plans-on-hold

Due to being down with the sickness, naturally.

mini-expedition: doctor! + pub!

Two entirely different kinds of medication and therapy.

after-action Cliff’s notes

1. Many of the small urban streets in Japan would be flat-out illegal in the US; or at least clearly marked ONE-WAY.
2. Managed to do a couple hundred kilometres on about $20 in gasoline; seems not too bad, good little car, but its been six months since I last had to worry about that.
3. The left-hand/right-hand road thing is not such a big deal. It ain’t no thang, as the kids say.
4. No matter how nice the afternoons and evenings were for the last week, the day of the trip was, of course, overcast.
5. Renting a car was the simplest and fastest thing I’ve done in Japan; took about 20 minutes, and a lot of that was the guy putting us on pause for a minute or two to answer the phone.
6. Every American must, when in a foreign country and driving a motorised vehicle for the first time there, blast “Sweet Home Alabama” loud enough for everyone they drive by to hear it. I don’t even like country and “no-brainer” doesn’t even begin to describe what a kneejerk first-add that was to the playlist. There was never even a question.
7. Driving is awesome, and eases the troubled mind.

web-blargh

Musin’.  Think I can replace “blog” with “blargh”?  “Yeah, I just posted to my blargh..”

definition: part one

Michael found three grey hairs in his beard tonight, and the rest of it is looking particularly shot-through with blonde; and while he’s had quite a bit of sun this summer, it hasn’t been quite enough for that. So he’s pretty maudlin right now.

kite and car

Moral of the story: a $2 plastic kite is a $2 plastic kite, and will not stand up against, well, any kind of wind, really. And the weather actually is pretty great for it (the lull in heat and humidity a few weeks ago was a ruse, but this time seems like it might stick). Idly considering setting a few bucks down and making one myself whilst uttering those immortal words: “How hard could it be?”

Looks like we’ll be renting and piling into a car next Saturday to take a trip out to Nagoya. I’m not at all sure why we are going to Nagoya, because while it is a perfectly acceptable city there is not really much there to see or do that is unique; but I’m the only one that can legally drive here, and they’re paying gasoline costs, so I’m not questioning the wisdom one bit.  I plan to skirt the city as much as possible and get lost in the surrounding countryside. Might keep the car over a night and hit the San-in coast (northwest of us) on Sunday; I’ve been dying to do that for awhile now.

class-y

The instructor for my (what is essentially) Buddhism 102 class is, at this point in time, very iffy; but at least the assignments are interesting. The homework for next week?

Determine if I have a soul, or not.

blargh

I hate birthdays and I love Firefly.  Also: living in an almost-proper dorm has assisted in my acceptance of alcohol for personal use.

It’s going to be a long day.

photostream

In an effort to take more pictures, I’ve started taking advantage of the email-and-upload feature that flickr has, so’s I can snap something with the phone and send it on, rather than having to carry the actual camera around with me all the damned time and then upload them off the card. So watch the bit there to the right periodically, comment or favourite, et cetera. I’m going to need to upgrade my phone plan a little. . .