tuition = totally worth it

Because this is what I did in class today.

No, seriously.

Okay, it's really cool and all, but I am so glad to be done with this class. I did learn a lot in it--I learned that it's really cruel to give vague assignments and zero feedback. (Me-ow!) Oh, and I learned that I like green tea with pomegranate. (Yum.)

In other news, tomorrow is the anniversary of the day I left for Japan. My Japaniversary, if you will. I know I will, because I love nicknames. I'm not sure what I'll do to celebrate--hunt the local grocery stores for green tea ice cream? clean something? organize something? engineer something? I don't know, I'll have to figure it out. Now I can no longer bitch and moan inwardly about how I'm not even supposed to be here, I'm supposed to be in Japan. Which means a) closure, and b) I'll have to find something else to bitch and moan inwardly about. Fear not; I'll find something.

[eta: I just realized it's really hard to read the speech bubbles in my little comic. It says "I know I appear normal, but.../Finals week has made me caraaaaazy!/First I banged my head against the wall until it looked like this/and then I temporarily lost my eyesight./Then I came up with a solution!/I GLUED ON ANOTHER FACE."]

it's amazing what you can accomplish via procrastination

This is my finals knitting, begun while writing a paper and worked straight through another one and two exams. I have another exam tomorrow morning, for my least favorite class, and then for some bizarre reason my Wednesday night class is meeting even though we already presented our final projects last week. I really don't want to go, but I'm afraid if I don't, it'll turn out to be something really important, and since that professor is totally quirky and unpredictable (I would mean that in a good way except that she's grading me, so I'd like to be able to count on something), that could very well happen. So I am trying to focus on the subject matter of my studying for this last final (not actually redundant, but sounds like) and not the towering rage I feel toward the professor, who is a lazy slob (and when I say lazy, I mean lazy--he comes to class late EVERY day, and then takes ten more minutes to shuffle his papers and make small talk before he actually begins teaching. He also makes inappropriate remarks about his wife, women, Jews, nuns, etc., with the occasional Democratic-primary-related diatribe thrown in--he's for Hillary, which shows his incredible broadness of mind given his remarks about women and their ridiculous ways--and spells new/foreign names/words instead of writing them on the board, because he's too lazy to get up. And he spells them WRONG. Ratemyprofessor, here I come.), and just get this all over with, so my summer can start. Wow, longest parenthetical EVAR.

I got a nice compliment yesterday. My teaching professor said he thought I would be a good teacher because "you've got that creativity." I never handle compliments well, but I really didn't know what to say. I certainly have never attempted to show creativity in that class. I was mostly thinking about how much I had to learn (most of the other students are teachers already) and hoping everyone didn't think I talked too much. So that was really nice. This sock is entirely creativity, by the way. No pattern, no math, just estimates and tryings-on. I did cast on too many stitches the first time and had to start over, but this yarn is so pretty and soft, and I'm avoiding work so hard, that I don't care. It's Mama-e's C*Eye*ber Fiber in Mermaid, and it's spectacular.

christmas in april

That's right, I finally finished my Christmas knitting. Jaywalkers for my dad in Scout's Illini colorway. He said they were comfortable and warm and that he will actually wear them--on select occasions. (I should have thought before I bought the yarn how very unlikely it was that a guy who owns only beige, brown, and black socks would enjoy these, alma mater notwithstanding.) He actually paused in the midst of a busy Saturday of gardening and deck-power-washing to try these on for me, so I can't complain about the quality of the photographs. Can't pose while time's a-wasting. (The picture on the right was his idea--GIANT FEET--and I must say, I love the effect of the giant fern-slash-tribal-headdress. That plant has been the punchline in many a family photo.)

I am making a resolution now. Mark my words: I will knit a sock pattern OTHER THAN JAYWALKERS. It's going to happen. (Oh, sure, I made those Log Cabin socks, but those are slipper-socks. They don't count.)

hello internet, i am 29

Milestones deserve random lists.

