Tails of a Wundering Kittie

Buried in Books

2012-02-03T05:08:00.000+09:00

Not that I'm really complaining, as I actually enjoy being buried in a mound of books (not literally, of course, that would be painful), but it does make for busy days and weeks. I haven't done much else aside from reading for the last three weeks. I did get to see my great-grandma a couple times and hang out with other family. That's always nice, especially outside of parties. I hate parties.

I finished the first of my books for class today, Marines in the Revolution: A History of the Continental Marines in the American Revolution, 1775-1783 by Charles Smith. So, the title is stereotypically dry, but I thought the subject matter would be interesting... it was, but gah was it a dry book!! Dates, battles, people, names (ships and people), numbers, weights, and basically a play-by-play of the Marine Corps between 1775-1783.... Fair enough, it's what the title said, but lord was it hard to read. I liked the maps and journal entries, and it was interesting to go more in depth into the battles since we only spent a few minutes covering Nassau and Penobscot Bay in class, and really skipped over the rest... But basically the story was a cycle of Captain So-and-so commissioned, looking for crew for Such-and-such ship, can't find any because the Navy paid crap and they were actually obligated to engage British ships instead of snatching merchant ships like the privateers, maybe get just enough to get underway, crew nears mutiny, British take the ship or the American officers argue over who's in command and thus the mission ends with the Americans either limping home or in prison. Definitely not the highest point in U.S. military history. :P I'm okay with reading dry narrative, but there was a lot of name, number, place, and date overload in it. And now I get to write a review for class. I may throw it up here if I remember to once the semester is over.

So the book count is now 3/24. I'm on track! And I have a couple more books for class that I'm about halfway through, or more, so amazingly, this semester I shouldn't fall behind in my completed books count. Last semester was all journals and chapters.

Leaving off on a huge bummer - one of the professors who said he would write a recommendation for me never sent it in. I'm a bit appalled if not overly surprised. Mostly I'm just bummed, because it means U-M and WMU are both out, at least for next year, but that means there must be something better for me to look for.

Organizing Stuff

2012-01-11T09:03:00.003+09:00

First, just let me say, being a graceful human being must be nice. Ow ow ow and one more OW!! I am so sore today! Happily though, while my ankle is doing worse, my wrist is doing a lot better. Maybe should have iced my ankle as much as I iced my wrist. Oh well. Left knee and both shoulders are unhappy today though, wow. I would like never to fall that hard again, thank you very much.

So I gave myself an extra hour of sleep and hit the ground hobbling this morning. Patched my jeans and washed them. They came out wearable. They were beginning to fray in places anyway, so they weren't the nicest pair of jeans around, but tear on the knee isn't exactly my style. Got to use the new iron I got for Christmas too. It's a nice iron! Picked up the house a bit, since I got behind the last couple of days, then set to my school work. All set on the WMU application, just have to print everything and mail it tomorrow. Overnighting it because I am a flake and overlooked the bit about having to mail physical copies to the history department as well as filling out the online application for the university. UM's was long and terrifying to write up, but seriously Western, can't you just share my transcripts? Hope those get there on time. Anyway, I'll be happy when that's all done and I can jump into applying for summer internships and jobs. It never ends.

Five history classes is going to be interesting. The total count as of right now is three term papers, three book reviews, fifteen short answer assignments, three "short" essays, three essay tests, five multiple choice tests, ten reading synopses, and five text books. This is not counting the African Women's history class which hasn't started yet, though I'm emailing the professor for the syllabus tomorrow if I haven't gotten one yet because we only have three classes and it's supposed to be a writing intensive class.... and we have three text books and I would prefer not to read them all in one week. The good news? I finally get to use the voice recorder I got a year ago for a class. I'm oddly excited about this fact. No textbook for the class, and a lot of information, so he encourages us to record it. Sweet! Got two marines in the class though, and they're already up in arms with him. Should be interesting. A friend of mine from last semester and I both had a face-meet-desk moment in our French history class, oh about ten minutes in. Ah freshmen who feel the to try to prove the professor wrong. I shudder to think I was like that... but I do remember getting into debates with professors, so I probably was.

Anywho, thus ends my break for the day. Three more hours before bed, and I intend to spend them getting a bit of my reading done. Five text books... plus three monographs... well at least I'll stay on top of my 24 books to read this year goal.

Moving Forward

2012-01-10T12:44:00.003+09:00

I just hit submit on my application to U-M for grad school. It's later than I wanted to send it by a week, but I hit submit before their deadline. Not sure why it takes an electronic application three days to reach the university, but I really hope they don't count that against me. I've got enough odds stacked against me with this application, but my letters are good, I did amazing on the GRE (89th percentile in verbal, 61st in quantitative, that one was crappy, and 96th in writing), and if I'm supposed to be there, being a middle class WASP from a blue-collar university won't matter. I am proud of that writing score though. :P Score was out of 6, I got a 5.5. And apparently the verbal is supposed to be as hard as the quantitative (math), but I rocked it. I'm pleased... and in an odd mood. Injured myself walking today. It's in my genes, I can't help being a clutz, though the fact that the grass is three inches lower than the concrete on campus really doesn't help my propensity to fall. My wrist and ankle are pretty messed up, and my knee hurts a bit. I'm furious that I ripped my only pair of blue jeans. Likely will be hunting for a pair that fits at the Salvation Army this weekend. Grr. Driving home was hard, and I had a "need to be somewhere safe NOW" panicky thirty minutes or so, so this evening's been really weird. I still got my application done though, despite being all achy and brain fuzzy. I also have an awesome mom who iced my bruises and gave me a big hug today, so that made me feel a million times better. :)

Now to bed! Only jobs I found for tomorrow were in kindergartens, and, considering it hurts to stand, I don't think that's wise, so it's finish WMU's application, apply for summer jobs, and hardcore study time tomorrow. Alas, no exercising for me this week. T__T

Also!! Before I forget, not going to review it cause typing kinda hurts, but I finished book 2/24, Prince Caspian. I read it before apparently, cause I remembered all of it as I was reading it, but it was a nice, relaxing, talking critters being awesome kind of book and exactly what I wanted to read. Ok, not true, I wanted sparkling unicorns, but I have a few books in Chronicles of Narnia between me and the sparkling unicorn, so I figured, you know, baby steps. :P No really bed time.

Lolita

2012-01-03T15:20:00.003+09:00

I have an intensified disgust for Lolita style clothing, which, contrary to amazingly uninformed, oblivious, or down-right dense western fans, is a symptom of a HUGE problem, i.e. the sexualization of children in Japan. It's aptly named. To some extent, the doll style fashion interested me in the past, but when I stepped back to look at the whole picture, well, I wish I could burn the two doll-like outfits I made (I sold one and made another for a friend). Anyway, when it comes to the western impression of Lolita fashion, there's no way I can avoid offending people online, and frankly I don't give a rip about offending those people, because as I said, they're either oblivious (in which case, please open your eyes!!) or completely thick and I have no remorse for shattering their rose-tinted glasses when it comes to Japan's modern culture. I have mentioned before the problem and legacy of orientalism, and I firmly believe anybody who even has a remote interest in expressing opinions and thoughts about Japan in any way should be required to read that chapter. (The link is to a temporary location, should be active until June, 2012. I may update it afterward.)

Anyway, I digress, though that rant, truncated because I really don't care to spend more energy on the subject at present, is related to my topic. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov... I don't think I care to go into detail about the story's background, though from a brief search online it appears as though it's completely fiction. Granted it's, very sadly, far from being an uncommon reality for people, even in the 1950s when the story is actually set (late 40s to early 50s), I spent the last 274 pages thinking it was actually an autobiography, so I'm moderately relieved to know that it wasn't.... at least as far as I've seen. The details of publication and the author's biography are easy enough to find, if you're really interested. I'm tired of the book, so I don't care to look around any more. Sorry.

So, my reaction to it... I hated it. Don't get me wrong, it was well written. The narrator was what he should have been, and his tone evoked strong emotions. In the very beginning, I did feel a little sorry for him, if you can ignore the fact that he was an abusive #$@!+ to begin with. He realized he had a problem. He was frustrated by it, sought help getting over it, was an addict tempted by a drug, but the moment he contemplated actually taking the drug I hated him. And yes, I'm using euphemisms here. The drug happened to be a 12 year-old girl. My official stance on child molesters and rapists in general, remove the hand that sins... another euphemism. Anyway, he went from emotional to eerily calm and calculating. Then as the story went on he got cold and seemed, to me, hateful, then near the end completely nuts.

It was odd reading, because I felt dirty at times, when I wasn't blazing mad, and other times, he would describe a grown woman with such a tone that, as a grown woman, it made me feel ugly. I don't think I want to elaborate on that one, but I did find it strange. I put it down several times just to get up and do something completely different to get my mind off it. It was definitely a relief once Dolly escaped. I'd known she had to at some point, just by how he was narrating, but it kept getting worse and worse. Once the narrator cracked it was hard to read in its own way. Some of it made no sense, some of it was just inane babble that I got tired of reading, and all of his professions of love just made me want to hurt him, severely.

I don't know what the purpose of the book was. It appears to not have been autobiographical. The author said it wasn't meant to have a moral. Evoke emotion? Make people think? Isn't that was stories do? It is what it is, and for that, I (almost grudgingly) have to say it was a good piece of literature. I still hate it. It's like 1984, in a way, except I might actually read 1984 again, and thinking about it doesn't make me want to injure someone, and I do use the themes in 1984 as conversation topics... Also, too much freaking French! Why do I not know French!?! ... Anywho, good literature, don't want to read again, glad I got it over with rather than glad I read it. It's another classic crossed off my list, and score 1/24 for 2012's reading goal.

I don't recommend this book unless you're crossing off a very long list of Books to Read Before I Die. Yes, that gets italics, because it's a freaking epic list. I think my next book is going to be mindless, perhaps mind numbing. I may read the third Southern Vampire Mysteries book... though the last one had some unfortunate themes in it as well, so maybe not... This is when I wish I could stomach something like Harry Potter... Actually I might just try to flip my attention somewhere else. Read books one and three of that series... Narnia! I have the Chronicles of Narnia. I will read one of those next.

Okay, it's after 1AM and I'm all grr and yarg and want to shower and get this book off me, so I'm going to shut up now.

2012

2012-01-03T10:25:00.000+09:00

I'm going to optimistically say that nothing could be worse than the end of 2010 through 2011 was, and then I'm not going to dwell on all the bad. Moving right along, I'm not one to do New Year's resolutions, but I am a fan of goals. Why? Cause then I get little yay rewards along the way and a nice sense of satisfaction when I can look back and go "Ooh! Progress!!" without the pressure of "Today = suck, so not gonna... damn, I broke my resolution." Win-win in my book.

I'm only going to briefly look back on 2011's goals, cause, well, if you've read blog this and/or know me, you already know why. So, my goals:

50 books in a year - not quite
Get back to America with my cats - success
Get into grad school - still in progress, success if you nix the "grad" part of that

Books I read in 2011:

Tennyson, Idylls of the King
de Troyes, Eric & Enide★
Cliges
Yvain, the Knight of the Lion★
Lancelot, Knight of the Cart☆
Beah, A Long Way Gone☆
Machiavelli, The Prince★
Bradley, Mists of Avalon
Golding, Lord of the Flies☆
Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Voltaire, Candide☆
Silko, Ceremony★
White, Once and Future King☆
Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora☆
Martin, A Game of Thrones★
Harris, Dead Until Dark☆
Living Dead in Dallas

☆ means I liked them or they were at least interesting, ★ means they were really freaking good

So, I read 1７ books in 2011. School happened, and if partial books counted, I could add at least another 20 onto that, but I'm only counting books that I read start to finish. I possibly missed one or two, but since I don't remember it, and didn't write about it, it obviously wasn't worth counting. And apparently, no surprise, after February I stopped writing reviews, so only a few have review links.

Anyway, reading goal for 2012, match or better. I'm going to be ambitious and say 24. Here's a short list of which ones I'm thinking (I'm running low on King Arthur this year :P)

Lolita - almost finished
Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life - probably going to take me all year
A Clash of Kings
A Storm of Swords
A Feast for Crows
A Dance with Dragons
The Winds of Winter
American Gods

And I'm eying the Discworld books and may read more of the Southern Vampire Mysteries if book 3 is less sexy vapidness than book 2 was... if not, book 2 was pretty high on the side of boring outweighing amusing plot, and, even though I read them for mindless urban fantasy, I'm not a huge fan of vapid. We shall see. And considering I'm taking 5 history classes this semester... I'll either have all those textbooks included or another three months of being buried under stacks of partially read books and articles.

Ok, so if I put that include that babble in the list, my goals for 2012 are as follows:

24 books in a year
get into grad school
lose 30 pounds
pass JLPT N1

Some other things I'd like to do this year, though they're not "goals" so much as "that'd be nice" are:

have a small garden this summer
set up an etsy account for my bead guys (active, but there's nothing listed)
get a job up near Traverse City for the summer
pack as much money as I can into savings while paying down some more debt
go kayaking at least once
go hiking in woods I don't already know at least once
go camping at least once
swim in one of the Great Lakes at least once
have another craft day with my mom and aunts
win NaNoWriMo

On that note, 2012 is, as of January 2nd, far less terrifying to look forward to than 2011 was. I can't say I'm excited or anything, though I'm trying to be, but I am hopeful. I've got my family and friends back, I may be an emotional wreck still, but at least my head is clear, and I have good goals that are within my reach (finally!).

Also, Soushi cat is a bully! Poor Ophelia just got kicked out of another comfy spot.

This actually isn't the spot (that would be the seam of the two sofa cushions), but he looked sufficiently satisfied at stealing a seat in this picture (from New Year's Eve) that I felt the need to add it.

This is already uber long, but I'm thinking I might make a 2011 in photos post as I continue to procrastinate on my statements of purpose for grad school (I have one intro!).... or maybe that'll be my reward for getting one of the drafts done... we'll see. At any rate, Happy New Year to everyone reading, God bless you, and I hope 2012 is amazing for everyone.

Smoothie, or Another Attempt at Eating Healthy

2011-12-31T06:04:00.000+09:00

While Mom and Gary were living here in the fall, before their Magic Bullet kicked the bucket, mom and I were trying out smoothies for breakfast as a way to cut back on the calories of breakfast foods which, in my case, totaled roughly half of my daily calorie budget. I'm not one to "diet" in the traditional way of cutting out food if I break my calorie limit and all that, but since I've been back in the US I've gained around 25 pounds, none of my clothes fit, and I feel awful. So I'm trying to eat healthy and exercise daily. I've gotten the exercise part down pretty well. Just about every day I do strength training; lifting small dumbbells, crunches, kneeling push-ups, lunges, squats, jumping jacks, all that good stuff. I also make an effort to play Wii Fit at least a little bit, and sometimes it intersects with my strength training. I like the yoga games for stretching, and the balance games are just fun. Or I'll play DDR for cardio and push myself to either make a calorie count on the "diet" portion of the game or just go for 30+ minutes. Once I'm back at school I'll have access to their gym again, and I'll get back to running/rowing. I'm also on Fitocracy.com, and I'm now 3/4 the way through level 7. It's just a nice little incentive, and they have "quests" and a community of support. If you're interested and want an invite, please let me know!

So that was a bit of a diversion from my main topic, which was smoothies. My family knows this, I think... at least my mom does, because I HATE yogurt (even with strawberries, hehe, narf). In Japan, twice I tried to get myself to eat it every day, and both tries lasted over a month. I know it's healthy, and it is a good little snack, but I hate it. The Aloe was okay (yes, I know that's weird here in America), and the fruit medley with white peach was passable, only because I love white peach just as much as I hate yogurt, but both times I just got sick of trying to force the nasty stuff down. So, needless to say, when mom and I started making breakfast smoothies, with a cup of yogurt in each smoothie, despite the yum of the fruit, I kinda choked them down cause of the ~~yarg~~ yogurt. Well, long story short, grandma and grandpa got a new blender... I think for Christmas, and lately I've been collecting household items since I either left mine in Japan or didn't bother with them in Japan due to space constraints (though I did bring back my rice cooker and kettle... loved those too much to leave behind). I think the blender came up because I was asking to borrow one, mistaking the name for mixer when I was getting ready to make my Christmas presents (marshmallows). I ended up buying a mixer for 50% off ($10) at Meijer, so that was nice. So grandma was getting rid of her old blender and gave it to me. Today I went to the store for groceries and decided to pick up some stuff to try to make a smoothie. It.is.delicious!!!!

Here's the recipe if you're interested:

2 cups of frozen fruit - I used the fruit medley with nectarines, grapes, strawberries, and all that
1/4 cup of low fat, organic yogurt - to thicken it
2 tbsp of plain oatmeal
1 cup of orange juice - I had the Simply Orange kind with high pulp

And that's it. I had the honey out in case I wanted to sweeten it, but I'm glad I waited because it doesn't need it at all. The orange juice, something I can't usually drink on its own because of the acidity, completely drowns out the yogurt, and it just tastes like frozen fruity yum. I put the oatmeal in there to have something somewhat substantial in my stomach (and I got the idea from a couple smoothie recipes online, same with the orange juice). I'm still drinking this lovely concoction, and I keep giving myself the starts of brain freezes because I want to drink it faster than I should. I may cut back a little on the orange juice next time, so I can taste more of the other fruits, but I'm overall incredibly pleased, considering I guessed at what measurements would be good. I added up all the calories, and according to my calculation one serving, which is about a 16 ounce cup full, is 366 calories, and 290 of those are from 100% fruit, so that's not bad. The yogurt was 38 and oatmeal was the same.

And I can officially say, my stomach is satisfied at the "almost finished" point, though knowing me I'll be hungry in about an hour. Still, yummy and I figured worth sharing. :) Maybe at some point I'll get around to sharing the marshmallow recipes Fay and I came up with.

Update

2011-09-25T05:08:00.000+09:00

Apparently once a month is about all I can handle, and this will likely be brief since I'm actually procrastinating quite a bit and should get going on school stuff.

Life update: It's been turned on its head again. School is great though. I love my classes, especially my research class. I just wish I had more time/energy to devote to it. I got "fired" from my job for going to doctors' appointments, so we reached an agreement where they replaced me when they find someone new and I can look for a new job... so I found a new job instead of get replaced, and now I'm a substitute teacher and working on a couple of other PT leads. It'll work out, I know. I'm actually pretty calm about the whole thing. I was shocked when it happened, and angry over the reasons and the BS around it, but hey, the doctor found out what's wrong with me and we're treating it, so that's the most important part. Still in some pain, but it'll just take time, and thank God it's nothing serious, just over-worked muscles in an area I did not even know had muscles. Go figure. And teaching is... well, magical is a gentle word for it, but I've already found one school I'm not going back to (bloody lips and noses from fists and 40 completely out of control kids who don't even listen when the vice principal yells at them... yeah, no). It's good though. It's much lower stress than the office (go figure that one out, I'm going to put it as the office had too many triggers in it), which is something I need right now, and it's flexible, which is also needed with school and all.

So I guess that encompassed life and job updates... and school even. So onto "future goals update" I had my TFA phone interview today. I think it went well. I rambled a bit at the end, but I can only do what I can do, and if it's God's will, He'll do the rest. I have the online activity to do this weekend, and I'm far too exhausted to do it today, but I really should.... I don't really want to work on stuff on my birthday, but I have that (2 hours) plus two assignments and a lot of readings... and mostly today has been grappling with life, finances, and finding my brain, plus that hour long phone interview. I was thinking of going to Ren Fest tomorrow, but I think I'll just be stressed and not enjoy it all that much if I do.

That's pretty much it. I can't believe I'm turning 26. It was a year ago already that I saw Metallica on my birthday. I guess not much can top that huh? That was pretty awesome.

Final note: I moved to google+ if any of you guys has it and wants to add me. I don't know who all is on there yet, so either add me or shoot me an email. :)

Off to try to make a dent in the work load.

Pray for me!

2011-08-19T09:50:00.000+09:00

I just hit submit on my application for Teach for America. I really, really, really cannot tell you how much I want this. Please pray for me. It's super competitive.

I'm going to go spaz out now.... a lot.... gah!!!

Summer is more than half over!!

2011-08-05T07:32:00.000+09:00

This summer has felt like a year by itself - a very long, trying, hot year. I'm sure that feeling won't so much let up when the hot goes away being that I work in a climate controlled office building. If anything I'm sure it'll drag even more. But hey, it's better than life flying by while you blink.

I'm going to ignore the hugely crappy parts of this summer and just say that I'm damn proud of myself for hanging in like I have and actually having some fun when April 11th all I really wanted to do was curl into a ball and cry until I fell asleep and never wake up. I've kept myself busy, it's helped.

So first thing, I got a job for a Japanese sales office. I hate it, but it pays for now. It's no where even near the career path I want to be on, and I know how to get where I want to be, so I'm okay until I find something better... unless it's 6:40 AM when I have to convince myself that, yes, I do actually have to get in my car and drive to a job I hate, again. Hour at a time, it goes by eventually. I don't know how people manage to live happy lives doing nothing but pushing paperwork and emailing people about products and money neither party ever touches because that's the accounting team's job and the parts don't actually go to America, they go to Brazil or Mexico (yeah, I really don't get it...), but whatever. If I keep telling myself it's a job, it pays better than no job, and it's just a stepping stone with an end in sight, maybe at some point the mantra will stick and I won't have to work so hard to convince myself that it's okay.

Other than that I'm almost finished with my summer night class. Two days a week, four hours (which means two days a week I'm sitting 2+ hours in the car, 7 at work, and 4 at school, no wonder none of my pants fit me... T__T but I will not say I hate my job.... even though I really want to). It's remedial US history. I haven't learned much new in class, but the papers have been interesting to write and I learned a lot with them. And I need the credits. In the fall I'm taking pre-1877 US history, historical research and writing, and Africa in the 20th century, the second two down in Ypsi again. The goal with this? If I take all of these and four in the winter semester (yeah, I know I'm nuts) I'll have enough credits for a second major on my bachelor's degree. And it will get me a step towards teaching again.

Which brings me to my next thing, I'm applying for Americorps this month. I'm completely geeked about it. I can't really describe how excited I get when I think about the program. It's like God said "Here you go, here's how you get to where you want to go." Makes me excited, makes me cry, makes me really wish the applications were over and I knew if I got in or not. I know I have a good background for it at least. That doesn't come until November though, at the latest. If I don't... I'll bawl like a baby and apply for grad school (and probably try again next year).

That's all future stuff though. I think about it a lot when I have, you know, time to breathe. It doesn't happen much unless I'm supposed to be sleeping, but what with being a chronic insomniac and all, there is plenty of that. :P

So what else have I been up to this summer? Over memorial day I visited Fay in Northport. I spent most of the time outside reading since she had to work all weekend. Still had a great time though. Almost didn't come home...

The shoreline of Lake Michigan. This was from Peterson Park. I spent hours there reading Once and Future King (which reminds me, I've added four books to my list of read since spring). It was my congratulations on getting a job gift to me.

Fox kit on the side of the road. There were two of them. I think there was a den in the ditch right there, because this little guy disappeared into it when a car came from the other direction.

Oh! And I'm not sure how I could possibly have even almost forgotten this!! I saw a bald eagle!!!!!! Not in flight though. But I was driving on I-75, north of West Branch. I left at like 4AM on Saturday morning, so there was nobody in sight for hours up there. Suddenly I see this giant white head on top of a brown lump poking out of a ditch off the shoulder. Holy crap was that thing huge!! I was sorely tempted to stop and gawk, but uh... dead or not, I-75, plus it looked like it could break my window with its beak if it wanted to. It was enormous. It was amazing! I didn't even know we had bald eagles in Michigan. It was I think about 7AM... I totally called and woke my mom up to tell her. I had to tell somebody, I was busting with "kyaaaaaaa!!!" Also that night I saw a really bright shooting star. It was a good day.

I went up again over the 4th of July. Fay and I went to Leeland and saw fireworks on the 3rd, watched the sunset over Lake Michigan again on the 2nd (we've watched it at least once every time I've gone up there), and it was pretty epic because you can really see the sun moving when it's near the horizon. It was pretty hazy that day, so it looked like there was space between the sun and the horizon, so it looked like this hazy nothing just gobbled up the sun. Once it set, like as soon as the ball was completely below the water/haze, a really cold wind gusted up off the water. It was cool. I've read about those winds, but never felt one.

On the 4th I had to leave early, so we got up at 5:30 to watch the sunrise at Northport Marina.... only then we realized we weren't far enough north to not have another part of the peninsula blocking us to the east. Unfortunately I won't be able to go back up there again this summer, but we were going to try to watch it from the lighthouse next time. Still got some cool pictures though.

Back in June we made plans for Fay to take a day off and I would come up and we'd go kayaking. Well that happened two weekends ago. I didn't get any pictures, but I did lose my moderately offensive non-PC Mickey cowboy hat T___T. Fay lost a sandal. If it hadn't been so much fun, I may actually have cried, because I'm still homesick for Tokyo and I really loved that hat. But it was amazing. We went on the Upper Platte river. My kayak was terrible. We ended up switching at some point and Fay suddenly realized that, no, it wasn't my fault I was having so much trouble steering. The first two times I flipped were pretty stupid and entirely my fault. Shallow though, but fast. There were a lot of trees and dams (I saw three beavers!!! and a bunch of Kingfishers... not related to dams though), and with the non-steerable kayak I kept running into them. I was stupid and attempted to push myself off of one. Under I went. The second time I was trying to rescue my paddle, which had gotten caught in a giant tangle of dead tree, quite literally in the middle of the river. I was trying to avoid a huge spider web or I wouldn't have flipped. Fay flipped around the same time - I don't remember which of us was going after whose paddle first.... but we were both chasing paddles and flipped. Fay lost her shoe then. The third time was really bad, because the river was really fast and clogged. That was when I lost my hat. This canoe with a little kid and her parents in it was right smack in the middle of the river going really slow. We'd given it a lot of space in front of us, but kayaks are way faster than canoes, especially a canoe not really rowing. This one bend was really fast and I caught the current. I tried to back paddle, but the back paddling against the current pushed me right to the edge, smack into the lower branches of a tree, completely sideways. I tried to push myself to the side of it, but I was still on the current. I flipped really fast and got pinned under the kayak, kayak pinned under the tree. When it finally made it past the tree I was able to hold myself up just by standing on my knees, it wasn't deep at all, but it freaked both Fay and me out a bit. A bit after that the river got deeper and there were less trees blocking the way, and the canoe got off at some point. We kept passing and getting passed by a bunch of other kayakers. They were fun. They rescued my water bottle after the third flip. I got it back about an hour and a half later. :P We were out there about four or so hours, and of course, the last stretch was entirely against the current. Neither of us was in the shape to do that, but oooh boy I'd do it all again... maybe minus getting pinned under the kayak. We went to look at the dunes, but with the whole Fay missing a sandal and wearing the extra pair of mine that were too small and us both being fried from the knee down (we very intelligently put sun screen everywhere.. but our legs... I was wearing capris and Fay rolled her pants up at some point... we fried), we weren't going to try to climb. Plus it looked like rain by evening. So we went to the historic town there (Empire, maybe? I don't remember its name) and watched the blacksmith and Fay asked fun questions and the guy was going to let me play with the toys but there were younger kids there so I felt bad and deferred - totally wanted to play though!! And by toys I mean 19th century tools that drilled holes in iron.

And tomorrow we're going camping!! It's kind of our last hurrah for the summer because she starts school in, I think, two weeks (?). So she's going back to the UP. Probably won't see her until Thanksgiving after this weekend, WAH!!!! T_________T But it should be fun, even if it rains. We're going up somewhere in the thumb to see the petraglyphs. And write, because neither of us has had the time to write in weeks. And attempt to see the sunrise over Lake Huron. XD And wear plenty of sunscreen on exposed legs.

So yeah, that's been my summer. Apologies for the radio silence. Lack of internet access kinda makes it a pain to keep up a blog even when you have epic kayak trips to write about. I have decided though, once I have my credit cards paid off and a steady income again, I'm getting a kayak. This time was only my second time - I've done canoes and row boats before, but not much kayaking. I'll fully admit I probably wasn't ready for that river, and I won't go on one any faster than that, but I really want one. They're so fun and so relaxing, even when you do flip and have to lift a giant chunk of plastic full of water over a log.... repeatedly. :P I miss the water though.

And I really have to end this. Food time then study time because I have a dentist appointment Monday right after work, school right after that, then Tuesday is a meeting for substitute teaching, and I haven't finished all of the lectures for that yet (...yeah, I haven't even started them), and another dentist appointment, then Wednesday is my final exam..... Off I go!

What is wrong with people here?

2011-04-20T05:55:00.000+09:00

I know that sounds harsh, but seriously, I just got off the phone with two different doctors offices and both treated me like crap. Receptionists, phone manners, kinda go hand in hand. Accross the street from Beaumont Troy, um... okay, that's on both sides of the road... in the new building? "I don't know ma'am, we're across the street from Beaumont." Those are directions?? What's wrong with people here??? I'm just trying to make an appointment. I'm a new patient. I don't have a doctor there, I just said I was recommended to call, don't get snippy with me and act like I should know exactly what to say to you people.

Yesterday when I bought my phone the sales guys were in the back talking (quite loudly) and goofing around. At Kroger there were three baggers standing at the end of the aisle I was in, and talk about crowded, and the cashier had to go get the application for their card. All three handed me my bags at once, like I have six hands to take them all when the cart is behind me. At Meijer I got lifted eyebrows and a snotty attitude from the greeter when I asked where the Red Box return place was, cause I'm obviously supposed to know something that obvious. At least she gave me the directions though.

Why does it seem like everyone in customer service is either goofing off, asking a question for every sentence, or talking to me like I'm a moron? Is it just me? I'm not 100% for Japanese customer service either, cause that fake smile is pretty darn creepy to be honest, but am I carrying over expectations from that? I don't remember noticing it this much before, or was it different three years ago? I'm confused, really, really confused. It makes me want to go somewhere else, but everywhere I go is like that. Verizon, Kroger, Meijer, CVS, Wallgreen, Target, Subway, gas station, Taco Bell, family restaurant, airport, bank, currency exchange, doctor's office, everywhere. How am I supposed to respond to that? I'm not necessarily annoyed unless three people are handing me bags at once or I'm getting ignored or talked down to, but it's really confusing.

Okay, yeah, I'll figure it out in a few weeks/months/whatever. Still, it's clashing with what's in my memory, which is making the whole adjusting to what I'm supposed to already know even more confusing. And I really, really don't want to hear the phrase "You're an American, what's there to get used to?" or anything like it ever again. I try to respond with grace, but it never gets through, and grace is something that I tend to lack.

