensemble. The music is quite gripping, to me at least (problems with music, likes are subjective). This can be a bad thing when you are listening to it while trying to study, but Copland would say that if you are only listening to music in the background, you can never get the narrative, nor should expect to be able to understand it. When I have the time to sit and listen their music always seems to have some surprise in it, but I discovered, probably a little over a month ago, that they have some of their sheet music at their site. I think that is pretty swell. I just wish they'd release another CD and update their website.

Well, I need to sleep while my computer does work for me.

Something hardly deep and meaningful

2006-03-27T22:13:00.000+09:00

Time is of the essence to try and think on important things. So, obviously, this will be the sketchy, half-formed, globulous sort of thoughts that I want desperately to fledge, but know that they will instead blurble in that amoebic goo of my repressed subconscious.

I have been reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard, and while from time to time her style and approach seem almost too forced--an unnatural seeking-out, as it were, of ways to view things, and a devotion to put them to paper and draw lines between them, no matter how nebulous, I confess that she is able to articulate through extended thought many things that I have tasted whispers of, have tried to articulate myself in too blunt and inelegant of language.

Today was another doctor's appointment. And I must say, I really regret that I will not be able to give birth ("give to light," how I love that Spanish phrasing) here. Nor will Dr Jinno be my OB/GYN throughout the full course of this strange adventure. I have a little photo album book that describes different months, which I received beginning the third month. In addition to little helpful hints about changes that will be taking place TO me, I also get a little marker describing the size of the Creature, the Symbiote. And because this is Japan, I also get an ultrasound picture every time I go, for next to nothing. I am ignorant of medical things to an extreme degree, so there two kinds. One is the "bottom-up" view during the standard cervical exam, which measures the length of the Creature, the other is the "tummy buzz" one. (Good thing I am not a physician, eh?) WELL. Today was the first tummy one, which produced a much more detailed image. Before, I could see the Creature's heartbeat. Today, I saw a tiny person with a tiny skeleton, dancing to music only It could hear. I heard its rapid hamster-heartbeat as if through loudspeakers. (I think the volume was up too loud.;p) It has a face, though no one could say a dancing see-through skeleton is "kawaii" by any means, seeing such a thing at all was shocking.

Some people become "pro-life" by becoming parent to their own tiny life. I don't know what I am. As this excellent article (linked to by B months ago) notes, the terms of the debate are all wrong, especially when viewed from a position of faith. I think I reject the terms of engangement. As Annie Dillard notes, nature is so exceedingly wasteful, a veritable flood of death- gruesome, incomprehensible-- that standing and looking closely at it can make one retreat back into the safe warm haven of human culture in horror. But I have this sensation that choosing this Creature was never in my hands. I could not have said to my belly "Be Thou Rife With Life; Bear Fruit," any more than I can tame my hair by demanding that it be straight, or force my feet to be one size smaller. I cannot by concentration split one cell, much less than can I coalesce a skeleton in miniature out of a secret knowledge. Do I have the courage to even bring this Creature into a world burgeoning with this overflow of life and death? "We are able to have children because our hope is in God, who makes it possible to do the absurd thing of having children. In a world of such terrible injustice, in a world of such terrible misery, in a world that may well be about the killing of our children, having children is an extraordinary act of faith and hope. But as Christians we can have a hope in God that urges us to welcome children. When that happens, it is an extraordinary testimony of faith." (Stanley Hauerwas)

Can I ask It... "Why do you dance, there, to a music your unformed ears cannot yet even hear?" There are tiny hands, there. No unformed flesh or knobs of putty dough, but hands in miniature, grasping and swimming and swishing in a tiny bound sea, performing acrobatics I cannot yet feel. What does that mean? That such a fragile, insignificant Thing should rejoice in unvoiced silence?

We human predators have no seeming compunction about exterminating one another, devouring the young of the enemy in smoke and fire. Why should there be any compunction about devouring our own young as an insect may, or a goldfish? For we DO, don't we? We tear into one another with our fangs and claws, and call it by names that are wrapped close in intellectual sounding titles that say nothing of their consequences. The whole world, as Dillard notes, a bloody altar.

Hope and grace, I suppose. And courage. And perhaps even blind, deaf rejoicing.

March Madness

2006-03-13T10:54:00.000+09:00

About a month ago, both of us were more or less standing in grey area. But even as recently as the last week, possible paths are becoming clear to us. We have both been accepted to Indiana University, and while we are still waiting on our other schools, it is comforting to know that we have somewhere to go.

At the end of May, we return to the States. Sooner than the original timeline anticipated, but necessarily. Security Husband will have a thesis to defend. We have a house to find.

So now, we are busy. Work is stressful, school is stressful. Full course load plus thesis. Full schedule plus miscommunication with superiors. I think we will both be glad when things are over. Our time here is drawing to a close, and though we will miss people we have met and the communities we have become part of, our original goals in being here are no longer being met, and we must go.

But things are slowly solidifying. We are creating timelines, picking up boxes, looking into plane tickets and a moving company, trying to find who will take what, how we will get rid of certain things.

And of course, the key date in everything is September 10th, now. The whole reason we have to fly back three months early. Mark your calendar, Kinuyo. ;p

So help me, Saint Elmo

2006-02-17T12:01:00.000+09:00

UCLA is out. At least for me. Got the email last night, and the decision was "we regret to inform you..." Sorry, Dan. We will have to visit you to taste the culinary delights that are LA. On the other hand, there was no indication on the online status form that anything at all had been received by them since December. Ie: No transcripts. No recommendations. Well, suffice to say I trust my recommenders. But the registrar's office... no. Security Husband had to request transcripts twice (he, unlike me, actually was concerned and contacted another school before the deadline to assure that they had received them). I assumed that my airmailed request (well ahead of the deadlines) to the registrar would make certain my transcripts got to the school well and early. I can put on my best face for rejection, if it was on my own merits that I failed. But so help me, if the registrar didn't bother to send my transcripts in, thereby sabotaging my chance at entering a really good program, Saint Elmo burn them please.

Advanced Degree Blues

2006-02-13T20:38:00.000+09:00

This is either the last lap or the gauntlet, depending on how you define it, for Security Husband. Last semester with a packed courseload, and write his thesis to boot. He's busy, doing things to strings of numbers that look like nonsense to me. Arcane science. Soon, as he commented at dinner the other night, he will have his master's... and that will entitle him to claim to know everything about anything. We laughed.

But underpinning that is the spectre of lost time, experience spent a different way. You can't judge your own timeline by what your loved ones or friends accomplish. This leads to frustration. But occasionally you watch your changing face in the mirror, pull out another hair gone silver, and you wonder... sometimes more hormonally charged or bitterly than normal.

Our plans have been violently shaken, and it remains to be seen whether our goals will slip as well. Graduate schools are slow to respond. We hold up March as the revelatory time, when some path will solidify in front of us, and we can stop fussing with the unchartable possibilities and start in on some real planning.

For no creature shall keep my kotatsu away from me. It comes back with us.

Searing Change

2006-02-05T22:51:00.000+09:00

Leaving options open is perhaps the great flaw of my life. I never expect to have my bridges burned behind me, but all too often that seems to be what happens. Time is the great healer, it seems, but not until the faded land has passed from view.

Losing Nate is the hardest, most significant thing that has happened to me, perhaps both of us in the last four years. It burned me (us?) both so severely that I think I lost all desire to return home, ever. Certainly the places that were home are that no longer. Home has infused itself into new places, into new pathways that grow increasingly foreign the more time not spent wandering them.

The more time I spend here, however, the more I realize that in order to fight for the kind of change I want to make in the world, I need to go where my voice has power, and where I am not isolated in an island of muteness, nor stripped of a voice by the system.

We have dreams to achieve. We have new battles to fight. New fires to temper in.

And here is where it gets interesting. Death burned the bridge back to where we come from, and now life will make it new again.

And I laugh quietly to myself...

2006-01-19T12:36:00.000+09:00

The benefit of having lunch while class is going on is that I get to overhear things. Right now, I hear three children SCREAMING.

Someone did something bad. Someones. And it was stressed that they had to say "Sorry," before them were allowed back into class.

Cue crying. No, wait. Uuuuup! Uuuuup! SCREECH! HOWL! Tantrum!!! And in the middle, I still hear the teachers repeating vainly like broken records, "Say sorry! Sooo-rrryyy... Say sorry! Say it! And you can go back in!"

You gotta let kids cry. This is one thing I have learned. Tantrum zone = no man's land. Kids have entered a disparate universe, and cannot be brought back.

Someone in the howling screams, "SOOORRRRYYYYUUAAAAAHHHH!" and they are allowed back in. Gradually, the others also say sorry. But someone is still screaming-- hoarse, horrible wails that sound like an amped up version of the cat sex outside our windows at night. They are... beyond.

I am glad I am not in the classroom. ^_^

A Return from Break

2006-01-10T11:34:00.000+09:00

A new semester begins but not after much relaxing was had by all. Since both the Wife and I are involved with schools, we both were able to enjoy three weeks of composing ourselves. So, if we have been a bit remiss in updating our digital diary, it is because we have been lounging, or freezing, depends on who you ask; the lack of any sort of central heating makes life a bit cold in the winter. It does have its advantages, like creating a walk-in refrigerator out of the kitchen. We have also been able to get some reading done, which I have luxuriated in. As I keep telling Dan, I'm working on a review of Aaron Copland's, What to Listen For in Music, for the Society, a site which we have both been overly lax in updating. I was able to get through A Game of Thrones, By George R.R. Martin. I keep wanting to write the title as, A Game of Throwns, not because it was bad, just when I start spelling it out, throwns comes to me before thrones, and throwns isn't even a real word. I also finished Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins. That book was very enjoyable, that I will liken to playing pretend. It reminded me a lot of Breakfast of Champions, by Vonnegut. I've also taken to rereading my books by John Holland, I just finished Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems and I am moving on to Emergence. I've just about completed Alternatives to Economic Globalization, and I'm not entirely certain what I think about it. They do a good job pointing out flaws with the current economic system and what people are doing about it, but they only briefly touch on the problems that are facing some of the alternatives. Still, it has been an enlightening read.

