I've been trying to write this up for a while now.

Work is going ok. Getting busy, but ok. Lots of little things have been coming my way and it's been a challenge to keep on top of everything. I'm afraid something is going to get overlooked sooner or later. The end of the term is coming up, a month to go actually. After that, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen. The next term doesn't start until October. As much as I'd like to think that we're going to get all of August and September off, I seriously doubt that's going to happen. I do know that some of the committees I'm on are going to meet and do some work. From what I gather, they're going to try and schedule those meetings at the beginning/end of the break in order to give everyone as much consecutive time off as possible.

I've been feeling kinda lonely lately. Part of that is homesickness. Odd that as I haven't been homesick for a long while. I guess I was due for a bout. Checking out family/friends' pics on facebook has really done it to me. Maybe I'd better just not check facebook as much. Also, I still haven't made many friends here outside of work. Moreover, my work friends are all older and married so they've got their own thing going on. Lastly, I haven't seen Miyuki all that much lately either. It was much easier to deal with the infrequency of meeting each other when we were living far apart, as it was something that just couldn't be helped. Now, she just lives about 10 km away and we still hardly ever see each other. I can meet where/whenever. She however, has been too busy to meet. Also, the few times we do get to meet, the mood has been well, kinda awkward. We did have a talk this past weekend, and she says her feelings for me are still there, mine are for her too. I don't want to put a timeline on things, but if we keep having these awkward moods I have to wonder if we really are right for each other after all.

In other news, my stimulus money came in. Good timing too as I just paid off my Saitama Residents' Tax. It is payable in installments, but I just wanted to get it over and done with so I paid the thing off in full. As the thing is from Saitama, the only place I can pay it off is at a bank downtown. I ended up wasting half of my day Wednesday to run this errand, and I didn't want to do that again, so yeah.

So I've been watching more of my digital cable TV and I'm actually kind of underwhelmed. It just doesn't have as much stuff as the digital cable TV package I had back home. On the flip side, my internet connection is about 5 times as fast, so I guess it balances out. With a good torrent, I can download a 700 mb video in about 2 minutes, a DVD-R image in 15. It's like having video on demand. Just the other day, I was in the mood to watch Tombstone and didn't feel like riding all the way out to the video store to rent it. Found a torrent, started it up, ran down to the Family Mart to get a drink and a snack, came back and the download was done! I might even cancel my digital cable. Still, it does have a lot more foreign sports and news, so I guess it's worth it for that. Oh and there is an add-on fishing channel. It's like 10 bucks a month. I might have to look into that.

Speaking of TV fishing, there was a fishing show on regular broadcast TV last night. They were going for yellowtail snapper. First they tried using live horse mackerel for bait. That wasn't producing anything so they switched to cut bait and then they landed 2 big snappers. One was 11 kg and the other was 10 kg. They served one up as sushi at the end of the show. It looked absolutely delicious, wow.

So yeah, I've been feeling kind of blah lately. Also, somewhat stunned at the news of Michael and Farrah. That really puts things into perspective. Oh yeah, and now Billy Mays, the Oxiclean guy. I totally went down to Target and bought some because of that infomercial!

At any rate, I'm going to try to not waste my Monday now and actually do some work.

I was quite busy.

Woke up late and found out my digital TV tuner was en route. I was cleaning my apartment when it arrived. I set up the tuner, but it would take an hour for it to sync up with the digital TV company. A hour? Well whatever, so I finished cleaning. There was still a bit of time remaining so I re-watched Terminator 3. Terminator 2 was on TV last weekend and I got in the mood to see 3, so I grabbed it the other day. For whatever reason, I really got into it. Once I unplugged my brain, ignoring all plot holes, etc... I found it to be quite entertaining.

By this time, the TV tuner and digital cable company were in sync, so I turned it on. It's pretty cool. High definition stuff looks great, especially movies. I watched some of The Mummy and man, the added sense of depth is just amazing. As if I could climb through the TV screen and step right into the movie. Then Lord of the Rings: Return of the King came on and wow. In addition to the increased sharpness, motion looked a lot smoother - almost as if it had a higher frame rate, especially the CG stuff.