In other news, today's job application tally is up to two phone calls, four applications, and one rejection. I also finished Ceremony, which puts my book count up to 11/50 I believe. I'm currently halfway through Candide. It's very abrupt, but considering the man wrote it with a quill pen in three days, what can you expect? Cats are good, I'm healthy and survived the doctor's prodding for my physical yesterday (OW!!!). I might scream at somebody if they tell me I'm not looking hard enough for a job as I can no longer count the applications and resumes I've put out. It's really frustrating. I've only heard back from one for a phone interview so far, and I get to wait another month to hear yay or nay on an in-person interview on that one. I'm appalled at the price of gas, but I'm sure everybody else is too. I'd take lower gas prices over health insurance that's kinda sorta working right now, but that might just be because my priorities are funky and I'm opinionated about things which I am expected to have no opinions on. Or something.

I have a raging headache, and I've been on this computer for pushing three hours now, so here I end my rant. And no, I don't expect any answers. It's a rant, and I'm attempting to process a should-be familiar world through completely changed eyes. It's been three days since I've broken down crying though, so I suppose that's progress, and I had a really yummy turkey and cheese wrap for lunch, which I'm still excited about. Yay pickles!

10/50 books

2011-04-03T12:36:00.000+09:00

Yay, I finally finished my book. Actually, I finally resumed reading my book. I stopped reading after the 11th and my book sat forlornly on my desk until Friday. I stayed up last night reading, and it was nice.

So, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is done. I don't have the energy to write a full-on review of it, but I'd like to bring up a couple of things. First, I barely remember that book from when I read it as a kid, and now I think I know why. It's boring! I don't know if it's supposed to be satire or Twain's personal opinions. I've read that it was supposed to be satire, and I'd like to keep my opinion of Twain as pretty much awesome and someone I'd invite to my dead-people-I'd-like-to-meet tea party... so I'm going to really really hope that all of the obnoxious, white 19th century superiority bits of it were intended as satire... cause they were annoying and filled most of the book. Secondly, if I ever meet a person who likes that book/narrator or agrees with pretty much anything he has to say and doesn't think it's satire I get the strong impression that I'm really going to dislike that particular individual. So I'm just going to keep my own little world and pretend everybody thinks the book is a satire and go with it. :D

As far as connection with King Arthur is concerned, Twain used Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as a base reference, even pulled whole chunks and stuck it in his dialogue now and again. As much as the mental image of a guy in a nude gymnast suit lassoing Lancelot and dragging him about makes me grin, the characterizations of all of the knights were mostly lacking. I think that was part necessity for what he was going for though. All of the nobility and chivalry were worthless, lacking individual personality, and, well, the enemy. King Arthur got some personality in the second half of the book, but he wasn't much more than a pawn for the entire thing. I started enjoying it as a story after the skip-three-years bit toward the very end.

So I have a couple of options I'm thinking about reading next. One is a book on Robin Hood legends and history, Voltaire's Candide, The Alliterative Morte d'Arthur, or re-read/finish Malory's Morte d'Arthur. That's if I get around to reading at all today. My goal is to finish packing all of these boxes and my suitcases and not go stark raving mad. First I think a trip to the grocery store for caffeine and a giant box is due. I have three boxes unpacked (and several partially packed), but I need a really big one for my fan. I love that fan. It has a remote and a timer. I'm bringing it with me! It collapses down and comes apart, and the box I need isn't too big, just a few inches wider than the ones I have now. Unfortunately, it's freezing out and I think it's going to rain later.... >.> Which means I should shower and get out of my pajamas now, huh?

The nightmare that is this month

2011-04-01T22:55:00.001+09:00

So, three weeks ago we had an apocalyptic sized earthquake and massive tsunami here. It was my last day of work, and I got stuck walking home eight hours across Tokyo and part of Kanagawa. That wasn't really the bad part. At that point I was in survival mode and making an adventure of it. I was also completely unaware of the actual damage, and I kept myself that way because as soon as I started paying attention, as soon as I saw videos of moms looking for their kids and a woman asking if a hospital somewhere was taking care of her missing daughter-in-law who was too pregnant to run fast and went missing, I broke. There are still over 5,000 people missing, presumed dead. There are thousands more in schools and temples trying to get by. They interviewed a group of moms a couple of weeks ago asking what the shelters needed, and they described how all the kids had colds and diaper rashes, they wanted to be able to at least bathe the babies in warm water, and that there were a lot of people who had lost their contacts or glasses and couldn't see to take care of the kids. Just to note - almost every Japanese person I know has terrible eye sight and wears really strong contacts.

Today at the vet I almost started crying again with the news on. I avoid watching it. I know it's hard for people back home to know how real all this has been here. To everyone back home, Fukushima is just a name that's hard to pronounce, Sendai is some city across a giant ocean, and they have no idea what Tohoku is. For most of the people I know will be forgotten when the next disaster hits somewhere or filed away as "I'm glad Chris got out of there okay," but it never will for me. All those people who died, the towns that just ceased to exist, they were closer to me than the people who died in New York on 9-11. For me, Fukushima is 150 miles away. Sendai is one of the five major cities all of my favorite bands tour. I'm not reading interviews in subtitles or hearing them voiced over, I'm hearing pain in the words as they are said. Apparently there was a fire in Tokyo caused by the quake... it was on the other side of the city from me, but I went there today. I could see the NHK building in Odaiba from a bridge. I passed through Tamachi on my way there then found out tonight that a ramp to the roof of the Costco there had collapsed on the 11th. Bottled water is still hard to find because after the 11th everyone panicked and bought it out. The same with any instant or easy foods. Bread was sold out everywhere for over a week and is still the first thing to sell out. My local stores are just now getting rice in. Since they found radiation in some of the tap water on the east side of the city, even juice and soda has been hard to find. The vending machines are all sold out. Everything is dark - stores, office buildings, signs, trains - in an effort to conserve energy and make up for the lack of output.

I'm not putting this up here for sympathy. When it comes down to it, the effects of the Tohoku earthquake were and are an inconvenience for me. I chose to walk home because I was afraid my window was busted open and I didn't want to leave the cats in the cold to possibly escape. (My windows had, actually, shaken all the way open, and my apartment was freezing inside. The cats were fine, but very cold and hungry since it'd been almost 24 hours since they'd eaten.) I walked on no food because I was a flake that morning and forgot to bring myself a lunch and all they had at the store was a tiny salad. I was out of food and water in my apartment, but I was still able to find enough to eat and juice to drink. The weeks of tremors have been aggravating and distracting, but nothing is broken, and I have no legitimate reason to complain about them. I've had it easy compared to many. I'm writing this because next week, barring any disaster at or getting to the airport I will be back in Michigan, and to be completely honest, I'm terrified of facing the people I love. I know what is said is meant in love, but no, I am not happy to be getting out of here. I'm terribly sad and stressed and don't know what to do with myself. Even before this I was sad and torn, and a few times, angry about the reactions and things going on here, I've said I'll be glad to be gone, but that's not true. This place, it infuriates me to no end, but it's been home for four years. That's almost all of my adult life. I'm sure, in time, I'll be happy to be back in Michigan, but it's going to take time to adjust, to get used to being among Americans, to driving on the right side of the road, eating a salad with a fork, responding to people in English, all those little things that you really take for granted until they're either gone or completely different.

Everyone wants to know about Japan, and everybody has their own ideas about what it's like here. Most people haven't got a clue. The stereotypes of Japan are all wrong, but even Japanese people will go about saying things like "Japan is mysterious and difficult to understand." Students of Japanese culture will often flat out ignore the reality and believe what they want to believe about Japan. Western media shows a Japan that isn't real, it's a superficial image interpreted how people want it to be interpreted. A really good discussion on Orientalism is here (click on "Legacy of Orientalism" on the left), on the Penn State University website. I wish I could make everybody read that before they ask me questions because even when I answer, whether they do it intentionally or not, most people don't hear what I say. They hear what they want to hear and interpret it to match what they believe Japan should be. For non-scholars it's an innocent mistake, and if the person I'm talking to is willing to listen, really listen, it's a topic I'm more than happy to discuss. I've lived here four years, and apart from that I spent six years studying Japanese and Japan. It's something I've loved for a decade, and when you've only lived through two of those, that's a long time. The thing is, I need time. I need to process my life before I can talk about it. I've been crying the whole time I've been writing this, sobbing sometimes even. This is hard for me. This month has been draining. My best friend left seven months ago, and I've been alone almost every day since. The job that I thought I loved turned into a nightmare. It's been a hard year. Even leaving my school here and returning to America after having the best three months of my life with Lindsey and Chieko, adapting to life in America was hard. I don't honestly think I managed completely before I left again. I started bawling in the middle of Hudson's after encountering something counter to what I had gotten used to here. I couldn't eat most American foods. I went to an anime convention with my friends and couldn't understand why I was surrounded by Japanese things but everyone was speaking English. No one understood me when my English failed and Japanese popped out.

Being in Michigan is going to be difficult. Even though my family loves me and I have friends there, it's going to be difficult. I'm going to need time to adjust, and I'm going to need the space to adjust in. I'm partly writing this for my family to read, since they're the main people who follow this blog. I won't be able to explain in person any of what I said here because it'll upset me and it won't all come out in English which will just frustrated me more and it'll all just become an incoherent string of babbling and crying. In time, when I'm ready, I would love to talk about Japan. It will take me longer to talk about what has happened since the Tohoku earthquake. If you think of it like talking to someone in upstate New York about 9-11 in October of 2001 you might get something of an idea of what this is to me. And I'm putting this on the internet, rather than emailing it, because this earthquake has not only effected Japanese people, it's effected the entire ex-pat community here as well. We're also the ones who have to deal with reverse culture shock and friends and relatives who don't really understand what this is to us no matter how much they love us and care about us. I don't know if anybody will actually read this, and I know I'm incredibly long winded, but if what I've managed to articulate about my feelings and experiences in writing here helps somebody else describe theirs then it's worth it.

Thank you for reading this far, and I hope what I've written makes sense because right now, I'm not sure I can say it any better.

Of books and cats

2011-02-28T23:05:00.001+09:00

For starters, my book tally so far is 9/50. I just finished The Prince, and I also read Mists of Avalon and Lord of the Flies. I also finished Lancelot, Knight of the Cart, though I'm not going to comment specifically on that one right now.

I guess I'll go in read-them-order and start with Mists of Avalon. I read it once back in Jr. high. My friend lent it to me, and I was probably 30 pages from the end (it's over 1,000) when I gave it back. I got bored with it I think. This time around, well, I've read parts of The Mabinogion, four of Chretien's five romances, half of Le Morte D'Arthur, Tennyson's Idylls of the King (why is that a classic??), and for the last three months have been discussing Arthurian stories with other lit nerds, so I know a bit more about the legends and stories than I did when I was 12. That was interesting, seeing what Bradley did with the characters, though some of them seemed pretty forced, like Gareth's adventure, which is sad cause it's a fun adventure and he starts off like he could be a useful character for her plot. I appreciated that Merlin's utter stupidity wasn't the cause of his death in this one as it usually is.

I have two major beefs with the book though... well, maybe three. One, according to her own intro, her aim was to show how Britain might have been prior to Christianity taking hold there. To that end she made a good bit of headway, but then she filled it with Eastern ideas of reincarnation and enlightenment which just aren't native to Western religions. If it was just briefly in there it might have been easy to ignore, but there were whole sections explaining basically what any introduction to Asian philosophy would say. This leads me to my second beef. There was far too much emphasis on religion, and the clash of religions. At first it was fine, and it even enriched the plot, but as the book moved on it became a fanatical voice narrating a story whose antagonist was another fanatic. I'd like to think it wasn't trying to make a point out of that, because I hate pointed literature and if it was pointed the point was badly made. My third beef with the book is mostly that I love Arthurian stories because of the knights and the adventures and the battles and even the epic fail of characters like Tristan and later versions of Gawain. Bradley skipped over almost all of that (including the entire fight between Arthur and Mordred!!!) for the sake of keeping to her narrators which were all female. That itself was actually pretty cool. A+ for idea on that one. It showed an interesting perspective, but it deteriorated quickly, and really, to me, the meat of the stories of Arthur and his knights are just that, Arthur and his knights. To completely push them to the side and leap over most of the major adventures and battles was really disappointing. I would rather her have allowed some of the male voices to narrate instead of sticking strictly to the females, or had a female in the camps or something.

It's not a book I'll read again any time soon, but those beefs aside, I really enjoyed the first half. Up until Accalon's part was over (*sad face!!*), I thought it was really good. Then Morgaine just went completely nuts and passed passionate into fanatical. The story started to take really long leaps around there too. I don't know, one of those books where the end is just really disappointing, and not because Arthur dies. Everyone knows Arthur dies in the end (if you didn't, now you do). Arthur always dies in the end.

I could keep rambling about that, but I'll move on to Lord of the Flies. I've been wanting to read this book. I don't know why I never did except that I never took Brit Lit in high school because of how I was bumped into the AP program my last year. I don't know that they even read it at my school, either in AP (10th grade was Brit Lit) or regular (12th grade), but it seems to me something that would/should be on a high school reading list. I wish I had read it when I was younger, when I didn't already know the world was messed up and humanity basically sucks. I think it would have had more of an impact on me. The writing style definitely felt geared for young adult. It spelled out a bit more than I would have liked, and the Lord of the Flies part with the pig head was a little random. Cool imagery, but random. Simon was so in and out of the story up until that point that it really felt sudden, but it was a pretty pivotal point in the book so I also felt kinda cheated. The ending was definitely a disappointment. It made it feel almost like they were put on the island as a test or something Battle Royale style. (I know the two have often compared, but I've only seen the movie. I have the book, but I haven't read it yet.) I didn't think the officer's reaction was appropriate either, though the children's was bang on. Still, ending aside, it was an interesting book. I liked the way the paint became a mask that hid shame. The dynamics of the Tribe were really believable, though I wonder, had Jack not been so obsessed with the pig, would any of it happened? Why was he so obsessed with the pig in the first place? I've read too much and lived too much to not tear points like that apart anymore... I wish I had read it when I was younger. I've read things that made me stop and reevaluate the world around me before, and I can imagine how that would have made me feel when I was 11, 12 years old, before I'd managed to work my way through things like A Tale of Two Cities.

Most recently I finished The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. Yes, that evil manual for dictators... or something. I don't get why it has such a bad reputation. Personally, I think somebody (probably the Church as they were the first to edit parts for publication) called the book evil, associated it with dictators, and people, being exactly as Machiavelli calls them, "always taken by what a thing seems to be" and rarely looking for themselves, took up the cry and never bothered to actually read it. Not that it is wholly wrong. I can see where a dictator or a prince or the President of the United States for that matter could pick and choose bits of practical wisdom and put them to use. It is better to be feared than to be loved so long as you are not hated (as a leader). Fear can mean anything from stark terror (though I doubt that's what his intention was as that would lead to hate as soon as it abated) to respectful awe. That tidbit has been pretty abused over time, but that makes it no less true. Practically speaking, a leader who is feared, respected, or admired has an easier time getting people to follow him or her into danger than one who is simply loved or well liked. "You like me, so come die for me," vs. "I have the power to make or break you, so come die for me." That's putting it in incredibly simple terms, and those are expounded upon, but that's the gist of that section anyway. Even the "controversial" chapter really was just stating the obvious. It's not ideal for a leader to be dishonest, but human nature being as it is, find me one who isn't dishonest, then find a way to succeed in the political game against dishonest characters by being honest. In this world it won't happen. To quote a song I like, 「理想はただの理想」 "An ideal is just an ideal." Basically Machiavelli wrote it as he saw it, practically speaking, not beating around ideals, not (completely) catering to the Church which, at the time, was an incredibly powerful political entity, and not making excuses for writing common sense. I say common sense because that's how it read to me. If you have enemies in a position to do you harm, destroy them before they can destroy you. He never says how, though let's consider it was the beginning of the 16th century, basing most of his philosophy on wars and princes up to the 15th century, the most common way would have been execution if one could get their hands on their enemy. He repeats multiple times that being hated by the people is the worst thing a prince could do - don't touch their property or women, don't make radical changes, don't raise the taxes. He also says that, while a mask of virtue is necessary, it's also better if the prince has at least some of the virtues he shows the people.

I thought it was pretty vague. I was actually disappointed, having believed the juicy rumors of it being the handbook for dictators. It's not. If a person has the intelligence to follow their ambition and succeed, they don't need Machiavelli's theories to help them. Most of what he says could be applied to any politician in any type of government as well as most people in a leadership role. His histories though were interesting, and Castruccio Castracani's was entertaining if not interspersed with pretty bits of fiction. It read better than some of the contemporary romances. It definitely beat Mallory. The first bit though was really dry and not easy to read at 7 o'clock in the morning. 112 pages to me far longer than I wanted it to. Once the histories started at about page 70 I breezed through it. I read half of the book today when it took me all last week to read the first half. It definitely would be an interesting conversation topic, except that it appears even the lit nerds on my forum are still mostly in the "Stalin's handbook" camp.

I'm not sure what to read next! I'm partway through Ceremony, but that book can be so depressing. I have a book on the history of Robin Hood, but I'd like something a bit less thinky. I went from middle ages Arthur legends to epic-length book that was more religious conflict than I care to think about back to Renaissance political theory with a post-nuclear war island nightmare in between. I need a break! I've already read all of the palatable Jane Austin though! (/dig)

Oh, and I was going to write about the cats too. Ophelia has a bladder infection... yay. >.> I feel bad. I thought she was just mad at me, so I let it go for almost two months. She's on meds now, has been since Thursday, but twice again she's peed on my couch. It's easy enough to clean up, but I need to correct the behavior. The problem is, I don't know how. Someone suggested getting her a new litter box and putting it where she's been peeing... which is a good idea except I don't have the space, and her current litter box is four feet from where she peed today. I'll go to the store and see what's cheap though. It makes sense. She's been in pain for two months whenever she goes to the bathroom. Of course she's not going to want to go in her litter box which has two months of pain associated with it. I'm too tired and stressed to deal with this right now though. I washed everything that I could, but some things just won't come clean. Now it's no longer 50 degrees and sunny, it's pouring rain interspersed with snow. What I really should do is just pack up a couple more boxes and get rid of the stuff in my apartment. Getting the boxes is a huge pain though. If it's not raining tomorrow I'm going to try the close grocery store again, see if they have anything. I could always buy more boxes, but that gets expensive and the biggest boxes really aren't that big. GAHH! I hate moving. I hate living in this tiny hole even more though. Even prior to Ophelia being sick, I could clean and clean and it's just not enough. The bathroom moulds in a few days. The kitchen smells like rat crap. I just don't have the energy to deal with it all. To top it off, I just spent $70 that I was planning on putting toward sending boxes on a vet trip. I don't regret it, I'd do it in a heartbeat again if I needed to, but it adds to the whole "CRAP I HAVE NO MONEY!!" panic when I think about how to send boxes, what to throw away, what to try to sell, and all that stuff. 混乱 I have no idea how to translate that, but that's how I feel right now, like I'm running in circles and can't see or feel anything to find my way.

I think I'll go back to thinking about the middle ages or made-up worlds... or beads. It's less panic inducing.

Trying to relax this weekend

2011-01-29T12:09:00.001+09:00

I've been really sick this whole week, so I made sure I had enough groceries to last me the weekend, and I don't plan on leaving the house until tomorrow evening. I had to leave briefly because I dropped my Downy ball off the balcony when I was doing my laundry... but that aside. I kinda want to walk, but I don't think the cold is good for me right now, so I'm going to stay warm and try to relax. Relaxing is a little difficult. I would like to be packing or cleaning, but I can't pack without more boxes, and I can't really clean because there's so much junk in the way, not to mention a tower of already packed boxes. le sigh. I'm thinking I'm going to drag my stuff up into the loft and curl up there for the afternoon, ignore the mess down here.

I finished two more books, A Long Way Gone and Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, which puts me at 5/50. I really liked Yvain. It was a lot of fun to read, and the story was pretty good. A Long Way Gone was really interesting in some ways, but it's so sad. It's a memoir by Ishmael Beah about his childhood during the civil war in Sierra Leone. I remember hearing news about that as a kid, and he's not much older than I am, so it was strange to read. He spent a long time running from the war then got forced into fighting for the military. Two years later he was pulled out by UNICEF and rehabilitated. Some of his friends, though, weren't accepted by their family, and some ended up having to go back to the war, which was really really sad. His uncle took him in, but not too long after the war reached the capital city and he was running again.

I'm not going to lie, it made me cry. It makes me cry just thinking about it. It's bad enough that war involves civilians sometimes - that sometimes both sides attack them, sometimes they get caught in the crossfire, indirectly it always effects them. But to take a child, give him or her a gun, then drug them to take away the need to cope with what they're doing and shove them into a battle... and continue to do that, it's just inexcusable. I know this is something I've said before, but I don't understand how the U.S. can justify its military support of countries that are using child soldiers. It's wrong, and yet we do it. We make exceptions because it's in our interests, or some bullshit like that. The United States has a lot to work out with their stance on the issue, I think, and it's sad that it's not even really a public issue. We act like we're morally superior to the eastern world when we're really just a strong group of uninformed hypocrites. Wars don't touch us. We didn't see them as children, they don't threaten our heated and air conditioned homes, the misguided extremists who attacked us were punished (ignoring the fact that one of them was 15 when he committed his crime). It's all just really, really sad, because the rest of the world is nothing like North America, and most people in North America, the ones with the money and the status to do something about it, don't know that.

My face is going to explode

2011-01-25T20:20:00.001+09:00

Gah, I'm so sick right now! I was hoping I'd feel better by Monday, but I had to conduct speaking tests in a damp, cold, concrete room all day... that helped. >.> It's hard to sleep at night when you have a cold, too. I crashed this afternoon though, slept about three hours. As soon as my tea is ready, I'm off to watch a movie, snuggle with my kitties, and hopefully sleep soon.

I finished Cliges, so I'm 3/50 now. It was uh... pretty dumb, actually. I was okay with the first half, his father and mother's story, but it seemed like somebody took the story of Tristan and Isolde and rewrote it so that it didn't involve an affair in which the woman is sleeping with two men, and moved it to Greece (which I found rather random, considering he was supposed to be one of Arthur's knights). What also bugged me is that he beat Lancelot, who was supposed to be Tristan's equal (number one in some stories, number two after Gawain in others). He equaled Gawain at fifteen (um... unlikely at best there, right up with beating Lancelot) but the fight was stopped to avoid them killing each other. All that also smacked of Tristan. So did being caught naked with his lover by a soldier of his uncle. The only difference was he didn't leave her behind since she was supposed to be dead. I don't know, it wasn't the worst I've read of the genre, but it was far from the best. Too much romance, too many parallels to Tristan. I know it's a classic, and you're not supposed to tear apart something that was written 800 years ago, but meh, whatever. :P

I'm currently on Yvain, which, being that he's a total idiot, is turning out to be quite interesting. The love story was there, but uh... Yvain's an idiot so now his wife has banished him from her kingdom and he went nuts and ended up running around the forest naked. That seems to happen to people fairly often. I think they shouldn't be dumb and pledge undying love to people they don't even know and have only seen once, but that's just me. ^__^

Tea time!

Finished a book

2011-01-23T01:51:00.000+09:00

My first finished book for this year is Idylls of the King by Lord Alfred Tennyson. Yay! It uh... definitely is my least favorite books among the classics relating to King Arthur, which is a very nice way of saying I didn't really like it at all. Its only redeeming quality was the story which, being King Arthur related, was not his. Most of the parts he changed were ones I didn't like.

This is my ranting review that I wrote for the literature forum I'm a part of, if you're interested.

Holy crap, Arthur, wow… just… wow. I never cheer for Lancelot, ever until this piece! The poor man!! Guinevere is a raging witch in this! She has absolutely no redeeming qualities, whatsoever. None. That said, what the heck gave Arthur the right for that holier than thou speech at the end? Did Tennyson really want his readership to feel that Arthur was being gracious and saint-like? Did anybody think that?? Ok, yeah, she cheated on you, but you’re the oaf who didn’t notice for how many years, and let’s not forget, you no more than saw her before deciding to marry her. How does that make for good measure of quality and loyalty in a queen? Seriously now.

His handling of the women in all of the idylls, Enid aside, made me want to scream. Make the women villains, that’s fine, but they’re completely demonized. The one that might have had a chance at being an actual powerful figure, Bellicent, didn’t even appear when the proverbial crap was hitting the fan.

Tennyson’s portrayal of women aside, and Tennyson fans please forgive me, I did not like his writing. It felt like it wanted to be a medieval narrative, but his use of more crude descriptions, Mark’s sword cleaving through Tristan’s brain, the lords and ladies eating flesh and drinking wine, to name a few examples off the top of my head, didn’t fit. They felt forced and out of place. It may also just be the fact that I have trouble with poetry any more recent than Keats, but there were also several sections that I just didn’t get. I had to go back and reread sections of The Holy Grail and The Last Tournament, and even then the writing was so inconsistent that it didn’t all make sense. Don’t get me wrong, some of the idylls I rather enjoyed for themselves, Geraint and Enid, Merlin and Vivien, Lancelot and Elaine, but as a whole, I really felt like Tennyson dropped the ball. His source material, primarily Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur was all that saved the poem, and really then only in pieces.

Taking into account that it’s twelve smaller idylls linked together, they still tell a story. They begin with Arthur’s ascent to power, even describing multiple accounts of his origins, they show Camelot at its peak, the splintering caused by the quest for the Grail, its further weakening through affairs and broken vows, to its war with Lancelot and then Mordred and Athur’s trip to Avalon. The problem I found with it is that, for a story written in the 19th century, it doesn’t meet the standards of a cohesive story of its day. Mordred is said to be a nasty antagonist at the beginning, there’s little mention of him in the middle, then suddenly he’s usurping Arthur’s throne. His mother disappears entirely. Tristan shows up at the end as a morally depraved character who’s taken his example from Lancelot and Guinevere’s affair just before he gets knocked off remarkably clumsily. The only constant themes, at least as far as characters go, are the breaking of vows and adultery, which I think made the characters really flat and, frankly, annoying. The only other possible one I can dig up, which may just be my unhappy reaction to his handling of his female characters, is the fickleness/weakness of women and the evils they bring to men. Even in Geraint and Enid, in which I think Enid is a fairly feisty female character, the damage done is not to her but to Geraint, and it’s blamed on Guinevere’s affair with Lancelot. Pelleas’ anger at Gawain and Ettarre is due to both of them, but he puts the sword over Ettarre’s throat, not Gawain’s. Tennyson brings up other themes throughout the different pieces, but if they connect I missed it.

I needed a flailing rant, and that was after a day of calming down. I don't know who reading this would be interested, but I posted it as a part of this discussion on Idylls of the King. I'm excited. We're discussing the first idyll right now, The Coming of Arthur. Idylls of the King is a set of twelve idylls, or short poems. I just had this discussion with Aunt Tracy on how we're counting our 50 (25?) books, and we decided that if it was a compilation than it's not necessarily the binding that makes it a book. Somehow though, I don't think this counts as 12.... they weren't very long. :P

I'm currently reading Chretien de Troyes' four romances, and I recently finished Erec and Enide. I'm on Cliges at the moment. I absolutely adored Erec and Enide. It's the story of Geraint and Enid - how Chretien came up with Erec I have no idea. Tennyson did okay handling that story, but Chretien's is so much better! It's beautifully written, and I don't really get why she's not allowed to speak, but yeah. Cliges is a bit, I don't know, boring is the wrong word, more difficult to completely lose myself in might describe it better. It's still pretty good though.

Erec/Geraint is a prince who is one of Arthur's knights. On his way to avenge an insult to him and one of Queen Guenevere's maids he meets and falls in love with Enide who, after beating the crap out of the knight who insulted him, he marries. They go back to his father's lands and he's so in love with her that he stops acting like a knight. He stops going to tournaments and seems to have lost interest in anything related to "arms." The people begin to talk, and Enide finally tells him her concerns and what people are saying, and so he takes her away to test her love (which I think is the point of what he puts her through....). She is not to speak to him no matter what happens. Well, when a group of knights approaches to attack him, she can't stay quiet and warns him, repeatedly. They continue to wander until he nearly dies and she's captured by a count who tries to force her to marry him. Erec, who they think is a corpse, wakes up and kills the count, and they escape and meet Guivret, who he narrowly beat on an earlier adventure and who has brought an army to rescue Enide after hearing that Erec had died. There's a final adventure, the Joy of the Court, in which Erec fights in a magical garden with a knight who has so far remained undefeated. He wins and frees the knight from a vow to stay inside the garden until he was defeated with the woman he loved.

I really enjoyed it, and honestly, so far I think it's my favorite medieval Arthurian story. Even Cliges, which isn't as good (or maybe I'm just less interested in it since it's about characters I don't know), is still good. Chretien spends a lot of time describing the battles, which I love but I also find fascinating because so far he's the only one who's done that. The others will say things like "they exchanged blows," and describe battles in pretty vague terms, but he's gone straight down to how many, where, with what hand, really vivid descriptions. I think it's probably the most accessible medieval piece I've read so far. If you're at all interested in breaking into medieval literature, I would recommend Chretien de Troyes, even though I can't pronounce his whole name. ;) (I asked, but I still can't figure out how to pronounce "trwa" o.O)

So, if I start my count on January first, and exclude the comic books (I think I've read three so far...), I'm 2/50, and I have 4 more to read this month to be on track. Well there are three more romances left from Chretien, and I'm working on A Long Way Gone, which is, not surprisingly, really sad. Actually, it's really lonely right now. I'll let you know once I'm done.

Other than that, I've got six boxes of books, comic books, cd and dvd cases, and miscellaneous clothing packed. I need to fill out the customs forms and weigh them before I call the post office. I was going to do that this weekend, but then I wasn't sleeping during the week and, surprise surprise, got sick today, so that didn't happen. I have a bunch of stuff for work that I have to do, but I'm planning on spending tomorrow either reading or playing video games because I am not going to let work bug me this weekend any more than it already has. I need unwind time. ...I also need another box. I hope it's not too cold tomorrow, or that I have some energy to go to the store and paw through their cardboard boxes. That was on today's list.

And that's the truth. pbhhhhh :P

I climbed a mountain!

2010-12-30T17:14:00.003+09:00

Well, first because we only had about an hour and a half of daylight left, I took a rope way up a mountain then hiked down (and barely made it before dark...). Then the next morning I climbed up the mountain, then back down. There are three main paths up Miyajima, and I climbed on all of them, and ne'er a monkey to be seen. :( At the top of the rope way there were free lockers to put your bags and signs everywhere warning about the monkeys, but on day one it was rainy and cold, and on day two.. well, I guess they just don't like coming out during the winter. I don't blame them, but I'm pretty bummed I couldn't see at least one. Had binoculars this time too, but no luck. I think they hate me. Third time's the charm?

Anyway, here are some pictures! Sorry, they're huge. I took 194 after deleting some of the blurry ones or doubles. o.O This camera is awesome.

