Days of Shades

Clan Kellington, Olympia Branch (and assorted hangers-on) is headed south tomorrow at 5 a.m., which is this mysterious time about an hour before I usually first slap the snooze button on my alarm and roll over for another 45 minutes.

We're going to visit my grandparents and see Jake Shimabukuro and Leo Kotke play at Britt, in Jacksonville. The fact that we're making this seven hour road trip with my parents (in the front seat, probably) and my boyfriend and I (in the back, as befits the younger generation, where we can poke each other and squabble until someone tells us to be quiet) is apparently surprising to many people... but we're looking forward to it.

Mom, Erik, and I wanted to buy ukuleles and teach ourselves to play on the way down, because 1) ukuleles are travel sized, 2) we're seeing Jake Shimabukuro, and 3) that's the kind of annoying-the-driver story no one would believe -- but financial prudence won out.

Also we don't want dad to leave us by the side of I-5 somewhere between Salem and Eugene. So.

(It's a hard dream to give up -- especially since I found out that Uke-an Play Jimmy Buffet! For Beginners is a thing (for real! That bad pun actually made it to publication!).

Anyhow. Don't know how much I'll be on the net, don't be surprised if I don't respond to hails, etc.

The trip to LA was more fun than I expected, but I'm glad to be home. I'm fairly pleased with myself for having no trouble driving the rented car in LA -- I was a bit worried about the whole strange car/strange city thing, but really, it's so damn car-oriented that it was easier than Seattle.

The only touristy thing we had time for was going to La Brea and the Page museum. The fossils and the excavations were fascinating... though it's a bit disturbing to realize that even nature is trying to pave LA.

Things I like about England: Clotted Cream

Things I loathe about England: Textured wallpaper

I ran myself a cold bath last night.

Apparently, if you run both the cold and the hot tap such that the bath temperature is actually correct, the cold comes out of the water heater tank somehow and so the hot runs out before the bath is full. Geoff and Peg were quite amazed at my foolishness until they remembered that my cousin had done the same last time she was here.

The town I mentioned before is Llangollen, pronounced something like Cthlangocthlen. I bought a latte there, which was really cafe au lait, and the takeout cup had a lid with no hole in it.

Tonight I'm going to make dinner, mostly because Peg remembers loving how I cooked rice. Plain rice. The instructions on the packets over here call for some ridiculousness with a seive, rather than getting the proportions right off.

Clearly, despite their many advantages over us in terms of, say, gay rights and a useful train service, the brits could use help in the vital areas of water-tap, hot-drink-take-out, and rice cooking technology.

Still enjoying myself immensley. It's worth noting that my feelings of small superiority are at the same level as those I feel about US vs. Canadian Wait/Walk signs. Ours are far preferable to the Canadians. We haven't got anything else on them, but I'll patriotically stand by the American Wait/Walk sign.

Off to sunny southern France tomrrow with didotwite2001!

One website says there's a masters degree program for comics in Lyon. One site says it's only a two week course, or a bachelors degree. It might just be that their site isn't complete. It might be that I move to Portland in a year or two, get Oregon residency, and study architecture. It might be that I stay where I am, loose faith in life and adventure, collect cats, and go slowly insane. This last would be perillously easy to do, because I'm strung along by always being on the verge of accomplishing something. I'm almost ready to submit children's book illustrations; I'm almost in a position to start comicing again.

Apparently, scrapping everything I've ever studied to pursue ethnomusicology in Quebec is not an option, because the only program requires a previous bachelors in the field and a working knowledge of German. Why the heck German?

Why does it feel like I ought to have done all this travel stuff during bachelors studies? How old do you have to be before you know what to be when you grow up?

It looks like I've finally got a new room-mate! Credit checks came through, situation to be mutually discussed in a month or two to make sure we don't hate each other, etc. Bonus points: Great Big Sea is one of her favorite bands, so at least we won't fight about music.

The weight of financial worry this takes off my mind is unbelievable. A room-mate or lack there-of is the difference between me putting $200 in savings every month or taking it out. It feels a LOT better to be on the positive side of that, especially with both Fiddletunes and a trip to the UK for bluwyngz and pyoor_excuse's wedding (tickets cost 150% what they did last time I went - ouch). I know I can afford those with money in savings, as long as I'm not draining that fund for daily expenses.

Btw, Kat? I would have come even if I hadn't found a roomie, it just would have gone on the credit card. :P

Now I can buy my carrots! Except, since I don't carrots my "once you find a roommate..." rewards are seasons 3 and 4 of Red Dwarf and perhaps interesting body creme stuff from villainess (if anyone's ever ordered from them, let me know).

ALSO! I have exciting happenings related to sheep and their astronomic adventures, but that's for another post.

As you can no doubt tell from my proper use of punctuation, I'm back at home typing on a standard English keyboard. My plane was a tad late, but not too bad. I have a lot of pictures -- we're talking something like 5 burned CDs in my luggage. I'll sort and upload the good ones to somewhere, but I'm not yet sure where.