Still, I didn't have a router, so I couldn't watch digital cable and use the internet at the same time. On my bike ride to the electronics store, I couldn't believe how bad the traffic was. Freaking Sunday drivers, now I see how this was turned into an insult back in the day. Then when I got to the store there was a line of cars down the block waiting to enter the parking lot. Anyway, I looked around the store and found one on sale (normal price: 7900 yen, sale price: 5900). Just to make sure, I asked the NTT rep if this was what I needed, and it was. Oddly enough he didn't try to upsell me on the more expensive one. He even noted that if I didn't need wireless, that a non-wireless router or even a hub would work and cost a lot less. (But I wanted the wireless.) Then when I checked out, a special "time sale" was in effect - it was an extra 1000 yen off. Score!

So I brought the router home and set it up. Of course, all the menus are in Japanese... *sigh* p(^O^)q ファイトー！ First, I had to tell the router how to access the internet via PPPoE. Next, I had to set-up wireless encryption so my neighbors don't get free internet. Then I had to enable port forwarding for torrents. That was all accomplished relatively quickly. I unplugged my computer from the router and started doing everything via wireless. Then I hit a speed bump, getting the TV tuner and the router to play nice. There are no settings on the TV tuner to play with, so I had to get it done with the router somehow. Eventually I found out that I needed to enable "IPv6 pass through". It took a while to dig through the menus but eventually I found it. I shutdown and restarted everything. Once it all came back on-line, everything worked perfectly! Whew! I thought for sure that some crazy kanji-intensive error message would come up, but fortunately that was not the case.

Anyway, that's pretty much it for the technology side of my weekend. Some other stuff went on that I'm still trying to piece together.

No reason in particular, I just wanted to try something out.




Oh and it's totally raining right now. There was a blackout a few minutes ago and my PC froze. I restarted and all my bookmarks were gone! Luckily Firefox keeps a backup of these things. Whew!

ETA: I finally watched Dodgeball. Damn, that was a funny movie. I laughed my ass off.

I stayed pretty late last night getting stuff ready for my lessons today. I was feeling quite good about it. Then it hit me, that I really want to become a good teacher for the sake of the students. The joy I feel from working with the students is not something that can be equated monetarily. Of course, I'd like to have a nice salary to pay my bills, buy stuff, and save. However, in my current position I'm beginning to discover other forms of compensation.

I haven't posted about basketball in a while. The Orlando Magic are in the playoffs, and they're on the brink of elimination. They did well in the 1st round against Toronto. However in this round against Detroit, it's not looking good. They're down 3-1 in a best of seven, if Detroit wins the game tonight, the Magic are done.

In other basketball news, I heard the best. call. ever.

Check it out around 0:50 when LeBron James throws down the vicious dunk over Kevin Garnett. Awesome.
( spoiler )

DWTS - I've been keeping up with it via YouTube. Kristi and Mark are awesome, taking it to the next level. Unfortunately, they've set the bar so high for themselves, it's almost as if there's nowhere to go but down.

Ok, back to more lesson preparation. (^_^)Y

It's like 4 am here (3 pm EST). I'm wide awake.

I should probably just pull another all-nighter. The last few times I've been to Japan I've done so and was on Japan time immediately thereafter. Then again I need to save my damn money to get ready for this apartment debacle, so maybe not.

I saw that Ramiele is done on American Idol. I'm surprised she lasted this long. She had a great first performance, but it was all downhill from there. It would have been nice to have a Filipina up there representing. She had the talent imo, just didn't showcase it well.

Oh and I caught a youtube of Kristi's week 3 performance (the tango) on DWTS. Very precise, a bit lacking in emotion. It was somewhat one-dimensional. She played the anger part well, but the passion wasn't there. That song was really odd too. They should have got Yo-Yo Ma out there to do one of the Ástor Piazzolla "Soul of the Tango" numbers. I just listened to some and they totally blew everything that was played on DWTS that night out of the water.

I need to get some Japanese study materials. I didn't bring any of my books with me. When I was packing, I felt I needed the space/weight allowance for clothing. Also, I felt that I have plateaued with the materials I currently have. Perhaps a new approach would be helpful. To quote a training master: "You must unlearn what you have learned." [cue: Luke's theme] For right now, I think I would do well just to get a notebook and a pen. I can grab the 2-kyu kanji off the internet. There are J-E/E-J dictionaries all over the school. So I can get one and work on that all day long. Even today, I saw kanji everywhere that I really ought to know by now.