A year ago this month:

1. I turned 28. (Duh.)

2. I had just said goodbye to my life in ABQ and thus,

3. I was trying to get used to a much more bland diet.

4. I was staying with my parents for the month of April because

5. I was leaving for Japan on May 8th.

6. I got to take the train into NYC to get my visa taken care of at the Japanese consulate.

7. I was looking forward to riding trains every day.

8. I was looking doubtfully at my scanty "professional" wardrobe and wondering how I would survive a year in it.

9. I had no plan for my life beyond my year(s) in Japan.

10. And I liked it that way.

This year, this month:

1. I turned 29. (Like the title says.)

2. I am eager for May 8th, so I can stop thinking about how I'm still supposed to be in Japan.

3. I finally got reimbursed by the Japanese government for my unpaid back wages (well, 80% of it anyway, minus another 20% for overseas remittance tax, since I couldn't leave a bank account open in Japan, being a foreigner and all).

4. The money should cover my summer and fall tuition,

5. Since I am now a grad student (again), working on an M.Ed. Because you can never have too many master's degrees.

6. I said goodbye to the awesomest job ever (at least until next winter).

7. I trained for my summer job--lifeguarding! I rescued a 250-lb. man who was lying on the bottom of the deep end (9'5", you guys!)--THREE TIMES! So I got a "special facilities" license and will totally guard the wave pool. I rock.

8. I am finally get used to my current situation and taking a deep breath. Which means I'm knitting again. Today I finished up an Everlasting Bagstopper and am preparing to cast on a Tomten Jacket with that red skein there. (It's Red Heart, but what does a 4-year-old know from yarn quality? It's machine-washable, and it was free!)

9. I miss my overseas friends like mad. Yesterday I was IM-ing with my roommate from Japan, now back in England, about how we plan to open a mad hip tea-shop in her hometown in Cornwall. (...Well, one can dream.)

10. I am gearing up for the end of the semester. Finally.

This month next year:

1. I will turn 30. (Duh. Again.)

2. I will be student-teaching. Scary. But also exciting.

3. I will be finishing my degree and looking for a job. I have no idea where--I have been toying with the idea of staying in the area, for a few years anyway. But who knows. I'd kind of like to move north and live in a quirky New England town with a craggy, mossy landscape and a great LYS. Or work on an Army base in Germany.

4. I will (hopefully) be a certified AASI Level I snowboard instructor. I could have taken the course this year, but decided to spend my dues money on new bindings instead.

5. I will (hopefully) have converted my parents to eating food that has actual flavor. I mean, nobody loves a nice bland pita chip like I do, but variety is the spice of life, no? (...Well, one can dream.)

bad blogger. no cookie.

Well, actually, I'm totally eating a cookie RIGHT NOW. Despite not having posted, or read anyone else's blog, for two months. My current excuse is my insane schedule: I work four days a week as a snowboard instructor (hello, dream job, my name is Cari, let's make love.), am taking twelve credits at my mom's university (not that she owns the place, just that she teaches there) toward my M.Ed., and have a ten-hour-a-week graduate assistantship at said university, working for some of my mom's lovely colleagues who totally intimidate me for two reasons: a) they are friends of my mom's and thus must not be let down, and b) they are middle-aged second-wave feminists, who may wear twee cat-motif brooches on their sweaters but are made of steel and will totally cut a bitch. (They are really nice though, and however demanding they may be, they always say thank you.) So my life is full to overflowing right now and the only thing keeping me going is the aforementioned dream job, which pays peanuts in actual hard currency but big bucks in all the intangible, meaningful ways. Naturally this means that I am getting enormous amounts of exercise and following it up with healthy doses of beer, which then takes a toll on the homework situation, which then takes a toll on the sleep situation, but I figure I can sleep when the snow melts.

