Today

Illness, illusions, delusions, and random stories.

I'm still sick, but I'm beginning to feel a little better. The cold in my chest is migrating north to my head, where it is quite happily taking up residence. But I have better meds for that, so... Slowly but surely. A nice girl called me today to check on my health, even offered to come over for a visit, but I said I was still too sick to receive visitors. Sad; she's such a sweetheart. We decided to make plans for a little later in the week, when the threat of contamination is lower.

Last night was to be the second of Welcome Camel's Japanese Tour '06, but alas, 'twas not to be. Luckily, the murkiness of mind that accompanies a disease helped to dull the disappointment. It sounds, from a few sources, that a lot of people ended up going anyway, to see the band we we supposed to open for. Rock and roll. Anyway, I need to go talk to the bar owner later this week to see if there's a chance of us playing there sometime in April. April would be cool; sakura (cherry blossoms) and all.

I really need to get out of the flat.

Still torn over whether to go home in June, or to stick around for another six months. My Japanese is still crap; thanks in large to my personal laziness. If I stick around, I can up my Nihongo and, hopefully, my savings account. Sounds good, but it means not seeing the kids at home for that much longer. 'Torn' is such a good word to describe what I feel. 'Riven' works well too.

Been reading Murakami's "Wind-up Bird Chronicle" in between bouts of coughing; despite being sick, I'm really enjoying it. The style took a little getting used to at first, but once in, it's really good. It blends so many stories together (which I like, since that's what I want to do with my Japan experience book), and has a sort of existential mystery tying them together: a every-man middle-achiever tries to sort through and make sense of strange circumstances that arise in his life. A good read.

Last Tuesday I woke up around 9:30 and decided that I would do much better if there was fresh coffee ready for when I got out of the shower. So I got out my bag of precious Caribou Coffee beans, Fireside Blend, dumped some into my handy-dandy coffee grinder, and took it into the bathroom. I did this (the last part at least) because my handy-dandy coffee grinder is from the States and has a polarized plug (i.e. one prong is wider than the other to prevent electocution) and the only polarized outlet in the flat is in the bathroom. So I went into the bathroom, ground the beans nicely, and proceeded to drop the container into the sink - spilling the nicely ground coffee all over the inside of the freshly-cleaned sink. So I did what any perfectly logical young man would do in my situation: I vacuumed out the sink. (Then I cleaned it properly, of course.)

Now, whenever I vacuum my bedroom, it smells like the Caribou shop I worked in in Minneapolis. Nice.


Okay, that's it for today; I've done quite a bit: read, cleaned up a bit, tried to kill germs with mind-bullets (the jury is still out on this), and even cooked dinner. Now I'm going to go to bed; I must must must go to work tomorrow, and I'm dreading it already.

Peace,
thom
















Holy Mochi! Me holding mochi (pounded rice cake the size, shape, and consistancy of a hockey puck). Tagata-jinja, 15 March, 2006.