This is the atomic bomb dome, 原爆ドーム(genbaku dohmu). I didn't stick around long, since we were on our way to the ferry to get to the island at the time and I was far more interested in seeing the monkeys, but it looks like it was a municipal building or something. It's part of the Peace Park. It was interesting to see how the city dealt with the bombing. If you're confused, Miyajima is just off the coast from the main island of Japan at Hiroshima. The first ferry we took, we got about a half hour in (as I sank further and further flat against the table) before the captain finally decided continuing out into the bay (we just barely made it off the river) was too dangerous. The river was all white-caps, and the waves as we neared the bay had to have been at least five feet. The bottom of the ferry was flat, and the nose was definitely not shaped to cut through waves. That was disconcerting. I'm glad we turned around, even though we lost well over two hours because of it.

We finally got to 宮島口 (Miyajima guchi) where the JR ferry set off. It's only about five minutes from the JR port to the island, but it took a long time to get to the station on the train. The water was still really rough, but it was one of those ferries that transports cars so we didn't even feel it on the top. This picture was while we were in line. Right before I snapped this it was really bright, but it had faded by the time the guy in front of my would let me move the foot I needed to get the pillar out of the way of my camera.

厳島神社の大鳥居 - This is the front of Ituskushima shrine. The gate is held into the water by its own weight rather than set into the sand. It's huge! This is just after high tide.

Deer. They were everywhere. They fear nothing, cars, people, squealing children. They're sacred though. Actually the whole island is, but deer are considered sacred in Japan. It's the same in Nara, though there were more deer on Miyajima than I saw in Nara. Apparently there are usually way more in Nara, and they're bullies, but I think animals in Japan just hate me and want to prove all of the tourist information wrong. Anyway, they cut off the antlers on the male deer in both places so dumb tourists don't get gored when they try to pet them.

I just liked this bridge. This was on the way up to the rope way. We went up to the peak, checked out the eternal fire temple on the peak next to it, then after a caution from one of the workers letting us know we had forty minutes of daylight left we booked it down the nearest trail. It was all stairs, and very uneven stairs. My knees stopped hurting today a little, but yeah, that hurt. Beautiful though.

Lindsey liked this tree. Apparently it was huggable, and I have nutty friends. :P

Starfish! This was at the JR ferry landing again the next morning. We were originally planning on going to Kyoto yesterday, but as we were making our way up the mountain on Tuesday we decided that we wanted to spend more time on the island. I'm glad we decided that before realizing there were no monkeys at the peak, or I may have started crying.

Two bucks attempting to fight... or their clipped antlers were itchy....

Mommy and baby.

The torii gate at low tide. This was maybe thirty minutes after the low tide mark. There have been a ton of landslides on that island, which makes me wonder if that's not why the change in tides are so dramatic here. It also makes me wonder how tall the mountain was originally, however many thousands of years ago. You can see so many places where it just fell away. On the trail we came down yesterday it looked like part had just crumbled and tossed giant mansion-sized boulders down the side.

Another up-close picture. I'm glad I wore my boots. I would have had cold, wet feet otherwise, cause I don't usually realize I'm walking through water until I'm not wearing boots and my feet get soaked...

A view on the way up.

Tanuki (racoon-dog) paw print in the concrete

She was cute. This is on the way to Misen peak. There's a really narrow stair between a bunch of boulders (in front of the pictures below) that you have to climb to get up there. A couple of Japanese women went down before me, and the deer was on her way up, so I stopped at the top of the stairs to let her pass and said basically "After you," but it came out in Japanese. The women in front of me looked rather startled and laughed and commented on my Japanese as they continued down. It made me giggle.

Lindsey scared about four people coming off that staircase despite the fact that I was standing on a boulder aiming a camera at her. It was entertaining.

So of course I had to crawl in too. XD

A view from near the top.

This is one of the males smart enough to avoid the tourist areas during antler chopping season. A little later from the top of the look-out, Lindsey and I watched a group walk up, two Americans and two Japanese guys. The mis-communication between them was funny enough, but then one of the Japanese guys was dumb and tried to pet this guy. Of course he lowered his head and got ready to charge, and one of the Americans made the comment "He's gonna get gored." Lindsey and I burst out laughing, which seemed to stop the Japanese guy from trying to pet him (idiot..), so I guess that worked out. We then had to look up how to say "to gore" in Japanese because it seemed like a useful word to know... it was a rather anticlimactic answer. 空く or 空き通す "to open." Japanese has some really fun words and some really boring ones... I call this one boring.

One of the shrines on the path. One of the deer found my camera lens cover interesting around here and looked like she wanted to eat it for a minute.

Getting down to the bottom was so painful. Had it not been for the stairs it probably would have taken longer, but both of us were in so much pain from our knees. I ended up finding paths through the woods near the trail to avoid the stairs as much as I could. On the other paths it would have been impossible. They were paved with stones fairly solid the whole way, and to the sides there were quite often really deep gouges in the mountain side from a landslide in 平成１７ which is.... 2005? I think... I'm bad at converting that. This year is 平成２２, and I went to school in Osaka in 18, so I'm pretty sure that equals 2005. Anyway, the landslide took out large chunks of the other two paths. It looked like there had been a few because of the different construction methods we could see on different parts. The trail we took down was built in 昭和４ or 6... I forgot already... I was born in 昭和６０ or 61, so that would put it sometime in the 20s or early 30s. There was another huge landslide in 1945 (if I remember the date correctly) that dumped 20,000 cubic meters of earth on the area in this picture, Itsukushima shrine. There were dams holding back the mountain all the way up both of those trails. Interestingly enough, the top ones were completely filled. Typhoons and earthquakes must just rip that mountain apart. Anyway, the trail down that we took looked like it had been damaged more by a rock fall, or maybe they built it around the rock fall... or maybe there were multiples. There were some huge boulders, and some with trees growing through them or between them, but the parts of the path that were there were all one construction. It made me want to study geology so I could figure out what was going on with all of that.

Leaving the island at sunset. It was beautiful. It really reminded me that it's Japanese cities that I hate, not Japan itself. The people in the cities (which cover most of the islands) are obnoxious, rude, and self-centered. I imagine it's a symptom of over-crowding and being over-worked. There's a lot about Japan though that is beautiful and fascinating. Historic Kyoto, if you can ignore the people who generally have the above qualities, is amazing. Nara is huge. Kawagoe is fascinating. Miyajima.. I could spend a week on that island and be perfectly content. It was nice to get away. I couldn't breathe in the city (used my rescue inhaler just about once an hour...), and coming back to Tokyo was a rude awakening (and I can't even get a hold of my landlord to yell at them, again >_<), but I had a really nice two days. I really want to print out the pictures I've taken on the trips I've been on here and make some albums. I have a ton of pictures, but they're all the good points about the last three years that I want to remember.

Lindsey's coming back to Tokyo tonight, and tomorrow we're meeting Jen in Shibuya to spend New Year's Eve out on the town. It was a blast last year, and I'm sure it will be again this year. Next week is Disney and a Dir en Grey concert, hopefully some sit-and-do-nothing time in between, then Lindsey has to go back to Canada and I have to go back to my evil job. I'm turning in my resignation right away though, then I'll figure out when I'm leaving and start packing. I have a class starting on the 10th that I'm excited about, and one of my applications for the Sleeping Bear Dunes passed part one of the review... so YAY!!!! Prayers wanted for that!! I really want that job. It's just for four months, but I'm really praying that I get that job. Something will work out for the fall, I really want to spend the summer working outside away from cities.

I was planning on doing some writing today, but I'm thinking the time would be better spent cleaning. This place is cramped with two people in it, and the utter chaos created by the last four months of me attempting to hold on to a cliff-face by my fingernails is really not helping. I'm glad I have my kitties though, even if they contribute a large portion of hair to the mess that is my apartment. They're such good company. I love coming home to them.

Oh!! That reminds me! Christmas pictures!

Ophelia really likes toys she can chase. If she catches a toy, she has no idea what to do with it. Sometimes she'll toss it and chase it on her own... most of the time she looks up at me and meows at me or looks forlornly at the toy and pokes at it. They both love this guy, and he's surprisingly sturdy!

Soushi got a chicken with tail feathers filled with catnip. He likes to kill things. He thoroughly killed the chicken the minute I got it out of its package, but also surprisingly, no tail feathers have pulled out yet! A couple days ago he got it stuck between the wall and my wardrobe and fell onto my computer trying to reach it from the top of the wardrobe, then looked ready to scale the curtains to reach it from the desk, which he knows he's not allowed to be on. It was amusing, but further rationale for his nickname of Dr. Destructo. He couldn't decide which toy he wanted to play with more after I got done tormenting him with the elf costume.

Ophelia was the easiest to put this on. She just stopped moving and looked disgruntled.

Soushi, on the other hand, kept trying to run off or rub the ears off. Haha, I'm a crazy cat lady, I know, but it was a very well spent $5, and they will suffer through wearing it every year because I think it's hilarious!

Ok, I'm really done with this post now. Happy New Year everyone!!

Not a mouse...

2010-12-22T07:03:00.000+09:00

So uh, there was a noise in the kitchen. I've been hearing it quite often lately at night, dishes bumping together, and I thought maybe it was the dishes on the rack, or something shifting because the building shakes occasionally. The kitchen lights were on and I was at my desk, so I looked over... yup, big grey rat climbing out of the sink.

Glad it's not a roach, because then I'd actually be scared. Right now I'm just thoroughly grossed out and ticked off that I'm paying $600 a month and not only have rodents in my walls and cupboards but now in my sink as well!

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!

Four more sleeps 'till Christmas

2010-12-22T00:43:00.002+09:00

I'm bummed. Last year on Christmas Eve I went to the Dacco Christmas Live. It was a ton of fun and just a nice way to spend Christmas Eve seeing as I was all alone in Tokyo last year. Well, I was planning on going when they first announced their Christmas Live this year, then I hemmed and hawed about the money, and finally today I decided "screw the money, I'm going." Well, it's on Christmas day this year. >.> Thankfully I'm not alone in Tokyo this year, and I have plans to have roasted chicken, apple tart, cheese, crackers, and wine with Jen on Christmas day. Still bummed about the show though. I looked for anything else, but nobody I like is playing on Christmas eve. One band is playing the day before, but that doesn't exactly help. So I guess it's me and the cats that night. Ritchie (long story summed up in two words - selfish jackass...pardon the French) has a show that night, and he invited me, after snubbing me at his last show and making me cry... again... but yeah, so not going to that one. Even if he wasn't such a jerk, I wouldn't want to spend my Christmas eve with the type of fans his band has. Thanks, pass. There's one where I say I'm sure they're nice people, but they creep me out. I'm used to being around the geeky boys who need reminders to bathe and eat something other than Mountain Dew and they creep me out. That's saying something.

I got my kitties Christmas presents today. I wasn't going to, but I went to Tokyu Hands to look for a hole punch, which, of course, they had for 3,000 yen, ahah, right, no. I wandered up to the pet store just to look around. I still want to buy them Japanese engraved tags, but then I'd have to put my name and phone number on something else... They're really pretty tags though... Anyway, I didn't get those, but I intend to take pictures Christmas morning, so I'll be sure to post them. I'm sure to have an unhappy Soushi (because I guarantee Ophelia won't let me get her) for all of about 30 seconds. Maybe I should just take a video, haha.

So last week I was able to finish up Life in a Medieval Castle. I only had one chapter left, so that doesn't count as a whole book. Actually I'm not sure I'm counting anything until the first of the year, but we'll see. It was good though. I found out that the whole egg on Easter thing dates back at least to 1300. Peasants used to give their lords eggs for...whatever reason. The twelve days of Christmas, unless I read something completely wrong, started with Christmas and went into the new year and were days the peasants didn't have to work their lords' fields. And I finally learned what Michaelmas was. That kept coming up in medieval stories and I had never even heard of it before last spring. Anyway, it was some festival that I don't know all the details of, but they killed a bunch of the livestock and had feasts so they wouldn't starve over the winter. Fascinating book anyway.

I also read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It was meh. I think I've liked some of the movie versions better, which surprised me. The writing was also not up to what I'd expected. I think I have high expectations for Dickens considering the first (and possibly only other, but I can't remember) thing I read by him was A Tale of Two Cities. It was certainly a quick easy read though, and maybe if you like getting into the holiday spirit you might enjoy it more. I tried. I'm not glaring at Christmas decorations or wanting to break speakers that are playing holiday music though, so that's an improvement for me. XD Guess we can't expect too much.

Finally read through Shakespeare's Henry V. I'd apparently read bits of it because I clearly recall being thoroughly annoyed at the scene with the princess and some woman that was entirely in French. I need to learn French... it's ticking me off. I keep coming across it, and this time I got just enough to know that I was missing the comedy parts of the play but not nearly enough to know what the heck was really going on. Grrrr. I want subtitles! Actually, I'm horrible about reading subtitles. If it's just a little bit I'll read them, but if an entire movie or show is in a language I don't know I just end up getting annoyed that I don't understand it and forget to pay attention to the subtitles most of the time. I found that out when I saw a few episodes of "The Four Gods" in Japanese after I'd watched it, oh, three times? in Korean. Yeah, missed a lot of that in the Korean version, haha. Anyway, good play. I'd like to see it one day. I'd like to see a lot of his plays, actually. The movie versions are entertaining, and I do enjoy the heck out of them, but I'd like to see them as plays at some point. Anywho, very accessible history. Maybe it's because I've been studying more on medieval history so I get more of it.... I really didn't like King Lear. It was boring. Henry V was amusing though, and of course, good speeches.

One I use every time I have to go into a class I hate:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
(...)For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

That one was from King Henry during the first siege in France at a city I can't remember, but they end up winning! I actually only ever use the first line, though I think it would certainly be epic to memorize that whole thing and use it someday... or maybe I'm just a dork who needs to find something else to amuse herself. :P

I rather enjoyed this one to, when King Henry was talking to a group of common soldiers in disguise:

BATES:
He hath not told his thought to the king?

KING HENRY V:
No; nor is it not meet he should. For, though I speak it to you, I think the king is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his sense have but human conditions: his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. Therefore when he sees reason of fears, as we do, he fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are: yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army.

This one's probably the most famous from the play, and I love it... not really sure why. Maybe I've just heard it enough to be fond of it. I had most of it memorized at one point. I'm also not sure why I went about doing that.. OH! I had that Shakespeare quotes book... that would be why... Anywho, this was right before the battle of Agincourt, a while after Henry returns to his nobles. The English were tired, sick, and outnumbered 5 to 1. One of the nobles commented that he wished they had more English soldiers to fight with.

No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honor
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on this vigil feast his neighbors,
And say 'Tomorrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
Be he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words, -
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, -
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd; -
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Anyway, it was nice to finally read the whole thing. I started Ceremony on the train because I couldn't make up my mind. I don't know that I'll finish during break... I may since Lindsey and I will be riding the train a bunch on our trip, but we'll see. If I'm going from last week, so... December 12th?ish, that makes two down out of fifty, so 48 left. Otherwise they don't count at all and I'll start on the new year. I don't know! We'll see!! :D

And with that reminder to myself, I need to book the hostel! Six days till Lindsey, seven until MONKEYS!!!!!

Grad school

2010-12-12T01:24:00.001+09:00

Yeah, I know, I should be writing my report.

One of the things I talked to mom about was grad school. Realistically, I need a master's degree and experience to be a professor. I think that's what I want to do with my life, at least as a base of operations type deal (see a few posts ago for amusement span - I'll be doing peripheral things to keep me entertained, but I think I'd like to be a professor). So... I like history and literature. Either one would be the same difficulty of getting into, both would be just as likely to get me a job afterward. So which do I start with? I want to study medieval history and Latin. I want to study Native American history and Ojibwe. I want to study literature and write a thesis on Le Morte D'Arthur. I said it as a joke, but as we were talking, I feel less joking about it, but I'm tempted to apply for all three and see which I get. I wonder if that would backfire with me getting all three....

I really do love studying history, and I could go on for hours about literature. They really go hand in hand, in my opinion. Well, for me they do anyway. I like knowing about the time when a book was written, like Le Morte D'Arthur or A Tale of Two Cities. I don't think you can really understand the books without knowing the history around them. If I study literature, I would apply to MSU. If I go for Native American studies, the same. If I go for medieval studies, Western. I wonder if I shouldn't start thinking about personal statements and thesis ideas for applying to all three and just tossing them out there. I wonder if that would work. I wonder if I did get accepted into only one if I'd then pitch a fit because I'd find out then that I really wanted one of the ones I didn't get. Life seems to work like that. Hmmm.

I think I'm thinking too much about things other than Rites of Conquest and how it fits into the study of Michigan history...

Adding to my list

2010-12-12T00:54:00.002+09:00

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Faith in Paper by Charles E. Cleland
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker
The Family that Couldn't Sleep by D.T. Max
This book looks really interesting too, but it might have to wait.

I'm sure there are others I've been wanting to read... ^__^

I applied to work at Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes next summer. Prayers would be appreciated. I really want the job. I get excited just thinking about it, but I'm a little scared I'll get my hopes up for nothing... it would be amazing though.

I talked to mom for two hours tonight. It was nice to chat and not have me upset about something. I've usually been lately. That gets frustrating, but not tonight. Hehe. I'm actually in a fairly obnoxiously hyper mood right now, which is moderately counter productive because I really should be writing my book report and I really just want to go run around the neighborhood or go to karaoke or something.

I need to plan my trip to see the monkeys! That's coming up in like three weeks... not even! Not today though... I need a draft before I go to bed (which is likely still three or so hours away when I realize the sun is coming up and I have to work on Monday).

I really want grapes. I'm a little tired of Fuji apples. They're good, but they're the only apples here that are remotely affordable, and they're still over 100 yen an apple most of the time. Or mikan... mikan would be good. Apparently I'm craving fruit at the moment, and I just realized I ate almost five hours ago.... everything makes sense now.

And I really need to write this report.

50 books

2010-12-06T19:08:00.000+09:00

I can't say what 2011 will bring, and to be honest, thinking of it scares me more than a little. Still, I want to make goals that I can work toward, and since I have a very short amusement span (different than attention span - I can pay attention if I choose to, I just usually get bored so I don't), I'm making a few different goals. So here's the biggest one, I think. At least, this one is very definitely going to take me the whole year, and since, as stated above, I have a short amusement span, and I also tend to choose long books, I may not get it done, but we'll see. I'm going to do my best at any rate.

So, fifty books in one year. Anybody up for joining me? I haven't compiled a complete list yet, and probably won't, again, see above amusement span, but here's what I have so far.

This month I'm finishing up some books I started. I'm less than 100 pages from finishing The Lord of the Rings, and I have a bit left on Life in a Medieval Castle. I want to read Dickens's A Christmas Carol since I never get into the holidays and I'm thinking of giving it a shot, but we'll see.

Books that are top on my reading list are:
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Henry V by William Shakespeare
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
1Q84 by Murakami Haruki
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Tentative, but I'm going to keep track of what I read here, though I probably won't do thorough reviews on all of them. I've read a few out of that list before, but it was so long ago that I hardly remember them. 1Q84 has four books out so far. I have book 1. I've been told that Murakami Haruki is a really good writer, but I'm still waiting to see how book 1 goes before getting 2-4.... an easier to use dictionary would also be helpful :P haha, but that's unlikely.

Any suggestions on what I should read? If you don't want to do fifty, but maybe you'd do 20 or 30, let me know! It's a challenge, no doubt, but I think it'd be fun.

On that note, I have a book report to write for class that I haven't even started. >.< Gah. Guess I should get on that, eh? It was a rather good book, actually. Rites of Conquest by Charles Cleland. I'll post my review up here once the class is over. Don't want the prof thinking I copied it off myself.

Life Update

2010-10-08T18:30:00.000+09:00

I can't believe it's October 8th already. I can't tell if time's going by slow or fast, but it's definitely going by... which is likely one of the dumber things I've said in my lifetime.

This last month and a half or so has been a very long exercise in making it through the day. Lindsey left at the end of August, just before work got started again, and things that sucked and made me want to scream then have just become unbearable. Going to bed when I know I have to go to work the next day makes me feel sick some nights, but the day comes, usually it sucks, I get home, then my time is mine for a little bit at least.

I'm registered to take the JLPT again, but I can't imagine I'll do any better. I was going to study. I bought two new books since I went through my old ones. I had a study plan in my head and the drive to do it... then I went to work and got mocked by my students for ten minutes for writing a correction on their papers. That's just one example of many, today two students laughed in my face while I responded a question. Mom said God's got a reason for having me go through this. I'm sure he is teaching me something, but I don't want to even think about what I need to know how to handle more mockery and bitchiness for. I have no drive to study Japanese, at all. I look at my books and want to throw them. I've tried to force myself a few times to study, and it just makes me mad or stresses me out. I'll be mad at myself once I'm away from here for sure, because I know for a fact I do love this language and I want to study more history and do more things with it. But for now... I kinda wish I didn't know it. I wish I couldn't understand people around me. I wish I didn't know what my students were saying, not even behind my back, right in front of me. I wish I couldn't hear the topic shift in train conversations to "foreigners" and "Oh, so-and-so speaks Japanese! Blah blah" and "Oh, this happened in English class and yadda-yadda" when people notice me or another non Asian face around. All those things that ticked me off and made me want to smack somebody before make me feel like I'm going to explode now. I really regret not packing up and leaving at the end of August... not that I had the money, but now my company is dangling a whole paycheck over my head to keep me here until January at least.

August was great. It was worth being here for, and I had so much fun and re-discovered a lot of things that this soul-sucking country hid from me. I'm still too unhappy about the day today to look back at them and not get angry at the present, but maybe I'll write about it soon.

I have a class starting next week, so that's something to look forward to anyway. I'm taking Michigan history online from MCC. No clue how I'm going to do research for any papers, but it'll at least keep me busy, and hopefully keep my mind on something other than life right now. Lindsey's taking Latin at her school, and she's sending me her notes and quizzes and stuff. It's fun. The verbs are pretty easy. I keep confusing some of the spellings with Spanish though. The nouns are... I understand them, but I haven't had the energy to sit and study them enough. I'm two weeks behind right now. I wanted to study some today, but I might just go for a walk. My head feels really funny. I should get some more paper... and food... and some cash since I have about $2 in my bag.

Sunrise and Tokyo Disneyland:Take 3

2010-07-27T03:14:00.002+09:00

It was so quiet outside that if it weren't for all the buildings, I might have forgotten I was in Tokyo. Sunrise is at 4AM here. I saw a few cars on the highway (past all those buildings), but they were far enough away that I couldn't hear them.

Last week we went to Disneyland. I got heat exhaustion, again, but I made it. We spent an hour at the Blue Bayou (attached to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride), which was reviving, and Japanese fans work wonders... so does probably a combined $20 in water.... :P

Lindsey posed under the walkway. All the people were making me too anxious to be the one posing, but be proud! I actually have pictures of myself this time! (apart from the usual me with the Brer Bear and Mickey statues)

Like this!

Oops... the woman behind me doesn't look so amused with my antics :P Not that I'll say anything for the general sense of humor in Tokyo, but we did run into some really cool people there, including a fellow VAMPS fan (see T-shirt) who worked at the place we ate lunch at and stopped me to tell me how awesome my T-shirt was and that she has one too. We were also chased down (literally, we asked the worker how to get tickets, found it impossible since I could barely stand at that point, and made a beeline for shade, and I'd just sat down when the woman caught up and started talking to us) by two women who gave us their tickets for the "One Man's Dream" show.

It was good! I saw it last year too, but I definitely enjoyed it both times. I needed the rest too, though it was still hot so right after this was when we went to the Blue Bayou for dinner.

Leave it to me to start munching on the dessert before remembering to take a picture of it :P It was good! We got the course, partly cause my brain was too fried to stand in the heat and debate spending the money, and partly cause it sounded well worth the $30. It started with soup, and oooh *makes fainting noises* that was to die for! I really wish I had any clue what was even in it, cause it was so good! We got 6 balls of bread each, warm and soft and mmmmmm so good. Then we got steak and veggies, which was good save the okra... I'll pass on okra. Really have never been a fan of that stuff, but there was only one piece. I even enjoyed the eggplant...mostly cause I got to eat cow, and I love cow. Mmmm It was delicious. Then dessert was pineapple..something (the gooey white ball with the applesauce looking stuff on it that's actually grapefruit jam) which was really gross (the pineapple thing and the grapefruit thing) until you mixed them, then they were great. The cookie would have been better first instead of last, since it was kinda dry, and the fruit was all frozen or canned, but it was still good! Tastiest meal of my life, and we got to listen to the ambiance from the ride too, and wave at the people going by. It was fun.

See? Picture of me! .... I like my hat.

And my usual picture with Brer Bear. This makes 3 now. I can't get a picture with the costumed person (they turn their backs on you if you're not Asian, so I didn't even try this time - tried last summer with Baloo for the last time), but I did manage to get some of the Song of the South characters doing a skit. I still like my bear statue though.

And the Mickey statue, also an obligatory picture spot that I believe I have three of now. Um... the pose is an inside joke we dragged out all day :P Every time we knew a picture on a ride was coming up we did that..it's from the concert Lindsey and I went to last weekend, the chorus consisting of four syllables, three of them in English and one in French complete with hand motions spelling out the word "dix." We thought it was ridiculous but managed to spend the whole day doing it.

Hehe...yeah.... we're morons.

These were gorgeous. I can't tell you how much I wanted to jump through the glass (and how tempted I was when I realized there was access from inside the store) and touch them. I love what they did with Snow White's, and Cinderella's was just amazing. The pictures don't do them justice. I wanted to get them in the daylight, but I was so out of it and needed to sit down that by the time I got back to take pictures it was sunset. I've wanted for years to design and make some functional versions of the Disney princess dresses...mostly Belle's, which I was choked they didn't have.

And the castle at sunset. They could make quite an attraction out of those castles if they actually filled them in with rooms and stairs, but since they don't have me on staff... hehe. Kidding.

It was a really fun day though. We spent 13 hours total at the park, from just after open to just before close. We rode Space Mountain five times, Pirates of the Caribbean twice (I think...that was the ride we went on for me to cool down, so I don't remember completely clearly..), Splash Mountain once, Thunder Mountain twice (once at night, which is so fun!), and Haunted Mansion twice. We also went on the Snow White ride, which is far creepier when you're actually paying attention to the ride, and the Rodger Rabbit one, oh, and Star Wars (got my C3P0 picture, but it's surprisingly worse than all the others..which are always bad).

This is the first C3P0 picture from when Lindsey and I visited from Osaka. The most recent is still on my phone.

We didn't bother with the parades, but I'm definitely happy we got to see the one show. We're planning on going again next July, if my plans hold and work out as I currently have them.

Oh! I nearly forgot! I got a picture on Dumbo too.

Still didn't manage to get on the ride. I'm very much not willing to wait 40 minutes for that one, though I'd like to go on it for memory's sake one time. :P

Cause I'm going down memory lane, here are the collection of pictures.

From 2007. Apparently I didn't get one from 2009... not surprising considering the group I was with. le sigh. I apparently didn't get one by the Mickey statue either, which, after looking at the ones by Brer Bear again, really doesn't surprise me. I like going to Disneyland with Lindsey. She acts as much like a crazy child as I do.

Brer Bear. He was painted at some point! and then painted back! huh. I also have bought head wear each time I went to Disneyland here. :P It's not in the 2009 picture, but I got a black cowboy hat with Mickey in a headdress on the side (my mildly offensive Mickey hat, I love it!). This years was that black ball cap. It says "A pirate's life for me" on the top. The bandanna is actually pirate Goofy ears complete with earrings.

Mickey statue. You can see the ears here.

We also got to try out the random pop corn flavors. Honey was probably my favorite, though the soy and butter was surprisingly good. I want to say we had another, but I really don't remember it.

I'm so excited for Cirque du Soleil and Disney Sea on Thursday!

Real-life post

2010-07-18T16:02:00.001+09:00

I haven't been writing much aside from book reviews for the past few months. Mostly I've been letting reading or crafts occupy my mind outside of work in an effort to stay sane. On the weekends I've been going to concerts. Now that work is out for the summer I really hope my stress level will go down to somewhere manageable. I haven't wanted to complain constantly, hence the lack of posts.

This summer has been great so far though! Since the beginning of this month I've been to a ton of concerts. Actually, they started on July 27th, I went to a play/concert/random thing with Lindsey. It had some members of bands that I really like in it, which is why we went. It was crack, and I laughed so hard I cried. On the 2nd I finally got to see Vamps, the band Hyde from L'arc~en~ciel (one of my favorite bands) is currently doing. That would have been more fun had I known to stay away from the first barrier. Hyde fans are insanely bitchy... to an extent I haven't encountered. I got my head shoved down and held, and my hair pulled twice, on top of three women trying to occupy the space I was in all at once. It was mostly a nightmare, but the concert, otherwise, was good. Next time I go, I don't care if my ticket is good enough to get me in the front, I am not going there. No way.

The next day we (Lindsey and I if I say we from now on) went to see Mix Speaker's,Inc., and it was a ton of fun! It was outside. It rained a bit, but not enough to really get us wet. I love their concerts. They lost the fun part of their audience though, and there aren't many of the rock crowd left, which really tones down the energy level. Still a blast though. On the Sunday we both took the JLPT... it was comprehensible, but I'm not sure I passed. I'm sure I didn't do as terrible as I did last time, but I get the feeling I'm going to fail by a marginal percent like I did the first time I took it... cause I understood it about the same level. I'll be surprised if I pass... pleased, but surprised.

Last weekend on Saturday we went to a Dacco lunch show. I love Dacco... they're crack. Their one singer, Yura-sama, was in the crack concert/play that we went to on the 27th. The show was mostly awkward. Yura-sama looked straight at me twice and stopped talking for a second both times, which I would have passed off as random coincidence had Lindsey not asked me later "Did you make eye contact with Yura-sama? Cause he wasn't looking at me, but he was definitely looking somewhere right next to me." Then he and Lida (the other singer) came off the stage and wandered around the tables shaking hands. Limp noodle would be how I would describe that man's handshake. Can't imagine how nervous my Grandpa-trained-handshake made him, haha, cause he didn't pull his hand back right away. They're fun though. I love seeing them. I always leave with a stupid grin on my face. We're seeing them again on August 1st, with Aya from Mix Speaker's,Inc. Then on Sunday we went to see Rice for Yuki's birthday (the singer). It was fantastic. I love them too. He has an amazing voice, and their music is really good.