I like the tagging feature of flickr, but not the upload limit or the maximum of three 'sets' (albums) for non-paying users. Also, I've never found it to have the most intuitive interface, which is an important consideration for albums one might want to send to, say, Grandma. Picasaweb doesn't do tagging, and neither does Picasa...and I don't need photo editing, just storage organization. Anyone tried photobucket? Lightbox? Smugmug?

I should be writing about the actual trip, but it's still distilling, so here's the briefest of rundowns:

I arrived in Fukuoka late on the 8th and left early the next morning for Ube, where I stayed two nights at Evan's apartment and rode a 'mama-chari' around the town. On Tuesday I took the train to Osaka, where I stayed two nights in an overly sterile, regimented hostel that fell somewhere between elementary school and jail in tone. In Osaka I wandered around parks and gardens, large shopping areas, old museums, and went to the aquarium. Then off to Kyoto to stay in a Ryokan (Japanese inn) with, thank goodness, a private bath, see some temples and shrines and souvenirs, do utterly foolish things on a bicycle, and wander around the amazing train station.

On the 15 I went up to Kawasaki, just south of Tokyo, and met Kiyoko, who I miss already/again. At that point it started really feeling like vacation - the girls (Kiyoko, Rina, and Yuriko) and their families all had more restful schedules for me than I made for myself, while seeing, really, the same amount of stuff. I think I need a keeper, sometimes. Kiyoko and I went temple-seeing in Kamakura, lounged around a cafe playing Othelo/reversi whatever (She kicked my ass), and spent the evening wandering through China town in Yokohama. The next day we went to the mall to get me some new, cheap shorts, as Japan was a whole lot hotter and more humid than I imagined (When I saw '85-90', I just stupidly assumed that those were highs and it cooled off in th evenings. It doesn't). She took me up to Tokyo and handed me off to Rina (The girls organised my Tokyo stay between themselves, right over my head, which was odd-feeling but really nice). I was a little nervous about seeing Rina, since it's been almost three years, but I'd forgotten that the real reason I kept involved with AUAP was that Rina and I had such a good relationship - she was my first AUAP room-mate.

I'd apparently never talked about my surgery history with Rina, btw, though she knew my leg issues were congenital. There's some kind of fascination there for her that I'd never encountered before - not clinical, not macabre - and even though I don't understand it, I appreciate it, because it meant lots of kind of idle foot/leg rubs, something only mom or emony42 have ever done. I'm really not getting enough human contact, recently.

Speaking of which, Japan is not a very 'touchy' culture - Rina made her parents hug me goodbye because that's what we white people do (insert chuckle), but they were clearly uncomfortable. I think that Rina and Kiyo both like that part of US culture (I know it's not homogenous). I know Kiyo likes it, because we talked about ways of interacting with kids, and how much children are hugged in the US. Between that, the fact we lived together, and the different Japanese standards of young-female-friend interaction, there was lots of hand-holding as we walked around, which was really quite charming.

But I digress...

Spent a few days with Rina's parents (She doesn't live there anymore, but has a room). They were really kind, very fun and comfortable-homey in a very brand new house. We went to an art museum and went caving at Nippara limestone cave, which has far fewer safety precautions than similar attractions in Suit-happy US. Rina's mom taught me how to properly tie an obi. I spent a day and night with Yuriko, then my handlers swapped me back again to Rina. Kiyoko's family picked me up at Rina's to go to Mt Fuji, which situation I'm afraid I made rather awkward by being in the middle of making scones when they arrived, so that they ended up being invited in for breakfast - a perfectly normal happening at my folks' house, but not too standard for Japan! Went with Kiyoko and her folks' to Mt Fuji and an Onsen (hot springs/spa/baths), then to their house in Chiba for the last night.

Now, after 29 hours awake and 12 asleep, here I am!

I wore myself out in Kyoto - great city to come back to sometime. Now, off to Kawasaki and Kiyochan. Ta!

This should be interesting.

As always, I'm mostly worried that I'm bringing to much junk. In this case, though, it seems like it's almost all stuff to give away.

Ciao!

Stuff in my hand

Rise Up Singing, 15th Anniversery Edition (Spiral-bound, westrider!)
CD, Le Groupe Sans Age
CD, Hand It Down
CD, Reunion
A book of crooked Quebecois tunes
A green plastic harmonica
A fun meter
An unraveling A string
A new A string of a type I'm not fond of.


Stuff in my head

A polka which is not actually named Timmy, even though I keep calling it that.
"Ronan Boys" (Liz Carroll reel)
"Road to Recovery" (ditto - still learning it, though)
"Reel Saint Paul"
"Reel Marcel Grondin"
troisieme partie du Caledonia, en 6/8
cinquieme partie du Lanciers
quelque 6/8...or maybe that's part of the Caledonia.
beaucoup de chansons de boire!
A bruise on my temple that should look nice and domestic-violence-y in a few days.