Well, the blog is officially back. At least, I hope it is. What started as a week off of blogging extended into almost two months. I enjoyed the time off, though!
Once we got back from Russia things got busy here at work. I finished an old term and started a new one, and got caught up in all the work that that entails. The new term is one of my busiest ever, so I find myself planning classes in the morning before I officially check in to work, and I also end up sometimes using my lunch break to set up for classes later that day. The good news is that I have four class periods a week with no scheduled classes, so I can actually do lesson planning on the clock. It sounds like common sense but actually to me it is a great luxury – like staying at a hotel with satin sheets on the bed.
Kuniko is busier than usual, but still less busy than her previous job. She’s got a lot of stuff going on with her career and maybe in the future I can get into that more. For now, it should be filed under “developing story”.
Since my last posting we haven’t had many major developments except for a visit we had from family. My cousin (really my Mom’s cousin) Steve and his wife Brenda visited from Australia and we hosted them for a few nights. I really get along with Steve well – maybe because my life slightly resembles his. He moved away from California to start a life in a new country, and found that the world is a big place and there are many more ways to live your life than the conventional list on offer in the U. S. of A. We both like wine and my highlight of their visit is when he walked through our local supermarket’s wine section and instantly and without contemplation scooped out a bottle of Moët & Chandon to celebrate my birthday and our upcoming anniversary. The guy knows his stuff!
Brenda was also really good to talk with. Both Kuniko and I are not really active conversationalists so I’m afraid that she was stuck with some of the verbal heavy lifting, but it was a pleasure to speak with someone else who teaches for a living and to hear about the conditions under which she works.
While showing them around our area I kept an ear open for interesting expressions, and was lucky enough to hear Steve say “Fair Dinkum!” a few times, and we also learned about the word “mufti”. My vocabulary is slowly expanding even today.
After the visit Steve and Brenda went off to Kyoto for a five day stay, and we went back to work. I managed to catch a cold at the tail end of the week, and pushed myself hard to get through the last classes of the day on Friday. I staggered home and promptly slept for most of the weekend. I’m back at work now, but the cold is still with me. I’m at the end stage when all the yucky stuff that was in my throat and nose wants to come back out by coughing, and I have to make sure not to send it back down my throat again. An old friend once called it “lung butter”, and that’s what I’m doing all day – hacking up lung butter.
Moving on from that mental image, I did have a spot of good news at the annual work health checkup yesterday. I managed to get through the battery of examinations without offending anyone and I’m getting more used to unzipping my pants in public thanks to the many times I have to take off and put on my business shirt. The moment of truth was on the weighing scale, and I tipped the scales at five pounds less than last year. I lost six pounds the year before that, so I’m hoping to keep the trend alive and lose another five next year. In a few weeks I’ll get the bloodwork results back and we’ll see if I managed to lower my cholersterol at all. They give me a hard time about cholesterol every year because it is just on the safe side of “high”. The nurse always tells me to stop eating meat, and I tell her that I eat meat only once or twice a week these days but I don’t think she believes me. What else would Americans eat?
Well, that’s enough for an update post, but I promise to be more regular in my updates in the future. My mom and dad have been ragging me a bit about the lack of updates, and let’s face it – they are the only ones who read this anyways so I hope this sates your appetite for Bryan news for a bit!
More to come soon. Really!