Yesterday's concert was special in all ways that special is special. There's a band I've loved since I got into Japanese music. L'arc was the first, Malice Mizer was the second. Malice Mizer broke up before I got into them. One of their guitarists, Kozi, has some really good solo stuff, and I've seen him once at a Rice/Dacco event, but he was drunk and horrible, his fans were obnoxious, and I just got a really bad impression (really disappointing too, cause I really like his CDs). The other guitarist has a band called Moi Dix Mois... Yeah, my ten months, clever. Anyway, I liked some of their stuff for a bit, but it starts to sound the same, and their old CDs all used programed drums instead of a live drummer, and the perfection just bugged me, so I stopped listening to them. Their bassist, Yu~ki, who was my favorite in Malice Mizer, wrote one song for Kozi's solo project, and since then hasn't done anything as far as I can tell. I've tried to look him up a few times. Well, last night was a Moi Dix Mois concert with Kozi's band starting and Yu~ki as a special guest, so Lindsey and I pre-ordered tickets and went because I really wanted to see Yu~ki.

I had really low expectations of the concert from what I saw of Kozi's last performance, but actually, aside from his voice being terrible and needing the distortion he uses for his CDs, he did really good! His drummer reminds me of Animal from the Muppets. I love him! Haha. Nut-job. He was so fun to watch. The bassist was really good, and the guitarist made me giggle. Kozi... was Kozi, but at least he didn't drop his guitar this time. Moi Dix Mois was way better than I expected. They have a new vocalist, and a human on drums. The vocalist was really good; complete 80s hair band scream and song introductions, really good headbang, good death-voice, and with all of that, he still sang really really well. The one guitarist made me think of Zuko from the Avatar cartoon..... Mana was... Mana. Really boring to watch, but it's amusing to see that he hasn't changed at all from the concert videos I've seen of Malice Mizer. I ended up having to put my sunglasses on because of the white lights though, and even then I still had to close my eyes and look down for about half of their set.

THEN Yu~ki, Mana, and Kozi all came out with their old instruments and played a really random song that was actually quite bad, but they came out to one of the Malice Mizer instrumentals and made me and everyone around me act like completely idiotic fangirls and boys and scream and jump and repeatedly say "No way!!!" After the first random song, they played "Beast of Blood." I love that song, and half of me doesn't even believe that I actually saw it live and got to sing with them and headbang and shout and it was just amazing! There were a few cameras going, so I'm hoping they make the concert into a DVD.... at least that last part, which was only about 10 minutes, but still! It never even entered my mind that they would perform one of their old songs, but they did! I'm still giddy when I think about it. It was so amazing. Such a great end to an awful week.

Tomorrow we're going to Disneyland, despite the 34C weather prediction... *death* Then Wednesday we're seeing Dir en grey, which will be fun and amazing as well, though I'll probably end up sore and bruised. Next week we're going to see Cirque du Soleil and then spend the evening at Disney Sea. At some point we plan to climb Mt. Fuji and head to Kyoto for two days. We're seeing Dacco again in August, as I said, and then the Romeo (who's singer was also in the crack play/concert last month). And all in all, I'm really looking forward to this summer! I'm not looking forward to Lindsey leaving at the end of it all, but at least it'll be fun while she's here. I got tickets to see Metallica on my birthday so I won't be bored and lonely then. School starts in September, so even if it's not as fun as I want it to be (it's poetry....), it'll at least keep me busy. My goal for the fall is to save as much money as I can, which, in spite of going to concerts at least once a month, should be easier since I have pretty much nobody to hang out with without Lindsey here, so I won't go out nearly as much.

So that's a me update. The cats are good. I have to renew my apartment contract, which is unfortunate and expensive, but such is life. I go back to work August 25th.... I can't think of much else. I think for the rest of today, at least until the sun goes down and I can venture out to go get some cat food and other necessities, I'm going to go up into my loft and engage in some gratuitous video game violence and further rid myself of stress by beating the crap out of zombies and various other undead. I was reading Emma, but that got boring.

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

2010-07-18T15:31:00.001+09:00

I really don't know what to say about Les Mis.... It's such a famous book, and it touches on so many important things, but it was so irritating to read. I want to love it, because the story, when there was story, was amazing, and I can see why it's so famous. But the whole thing, 1200 pages, was just difficult to read. I stopped reading it a few times. There were at least 300 pages that could have just been cut right out. I understand why there were included, but they were preachy, rambling, and not really all that relevant to the story.

Victor Hugo was a political activist during the 1800s in France, and everything he wrote in Les Mis makes perfect sense as coming from him. I would say that all of it is perfectly valuable and worth reading, but I would have preferred to read it in a pamphlet or an appendix or something that didn't completely stop the story for a hundred or so pages at a time. I suppose, for the books original audience, it might have been less disruptive since the book was published in separate volumes. Still, I'm not a fan of abridged books, at all, but this is one book I would rather read abridged, provided it was done carefully.

His writing style is a little jumpy. He goes from one subject to another, to a side story, to a flashback, really quickly, and said side story or flashback, or back story or rant will last 50 pages or more. I enjoyed the side stories. I could have done without the rants. The beginning is all the story of a bishop who only has contact with the main character for a night, but it's such a good back story, and since the bishop has such a profound impact on Jean Valjean (main character), it's good to know and really adds to the story. The description of the convents was excellent, as well as the bit on the lifestyle of the nuns and how the students there lived, but the rant about the evils of such suppression and seclusion, while being perfectly relevant and understandable, were incredibly disruptive, too long, and over-kill. I think the reader could have come to the same seclusion as Hugo wrote without being told it, or if it was really necessary to state, seriously, footnotes and appendices.

I want to watch the movie. I love the story, but it's so hard to pull the story out of that 1200 pages, because the actual main story was probably around 600 or so. I'd summarize it, but I don't think I could. I want to read it again and I don't. I love the story but I hate the book. There were amazing parts, I nearly cried on the train reading some parts, but then there were whole weeks worth of reading that I just dreaded trudging through. I learned all about Waterloo. I know exactly what Hugo thought of King Louis Philippe. I know all about life in a convent, and the history of more orders of nuns than I can remember. I know what he thought of the Catholic church, and I know where he stood with his own faith. It's all interesting information, fascinating really, but I would have rather read it either before or after the story. I would say certain points added to the story, but it took me over a month to read the thing because it made me just not want to read at all. If I want to read an essay or a rant, I'll read an essay or a rant. When I want to read a story, just let me read the story!

Anyway, I felt bad for Javert at the end. He was the police inspector who was on the hunt for Valjean the whole time. He was diligent, loyal, and faithful to what he believed only to find out that what he believed wasn't the whole picture and have his world shaken to the point of breaking. I felt bad for Valjean, but he was so peaceful about what happened in the end that it was okay. He was okay, therefore I was okay. Javert just broke. Marius is an idiot, which amused me when I read the biography on Victor Hugo at the end and realized that Marius's character is pretty much Hugo himself. Cosette... I can't quite blame Cosette for being a twit because Valjean really didn't raise her to be concerned with anything. She was still irritating though.

It's a very pointed piece of literature, but it doesn't make any attempt to present itself otherwise, and it's points get across very clearly. Take away the rants, and I would say it was well presented. The story of it alone, the last chunk that was rant-free, left me with such a strong frustration at social injustices and just the aloofness and obliviousness of people who live in comfort that I actually feel like I look at certain aspects of life quite a bit differently now. It would be nice to say we've solved all of those injustices, unfair penal systems, child abuse, moral superiority, unfair wages, prostitution, cruelty toward women and children, but we really haven't. For sure, things are a lot better in certain parts of the world, let's call it North America since I really only know by news and hearsay about Europe, and I can't say truthfully that Japan has solved any of those injustices what-so-ever. There are still homeless who are homeless because they fell through society's safety nets. There are still children who are left in abusive homes, or taken from one bad place and put in another by the system meant to protect them. The elderly with no family are not left to die in poverty and misery any more, but I won't ever forget how depressing and hollow the nursing home felt when I'd visit my Nana. Minimum wage, even at 40 hours a week, still won't feed a family or even support an individual. All those problems are still there.

Japan... Japan is a social nightmare that one day I'd like to study. One day, when it doesn't effect my daily life, when I don't have to go outside and see the homeless men sleeping in their winter coats when it's 35C under a cardboard box on my way to the station, when I don't have to watch the woman playing with her jewel studded cell phone and ignoring her two young children trying to get her attention on the train, when I don't have to be the only one in my row willing to get up and give my seat to an old person for a few stops, see the boyfriend flop himself down on the seat while the girl has to stand in heels and cater to him... pretty much when all of the surface symptoms of what is messed up about this society aren't in my face and ticking me off, I'd like to look at them and ask the question "Why?" Ask why without feeling the desire to change it, because I can't, and that's what upsets me the most. This part of Asia (I've been told by my college friend working in Korea that Korea is pretty much the same) would be an interesting social study.

John Keats

2010-07-18T14:56:00.000+09:00

I think my surprising and new-found enjoyment of a very limited amount of poetry ends past Keats on my reading list. (I started into Whitman and remembered why I find it all incomprehensible and annoying.) Keats is a bit like Poe in that it's just messed up! Well, let me edit that a bit. I've only read two of his poems, Lamia and Isabella... but they were both incredibly messed up. They're both narrative poems, which, I'm finding, is pretty much the only way to keep me interested in a poem. The history of poetic forms class I'm going to be taking in the fall is going to be fun.... in the way that fun isn't fun at all. Necessary evil though... at least I think it is.

Lamia
This poem seems a bit less twisted after I read about the actual myth of Lamia, but I still find it incredibly random. Here's the text from Project Gutenberg. It starts off with a bit about Hermes looking for a nymph and finding Lamia, who is apparently a child-eating demon, in the form of a serpent. He sets her free, and a boy from Corinth, Lycius, falls in love with her. They hide what I'm pretty sure was a giant house that Lamia made out of magic, cause I got the feeling it hadn't been there before she arrived. She doesn't want to meet Lycius's master and avoids meeting anybody until their wedding. At the feast, Lycius's master exposes her and Lycius dies of surprise? grief? I just thought it was twisted with the connection between Lycius and the man who exposed Lamia, at their wedding, and ended up killing him. It's far less random knowing the myth that inspired it, but I didn't look that up till afterward.

Isabella
Whatever inspired Isabella, I still put it up there with some of the best of Poe's for twisted, gross, and random. Isabella is a rich woman who is supposed to be married off to someone else rich, but she falls in love with one of her brothers' workers. Her brothers finds out and kills the worker, burying him in a grove. Lorenzo's ghost comes to Isabella and guides her to where his body is. She digs up his head and takes it back with her. She puts it in a basil pot and obsesses and mourns over the pot, and the plant grows really well. Her brothers steal the pot, dig up Lorenzo's head, and recognize him. They leave, I suppose in fear of their crime being discovered, and Isabella asks incessantly for her basil pot from inanimate objects. She then dies. Here's the text. It's pretty short.

I don't know what I'd consider those poems, but romantic doesn't really describe it. I guess I don't understand what people consider romantic. I enjoy them, but I really really don't see "romantic" as a good descriptor.

I tried to read Endymion, which is another of his famous poems, but it's really long, and it's really sing-songy. The rhymes are horrible, and the meter is just annoying... and overall it's just distracting. Maybe it gets better as it goes, but after two pages I couldn't stand to read it any more. I'll get to it if I have to at some point, but it's not something I'd read for pleasure.

A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen

2010-06-04T12:35:00.001+09:00

I have no idea when I read this play before, but I know I did... probably in my general lit class in college. It's a good play, and very short. The only difficult part is that it deals with some major societal problems.

Nora is a housewife, presumably in the late 1800s, and she allows her husband, Torvald, to perceive her as a complete twit. In fact, she encourages it. She's not though, she's simply ignorant which is a fault of her father and her husband for over-sheltering her and only teaching her what they believed she needed to know. In order to save her husband's life, years ago, she took a loan, not knowing the consequences of her signature and her illegal actions regarding the note. She's been working secretly to pay it back, but the man whom she took the loan from has reared up and is using her actions and Torvald's ignorance of this situation as blackmail in an attempt to keep his job and even get promoted. The actions of the play revolve around that.

I can imagine what kind of an outcry that caused in 1879 when it was published. It seems to be an ideal marriage, except it falls apart when it's shaken at all. I'm fully willing to put the blame for that on Torvald. Throughout the whole play, I was just repulsed by him. He's arrogant, all-knowing (or so he thinks), demeaning, controlling, and a coward to top it all. Torvald knew Nora's dance better than she did, he would teach her. He would teach her to do this and that. He told, and thus she did. He claimed ownership of her and yet failed to protect her. He left her ignorant and failed to put himself in there to fill in the gap. Of course, she had no real reason to think this odd or assert that she knew anything at all. It was a fun play for both of them and their children, but at the same time, and it brings up this question, how can one love in a relationship like that, or even be truly happy?

It's a good read for a lot of reasons. It's thought provoking more than anything. I'd like to see it performed once. Not all of the issues it brings up are relevant to the general North American culture, perhaps, but then again, maybe they still are. They certainly are in Japan. From what I've been told, "American women don't know how lucky they are." (This was from a Russian-born American woman I met last year.) You could easily say the play was feminist in nature, but I think more than that, it's shedding light on a problem with society in general, not just in familial relationships. I would assert, though, that women aren't necessarily the only ones kept ignorant and then abandoned by the people who kept them in the dark when a crisis arises. That seems to be an old form of control, someone in power keeps his or her power by keeping the ones underneath from knowing any different. Lots of food for thought in there, but I:m sure nobody wants to read me ramble about it any more. I actually read this a good while ago. I've been reading Les Miserables... not that you can tell at all.... I spent a whole day thinking about it after I was done though. I couldn't start my next book until I'd sorted my thoughts out on A Doll's House first.

Persuasion - Jane Austin

2010-05-14T11:06:00.002+09:00

After Le Morte D'Arthur, I needed something brainless and happy. I enjoy Jane Austin, but I really don't care to sit an analyze her work. I read it for fun. So far I've read of hers Pride and Prejudice, Northenger Abby, and this. I still hold Northenger Abby as my favorite. There's really nothing like a book mocking your own genre. :P

Anyway, Persuasion is the story of Anne Elliot, daughter of Sir Walter Elliot. Anne fell in love with Captain Wentworth when she was 19, but because of her position in society, which her family and friends saw as being higher than it actually seemed, her mentor and father both opposed their marriage. So she broke it off, and Wentworth went away and sulked. Fast forward 7 years, and her father is massively in debt because of the way he and her sister, Elizabeth, run the household. To avoid loosing the land, they lease it out to an Admiral and move to Bath to attempt to live more within what they can afford. Mary, her other sister, is married, has kids, and lives in a town about 3 miles away. Anne goes to live with Mary where, unlike at home, she actually has something of a place in the social group. Her dad ignores her mostly, and Elizabeth doesn't seem to even like her. Mary complains about everything under the sun, but her husband's family is welcoming of Anne. Side note - Mary's husband first proposed to Anne and was rejected.

While she's at Mary's place, she runs into Captain Wentworth who now has money but seems to be more interested in Anne's sisters-in-law. On a trip to Lyme, Louisa, whom he seems to favor the most, is downright stupid and jumps off a ledge to have him catch her. Well, he drops her on accident and she gets a concussion. Just prior to this, Anne's cousin, Mr. Elliot, passes their party and shows interest, and Cpt. Wentworth begins to show jealousy. Anne eventually moves to where her family is in Bath, and Mr. Elliot continues his interest in her and by the time Cpt. Wentworth comes to Bath has everyone gossiping that they're getting married.

So, I'm pretty sure almost all of this genre of books ends happily... or as happily as they can. Jane Austin is a bit lighter than any of the Brontes that I've read. She pokes fun at a lot of the culture and ideals of the upper class, quite pointedly in Persuasion, but also in Northenger Abby. It's been too long since I've read Pride and Prejudice to remember more than it being one of those love stories that succeeds in leaving you happy by the end.

I think it's a comment on how bad my day was on Wednesday when I was finishing up Persuasion that a letter from Cpt. Wentworth to Anne had me crying on the train. >.> *sigh* Seriously, nothing tear-worthy in Jane Austin. Anyway, it was a good book. It's not an overly interesting or unpredictable story, but Austin's jabs at the society keep it amusing even if you've read far too many of that type of book for your sanity.... not that I have or anything.... not me. It's a nice easy read too. I highly recommend Jane Austin's work for anybody who wants to read "classic" literature that's not incredibly dry or difficult to trudge through. No trudging involved in her stuff. I still have quite a few of hers on my list, which, speaking of, I doubt anybody wants a copy, but if you do, let me know and I'll send it to you. There's almost 200 author entries on it.... not intimidating at all... >.> <.< Lindsey and I actually added a lot to it. There was no Austin, Steinbeck, H.G. Wells, or any of the anti-utopia novels! We added a few non strictly "literature" favorites on there too.

Le Morte D'Arthur Volume I - Sir Thomas Malory

2010-05-09T13:34:00.001+09:00

I have to split this up, because after over two weeks of reading I'm having dreams of me having to go to therapy because of reoccurring dreams of being stuck in armor. It's just under 600 pages, and I've finally made it past 300, actually to 310, but I just can't do it anymore. So I'm going to cut it in half, since it's already split into volumes I and II.

The story, especially near the beginning about Arthur, is pretty much the story I'd say most Americans know from Disney's The Sword in the Stone. Merlin disguises Uther to fool Arthur's mother into thinking he's her recently dead husband and thus Arthur is conceived. They marry a few days later, and when Arthur is born he is sent in secret to live with Sir Ector. After Uther dies comes the story of the sword in the stone, the knight who can pull the sword is the rightful king of England. Years later, at a tournament, Arthur forgot Sir Kay's (Sir Ector's son) sword and couldn't get into the house in time so seeing the sword in the stone, he runs up, pulls it out, and gives it to Sir Kay to fight with. Sir Ector recognizes the sword and the knights and barons repeatedly make Arthur pull it out, trying themselves over and over until Merlin and those on Arthur's side get sick of it and the barons try to kill him. Long story short, they fight, Arthur kicks their butts, sleeps with his sister, has a kid by the name of Mordred, and establishes himself as king. Somewhere along the way he gets the Round Table from another king and then we get into the stories of the different knights.

Sir Gawaine begins his career as a knight by refusing mercy to another knight who surrendered and in the process of trying to cut his head off cuts the head off of his lady. He is made to swear an oath to be especially gentle towards ladies to make up for that, and also to never deny mercy to a knight who surrenders. He's not very good at this.

Sir Launcelot loves Queen Guenevere, but despite the fact that literally everyone knows this, Arthur manages to not find out. He's the perfect knight, strong, practically unbeatable, loyal to his king and to his love, courteous, and, yeah, the perfect knight. He's also pretty predictable and flat throughout Volume I (though this changes a bit in the beginning of Volume II). He goes between hating Sir Tristram and loving him after Sir Tristram saves his life. He's interesting in his own way, but too perfect (though I find it odd that the ideal knight is involved in a love affair with his king's wife and remains perfect).

Sir Kay is a moron and a jerk. Arthur sees him as a brother, considering they were raised as such, and so he's one of the knights of the Round Table, but he's really really stupid. He makes fun of everyone, even though he's really not a strong fighter... at all. And he really doesn't learn any better from finding his boot stuck way down his throat.

Sir Gareth is pretty nifty. He's Sir Gawaine's brother (half-brother to Sir Mordred). King Lot of Orkney, I believe, is their father (but it's kinda hard to keep those things straight). He came to Arthur's court leaning on two servants and unarmed and asked for two gifts. The first gift was that he be allowed to remain at the court for a year with food and drink. The second one he would ask at the end of the year. Arthur granted it, and Sir Kay made fun of him and called him Beaumains (fair hands). Beaumains went to work in the kitchen under Sir Kay's orders, and after a year a damsel came asking for a knight to go with her to rescue her lady who was trapped in a tower. Beaumains asked for his second gift, to be knighted and take the quest. He left the court armed with his own armor and confused the heck out of everyone. Sir Gawaine and Sir Launcelot were the only two who didn't make fun of him. The damsel raged on him the whole trip until he proved himself. After several adventures, he finally marries the lady who was trapped in the tower. (Some of the adventures included a conjured knight that the first damsel raised to attack him and prevent him from sleeping with her sister, the lady in the tower, before their wedding night.) Sir Gawaine finally finds out who Beaumains is (still confused how he didn't recognize him, but that's a pretty continuous theme in this story), but Sir Gareth prefers Sir Launcelot's company to Sir Gawaine's because his brother isn't a good knight.

Sir Tristram (Tristan) isn't part of Arthur's court in Volume I, but he has his own story in Le Morte D'Arthur. He's the nephew of King Mark of Cornwell. He started his career as a knight by saving Cornwell, but his uncle hates him. Tristram and Isold are another Launcelot and Guenevere, but with flaws. Tristram royally messes up sometimes, and gets caught doing it. Isold is married to King Mark (who married her to spite Tristram who loved her), but loves Tristram. In one of the more entertaining bits of Le Morte D'Arthur, Tristram is followed and exposed by one of King Mark's knights while lying with Isold. He then proceeds to kill something like ten knights butt naked and make his escape. After several years he marries someone else, though he never sleeps with her, and makes Launcelot his enemy. He makes it back to Tintagel (King Mark's castle) he finds letters between Isold and one of his knights and goes crazy for the hurt. He spends six months, again butt naked, in the forest before he's found by King Mark (who doesn't recognize him), healed, and exposed by a hound of Isold's and therefore banished from Cornwell. He goes on to have more adventures and eventually ends up a prisoner of Morgan le Fay who makes him carry a shield during a tournament of Arthur's. The shield is a dig at Arthur, Guenevere, and Launcelot.

Arthur himself is pretty boring, and when he does things, they're mostly unbelievable, but I suppose that's the romance around him. After securing his kingdom, he gets allies in France and eventually makes his way to Rome and controls Europe. He's a pretty flat character though, and not overly bright.

A few things I noticed; there is a lot of romance about the knights in this book. They fight with honor, even at the cost of their lives. Malory has them removing their opponents helmets when fighting on foot before they kill them, which as far as I've researched might be physically possible, but it would in no way be easy or practical. There are opposing ideals regarding love and loyalty, and it seems like when it's "true love" there are double standards.

I don't understand courtly love. I think at this point I'm not going to figure it out by reading about it. I think I need someone to explain it to me. I don't get it. It seems too contrary to itself.

I nearly forgot Merlin. Merlin gets killed by Nimue fairly early on. He's also not a wizard, he's more of a prophet, and apparently a pervy old man, which is why Nimue killed him.

I think if I was doing research on Arthurian legends, which would be interesting, this might be easier to handle. I think breaking it up into books or chapters might also make it easier. It's not a read-all-the-way-through book by any means. I haven't been daunted by a book in years, heck, I made it through Paradise Lost without getting bored until the end. I'm actually excited to read the poet that's next on my list, and I hate poetry. I was going to try to read this all the way through, but that's not going to happen. It's interesting because it is in Middle English, and the edition I have preserves that. It has modern spellings, which makes it readable for me, but the language as it was is preserved. Caxton, the editor of the oldest copy known, did a horrible job. Chapter breaks are in strange places, chapter titles are mini-reviews, and it's just poorly put together. As a book, if we stuck it in as fiction, it stinks. As a historical text, it's interesting enough. I'd need good incentive to go back and study it though.

Ophelia and the nightmare vacation

2010-05-07T11:10:00.002+09:00

That vet I took Ophelia too... I'm still mad at her. I need to go in and get my cats' records and demand my $60 back. I took Ophelia to a different vet the next day, because she spent all of Saturday puking up spit despite the shots and immediately puked up the medicine I gave her Sunday. The new vet is actually an animal hospital. It's huge and immediately gave me the feeling of a North American animal clinic. Divided waiting rooms, completely separate observation rooms, a few dozen staff. The doctor who saw Ophelia spent a good five minutes feeling her stomach and took X-rays when she felt something not right. Why didn't the first vet do more than poke gently around for a few seconds? Why, when I told her there was a possibility that she had gotten into roach poison, did she not do a blood test? This vet did. Ophelia got poked, X-rayed, ultra-sounded, and stuck with an IV which she had to keep in till the next evening. I brought her home Monday, and she's been fine. Something was stuck in her intestines, probably a hair ball. I have to take her in for a check-up tonight, and I'm going to ask about hair ball remedies here to avoid this in the future. I'm thinking tomorrow or Sunday I'm going to the old vet and getting those charts.

It's hard not to be furious, even a week later when Ophelia is okay. Had I followed what that vet said, I don't even want to think what might have happened. At best, Ophelia would have taken longer to recover, which means going longer without food. An injection or two of vitamins isn't exactly enough, or I would have been able to take Ophelia home overnight without an IV in her paw. My biggest problem in talking to the old vet is language. I don't know the words I need very well, and I'm mad, which means when I'm trying not to scream at somebody and talk politely, I have trouble putting words together in any language.

Angie came and visited for a few days. That was nice. Tokyo was crazy crowded though. We went to a random free concert... they were surprisingly good! I wanted to stay for the whole thing, but Lindsey and I both had to work in the morning. We may look for another of their concerts sometime. They were fun. Best part was that it was $5 for the drink ticket and free admission. I like those. :P

And I'm back at work and dreading two of my next three classes. I'm having a lot of trouble with one of my co-teachers, and one is just a flake who doesn't know English very well, so she's a pain to deal with. The one I'm having trouble with though is being belligerent and disruptive. If she does it again today I'm writing it down before I get on the train and calling my company. I'm not dealing with that all year. I was near tears last week and left work fuming and looking for jobs in New York. Yeah... really not looking forward to that class. I've worked with this teacher before, and she was one of my favorites last year. I feel like she's mad at me for some reason and taking it out by being obnoxious in my class, but I have no idea what she could possibly be mad at me about. Other people I've talked to have suggested personal problems in her life, but I don't care what's going on. Personal problems can distract you, but they're no reason to be a complete bitch to your coworker in front of 40 students and affect the environment of the whole class, literally bringing it to a stop. No excuse. (>.<) At least the other school is going really well. This one class is enough to make me want a new job though... which is bad, cause I put up with a lot last year and managed. I think partly because my co-teacher for my problem classes worked with me to try to make the classes better, and this time it's the co-teacher disrupting the class. I want her out of it, but by law she has to be there since I'm not a licenced teacher. ~~Then shut up, sit in the back, and let me lead the class on my own.~~

*sigh* Here's hoping for the best today. ~~Maybe she's out sick.~~

Concert tomorrow. I'm excited about that. I saw Dacco on Christmas Eve last. They're a fun band.... they suck, but they're hilarious and at least (I think) they know they suck. Yura sama's so happy on stage. It's easy to ignore his terrible singing and actually surprisingly hard to stand straight and not fall over laughing. I'm pretty sure that's the last concert I have tickets to until July. June's gonna suck! >.> Need to find something to go see. My friend's band has a concert tonight, but I don't already have a ticket, and it's not happening even if he gave me a free one.... not that he even told me about the concert. He just wants me to teach his vocalist English pronunciation and be his "American friend." ... I'm not bitter at all today! Haha.

Okay, I'm off to relax before my next class. I'll have lunch to destress between bad teachers at least. XP And off topic, but I'm still barely half way through Le Morte D'Arthur...and I still can't pronounce the "thur" part. That book takes forever to read! I feel like I'm going and going and I should be 100 pages in and I'm like 15. (>.<\) I can only take so much smiting.... no, actually, that's not true, and the fact that Sir Tristram keeps finding himself naked and going crazy is quite funny, but I'm a bit tired of Sir So-and-So smiting Sir Who's-a-What's-It, taking his horse, and giving it to Sir Falls-a-Lot. And the French names are really no more clever than those, which, aside from being annoying cause I can't pronounce them and they're dumb, makes it really hard to remember who's who. I did like the part about Sir Tristram in prison today though, the one line:

For all the while a prisoner may have his health of body he may endure under the mercy of God and in hope of good deliverance; but when sickness toucheth a prisoner's body, then may a prisoner say all wealth is him bereft, and then he hath cause to wail and to weep.

That was probably the first line in the whole 260 pages I've gotten through so far that really had feeling behind it... and it was really randomly placed, because after that we went back in time to before Sir Tristram was sick at all, and he really wasn't sick and in prison for very long before the guy holding him let him go. It felt like a tangent where it was. The introduction to my edition made mention of this line (I think it was this one anyway, one about one of the knights in prison was all they said) and hypothesized that Sir Thomas Mallory (the author) might have been a prisoner at one point in his life or while he was writing Le Morte D'Arthur. I can see where they got that idea, aside from having two records of a Thomas Mallory... one of them being a knight who was imprisoned. XP

Okay, seriously going away now. 5 minute countdown has begun.

On Pets

2010-05-01T13:10:00.000+09:00

Over the last few weeks I've spent almost $200 at the vet between the two cats. Soushi's better, thankfully. Still never managed to get a pee sample... o.O But he's acting normal, so I'm going to assume he's fine for now. Ophelia, on the other hand, has thrown up 6 times in the last 24 hours, so she got to take a trip to the vet today. She was such a good girl though. She just laid on the table against me and let the vet look at her and give her shots. Kinda makes me thinks she's really not feeling good. No food for her until tomorrow morning, though what she puked up I'm not sure because last night she was vomiting water. I hope she's okay.

I didn't get up that long ago, but with yesterday as sucky as it was, and with how today started, I kinda just want to go back to sleep. I think I'll go get a coke instead. It's hot out. I need to figure out what to do with my hair that doesn't hurt my head. Ponytails are a no-go again. It's too long. Owwwwww. Studying didn't happen yesterday. I don't know that it'll happen today. We'll see after I get some caffeine.

I had a good breakfast/lunch though. I cooked ground pork-beef with asparagus and carrots in yakiniku sauce. It was quite tasty. The insides of my eyes are still white though. Slightly more pink, but still mostly white. Might have something to do with eating mostly pasta and veggies all the time.... cooking is such a pain.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - The Pearl Poet

2010-04-28T11:07:00.000+09:00

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is apparently an alliterative romance.... I have no clue what that is (though I imagine I will after the poetry class in the fall). It's a very long poem about an adventure of one of King Arthur's knights of the Round Table. It was written sometime in the late 14th century, which is about the time Chaucer was writing Canterbury Tales. The funny thing about this, and perhaps it's the dialect of Middle English it was written in, is that I can get some sense out of Canterbury Tales without looking at the translation. For Sir Gawain, I maybe understood under 20%. I found myself a few times reading the translation and accidentally going a few lines into the original text (there were no breaks or markers between them) and only realizing when I came across a word I didn't know. I suppose that's ironic in a way, because I really didn't like the translation.

I'm perhaps not the best person to critique translations in general (though I know how hard they can be), and especially translations of poetry, but it really lacked the sound of the language. I'm going to assume it had the meaning, though from the lines I looked at to compare, some of the words I thought could have been left in their older forms, since they weren't that different, if only to preserve some of the original feel and sound. The translation, done by W.S. Merwin, felt empty and a little vague to me. A lot of the reviews I read (and one of the reasons I chose that version) were full of compliments and awe, but it really felt like it was missing something that, when I looked at the Middle English text, should have been there. There are several other editions, one by Tolkien which I'd love to get my hands on if only for the collector in me, and I want at some point to go through and read the whole thing in Middle English. The story seemed to be amazing, but the translation just didn't bring it up to the level I expected, or even close to the other medieval poems and stories I've read.