I think I'll bring my shoes to work tomorrow. I have 3 pair just for use at school!
1. Indoor classroom shoes
2. Indoor gym shoes
3. Outdoor athletic shoes
I suppose I could just have a pair of outdoor athletic shoes that I could use both in/out of school. However, last time I was there, there were some occasions that just popped up where I wore dress shoes to work but we needed to do something outside. (e.g. Go to the farm)
Similarly, I could have my classroom shoes = my gym shoes, but I just wanted something different.

So tomorrow (later today) I'm going to stop by work to do some stuff and also get them to call the real estate agent and try to finalize my apartment ASAP. The school's opening ceremony is on Tuesday. I would really like to be in my place by then.

Kristi was incredible (again). She may have started out setting the bar too high. Part of the show is seeing the participants improve. If she's this good from the start, there's nothing for her to improve. On the flip side of that, Monica is probably done. (;_;) I don't think she's as bad as the judges' scores have been. However, she is the weakest dancer on the women's side. Unless a bunch of crazed tennis fans start hammering the phones, she's going home. Interesting side note, for Monica's practice footage, they were in Tokyo. (She had something to do over there.) That was pretty neat. I was like "Hey, I'll be there a week from tomorrow!"

Oh damn, it's late. I need to get to bed cause I gotta get up early for that drive, ugh.

I am a huge fan of both Monica Seles and Kristi Yamaguchi. So I was thrilled to hear that they were both going to be on Dancing With The Stars this season. Last night they danced for the first time. It was great to see Monica doing more girly stuff. I didn't realize how tall she is (5' 10" - where you at pez222?). She gave it her all, but she looked a little stiff. It was kind of surprising because she is considerably more graceful on the tennis court. I think she actually got the lowest scores of the night. :( I hope she does better next week and makes the cut. Kristi otoh was awesome. I'd say she does have a significant advantage with her figure skating background though. I've never tried either, but ballroom dancing and figure skating look very similar. This is only the first week, but she danced like one of the pros! She got the highest scores, straight 9's (outta 10). Not that I'm complaining, I think she's great and hope she goes all the way.

Speaking of going all the way, I watched a bit of American Idol last night too. Ramiele, what are you doing girl? Her song selection and presentation have just been so-so. When she goes all out, she's fantastic. She just hasn't done that enough recently. I can't honestly say that she's the best one on that show now. She has yet to outdo her week 1 performance - which was damn good, but still.

American Idol and Dancing With The Stars - WTF?!? What's next, Project Runway? lol.

To balance that out, I will say that I watched 3:10 To Yuma the other day, and that movie was badass. They need to make more westerns. I don't know what it is, but westerns make me want to drink whiskey for some reason. There I go with the whiskey again. Fortunately, Jack Daniels is available at 7-11 in Japan so I won't be missing out on that. Real top shelf labels are a little harder to come by. Then again, I've got all the top shelf sake and shochu in Japan to make up for it, so I think I'll be alright. (^_^)

Getting kind of restless again. The Japan thing is out of my hands. I just have to sit here and wait for Japanese immigration to process my stuff. It's frustrating because I can't do anything to make it go any faster. I need to figure out a way to tell my folks, but until the visa stuff clears it's still rather speculative at this point.

Had dinner with RS at one of our usual haunts (there are 3). We didn't get our usual server which was a real bummer. We had a reservation for Thursday, but I was in Tally. So Wed. night I called the place and told them to change the reservation - with explicit instructions to get the same server. Well we got to the restaurant and not only was our server request not there, our entire reservation was missing! It's not like it was crowded, so we were able to get seated quickly enough. I just felt bad because that meant that Beka (our server) held our table for who knows how long on Thursday. We saw Beka and told her what happened. She was cool with it. Apparently the hosts/hostesses are pretty bad about passing these sorts of messages on.

Anyway, I haven't really done much since I got back. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. I had seen bits and pieces over the years, but never the whole thing. That was a very interesting movie. I'm kind of glad that it took me this long to see it. I probably wouldn't have gotten it if I had tried to see it when I was younger.

As they were saying goodbye to the final girl on American Idol, they panned across the remaining girls and Ramiele was crying. Seeing her cry made me want to cry too. (;_;) But I'm glad she made it to the next round. Am I going to start watching this show? Maybe. If I do, it's all pez222's fault.