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?

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?

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!!!!

It's Aliiiiiiiive!

Yes! I'm back! Oh, Blog of My Heart, hello!

Sorry about that. I actually returned to Japan one week ago exactly, but there's just been so much to catch up on, and it feels like I was gone way longer than eight days. Did you miss me? (it's okay to lie to me, my ego demands it) because I missed you. Well, sort of. I mean, I didn't actually spend all that much time as I was climbing the Great Wall or prancing through the Summer Palace thinking about my knitting blog, but you know what I mean. Since I procured the pictures in this blog, you know that I was thinking about you!


Fetching in the Forbidden City

I've been trying to get all of my trip stuff up on my regular blog, but on Friday I was finally publishing the first round of pictures and commentary, and iWeb spent thirty minutes saying it was publishing (time during which I cannot do anything else on my computer because all there is is the Spinning Color Wheel of Supreme Frustration) but then at the last minute proclaimed an error and I was back where I started. GAAAHH!! I did not miss that bulls*** (sorry, can't curse, my mom reads this).

More Fetching at the Summer Palace

So, anyway, MLE was sweet enough to drop me a line yesterday inquiring whether I had been kidnapped and sold into slavery, so I thought I'd come by quickly and say hello. Okay, actually she just asked if I was coming back (and thank you for that!), but the kidnapping fear was one that crossed my mind a time or two before I set out to China all by my lonesome, so there you go.

Now, I promise to give you the link to my trip stuff when iWeb stops taunting me and lets me publish it, and to tell you all about the small amounts of knitting I've eeked out since I last blogged, in a few days. Meanwhile, I have somehow caught a cold despite the long-awaited arrival of spring, and am going to watch Battlestar Galactica and drink jasmine tea. Good evening, my little Langoliers!

Sayonara and Ni Hao

Brief post, without even a picture, to let you all know that in eight hours (sheesh!) I'll be leaving for Beijing. I'm gone for just over a week, and while there will be plenty of picture-taking, a bit of knitting (I've got to knit at least a few stitches on the Great Wall, after all), and at least enough internet to call my dad on his birthday next Thursday, there will be no blogging. Rest assured, dear reader, that I will be having plenty of fun without you.

When I get back, reports on the trip, Watchmen, and that *@^%$#&@(@&$^%$% blanket. Later!

Travel Planning!

Here's where I'll be in just over three weeks:
Even knowing that the baby has arrived and time is short, I haven't really knit anything in the past couple of days.

First, there was drama. Now, I'm a little too old for drama, but I basically live in the equivalent of Melrose Place for the foreigners of Yatsushiro. Except with less sex. As far as I know. Anyway, there was drama and that involved coffee and gossip sessions, and I got distracted. Bad Tracy.

Second, my books on Beijing and China arrived. Yea! At the end of this month, I will be leaving to spend eight days in Beijing, but all I've got booked so far is the flight, the first two nights at a hostel, and my visa. So there is a lot to research and plan. I got the Lonely Planet guide to Beijing city, and Fodor's China. They both seem pretty good so far, and I got them both slightly used but in excellent condition from BetterWorld Books, who sent them promptly. I love that site.

Originally I had hoped to have the Prepster done by that trip. Now I think I'll be lucky to have sent off the Leaf Blanket.

In either case, however, I will be in China at the end of the month. How rad is that?