The story is about Sir Gawain, obviously, and a green knight. During a feast at Christmas (New Year's Eve, actually), a huge knight, literally solid green from head to foot, skin, hair, and all, bursts in. His outfit and saddle are elaborately embroidered, and even aside from being all green, he's a stunning knight. He offers a challenge to the court, he will give his axe for a knight who will give him a blow. He won't move or fight the blow, and in return, after a year and a day the knight must find him and he will return the blow. Everyone thinks it's pretty ludicrous, but they also seem a little intimidated by the knight, and Arthur finally moves to accept the challenge. In his place, Gawain (whom I gather from Le Morte D'Arthur to be Arthur's nephew, but I don't remember what they said he was in this story) takes the challenge and cuts the green knight's head off. The green knight picks his head up, reminds Gawain to find him by New Year's day the next year to receive his blow, and rides out of the court.

The next year as winter is closing in, Sir Gawain heads off to find the Green Knight. He travels all over Wales, and as Christmas is coming closer he prays for a place to hear mass and some word of the Green Chapel where he will apparently find the Green Knight. Not long after, he comes to a castle, and he stays for Christmas and after the feast is about to depart when he is told by the castle's lord that the Green Chapel is less than a day's ride away and he will send a knight to show him the way on New Year's day. In the meantime the two make a pact. Gawain will stay in bed and rest, hear mass when he wants to, and hold the company of the ladies of the castle (one is the lord's wife, the other an old woman, and I imagine their companions). The lord of the castle will go out and hunt and give Gawain whatever he wins. In return Gawain will give the lord whatever gifts he receives or wins. Every day the lord's wife comes to Gawain in the morning and tries to sleep with him. She convinces him to give her a few kisses, which he returns to the lord when he comes back at night and they exchange their winnings. Finally, on the last morning, she convinces him to take a green sash that will protect its wearer from death and to not tell her husband of the gift.

When New Year's day comes, Gawain leaves the castle, and the knight who is guiding him tries to convince him to leave his quest, since it can only end in death. Gawain goes on without the knight to the Green Chapel where he finds the Green Knight. When the Green Knight moves to strike his blow, Gawain sees the blade and unconsciously flinches. He's chided by the knight, since the Green Knight didn't flinch or move when Gawain struck him. The third time the Green Knight slices Gawain's neck, but not deeply. After that, Gawain gets fed up, saying he's already received the one blow he promised and that now they could fight evenly. It turns out that the Green Knight was the lord of the castle, put up to his antics as the Green Knight by Morgan le Fay, the old woman in his castle, to test King Arthur's knights. Gawain was wounded because the knight recognized the green sash and explained that he put his wife up to her antics to test Gawain, and had he slept with her or lied to him any more than he did, he would have died.

I have a few reflections on the poem I want to talk about. This is the first Arthurian text that I've read written in the middle ages. It wasn't at all what I expected. It was written likely more than a century after Song of Roland, which had priests and bishops and holy relics. Their role in Song of Roland was natural to me. That was practically what the poem was about. So much of the Arthurian stories around in modern times, and by this I refer to anything on TV, the recent Merlin done by the BBC, the Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell, The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, portray Arthur or Uther, his father, as against the church. If he's not directly against the church, as in Disney's The Sword in the Stone, he's certainly not it's champion. Merlin is usually represented as a Druid and part of the Old Religion or magic from Avalon or the earth. Somewhere along the way the story changed, possibly because there's more romance in the idea of magic struggling to survive (at least I personally think so). At any rate, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as Le Morte D'Arthur, Arthur and his knights are Catholic and very devout. Launcelot du Lac speaks in Le Morte D'Arthur about why he will not take a mistress or sleep with any of the women who want him (and there are plenty) as being because doing so is a sin and will turn God against him, and a knight against God doesn't last long in battle. Sir Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight hears his mass every morning when he's somewhere with a priest, and when the lord of the castle's wife comes to his room to tempt him, he prays that God would give him the strength to resist her.

All things considered, it shouldn't have surprised me. Any of the stories written at the time would have been written for those who could read, which meant the nobility, and the nobility were strongly connected to the Catholic church. Clearly the hero they created in Arthur for the knights and nobles of the court would be as much like them or their ideals as they could make him. I really didn't see it coming though. I'll definitely have more to say on that once I'm finished with Le Morte D'Arthur.

The blend of magic and Christianity seems strange in a way. Morgan le Fay can change a man and have him survive getting his head cut off, and she lives in a castle that has its own chapel and priest. That seems to be the way these stories work though. Magic isn't necessarily a bad thing, nor is it a good thing. It isn't always against the church or for the church. Most of the time it's just a part of the way the world turns. It's neutral in and of itself and works with whomever is using it.

I find the ideals of knighthood interesting. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain is a legendary knight, renowned for his chivalry and strength. It's the chivalry part that I'm interested in. Chivalry and honor to duty to the church, humbleness before God, duty to the king, gaining and protecting one's own honor, being gentle and obedient to ladies, and probably dozens of other things Sir Gawain and the Green Knight doesn't touch on and I still haven't found from other places. It also extends to one's word. The Green Knight allows Gawain to strike his head off based on his word that he will come to his own death a year later and do nothing to resist the return blow. And Gawain does it! Perhaps it is less surprising when the vow is made in front of the whole court of knights and the king, but this also seems to extend to vows and promises made between two knights when no one else is around. Gawain receives kisses from the lord's wife in private and returns each one of him to the lord by their promise that whatever the other wins during the day be given to the other. When he fails to hand over the green sash, he is wounded for the infraction and wears it for the rest of his life, of his own will, to show that he was false.

The idea of courtly love also amuses me. Gawain can't flat out refuse the lord's wife. He dodges around her temptations, barely, but he can't flat out say no and begone. In fact, at the end of the first morning, she tells him he's not the man she'd heard of because that Sir Gawain wouldn't refuse a gentlewoman and would at least give her the kiss she asked for. The next day she chides him for forgetting her lesson from the day before. But it's okay for a married woman to come into the chamber of a bachelor while he's sleeping. It's okay for a husband to send his wife to tempt his guest to sleep with her. It's an interesting contrast with current ideals. The way Gawain dealt with her was honorable up until the point he hid the sash from the lord of the castle.

I've made it a goal of mine to one day collect all the old Arthurian stories and fight my way through them in their original dialects. I want to catalogue the characters and the changes over time. An example that extends to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the character of Sir Gawain. He's a knight of honor and renown. In Le Morte D'Arthur, however, his own brother prefers not to be around him because, though he's a strong knight, he doesn't live up to the ideals of honor Sir Gareth believes a knight should hold. I'm also looking at a book of British history, because I'm looking at all these dates and reading about the wars and kings and what's going on, and I have no point of reference. My British history is pretty vague and has a lot of gaps. I found one that looks good... next paycheck. I'm actually sad about my reading list now, because I want to focus on the medieval literature. I'm in love with it! But I have to move on to the poets and Renaissance lit soon. Maybe I can make a thesis out of studying Arthurian legend. I also need a dictionary of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, especially if I want to read this one's original text.

Anyway, if you're at all interested in Arthurian legend, this one's worth checking out. It's not a difficult read translated, and the story's interesting. Of course, if you read this whole thing, I've given most of the story away so you won't have the fun of trying to figure out what the heck the wife is doing tempting Gawain like I had... but it's still a good read.

I love grapes!

2010-04-26T11:16:00.000+09:00

Even when they have a billion seeds and are a pain to eat! I love them more when I find them on sale. Mmm grapes.

So, I'm back to studying Japanese. My friends made me mad enough at failing the test to want to pass it again. Thanks guys! ... I think. It gives me something to work at anyway. After July I'm going to go back to studying Latin sometimes too. Right now it's Japanese every day. Too many languages to learn!! Lindsey spent hours yesterday trying to teach me how to pronounce "Le Morte D'Arthur." Apparently (before my face got tired) I could do the "Le Morte" well, and passably up to "D'Arth," and I figured out how to say the funky "u," but not put the "u" and the "r" together. And this is why when the French teacher at GEOS tried to teach me French, I laughed at him. Really gotta wonder what the people around us were thinking (we were walking and shopping in a relatively crowded area during most of this ...activity). I still am not interested in learning French seriously... I can get the gist of the things that come up in my book... but I'd at least like to be able to pronounce titles (why the title is in French, I'll never know... it was first written in English... no reason!) and the names that come up. For the sake of reference, Launcelot du Lac has far too many vowels in it.

Still really want to relearn Spanish and learn Ojibwe... and German.... and Welsh. See? Too many languages! I want to know them! Not doing Spanish and Latin at the same time again though... Still only remember the latin verb for "to care for" that I put down on my Spanish test in 10th grade. >_> Latin would be helpful though. And Anglo-Saxon (see?? That's another one!). I want to go to England and poke around everywhere too now. Not that I know what there is to poke around in.... but I want to anyway!

One day. England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, then Versailles and Berlin. Lindsey wants to see Auschwitz, but I really don't think I could handle that. We were planning our immaginary trip yesterday, and I got a knot in my stomach and nearly started crying when she was talking about it. I do want to see the beaches at Normandy though. Oddly... I have no desire to go to Rome. I'd like to go to Finland and Sweden too. And the nerdy part of me wants to go to Romania, but the part of me that's seen too many slasher movies is going "ahaha, no." Maybe though.... if I can find convincing proof that it's not dangerous for tourists.

On a more serious planning note, this summer I'm saving to go back to Kyoto and Osaka, which I haven't been back to since I moved here. I really want to go to Kyoto. Then next summer I want to save to go to Beijing, Laos, Vietnam, and Korea (in something of that order). Take a week and just visit them all with Lindsey and hopefully Jen. I want to walk the Great Wall, and what I've seen of Laos and Vietnam, they're beautiful. Though the Canadian embassy page warns caution and to stay in the cities and off the beaches (apparently there are still unexploded mines in some places). We're going to watch the political scene there for the next year and make sure it's safe to go before we book anything. From what I've heard, in the cities, the worst that'll happen is you get ripped off by a cabbie or a store owner. Oh, but the Canadian site also said not to play cards or accept English teaching invitations... neither of which would I normally do anyway. Apparently people loose a lot of money to stacked decks. Why would you do that?? Seriously? I only want to spend a day or two there and see the architecture.

And I am off to teach class. I like my Monday schedule. It's so much better than last year!

Paradise Lost - John Milton

2010-04-24T17:37:00.001+09:00

Paradise Lost was first published in the 1600s, and it is actually a poem, though first glance looks a bit like gibberish. A few things on that, the language used is roughly the same as that in the King James bible, only because it's a poem Milton ignores typical grammatical structures and customs. This is the first poem I've read where I think he actually had a purpose to that. Apparently he was blind when he wrote this, and so it was transcribed for him, which meant he had to speak the whole thing out loud. I couldn't read it like I read some books, where I look at the words and understand them sometimes without hearing them. When I started the poem, I had to do it out loud (which was the only suggestion of Pullman's introduction that I appreciated). Reading it first out loud and then letting myself hear the words in my head let me skip the part where I understood the words as parts of a sentence and paragraph, rather in context, and lead straight to understanding the image of the words. That sounds weird, but the majority of the poem, if I read the words as words on a page, I didn't have the first clue what he was talking about. If I let myself hear the words, I would get images in my head that played out a story for me, complete with sounds and smells and tactile feelings. Despite the struggle sometimes, it was actually a rather amazing experience, and I've developed a bit of an obsession for figuring out what he did that caused that.

Unfortunately, partly because of the way you have to read Paradise Lost to understand it, and partly because it written in a fairly archaic form of English, I don't know that many people I know will read it, or if they do finish it. If you can read and understand the language in the King James bible, you'll be fine with vocabulary and word conjugations, but it's the necessity of letting your mind go with the sound of the words that... I don't know, it was hard. Maybe it was hard for me because I'm so used to analyzing words as words and sentences as structures. From what I hear of people who've read it though, it's just a hard book to read, and a lot of people hate it. Jen's comment to me when I told her I was reading it was an immediate "I'm sorry!"

The story is one that anybody with some roots in the Christian or Jewish religions would be familiar with. It begins with Satan's fall, along with 1/3 of the angels in heaven, and goes through creation to the temptation and eventual fall of man. For the first 2/3 at least of the poem, it didn't matter that I knew the story. I was wide-eyed and caught myself chewing on my thumbnail for parts of it (rather embarrassing in public). I think because I took at two week break in reading it, though, it lost its momentum after the temptation of Eve, and the last two books were a challenge to get through. So far I don't have anyone to chatter with about this book, which is disappointing. I've talked to people about it, but nobody's read it, or, in Jen's case, enjoyed it as much as I have.

The beginning of the poem centers on Satan and his demons. It opens with them just recently fallen, and they're in agony and dazed from, literally, falling into hell. Satan is the first to rise and break off the chains. He leads the demons away from the pit of fire they're in onto a continent where they assemble and decide what to do. In the end, Satan heads off to track down the rumored "man," God's new favorite and the new paradise He's made for them. At the edge of hell he finds a gate guarded by two beings. One is a woman with dogs eating her insides, the other is a shade. The woman is Sin, his daughter and the mother of his child, the shade, who is Death. Sin was given the key to the gate and opens it at Satan's request. The key only opens the gate. It can't close it again. He passes through and comes to a void that he must cross. The beings living there let him pass, and God and Jesus watch from heaven as he makes his way to earth. In heaven God predicts the temptation of Adam and Eve and their eventual fall. He announces what the consequences will be and asks who will take their place for punishment. Jesus steps forward for that task.

Satan makes it to earth and takes the shape of a cherub. He asks the way to Eden of one of the angels and is shown, but the hatred on his face when he sees it gives him away, and the angel descends in the evening to warn the angels guarding Eden. They catch Satan inside Adam and Eve's dwelling, whispering in Eve's ear, and throw him out. He wanders the earth for several days before returning just outside Eden. God sends the angel Raphael to warn Adam and tell Satan's story, how he fought God and the battles between the angels in heaven and how Jesus threw him out of heaven. He answers Adam's questions and leaves. Later, Satan disguises himself as a mist and takes over the body of a serpent. The next morning, Eve wants to separate for the day to divide the work, but Adam doesn't want her to go. She insists that they shouldn't be ruled by fear and goes off. Satan catches her, claiming to have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thus gaining the speech of man. He leads her to the tree and convinces her to eat. When Adam finds out, he eats as well, thinking that Eve is doomed and that he couldn't have any replacement for her once she was gone that would make him happy. They're both in a sort of drunken euphoria after eating the fruit, but once it fades they argue about whose fault it is. They try to hide their nakedness, and when Jesus comes, knowing what they've done already, they hide from him. He clothes them, and when he leaves, the earth begins to change from its original climate into the more violent climates that we have.

Michael is sent to cast them out of Eden, but also to show Adam things that are to come. He shows Adam death in all its forms, the crime of his son, the perversion of man in later years, the flood, men aspiring to be gods and the tower of Babel. He also tells Adam of God's promise, that his descendant will bruise their enemy's head on his heel. They leave, and the angels guard the entrance to Eden against any more incursions by Satan or men.

Phillip Pullman did the introduction to the edition I have and commentary on each book inside (there are 12). I took one good piece of advice from him, and that was to read the book out loud. Aside from that, he immediately discredited himself by saying how much he didn't know about the work compared to others. At the end of his introduction, he turned his biography on the author and history of his own encounter with Paradise Lost into his own speculations on what the story meant, and his ideas on the meanings of the themes.

In my case, I found that my interest was most vividly caught by the meaning of the temptation-and-fall theme. Suppose that the prohibition on the knowledge of good and evil were an expression of jealous cruelty, and the gaining of such knowledge an act of virtue? Suppose the Fall should be celebrated and not deplored? (...)The true end of human life, I found myself saying, was not redemption by a nonexistent Son of God, but the gaining and transmission of wisdom. Innocence is not wise, and wisdom cannot be innocent, and if we are going to do any good in the world, we have to leave childhood behind.

Personally, I find that incredibly interesting, and it's something I've thought about often before, and it's definitely an interesting premise for a story. However, as the second to last paragraph in an introduction to a text, I thought it was out of place. If I wanted to read arguments and analysis on Paradise Lost, I would have bought a book of essays after I'd already read the poem and formed my own ideas. After that, I couldn't read his introductions to the books. They irritated me. I don't want that kind of input before I have the chance to form my own ideas. I'll take them after.

There were a few things I noticed throughout the poem that struck me as interesting. Not that I entirely understand them, or why they're included, though I have my own ideas as to that, I want to put them out here. The first one is that both Adam and Eve, our perfect father and mother, are blonds. Yes, this was written in Europe. Can you tell? Another thing I noticed, Adam is obsessed with sex. Maybe obsessed is a bad choice of words, but he talks about it to Raphael and gets warned by him. The first thing Adam and Eve do after eating the fruit is have sex. On the other hand, beauty is repeatedly spoken of as dependent on virginity. I'm curious what exactly Milton was thinking when he used the word "virgin," because neither Adam nor Eve were virgins in the traditional sense of the word, yet he kept calling Eve beautiful based on her virginity.

Purity is also equated with naivety. They are innocent, not knowing good and evil, and so they don't know that to be naked is something to be ashamed of. They are pure, virgins if I can venture to guess that's what Milton meant by the word. Because of this they are both beautiful. So were the angels who fell. When they were innocent of evil they were beautiful. Satan didn't recognize his daughter/lover Sin, didn't know himself how unrecognizable he was after he fell. This is one of those things that I felt Milton was going somewhere with, and I would need to read it again, preferably with a notebook by me and a hard copy that I can write on to figure out where exactly that was.

There are three main perspectives in the poem, Satan's, God's, and Adam and Eve's. Satan's is by far the most intense. His drift into God's perspective, for example when Satan broke out of hell and was traveling the void between hell, heaven, and earth it shifted from his struggle to God watching. The shift from something so intense to a rather rigidly paced narrative, the shift from the hero's struggle to his persecutor as it were, brought out some interesting thoughts and feelings. I think that's somewhat what Pullman was talking about in his introduction, or something that maybe helped inspire that because in the beginning, Satan feels like the hero. You feel sorry for his struggle; you want him to get his revenge. In a way, you're almost mad at God for causing it. Then again, at the same time, as a Christian, that felt irreverent, which brought up more questions and thoughts that challenged me as a believer and made me look at what and why I believe what I do. I wonder if Milton did that on purpose. At the time, the Catholic church still ruled most of Europe, and the rest was still Christian. His readers would likely be coming from the same perspective as myself.

Once Satan reaches earth, we have some time in Adam and Eve's perspective, then when Satan gets captured we get another jolt of "Crap! The hero's in trouble!" Literally up until the point where Satan stops appearing in the story, which I found random..., he's very definitely the hero. When Jesus and the angels kick their butts in the battle in heaven, it's epic, but it's the hero who looses. He's a sneaky sucker who keeps getting thwarted and finally gets his revenge. He's punished, though, and after that he doesn't appear again. Part of me was hoping he would show up again. He did win, as far as this part of the story is concerned. I wanted him to gloat. I've heard an excerpt from this poem, from the very end, and I've always taken it to have been from Satan and crew, or a representation thereof. I don't know if it's the contexts I've read it in, or just my misinterpretation, but it's a good line.

The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and providence their guide:[...]

Mostly the section "The world was all before them." It's not at all related to Satan and crew. It's about Adam and Eve, but part of me expected it to be. I thought it was weird that the hero just dropped out and didn't make a final appearance.

God's perspective at first seems careful and rigid, in a way that, I think, helps lend to Satan as a hero and the reader's sympathy for that. Moreso with Jesus' actions and the parts involving him and the higher angels, there also feels like there's a lot of reverence. It might be less spectacular than Satan's role, but it's no less awe inspiring. God is definitely not a flat not-quite-there being. He's a full character with a range of emotions and reasoning behind his actions and decisions. He's a king and demanding of worship, strong and jealous but also loving. He knows what's coming, and yet he's bound by the rules he set in place to not stop any of it. It doesn't make him change, but it does make him sad.

One of the themes I found was of free will. Can one truly love if one's not free to choose whether or not to do so? God created angels first and then men with free will, even after the angels showed that their will wasn't necessarily his. Here's some of what God says to Jesus, talking about giving his creation free will and what they choose to do with it.

[...]I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. Such I created all the ethereal powers And spirits, both them who stood and them who failed; Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. Not free, what proof could they have given sincere Of true allegiance, constant faith or love, Where only what they needs must do appeared, Not what they would? what praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid, When will and reason [...] Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled, Made passive both, had served necessity, Not me. [...]if I foreknew, Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no less proved certain unforeknown. So without least impulse or shadow of fate, Or aught by me immutably foreseen, They trespass, authors to themselves in all Both what they judge and what they choose; for so I formed them free, and free they must remain, Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change Their nature, and revoke the high decree Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained Their freedom, they themselves ordained their fall. The first sort by their own suggestion fell, Self-tempted, self-depraved: man falls deceived By the other first: man therefore shall find grace, The other none:[...]

The question, then, arises, well what of knowledge? Why is knowledge of good and evil forbidden? And that's a question for philosophers, not me. Apparently not for Milton either, because he doesn't really deal with that question in Paradise Lost. I think there it's more a simple, easy-to-follow command given not to eat of that tree, maybe a test?

Eve's role throughout this makes the feminist in me a little unhappy, though looking at it from the perspective of the 1600s, I'm actually a little surprised she had as much influence as she did. When Raphael and Michael come, before and after they've eaten the fruit, she stays out of sight, sometimes goes away completely. Adam sends her to fetch fruit to give to Raphael while he stays with them and talks. It seemed to me, though, after Raphael's warning, when Adam wanted her to stay and work by him so she would not be vulnerable to temptation, that she was a bit stronger than she appeared. I'd say her feathers got ruffled by being seen as weak by her husband. She insisted on going separate ways. Granted, she had valid arguments for why they shouldn't stifle their lifestyle because of fear, but the way she reacted struck me as being a bit miffed.

Her argument was something that made me think about the fragility of happiness. When Raphael talked to Adam, a conversation that covered quite a few topics including sex and pursuit of knowledge (and warnings against obsession with both), he said this:

Son of heaven and earth, Attend: that though art happy, owe to God; That thou continuest such, owe to thyself, That is, to they obedience; therein stand.

Basically God made Adam and Eve happy. It's up to them and their continued obedience on God to remain happy, but it seems like since Eve's first contact with Satan in her dreams unhappiness found its way into Eden. They're both disturbed by it. After Raphael tells Satan's story, Adam's cautious and wants Eve to stay by his side. This seems to make Eve unhappy.

But that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubt To God or thee, because we have a foe May tempt it, I expected not to hear.

Adam continues to argue that it's better to avoid temptation altogether, to which Eve answers:

If this be our condition, thus to dwell In narrow circuit straitened by a foe, Subtle or violent, we not endued Single with like defence, wherever met, How are we happy, still in fear of harm? [...]Let us not then suspect our happy state Left so imperfect by the maker wise, As not secure to single or combined. Frail is our happiness, if this be so, And Eden were no Eden thus exposed.

I think she's right, their happiness was very frail, and I think by that point it'd already begun to break. Once Adam finds out Eve's eaten the fruit, he chooses to eat it as well, believing that his happiness will never be complete without her. In this set-up, I don't think eating the fruit was the cause of unhappiness.

Satan is, in turn, also unhappy about the whole state of things. It seemed to me that he regretted his rebellion but was stuck with the consequences and so made the best he could of it. Speaking of the earth God created for man, he says:

With what delight could I have walked thee round, If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange Of hill, and valley, rivers, woods, and plains, Now land, now sea, and shores with forest crowned, Rocks, dens, and caves; but I in none of these Find place or refuge; and the more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel Torment within me, as from the hateful siege Of contraries; all good to me becomes Bane, and in heaven much worse would by my state, But neither here seek I, no nor in heaven To dwell, unless by mastering heaven's supreme;[...]

He has a sense of pride. He was second only to God before Jesus came into being, which was the ignition for his rebellion. He knows what he's lost, and he knows the only way to get it back is to rule heaven, but he can't. He's tried, and he can't defeat Jesus. So he's doing the next best thing, he's ruling hell and defiling God's beautiful creation. In doing this, he's aware of the necessity of lowering his pride, stooping low enough to take the body of a snake that crawls on the ground when he once aspired to godhood.

O foul descent! that I who erst contended With gods to sit the highest, am now constrained Into a beast, and mixed with bestial slime, This essence to incarnate and imbrute, That to the height of deity aspired; But what will not ambition and revenge Descend to? Who aspires must down as low As high he soared, obnoxious first or last To basest things.

Once fallen and cursed to pass his guilt on to any offspring, Adam is quick to look for ways around producing any, including suicide and abstinence. I liked his monologue near the end talking about this.

O miserable of happy! is this the end Of this new glorious world, and me so late The glory of that glory, who now become Accursed of blessed, hide me from the face Of God, whom to behold was then my height Of happiness: yet well, if here would end The misery, I deserved it, and would bear My own deservings; but this will not serve; All that I eat or drink, or shall beget, Is propagated curse. O voice once heard Delightfully, Increase and multiply, Now death to hear! for what can I increase Or multiply, but curses on my head?

That's the end of my random observations, in no real order. I have two other quotes, both belonging to Satan, which I really liked and want to share. The first one is from when he learns of pain during the battle for heaven.

But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience.

That was one of the lines that I thought made him seem more sympathetic. The last quote continues at the very end of the one in which he talks about reaching high and stooping low.

Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils; Let it; I reck not, so it light well aimed, Since higher I fall short, on him who next Provokes my envy, this new favourite Of heaven, this man of clay, son of despite, Whom us the more to spite his maker raised From dust: spite then with spite is best repaid.

With that he stops talking and goes about his revenge. Aside from being thought provoking, it's a pretty epic last line for a monologue right before the climax.

I would actually like to study this book in depth at some point. I understand what's going on, and I'm following most of what Milton says, I just can't organize it in my head very well. It's like I'm grappling with too much at once. I kinda hope there's a class offered including Paradise Lost. Apparently there's also a Paradise Regained, which I'll get to at some point. If nothing else, Paradise Lost at least deserves another read through. I'd love to hear it read by someone who could read out loud well. That would be an interesting experience. And I still just really want to know how gibberish can make such amazing images. The dialogue, like the quotes, isn't gibberish, but the narrative can really be sometimes. I could hear the groans of the fallen angles, see the ocean of fire and bodies, hear the sound of the chains being ripped apart by Satan, see and hear the locks in the gate of hell fall open... It's probably something I'd do better to not get overly obsessed with considering how strange some of my English has become just by reading older poetry and narratives as it is... I almost said the word "wroth" in all seriousness the other day... but I still want to know.

Pausing my chores

2010-04-19T17:58:00.003+09:00

This last week has been just insane. I pushed myself way too hard, I think, and I definitely paid for it yesterday. From Tuesday on through Friday I didn't get home until after 10. Saturday was crazy getting my new phone and getting it set up. Lindsey helped me carry cabinets that I put together and now have in my kitchen. They were cheap! And they're really not bad. It's so nice to be able to walk through that tiny space and not knock everything over. I also got a shoe rack and a tub to put my towels in. All in all, under $40.

Well, Saturday night Soushi was in and out of the litter box around 4 times and didn't go. I figured he was just upset cause I hadn't been home and then I was and I was changing everything. Sunday was the same, so I called the vet and took him in. 2 shots and $60 later, he did stop going in and out of the box quite as much, but still fairly frequently. Took him in again today like the vet said.... and had to pay for 2 more shots on top of a week's worth of anti-biotics. She wants me to get a urine sample at some point.... That's going to be interesting to do. >_< It's to check for traces of stones that might have caused the infection, if an infection it is. I'm really praying it's not stones. For one, I can't get a sample when he's in and out of the box and not actually doing anything all the time, and for two, those can be deadly in cats. :S The vet also said he's too thin. He weighs just a little more than Ophelia, and she's probably 1/3 smaller than him. Anyway, boiling this chaos down, I'm going out to get the good canned food tonight. I stopped giving it to them maybe two months ago because they weren't eating it with the dry food as an option at night. The vet suggested mixing the dry in with the wet, just a little bit, and recommended a type of regular milk that's easy on stomachs that she gives her cat. So we'll give it a try, because obviously the dry food isn't good for them. I knew this before... but it's hard to fork out that much a month sometimes. Of course $120 in vet bills in two days is also hard... so I imagine in the long run the better food will be easier. I'm so not doing anything over Golden Week. >_>

Soushi likes the cupboards too. The picture's uber blurry, but I let him enjoy being in there before I stuffed cans and bottles in it and shut the door :P

I finished Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I'll have to write up something on that. I have lots of thoughts on it, but significantly less than I had for Paradise Lost, so it's a bit more manageable for a quick write-up. That... and I'm not going to confuse Paradise Lost with anything. I likely won't for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight either, but I'm currently reading Le Morte D'Arthur (Don't worry, it's not actually in French) and I'd like to do a comparison when I'm done... in about 480 pages. :P They're both... special? Actually, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is more like what I expected from a medieval Arthurian tale, but there's still a surprising amount of Catholicism in it. There's still magic at least though. In Le Morte D'Arthur any of what we'd currently say was magic is credited as a miracle. Merlin is some sort of prophet rather than a wizard... so far anyway. I'm only 30 pages in, and Arthur's still fighting to keep his title.

I hope I manage to get the medieval lit class sometime. It's rapidly becoming my new obsession. I dropped the Irish Drama class for the sake of not failing the History of Poetic Forms one.... stupid poetry. I stop understanding it at around Shakespeare. After that I'm completely lost. Before that? Bring on the smiting!! (Not a poem, but Le Morte D'Arthur was doing quite a bit of smiting in the last few chapters today *grin*)

*edit* The second program I ran to clean my computer last time I posted... 81 bugs....... yeah..... Managed to save my emails on it though, since I stupidly deleted all of them from the actual inbox. >_> For now, it's a dedicated DVD player, cause that's about all it'll do anymore... and even that it only half does. I'm pretty sure re-installing windows would help some, but alas I lack a copy of it anymore, and the computer didn't come with a boot disc.

On Paradise Lost and Trojans of the Digital Kind

2010-04-12T20:54:00.000+09:00

I finished Paradise Lost. I made notes. It was quite epic. It might take another read-through or more thinking about it before I can write much on it. I think the 2 weeks of not reading it might have killed some of the momentum, cause the ending was significantly less epic than the beginning. The last few books fixed the idea that the whole thing is actually pretty reverent in my mind. I'd be interested to read what the author himself had to say about his work, rather than all the interpretations out there, of which I've read one and was incredibly annoyed by. I don't know, it requires more thinking than my brain wants to do today.

