Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was interesting. Daniel and my mother and I all went down to Grand Junction and spent a week with Daniel's family. Thanksgiving dinner was quite impressive. His aunt "rented a hall" which basically ended up being a large structure with two rooms, one smaller one in the front with a fire and tables for all the food, and the one in back being quite large, with long tables for eating and a giant projector screen (think Frank's 2000" TV) hooked up to a Wii. There were various small children there who I'd never met who played DDR and Mario Kart and Wii Sports. Since there were so many people there, there was also an impressive array of dishes, ranging from turkey (two of them) and ham, to Granny T's Sweet Potatoes, to a crockpot full of mashed potatoes and a pitcher of gravy, to crackers and buffalo chicken dip, to red cabbage. And a separate dessert table.

Even more impressive was the fact that I didn't gain weight the day after.

The ride back was ok... the first part was fine, we stopped at Chili's and had lunch, and by the time we hit Vail the snow was starting to get thick. Just before we hit Eisenhower tunnel, my mother lost traction and tried pulling onto the snow to get it back, and we ended up getting stuck. A nice woman came over with a truck offering to pull us out, but there's apparently nothing on my car to hook onto. So Daniel and I ended up pushing the car and dashing back in once it was rolling again. The drive from that point on was pretty miserable, and we didn't get back to my mother's house until 8pm.

Other highlights of the trip: girl's day out, where Daniel, Ian, Clayton, and other assorted BOYS went to The Shop and played Warhammer, and the girls hung out, went shopping, ate out for lunch AND dinner, and then went to Twilight. It was entertaining enough but I don't know that I'd, say, recommend it.

Also enjoyable was the party on Friday, which benefited from a Magic draft, crockpots of chili and cheesy potatoes, and a sort-of-working pinball machine, and would have been even better if I hadn't gained a pound and a half from munching on chips and dip and brownies and cherry pizza all evening.

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I've been thinking about my blog a lot lately. Some of it has been spurred by Daniel, who just created a new blog for himself on his personal website.

I know that some people still check this every day (lord knows why) so I've been spending some time lately composing blog entries in my head. These then turn into meta-entries on the fact that I spend more time (much more time) composing entries in my head than actually writing them. Which turns into the realization that I probably won't even write the meta-entries, at which point I give up and start thinking about pie. Or homework.

Daniel is silly. He's reading over my shoulder. I mean, if he were to just wait, he could read it tomorrow during his daily grind...

Well, I should write something more than a meta-entry, but who am I kidding. I'm just procrastinating on my ethics essay.

I suppose I shall put an update here, so that when I look back I know what was going on in my life at the time.

I'm hoping to graduate this May. Saturday is my mother's birthday, and Daniel and I will have been dating for four years. I'm an intern for Sun. I like it there. I'm only taking 13 credit hours this semester, and it's quite a bit more relaxing than this spring. Next semester I'll only be taking 12. I wish I hadn't taken Databases. But at least Kenneth is in class with me. Then again, he convinces me to ditch a lot.

I like my ethics teacher, which is sort of surprising since I hated him at the start of the semester. Amer is an even better teacher than I thought he would be. I'm president of WICS. I'm a lousy fellow, but at least I try.

That's about it. I have too many things I need to do. Like go to the bank and deposit checks. And get an oil change. I can't remember everything. Maybe when I've graduated I'll finally get everything done... ha.

do you hear it too?

I swear I'm going crazy. This is the fifth time in the past two weeks that I've heard a snatch of a Paul Simon song floating through the office. By the time I leap up from my chair to investigate the source, it's gone. Today was "You Can Call Me Al"... Previous occurrences have included "Me and Julio" and "Late In the Evening".

...

I have solved the mystery! Ok, so I wasn't going crazy, but I apparently am too attuned to Paul Simon or something, because someone in an office across the hall and around the corner was playing it very quietly in his office. So, I could hear it, but only just enough to think I could have been imagining it. And my coworkers couldn't hear it...

Man, the guy must have had it on loop for the past two weeks. He must really like Paul Simon.

