Hi! I'm updating because I don't want to work on this research paper, and my remaining options are "play on the Internet," "hook the Wii back up," and "mop." If I hook up the Wii I will never finish my work, and the bucket is out on the balcony. Alone. I'd hate to interrupt its quiet time ( Read more... )

1. On Friday, a surprisingly difficult reference question about current educational policy in Turkmenistan ended in sweet success and with the patron presenting me with a shiny 1000 manat coin as a memento. I spent the rest of day aglow with nerd glee. It says "prezidenti"! And "banky"! I bet I know what those words mean ( Read more... )

Remember when my iPod died on me in Japan and I had such a miserably long wait for it to be repaired under warrenty, mostly because it takes a good week to ship something from Oma to southern Japan ( Read more... )

The coffee maker at the Board has departed. As I pondered, weak and weary, staring at the empty space where once it sat, the secretary brightly pointed out to me the can of instant coffee. The baby dodos are weeping ( Read more... )

So yesterday was graduation, which started two hours after I had to be at school and then ran for two and a half. The PTA had a luncheon (3,500 yen a head, eesh) for the teachers afterward, which ran for another two and a half hours. When you're trying very hard not to let your nascent funk turn into anything full-blown, this is an eternity. Then I ( Read more... )

The principal admitted to me today that he doesn't know how to operate the coffee maker. In addition to amusing me, this explains why he so often has a wistful smoke near the machine and perks up when I come in and exercise my grounds-fu ( Read more... )

When I opened my door to leave today, it swung out into the foot of snow that had accumulated overnight on my porch. I also got blasted in the face by a nigh-horizontal fury of flakes. Around here, the weather never does anything halfway ( Read more... )

Apparently my qualified success in repairing my laptop's AC adaptor made an impact on those watching (hard to imagine it wouldn't, really, given the sheer amount of sparks), as today the JTE asked me to retrieve his CD from a player that would not power on and had no mechanical eject feature short of taking the thing apart. By a stroke of fortune, ( Read more... )

I should have opted for the construction of typing gloves yesterday rather than napping on the sofa. My fingers, I cannae feel them. I should also have figured out a way to get the kerosene smell out of the carpet from where the pump leaked fantastically, but I just dumped Febreze on it and hoped. Lo, I am lazy. I'm not sure why jet-lag affects me ( Read more... )

By my personal standards of holiday division, we have now officially passed from Thanksgiving to Christmas. This means it's time to dig my jingle socks out of the drawer, deck the halls to the best of my ability, and hum carols under my breath ad irritatum. It also means I should probably cut my NaNo characters a break and let them do something ( Read more... )