Wrappin Up

Klizeks
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

I need to get drunk and wrap presents more often.
They turned out pretty good! More pix in the flickr photostream.

Happy Thanksgiving!

IMG_2499
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

Bombshell

Just got word from the Zaibatsu (corporation) that they want us to extend until March 31, 2009.

I am trying to reschedule the packout. It feels like stepping in front of an oncoming freight train and saying "stop, please."

Also,
I JUST did all my xmas cards and put information in them about our temporary contact info. Sheesh.

Also, also,
I GAVE AWAY THE XMAS TREE. I hope Tatum will let me borrow it back!

Laundry List

Posting at 11:58pm JST. Way past my usual bedtime!

A lot of phone calls tonight, from family and friends. Cp called and I was SO excited I actually had to sit down. The job interview that was supposed to happen at 10pm did not. I'm hoping it was simply an oversight.

Tore through 25 items on my to-do list, not easy stuff either, with the last thing remaining being to call my company's travel office and get stuff set up for our fly out.

eta: it's now 12:44am. The Japan hotels are booked. The flight is booked. The rental car is booked. The only glitch is there's no extended-stay hotels available for the month of January anywhere in Baltimore. Argh.

The shopping for T-Day is done, the rented tables and chairs have been picked up and set up. The tablecloths got ironed and I got the place settings arranged :


Not happy about the paper plates, but I had to cut some corners somewhere in order to accomplish everything. At least there's not paper cups. Tomorrow, oh, no, wait, today's Monday. I don't have to start any cooking/baking until Wednesday.

I woke up with this joke in my head today: What do you get when you cross an Amish guy, a Chinese guy, a spastic, a polack and a dumb blonde? Misawa's Server Support Group. Ha ha ha.

Blog Update

I don't know what to blog about.
Benri the Ninja told me, quotes are a good spot to start at.

And now I am done with my update! Domo, Benri!

First Snow in Misawa

Here is our first snow, right on time as predicted. My last first snow in Misawa. =(

Our packout date is December 4. The packout means the movers come and cram all our things into crates and get them shipped out. Our "final out" for the house will probably be the 6th of December. We will be staying in a hotel until the end of the month, although this is subject to change.

I am sad to be moving out of our darling house but at least we are moving forward again, after being stalled out.

Shokuyoku no Aki

Shokuyoku no Aki - Autumn is for eating, Japanese proverb.

We spent a late autumn weekend away and it basically amounted to finding something to do between eating fantastic kaiseki meals. Autumn is for eating? Hells, yeah!

So we (being me, my spouse and Benri the Ninja) travelled to Hakodate, a city on the southern end of the island of Hokkaido. This was our third trip to Hokkaido, our second to Hakodate. Chris and I were celebrating our 5th wedding annivesary. Benri was celebrating being back from the desert, seeing clouds again, and tempratures less than 140 degrees farenheit. We spent Friday through Sunday at the beautiful Wakamatsu, a traditional Japanese ryokan.

Ryokans are reknowned for the level of service, the loveliness of the rooms, and the fantastic kaiseki meals. Some ryokans have onsen or hot springs, too. Wakamatsu had a gorgeous onsen, all marble and pale wood. The outside bath was on a balcony!

We were the only people on our floor and there were scant few guests at the rest of the ryokan. We had a huge room with a gorgeous ocean view - we were about 100 feet away from the water. The sound of the surf was amazing! I can understand why the Japanese Royal Family chose to stay here.

Did I mention the food? I think I did. But I will mention it again. The whole stay revolved around eating.

You can see pictures on my flickr photostream.

Five Years (Happy Anniversary)

Unconditional love. That's what this is. I love him, as is, fully. I've had to stop arm wrestling with the facts. Why me? Didn't I already have a big love once? And lost it? So why should I get it again? I've had stop trying to look for cracks and flaws to prove that it's not as good a it seems. Because it's as good as it seems. Even when we fight we fight inside a container of good. Somehow, through a flip of the coin, I ended up here. Feeling like somebody at the top of the heart-lung transplant recipient list. Damaged but invigorated and fucking lucky.

Magical Thinking
Augusten Burroughs

Thank You

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRAGE

small woman + big diesel truck + judas priest on the stereo = four wheeled terror bearing down on slow-poke japanese drivers. I think I may have made some old obaasan poop her pants.

My truck is done sold. I had to drive Chris' enormous Surf today, which I hate because it is so huge and I feel completely lost in it and I swear to the zombie babby jeebus that it doesn't fit in the parking spots no matter how carefully I manuever it.

I will say the Surf is considerably more POWERFUL than my Tonka Truck ever was and as a result I ended up consistently 30 klicks over the speed limit. It doesn't feel like you're going all that fast for some reason.

Anyway, no news on the repatriation home front. Stay tuned.

Baby Steps

We had our household survey. It will take about 1 day to pack up our approximately 4 tons of stuff.
That's really 4 tons, I am not exaggerating.

Sylvia is 25 days out from departure.

We are 39 days out.

We told the Aizawas on Sunday (11/2) that we are officially leaving. They took it well.

I am anxious and excited but totally bummed that I will not be in my own home for the holidays.

I also found out that Sylvia has a totally nice butt that really nice to squeeze! I really want to bite it, but a brief discussion with Sylvia allowed us to figure out: a bite on the butt = a punch in the neck, nothing personal, that's just the way it is. ;)

And So It Begins...

I sold my truck on Sunday to a nice lady named Joy. I hope she enjoys my little truck as much as I did.

Today I also stopped by the hospital and picked up my dental records and made arrangements to get copies of my medical records.

The I went over to the comm squadron and dropped off one of my smart cards/ID cards that I no longer need.