Yesterday's all-day dumping made for a rare occasion in PA--actual powder. After my last lesson of the day I went free riding with a revolving assortment of fellow instructors (all of whom, well, most of whom are pretty fucking awesome) for four hours. Don't tell the rangers, but we poached some closed trails--it was the kind of indescribably great experience that makes me speak in all four-letter words because there's just nothing else strong enough. The phrase "better than sex" was tossed around. Several fucking times. Afterwards I could not stop smiling. (Well, not until I got home and had to shovel the driveway, since my dad is out of town and I dislike and distrust the snowblower.) I had to bust out the facemask, which is why you may not recognize me from the little cell-phone portrait there.

I don't have much time to knit, sadly. I'm still working on my dad's Christmas socks but I needed a break, so I started a Quant with some heinous self-striping Paton's Merino that I liked on the skein and now am hating. I'll have to get some pictures up and get some feedback, but the combination of the colors and the shortness of the stripes and the entrelac is just... no.

think responsibly

So in the aforementioned care package from Jessa, I received the following:





Rap Snacks. (You know you want to click on it, don't lie to yourself. Don't skip the intro.)

Acting responsibly is one thing, but what the hell is thinking responsibly? I mean, you don't have to be responsible for your thoughts if you don't act on them. You just have to keep the crazy ones in your head. Like, "I wonder if you could put out a fire with ice cream." Okay, great. Interesting thought. Just don't test your theory. Or, "I wonder how many times I could poke the guy in the line in front of me before he totally snaps." Curiouser and curiouser. Let's just imagine it, though. "I wonder how these chips taste." Hmm, interesting question. Let's keep it in the realm of supposition, though. But just because I want to keep them forever and forever. Rap Snacks is love.

mystical math?

Someone found my blog by googling "mystical math." Isn't that a contradiction in terms? I mean, you can worship numbers or the Five Perfect Solids if you want, but really, math is not mystical, you are. Other recent hits include "mom foot," "cool knots tied with one hand," "Japan open container laws," "random facts about the Home Depot" (????), and my favorite, "hipster dinosaur robot."


I've encountered a little problem with my EZ saddle-shouldered sweater for Dad. That problem, for once, is not gauge. My gauge is PERFECT. What is not perfect is... my laziness. I asked my mom how big my dad's chest was, and she estimated 36" and said that a 40" sweater would be fine. It's true, he's not a big guy, but my chest is bigger than that. I should've asked her to measure (and him to pretend to forget... oh, who am I kidding, this cat is 40 miles down the road from the bag and hasn't stopped running yet), because when I finally broke down (under the desperate, consuming need to know--did I do all this stockinette for nothing?) and asked him if I could measure his chest, I came up with the horrifying, terrible number of...

42.

That is two inches LARGER than my perfectly-on-gauge(-for-once) sweater, people! I may be able to block it bigger, but how much bigger? I don't want my dad walking around looking like a sweater girl! It's got to have some ease! Why did I do this to myself? WHY?

So I've put the sweater aside for now, to be rethought later, perhaps for Father's Day '09, and started on a pair of socks with some of Scout's Illini sock yarn (click on it, her photos are much better than mine!). I bought it ages ago, with my dad in mind (he and my mom met at the University of Illinois, 40 years ago this week, actually), but hadn't used it because based on what I've seen in the laundry room, all of his current socks appear to be black or dark brown. This may be an interesting experiment: will my dad actually wear anything I knit for him?





p.s. I got MAIL today: a care package from my best friend! Which she meant to send me while I was still in Japan, but hey! Snail mail is love, whenever it arrives! Included was Craft magazine, cover story Japan Style. Awww. I also got a ton of actual, frameable, non-jpg photographs and some candy corn. Which is already gone, unfortunately, or it would've made a nice addition to my very orangey photo. Check out her new baby decked out in his care-package-from-Japan bib, you guys!

tradition, hoooo!

My Thanksgiving was pretty great. It involved my grandmother, aunt, uncle, and three cousins as well as ye olde nuclear family; my grandmother told us the story of how she and my grandfather met (the long version... again...), and my uncle and the boy cousin showed us all how you can make an awesome soda-pop volcano with Diet Coke and Mentos (seriously, try it--our best one shot up 7 feet!), and I introduced the whole family to Japanese television personality Hard Gay. The last of which resulted in our gathering around my uncle's laptop watching youtube clips for over an hour and then ending all of our sentences with "HOOOOOO!" for probably another hour. I really hope that becomes a tradition.