PICT0036.JPG
Originally uploaded by t_k3ttl3.

That's pretty much been my break, reading, playing around on the computer, and I even got some work done on my thesis, as well as finished my graduate school applications. Now the waiting game begins. We did get some traveling done as well. For the new year, we went to the 平等院, which was gorgeous. The name struck me as ironic. For our anniversary we went to a 旅館 in 木ノ本. It was a bit too snowy to hike around, but we enjoyed the lavish room and private onsen. The food was metcha delicious; duck sukiyaki for dinner and a traditional Japanese breakfast as well. I shall leave you with some pictures of our travels.

PICT0045.JPG
Originally uploaded by t_k3ttl3.

Little surprises

2005-12-21T23:13:00.000+09:00

And my husband's philosophy on name-use has changed. I suppose I agree with him. Anonymity is not real, no matter how much we think it is. Mark us, the end of an era.

Save a tree, have an online application.

2005-12-21T23:07:00.000+09:00

Not that it saves the massive necessity for energy that goes into making, say, computer chips, but watching reams of paper fly by as I struggle to convince letter sized things they need to print on A4 is just DEPRESSING.

And a note to graduate schools everywhere. Organize your websites. Fix your broken links. Look at Carnegie Mellon, they do an organized website RIGHT. Looking for information--BAM, it is RIGHT there, a rational number of clicks through.

And. And. And.

2005-12-11T23:10:00.000+09:00

First performance with 和 da Affair was the next day, Sunday, at the Minakuchi International Festa. I have been rehearsing with them for only a handful of practices, but it is great to create music again, and I hope to keep singing with them for the rest of my time here. They do mostly local events, and do cover songs (mostly? exclusively? I don't know really). We sang some kiddie Christmas carols in Japanese and English (apparently I looked frightened at the beginning... my Japanese is the worst in the group, by a long shot--but practice is also the only real chance I have to be around so much spoken Japanese, too!!! Grad school applications have successfully chewed up my study time--byebye kanji skills, it was nice knowing you, albeit briefly. My vocabulary skills are not growing much, due to the all-English environs at school, now, but I am amassing a rather unusable vocabulary of child-words-- I know three different words for poop now. [And don't forget vomit. And stomach flu.] Lucky ME!) We also did some pop covers, including one with sign language. My big surprise came as they pulled out a song everyone knew, but I had never sung before the sound check, but sang all the verses to for our encore. (Granted, "Can't take my eyes off of you," isn't totally unfamiliar, but whoa!)

It was wicked. I have a t-shirt to match the rest of the band. It is soft and eighteen sizes too big. It has the kanji for hibiki on the back-- 響 ^_^v　Love that kanji. No reason. Coca Cola.

The last ride of うなぎ組

2005-12-11T22:41:00.000+09:00

A week ago Saturday, the 'Gumi had their last 'live'--"The Eels and Fun Family"--at B Flat in Hamaotsu. They were last, because, and I figured this out kind of after the fact--they organized the whole thing. Three hours of (I think all) high school bands; Sec-Hus and I came about an hour from the end--I was there to see THEM, after all.

And I must say, while the 'Gumi's music ain't really my style, I have watched them gel together as a group over the past few years, and they have improved massively. But Fumina is going on to bigger and better things, and Kazu and the guys are gonna stay together, make a new group. But first... the end went a little something like this--

They played. Talked. Played. Talked more. And then... got to talking about what was happening to the band. They gave Fumina a big send-off, complete with flowers, and she gave a farewell speech. It was like high-school graduation here, but somehow... more authentic. The whole band was in TEARS on stage, in front of a packed out live house (a veritable sea of high school students, with a few parents and us in for flavorful gaijin mix). Of course Dai'ichi in back was mocking the other guys from his drums in back, but hehe... I think it got to everyone. Fumina could hardly sing their signature number--Hana.

I am left with weird feelings about what it means to be a teacher. What it means to watch kids follow their dreams, and wonder where you left yours. If you ever had the slightest influence or inspiration on them, and suspecting that you didn't, but being fiercely proud of them anyway. I certainly hope that the 'Gumi Guys, no longer the 'Gumi, but something else soon, will rise out of this experience into something new and fantastic--they have a lot of talent going for them. We had to run like mad after the show was over, which was good, because I wanted to sob my eyes out when Kazu said thanks, and at the end, "うなぎ組でした。"

If it wasn't for the 'Gumi I would never have ventured into the strange world of smoky live houses and weird bands. I would not have challenged my own comfort zone to hurtle my singular foreign self into an environment so incredibly shocked to see me there. Some of my former students saw me, and exclaimed, "あっ!　先生！" ... I nodded, embarrassed as always, and uncertain of how to respond, but what I wanted to say was, "違う！もう先生じゃないよ！いま、私はただケイトやで。" I always think of good responses too late. And who knows, maybe it doesn't make sense to them anyway. Maybe they will always think of me as a teacher and not a person--I know I still regard some of my high school teachers as not exactly human. They will never be cool. (I will never be cool. I think I can live with this. I think.) But it is hard to convey to your students that while you have been trying to inspire them, a lot of the time, they end up inspiring you.

"WE LIVE," they said in passing

2005-12-01T08:04:00.000+09:00

Updates... have indeed been somewhat lacking. So please sing the following to the tune of Hurry, Hurry Cinderella.

Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry,
finish up those applications
and don't try to scream your head off
when you see project deadlines coming

Work feels like such long hours
And we're getting kind of dizzy
Still life conspires and hollers,
"Keep them busy!!!"

How lovely it will be
When Christmas break is finally here
But for the weeks we have no working
We're staying right here!

Creativity is stifled
And the restless pot ain't stirring
But with every car that's dodged
And every degree dropping
Life conspires, it conspires
To keep us hopping!!!!

This was really bad, but I DID write it in nine minutes. *flex*

I Guess I'm a Heretic Then

2005-11-04T15:22:00.000+09:00

My friend Dan and I discuss the nature of idleness every once in a while, weighing in on how, as we get caught up in excessive busy work, our lives lose dimensions. I think it began with one of reading a review of "How to be Idle" on "The Guardian," when I said something to the effect of, "This mirrors my philosophy very closely." Dan recently sent me another article on idleness. In it, Mark Slouka, discusses that those who profess enjoyment in idleness blaspheme before the Church of Work. I'll gladly count myself as one of those. He also points out that work is important, but I'll let you read the article. I don't have a problem with work; I do have a problem with work when it tries to take over the entirity of life. Living in Japan is a stark example of what happens when business and busy-ness rules. It occurs with children as well as adults. Kids go to school from 8am to 10pm in some instances, though 8pm to 9pm is more realistic. What are they doing? Being kept busy...so they don't have time to make trouble or think.

I wish I had the mental fortitude to continue this post, but, I was up all night last night and the night previous (something about grad school--which I will admit, is work I like. But, then again, I view it as that "end in itself" crap), and it is approaching 4:30pm here. I was actually asleep but the repair guy stopped by to listen to our washing machine. He told me it wasn't going to be easy to fix and then left. Okay, I really need to sleep. I do have one more thing I want to point out: The Tactical Ice Cream Unit!! Oh, and a cool LaTeX program for putting smooth equations into your Keynote slideshows or Pages documents: LaTeXiT.

Hikone Castle Festival

2005-11-04T02:28:00.000+09:00

A Day in the Life of a Samurai
Originally uploaded by Me.

Today was the Hikone castle festival. It was like a mini-Jidai Matsuri through downtown Hikone, A celebration of the Ii family. The Wife and I headed out with a few friends on this cloudy and rainy day. Took in the parade, missed the firing of the arquebus over the castle, and grabbed some delicious ramen at Okabe's. I was instructed to apprentice myself to a ramen shop as it would make me a better person. I heartily agree. Unfortunately, nothing quite compares to Tenkagomen, and I refuse to apprentice myself to anyone but the best. I'm back to work on my projects. Later.

Thoughts

2005-11-01T22:51:00.000+09:00

I was told I wore cute man-pants.

Thoughts

2005-10-31T19:47:00.000+09:00

By 5 am this coming morning, Mi Amor will be finally finished with the graduate school rite of passage--comprehensive exams. It has consumed him for the last ten days, and both of us can shift our mode of frame reference from "When the exams are done..." to "When applications for PhD programs are finally in."

My goal for today involved completing my essay to my top school. I have written three drafts, only one of which is remotely decent, if 300 words too long. I am horrified that this school does not want writing samples--do they think they will get a good sample of that from 700 words? Do they think they will actually read the horrible crap I scribbled down for the GRE? Anyway, suffice it to say, "I have not made my goal today." We finally got our water bill--bimonthly and they come a month late--, and I spent two hours trying to figure out where to pay it by the deadline (today.) Then on the advice of my love, I took a nap--I have been fighting a bad cold and some other weird condition, and I think he wasn't amused when I said, "I think I will follow in the footsteps of my ancestors... and only go the doctor if things get worse."

This weekend had a lot of firsts for me. I have spent my time in Japan trying not to make scenes, trying to blend in to the background as much as humanly possible... That ended last night as I went out with my coworkers in costume. We got stares, laughter, and some people even managed to ignore us successfully. On a dare, I marched up to some college students and told them that tomorrow was Halloween, and if they said "Trick or treat" to me in English, I would give them candy. They did, and they got candy. Miyuki got that one on video.

Oh yeah. And we were all married women. I have never had so much fun in a group like that, maybe that is the first such group I have ever been a part of! I laughed until I had tears running down my cheeks, I watched a little old Japanese lady say "Eh!?" in surprise when she found out that my coworker/boss dressed as Fat Superman was actually female, I drank guava juice, I ate tacos, I sang Strawberry Chips with limited success, I listened to the yakiniku yodeling song done with amazing skill. I am empowered by this group of strong women. It is really exhilarating.

