
My second semester as a grad student began yesterday, so if you thought I posted infrequently before, prepare yourselves to be completely underwhelmed by this blog. Aside from staying pretty busy at work, every weekend for quite some time has brought either out-of-town visitors or summer parties of some type, and often both. I started reading a novel last week for the first time in far too long, and managed to plow through five chapters before I went and picked up my books for class. And now school has started before I decided I was completely ready for it. So maybe it wasn’t the best time to start a new blog. Oh well.
As if all that wasn’t enough, I’ve been cranking my efforts to learn Japanese up quite a few notches. I managed to get a hold of some audio lessons that I can listen to in my car to supplement the Rosetta Stone lessons that I haven’t been nearly as diligent with as I should be. All this in hopes of being ready for my visit to Japan. I’ll be flying out on Christmas morning and returning on the 4th of January. I can’t wait. The downside is that I won’t be able to dress like Santa Claus and scare the hell out of little Japanese kids. I mean, I still could…but last time it was my way of entertaining myself while Yuka’s family was busy selling Christmas cakes on Christmas Eve.
So, when I’m not working on my Japanese skills, reading a new novel, entertaining out-of-town visitors, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, and kicking off my second semester as a grad student, I mess around with ridiculous social networking sites. Or, I guess I should say, I play around with those websites while I’m doing all that other stuff. Here’s a funny video about how silly it all is. And this video seems to have been created before twitter and all its contemporaries, which are a little more like crack than friendster, facebook and myspace. Here’s to you, technology. Thanks for helping me keep real life friends at a safe distance while allowing me to be constantly and intimately involved with the mundane minutia of perfect strangers’ everyday lives.