Thursday, February 14, 2008

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful...

Sure...we have 3 days of cold as all hell, but otherwise perfectly beautiful weather this past weekend (seriously, I didn't see a cloud for like 3 days), and now it turns to shit.


High today of -8C, 50cm or so o' the white stuff since yesterday with lots more on the way, & 10 m/s winds....yes, boys & girls...this is what living in arctic hell is like! w00T!

(of course, I probably wouldn't be bitching about it so much if I didn't have a cold and was out boarding right now, but that's neither here nor there)

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

I Have the Bladder of a 12 Year Old Girl...

I swear man...I guess I am getting older. I've only had 3 cups of coffee so far today, but have been back & forth to water the porcelain like 5 times in the past 3 hours.

Anyhoo, oh yeah...
(Insert mandatory "Blah, blah, sorry I haven't updated the ol' blog in like half a year" apology here). How ya been in the meantime?

Just to get up to speed, here's what's gone on since what...last year?

  • FamilyMart pulled a certain mook and the whole thing finally died down, although I've continued to get hits about it ever since.
  • Gotta new English teacher at the town Jr. High who's turned out to be my nemesis. Had a bit of a tuff-up in the staffroom and although we've been able to be somewhat courteous to each other ever since, I still dread the 2 days a month that I have to teach with that horrible woman. Thankfully she's on the Superintendent of the BOE's shitlist as well, and hopefully she'll be long gone come April (please, oh Jesus, let this be so).
  • Even though the BOE pretty much begged me to stay, I made the painful decision to end my contract come August of this year and my successor's already been decided (really a pretty cool guy who I have big expectations about). Yup, after 8 long years, my big adventure here in Happy Land is about to come to an end and I'll soon be heading back to the land o' the not-so-free-anymore w/ M. Really hoping that somebody'll be dumb enough to hire me...
  • Ate way too much over New Years & gained like 5 kg. I suspect my Japanese mother-in-law is secretly Jewish and/or Italian. "What? You can't be full! You must eeeeeeaaaat!"
  • After espousing it as "MySpace for Rich Kids" and swearing up & down that I'd never have anything to do with it, I finally caved & joined FaceBook once I realized its not that different from Mixi. It's amazing to see how many people I know are on it and now I too can be a sheep. Baaah. ;)
  • Winter wonderland, my ass. I think the high temp here in Rice & Watermelon Town has been above freezing maybe twice since December. Average highs around -5C & average lows between -20C to -15C. My clunker Pajero regularly refuses to start in the morning, our front door freezes on the inside on a normal basis and the big kerosene heater in our living room has been running non-stop since about November, yet strangely, I've kinda gotten used to the cold. A friend from Hot-lanta asked me a few days ago how the hell I live in a climate like this, but from my perspective, I can't see how he stands it there in the summer. Hell, M & I thought 4C was hot when we went down to Sapporo over New Years...
  • Last but not least, bun has been firmly inserted in oven! That's right folks...we're preggers and actually expecting a little hellspawn the likes of which the world has never seen before any day now! M & I're actually gonna be a Mommy & Daddy to an amazing little girl who, for the moment we've nicknamed our "Little Bean". Can ya believe it? I know I'm sure having a hard time getting my head around it.
Ok...guess that's it for now, so hopefully this'll satisfy the wants of a certain few who've bitched at me to update for sometime. I'm off to translate more Japanese hotel websites that feature words like "feature", "relaxation" and "tranquil", so for now, ta, muchly ;)