Do you like to sing?

2005-10-21T17:26:00.000+09:00

The Wife and I were wandering around Hikone. The Wife is looking for opportunities to sing, and we happened upon what was billed as a music school. Upon reading their pamphlet of information and observing a class that was being taught we deduced what sort of music school it was: A Karaoke school. People pay money to go to this school to learn Karaoke songs. The class we happened to watch was the Enka class. It was a bit puzzling.

Thoughts

2005-10-20T21:48:00.000+09:00

I like Thursday nights, because I am alone. Tonight I hit up the CMU website, and Security Husband's enthusiasm for their CS department is now nearly matched by mine for their history department. I have my official second choice. >^_^< So, in haze of pu-erh caffeine high and flying on this new wave of positivity, I hit up Amazon and ordered Graduate Admissions Essays: Write Your Way into the Graduate School of Your Choice by Donald Asher. I got to page through a copy belonging to someone currently USING it, and I was very impressed, after skimming all of her highlighted sections.

On impulse, I also bought a Bob the Builder video. It was only 832 yen, used!!! I suspect it will be popular with my chibis. It... it is the first children's video I have ever purchased. ... I am a crappy aunt.

A note for all parents... NOW is the time to educate your kids in foreign languages. The younger they are, the more spongelike their brains are, and they just absorb and absorb. Videos don't do it. You have to do it yourself. If they go to a class, you have to work with them at home. Languages are like keys to unlock the world. Start them preschool, kindergarten... before they acquire that peculiarly adult form of panic that comes when they hear words they don't understand.

A Bullet List of Recent Events and Unmentioned Previousnesses

2005-10-19T21:59:00.000+09:00

* GRE taken Monday. Verbal 680, Math 580. Lesson learned: borrow others' premade study materials. (Thank you, Cat.)
* A little over a month since I became a legal worker. Visa status: Specialist in Humanities/Other. I find this amusing.
* Postman apologized in person to husband for mail being slightly wet from rain.
* Participated in country-wide census October 1st. YEAH, BABY. We contribute officially to Japan's foreigner population. Nod to D from Maibara: "You light up my ceeeeensuuuuus!!"
* Imotsuki--"potato moon,"-- this month's version of a harvest moon. Perfect skies. * SecHus plans to start Aikido and Iaido on Saturday.
* Still trying to find times on naginata class. Thought the one at the budoukan (a FIVE MINUTE walk from us) was smack in the middle of my Saturday class. Sorely disappointed. SecHus visited, nobody there. Perhaps the judo teacher was mistaken? Soft tummy says, "EXERCISE ME!!!"
* I have Halloween all week. I love my job. I get to carve a pumpkin every single day.
* We have acquired a second mama-chari, from M-chan, my coworker. For free. Now SecHus and I BOTH got wheels... VROOM.
* I honestly thought my boss left obscene drawings in the menu at Coco's. I thought we would never be allowed back there again. Found it in my wallet last night. Phew...??
* Finally updated sidebar. WE ARE SO ORGANIZED. AND WE NEVER, EVER PROCRASTINATE...

This is security husband for a change

2005-10-13T14:52:00.000+09:00

But I'm a bit at a loss of what to say. There are personal updates: I'm still doing course work, I'm working on my thesis, and I'm applying to PhD programs. The Wife alluded to some difficulties we were having upon my return to Japan, and we've been trying to find time together. The difficulty with this plan is that if we spend time together at the apartment, it usually involves very little communication. An example, **type type type type type type type type type type type** "Do you want some tea?" "No, can't have caffeine or I won't be able to sleep." **type type type type type type type type type type** This isn't so much anyone's fault, but representative of how busy we've become and an example of how the mudanity of life can destroy the excitement of learning about other people or other things. I expressed to my friend Daniel Hengeveld that I feel that I'm shrinking as a person the more I focus on my "specialty." It isn't so much that I don't enjoy what I'm doing, because I do, immensely. I have the joy of discovery, but feel that I have little time for discovery outside my school work.

However, sitting here, thinking about it, I know that isn't true. I've started playing my guitar again, I've been reading a fair amount of things outside of what I'm studying (though much of it pertains to what I want to study). I've also been spending a fair amount of time wandering around Hikone. Hikone is a pretty sweet city. There is so much culture here. The Wife is looking for a Hikone history scholar she can talk with about it. Anyway, I've got to get back to my work.

There is so much to tell

2005-10-05T21:23:00.000+09:00

里帰り
We returned for the first time last weekend to 水口, our Japanese hometown. I realized then for the first time that the irritable displacedness I had been experiencing was... homesickness. We went back to meet 西田さん for lunch, and each step through the rice fields and familiar train stops was soothing. Handouzan (反道山）the mountain with which I have had this running rivalry for three years (I am not sure it cares one way or the other, I suspect it is indifferent), listened to me once again assure it that it has not won by virtue of my not having ascended it yet. IT WILL HAPPEN. We also met up with R, and talked for hours... good conversation is hard to find, and it made me realize how completely desperate I was for it.

The next day I ended up going to the Kuch yet again, this time in order to switch bank accounts. Which in the end, I could not do. But while I waited in the bank, there was a tap on my shoulder. "Didn't you used to live next door? The people living in your old apartment had some mail come for you, and they gave it to me. It's in my car. Want me to go get it??" Shock. My former neighbor. (Conversation transliterated for ease of understanding.) She handed me two publications belonging to Security Husband, mostly stuff from the ACM. Fortuitous!! I met a friend from school for dinner... she is ditching the system!! WOOHOO!! ...unfortunately it is because the system is destroying her. Hopefully the months to come will see her free and happy.

Work has been more and more interesting for me. I still feel largely inept about things like classroom discipline, but I am fast acquiring funny stories to share. I cannot fathom how my coworkers maintain such positivity and energy, but it is a trait I am trying to share. Uninhibited enthusiasm and boldness strike me as things I would like to generate like nuclear power. Maybe it comes from the children themselves, who seem to generate energy and heat like nothing I have ever experienced before.

I signed up for the GRE. At last. I am teaching myself how to do math again. SecHus and I are rather concerned about getting applications for grad school together. I have applications I have to get going... particularly those personal statements. I am severely torn... everything I read on my chosen disclipline seems to resonate, and on the other hand, I feel like I have finally begun a job where every one of my talents is utilized.

B (no longer from Nara) is staying with us for a few days, and it has been nice to have someone else around to have good conversation with. She also is a FREAKING AWESOME cook, and just apologized to me for forgetting to make chocolate chip cookies. (!!!!) On Sunday she and I went to a woodblock exhibition of Japan and Thailand at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. I know my time limit on art. Any museum, really. About an hour. Maybe less. But we saw woodblock, lithograph, silkscreen and a number of -graphs I had never even heard of. It was really exciting, as I have had no exposure to that sort of art before. I also saw a few pieces (the award-winning one made me giddy) that really inspired me, and made me think about things like material culture and folklore communicated in art and what makes art folk art and not... questions I may do further reading on at some point... even though I don't consider material culture one of those things I am really interested in. ...Oh yeah, and like looking at most good art does for me... it made me despair of my feeble sketchbooks, and wonder if trying a different medium would make me brilliant. (Suuuure it would.) Though, in a lot of ways, I had to wonder about the communicative element of art... (Obviously this is something I haven't thought about very much. Or I want to think about it... or... something.)

Today and yesterday mark the first real "autumnal" days here. Cool, rainy weather. (Perfect for biking to work in. >_<;) At lunch today, I put on the headphones (hoorah for Security Husband bringing back a portable music player from the States), and ambled about the neighborhood around the school. It still makes me giddy to listen to music while I walk around... like I have my own personal soundtrack playing to the world, and nobody knows it but me. I can't help but smile at people, and stifle dancing in the streets. I still have held off on the "listening to music while biking," as I depend on every sense I possess to stay alive to and from work.

Strength in need, counselor in perplexity, comfort in sorrow, companion in joy

2005-09-24T00:26:00.000+09:00

Security Husband and I came to the conclusion earlier this week that perhaps nearly a month of extended being apart, prefaced several months of stressed work schedules may have been rather detrimental to our relationship. We have gotten used to lifestyles that are in fact not mutually beneficial to one another, and the price we have paid is in us.

Like the taste of a good wine in a forgotten bottle. When did I forget how to lose myself in his eyes? The time we have invested in one another springs back in us, in resilience to all the new challenges we face.

Thoughts

2005-09-14T03:53:00.000+09:00

I'm finally heading home after two weeks of traveling from Chicago to the East Coast of the USA and then back again. I've been to several schools that I'm considering for a PhD program. I wish I had more time, as I was completely jet lagged for the first three schools I visited. I've found at least two schools that I could be happy spending five or six years working. It was also good see my parents, my wife's parents, my grandparents, my sister, and some of my friends in Boston.

One of the things about moving around a lot is that I know people just about everywhere I stopped. I had a friend of mine show me around Pittsburgh and treat me to lunch. I was able to spend a couple of nights with a friend in Boston and even got to see The Blue Man Group at the Charles Theatre. I recommend seeing the show if you haven't. It reminds me a lot of a modern Kraftwerk, both celebrating technology and showing the isolating effects of that same technology. I'm not going to go into details, as I don't want to give too much away, but very fun.

I'm not writing anything nearly as cool or thoughtful as The Wife these days, but I've been having some excellent discussions with friends. Actually putting down those conversations evades me at the moment; maybe, when I have some time to actually relax at home I'll feel more comfortable with them.

I board my plane in an hour and a half and need to get some reading done to keep up with my classes. The End! for now.