So, my Japanese computer got massively infected with, according to Windows Defender, something like 31 trojans while I was away. Hence, I'm on said computer now running malware and spyware scans and not doing other things I said I'd do today. It's cold and rainy and I ate way too much pizza when I was planning on eating a half a cup of rice and veggies for dinner.... mostly cause it's cold and rainy. I did empty the litter box though, and do a ton of dishes... pretty much everything I have that could be used for food was in my sink. Saturday's spring cleaning. I will find places to put things that don't drive me nuts. My other "to do around the house" thing for today was fixing this hunk of technology, which I'm currently doing, so aside from the food thing, and the not studying thing (which I still have time to rectify if I can get the gumption), I've done everything I planned for myself to do.

Also, I have new neighbors. There are two of them, a man and a woman, and I want to know how they manage to live in that tiny space. I know the 1st floor lofts are smaller than mine, so they can't be utilizing that space for much. If they're sleeping up there, I pity them in the summer. It gets hot, though I suppose less so on the first floor. Anyway, mostly, they're good neighbors, but the guy has a really boomy voice, and he likes to talk apparently. He gets up at 6-6:30 every day, including weekends, and goes to bed around midnight. I know because despite the two fans I have going at night, I can hear him through the floor when I lay on my side, and since I can't breathe on my back, I can't sleep when he's awake. >_> I found earplugs today though. I used them before when I was having trouble with my suite-mates back at Eastern, but they hurt so much I couldn't sleep with them in anyway (quite possibly why I was so twitchy then and why I get so upset when my sleep is interrupted now). Anyway, I'm hoping for good things. I'd like to be able to sleep on my terms tonight...mostly considering the earplugs. Beats trying to curl up on a two-seater non-plushy couch though.

First day of classes tomorrow at the school that last year was nightmare school and this year I really can't hope is too much better cause I really don't want to be disappointed. I'd rather go into it braced for the same. I wonder if I can use a dunce cap.... I'll have to talk to Satomi about that (sounds mean, in my opinion, but if I can't kick the obnoxious kids out, I have to do something to make them at least shut up and participate). Really, I'd like to find a way where they want to participate, but the whole atmosphere of the school, and the utter pointlessness of my class really depresses anything that could be there for most of them. I hope to make it less pointless this year by shifting the focus from conversation to reading for the first while, but Satomi really doesn't seem to be going for that. Verbally saying they can't read the sheets we give them, she still wants them to learn scripted dialogues (short or long, I don't see the point when they don't know how to respond to "Hello"). I don't get it. Half of me wants to be a good ALT and let her take charge of the class and curriculum. The rest of me (which is decidedly louder than the other half) would actually like to teach these kids something and enjoy the school year with them.

My 2nd year girls (last years 1st years) were so excited to see me at the other school. It made me feel really good about what I do there. They were surprised it was still me, but their words and demeanor were both so happy. I was really surprised. One of the teachers for the 2nd year class... my first thing I'd normally say is "useless," but I think he might learn to do what I need him to do... which is the occasional accurate translation (I hate it when they say something I didn't say....>_> funny cause some of the kids notice too, jokes on them at least) and pulling the girls into what we're doing. One of the teachers, Uchida, isn't very good at keeping the girls quiet, but I really like how she translates. A few of them do this actually. They'll translate the grammar, but use the key words in English, or say the sentence in English and translate bit by bit as they say it. It's hard to explain that to someone who doesn't understand me too well, but I'd like all of my teachers to do that. It's so much better than just straight translation, because it actually pulls the kids into what I'm saying and breaks it down so they can understand it rather than just feeding it to them in their own language so they don't engage at all. My Friday teachers though, they're awesome. I'm so glad I have good 1st year teachers now. Last year was so hard. The one teacher had the worst grasp of English ever.

David wants to hold off on teaching phonics till we have the book I asked him to order. He wanted a book, so I told him a good one I use at the other school. So... I have it at the other school and I'm capable of researching and making an outline for 5 minutes a week without a book. *eyeroll* Basically, I'm going ahead with it. It'd be nice to have the CD, but for just the basic phonics alphabet, I can make them chant without multimedia. If I have time, I want to laminate letter cards. I found pictures for the first bit of the alphabet. I probably should have been working on the next bit for two weeks from now today during my 30 minutes of free time (I love not having 3 hours of office time!! It's GREAT!! *dances*) instead of looking up lolcats.... but I was tired and cranky from not sleeping. I needed the giggles.

Example of a lolcat:

I saved a bunch to my work computer so I can look at them and giggle when the office is stressing me out :P

And after an hour of scanning program the first has removed 10 bugs from my computer. Now onto program the second, and while it runs, a nice hot shower. ^__^

Obligatory return post

2010-03-31T17:55:00.001+09:00

I~m alive. I want a shower and kitty cuddles.

And I MUST see that Star Trek movie. I woke up partway through and was very distressed! I didn~t want to spoil it for myself so I went back to sleep but gah!! Shiny!!

I love to travel

2010-03-15T16:47:00.001+09:00

But I hate long flights and the day before leaving. I have to clean and pack. I hit the stores and got what I needed (and green nail polish!!! /girly mode), which included an amazing find of Scrubbing Bubbles! I only recently managed to find something to clean out my pipes, and my tub was uber stained, and the Japanese cleaners weren't even beginning to cut it. Yay for clean bathtubs! Now I just need to clean Mal's tank, the litter box, the kitchen, the floors, and pack. o.O I could probably get away with not hard-core cleaning the floors, but Lindsey's doing me a favor by staying here with the cats, so I don't want her to feel uncomfortable (since my house already smells like mould even when it's spotless).

Wah, I don't wanna! I'm reading Paradise Lost right now, to which Jen said "I'm sorry!" except I'm really enjoying it! I kinda want to just curl up with that and read for the rest of the evening. There's a decided lack of curling room on airplanes... unless you're in business class, but alas I will never be able to afford that, and I'm thinking that was a one-time-only God-send when I got it last time. I'm neither sick nor in agony right now, so I can soldier through economy (probably).

I was going somewhere with Paradise Lost, before I got distracted by rambling, and that was that I don't understand how it's written! Usually, even if I don't really understand something, I can see how from a certain perspective or a certain background or twist in logic it would make sense. This, I haven't got the foggiest. Not all of it, but a lot of it, if you read just the words, it's gibberish! (not to the extent of the sound poetry ~~crap~~ I had to read my last semester of undergrad, but still gibberish) There are no sentences, no apparent grammatical structures, words are pretty much just put in wherever, and there aren't even really lines (though there are random line numbers...), at least not in my edition, so that you could count syllables or feel a rhythm or anything to the words. The word that strikes me as most accurate would be "haphazard." But, for some reason that I don't understand at all, even though I don't always (rather rarely) know what exactly is being said, I get images. If I detach myself from trying to puzzle out the meanings of the words themselves, I don't even realize what is prompting the images, they just appear in my mind. I could quote all of one line (the line everybody knows, just not always from where), and that not properly, I couldn't tell you more on the style of words used, other than it's not modern English, even though I understand that version of English just fine (normally), but I could tell you the story as I've been seeing it in my head. Wow is it an intense story! And the scenes, the moments where the image is hanging in my head, and I'm not quite sure how it's going to unfold, just, gah! I caught myself chewing on my thumbnail on the train on Friday.

I just started book V of XII. I hope I finish it soon. I don't think I'm going to have as much reading time over the next few weeks :P

I really should pack... or clean. I even made myself a list to make it easier. I hate this part of traveling.

The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

2010-03-11T13:58:00.002+09:00

Just to make it clear off the bat, it was pretty hard to read this as simply a piece of literature from the 19th century and not critique it based on historical events of the 20th century that basically showed that its theories don't work

It opens with a discussion of class conflicts, people above vs. people below or, as it summed up, oppressor vs. oppressed. This turns into a discussion of the Bourgeoisie vs. the Proletariat or those owning capital vs. those who must sell their labor in order to survive. It was published in 1848 by two German philosophers, which I think is important to keep in mind. For one, according to them Germany had never reached the point of social development in which the bourgeoisie and the proletariat were formed enough for life to get bad enough to justify a revolutionary proletariat. Germany political literature on socialism was a "schoolboy's lesson" of the French which the then aristocratic German government used to squelch the rising bourgeoisie, thus halting the growth of the proletariat. That's not to say what the pamphlet had to say was irrelevant.

1848 was in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, which is why I say the date is important. The problems addressed in regards to the oppression of the proletariat under the bourgeoisie were legitimate then. Children were sent to work in mines and factories to help support the families who were underpaid, overworked, lived in awful workers' housing, and were generally exploited by those competing for profit from factories in the developing market. There were no laws protecting workers at the time, and any cursory review of history is bound to show that people, when they're not restricted by some form of law and when they're gaining some sort of profit, are nasty to each other. Before the bourgeoisie came about, people in Europe lived under the rule of the aristocracy, those working the land paying taxes to the owner or lord of the land, those lords and owners owe allegiance to a monarchy. This is also, in my opinion, a recipe for abuse of power, and the fact that it was violently overthrown in some countries is a pretty good indicator that power was being abused and people were unhappy. Yet it seemed like this feudal set-up was almost idealized in the beginning sections of the pamphlet.

Later there is a discussion of Communism's relationship with the different forms of socialism and what the authors thought of the different forms, mostly concluding that they were Utopian or merely another way for the bourgeoisie to remain in control. It did actually call in the end for social revolution, and seemed, in not so many words, to admit that any such revolution would necessitate violence. What land owner is going to give up what they have peacefully? It also called for an end to nations, since

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.

For the sake of reference, and because I think it's interesting, I'm going to type out what the "measures of course" are that they talk about in reform.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c.,&c.

(Emphasis in bold mine)

There was also argument for dissolution of family as we know it (under the bourgeoisie class structure). The argument presented was that families are a means of income, all members work to get money for the family and the children are exploited.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

This is why I emphasized the bit about child factory labor in its present form, because no matter which way you cut it, if you're making kids work in factories, whether for the benefit of the family, the bourgeoisie, or the society as a whole, it's still exploitation. It also argued for social education to be taken out of the hands of the ruling class, only that's one of the other parts I really don't understand (and that seems counter-intuitive) because the manifesto says that there will have to be a ruling body, a portion of the proletariat, so there would still be a ruling class. Again, it doesn't really matter how you look at it, people in authority have influence over things they want to influence, and one of them will always be education.

In a further way of dissolving the family, it talks about creating a community of women, arguing that the bourgeoisie regard women as a means of production and employ prostitutes and the wives of other members of the bourgeoisie. So in essence there already is one and the Communists would simply stop the hypocrisy of the current system and make it legal.

Later on it addressed forms of socialism it called Utopian and reactionary. I know the intent of those words was probably meant differently, but to me they really fit my reaction to the theories presented here. They're a reaction to the social changes that were taking place between between the 18th and 19th centuries. Europe was feudalistic for centuries before, and before that parts were dominated by Rome. It doesn't surprise me that people had such a strong reaction to what was going on around them at the time. It also doesn't surprise me that they were impatient for change.

Parts of it struck me as opposed to progress, which I'm sure they would argue I say because I was raised as a part of the system they oppose. This is part of why it strikes me as Utopian--it assumes human nature will gear itself toward sustaining mankind as a whole. The arguments presented, about nations ceasing to exist, about hostilities between nations ceasing, assumes that the world, as a whole, has adopted Communism. That would require all men (used in the sense of humankind) to be selfless. There is no personal gain, and perhaps it isn't anti-progress, but in that case it assumes people will continue to advance without any personal reward, that they'll struggle through their education, that they'll build and discover and create completely selflessly.

I know The Communist Manifesto has been used by governments as a so-called framework for building societies, but any of the societies that come to mind as having used this fell far short of its intent, and the ones coming to mind are the U.S.S.R., China, and North Korea. I'm not including countries that consider themselves Socialist. Maybe they really did start out intending to make this ideal society, but I think people tend to get in the way of their own ideals. In my Poli Sci classes in high school and college, my teachers talked about left wing and right wing meeting at their extremes, more like a circle than a 2D line. It's not the only political theory, and it's not the newest one, but it's hard to deny that Hitler's version of Socialism (which could actually be considered Fascism), Stalin's version of Communism, and Mussolini's version of Fascism all look pretty similar. Anyway, that was just to illustrate the fact that I think the ideas put forward in The Communist Manifesto were abused.

It's interesting to read as a historical text, though I think if you're going to read it with strong political opinions in mind you might as well not read it at all. It was hard enough to get through under thirty pages with the events of the 20th century marching through my head and shouting "No, see that, they slaughtered people over that!" off and on. The writing style is a bit too pretty, which made it hard to pay attention to what was actually being said. There are contradictions in logic that take a lot of standing-in-someone-else's-shoes to puzzle out, and some that I was just unable to work through at all. I think reading this you have to let go of whether you agree or disagree with its ideas. It's pretty irrelevant, I think, whether or not you agree since in practice history has shown that it doesn't really work that way. Of course, looking at it from that perspective doesn't do much for working through the text either. It's a biased piece of literature, which, I think, makes it very difficult to read for anyone, because I think a lot of people are biased in one way or another.

Song of Roland

2010-03-10T16:53:00.000+09:00

That was bloody. o.O I have to say first, I love the word "smite," and I love how much this translation used it!

Song of Roland doesn't appear to have a known author - it apparently became a nationwide song. According to the introduction by the translator (old French), it's not even very historically accurate (Charlemagne was 36, not 200, and the attackers were a different group altogether). It's still an interesting window into the past, though.

Count Roland is the nephew of Charlemagne, as well as being his favorite. The poem is the story of Ganelon's betrayal of his step-son, Roland, to the Spanish armies. His reasoning is more revenge than anything else, but it's still treason nonetheless. Roland is made to stay behind and guard the king's back while the armies return to France under a false treaty. Set up by Ganelon and the Spanish king, the Spaniards have a huge army, three of them if I read it right, waiting to kill Roland specifically, since Ganelon has told them that until Roland is dead, Charlemagne won't stop fighting. Roland's army, 20,000, beats back one of 100,000, but starts to suffer losses in the second wave. Still, he refuses to sound the horn that will bring the king's army around to help him fight. By the end, he's cut off the Spanish king's hand, killed all of the enemy's nobles, and pretty much won the battle. Of course, his army dies down to the last man. Roland himself never appears to be wounded, but sounding his horn at the very end he somehow bursts his temple and his brains start dripping out of his ears. (Did I mention this was bloody?)

Charlemagne's army gets there too late and wipes out the remnants of the Spanish army, which is fleeing by this point. He sacks the city, kills the king, captures the queen, and makes everyone convert to Christianity. After burying the dead, they return to France with the bodies of three of the nobles (Roland, Olivier, and one other) and the queen where they try Ganelon. Ganelon's got a smooth-talking cousin who manages to turn the judges against the king, except for one (who's brother, I believe, was killed in the battle). Thierry challenges the ruling, tells the king he thinks Ganelon deserves a traitor's death, and Ganelon's cousin, Pinabel, challenges that and thus we come to a joust, complete with lances, knocking each other off horses, epic mid-battle banter, and ~~turtles in armor waving swords~~ at last a sword fight. Pinabel scores a hit but doesn't kill Thierry in time, and Thierry slices his face open. So Ganelon and all thirty of his family members who came to support him are killed. I think the family were just hung, but Ganelon had his limbs torn off by four horses. The queen of Spain converts to Christianity, and the angel Gabriel visits Charlemagne once again to tell him to ride off to another battle.

I mentioned this was incredibly gorey, right? Cause it really was. I'm still trying to work out the physics of a fairly blunt hunk of steel managing to slice from a helmet, through the armor and the skull, ribs, pelvis, etc., down through the saddle and into the horse's spine. I can attribute that to 1) being done by the hero's blade and 2) said blade being embued with divine power. But then I come to the problem of Roland's death. He continues to fight a good while after he's popped his brains. Granted, he passes out off and on, which also gives me problems because he's surrounded by enemies and there are only two people left fighting with him. I'm being too literal, I know, but I can't help it.

There's a big theme I noticed with divine power. Roland and Charlemagne both have weapons built out of holy relics; the tip of the spear thrust in Christ's side, a scrap of Mary's veil, someone's hair (I don't remember whose). Before he dies, Roland tries to break his sword on a stone instead of let it fall into "heathen" hands (they've fled by this point, but I guess he was worried about them coming back before Charlemagne's army made it to him). The thing won't even dent. It bends and twists and when he holds it up, pop, right back to being straight again. I also have to point out, in those medieval battles, they hacked at each other till someone died or their weapons broke. Those swords were not sharp or solid. The good ones were, yes, and they'd last a lot longer, but even in this it mentions how the lances broke quickly and the swords gave out.

There is also a lot of divine guidance. The Christian king is visited by God's messengers with prophecies and even, in the end, direct battle orders. Battles are done, kingdoms are expanded in the name of bringing Christianity to the heathen world, interesting if you turn the tables around and look at it from, say, a modern perspective. Not that a Christian king claiming divine right, power, guidance, what-have-you is anything new or surprising, just interesting.

A couple of things I didn't understand that came up a lot was all the fainting. Yes, it happens, though it seems like, at least if you go by what's written down, it used to happen with far more frequency. Some people see blood and faint, though that really wouldn't work well for a seasoned soldier in those days... or in any days. Roland and Charlemagne both faint repeatedly. Roland's got his brains coming out of his ears, so I kind of understand that, though how he manages to survive while he's fainted is beyond me. Charlemagne seems to be fainting out of grief, which is legitimate, but I don't understand why the poets felt it necessary to include, and not just once. He faints and his nobles rouse him. He says a few words, faints again, and more nobles help rouse him. It seems odd to me, and even the same with Roland, to take an idealized warrior/hero and give him that kind of weakness. You're completely vulnerable when you're unconscious!

Charlemagne also did one other thing that I don't understand. They buried their dead on the field, but for the three that they took back to France with them, he also removed their hearts and put them in containers. My immediate thought was what the Egyptians used to do before they mummified their dead, but it seems to go against a proper Christian burial of the time, which was intended to preserve the whole body for the rising of the dead in the second coming.

Which reminds me, the arch-bishop was one of the last two fighters standing. That he was fighting actually surprised me. I knew armies kept clergy around, for obvious reasons, but I wasn't at all aware that they were participants in the battle.

For a poem, (and I hate poetry) it was a good read! It was light on the obscure imagery and pretty much lacking in the need to interpret meaning, and thus made sense. The rhythm and rhyme of it were a bit mind-numbing at 7AM when I was trying to stay awake on the train, but by the end I was pretty well caught up in the "Holy crap the French are getting slaughtered, but holy crap they're taking them down with 'em!!" that I mostly stopped noticing any of it. It's a good read if you're at all interested in medieval anything. Word of warning though, if you can't understand the language (vocabulary-wise) in Shakespeare, you're going to have trouble. Verb conjugations are weird, and words like troth, wot, and sooth abound. Still, there was an epic usage of the word "smite," and that wins my heart, right there.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

2010-03-09T22:02:00.002+09:00

I followed it, right up to the end, when it stopped being nonsensical and tried to be semi-serious in contemplating children growing up. I'm pretty sure everyone who grew up in an English speaking country has at least heard of the story or references to it if they haven't seen one version or another in film or print. Alice goes down the rabbit hole after the white rabbit, has issues with her size, meets all sorts of talking critters, talks with the Cheshire Cat, has a crazy tea party, plays croquet with the Queen of Hearts, listens to to Mock Turtle's story, goes to a trial over tarts, and lots of "Off with her head!"

I enjoyed the nonsense, and the word games. I just really really didn't follow the ending. She wakes up on her sister's lap (got it), and it was all a dream (got it). She tells the dream to her sister (got it), and her sister sits and contemplates the dream and imagination and holding onto all of it as she grows up and tells stories to her kids (totally and completely don't get it). Okay, in a way, I do get it, but it makes it seem like the book is supposed to mean something profound, a la Peter Pan and the loss of childhood, which is really jolting.

I know the popular theory is that the whole story is one big drug reference, and I looked for it, but I really don't follow that. Maybe it is, who am I to say? Still, it seemed more like sitting down and listening to my brain for a couple of hours, not that mine goes with those particular themes, but the randomness and the jumps and the word games and twisted logic really just seemed train-of-thought to me. I did a bit of reading after I read it (cause I really don't get the ending), and I didn't find anything to change my view of cocked-eyebrow at people who say it's all a big drug metaphor. Personally, I'd say that's giving it too much credit for metaphor. That, and the fact that all of the word games and weird logic make complete sense in their own way really casts doubt on the "made kooky by opium" theory.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on that. I'm excited to see the new movie (which is why I bumped that from its low place on my list to today). I don't recall having a fondness for the Disney version, actually it seemed more silly than anything else, but I don't really recall having much fondness for most children's books and I still enjoy the movies, especially when they include Jonny Depp. XD

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

2010-03-09T21:18:00.000+09:00

For all I've read the beginning of this book at least seven times, I've only actually finished it twice. I still love it though. It's hard to summarize the story without retelling the whole thing. It's really long, and it takes you from the very beginning, with Dr. Manette being "recalled to life" through the French Revolution. It follows Dr. Manette's family and friends, including an old servant of his from before he was imprisoned. Everything is connected, but it's not done so that things are glaringly obvious. Minor characters in the beginning show up to play important roles in the end. Major characters are connected with those who are only briefly mentioned having played a part of the book's history.

A portion of the book deals with the French aristocracy, their abuse of power (and everything else), their vulgarity (which is amusing in the way the word has changed meaning in the last 100 years), and the way they looked down on the common (vulgar) people as less than their dogs. Though the commoners are starving, the Monseigneur has four men employed to feed him chocolate. A marquis (duke, I think) catches sight of a common girl he wants and causes the death of her entire family. Admittedly, I didn't study the French Revolution. I know it happened, I know some details about it, but really nothing past that. Still, that it happened makes sense. Really what confuses me is why it took so long to happen.

Dickens really captures mankind at its worst near the end. The revolution draws from these horrible crimes committed by the aristocracy, but once the king is taken down, once the nobles are all dead or in hiding, it doesn't stop, and the people don't seem to want it to stop. For the sake of more bloodshed, a wife is contemplating turning in her husband for having sympathies in a completely unjust execution, even though that husband has played a key role in starting the revolution. 52 heads a day, and the people are crying for more. Prisoners are released, cleared of their charges, and the crowds kill them anyway, or find new reasons to send the back to jail. All in the name of freedom, even though, by the end, it seems less free than it was to begin with.

My favorite character is Sydney Carton. He's a dead-look-alike for Charles Darnay, a marquis making his own living in London teaching French language and literature, but they couldn't be more different. Lucie, Dr. Manette's daughter, marries Charles, and, at least I think, Sydney idealizes the family. He spends days there, just sitting. He specifically asks Charles's permission to, when he feels the need, just enter the house and be with them, and just knowing that he's permitted to do that helps him get by. His life isn't particularly bad. He's some kind of assistant to a lawyer, who, while being his friend also manages to get ahead of him at every turn. We know he's hurting, and there are a few brief hints as to why, but it never comes out and says it. Sydney believes his life is wasted and that the only good part of his life is Dr. Manette's household. When Charles is arrested in Paris (crime being an emigrant, and also being part of the marquis's family who was particularly nasty to the family of one of the influential players in the revolution), Sydney follows the family and does what he can to save Charles... which is a really lame way of putting it, but if you haven't read it I really want you to and I don't want to spoil the ending!

It's not an easy book to read. I tried about five times before I managed to read the whole thing through in high school (granted, I started when I was eleven...). This time around, the edition I got on my reader (free Sony CLASSICS=suck) had typos, wrong words, and punctuation errors everywhere, so sometimes I had to go back and reread sentences before I could figure out what was supposed to be said. Still, even without that, the first book, "Recalled to Life," is incredibly dry. The second is better, and by the third, well I stayed up reading until 1AM even though I knew the ending.

I love his language. I love how it sounds in my head, even if I probably couldn't read it out loud smoothly to save my life. And the way everything ties together, the little things you'd forgotten about in the beginning, because they just seemed like scenery at the time, just dazzles me. And I seriously love Sydney, and I love (and hate) the ending.

Tuesday Evening

2010-03-09T17:13:00.000+09:00

Canterbury Tales is really long, and I really hate poetry, even when I try to amuse myself by sounding out words that are spelled strangely or tracing the origins of modern English words (there were some nifty ones, villain, curl, complexion, and humor among them). Anyway, I finished the intro, and now I'm moving onto something else that isn't rhyming for a while. Not that I don't find the subject matter interesting (I'm not sure what the common theory is, but it looks to me like Chaucer is making fun of his audience, which I find quite entertaining), but bleh. Took me way too long to read 39 pages of half-page text.

I have more bead projects to work on... I should finish those.... I want to build the puzzle though. :P Oh, and it's now back to cold and rainy. I'm betting it'll stop come Tuesday, and by the end of the month it'll be hot and miserable, cause that's how these things work, ya know? Ah well, it stopped me from going out and spending money. I wanted more cranberry juice and coke (not to mix), but the cranberry juice is really far. I was going to attempt to jog it for exercise, but not with an umbrella, thanks. I want to start jogging again though. It probably won't last long, especially once it gets hot, but I really miss it. It feels good to move around and just sweat sometimes.

Gah! It's cold!

Weekends are wonderful things

2010-03-07T14:38:00.000+09:00

Friday night, Lindsey and I wandered around for hours, waiting for free-time to start at karaoke so we could afford to go (1500 for 10-3 vs. 600 per hour). We found a really cool arcade up by Nerima, hung out there for a while, wandered some more, then stayed at karaoke for around 3 to 4 hours. It was fun, exhausting, and very needed.

Yesterday we went up to Toys R Us in Shimura and got a puzzle and a puzzle mat. It was a puzzle day, rainy and cold. The picture is of the four gods, suzaku, seiryuu, gembu, and the tiger that I can never remember, basically the phoenix, blue dragon, turtle-snake, and tiger. It's gorgeous, and really, really difficult. We got all the faces so far, and part of the border, but the phoenix tail is so big, and the background is all shades of brown, that it's really hard to find what goes where. We worked on it through two discs of firefly.. so 8 episodes... not sure how long that totals out to be.

Today I need to go to the grocery store, but I think I'm going to put that off a bit longer. I definitely have to go though, I need cat food and litter. I made hamburger helper for me, and mmm was it good. I don't think I'll need much for dinner, probably just eat edamame. I want to finish A Tale of Two Cities today, but I don't know if I will. I have a little under half left.

I went through the reading list the professor gave me and wrote down my own starter reading list. Some of these, not gonna lie, I'm very much not looking forward to.

Metaphyiscis, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Le Morte D'Arthur, King Lear, Shakespeare's sonnets, Paradise Lost, Faust, Les Miserables, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Anna Karenina, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Wasteland, Waiting for Godot, The Chronicles of Narnia, Catcher in the Rye, Death of a Salesman, Fahrenheit 451, Mists of Avalon.

I've read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but I really don't remember any of it. I was in elementary school... Mists of Avalon is likewise buried under dozens of other books about the same Arthur legend in my memory. I don't know that I ever finished reading Beowulf. I think I got distracted by wanting to learn Anglo-Saxon. And the only thing I remember about Catcher in the Rye is the one guy nodding.

Anyway, I have a few of those on my reader that I got for free, which means the editing is going to be horrible and there are going to be spelling errors everywhere (I don't think they edited those after they scanned them), but I guess I'll start with those. I need to grab my Shakespeare collection when I'm home. I don't remember what's all in the big book, but I know I at least have the sonnets in there. I've been wanting to read Le Morte D'Arthur for a long time, from back when I was on my Arthur kick in Jr. high, so I'm pretty excited for that one. Not so much so for Metaphysics. I'm more thinking "gag me with a spoon" on that one.

I love being able to keep a whole library on my reader. I'd be so upset about having to either transport all the books I have from home to here, or buying them here and having to transport them back or get rid of them somehow. Sometimes I really love technology. Now the ebook publishers and bookstores need to get over themselves and stop putting so much DRM on the files so the market can improve. Or somebody needs to come up with a library system... that would be awesome.

I think I'm going to go curl up with my book now. Yay for comfy couches, warm blankets, cats, and good books. One day I'll get a better copy of A Tale of Two Cities so I can read it without having to sift through typos (like "bad" instead of "had"). ^_^

Bone Crossed - Patricia Briggs

2010-03-07T14:18:00.000+09:00

Bone Crossed picks up right where Iron Kissed left off, literally at the same scene. Mercy has chose Adam, but the emotional injuries from her attack haven't quite healed. Her mom shows up, and right around then Stefan, the Mystery Machine driving Italian vampire who's friends with Mercy, appears in her living room, pretty much dead, as in second dead, not just vampire dead. This is the start of what looks like the vampires starting a war against Mercy. That night, a relative of her attacker, now dead and torn to bits, takes revenge on Mercy by graffitiing things like 'liar' and 'whore' on her shop. Zee discovers a set of crossbones painted on the door that his glamor can't cover. On checking the security cameras, they discover that it was a vampire who painted them, and eventually find out that it's a curse.

Offered a way out of town for a while, Mercy leaves with Stefan to help her old college acquaintance in another city deal with a ghost problem. The very first night she encounters the vampire other vampires are afraid of, and, after making the ghost problem even worse, to the point that the family has to leave their house, she flees and returns with Stefan.

The fight with the vampires is resolved, and so is the ghost problem. There is a bit more about pack magic (werewolves), as well as vampire and walker magic, but a lot of it felt like it came up in response to the plot rather than being a part of the plot.

I enjoyed reading Bone Crossed, though not nearly as much as I enjoyed the other three. The story was okay, but it felt rushed. The editing wasn't as clean, and the story just didn't have the same believability as the other three. I think it was partly, again, because of that feeling of convenient magic to fix or respond to the plot. I liked learning more about the walkers, and I felt like there could be a lot there, but it wasn't very convincing. Mercy wasn't nearly as interesting a narrator in this one, and it was the pace and quality of her narration even more than the content of what she said.

I really liked this series, and I love the ideas behind the characters. Still, part of me hopes Briggs will leave it be, as excited as I was to find a fourth book. Unless she improves the quality of the stories, I'd like to remember this series as books I through III.

Elric: Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock

2010-03-07T14:05:00.000+09:00

This is a collection of the earliest short stories/novelettes about Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock. Elric is the emperor of Melnibone, the last emperor as he has no heir and succeeds in destroying the last of Melnibone's cities in an act of vengeance during the first short story. According to Melnibonean tradition, he's not very good at being a member of his race, which is less bloodthirsty and more carelessly selfish with perverse, and often bloody pleasures. He's also too much a part of Melnibone to fit in easily among humans, though eventually he almost does.

He carries a runesword called Stormbringer, sister sword to Mournblade. Both swords were forged by Chaos to destroy/reform the world as it was and can only be wielded by the royal line of Melnibone. Stormbringer, for most of the stories, keeps Elric alive by feeding him souls of the people it kills. He is a sorcerer, which takes a lot of strength out of him to begin with, but he is also sickly to the point of not being able to survive without magic, which is apparently part and parcel with being albino in this story.

