springy

I just cleaned everything off my floor in my bedroom. Yay! I even vacuumed. I should probably go to the post office tomorrow and try to mail some stuff and also buy a lot more boxes. I have at least two more boxes worth of sweaters and other colder-weather stuff. This shipping stuff home business is going to cost a lot of money, alas.

Mom went to Linens-N-Things this weekend and bought my dishes! I'm very excited. I have the poppy and the white, how festive!



Haha, I have finally added pictures! Surprise! Maybe I'll add more in the future.

swing city

I was mildly productive today. I did two loads of laundry and packed up two more boxes of cold-weather clothes to send home. I've also gotten quite a lot accomplished in my little city in Sim City, so that's good too.

My future landlord emailed me the lease agreement for my new apartment. It seems fairly straightforward and reasonable. I read through it today, but I'm going to read through it again tomorrow before I sign it and send it back to her.

I think there are some angry cats in the neighborhood, because I heard the most awful sound a few hours ago, and it could only be some kind of angry animal. I assume cats, but I guess it could be tanukis. Or monkeys. I hope not monkeys.

I finished watching season two of Bones, so now I have to watch the third season and I'll be all caught up. Yay! Man, do I love David Boreanaz. Damn.

Last night, the Kumano girls went out to Shingu for curry and some light shopping. I finally had their sag cheese, and it was so good. I think it's my favorite. It looked different from the sag panir I've had before, but it tasted great, so I don't care. I will miss that place so much, but I did some research, and there are a few Indian places in Charlottesville. As long as they have nan (and allow for my low spicy tolerance), then I'm cool.

We also went to Uniqlo, and I didn't mean to buy anything, but I did. I got two pretty awesome t-shirts. One has this weird picture that kind of freaks me out, but I like it. Maybe I'll take a picture of it later and post it. The other is from some Rumiko Takahashi manga, which itself isn't that awesome, but the picture is of a tiger wearing a cape and wrestling shorts fighting a girl, featuring the caption "Tiger Fight". It was too much for me to resist.

I don't know what tomorrow has in store. I don't see myself getting up in time to go to the post office and send my boxes off. Maybe I'll clean. My apartment could certainly use it.

practice

For the last 15 minutes or so, there have been fireworks going off at the beach. At first, I thought the town was being bombed, but then I realized that was a stupid thought, because Kumano is too insignificant to be a target for anything. I looked out of my bedroom doors, but didn't see anything, and it's hard to tell where sounds originate here, since everything echoes off the mountains.

Then I went out my front door, I saw that the noise was coming from random fireworks. We stood out and watched them for a while, and then the lady next to Catherine came out, and when I asked if there was a festival or something, she said it was just practice. Practice for what? I guess the big summer spectacular, but that's not until August. Weird.

We finally had our scheduling meeting for this semester. I'm only partially busy, but it looks like a decent school-to-office ratio this time around. And I only have one elementary school visit and it's to Ido, the only big school without horrible, horrible children (now that the 6th graders have graduated).

It was stupid, however, that I start class on Monday, but the meeting was at 4pm today. Thanks for giving us planning time, Sato-sensei. At least my first class is at Isato, where I plan all the lessons, so I planned them out before lunch. Still. A pain.

Also a pain was the fact that we only work until 4:30, but the meeting didn't end until 4:50. I expect to be able to get off work 20 minutes early sometime soon. I know that's kind of dickish, but after being around the office a-holes for three-and-a-half weeks, I don't care. If they were nice, I'd let it slide.

Anyway, seeing my schedule for the next 3 months all laid out in front of me made me very happy, because that's all I have left. After those classes are out of the way, I am going home, and I am thrilled.

My parents are thrilled too. I think Mama mentions in every email how many months it is until I go home. It's pretty sweet. Also pretty sweet is that my parents have been planning on paying my rent while I'm in school. I wasn't expecting that. Thanks, Mama and Daddy!