Crafting Aliens

2005-09-12T22:27:00.000+09:00

Knowledge of writing for an audience encourages inanity and hedging, for those who one truly is writing to are not anonymous in the slightest, and exposure is the most cardinal embarassment of the online world, when we exist in it, even if we keep one foot on dry land.

The nature of community--virtual in truth meaning "not real"--is a complicated question. [ze]DH brought up some time ago in a very insightful post about how he has changed over the years... I have tried bringing up the topic with people, but have felt very little success in pursuing it much further than poorly phrased value statements, particularly with those who share the experience. Perhaps these are questions which are generated by the communities they concern, and concern the communities they are not generated by. However, like [ze]DH, I am certain that the questions raised reflect very deeply on our perceptions of how we not only communicate, but interrelate.

Can friendships really be made over distance? We used to have penpals with people we scarcely knew, but now the thought of giving out our real addresses makes us cringe. What does it imply about people who communicate virtually (note pun) solely through text? Is it a mutually exploitative enterprise, fulfilling a base desire for companionship that removes all complications like responsibility or the old function of the community--support? We have received so much help from our community here, a community we had never thought of because it was developing alongside us. During the move, our helplessness would have been laughable, had it not been for people offering assistance, providing valuable advice, even giving us furniture and appliances, or patch of floor and hot meal. How tenuously linked we are! Yet we are drawn in some uneven webbing together, all the same. Regardless of how much the western mind values its independence, without support or a network to value our accomplishments, we falter.

Relationships are delicate things. They do not move in laws and courts. They are sustained by the most strange sensitivies of human interaction and neglect. They are curious.

This would be incomplete (and I fear will remain incomplete anyway, as my moments of extemporizing in this forum are rather infrequent), without referencing the concept of family. Of environment. Of upbringing. So I have referenced it, and all the things that beg to be said are impossible to articulate before bedtime. Every metaphor I have tried to write them in has fallen apart in a mess of leaves and wings and roads and music. But it is something I am thinking about.

I referred to Minakuchi as "home" today, without even thinking about it. It really has become our Japanese furusato,... we haven't been back yet. We need to plan a satogaeri soon. Pieces and stages of life seldom transition like chapters, and perhaps it is foolish to think of them in such breakable pieces as that at all. All of it is as sincerely part of me as everything else, everyone else. And distance does not change these things, just stretches out the webbing a bit more, but the connection never breaks, not really.

Lessons learned over the past month... TWO MONTHS?!

2005-09-09T09:35:00.000+09:00

NTT is out to gouge you for money.
We uh, hehe, actually DO have a volume control for our doorbell. So, it was actually our fault that we missed the phone line inspection guys the second time. BUT IT WAS THEIR FAULT THE FIRST TIME!!!
The third time is the charm. "TillalillaLING!!"
Little kids are cute.
Little kids are hellions.
Little kids freak out when Mommy goes missing. In the space of one second.
Teaching little kids may be my calling: I get to make faces, sounds, voices, pictures, sing, dance, roll around... >@_@<
Teaching little kids requires a mind of STEEL. Discipline is hard.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. And makes you live over at your friends' apartment and play bawk-bawk with their cat.
I actually do like Indiana. But not politically.
The guy I sat next to on the plane on the way back did things the flight attendant had never seen before... and he told me so.
Borrowing a friend's How to Draw Manga books is not actually dorky. And it isn't nerdy, either. And... it... uh... isn't pathetic, either. DON'T JUDGE MEeeee!!! >o<

Okay, I have a LOT more lessons than that!!! But that is the short, non-philosophical list. More of substance to come, I am sure. Under a week until my love returns to me. Call me Solvejg.

In Search of Futon

2005-07-27T11:41:00.000+09:00

Yesterday was the final burst of activity that moved us and accompanying stuff to the big, bad, castle city. In the middle of an incoming typhoon. It veered off, and so we just had wind and a little spitting, sideways rain. But it was exhilarating. In the afternoon I journeyed to a store that a northerly-dwelling fellow orientationeer recommended--Nafuco. O! Beauty of Do It Yourself! O! Warehouse of Wonder! Why looking at various forms of shelving or curtains should make me giddy, I don't know, but we lost a good half of our stuff to moving, because it belonged to the prefecture, not to us. But I was in search of... FUTON! We have decided not to bother buying a bed, because it is big and clunky, and a decent one would be expensive. But -proper- futon, those are a delight. And I think, after three years here, that I did pretty darn well, even got the little mat things to go underneath!! (Although I was comparing prices for a good long while, so long in fact that I noticed the same security guard pass me by no fewer than four times... Discrimination? Maybe. But I think by the time I wheeled my towering doublewide shopping cart to the checkout, that did away with any possible suspicion. To repeat the current Shiga anti-shoplifting campaign slogan: STOP THE MANBIKI!) No more rental futon for us! We are OWNERS now. Much to the puzzlement of the staff, I requested delivery. I don't think anyone much walks to this place. The guy I initially asked looked at me curiously, and asked WHERE I wanted it delivered, because they only delivered inside the city. I should have said Zimbabwe.

Vive l'amour, vive la compagnie!! OR お疲れサマー

2005-07-25T09:43:00.000+09:00

Let every good fellow, now join in our song,
Vive la compagnie!
Success to each other, and pass it along,
Vive la compagnie!

Chorus
Vive la, vive la, Vive l'amour.
Vive la, vive la, Vive l'amour.
Vive l'amour, vive l'amour,
Vive la compagnie!!

A friend on your left, and a friend on your right,
Vive la compagnie!
In love and good fellowship, let us unite,
Vive la compagnie!

Repeat chorus

Now wider and wider, our circle expands,
Vive la compagnie!
We'll sing to our comrades, in far away lands
Vive la compagnie!

Repeat chorus

With friends all around us, we'll sing out our song
Vive la compagnie!
We'll banish our troubles, it won't take us long
Vive la compagnie!

Repeat chorus

Should time or occassion, compel us to part
Vive la compagnie!
These days shall forever, enliven our heart
Vive la compagnie!

Music is a curious thing. It comes to me and brings the strangest insights in the midst of chaos.

The first time I sang this it was with full exhilaration, and we were teenagers who had never tasted the bitterness of death, or the sorrow of farewell. And now, we hurtle through these lyrics like they are our life story: exhaustion and sorrow and summer and mad, mad celebration all mingling to make their mark like some epicurean tattoo, searing quiet the words "the last time" and imprinting our memories indelibly. VIVE LA COMPAGNIE!!!!

微妙な～。。。

2005-07-12T08:35:00.000+09:00

The Conquering of the Inner Keep

The rain had stood in the way of the advances of the leader they called simply, "The Fury of the Hills of Old Castle, next to the Western Friend, of the Palace of the South Sea." The day dawned clear, with none of the threatening rain that had made everything linger in seemingly permanent dampness in its wake.

Screaming their war songs, the force descended upon the closed places that had defied them. Dust flew! Blood spilled! The entrails of the inner keep EXPLODED out in an EXPLOSION of EXPLODING EXPLOSIVES!! The leader laughed a mighty laugh, sweat and the blue of the face paint mingling together, the adhesives of booty affixed to the person. The kilt, another spoil of the war, adorned the leader's mighty frame! Lifting the mighty claymore, uttering a bloodcurdling howl of defiance, the leader challenged the inner keep! AND IT ANSWERED!!

Battle was met with the second dweller of the keep, the whoosh of one! two! three!The deadly dance was enjoined. But hark! The claymore's deadly path was diverted, and it shattered in TWAIN! Laughing, then, for they knew one another to be allies after all, the combatants joined forces, and the inner keep quailed, and fell.

2005-07-10T16:34:00.000+09:00

Thoughts

Our life is boxes.
Our life is goodbye parties, even though we aren't leaving.
Our life is communicational disaster, work inflicted mania.
Yet.
In the midst of this hurricane, there is the surprising, humbling touch of God, there is the stunning revelation of conversation, there is a faint moment of depth of thought, or the lightning that makes us small again under the vast dark sky, the communality across distance, the matchstrike of inspiration, the yearning and motivation towards everything that is lost and that may yet be.
Is all change as funny as this?

2005-07-02T19:42:00.000+09:00

Thoughts

This past week has been a bit insane for the both of us. We've got everything sorted for moving into the new apartment now, by which I mean, we will have our ADSL connection ready for us as soon as we move in. I was hoping to get work done for the classes I'm attending by bringing the computer in to school so I could read during my down time between the classes I'm teaching. That was a bust. Wednesday through Friday I was teaching all day at two different elementary schools. Usually, I teach at the Jr. High, but there is an unwritten agreement that the English teacher gets lent to the elementary schools once a month. This week was that once a month, but ended up being three times this month. To be honest, I really enjoyed myself. As I was telling my wife, this job has been the best thing to happen to me, in terms of martial arts prowess. I basically have 8 hours a day of low-level practice. At the Jr. High it's stopping fights, but at the elementary school its giving a kid a piggy-back ride while racing another kid in a 100 meter dash. It isn't the most conducive environment for getting much else done, and I can't say the lack of AC is the best in 90% humidity, but I had a lot of fun. I'm going to miss this job when I leave in August.

The folks over at IlliGAL have just gotten back from GECCO. Looking through the TOC from the proceedings is making me add another book to the wish list, as well as causing me to bemoan, at least to a small extent, how busy I am. I've had a project on the back burner for some time: A genetic algorithm for fast point-based character generation for the Shadowrun RPG. I know, I know, it is really nerdy, but still, it sounds interesting to me. Unfortunately, I haven't had the time for side projects recently.

Okay, I've spent enough time avoiding work that I desperately need to get done, back to the grind, but first a picture of our "Jumps" before recycle day.
Peace.

2005-06-27T23:58:00.000+09:00

This was the ride at Supein Mura that had the entirely mindwarping flamenco dancers. It only looks innocent.

2005-06-27T23:52:00.000+09:00

I believe this speaks for itself.