An already-established tradition is that of me starting my Christmas knitting in July or August, going like gangbusters, and then stopping for some reason and waking up mid-November realizing how little time I have left. This year it's a sweater for my father, an Elizabeth Zimmerman saddle-shoulder in Cascade 220, sort of a slate-grey color. And this year's reason for stopping was the aforementioned disaster. For almost two months before I left Japan, we were pretty sure that the end was near, but hoped that it wasn't. Our mid-September paychecks were late, and I just gave up, because I didn't want to knit the fear and indecision and general negativity into my father's sweater. Well, really, I was too depressed to have the energy to keep working on it. So I have barely touched it in almost two months, and it's just this torso-tube, and I can't find more than two size 7 dpns to start a sleeve, and I braved the Christmas-shopper traffic today to go buy some with my dwindling funds, and the craft store didn't have any. I mean, come on! Are they unaware that I've just been through an international unemployment incident? Do they know it's Christmastime at all? Won't somebody please think of the children?

So I've rooted around and somehow come up with a couple of fives and a couple of sixes, and I'm going to cast on with those and see if they'll get me through the ribbing, after which I can switch to a hat-sized circ.

Hope your Thanksgivings were as full of joy, food, sugar explosions, and hip-thrusting as mine was.

let's do this organized

Thanks for the nice supportive comments, guys. It means that much more since I haven't been able to keep up with your blogs/lives since I've been computerless.

Today and yesterday I tried to ignore my jet lag and get some things done. I exchanged money, which took an hour in my small-town branch bank, because they don't do it that often and had forgotten how, and because Linda (the teller, whom the whole town apparently knows) had to chat to everyone who came in, and because everyone who worked there had to come over and see what yen look like (for which I really can't blame them because foreign currency is pretty interesting). I drove around alternately soaking in the fall colors and being outraged at the pace of development ("Oh my GOD, the LAST time I was here this was all TREEEEES!"). And today I am alternately IM-ing my old roommate, who is still in Japan, and freaking out over grad school applications. Later, if I ever get out of my pajamas, I'm going to visit some temp agencies in an attempt to alleviate my extreme poverty.

But hey! What I don't have is poverty of experience! Today's photo is a subway station (obviously). Totally original observation: Japan is the cleanest, most organized place I have ever been. You can see your reflection in the floors of the subway cars. I went to one of those horrible big-box discount stores with my mother to stock up for Thanksgiving and found myself wishing it were as clean as a Japanese subway station bathroom. And that it smelled as good. I can't believe we're going to eat food we bought there. The little feet in the picture are where you line up. The dark bar on the ground is where the door opens, every time. It's so orderly. Unlike, say, CHICAGO O'HARE.

It is totally weird having culture shock in your own country. (Hey, check me out, I'm going to be one of those people who, for the rest of their lives, is like, "Well, when I was in JAPAN...")

this is the ceiling

in the main area of Terminal 1 at Narita Airport, at which I stared for hours on Monday. I took the midnight bus to Tokyo (it actually leaves at 10:50pm but "midnight bus to Tokyo" sounds so much better) the night before, arrived at the airport at 6:30, and had to wait til 11:45 for United's check-in counters to open before I could ditch my overweight suitcases. Literally overweight, I mean, I had to pay extra. So I had plenty of time to watch the shadows on the beams change and contemplate the disaster and my future. I'd been trying not to think about either. But now I have to. I'm at my parents' house in PA, a jet-lagged charity case.

But at least I got six months.

oh hey, don't I have a blog?

...but not a computer? It's been back in PA at my parents' house for two weeks now while HP avoids our calls. I've never been less impressed with a company's customer service.