Next was a trip to the Personnel Flight to find out what I need to do transfer my car to the new owner. Short answer, come back tomorrow with Joy to get stuff started.

At work, I packed up my little corner work area and brought all the crap home, stopping to pick up Chris' dry-cleaning on the way home.

I also scheduled the survey of my house for the packout, which will take place in December (date to be determined).

I am currently working on my household goods shipment paperwork.

We are both still trying to find jobs but at least now I can focus and move forward.

Wow. It's really starting to happen!

Happy Halloween!

Some orange and black in honor of the day.

Scintillating Conversation

I adore my coworkers, even though they sometimes smell as weird as they look. They're smart, funny and endearingly geeky. We talk about all sorts of things. Today we were learning about transparent alumina and sintered ceramics. Even the most serious conversation has lighthearted bits and generally the dialogue is pretty damn funny. There is nothing like getting a bunch of engineering-minded know-it-alls with a propensity towards twisted humor (and pseudologic) together. Unfortunately, most of the humor is of the "you had to be there sort" but yesterday's topics included:

Benri is composed of parts made in China and assembled in the USA.

Cockroaches came before dinosaurs but we're still working on the chicken/egg thing.

It is better to be pissed off than pissed on but there's money to be made from both situations.

An airplane on a giant treadmill still can take off, duh.

We are yet undecided about quantum crystalline versus adamantium in terms of overall strength. It might be apples and oranges, but at the very least, it's two different universes.

Darth Vader would probably win a fight with Superman (we worked through several scenarios).

The Borg could most likely assimilate a virus but based on the episode with the cycling phaser frequencies, a couple of Borg would have to be infected/die first. One really interesting thing - everyone responded to the question by first asking "What's the virus' payload?"

Blog Flog

Amish Ninja finally updated his blog.
To my "numerous" readers (ah, ha ha ha ha) go leave him a comment, wouldja? He was totally like "I want comments on my blog, waaaaaaaaaaaaah" at the office, while SOME of us were trying to do WORK.

Mushi Shi

We just finished watching the Mushi Shi anime. We really enjoyed it. It's based off a manga, which we also have.

It rained today, but stopped by late afternoon. Definitely a fall sky and for the eleventy-billionith time in my blog, I'm going to mention how awesome the clouds are here. The cloudy weather is not awesome (there's too much of it) but the clouds themselves are splendid. I got out my Audobon's Weather Guide to see how many kinds of clouds I could spot. How can you not like clouds?

Sylvia's pack-out is November 18th. That really drives home how rapidly the end of my time in Japan is approaching.

Since this is the first weekend in a long while that I won't be spending most of my time studying, I am going to do some grocery shopping, home-office stuff, errands and then some knitting and sewing. It feels weird not to be studying, but I've got plenty of other things that have piled up. I am looking forward to getting back to the gym on a regular basis, too.

Phew!

One test a week for four weeks. I have completed my MSCE 2003 +Security. Now I am going to bed.

The Last Big Bazaar

This weekend, I got to wear two of my best kimono and obi. They were big hits. There's more kimono photos on Flickr.

Saturday and Sunday were the days for the Big Bazaar. There's not the variety or quality of vendors like in years past (vendors PCS, retire, etc) but that hardly mattered. People who had just arrived in Misawa were excited and it was contagious. Everyone was in a really good mood and having fun. I talked about (and sold) kimono to oodles of people. This Bazaar was my last one and it was probably the most fun I have had.

Near the end of the day on Sunday I was a bit tired and everything had a tinge of sadness. I couldn't believe that I've been helping Mr. Ikeda since 2005. I didn't want the bazaar to end and I didn't want to leave and I think Mr. Ikeda could tell - this bazaar was the only time he has let me help with packing up the shop. Even so, it went so very quickly. We said our farewells and off I went. I cried a bit on the way home. It's really beginning to hit me that I am really going to be leaving soon.

PS - I am also studying/cramming like crazy. My last test for my MCSE is on Wednesday and I am really struggling. It would suck to bomb out on the last one.

Whoa

Hi.

Normally I try to update the blog on M, W, F. With me being so focused on doing my MCSE tests (one left), I haven't been updating. A whole week rushed by without my even realizing it.

Between studying, studying, studying, eating, sleeping and working (barely) I've been looking for a job. Send me luck. THANKS!

Speaking of sending stuf, SD sent me a lovely care package - beer and dried snacky things. THANKS!

I am a bad influence and made Sly buy SHOES. HAHAHAHAHAHA! YOU'RE WELCOME!

Mom emailed to check up on me - THANKS. I LOVE YOU, TOO!

Skully and I finally connected - chatted about vivisection, bacon and POOP. I miss you, dude!

The big bazaar is tomorrow. My last one! I am excited and very sad, too. I am going to wear some of my fancy fancy kimono for my last hurrah. But where did I put my fancy hair?

The weather has been gorgeous. I don't want to leave. But the fact that I am going to makes it that much more of a wonderful last autumn here in Japanland.

Anniversary

Yesterday was the 10 year anniversary of my dad's death. It came and went without much ado, I was focusing on my 2nd of 4 MCSE examinations, which I took (and passed) today.

That's not to say I didn't think of him, because I did. But thinking waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back, it hurts a lot less now than it did back then. After my examinations are done, I'll knock back a few drinks (of the alcoholic variety) to honor him. Actually, it's sort of stupid to drink to the health of someone deceased but my father would appreciate the gallows humor there. Oh, I wanted to make it even more authentic, it would be something made of CHEAP alcohol, but I'm past that now. Besides it conjures up memories of the most studendous hangover EVER, courtesy of Dad's penchant for cheap rotgut whiskey (and beer).

Cheers.