2005-06-27T16:30:00.000+09:00

DANCE!!!

Once I fought a monster gnat, with my sword I struck it!
Then I melted down its fat, more than filled a bucket!
Cobbler, cobbler, mend my boot, you'll be paid, so that's that--
Though I may not have a coin, you shall have my gnat's fat!!!
--Hungarian folk song

I really like that song. It has been going through my head often this last week, which has been the kind of busy where our feet haven't touched the ground, nor our heads our pillows. But a lot of interesting things have happened, so I will try to briefly (HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHitisMEwritingisitNOT?!) summarize.

HOTARUGARI 蛍狩り
Summer traditional activity of Japan. Firefly viewing. I had never done it, but when 西田さん said she had a friend who knew a good place to go, we went on Wednesday night, out through country ricefields, along a shallow stream. Apparently 西田さんused to go out when she was younger in yukata with her whole family. Although the hotaru are not out in as much force as past years, and indeed, it is a little early yet, it was still very cool. There was a tree down by the water just full of fireflies, and it was lit with the eerie glow of tiny, sporadic lights. There was a bridge, and looking out over the river and into the slow, mesmerizing firefly dance was really something. The BB came with, as Sec-Hus was busy doing homework. We stayed for tea with the friends of friends, and ended up staying quite late to see the end of a Hanshin Tigers game. How Japanese is THAT?! I feel like I have done everything now, seasonally speaking. Hanami, Kouyou, and now Hotarugari. Satisfaction. I learned a song! Let's see if I remember it.
ほ、ほ、ほたる来い
こっちの水は甘いぞ
あっちの水は苦いぞ
ほ、ほ、ほたる来い
Firefly, come!
The water here is sweet!
The water there is bitter!
Firefly, come!
Or something like that. There was another one about little fish and fireflies, but I never came close to remembering that.

Apartment FOUND
Got one. We made the first processing deposit on Saturday. It will be ours. We move our crap in three weeks. Relief, just in time to panic about everything else. YESSS.

Shima Spain Mura 志摩スペイン村
We have commented before on the mindbending nature of theme parks here. Let me assure you, gentle reader, things have not changed! In Spirited Away, the father comments that a lot of theme parks were built during the bubble economy, and now are abandoned. Supein Mura (Spain Village!!) doesn't have long before it meets the same fate, I fear. Yes, it is a theme park themed on ... SPAIN! Once again, SecHus could not join us for schoolwork occupying his entire life, but the BB came, as well as Kinu-chan, and other teacher friends, as well as the very cute Kazuki, providing the under-3yrs-old contingent, as well as someone with whom I can have very complete and satisfying conversations. We stopped in Toba (near Ise) for lunch, and had fresh grilled shellfish in the shell and Ise-style udon. Clams were yummy, but the weird topshell things I shall never sample again.

Supein Mura, the BB and I concluded, was either an amusement park with a Spain theme tacked on, or else was designed after Spain using a single entry in the Encylopedia Brittanica. They close at 4:30 pm, and the place is designed for thousands and thousands of people. There were no lines. There were no crowds. We got off roller coasters and ran around for another go. The coasters had names like Gran Monserrat, Swing Santa Maria, Flying Quijote, Adventure Lagoon, and Bull Fighter. That one is particular is worth mentioning, because the whole ride was in the dark, and the coaster, I believe, was supposed to be put in place of the bull. It would stop, and start, and jerk around so violently that I think we were in death throes, and bright, neon red capes would be lit up in front of us and we would speed up to charge them. We got off, and referred to it as the Whiplash Machine for the rest of the day. To be honest, most of the rides and theme attractions of the park were kind of... sad. Most sad was the stage of foreigners in funny costumes that were clearly humiliating themselves for money. And probably not very much money. I had to avert my eyes. Though, they DID have a cool ride that combined water, coaster, AND indoor ride WITH pirates, ogres, treasure, attacking mainland castles, skeletons, Triton king of the merpeople, and clapping seals. They did have one really good coaster, and I had a blast riding the merry-go-round (WITH HORSES THAT WENT UP AND DOWN IT WAS LIKE MARY POPPINS!!!) with Kazuki and the company o’ ladies. They also had a ride that consisted entirely of Christmas lights and plastic flowers, and the most disturbing nightmare fuel of wireframe flamenco dancers whose bodies were made of lights, but had no features, and whose dresses were just… dresses. And they thrashed to and fro. They also had “Ice Castle,” which I didn’t go in, but the BB said it was basically a walk-in freezer, at minus 30 C. They weren’t kidding about the ice, apparently, and those who went in came out freezing, as the muggy humidity crystallized upon their skin. Anyway. Supein Mura may or may not last for another few years. If it doesn’t (“They must have spent MILLIONS to build this,” said the BB), then it will certainly be a splendidly haunting place. And despite the bizarre nature of the whole thing (they had a posse of animal cartoon characters that were the main characters from Don Quijote), it was, in fact, quite fun.

Sketchbook roadtrip
So, without asking my permission, the other week my darling だんな took my sketchpad to work with him to show around. I think it is because he knew I would say NO. He showed it to the art teacher. (Imagine me choking in helpless mortification as he reveals this to me.) “She liked it,” husband said. And he showed me HER sketch travel diaries which she had lent him to show to me. And… and… it was AMAZING. She sketches in 0.3 inkpen, and literally DRAWS things she does and sees, along with pasting tickets and random postcards and things in her sketchbook (without a pencil sketch beforehand). She has little manga versions of herself responding to things, and I was so amazed I forgot to be embarrassed. This is what art teachers are allowed to do, after all. Be artists. And HOW. And I am reminded of my ever-encouraging high school art teacher, Mr. Evelyn. If you are out there anywhere, Mr. Evelyn, I wear my hair short and look like Frodo Baggins now, not like Kenny G. And I hope retirement is everything you hoped it would be!

Speeches and Biwako
Had to write a speech to give in front of the Prefectural Board of Education on Friday afternoon. In Japanese. So I had my kids write most of it for me. I shall include it below in its original format. The beginning is the introduction. Kinu-chan graciously translated my overdirect and comprehensible Japanese into very polite and soft-touch keigo. There has only been minimal editing.
この三年間、短かったですが、いろいろ経験し、学び、そしてたくさんの思い出を作りました。私たちは色々な理由で日本にALTとしてやってきていますが、私たちの仕事は生徒のために何かをすることだとすぐに気付きました。私は生徒に聞きました。私の授業についてどう思いますか？良い思い出や悪い思い出はありますか？そして何を学びましたか？
かえってきた生徒の答えです。
最初は外国人だと思い、きんちょうしたけれど、笑顔で声をかけてくれたり、面白いことを言ってくれたりとケイトのおかげで、今では普通に話すことができるようになりました。―Yuko
I have a lot of things from you. I seem to be walking dictionary!-- Noriko
ケイトの授業はとても楽しくて勉強している気分がしなかったよ。体育の後とかつかれて寝てしまった事もあったけど笑ってゆるしてあと、ケイトと二人でtalkingした授業はすごくきんちょうしたけど、自分の英語に自信がついた。― Mami
ケイトにアメリカのことを教えてもらってとっても、楽しかったし、アメリカとか他の国に対してめっちゃ興味をもつことが出来たよ。－Mai
Everytime you are kind to teach me English. You saved my life. – Eri
Sometime when I was in bad humor you make me happy. I don’t forget something you taught me. I don’t forget you, so don’t forget us, too. – Takaoki
ケイト先生のクラスはとても好きでした！！もっといっぱい話したかったし、たくさんのことを学びたかった。-- Miki
I had a lot of good memories with ***. I learned that English’s culture, pronunciation, and more… Especially I think I had learned “English is very funny.” --Ayumi
また出会う日があったらいっぱいしゃべりましょう！！－ Naoko
本当にありがとうござました。-- Hideya
こちらこそ、皆さん、本当にありがとうございました。
After the speeches, I hung out in the Apple store in Otsu with MacFiends. Er. Friends. Yes. Haha. Then I went to Biwako, and thought I might write, but instead was completely filled up with the lakeside. It was the perfect place to be, and the lakebreeze was entirely energizing.

さようなら、日本語教室
At Japanese class on Friday night, I realized that it would be my last class because of farewell parties on Fridays for the next two weeks. So. Again I had to give a sayonara speech. 泣いちゃった！ Again! Luisa es una mujer sensible como yo, entonces nosotras dos lloraban. Pucha!!

Beloved Husband
His paper finished, this week has another paper and a review for the ACM. Good luck, love. In our free time we can start packing stuff into boxes. On the positive side, this week both of our respective workplaces has exams from Tuesday to Friday. This will be a welcome relief and chance to get things done. Wife out.

2005-06-21T08:48:00.000+09:00

Thoughts

There is a lot, yet not a lot to update. Security Husband thought he could drop the summer course he has no time to take, but it turns out he can't, unless he wants the incomplete he received last summer to turn into something that will drop his GPA through the floor. So! After a whole day of feeling liberated, he realized that he was not free after all. Back to work.

As for me, I was excited to relate that I got a haircut! The romantique dolly-curl-afro is gone, and now it is kinda... interesting. Flappery, perhaps, or lots of bitty fairy curls.

There is more! We were up almost all weekend doing apartment hunting (I am too burnt out on horror about "thank you money" and housing deposits that all I can say is... ohhh yeah, we are gonna need SH's current paycheck and half of mine to get into a new apartment at all. Dios mio.)... and it was fun, if not totally exhausting. I got kinda sick, spent Monday recouping. I am trying to break my addiction. Day two of headache. I thought withdrawal from caffeine only lasted a day! ;_;

Read some AMAZING literature-- finally finished The PLAGUE, by Camus. Have some thoughts to share there, but... that will have to wait until I get the book in front of me while I am writing here.

I at last took steps at work today to confront the system...gently. Maybe one day I will get into a description of office politics in the Japanese workplace, but I have flexed my gai-fu, and shall see what fallout there is. Hopefully good fallout. I don't deal well with being angry for long periods of time.