It's a shame to whine while I'm doing something as exciting as living in a foreign country but without my computer to record everything, how will I remember anything? And I don't care if this is cheesy--I want to share my freakin' experiences with my family! Nothing counts if they don't know about it. Plus it would be nice to be able to keep up with their lives, too.

Anyhoo,


have some rice.

Forget me not, for I remember you, although it may not seem like it because HP is a slightly unhelpful company

My computer is totally, completely, stone-cold dead.

I bought it in March. It started having problems in May.

I'm furious.

I have to send it back to the U.S. on my own dime, wait for them to fix (or, given how things have gone so far, "fix") it and ship it to my parents, and then wait for them to ship it to me. The frustration is threatening my health, seriously, so I just try not to think about it. If it weren't for my amazing email-capable Japanese cell phone and my awesome technologically generous roommate Amy (whose laptop I'm currently using), I would have no communication with the outside world whatsoever. I'm in a country where I can't even read street signs, so you can imagine how completely out-of-touch I feel. It would be different if this were back in the day, before email and blogs and craftster and tvlinks, and if I were thus mentally hardened for the ordeal, but it's not, and everyone around me is so freakin' connected, and asking if I've heard about some senator who did something, as if I could possibly know any news that isn't part of Sendai's only English-language news broadcast...

oh, I know, poor, poor me. There are starving children in Africa who don't even have computers. But imagine! Seriously! Imagine running your life without a computer for three months! Now imagine doing it from a foreign country! Where the internet cafe has for some reason blocked some functions of web-based email such as the REPLY and NEW MESSAGE functions which are the MOST IMPORTANT FUNCTIONS. For fuck's sake.

Now if you haven't gone into a dark room to lie down after that horrific scenario has played itself out in your mind, I'd like to apologize for not answering your email/checking your blog/noticing your death.

On the upside, I taught someone the words "brewery" and "distillery" today, and I finally finished my Tivoli. Pictures... someday, if I don't suddenly become a Luddite out of conviction rather than necessity.

wish you were here

legs on beach
Originally uploaded by safety dance.

Wish I were still there, too.
Nobiru Beach

three things that caused me nearly to wet myself

1. Someone found my blog by googling "dance song that goes-doo doo doo doo doo".
2. I've been perusing engrish.com this evening and wish I could find this hat. It would be a fantastic Father's Day gift.

3. And, so as not to go photo-less into that good night, some Engrish I saw on the street:

just me?

...or is it really rude to ask someone if they regret getting a tattoo? Like, in casual conversation? I mean, you would never ask someone if they regretted having a baby or not going to college. Or, say, gaining weight or wearing Uggs. I'm just sayin.

akiu

hot hot heat

I went to an onsen with my roommate Amy today. It was a co-ed onsen, but because the main onsen was men-only until 7 pm, the only other people there were women and a little boy who was really not happy to be there. There were both indoor and outdoor onsens, so of course we chose the outdoor, mostly because we're both northern girls and, hey, did you know, hot springs are REALLY hot? It was really pleasant to sit on the rocks with your feet in the onsen as it started cooling down in the evening, though.

It was really unpleasant to get out of the onsen and walk down to the bus stop and wait for the bus in the rain, however. Then as we tried not to fall asleep on the bus we realized neither of us had eaten since last night. We got off the bus, onto the subway, and finally to the yakitori (aka kebab, aka food on a stick) place right by our subway stop.

This is where it gets fun, because two men and a woman were having a big night out and were enjoying watching us eat our baked potato with chopsticks, and one of the men came over to talk to us, and he asked what country we were from. Amy said she was English, and the man said, "Ah. [gesturing to his friends] We are Japanese!" and everybody cracked up. I'm still laughing. They bought us some ginger and wasabe yakitori, clearly anticipating the eye-watering and mouth-fanning, but even Amy didn't think it was that hot. Although our sinuses are quite clear now. As we left, one of them yelled, "next time!" which has caused Amy and I to start a "he LIKES you" war.

Pictures soon--er, not of the onsen experience, but of the beautiful town the onsen was in.