Elric is something of a tragic hero in the end, but while I wouldn't quite consider him an anti-hero, he definitely began with a strong potential for that. He's too concerned with the balance of Law and Chaos and with redemption for me to call him an anti-hero. As a Melnibonean, he traditionally serves Chaos, but with Chaos trying to destroy the natural course of Fate and the world, he fights along side Law. Then again, with lots of help from magical items like the Chaos shield, his runesword, and a nifty horn, all of which try to kill him, he ends up assisting Law in the remodeling of the earth and the end of mankind as it is known at the time. So it's hard to classify him as the average hero either.

To put it bluntly, the writing was terrible. Granted, the writer at the time was young and inexperienced (as he himself admits), but that doesn't change much--think Eregon, bad is bad, doesn't matter how old the writer is. Grammatically it's painful. The dialogue is cliche, corny, and incredibly unbelievable while at the same time committing the dreadful crime of over-telling almost everything, and telling it poorly. There are holes in the weaving of each story big enough to drive a Mac truck through, but that may be in part because they're short stories and don't, by their nature, have the size to fill in those holes (but still).

That said, I kept reading and I will read more of his shorts in the future because Elric is an interesting character with an interesting story. (There was an unrelated short in the middle, and lots of commentary in this volume, but they were irrelevant and fairly obnoxious, so I'm not going there.) Especially as a younger character, prior to the angst that pulls him officially out of the badass anti-hero category and into the whiny hero category, Elric has a lot of draw for me. It's almost refreshing to watch him take out his anger by destroying an entire city, the city he grew up in. That just doesn't often happen in fantasy, unless it's done by a villain.

The general ideas of the stories, I thought, were intriguing. Kinda like Harry Potter, I like daydreaming in the stories rather than reading them. I know there's a draw for the tragic hero--the one who's life is just so messed up that it seems it'll be impossible for him to redeem himself. At the same time, if you're going to go all the way out on a limb and make the character half-evil, go all the way out there and stop his whining. Give him a pair and then give him the strength of character to deal with it. I really don't like my heroes, tragic or otherwise, complaining about their lot in life or their guilt or what-have-you. Just a personal opinion there.

In great need of getting out of this city

2010-03-05T10:59:00.000+09:00

Counting to 10 only works when people aren't constantly interrupting the counting to tick me off. *sigh* I seriously need a break from here, all of these people, the tiny spaces. My coworker is driving me completely nuts the last two weeks, and that doesn't help. Someone moved in downstairs yesterday and pounding on the kitchen ceiling (?!?!?!), and that doesn't help either.

I went into my company's office yesterday to sign my new contract, and my boss asked me about my coworkers, so I breifly mentioned my issue with this guy - mostly that he treats me like an idiot child and is completely inflexible about doing things his way - and was told that the person before me had the same problem with him. Today, in one breath, he told me the same thing 4 times... a very common sense thing that, had I not already known what to do, I would have asked. It's incredibly difficult on a normal day not to snap back or at least glare. Today I had to leave the office and go to the bathroom to cool down. If he was super smart or even a trained teacher, I still wouldn't be happy with how he talks to me. Being as he is neither, it's infuriating.

In good news, though, I got accepted at Mercy! I have to take some undergrad classes, since the proram director is concerned about how narrow my exposure to lit studies has been (after reading through the reading list he gave me, I agree...), but I'll be able to start in the fall! Hopefully in three years I'll have a degree that lets me get out of this type of work. (I really don't mind the actual work part, it's the people and the fact that next to no one is actually trained to do their jobs, but they all think they know what's best and are completely unwilling to listen to other opinions. I don't know what's best, but I can recognize when something isn't working, and sometimes I might just have a semi-decent idea that might be worth at least trying.)

I'm crabby about work today. I was okay with it until he did that a bit ago, now everything's back to bugging me. I was completely indifferent to coming in next week to do grades, but now apparently we have a "meeting" in which he wants to tell me (probably four or five times) about ways he wants to change the first year curriculum. It would be less annoying if I could have some say over when these meetings happen, rather than him going "Let's have a meeting... now." (He's not my boss! Not by a long shot!) and if something that should take 5-10 minutes didn't take an entire hour.

It's good to know it's not just me, and that the woman before me found it worthwhile to mention to my boss. It's still frustrating, and no matter what I do or how polite I act, or how firm I am when I need to be, nothing changes. I'm more than willing to ask questions when I feel I don't understand something, and I've done so whenever the need arose. I really don't understand what makes him think I'm stupid or need to be told things repeatedly when any person of average intelligence would have already come to that conclusion already. I really could scream right now. *sigh*

Three more classes, and I have to find my boss at this school and talk to him about grades, and then I can forget that I work here until Wednesday, which I so very much need to do. Two weeks is really short, but even that long away from this city, I think, will do me a lot of good... I hope anyway. I need a break from people and crowds. I think I'm going to spend time in August (next vacation time) somewhere completely isolated for a few days, inclusive of no pushy male neighbors.

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

2010-02-26T10:58:00.000+09:00

The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family from their home in Oklahoma to California where they hope to start a new life after the bank took their farm. Tom is the second son, and he's just gotten out on parole when the book starts. He makes it home to find the former pastor, Casey, returned to the area and his family gone. He catches up with them at his uncle's house and finds them leaving for California. Their hopes are as high as they can be, considering their land just got taken from under their feet and they barely have $150 and a not-so-great car. Their journey pretty much starts with death. Grampa has a stroke the first night. They meet a couple on the road and join with them to make the going a little easier, but they end up having to split up before they reach California. Grandma dies before they get there, and the oldest boy leaves. They keep meeting with people who are leaving California, saying things like their entire family's died there and there's no work. By the time they reach it, the book has a really strong sense of hopelessness, but they keep going. They look for work, run away from the police and the bands of vigilantes who are burning "Okie" camps, and just try to survive.

I liked the book. I enjoyed reading it. I really liked the use of language between the narration and the dialogue, and it really seemed like the characters were very strong in their presence. Tom and Ma were my favorite. Sometimes it really seemed like Ma was less a person and more what the characters needed, but I think that was her purpose in the story, and it's not an unbelievable role at any rate.

It was also very frustrating to read. It got me thinking a lot about our history and how much, as a culture, we've tried to cover up or just ignore when we teach it. The industrial revolution and its impact on agricultural lifestyles is just one of those things. I think every culture has that - I know Japan does, and nobody ever tells the whole truth when it comes to war or hardships. Humans are a nasty bunch. When I finished reading The Grapes of Wrath, I remembered a comment on Facebook where someone had been talking about America's superiority to other countries, based on what sounded like cultural "morality," which is a load of horse shit (pardon the language). Humans are human, and like I said before, humans can be nasty creatures, Christian or not. Humans backed with an idea of righteousness and moral superiority are even worse.

Anyway, it was a thought provoking book. I'm glad I finally read it, but like 1984 and A Brave New World, I needed a break once I was done. I've finished Elric - Stealer of Souls and I found a new book in the Mercedes Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, so I'm reading that now. Next in my list of "Literary Classics" will probably be Dickens, I'm debating which one still. I have more Steinbeck (6 pack of short novels!!!), but I'd like a break from American authors for a bit. What I'd really like is to find some good fantasy that's well written! Briggs is great, so maybe I should ammend that to say good epic fantasy that's not first person and is well written. (Moorcock falls way short of the "well written" part of that.)

And on that note, I'll write review Elric - Stealer of Souls soon, but not likely before I finish Bone Crossed. I love reading her stuff! I almost missed my train stop today!! I'm so happy she wrote another one. I was content with the ending of Iron Kissed, but I was curious what would happen to all of them after.

Curriculum Experiment

2010-02-22T09:49:00.000+09:00

The entire foreign language learning process here seems to be memorize and repeat. I think this is helpful for the lower levels of the language, particularly with students who are lower level learners. With students who are actually learning the language and getting a grasp on it, I think that kind of memorizing and repeating just dulls the learning experience and doesn't permit growth in functional usage of the language. Granted, my experience with language education is pretty much limited to my time as a language student (which is a frighteningly large number of years....), and I have zero knowledge of teaching methods, so I may be wrong about some things. But it seems to me that if an intelligent student is merely repeating phrases and memorized conversations, they may be expanding their knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, but if you stick them in a real every-day situation, they're still going to have a lot of trouble pulling up those memorized phrases to function on the spot. I sure did.

So I'm having an experiment day in my classes today. We're a day ahead of the rest of the classes, so it doesn't interrupt the curriculum at all. My experiment's purpose is to put them on the spot (in a really controlled way cause they've never done this before) and make them have a conversation. I started with a theme, Spring Break, and gave them questions to think about. I had them write a short essay on where they were going, what they wanted to do, how long they would be staying, what the place is like, and any experiences in their chosen vacation spot, as well as anything they wanted to throw in. I gave them 15 minutes to write it, and then I had some girls read theirs from their desks. The four who read theirs did very well! I was impressed. The next part was making the conversation. I explained the scenario, talking on the phone about spring break, and demonstrated an example conversation with my co-teacher. Then I gave them an example outline and gave them 3 minutes to make an outline with their partners in a box on their paper. I had six parts, starting with a greeting, going through the questions I'd had them answer on the front page, and a farewell. From that and their paragraph I had them face their partner and talk on the phone. I told them not to worry about making mistakes, and had them repeat it as many times as they could in the time alloted to improve their conversation.

A few groups got it, and from what I heard they did it really well and had fun. That made me happy. I need to figure out a better way to introduce the outline though. They seemed to not know what to do with it. I asked my co-teacher, and she said that Japanese schools don't tend to use outlines, so they've probably never made one before.

I have two more classes today, one the same level as my first class, and one the next level higher. I'm pleased that it worked as well as it did the first time. I was worried that it would flop completely. I want to figure something out and propose it to the other ALT to add into the curriculum for next year, maybe two or three times in the year, just to get them introduced to the idea. Especially for the second and third year students, I think it would be really beneficial. So what if they've memorized dozens of pre-written dialogues. That means nothing if they can't use them when called to.

As a random off-topic note, I remembered to bring my headphones, but I forgot my mp3 player and apparently the music on my flash drive got deleted, so I'm being a jerk and pretty much just wearing the headphones as ear plugs.... and I'm still twitching. Gah! It really doesn't help that the desks are on top of each other and, like I said in my last post, it's dead quiet in here. That's a really bad complex to have in this country. I thought it was bad enough back in the states!

Tired to an epic degree

2010-02-22T08:33:00.000+09:00

I actually got a lot of sleep this weekend, but last night was really late and this morning was really early. The police were bored last night. Police in Tokyo ride around on bicycles, and they tend to stop people on bicycles and check registration. I've heard of expats getting stopped and asked for ID, but last night was the first night it happened. Right before I got stop, 4 cops rode by on one of the bigger roads. Apparently the boss sent two of them to follow me down the side road. Half of me is happy to know that my town is dull enough that the police aren't overly busy fighting crime, so they have time to patrol and talk to people. The other half of me was very annoyed with the twenty questions whilst I stood in the cold holding bags of groceries. Glad I had my ID on me though. I've forgotten my wallet a few times before... that would have been not good.

So, in my exhausted state today, it's going to be a challenge not to freak out in the office. It's too quiet, which means whenever someone picks up a coffee cup, I want to scream. Not only do they do the slurping that people do when a liquid is too hot (if it's too hot, blow on it! or wait!!!), they make extra noises that make me want to puke. I know I'm too sensative to it, and mostly I just stick in my headphones and do my best to ignore it. Right now it's too close to class start time, but I kinda want to knock the mug out of the guy's hand in front of me. We need a fan or some sort of white noise in here. It's way too quiet, and I know that the sounds annoying me is a bit rediculous. (Then again, they are extremely loud, even going by people who eat disgustingly loud back home... and mostly because they eat things that are way too hot and don't blow on their food... instead they slurp...everything.) Of course, I feel like a jerk with my headphones in all the time, but if I don't I get cranky and I start glaring at people.

Three classes today. I'm going to try to do some studying. I finished Grapes of Wrath as well, so maybe I'll write a review of that. Also, the guy downstairs who was giving me all that trouble is gone!! I'm so happy about that. I thought I was going to have to move, but now I don't have to, and my fan easily drowns out the guy's laughing next to me. ^_^ And he doesn't pound when I walk on the floor. Yay!

Productive lazy day

2010-02-11T21:02:00.000+09:00

The only thing I did really was walk this morning. It was a day off, and I crashed at my friend's place, so I had a 40 minute walk home this morning. It was nice, a little chilly but not bad. Other than that, I've pretty much spent the whole day watching Bones. After dinner I worked on some bead projects while watching Bones... I now have mom's birthday gift completely done, and a Minnie Mouse Christmas ball mostly done, I'm just missing a flower part for the chain. So... I'm out of bead projects for now, unless I want to make another Tigger or Snow White. I have to take some pictures of the recent stuff. I made a little devil bear last week. She's cute, and sparkly... and the wand really didn't work out quite right, but *shrug.*

I'm kinda realizing how attached I am to the idea of getting into that online program, and it kinda scares me. Realistically, I'm under qualified for the program, and I honestly have no way to pay for it. If I'm lucky and get even half of my fees covered, I'll still barely be able to afford a class a semester, which will put me at 6 years to graduate. I need to finish the FAFSA tomorrow. I've been putting it off because it freaks me out. I know I don't make a lot of money once you take out taxes and student loan payments... but I get the feeling the big number up there's gonna bar me from getting aid. I know there are people who need it more than I do. It's just frustrating.

Realistically, I should fill out the FAFSA just in case, but I know I shouldn't get my hopes up on even getting in. I was a Japanese major. I took 2 lit classes in undergrad. If I do get in, they're probably going to make me makeup a few undergrad classes, which I'm not opposed to, but we come back to this giant anvil called "Student Loans" that likes to drop down between me and what I want to do when it comes to anything school related. The only good thing is that I'm slowly seeing progress in paying it down.

Anyway, I'm going to go whole up with a book until I'm tired enough to sleep. I think I give up on Moorcock for tonight though. His writing is too crappy for me to put up with in my current state of pissiness.

I wanna know! (x3)

2010-02-08T19:16:00.000+09:00

I'm impatient. It's pointless since neither of the people I asked for recommendations has sent them yet, but I want to know, now!

I'm reading The Stealer of Souls at the moment. I'm about half way through. The writing... is mediocre at best, but I have to give him credit. He had a story to tell, and he told it. There's nothing fancy in the working of the stories (bunch of shorts), but I'm interested enough to keep reading them. Each one's gotten a little bit better. The biggest thing that's driving me nuts, though, is his lack of punctuation. If he uses it, and he likes to use dashes, he does it wrong. Most of the time, he just ignores it. Commas, please! I had to re-read a sentence three times for lack of a comma. That was how nonsensical it was! Editing is a good thing.

I'm so scatter-brained today. Ate way too much soy too. I think I could probably go to sleep now and be fine until morning. Waaaaaah!

Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus - Mary Shelly

2010-02-07T16:18:00.000+09:00

That's one book down that I should have read ages ago. Hm.. My thoughts.... I liked it, and I didn't like it... mostly I liked it. First, a short summary, in case you haven't read it.

It's sometime in the 1700s, and our narrator is R. Walton. Walton's ambition is to find passage through the arctic by boat. During this journey, he finds Victor Frankenstein adrift and half dead on a chunk of broken ice. Victor tells him the story of how he got there with the hope of curbing Walton's ambition. He was a happy child, obsessed with natural philosophy (science), and when he left home to study, he learned of a way to create life in an inanimate, organic, something. So he did. He created his monster, as it is referred to throughout the book. While he was creating it, he was in love with the idea. He didn't think it was horrible or disgusting to assemble a body from, basically, parts, and only once he'd put life into the monster did he find it ugly. This is the first time Victor goes stark raving mad, and the monster is set loose. His friend Clerval comes to the same university to study and helps Victor recover his sanity. Victor heads home in time to find his youngest brother has been murdered and one of the servants whom the family loved was blamed and executed for it.

Not too long after, Victor finds the monster, and the monster tells his side of the story. He was alone and lived in the forest for a long time until cold and hunger drove him to seek shelter among people. There he was feared and beaten, so he hid. During his time in hiding, he observed a family and helped them anonymously by bringing them wood so the brother could find work at another farm. He learned to speak and read from watching them, and eventually, lonely for companionship, made contact with the blind father. When the son returned and saw him, he beat him away, and the family left in fear. At this point, the monster went crazy with rage and burned the hovel down. He set out to find Victor and instead found his brother, killed him, and planted evidence on the first person he saw. He tells this to Victor hoping to gain some sympathy as well as a companion. He convinces him, by way of this story as well as threats to Victor's remaining family, to make him a mate.

Victor sets out for England to get a hold of some research he needs to complete a female version of the monster. He travels with his best friend, Clerval, and in Scotland they separate so he can work alone. When he's half way finished, he has second thoughts, not wanting to construct it in the first place. He believes that, despite what the monster has promised (that he will depart the company of men forever), things are more likely to happen that will lead to two of the monsters, stronger and sturdier than men, bringing evil on mankind. He refuses to complete the project and tears it apart while the monster watches. The monster promises that he will be with Victor on his wedding night, and that night murders Clerval. Victor is blamed for this murder, and after his ensuing insanity and illness, is found innocent and returned to Geneva.

He marries Elizabeth, and on their wedding night he believes the monster meant to kill him. Instead the monster kills Elizabeth, and as a result, his already old and tired father dies as well. Victor is locked away for a while, completely nuts, and when he comes out of it, he swears vengeance. No one will believe his story, so he hunts down the monster on his own. He's almost caught up with him when he is stranded on the ice block where Walton finds him. After telling his story, he dies of a fever, and the monster, always near by, visits his remains aboard the ship before it leaves. There he confesses his torment and the rest of his story that Victor didn't know.

The whole story is related by Walton in his journal. Victor tells him the story, and helps correct his notes. He has some letters as evidence, and tells what he recalls the monster telling of his side of the story. This is very definitely the style of the period in which the book was written. A lot of stories used to be written by means of a journal or letters or verbal retellings. Intellectually, I know this, but I've always had trouble believing those stories--mostly because you don't remember things word for word, and when you're going into twice removed quotations, well, it just looses credibility. It also irked me that the monster was so eloquent when, by all rights, he shouldn't have been. I understand why she did this, one of two reasons anyway. For one, there's rarely any difference in voice in this type of novel. It's a first person narrative the whole way through, but the different narrators rarely sound any different, unlike modern novels in which the author deliberately works on giving different characters different voices. She has a very soft way of writing, and so all of her characters speak that way. It's either a result of this writing style, or it was deliberate to give the monster sympathy.

I really felt that she did a good job making the monster sympathetic. He is gentle, but hideous and unloved. I've never read theories about this book, but I really get the feeling that that's the purpose behind it; nature vs. nurture. He loves the townspeople, he's drawn to help them and protect them, but he's so hideous and inhuman looking that they fear him and beat him. In isolation and anger, he turns to vengeance and takes it out on his creator who's abandoned him. Even in the end he speaks of how it pained him, a being who is inherently good driven to evil deeds, to perform those deeds on men who, to him, are beautiful. At the same time, you never know. Is he honest? The human characters doubt him. Is he just saying that so they won't kill him? Will he hunt men again, or will he, like he promised, go as far north as he can and burn himself? You never find out, neither do they. I'm going to go with the assertion that it was deliberately written that way.

It was definitely weird going into this book with all the preconceived images of Frankenstein's monster that I grew up with. The way he was described in the book really clashed with those images, and his gentleness and eloquence really threw me at first. He just wanted to be loved and to love back. He loved the world around him. He found everything to be beautiful but himself.

I'm glad she didn't go into the science of it. It's outdated to begin with, but I think it makes it more believable this way. The language wasn't too difficult, though some of the usage is incredibly archaic and sounds funny and downright wrong. It's still followable. There was none of the reading of an entire page and having to go back because I didn't have a clue what was being said, ala Dickens. If you like older literature, I'd say it's a good book to put on your list. If you're prone to falling asleep with long, overly detailed narratives, don't bother. Caffeine kept me awake through about half of it, standing on the train the other half. It's one of those drawn out books that you have to sift through to get the story. It's definitely not one that I would say to read for the language, go for Tolkien or Jane Austin for those. Speaking of Jane Austin, I have to get my hands on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I love Pride and Prejudice, and zombies are just the thing to spice that sucker up. Hehe. I don't think I did a review of it, but Northenger Abbey was another good one by her, especially if you've read a lot of the Gothic romances. I had a lot of good giggles in that one.

Next on my reading list are the two Elric books I bought, and possibly Faust. I forgot I had that one. I want to try to read A Tale of Two Cities again, but I'm not sure I want to take on Dickens just yet. I'm having trouble writing normally now, since the only modern author I've read lately is Stephen King. I tend to start writing with strange sentence order and weird word selections when I read too much old stuff. :P Nobody wants to read a book that sounds like a bad version of Dickens. I think I'll wait till I'm done writing my current story before I tackle that.

The Dark Tower - Stephen King

2010-02-02T17:53:00.000+09:00

So, I finished it. I liked the ending. Well, clarify, I liked Roland's ending. The other characters' was too soft--fitting, in a way, but still too discordant with the rest of the story. I liked the story, for the most part. It kinda felt forced in some places, and I really didn't like him pulling reality into it like he did. It made it feel less real to me, but I can see why he did it, and I can respect how he did it. I don't like the use of three massive deus ex machina(s?) in one series like that. First, it was ka. I can accept that. Fate, destiny, what-have-you. I actually kinda liked it, because not only did it help the characters, it also screwed them over royally some times. So, first we have ka. Then we get the author as a character sending hints and messages to our heros (..... no, just, gah!), and in the end, on top of this, talismans, relics, etc., we have telepathy. That's not to say I didn't enjoy how some of it played out, and I'm not opposed to the use of deus ex machina (God-hand, if you will, for those of you who might not know that term), that was just too much.

So, we come to the conclusion. There was no better way it could have ended. What's in the top room of the Dark Tower? Haha, suckers, like you'll ever be able to find out. King, however, doesn't exactly appreciate the intelligence of his reader. See, Roland there, he has the horn now. He bent down to pick it up (in a time paradox that wouldn't work the way it was set up...), so I hope you get what I meant. Uh... yeah Steve, we got it without your explaining it in the afterword.

I have zero problems with character deaths, but it needs to be believable. Nobody gets shot in the head, then ten minutes later has the strength and wherewithal to pick up a gun and shoot someone else in the head. I'm sorry, nobody, not if they're human. His foreshadowing is mediocre, and by the time something happens, I kinda felt like he'd been beating me in the head with it for so long that I was just glad it was over. Honestly, the two things that kept me reading were 1) I wanted to know how Roland was going to make it to the Tower and how the end would play out, and 2) I read 6 out of 7, I'd better finish the series.

I still hold that it's a good series. On the whole, my favorites are The Gunslinger, The Waste Lands, and Wizard and Glass. Those are three I will definitely read again. I recommend it, at any rate.

That was a bit of a lame review, but I don't want to give away the particulars of what happens. There is very little focus on character growth and development at this point, so the entire book was pretty plot driven. I think the biggest thing I was pleased with was the ending. I was worried about it, not gonna lie there, but once it came, I was very pleased (until I read the "Did you get it????" bit in the afterword).

On to my next set of books! I'm currently reading Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, finally, and I grabbed a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, because Steibeck is finally in ebook!!! I also got two books by Michael Moorcock, Elric: The Stealer of Souls, and Elric: To Rescue Tanelorn. I read Elric of Melnibone last year, and I really liked the premise. I've been told his writing has improved, which means wonderful things, because as much as the writing style was less than fantastic, I still loved the story. I can't seem to find any of the Earthsea books in ebook, which is a bit of a bummer. I might have to cave and buy a hard copy instead, because I really want to read them.

And I'm on my last stages of editing my statement of purpose. *cringe* I'm aiming to submit that tonight. I had to send my transcript requests by registered mail, finally, because nowhere faxes overseas. Ah well, hopefully that doesn't take too long. I was going to be productive for the rest of tonight, but I'm thinking it's going to be a sit down and read night... after I cook my chicken.

OH! And it snowed last night! I have pictures. I have to upload them and show. Yes, this is a big deal. We have palm trees and bugs the size of small dogs here.

You guys who love me

2010-01-29T18:58:00.001+09:00

Help! Okay, so, the panic is ended. I have to take the Lit GRE still, but I can apply without it. I just have to find a way to take it during my first semester or so. And! The program head wants to see my application. *shriek!* So I need to finish it!!!!

I'm stuck on my statement of purpose.
State briefly your primary purpose in undertaking advanced study

My purpose in pursing graduate studies is to attain a degree which will allow me to take a step toward my career goal as a teacher of English literature at the post secondary level. I am interested in both English as a language and the contexts it has been used in throughout history. I expect to broaden my knowledge of English literature and gain a better understanding of it, particularly in periods and genres in which my current knowledge is weakest.

It needs to glow a little more than that. I'm working on it tonight with Jen, but any feedback (ASAP!) would be hugely appreciated. I want to get this sent in like now, especially with the department head asking for it. Kyaaa!!

I've requested two letters of recommendation, but I'm going to write my old Japanese prof for a third, just in case. She was my main teacher, so all things considered, I should be asking her anyway. I'm just scared to write the letter. She was a keigo Nazi (formal speech), but she's so awesome. I don't really know why I'm freaking out, but I am. Cause I want in. Cause this just made my suck week so much better.

I'm off to buy myself a grocery store pizza now. Help me, please!!!!!

Uh huh, Yup

2010-01-27T21:48:00.000+09:00

8 o'clock is bad too. Seriously, I don't think this guy works. He keeps me up laughing at midnight. It'll be the middle of the afternoon on a weekday or the evening and he thumps like an ape if I use the trampoline. I was barely bringing my feet off of it and, sure enough, after 20 minutes he'd apparently had enough. Makes me want to be an ape and just jump on the floor, see how he likes it without the buffer. I finished my 30 minutes and tried following a dance in a music video Lindsey and I have been trying to do at Karaoke lately. I got the first bit down. Did a few yoga stretches. I feel better, but I don't feel like I worked out as hard as I wanted to. You know how sometimes you just want to sweat and feel your muscles work? I need to find a way to do that a few times a week. I stretched and got warm enough to be in a tank top without the heater on, but I really don't feel like I worked out.

And apparently Ophelia wanted a turn on my lap, because she climbed up my guitar case and meowed at me to pick her up off of it. She's now laying down and meowing at me to stop typing and pet her. As soon as I stop petting her, she gets offended. Haha. Silly cat. They're both very vocal today.

やる気なし

2010-01-27T19:40:00.000+09:00

That's what we say here to describe what I am today, "yaru ki nashi." Absolutely zero drive to do anything. I'd say it's one of those days, but this whole month is accumulating those days, and I'm finding it a little irritating. At the same time, it's too cold to go out and wander - that and it's dark, which doesn't usually bug me so much, but cold and dark for some reason really does. My weight's really bugging me today, and I would really like to join a gym, but that's not going to happen in this country, ever. Not paying that much money to be a freak show, pass. I miss running every day though. I wish I knew of a good park... or any decent sized park with a loop that I could run around... put my headphones on and close my eyes and I don't care if I'm a freak show. The only one I can think of though is around the imperial palace, and that's... actually not too far out of my way coming home from work, but I'd have no where to dump my stuff. I could try the station. It'd probably end up costing me at least $4 a day, or more, in train fare and locker money. Still cheaper than a gym. Do I want to run around with that many people though? That answered that. No. It's really busy down there. It's smack in the middle of Tokyo business central. Gaaah, I want to exercise and it's so hard to do here!!! I'm tempted to bust out the trampoline right now, but I really don't want to deal with jackass (pardon the French) downstairs being an ape. Maybe I'll do it anyway, just turn my music up louder if he gets annoying.

I know it screams geek

2010-01-25T22:14:00.001+09:00

But I'm ridiculously happy to find Steinbeck finally available on ebook! Well, legally anyway, which tend to be better since half the scanned versions, the software messes up the words, switches words, screws with the spelling, and formats horribly. The other half are hard to see cause they're picture scans which don't work well on anything but a computer screen, therefore I can't use them on my reader.

Now to find a copy of Canterbury Tales with a parallel translation, and Beowulf...well... Anglo Saxon's still a bit on the uh.. can't read more than a word here or there side of things, so a main translation would be super, with the Anglo Saxon at the back so I can read it and giggle like the nerd I am.

I've also added several books to my reading list (aside from more Steinbeck and Canterbury Tales, which I'm not sure how I managed to get this far in life without reading...) after taking the sample GRE Lit test. I know I won't ever catch up to half the stuff on there, because poetry and I will never EVER get along, but there were things like Heart of Darkness and Frankenstein that came up, and I really was rather appalled, much like the whole Canterbury Tales thing, that I've never gotten around to reading them. Kinda wish I hadn't used up my 100 free books on Gothic stuff I've already read (though I really do love Jane Austin and the Brontes... they're worth it...) and Shakespeare... wait, no I don't. I just want more books, and I wish they weren't so stinking expensive. The Sony store has them fairly well discounted, and obviously I can't possibly get hard copies of all the books I want right now - really am a fan of the Penguin classics editions though... I like that they're all the same height. It makes them easy to sort on a bookshelf.

I digress. Anyway, I know which books I'm likely to get with the rest of my Christmas money (thank you Aunt Tracy!!), and yay for Penguin (see, good publisher!) compiling Steinbeck's shorter novels in one package. It's 11 bucks, but each book separate is over 5, actually I think The Perl was 8... Grapes of Wrath is not included, obviously, but, yeah. I also want to get The Stand (Stephen King) cause now I'm interested in it. It's loosely connected to The Dark Tower series, and he wrote it before he started on the whole rabbit trail he's gone after with the last few books (*le sigh*). I really... I can follow it, I can respect it for its creativity and the way it ties everything together... I just don't like it. It stole a lot of the magic of the series for me. I still wanted to cry reading it last week, and had to stop until today after Zeke died cause I knew I'd cry again cause I really do love (most of) the characters. I don't like fantasy and magic neatly tied up. It irks me.

Wow, I really can't stay on one topic. I need to write my "brief summary of why I want to attend a graduate program." Here's a quicky:

I currently teach English as a foreign language in Japan, and I want to pursue my career goal of post secondary education in English Literature. I am also interested in English as a language and the historical context of when and how it has been used over time. I expect to broaden my knowledge of literature in English, particularly in periods and genres that I am weakest in, as well as gain a better understanding of how to analyze it.