There is so much more to share, so many more current events, but I think this will do for now. Waifu outto.

2005-05-27T13:05:00.000+09:00

Brought to you by the BB

Went out last night with the Bitter Baron and a small crowd of friends, whose younger sister is in for a week with her boyfriend, en route home to England. A number of amusing things occurred, but most of them were the confusion of humor, insults, and nonsense from the BB himself. We were laughing so hard it was necessary that I begin taking notes of the things that were said. It is best to picture them at top volume, spoken with the pomposity of a circus ringleader, gesticulating with all the bluster of a British lawyer in full regalia, wig and gown.

[cell phone rings] "You see? YOU haven't got any friends, because all your friends are here, but I have friend, who aren't here, and they're emailing ME!!!"

[to a friend heading to Harvard law school come September] "You, are actually a maggot, preying on the fungus which fed on the animal--which was us! that you killed in the Independence War!"

"Don't think about that, because if you don't, you won't agree with it."

[on recent additions to Florida law, and what exactly is "self-defense']"You said hello with a slight aspiration on the H--and in hoallamllama-go, THAT is aggressive! BANG!! I shoot you in the face!"

"Adding one letter to 'democrat' makes DEMON-crat. But adding 'n' to Republican makes Republicann."

[on drawing attention]"It's like a seal! It'S like an aquarium!! Waa-waa-waa-waa!!!"

"The label hid the melicious layer!"

[On his own virtues, by comparison] "Now we all know that the person from Virginia isn't very smart, even though she's going to the best law school in the historical planet!!!"

[On dialects of English in his sister's boyfriend] "The Geordie force is strong in you!"

"He's preparing himself to produce THE GEORDIE!!!"

"It's not that interesting, but I'm building up."

2005-05-24T14:48:00.000+09:00

Thoughts

As The Wife has said, I've been very busy these past few weeks. I had, for one of my classes, an involuntary break as I waited for my textbooks to arrive. I had ordered my book using Amazon's patented "Buy now and we'll never send it to you, ever" technology." When my texts finally arrived I was in the middle of everything else. Time seemed to snap forward, propelling a giant spitwad of accumulated work my direction. My plans of intense training at the pool were absorbed into the glowing screen of a once working laptop. Still, as far as semesters go, I enjoyed this one immensely. I was studying cryptography and databases, and, while I dislike databases, both classes were pleasing for different reasons. More importantly, the further I progressed in my research, the deeper I wanted to go. Unfortunately, while this research, of which I will be able to speak more freely about shortly, has given me a direction to explore, I still find the general field of Computer Science interesting, rather than a very narrow subject. The key now is finding something that I find intriguing enough to maintain my interest through a PhD program. I'm looking at the field of machine learning as a cohesive way to combine my interest in information theory and genetic algorithms, but I'd also like to progress in my study of cryptography, or more specifically, the number theory behind it, which I've recently become enamored with.

The last weeks of my semester went something like this: project, project, final, final, all research done by the 17th to meet publishing deadline for paper. Then, after the last project, but before the first final, insert a new job. I'm teaching English up North, near Hikone. It's been an eye-opening experience in that it has expose me, first-hand, to one of the major problems in Japan, the continued discrimination of the descendants of the untouchables and the effects it is having. Still, the teachers are all quite friendly, and I'm finding my time spent here well worth it.

My main qualifications for the job were: 1) I am a native speaker of English, 2) I'm large and practice martial arts. The interview process was amusing, to say the least. I met with the head of the board of education and the mayor. In fact, I played the mayor at Go. I happened to win, but only by 12 pieces, and I was given a 9 piece head start. It wasn't bad for my first time playing and only being vaguely familiar with the rules.

I've been using my hour long commute, by train, to read, study, or sleep. So, after starting, but before my first final I was using whatever time I could find to study, but upon returning home, but, upon returning home, I had to devote my time to research. Regardless, the semester ended on a good note, though by the skin of my teeth, which really is a bizarre expression.

The job, combined with everything else, destroyed my chances at a good practice for the Japan Masters on the 22nd. I went in with only three days practice and I felt it. I swam the lead in a 100m medley relay and managed to do my 25 backstroke in 15 seconds, which I suppose isn't too bad, but I don't judge anything on the 25. I was signed up to swim both the 200m free and 200m back, but, halfway through the 200m free, both of my legs cramped. So, while I achieved my goal of going to the masters, I was quite disappointed with my performance.

Which pretty much brings me up to date, with a few exceptions. The Wife and I were looking forward to having Dan and his new wife with us for a bit in the autumn, but now it will only be Dan. I tend to be empathetic to my friends and was quite elated when Dan gave us the news. I was looking forward to meeting the person that brought him so much happiness. As it stands now, both The Wife and I are happy that we will be able to spend time with him again, but...

There is also some very heavy work that needs to be done with "The Society for Reflective Consumption of Media." We are trying to develop a full manifesto that will define our goals in both the positive, what we are, and the negative, what we are not. The current statement is quite vague and has lead to some disagreements between reviewers. We've agreed to hold off on some of our reviews until we can better convey what it is we want to accomplish. Encouraging discussions is one of our goals, and we have certainly achieved that, at least amongst our small group. I also have some reviews that will be going up shortly. First is, "A Course in Computation Algebraic Number Theory;" followed by a multipart commentary and review of, "Guns, Germs, and Steel," "Technopoly," and "The Technological Society;" and then a review of hBOA. I'm still enthusiastic about this endeavor, but it needs some maintenance, which I haven't been able to give recently.

The Wife has already mentioned that we are moving to Hikone this summer, but I thought I should add my own opinion. I'm really pleased that The Wife has chosen the way she has. Certainly, I had input, but the choice was ultimately hers to make. While the uncertainty of things has increased, so have the number of opportunities. By uncertainty, I mean economic uncertainty, while the opportunities are social and cultural. It will be nice to step outside the bureaucracy, which has served as a nice safety net in many instances, but is something we would like to move beyond. I will probably need to pick up a part time job. Even though I'd like to stay at my current job, I doubt that will be possible. The parting with friends in Minakuchi will be difficult, but we are not an impossible distance away.

I'm looking forward to this coming summer, though it is the first time, in the time we've been here, that we won't have any visitors. It will make the summer seem lonely, but perhaps we will have some money at the end of it. That is, of course, depending on when Dan comes. If he comes sooner rather than later, or if we receive a notification that a friend is going to visit, we might have a guest. This is merely thinking too far ahead.

So, with the start of classes in two weeks, the job, and my continuing research, I'm back to a normal schedule. That's all for now. I'll probably be writing more frequently, as I have a fair amount of free time to do some thinking.

2005-05-23T13:19:00.000+09:00

"Hmm? Oh, That was my instrument of justice. I’m actually a vocalist!"

In this exciting episode, we will answer these questions!!!
-WHY is the husband bald?
-WHY the fascination with cleaning?
-WHAT is Sorrow Sheeps?
-HOW do you find oil paint in Kyoto?
-WHERE is Mexico?
And so much more!!!

There is some updating on events to be done. So listen, children, gather round. It’s been an interesting weekend.

Security Husband has been burning the midnight oil to finish research, work at job, and try to swim to prepare for the Japan Masters. I had midterms at school this week, so I took a personal day, lounged around, did some writing, got some sleep. I took off the afternoon on Friday to have time to bake cookies for a breakfast brunch in Kyoto. Friday night after class we went to Saizeriya with R from Minakuchi, the BB, Nishida, and L from Minakuchi. L is my new aerobics buddy from Peru. She lent me a fistful of Peruvian TV shows on DVD. Wootwoot!!!

Saturday, Security Husband took it easy. Rested. Swam. I expected to launch myself in the direction of south Shiga, but instead found that my plan for all day cleaning had fallen through! (Joyce from church is heading back to America, and we had been planning on helping her do that final housecleaning before moving out.) So, I called up B from Nara instead. We ended up at the Hiromi Ichida collection of indigenous clothing on display right now. Very cool. Out of time to make more cultural things happen, we went for Indian food at the marvelous Raju’s. I got to show how smart I was, pointing out that “Paneer Butter Masala” had cheese in. B informed me that paneer was the name of the cheese. YES!!! I am smart.

I bid B adieu, and zoomed over to Katata. Caro-chan asked me a while back to go see the Ring Side Horfars, because they had a live performance that night. They have a great sound, which I really enjoy. They were also last in the lineup, which was seven bands. We came halfway through, so I only saw four. Huckleberry live house is a very small room, roughly a third of which is a stage. There is a small bar, a balcony for band members, and two or three tiny tables, but no real seating. This place is for hearing music, plain and simple. And to comment—most of the people there were the bands, a couple of girlfriends, and a few friends. Me an’ Caro-chan were the only foreigners. It’s an odd feeling. Most of the lineup was hard rock or punk, or something I like to term "loud." It is interesting when the wall you are leaning against can give you a back massage. Most groups handed out a questionnaire after their short set. Sorrow Sheeps asked for criticism, and gave me a sticker, even though I commented that occasionally their vocal harmony needed work. (See above quote. As a vocalist, that is the only real perspective I can offer and know what I am talking about!) Also got to hear Wasted Breed. Loud, but entertaining. RingSide had an old CD for sale for 200yen!!!! I bought it. Also a pleasure to my ears were Nayuta -- who have a very eclectic sound—"What genre would you say we were?" asked the questionnaire. Maybe electronic/progressive? What do I know about genre? More than cheese? I picked up their CD, too. They all looked very tall on stage, but when I spoke to them briefly after, I saw that it was not so. They also have "very good looking" going for them. Ring Side, of course, was great, and brought their ambient, electronical, muselike sound to everyone, soothing our ears and letting our minds take flight after hours of very loud guitar and screaming into microphones.