After spending several days looking at apartments, I have moved on to looking for furniture. So yesterday, I spent most of my time at the office on the Ikea website. I'm so happy that I'll finally be able to buy something from there. The one item I want the most is the Malm bed; I've been wanting that for years, and soon, it will be mine.

I can already tell that I'm going to have a hard time picking out color schemes. I'm liking green a lot lately, and also dark purple. Blue is a longtime favorite. And dark brown is very nice too, especially combined with blue or pink. Argh.

In addition to checking out furnishings, I also did some cell phone and plan research. I want to stick with T-Mobile, because they haven't done me wrong yet. They have these "myFaves" plans that give you unlimited minutes to call up to 5 numbers. I already know what 3 of those would be: parents, Ali, and Michelle. The other two are up for grabs. And text and internet plans are a lot cheaper than I'd anticipated ($4.99/month and $5.99/month, respectively). I also looked at Blackberry plans, since I'm considering getting one of those. Whichever way I decide, I'll be spending between $50 and $60 a month, which is exactly what I pay now. Not bad.

Did I mention there were hot guys at Mosburger the other day? Because there were. HOT. And tall. And they were in suits. God I hope they live/work here, if only so I can see them around town. Too bad one of them was wearing these god-awful blindingly orange Crocs. Crocs make me want to amputate the feet of the people wearing them, that's how much I hate them. What hideous shoes.

pity, party of 1

I didn't get into Berkeley. My first rejection, and it was a big one. At least they sent the letter to my house in America and not to where I actually live.

Oddly enough, I'm not too broken up about it. I think the fact that I already got into Virginia, which was my other top choice, played a big part in my response. I mean, sure it would be nice to live in California and go to a school that doesn't use grades, but I can always try to get a job out there after I have my degree from another awesome school.

I'm still waiting to hear from Columbia, since that's the only school I haven't heard from yet that I would consider going to. I don't want to go to Duke and Harvard is too cut-throat (and Boston is too cold). But most likely, I will go to Virginia. Woo-hoo!

The conference has been good. CLAIR got better speakers for this one than any other JET conference I've been to, I think. Even the guy who talked about something that had nothing to do with us was at least interesting.

Also, this conference is not mandatory, so I didn't have to go to all of the career sessions today, just the ones I was interested in. As it happens, I was only interested in the law session, so I spent the rest of the day shopping and eating. Haha! I got another pair of skinny jeans at Uniqlo (like I need them, but these are in a more casual wash!), plus some cute hoodies. I think I might go to Zoff tomorrow and see if they have the sunglasses I like so much.

Megan, Stan, and I went to TGIFriday's for dinner tonight. (We went to Chinatown last night, it was good, but the waitress was a bitch.) I never go to TGIFriday's or Applebee's or similar restaurants at home, but it was so good tonight! I had loaded potato skins and chicken fingers with honey mustard and this delicious Bailey's/mint/oreo/ice cream drink. It was expensive, but worth it, since I never get to eat stuff like that here.

I don't want to go home tomorrow. I'd much rather stay here and not work. Boo.

trickery from g-town

I'll start with the best news of the day: I got into Georgetown! I'm very excited, as it's the highest-ranked school I've gotten into so far. Number 14 this year, according to U.S. News and World Report. The letter was sitting in the genkan when I got home from work. It was a small, almost greeting card-size envelope, so I had an immediate case of sad face, but when I opened it up, the first words was "Congratulations!", and my sad face went away.

Too bad tuition is $42,000+, not counting anything else. It kind of makes me ill to think about.

Other than that, I had a long, draining day at the office doing very little. I emailed back and forth with Ali in the morning and read her awesome craftlog (http://www.right-brain-release.blogspot.com/). So crafty she is! I'm so jealous it hurts.

I also looked for laptop bags. I really like the custom laptop messengers from Timbuk2, but they're about $140-163, which is unfortunate.

Later in the day, I got a headache, which I still have, even after a nice nap. I guess that means it's time to go to bed. :(