That was lame. I know it's good to talk about your strong points, but as far as what's considered "literature" (I actually do hate that lump term, rather how it's used... isn't anything written technically "literature"?) all I've got are the British Gothic writers, and only a few of them at that. Dickens and I, not friends. Kinda like poetry and I... though I can deal with Dickens a bit better... he's just long winded and boring. Good stories though. At least I can understand what he's trying to say. I don't know what else to write!! I need to stop putting this off. I need to work on that (I literally thought it up as I typed that - first draft, promised myself I'd do one before bed), and take the GRE Lit (at least it's not the general test...), which as far as I've seen, they're more concerned with the scores as a benchmark and a sign of ability to succeed in graduate studies... which is good cause I was getting the analytical questions right, just not the identification ones.

I also need to do my income tax report, overseas income thing that I have to send to the IRS so they don't think I'm scamming them, which means I have to dig out my pay stubs (glad I kept them, but I'm missing my last one - they never gave it to me -... I have the stamp in my bank book from the wire though) and play with a calculator... several times cause somehow I always manage to add things up wrong. I also need to print those forms... note for work tomorrow. Then I need to fill out the FAFSA, and can you believe I paid almost $6,000 in interest alone on my loans last year? Seriously, how does the Japanese government expect me to pay them over $400 a month with that? I'm really really hoping that I can get some sort of grant, cause I really don't want to take out more loans, unless they're subsidized so I'm not responsible for the interest that accumulates while I'm a student, but even then... no more loans for me. I was actually a bit shocked when I saw that report from the loan company. I never did the math, mostly cause it depressed me. Had I been able to get a decent job while in school, I might have been able to pay off the interest before it got as bad as it did.

Money's stupid. That's my conclusion. Speaking of money, I bought myself lots of fruit today. Apparently my body wanted it, cause my brain shut off till I was at the register. The apples were on sale though, and kiwis weren't too obscene. I have strawberries in the fridge from the other day, and some kind of weird apple pear hybrid, so I think I'm going to get up a little early and make myself a fruit salad for breakfast. I'll probably be digging into my comfort cookies at work (bought last week on my terrible horrible no-good very bad day) cause that's not going to last till lunch, but it'll be amazing! Add cranberry juice and mmmm!

I ramble a lot, don't I? Are you guys actually managing to follow? Cause I've been told my topic jumps are a bit confusing sometimes. I can't imagine what I sound like when I talk and ramble. At least in print, my grammar isn't atrocious, and sometimes I do actually look back at what I wrote and wonder how much sense it made. Not that I often change what I wrote, but at least I can if I need to/want to/feel inclined to. How do you not end a sentence with a preposition? I'm so glad that rule has changed. It would require the rethinking of the entire structure of pretty much every other sentence! And I'm glad firefox has the spell check thingy now. I kept spelling sentence with an "a," and apparently my spelling is worse than I thought... though I had no idea that "waive" did not mean the flailing motion with a hand... Gah, how am I an English teacher? And why are water currents and flailing motions spelled the same? That makes no sense!

I'm going to bed before this becomes a short novel. Night!!

It's weird

2010-01-24T22:05:00.000+09:00

I'm not even sure what exactly it is, but I feel like I'm finally in charge of my life. I'm flat broke, cause I've spent way too much money this month, I've already taken $100 out of my savings because my other money went to bills that were way higher than I expected, and I'm 3 weeks from payday. Yet I really do feel like my life is finally mine and, at least somewhat under control. I'm not really sure what the difference is.

The guy downstairs is a jerk. He likes to pound on the ceiling if my music is on, especially if I jump on my trampoline. It doesn't seem to matter what time of the day it is. Today it was noon. He was really pissed. That was the loudest he's pounded, and there was screaming, but it came through the floor so I couldn't understand what he said. I called my landlord to get the light outside my door fixed. As far as I'm concerned, it's the middle of the day, and unless I'm cracking the plaster in the ceiling, I have the right to listen to my music at a reasonable level and exercise in my own place. (I blasted Disturbed and turned up the sub woofer on the floor after I was done... that was spite though. I'm not usually anywhere near that loud.) His timing today was really bad. 20 minutes into my cardio workout meant I was full of adrenaline and whatever other brain chemicals get pumped during cardio. That meant another spike of adrenaline when he hit the floor and screamed, which made my legs and hands really shaky. It was okay till I stopped 10 minutes later, then I realized I couldn't stand up on my own. I was livid.

I would respect it if he came up and talked to me like a civil human being, but I'm not sure someone who would pound and act like an ape like that is capable of being civil. I've seen him outside my door, he came two or three times one weekend, but I refused to answer cause it was night time. I'd talk to him, provided the door was locked so it doesn't open all the way and I'm on the inside of it, but only if he's going to be civil. If I'm breaking the plaster, I'd quit. I don't think I am, because the liquids in my room don't even move when I jump. If anything's damaging his apartment, I'd think it would be whatever he's hitting the ceiling with. Now that the adrenaline's out of my system though, I'd rather deal with the pounding and let him fume. I don't want to talk to him. I don't want him seeing me. I doubt he'd do anything, for one cause he's Japanese and for two cause he mostly just pounds on the wall and I'm not even 100% sure it was him coming to my door that day, I just assumed. Still, my "I'm a single woman living alone" instincts are a little high from living in Ypsi. At least the light outside is fixed. I carry my keys defensively from the time I hit the staircase, sometimes before then. I don't open my door all the way, actually I rarely answer my door. I just don't like that I have to deal with an asshole living downstairs. I need to exercise, and it's my home. If the landlord tells me to quit, then I will, but during the day, as long as the landlord doesn't say anything, I'm going to exercise. I don't know when he's home or sleeping or not, and he's being an ape so I'm not going to put myself at risk by going and asking him.

Oh the times I wish I had a boyfriend. For some reason, that actually has weight here. Send the boy down to yell at him. I don't even have guy friends who are close enough to do that for me. I suppose I should ask the two I have what I can do about it though. Anyway, I'm annoyed because it makes exercising not as fun, but I really want and need to exercise every day. I can't do it outside cause there are too many people. I can't afford $100 a month for a gym membership, and seeing as there are none near here it's a moot point. I'm not pounding on the floor, I'm jumping on a trampoline. It probably creaks the floor, and the noise is probably annoying, but you know what, the 1st floor rooms are cheaper for a reason. Grr! He makes me mad.

And that was a random topic. I was going to mention that I did a bunch of cleaning yesterday, and I was very comfortable today. Today I played with my cats, did some writing, played video games, and watched Bones. I'm getting addicted to that show. It's pretty interesting. Ophelia's got a cut on the back of her neck that's not healing well, and I'm a little worried about it. I think the worst that'll happen though is that it'll scar. The scab keeps getting split or chewed off (by Soushi). It was originally under a tuft of hair, but that hair got ripped off (likely by Soushi) and now it's an exposed scab. :( I want to say it was from the cone she had when she got fixed, but I'm not sure. I can't imagine what else it would be from though. It doesn't look like something cut her or Soushi bit her there.

Ugh, long day of work ahead of me tomorrow. For the next few weeks, it's pretty much solid one on one interview testing. SUCK! I was supposed to work on figuring out how to grade said tests over the weekend, but I didn't. Maybe I should do a little of that before I hit the sack. I have to start first period, so I won't have much time to do anything before I have to start them. Stupid! I hope the girls actually study. I literally showed them the sheets I would be using and told them when they came up with the right answers, but let's see if they bothered studying it. I can't forget to bring the timer either. I should probably get a second one and just leave it at work. I need mine for cooking and exercising. I wish my back was strong enough to do sit-ups. I like doing push-ups, but I've lost all of the strength in my arms, and my back never liked sit-ups. Plus, it always hurt my tailbone... I really like jumping, but I also really don't like people pounding and yelling. There's no safe time, but I guess I could give it a shot tomorrow after work, see if he fusses. 4:30 in the afternoon... seems like a safe time to me, but last time he did the whole pounding thing again. I have not nice words for him. They would come out in a very angry very loud stream of mixed languages given the chance.

And, I really should go to bed. Long day tomorrow, and I'm still fighting a cold. At least I only have 3 classes, but I think I'm supposed to be recording one of the listening tests too... Don't see why we don't just do that Friday when we only have two periods of teaching the whole day. *eyeroll*

Ophelia playing

2010-01-14T17:22:00.000+09:00

The video quality is pretty poor.. I took it with my webcam, which doesn't do well auto focusing, and then had to change the file type, so it got kinda blurry... but yeah, this is what I was talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZsffeVwq2g

Thinking

2010-01-14T16:49:00.001+09:00

I'm doing lots of thinking. I've narrowed down my grad programs choices (not that there were many to begin with...) to two, both online, both really stinking expensive >< One is a Master's of English Literature at Mercy College in New York. Actually all but two of the classes I would be taking sound really interesting. Two sound like... well... necessary boring stuff. If I have to take the stupid poetry class due to scheduling... I think I may actually just take a semester off. -_- Pass on that, thanks. The other program is a Graduate Certificate in Children's Literature. I want to take every one of those classes so badly!!!!! But it's not a degree program, which means I'd be completely on my own for tuition, and slim chance of me getting a job. At least with a Master's I can teach at a community college and maybe even a university. Oh, but those classes look so fun and interesting, and I think if/once I finish the master's program, I may take them anyway! Fables, fairytales, the art of picture books, fantasy in children's literature - there is nothing about those that does not sound amazing! I think I'm going to steal the reading lists anyway and read some of the texts for fun. I still want to find a good copy of the Grimm's fairytales... that's not $100...>_<

So, actually, I'm pretty sure I've selected which program I'm going to do. I want to do the children's lit one, but I'd still love the English lit one, and I can actually use that when I finish with it. Children's lit can come later. Now all I need to do is hope and pray that the FAFSA goes through and they give me money, haha. It's over $2,000 for one class.... both schools are pretty much at the same price range. If I can get a grant, I can take two classes a semester, at least until I'm at the all lit classes point, then I'd only have time for one, cause holy cow are there a lot of books that I haven't read in there! If I can't, well, I start saving next month just in case and take one class. $350 a month, I calculated it on the train ride home today.... *whimper* I can do it though. My taxes for last year are done this month, and if I put just $100 aside a month for taxes starting February, they won't be nearly as painful when they come again in June... (I hope...) I just won't be going out as much, and this winter is my last hurrah for going to concerts... though Vamps just announced their 2010 tour dates, and I am entering in the lottery for tickets (I so did not join the fanclub just to be in a fanclub! I want to see them!!). I'd be fine with one show. If it comes down to a pinch, I can lower my current loan payments, and I do have some reserves in the bank already.

Okay, I'm going to put it out there, one of the hardest things about being an adult is managing money. I was good with it until I came here as a student, and even then, I returned with enough of my loan money left to cover all of my tuition for summer classes plus my rent for two months, so actually, I was still pretty good back then. Living away from where my life was, you know, where I had a bed, a dresser, a mirror, shower curtains, blankets, the list goes on, was really expensive at first. A couch that does not smell like cat urine and a fridge that doesn't freeze my carrots and melt my ice cream are the only two things left, and thankfully those are getting taken care of, and then I think my spending should go down a lot this year. The cats are both fixed, and barring anything I don't want to think about, I'm hoping we won't see the vet this year. They're completely indoor, so I don't really see the reason to give them vaccinations every year. It's not like they're including something for heartworm or anything in there. And actually, a decent fridge will save me money in the long run. I throw away so many veggetables, it's rediculous! And if I can buy popsicles in bulk and the grocery store, it'll stop me from buying them at the combini when I'm dying of heat. :P

I wanted to move, to be honest, since my contract for my apartment is up in August, but I want to go to school more. If I can get my tution covered with a grant, then I still can, but moving would cost at least $2-3,000, not counting what my current landlord will likely charge me in damages (though personally I think the extra $30 a month that I pay for the cats should cover the little bit of scratching on the walls and floors. It's not like they do it deliberately, and there really isn't that much of it, but apparently they're really fussy here.) Well, either way, it's lots of saving up for me now. I'm excited though. I need to finish the application, order my transcripts (all 3 of them... at least I don't have to get the ones from the university I went to here), beg for recomendation letters, write why I want to study (I have no clue what I should write for that... I like reading? It sounds fascinating? I want to be a professor?), and send it away with $40 and lots of prayers. Oh, and I have to take the GRE lit test... they say that score doesn't technically count though, it's just a benchmark.

I love how much Ophelia wants to play! haha. First thing in the morning, I sit down to eat my breakfast, and she's right there with her toy, meowing at me to throw it. She just nearly fell off the ladder while I was writing this, poor clutz. Now both of the toys I was throwing are stuck on the ladder, and she's attacking the feather stick. I like those, cause even she can amuse herself with them. She's really bad at amusing herself, but yeah, she picks up one end, the stick moves, and the tail at the other end catches her eye, so she triest to chase it with the feather end stuck in her mouth. It's quite comical. They ate the poof at the other end, and the peach fur one Lindsey got to go with the feather one, but the feathers have lasted surprising long. Destructo boy must like the toy not to destroy it in 30 minutes..... oh Soushi....

Since I'm already writing a novella here, I'm gonna babble briefly about my new writing scheme. I had so much fun in November, and it felt so good to write, even when I wasn't sure where to go with my story or how to write a scene, and it still feels good to look at what I have, over 50,000 words (100 or so pages in MS Word), and know that I wrote it. It's not good, but I'm going to print it once I get back to my other school (that lets me use the printers that print fast enough that printing a chapter a day won't get me in trouble) I'm going to print it out (a chapter a day) and start working on editing it. I really can't edit on a computer screen. I need the actual paper so I can scribble on it. Anyway, so I made myself an excel sheet to keep track of my word count, and a graph. One line tracks how many words I wrote in a day, and one line tracks the total words. My writing software does this too, sorta, but it's fun to watch it accumluate. My goal is, again, 50,000 in a month. Already, just after two days, I've taken an idea I've had for years, beaten the crap out of it, completely changed the setting, and gotten a good start. Science fantasy, hehe, don't ask. I'm excited though. I wrote for the first half of my train ride home. That's one good thing about writing (and reading) on the train, it makes the ride go fast.

I'm gonna watch Ophelia stalk a piece of leather that's attatched to her mouth for a while, then get on attacking my list of things I have to do today. Miki live tomorrow, and payday!!!! Yay, I can buy the shelf I've been pining for and go hunting for a used fridge!... and groceries :P I'm making rice for curry at the moment. It's taking too long. That's part of why this post has carried on this long. Gah, I need to film this. It's hillarious!

The good, the bad, and the really cold

2010-01-12T21:48:00.000+09:00

True to form, I'll start with the good :P The good is that, in reply to my email requesting a transfer and inquiring about a visit home in March, my boss informed me that he will support my continued employment at my current positions for next year. Yay, job! Also good is that they want me to work the camps again, and they're already asking about my availability!! (Not that I know it... at all...)

The bad - I hate my commute! But nobody's leaving or transfering (not much work here, no work in the states, nobody's moving around much, it seems), which means there are no Tokyo based positions opening up, though my boss is now aware that I'd much prefer one.

The really cold. Yes, it's really cold. It's not Michigan cold by any means, but it's wet, and my walls are crappy and uninsulated wood. All of the heat goes up, which means with a blanket on my lap in my loft I was toasty, but down where my bed goes and where my computer is, two blankets isn't enough. I got tired of wandering around and beating up monsters though. I think there was something crawling around in my heater, cause it shorted out twice and the cats were far too interested in it.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I got Ophelia a collar to replace the one Soushi broke (sturdier this time, I hope), and she hates it! It's funny. It's green, and actually brings out her eyes... which I didn't think of. I just went "Oh! Cheap... and GREEN!" It's pretty on her though. Soushi (might) get a new one for his birthday (too?). I like having the bells on them so I know where the heck they are, and Ophelia's has a double loup that Soushi can't break to get the bell off. Or I might just find a cheap bell and stick it on the loup with his name capsule. I still want to get them engraved tags, but that's more money than I want to spend right now, and I'd have to go to the cat store in Ikebukuro, and the women who work there really irritate me.

On the cat note, Soushi was sitting on my folded up bedding watching my video game for a few minutes. There was one part where a dolphin shot out of the water, and his head jerked up with it. Then my characters got to talking and not moving, and apparently he got bored and wandered off :P Ophelia cuddled with me for 5 or so minutes until I required both hands to play my game. Then she got offended at being neglected so, and she ran off. Now she's meowing at me, and Soushi's trying to crawl onto my computer desk from my lap.

No work tomorrow. I have to try to get up earlier though. Last night I went to bed at 8 to fix my sleep, and my hips were hurting around 3ish this morning so I rolled onto my back and had some wickedly horrible nightmares. No more of that, thanks, pass. I wish I had the space for a real bed. Hopefully it's not too cold out tomorrow so I can get some running done.

Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susanna - Stephen King

2010-01-12T09:43:00.000+09:00

Wow, okay, it's been a bit since I read this. Book 5 in the Dark Tower series, it's a bit of a shift from where it seemed the other books were going, well, at least 3 and 4. It did keep up the story-book atmosphere from book 4, only this one was more comic-bookish. The gunslinger's party goes to this town, which is supposidly a representation of a town in Maine? and they're about to have half of their kids abducted by mechanical wolves. So the basic story is about the gunslingers checking out the town, deciding whether or not to help, and then planning the battle. It's a big lead up into the fight, and then they leave the Calla.

Book 6 is about Susanna and Mia, a demon who becomes mortal and possesses Susanna so she can steal her baby, who is half demon. I've never been a fan of Susanna, but King did do some developing of her character ~~finally~~ in this book. During the battle in book 5, Susanna makes an agreement with Mia to stay in control of her body, and once the battle is over, Mia whisks her away through the Unfound Door and viouala, we're back in New York, and Susanna now has legs. I'm not sure what he used to explain this, but Mia is apparently taking over her body, literally? Anyway, it's a lot of them getting around the city and walking into a nest of vampires and other dark creatures so Mia can have her demon baby. Finding out about the baby was a bit of something that made me hit my head on my desk, but that's kinda how book 6 (and book 7 so far) turned out. The rest of the party splits up, one part is supposed to go back to Maine and one is supposed to go after Susanna in New York. Deus ex Machina (aka ka or fate) switches who goes where, and Jake and Callahan end up going to New York while Eddie and Roland end up in Maine.

I forget where exactly the book left off, cause I'm part way into 7 already, and I didn't have to ride the trains most of the last month so I haven't been reading at all lately. I will say, though, that I liked 5 better than 6. 4 is still my favorite, and I don't like where 6 and 7 went. The writer is already very much in any story, and it bugs me a little when the writer makes a character of himself and sticks it in there. It ties the worlds together nicely, but I almost didn't want them to be tied together. He's already got the Dark Tower and the beams tying the worlds together. I didn't like how he put himself as the writer of the story into the story. I can follow it, and I'm sure some people really liked it, but it took away alot of the books' believability for me. Part of the reason I can get into fantasy is because it's fantasy. It doesn't have to be rational or justified. I don't like that he justified his fantasy by putting himself in the story as the writer of the characters. He is the writer of the characters, but, okay, I'm doing a bad job of explaining what he did. He's got a character called Stephen King in the story. This character wrote all of his books, and he's part of one of the beams holding up the Dark Tower. Characters that he created, and hasn't created yet, come and talk to him and he sends them messages in the future, and it really smacked of deus ex machina - which gives the Dark Tower series two really big ones.

I don't dislike the series because of it, but it did kill a good bit of what I liked about the series. It's not bad, but I thought it could have been better, even had he just left the worlds untied as they were.

Anyway, we're now between classes and everyone wants to tell me about their holiday, so I should go.

Running Around

2010-01-06T15:43:00.000+09:00

I made myself exercise today. I'm 10 kilos above what I was when I came (I'm thinking in kilos, cause it's less painful), so yeah, diet and exercise for me. No wonder nothing fits right.

Christmas and New Years were fun. Disney Sea was really crowded, so we only managed two rides, but it was very Christmasy, and that's what I wanted. New Years we spent in Shibuya - mmm steak and eye candy. I drank a tad bit too much at karaoke, around when my stomach was empty from dinner, and tripped, so I have a nasty nasty bruise on my leg. Other than that though, and the whole having to walk an extra 20 minutes cause I was having to sleep at Lindsey's house while my friend was over, it was really fun. Anything involving karaoke and steak and friends though, really can't beat that.

I have a few more things on my list of stuff to do today. I started translating again for a few fan communities of bands I really like. Not five minutes after I posted, I remembered why I stopped doing that. Man are English speaking fans annoying sometimes. Not all of them, but some just get these attitudes, like they either know everything, or they deserve to have everything. Either way, it makes me want to smack them. I need the practice though. I really should get on with the studying again.

Ah, well. I think I'm going to do some writing, then make dinner. I really REALLY want a bigger fridge. I can't keep anything in mine, and I was just thinking it'd be nice to make a chicken salad, except I have no room for lettus or tomatoes in my fridge. Grrr.

Earthquake

2009-12-18T06:53:00.001+09:00

I~m really hoping that was why Ophelia kept me up all night chirping. I doubt it...but I can hope. I~d like sleep sometime.

Anyway. Ophelia~s an it now and home from the vet - hence the possible 30 minutes of sleep. No damage from the quake so this morning is almost doable. I couldn~t leave my apartment yesterday so all of my presents are going to be late. Sorry!

And that~s the current (brief) update on my life... Today~s going to be so much fun. (¬_¬)

Ready-to-help teacher Chris is so very much still in bed today

2009-12-01T09:23:00.000+09:00

That could make the day interesting. I'm so tired. I feel better than I did yesterday morning, but not by much. This weekend was too short and too busy. I have a four day weekend coming up, and, well, Sunday will be painful (test that I haven't studied at all for) but Friday and Saturday I intend to sleep until I'm healthy again.

I won nanowrimo! No, I didn't actually win anything specific, I just managed to write 50,000 words in under 30 days. My personal goal is still not met, though. 50,000 is a good start, but before the new year there will be a "The End" attatched to that stupid story. It'll need editing, and no way am I busting my butt to write when I want to be playing with beads this month, but a complete story with "The End" on it would be a nice first and a good launching point for editing and, well, writing another one.

I'm so excited about the projects I'm working on right now! I wish I could post pictures! This next one I can though. Lindsey and I are going to The Romeo's concert next Friday. We harassed the singer, Daishi, a few years ago, or rather he gawked at us and watched us to see if we could sing the lyrics with him while we were standing at the back of the live house (putz), so we decided to give him a little something this time around, since we plan on standing front and center to get back at him for that :P It's cute, and so very very Daishi. Grr (*kitty puch*), hehe. Okay, you'd probably have to actually hear or see me ramble that one to understand the joke. He's "badass," complete with quotations, leopard print, bad tatoos, and a whole lot of ineffective "grr." So he's getting a biker kitty cell phone strap. XD

I'm probably 90% done with Christmas presents, but the last few are going to take quite a bit of time. The books are harder to follow, because they don't break the steps down. There's a map of all of the beads for one piece, and you have to follow the blue and red weaving lines into the right beads. It's actually a lot easier than it looks, unless I'm tired, like I was yesterday. Then I end up taking it apart two or three times because I made a dumb mistake with the weaving or, like yesterday, switched the colors around. -.-;

Yesterday was definitely one of those days that, once you make it through, you know you can handle just about any bad day that comes your way. Sick as a dog when I got up, I made it to work, got a huge chunk of my grading done and then got more papers that I need to grade tomorrow, made it home on dark chocolate and water, and then arrived to the smell of cat piss in my apartment. Granted, I hadn't emptied the litter box in a few days, it was first on my list of things to do today, except it wasn't the litter box. I have a white softbox that I got from Ikea when I moved here, and I was keeping random odds and ends, socks, washcloths, gloves, my knee brace, stuff like that in there. My afghan was in it until recently, and when I pulled that out I found all the random stuff underneath. The cats generally sleep there during the day. So, I went to empty the litter box and found everything in that box wet..... soaked.... GRR!!! It took two washes for most of the stuff, and three for some like my favorite flannel and one of my leather gloves (no clue why that was in there). The cats stayed away from me most of last night, little crap heads. I have no clue which one did it, but my money'd be on Ophelia just because she's in there most. Soushi goes for the kennels.

The only thing I can think is that the litter box was too dirty. So I rearranged my room. The litter box is on the main floor now, and my clothes are reorganized. I moved the vaccuume and rice cooker to the other side of the room so the litter box wouldn't be right by my desk. It's in easier reach for me to empty every day. I don't go up in the loft every day, and when I'm tired, like I've been lately, it just doesn't get emptied. Fortunately, the only likely victims of this are a white tanktop that looked kinda yellow coming out of the wash and maybe my glove. The box came clean, though I'm not sure what to do with it. Maybe I'll stick their blankets in there. They need some place to stay warm during the day, cause no way am I leaving the heater on while I'm gone.

Anyway, despite coming home to two hours of disaster cleaning, I still managed to write the 3,000 words I needed and start on Daishi's cat. Of course, I was up until midnight... which means I'm exhausted today, but hey, I did it. Today sounds like an edamame for dinner day and finishing the rest of Braveheart. And I will be in bed before ten! I hope... Gah I'm tired.

Killing time at work

2009-11-24T11:17:00.000+09:00

And avoiding doing things I should actually be doing, like studying. :P

Gallery link

So, since I've made too many things to clutter up this page, I put all of the pictures under that link. I even attempted crocheting...

It's... special. I'm going to try to remake it - hopefully that looks less like a first grader tried to make it.

My favorite beaded thing I've made so far is this ->

It's pretty. It looks yummy, though I had a little trouble with the dish part and the T-pin. I can never keep them straight when I bend the loop. I bought the right pliers for it, but there's no way to keep the pin from bending underneath the beads.

I went to a bead store yesterday with Lindsey to get beads for the rest of my Christmas presents. IT WAS SO FUN! We're going again on Saturday (to a different one) and getting beads for a grr!cat we're giving to Daishi (singer, we're going to his concert in a few weeks... it's a joke gift) and to pick up the rest of the beads for the last few presents. I hope people actually like these things. Most of them are ornaments, really. I'm making a few non-ornaments that I'm not posting here till after Christmas (sad! They're so cool!!)...

I was also wondering if they sell beads like these in the States. :S I imagine they do. For the most part, they're not that fancy. The beads I got for one of my presents yesterday are Swarovski (spelling?) beads though... they're shiny!! If they had that cut in something that's not $2 for 30 beads I would have gone with that, but........ Christmas only comes once a year, and I like making things to give to people... and my lunches are cheap :P I'm actually pretty sure the hedgehog is Swarovski too, but that was a kit. Lindsey bought it for me to make her at 50% off, and it was still $10.

Hm.. yeah, not much else going on in my life. My coworker just had me watch the trailer for Avatar (we're working hard today!). It looks pretty good, aside from the military premise being... well, classically Jackson vs. Native Americans evil.

Flash drives are amazing!

2009-11-18T09:06:00.000+09:00

Here I am, at work, listening to Jules Massenet's "Meditation" and ignoring the people drinking loudly in my office. Noise reducing earphones are also a wonderful piece of technology. Pity mine broke, but I'm currently borrowing Lindsey's until I break them and have to buy her a new pair or find the money to buy myself a new pair. Either way, it almost does the trick.

Also with my handy-dandy- 2GB flash drive (that glows green when you plug it in... oOohh!), I can also use the writing software I've been working with and bring my story, my notes, and all the pictures I have associated with said story, and the music playlist I'm currently listening to, in one program. *cheesy commercial-style grin*

Enough of that. I'm at work early today to get some grading done. Apparently, "You'll do that one year, realize it's too much work, and never give homework again." .... Cause the students will learn at all when they don't know why they got the good/bad grade they did on a speach test. Yes... I can see you're dedicated to your job. *eyeroll* I have two classes worth stacked up from yesterday, and I have one more class doing speaches today that I'll have to grade on Friday. The only frustrating part about it is that in their grammar classes they're taught that it's okay to say things like "I felt cool there" (not necessarily wrong, just weird) and "There was cool" (wrong!) instead of "It was cool there." I'm not docking huge points for grammar mistakes, but I still feel bad marking up their papers when I know they worked really hard on them, some of 'em anyway.

I finished "Wolves of the Calla," yesterday. Thank you Aunt Tracy!!! ^__^ I took my time reading it, only on the trains and a little at work when I couldn't handle being in the office and the people there, so it lasted quite a bit longer than the other books. Haha. I'll write up a review another day. I have quite a bit to say about that book.

For now, since I do have that useless test *sigh* coming up the first Sunday in December, I'm taking a break from English books and reading one of the Japanese novels I got partly through then got bored with last year. Despite the fact that I know the plot sucks, it's actually good motivation for me to look up words and kanji that I don't know. The same goes with games, but those go by too quickly for me to bother with a dictionary. I'm circling words in pencil that I can't read (there's an obnoxious amount of them having to do with militaries and war...) and I'll look them up later. This time I probably actually will. If I'm interested in something and have a good reason, like not being able to read what I want to read (grr!), then I'll actually study. Not having to use past the Japanese I already know on any given day, it's kinda hard to give a rip about grammar and words that are so old native Japanese speakers can't pass the test. I doubt the words I'm looking up from my book now will be on the exam, but whatever, at least I'll be able to read them, and I guarentee they'll come up again in that book, another, or in a game considering the books/games I like.

And I'm off. I have a few emails to write, then it's down to grading papers.

Amazingly delicious leftovers

2009-11-09T12:04:00.000+09:00

So.good!! A little light. I could have used a bit more filler. 1/3 of an already tiny steak, 1/3 of a normal sized portion of green beans, and 1/2 a cup of rice.... I like eating smaller meals, but I need to figure out how to eat more smaller meals, because between breakfast and lunch I get really hungry, and then lunch just isn't very satisfying. Dinner's almost always small, but even when I'm hungry I don't like eating a heavy dinner. Some pasta, tonight will probably be a lot of bean sprouts over rice, and then fruit or something snackish later on. I don't like leaving work hungry though, because then I'm tempted to buy junky snacks to hold me over on the 1 1/2 ride home.

In writing news, I have a plot! Finally... after 14,000 words... I was half paying attention in my meeting today... and half jotting down ideas as they came into my head on the paper for jotting down meeting notes.... :P And viouala! (probably spelled that wrong) This story might actually turn into something, which would be super fun and really random... It's weird how that many words can come out of a ditty about a smell, and then a plot can suddenly spring up from babbling words linked together. It was getting to the point of babbling, so I'm really glad I have somewhere to go with the babbling now. I swear I'm working hard at work :P It just so happens that I only had 4 hours occupied in my 8 of actual, real work today. Hehe. And the amazing software I found yesterday can be installed on a flash drive, so I have that on my work laptop now and I can just copy my updates onto my home laptop and presto! (cause I know how to spell presto...) Magic. And speaking of, this story is turning into a lot of magic... which could be interesting because I never have my characters use "magic." I'm excited about it now though, moreso than I was because it might turn into something decent after I edit the crap out of it (in more ways than one) and fix it up. I even have ideas for a sequel, which is also random and a first!

My word of the week is "random." It's a good word.