All of the groups want to perform, and some of them are really talented. Most of them put together their own CDs, and occasionally someone gets signed. But for the most part, nobody knows they exist, which is sad. Either that or they have no way to find their target audiences. One of the guys mentioned that the current situation in Japan was kind of how the US was in the early 90s… These guys may be the groundbreakers in a real independent music scene in Japan. But for now, they are playing to a mostly empty house. But they are all really nice, and I wish them big crowds that dance and scream their names. Whenever I get a car, I can put a Sorrow Sheeps sticker on the bumper, and point and say, “Now THIS is indy.”

When I returned home at 1:30 am, I found Security Husband running around with no hair. Yes, he had to get up at 5 am for the Masters, and had shaved his head to be swimmy. He was gone before I was conscious, and I hauled myself, my cookies, and some mint from the balcony in to Kyoto. It was the goodbye brunch after church for Joyce. It would have gotten kind of emotional (and it was anyway), but she said she would pop in just before leaving for the airport next Sunday. So it was a goodbye sans goodbyes, which was good. There were some visitors, and I was asked if I was the "layout artist" for the church homepage. That was gratifying. I had a good laugh about that.

I also had a good laugh on Friday at Japanese class, when I had to explain that Mexico was not an island in the Caribbean. Mexico is the country which borders the continental United States to the south, and is quite large, with a variety of terrain, in case you were hazy on that one. But then again, I shouldn’t mock, because I couldn’t label all the countries in Asia if I had to.

And finally, if you want oil paint in Kyoto, don’t go to Maruzen. They ain’t got it. Go to Loft, around the corner. Loft’s art stuff floor is HYOOJ. It’s amazing. And yes, this project is as secret as it is experimental.

As for the quote that starts this article, see its original context by clicking it! Also check out weekly-updated running webcomic by the artist, called Flaky Pastry. It is beautiful. And funny.

2005-05-12T09:20:00.000+09:00

The excitement never ends

It isn't everyday you get to blow through an entire paycheck, within two days of receiving it.

Security Husband and I have had terrible luck with laptops. Now, part of that is due to my Death Touch, which took the form of a perfect cup of coffee last summer (it doesn't do a thing to processor speed, in case you're wondering). But this time, we have mechanical problems, pure and simple. Our new laptop which we acquired after the coffee incident runs warm, but starting midwinter, it began overheating. We chalked it up to a variety of factors, propped it up on erasers. In the last few weeks it has been shutting down regularly, but we thought it might be due to some other factor. Tuesday evening, it flashed up a blue screen, said there was some kernel error, and said it should be restarted. Well. It didn't. Hard disk would not respond. (Though, on a matter of luck the next morning, it restarted long enough for me to shuffle EVERYTHING important from the C drive to our external hard drive.)

This timing could not be worse, yet at the same time, could not be better. Security Husband has research for school he MUST finish. Hard deadlines to meet. He had been looking forward to coming home that evening and then programming for hours. On the other hand, Tuesday was payday. Security Husband started a job last month, and this month he will receive his first paycheck.

To make a long story short, we went on an excursion with the Bitter Baron and R from Minakuchi...to the Apple store in Otsu. The BB picked up an external hard drive, R priced laptops, and we walked away with an iBook. No more Windows. Well, at least until our other laptop gets back from the shop--it IS, luckily, still under warrantee.

It seems like a good idea to name all the computers, now. I was given Chibi-chan, my teeny laptop running Win95 from a friend, already named. We refer to the lump of inert circuitry in our closet at The Coffee Computer... but what now? The white computer was just "research computer," but I feel like it should be called something a little more accurate. How about 暑死？ Atsushi is a perfectly legitimate name for a guy... But with kanji that mean "hot" and "death"... I think that should work. Now to think of one more, for the mac.

2005-04-26T15:44:00.000+09:00

Me and Suit Thing--The Adventures Continue...

You could say I blame Suit Thing for all this. You could say that, and you'd be wrong. Suit Thing and I are partners in crime, though in all honesty, Suit Thing couldn't do a thing without me.
So. Suit Thing sees this ad for a Position. Up North. Not as far as Long Beach, but a castle town. 'Fantastic,' I said, 'that's just the ticket.'
'You've got friends up there,' said Suit Thing, in that casual way Suit Thing has of twisting a phrase.
'Yeah,' I replied, wondering how on earth it was that Suit Thing could read my mind like that sometimes. So. A few electronic communications, and we were off. We caught the Most Expensive Train in the Country, the great trundling metal shoeboxes, and left early on Saturday. On the way, Suit Thing was on about button, unbutton, button, unbutton, but I ignored Suit Thing, and started a book on Japanese psychology, the kind where every third word is a transliteration or a romanized word from the Japanese, and has examples like 'How does the teacher who is eagerly teaching his female student justify his actions? Is he aware of his real intentions?' Suit Thing doesn't care too much about stuff like that. Suit Thing is there to look good.
We got to the castle town right about lunchtime, and soon our contact met us. Suit Thing was very quiet through the whole process, but I had to say, these people were impressive. The operation they had running completely floored me. Suit Thing was unruffled, but I could tell--Suit Thing approved.
'You should just tell them,' said Suit Thing quietly to me on the train home, 'Tell the people at The Top to go to hell, get out of the system, work for these guys.' I gave Suit Thing a cold look.
'Do you know how hard I have worked for this?' I hissed. 'Weeks of preparation! Loss of sleep! Everyone is counting on me now to go to this thing--and YOU are coming with me whether you want to or not!'
'You're too nervous.' Suit Thing lolled back against the seat cushion. But of course, Suit Thing was right. I was terrified. I couldn't comprehend Suit Thing's blase attitude toward it. The Meeting. The guys from The Top were going to give me the hardest questioning of my life--in a language I could barely speak. I was developing a stutter, and my mind had been going panic-blank just thinking about it. Yeah. Too nervous. But what could I do about it?
Monday came sooner than I had expected, the threat from the Meeting hanging over my head even as I gave the house the once-over, the twice-over, washed all the dishes, the blankets, bought all new laundry lines and clips. Hell, I even called up the Girls, got a few of them over for vids--a suspense thriller. Not the best choice. They left, I reviewed what I thought I might say to The Top guys, and I tried to sleep. All night, caffeine and suspense thriller tangled with the sheets.
Suit Thing was waiting for me when I got up. 'You look tired.'
'Ugh,' I said, reaching for a tissue, 'Guess allergies have finally caught up to me.'
'You better do something about that,' Suit Thing grimaced. ‘I can't do a thing for you if you're gonna snot the guys from The Top.’
'I'll be fine,' I growled. 'It'll go away.'
But it didn't. By lunch my nose had developed a distinct leak, and I was sneezing uncontrollably. Suit Thing was waiting for me, gestured curtly. 'Look in your bag.'
Lo and behold. Meds. Blearily I gulped them down. Interview in two hours! I couldn't stop sneezing, dripping, and sniffling long enough to speak a coherent sentence!
Suit Thing pitied me, maybe. But I wasn’t giving up on account of feeling like my head had decided to rebel against the rest of my body! No way. I’m stubborn. It’s a gift and a flaw together.
Suit Thing and I made it down to the station (only one stop on the Most Expensive Train Line) to the Just Regular Train. I was going early. Suit Thing was quiet, fiddling with whether or not to relax open, or buttoned up tight. Suit Thing settled on two of four buttons. I opened my notebook to scribble, to review possible answers to questions The Top guys might ask at The Meeting, in order to soothe what should have been hyper panic. Suit Thing smirked.
The panic never came. That cold medication was seeping into my brain cells, lifting my head away from my body, settling some bizarre mental cotton between what should have been overreacting, and my effort to keep blinking at a regular rate. It was making me calmly, curiously alert.
I sailed into the meeting place ten minutes early, to find that I was the last, and they were well ahead of schedule. I was due to go in immediately. The gut reaction should have been unprepared fear, but it was a tension I never actually felt. I murmured something reflecting surprise, then walked in. I didn’t understand everything; I didn’t even answer one of the questions with the correct answer. My palms started to sweat, even as I held them politely, feminely in my lap. But somehow, strangely, I felt relaxed. Suit Thing! Where the hell did you find that allergy medication!!? I did better than I think I could have ever done. I had poise. I had vocabulary. Well, not always enough. But enough for me. I did it, and without defenestrating myself or anyone else. Me and Suit Thing.
We walked out, surveyed the other people who had been called in for The Meeting, and I exchanged a few words, blew off a little nervous steam. I sympathized, but I couldn’t feel the nerves. I could only relate how I had been for weeks prior. We bid our adieus and headed back to the train.
‘Thanks,’ I told Suit Thing, a hazy grin on my face.
‘Hey,’ shrugged Suit Thing, ‘We’re in this together. I wasn’t gonna sabotage our chances or anything, just because I think the castle town is the perfect place.’
‘Geez,’ I replied, ‘What if The Top guys assign me to Long Beach?’
‘Then you got some decisions to make,’ said Suit Thing.
‘Huh. I got decisions NOW,’ I grinned, sifting through the chocolate at the conbini, settling on a white chocolate Kit-Kat. For luck, you know. Japanese. Kitto Katsu
Then we went home.

2005-04-11T18:06:00.000+09:00

At the top of the mountain, people... all there to see sakura plus castle. There was an long line trailing out of the entryway to get into the castle, and we could see people packed inside, peering out for the great view. We opted out, and instead found a giant bathtub that belonged to a Fujiwara, and took quiet pleasure in watching a lady in kimono walk under the cherry trees.

2005-04-11T18:04:00.000+09:00

A shot of Hikone-jou minus people.

2005-04-11T18:03:00.001+09:00

Packed. People. Sakura. Festival food. Can life get any better?

2005-04-11T18:03:00.000+09:00

This is o-hanami, done in style. Go out, look at cherry blossoms, picnic under them, usually with sake. The entire grounds was packed with people.