It felt like I was on a boat

Yes, I felt the earthquakes yesterday. The first one was during my first lesson of the day and lasted maybe fifteen seconds. When it stopped, we just continued the lesson like nothing had happened, although I was totally thrown off my game (and I assume the students were much more so--after all, on this whole continent I have only myself to worry about). All the local news is in Japanese, of course, so we had to wait for the Western world to wake up and report on it before we knew what was going on. Just as we were going to bed, we felt the second quake. I was lying in bed and watching a downloaded episode of Heroes, and the shaking was gentler than earlier but it went on for more than a minute. When it finally subsided I got up and consulted with my shaken (heh) roommates. We checked the internet for updates, but even forty-five minutes later there was still nothing; we tried finding some coverage in English on TV, but to no avail, so we gave up and watched a few minutes of a learning-English game show. The contestants had to fill in the blanks of a English sentence after listening to three or four native speakers say it. It was pretty amusing, but not nearly as good as Japanese commercials, of which my current favorite is the Kirin ad featuring "We Will Rock You."

(We're far enough from the epicenter that there doesn't seem to have been any local damage, but there are thousands homeless in Niigata. I'm trying to figure out how to donate or volunteer to the Japan Red Cross, but so far haven't found it.)

I don't knit lace on the train

Not since I had to frog the beginnings of my Orangina. Don't ask me why, but suddenly, about two years after the Orangina craze, I suddenly, out of the blue, decided to knit it the other day, bought the pattern, and found some Japanese yarn. I don't know what fiber it is exactly--it says 70% something, 30% something else, and neither things are the characters for cotton or wool... It says SoftRamie on the front of the ball band, and I'm fairly sure the 70% is the katakana for acrylic. But it feels nice enough and it was on sale, so I went with it.

So, my dad taught me to use chopsticks when I was a little girl. I promptly forgot and devised my own way. He has since told me I do it wrong, but I'm so good at doing it my way that I didn't have patience for learning to do it all over again the right way. Well, the other day I went out for soba with some friends. It's pretty cool, actually--you order using a vending machine outside on the sidewalk and it gives you a ticket with your order on it, and then you go inside and hand the guy behind the counter your ticket and tell him what kind of noodles you want (soba or udon), and in a few minutes you've got yourself bowl o' noodles. It's a standing restaurant, too--no chairs. So anyway, I'm standing there trying to eat noodles with chopsticks, which involves slurping, which is totally polite in Japan but which I still cannot force myself to do, and which is actually really difficult to do anyway, without making the noodles fly all around and fling sauce on your shirt, when these three late-middle-aged businessmen come in and stand next to us and start... observing how I eat my noodles. They found it very amusing. I wasn't terribly embarrassed or anything but it made it that much harder to eat with grace, knowing that I was being watched. So then one of them tapped my shoulder and said "wrong," while pointing to my chopsticks. Disconcerted, I said, "...oh?" (Brilliant international communication! We will reach understanding!) He grabbed a pair of chopsticks and said, "sample, sample," showing me by example how to hold it so that the lower chopstick stays still and the upper chopstick moves (just like my very American dad does it). Well, it's hard to overcome twenty years of chopsticking, so I made some mistakes and got some more sauce (which is clear, but also oily, so it still leaves a stain) on my shirt. But at least I provided them with some amusement. I'm sure they have traveled for business to the U.S. or had to interact with foreigners for business, or they wouldn't have remembered (from their school days) enough English to talk to me, therefore they must've been the embarrassed party at some point, so I didn't mind so much, but sometimes it's hard to tell when people are laughing with you and when they're laughing at you, so it wasn't exactly fun.

My friends suggested that next time I should just shake my head and claim, "Korean style!"

Never mind

no, really...

I mean, thanks, Blogger, for realizing that I'm in Japan and maybe I read Japanese, but hey, maybe I don't, and you know, maybe I'd like to DELETE A POST you know, and I can't figure out how the hell to do that. But whatevs, that's cool, don't even worry about it. Peace.

p.s. AND ANOTHER THING!! I can't change my template. Grrr.