Monday, August 24, 2009

Pictures and Whining

So!

I'm starting to get caught up. I'm half-way down my list of blogs, and I did post an entry about the Fuji climb on my Japan blog. Also, those pictures are up.

I've turned the heel of my first sock, and am on the foot. Except for the gaping holes in the gussets, it's really not so hard. And self-striping yarn is just fun.

I have moved to Chapel Hill. YEA! I'm close to campus, just a short ride by bus from the stop that is about a minute from my door. My roommate is really nice. Tomorrow is SILS orientation, and school starts Tuesday. Now all I have to do is find a job, and I am set. Of course, the job might be the hardest part. But hey, what can you do?

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

I'm Still Not Dead! Just Not Very Communicative!

Hey, kids. Yes, I am a terrible blogger. I am doing my level best to get caught up this weekend, because guess what? School starts next week! OMFG! After that, I certainly can't expect to be blogging much more often than I am now. Let's hope, however, that when things settle down a bit and I get a regular internet connection again (ahem), I can at least blog semi-regularly.

Maybe.

Anyway. Here I am. How are you? I'm so sorry I haven't gotten caught up on all of your blogs. Hell, I don't even know if anybody is still reading this besides my mom (hi, M). If you are, Hey! I'll get caught up on your stuff soon. Er, soon-ish.

Quick me update: I am now in North Carolina, trying to find a place to live in Chapel Hill, trying to find a job, getting freaked out about the start of school, feeling a bit (okay, a lot) out of sorts because of the lack of settled personal stuff. Once upon a time I would have thought that home was where my stuff is. I have now amended that to where my stuff is organized.

It's good to be home, albeit weird. I've mostly adjusted, I think, and done most of the immediate gratification things I wanted to do - hung out with the rents, sat on the couch with the dogs for hours on end, eaten Taco Bell, Burger King, Cuban food, Chik-Fil-A, Steak'n'Shake, gone to the movies (more on that later), bought clothes and shoes in my size, driven around 'til I was tired of it again... All that. So, acclimated, I guess. I just miss my friends. A lot.

Trip and travel updates and pictures are still pending on my other blog. I might get around to doing some of that tonight. If you're lucky.

Okay, enough about that crap.

Knitting update: I've made a couple of wristlets for my new tattoo, and I've put them on Ravelry but I haven't yet put the patterns on this blog, as I've meant to do. It's on the list. But they're coming, as are pictures of stuff. I have also gotten Anne Budd's book on socks, and just today I cast on for my very first sock! Squeal! I like the yarn, JoAnn Sensations Bamboo and Ewe in a variegated purple and grey, and I'm excited to see the sock unfold and figure out how to do the heel and all that. Yea! I'm hoping to have the pair done by the time the colder weather gets here, but since school will be starting I just don't know what will happen to my knitting time.

Geekery update: Wanna know what kind of geek I am? I'm a Star Wars novel geek, that's what. When I got to my parents' house, I discovered, amongst the large piles of things belonging to me that they have patiently kept, the X-Wing series book 5, which I vaguely remembered giving to my mom to take home for me when I finished it two years ago, in the storage-unit-already-closed-but-still-in-the-US time frame before I left. Well, it looked a lot more fun than The Brothers Karamazov, which I was ostensibly reading, so in I plowed. And I've been geeking out to those, or the ones that I own on the East Coast, anyway, since I got home. Yes, I know.

Also, I saw G.I.Joe. I expected it to be utter crap, but I have to admit that I enjoyed it immensely. It was so over the top it was fun, and I don't think it was taking itself all that seriously, which I appreciated. Now that absurd child fight scene - well, that was a little disturbing, not gonna lie, but it was also just so damn absurd I'm not even annoyed about it. Then again, I was so absolutely delighted to be in that theater that I may have been more charitable than usual.

All right, that's me. I'll be getting on that stuff I mentioned above, hopefully, but until then, sayonara! Oh wait, I mean, Bah! Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Hilarity Monday: Good-bye Japan Edition

Oh, damn, has it been two weeks? Things have been crazy, as you might imagine. But I'm not dead, and I am home. In fact, everything is pretty peachy, except that it's in this weird in-between state.

Brief update, which will hopefully be embellished later: Mount Fuji was complete torture but we did it; Tokyo was cool but utterly exhausting; my flight was long but uneventful; I got to see my sister in Seattle, very briefly, which was great; Florida is hot and sticky but wonderful; my parents were delighted to see me, and I them; sitting with the dogs and cats is pure therapy and just delightful; there is no wireless internet at my parents' house, no way to connect my computer to their internet, and their computer is sloooooooow and annoying (sorry, M); I leave for North Carloina this weekend.

So that's it, in a nutshell. I hope to be talking all about Fuji and Tokyo and how weird and yet wonderful it is to be home in my Japan blog, but to do that I will need to spend yet more hours hanging out at Panera Bread COmpany or Barnes and Noble, since they are the nearby places with free wireless internet. Today was the first time I got to sit at Panera and I ended up drinking so much coffee my hands were shaking. And that was just getting caught up on correspondence and starting the UNC appointments and stuff! Just imagine the possibilities for caffeine overload in getting caught up on all the blogs and web comics and other things to which I became addicted over the past two years.

Anyways, my little Langoliers, I have not forgotten you, and I will read your blogs, will comment when appropriate, and I will update again soon, I promise. But for right now (and honestly, for the next couple of months, I think), I am in an odd, transitional limbo, with no real space of my own and no solid, constant internet connection for my little Powerbook. Hell, I'm writing this from my parents' computer, so I can't even give you pictures! So I am sorry, but have faith! This blog will return to its former, kind-of-interesting level of quality soon!

Meanwhile, here is your last Japanese-related Monday Hilarity. Well, it might not be the last, but you know what I mean. In celebration of the bizarreness that is Nihon, I give you: BINOCULAR FOOTBALL!!!!