A break.

Today has been nice. I haven't done much of anything, and I don't really plan to. It's a nice contrast to the happenings of the past week. Every night I've had plans.

I interviewed with Google. That in itself was an interesting experience. On Monday I went to a tour of the Boulder office with ACM, and then just hung around until I went to dinner with some google employees and recruiters, as well as fellow interviewees. It was expensive. Well, ok, not for me. It was free for me. I had wine even. Like, maybe a tablespoonful, but still. The dinner was definitely enjoyable, but it did take up 3 hours that I needed to do my chaotic dynamics homework. I got home at 10:30 and ended up staying up for 3 or 4 hours working on homework due on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning I split between working on my homework and interviewing with google. I got to the office early and snagged a naked protein shake thing, and a pack of milano cookies. Hooray for google breakfast. The interview was fun, but I don't feel I did particularly well. I was confident and answered the questions I was given, so at least it was entertaining. I shall hear back in 5-10 days.

The return.

I realized that I started a post earlier this summer, the day after I posted a link to my work blog. I never posted it, but I think I should now.

"By the way, things I should probably mention:

"My parents are getting a divorce; they separated this Christmas. Earlier this week, my Dad proposed to his girlfriend, Shannon.

"I'm going to Japan this fall; I finally got notified of my acceptance by Kansai Gaidai (the university in Japan), and I bought plane tickets yesterday."

So, it's been a while. The only people who probably still read this know the most important things. That my parents separated about a year ago, got divorced last summer, and that my dad remarried this August, a week after I left for Japan. My dad sent me a care package on Halloween with a photobook and DVD of the wedding. It was probably better that way.

I've basically been in a different life for 4 months. I'm gradually getting back to it, but now I know how I want it to be different.

I don't want to lose Japanese. For a long time I'd sort of given up on it. I received a C- in my last Japanese language class, in Fall '06, and I decided it was time to take a break. I was burned out. I may never be fluent in the language, but I don't want to lose it again. My proficiency in Japanese plummeted while I was taking a break from it. Not speaking or thinking about a language for a year and a half does that to you.

While I was in Japan, I didn't get the immersion I had expected. Honestly, I spent most of my time there speaking and thinking in English. My classes were in English, my classmates (even those from non-English speaking countries) all spoke to me in English, my roommate and dorm-mates spoke to me in English, and those Japanese people I knew also spoke English enough that I would often have half-Japanese half-English conversations with them. I ate lunch with my speaking partners once a week, but they would often bring their Japanese friends, and instead of talking to me, ended up talking amongst themselves in Osakan slang that I couldn't understand, occasionally turning to me and attempting to translate in broken English.

By the end of my time in Japan I could talk about various things, but I still couldn't really understand what was said to me, most of the time. I did have a rather strange one-sided conversation with the taxi driver on my way to the airport the day I left, though. The thing I remember from our conversation was that he disliked old politicians - the new prime minister is younger than the last one, apparently - and that he didn't like Hillary Clinton because she was too old. Yeah... Well, at least the Japanese know the U.S. presidential candidates. More than I could say about Japanese politics. I mostly muttered "yes" "is that so?" "ah" and such while he happily ranted at me. What surprised me, though, is that I actually figured out what he was saying. Often I don't get that opportunity because when someone says something to me and expects me to understand it immediately, I often don't understand the context well enough to guess at the meaning, so they get frustrated and give up, or try switching to English.

I think the biggest change that I saw while I was in Japan was a healthier way to live. I don't really like Japanese food, so I had completely different eating habits while I was over there. I like bananas again. While I was there I lost about 30 pounds and I got into what was, for me, probably the best shape I've ever been in. I walked everywhere, biked to school every day, went outside every day, explored shrines, and hiked up a mountain. My life was relatively low stress. I just learned not to freak out or stress about things, because I had to deal with a lot of changes, and to act the way I do at home would have been horribly stressful. Japan was an interesting place, but mostly, it was an opportunity to see how my life could be different, and what I could do with it.