2005-04-11T18:00:00.000+09:00

At the Genkyu-en, garden near the castle. We sat and watched ducks and hawks and the water was like glass. Delightful.

2005-04-11T17:59:00.000+09:00

Hikone-jou and sakura.

2005-04-11T17:58:00.000+09:00

Hikone Castle is one of only four original castles remaining in Japan. The rest are rebuilt, mostly with concrete.

2005-04-11T17:57:00.000+09:00

Sakura... FROM ABOVE!!!! Look out, lady! It's coming for YOUUU!!!

2005-04-11T17:55:00.001+09:00

We never did get ama-zake, but we did take a picture.

2005-04-11T17:55:00.000+09:00

They come in different flavors.

2005-04-11T17:54:00.000+09:00

So. We take pictures of people taking pictures of sakura. And then we take more pictures of sakura.

2005-04-11T17:53:00.001+09:00

Shidare-zakura, or weeping sakura.

2005-04-11T17:53:00.000+09:00

Sakura. It's the season for hanami. Let's hanami together with us, and revel in the madness that waves upon waves of cherry blossoms bring us.

2005-04-11T17:43:00.000+09:00

At the top of the mountain, there is a park. Trellis, beyond that, gates, beyond that, our tiny island kingdom.

2005-04-11T17:42:00.000+09:00

Yearrrrgh, mateys. Th' mountain's belongin' ta ME!!!

2005-04-11T17:40:00.000+09:00

Abandoned playground on ??, the place we call simply, "The Mountain." This was last week.

2005-04-11T17:37:00.000+09:00

The map there shows the original layout of Azuchi-jou.

2005-04-11T17:35:00.000+09:00

The way down Azuchi-jou mountain.

2005-04-11T17:34:00.000+09:00

Mi bicicleta triste. (Waifu)

2005-04-11T17:32:00.000+09:00

On our way out of Azuchi, we stumbled across a remarkable discovery--tile farming!! The young tiles are immature and tender, and are not yet ready to be harvested.

2005-04-11T17:30:00.000+09:00

Another fox from Fushimi Inari. He looks happy. Or hungry.

2005-04-11T17:26:00.000+09:00

At the top of the mountain. We are standing where Azuchi-jou once stood. That is a three-storey pagoda, the only building up top that remains from the original. This castle was the first of its kind. For a little more information, check out http://www.jcastle.info/castle/azuchi.html

2005-04-11T17:21:00.000+09:00

Gazing up from the bottom of stairs.

2005-04-11T17:20:00.000+09:00

It was so quiet on the mountain of Azuchi-jou, apart from us panting up the enormous steps. Eerie.

2005-04-11T17:17:00.000+09:00

On the way up Azuchi-jo mountain, a small shrine, the lights already lit. And entirely deserted.

2005-04-11T17:16:00.000+09:00

At the ruins of Azuchi Castle. See? It says so on the stone! We went there last weekend, and it didn't rain until after we had seen it. A matsuri was just getting out as we arrived in town, and the bell announcing the procession of the omikoshi through the streets was still ringing through the air when we left.

2005-04-11T17:13:00.000+09:00

At ????, just around the corner from home.

2005-04-11T17:12:00.000+09:00

A jump back to our own local park, to a little ?? in the ?. Security Husband took this on a stroll through.

2005-04-11T17:09:00.001+09:00

From Fushimi Inari Taisha. That's Kyoto down there, spread out through the valley.

2005-04-11T17:09:00.000+09:00

One of many foxes, with a very unique face. In its mouth...? perhaps a scroll? Some foxes had rice in their mouths. They all are wearing red bibs. We don't know why.

2005-04-11T17:07:00.000+09:00

Also at Fushimi Inari. Inari is a traditional Shinto god of rice, whose messengers are foxes. Instead of the "Korean dogs" at most Shinto shrines, there are foxes here. They are EVERYWHERE at the shrine, and at dusk it can be quite unsettling.

2005-04-11T17:05:00.000+09:00

At Fushimi Inari Taisha, late afternoon, about a month ago. I went there with B, a friend from Nara. We scared ourselves silly with dire folk stories about what happens to people on the mountain past sunset.

2005-04-11T13:26:00.000+09:00

Thoughts

"Come with me to the principal's office" is an entirely uninspiring set of instructions. The kind that instantly make me shiver and think, "Oh, crap. I have done something wrong. I'm going to get in HUGE trouble." And then immediately start thinking of what I could possibly have done to get an personalized call-in to the principal.

It turns out I made it past Phase One. I got congratulations, several handshakes, and that was even stranger than just having it set down on my desk with no fanfare.

I have the unnerving sensation that my getting into this elementary-school teaching program up north is a matter of pride for the school. I am not only doing this for me, now. I am doing this for the Gipper. Er. The Suiko.

I am really scared, now. Phase One, with the essay that nearly broke me, was the easy part. Phase Two has me going down to kencho for an interview. In Japanese. Yeah, I am utterly confident about my ability to boss elementary kids around. Formal interview-language? I can feel my brain blank just thinking about it.

Luckily, everyone from my former supervisor, to my boss, to the principal himself have offered me their free time to help me do interview practice. 頑張ります！！！

2005-04-08T14:32:00.000+09:00

Thoughts of Breaks Now Ended

Farewell sweet melancholy couchlounging! Goodbye endless DVD and computer-slacking! O! Microwave pizza of Seiyu and Corona with lime packet! To thee, wiki, I pledge my fascination! Vacant screenstaring and eyeball aching! Packages sent to the land of SUVs and hippies! Motivation brought again by warming weather! Ume fading, spring sprung open again! Much has been done, places visited! Ruins of ancient castles, the ghost of Nobunaga! The eerie glow of twilit temple lanterns! From the mountain, my tiny island kingdom surveying! Last bells of agricultural matsuri! Applications written, institutions researched! Supervisors changed! Beer and onion rings found in abundance!!! AGAIN THE CEREMONIES MARK US! WE HAVE RETURNED TO SCHOOL IN A DOWNPOUR OF SAKURA!!!

Just to note. That wasn't supposed to be good. And it isn't. I have spoken.

We have visited a bunch of places over the last month or so. We'll get some pictures up here to show off.

2005-03-17T12:13:00.000+09:00

"Don't touch! Don't touch! The bunny!!"!

There is nothing quite as nice as going out with friends to eat. Then, upon returning home, looking forward to a hot shower before crawling, exhausted, into bed. But something lacks when there is no gas in the house. Which means no hot water, and no functioning stovetop. What a curious bepuzzlement ensues when one is staring at the digital wall display that tells the water temperature, and it reads letters that one has never seen before! Maybe it will come back in the morning? But no. To wash my face with warm water this morning required microwaving a plastic bowl of water to desired heat. I slouch into school in a sweatshirt, wishing I had jeans without holes in to continue the unwashed "Saturday" feeling.

In other things, at school, the application I have been doing to teach elementary school come August has entailed my writing a page-long essay in Japanese. Without the help of my truly amazing, dedicated, and wonderful International Department, I sincerely doubt it would have been comprehensible. The head of the department and my supervisor put MANY hours into proofing, reproofing, helping me straighten out my goals, my ideas, and helping me tailor the essay into something that worked for the position. They also put together the evaluation of my performance that went along with the essay and application to the prefectural capital. A colossal amount of work, all told. My supervisor confessed to me this morning that she could hardly sleep last night, because she was thinking about my essay. Then she said, "If you don't get this job, I'll kill you!!" Yes, Ma'am, Kinu-chan!!! I wonder if I had managed to put that on my application, if it would make a difference to the people making the decisions?

I learned so much doing this this week. I get the distinct feeling that if I wrote essays every week for a year, I would be really good at Japanese by the end. We shall see. This thing has been top stress this week, against the constant static of job-hunting. Hopefully things will work out!

2005-03-12T02:18:00.000+09:00

Thoughts

Several people took note that I have Martin Pelikan's book, Hierarchical Bayesian Optimization Algorithm: Toward a New Generation of Evolutionary Algorithms on my to read list. Once I'm done with it, I will be posting a review on my review site along with a review of Henri Cohen's A Course in Computational Algebraic Number Theory. The latter will be up June 2nd and the former will be up a brief time after that. Both books are available from Springer publishing. You can find other reviews at The Society for Reflective Consumption of Media, though not all pertain to technolgoy, you may find them interesting regardless.

2005-03-11T17:10:00.000+09:00

Thoughts

Huzzah! It has been quite a while. Like all life, my current position is one of both perceived good and bad. The grant money I had hoped to get was not available to me, thus I will not, most likely, be giving a presentation at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. It wasn't going to be much, just a 5 minute talk about the current research I'm doing, still, it would have been nice.

So, while that is disappointing, I have had additional good news about the research. I brought some observations I had about the original project to the attention of my research advisor. He was quite ecstatic at what I was suggesting and then brought that attention to some of the top people in the field I'm working in. They had not heard of it, at least in public literature, so we've decided to go ahead with another paper after the original is finished.

I've started a website with my good friend Dan and some other friends. You should check out the Societey for Reflective Consumption of Media. We are hoping to develop a community of friends whose opinions can be trusted for making timely media choices. The new intellectual will be one that is able to filter information for relevancy and we hope to be a part of that filter for many.

I have a long booklist of things I have read and must review and things I want to read. The latest on that queue is Hierarchical Bayesian Optimization Algorithm: Toward a New Generation of Evolutionary Algorithms. It is about what the title suggests, a scheme for utilizing a Bayesian Network for promising solutions, while sampling the built network for other solutions, which the network interjects back into the genetic algorithm.

The Wife and I are in a limbo here, so this counts as more bad news I suppose. We're not certain if we will have jobs here, so we may be returning home after this August. This has more possible outcomes, which could be considered good or bad, but I'm going to let time adjust my perceptions in this manner. I think that about sums up my life so far. I know this has been terribly mundane, but most of my thought has been directed elsewhere.