2012, for me, was a year of quiet engagement. It was a year without bombast or fanfare, but one in which I accomplished many small things, to the point that I am at this moment regretfully recalling stray moments of achievement, weighed down by the notion that they are evidence that I have forgotten more ( Read more... )

If you look at the link provided, there's a tongue-in-cheek list of what you're supposed to be able to accomplish by the time you're thirty, based around those cheesy Piagettian guides to pop-psych childhood development. Since I'm 3/4 there, I need to figure out what's still left on the list. Anything struck out is something I have yet to ( Read more... )

The rhythm of life for someone living abroad is just so different. I have to be much more mindful of my energy and how I'm spending it, because it is so much more finite as a resource. It's not that I have less of it, but it just takes more effort to do most anything outside of my house, despite having adequate language abilities. Even so, I ( Read more... )

My friend asakiyume's daughter posted this video, which she then posted to her lj, and it prompted a bit of reflection on my part.

Click to view

As a bit of context, bullying is a big problem in Japan, and is quite popular as the social issue du jour. In many ways, it's worse than the similar problems America has been having recently, since Japanese culture places so ( Read more... )

I was looking forward to today. It's the first day since hazliya left to go back to America for 3 weeks that I've had some spare time to do something besides take care of basic necessities. I had errands to do. The apartment to clean up. Maybe even take some time to get back to stuff like thesis and other writing. But my body chemistry has decided ( Read more... )

It appears that pretty much all of you need this ( Read more... )

In November last year, I started running. I was theoretically training for a half-marathon last April, but after basically a decade of only a little exercise here and there, I was too ambitious and sustained an overuse injury ( Read more... )

More spoilers ahoy ( Read more... )

So, a couple months ago, I played Mass Effect 3, and like so many others was appalled by the ending. Although a lot of other people have written about how and why it’s bad, most of it is fan rage. There were a couple of writers tackling it, but they seemed pretty ignorant of games and what they do and how they work and their history. Lots of ( Read more... )

Out of hatred for the universe, I just learned the Careless Whisper intro solo on guitar.

But mostly I learned it to troll my wife. ^_^