Odds and Ends

I've had a busy few days but nothing all that interesting has been happening. The most exciting thing that happened was that I recently discovered my school has an airplane. A real one.





You may wonder how I could have been working at a place for a year and not have noticed a friggin airplane. My reasoning: they keep it tucked away in a little courtyard between buildings, none of which I ever go near. My daily routine on campus keeps me limited to two or three buildings, and I don't generally spend too much time exploring the nooks and crannies of when I could be home doing something else. But as I'm a bit of an airplane fetishist, I was pretty excited to see this plane. I may try and pull some strings and get into the cockpit at some point, if they'll let me. I doubt they will.
In other uneventful news, this being the start of the new school year here in Japan, my school came out with the new catalogue of faculty. Aside from discovering that there's a professor working at my school who was born in 1917 (because dates of birth is one of the only things I could read in the catalogue), I also found my own mug. All that Japanese next to me describes my background, hobbies, etc. I wrote it in English a while ago and they translated it, and I'm not sure exactly what it says at this point.



This afternoon I took a ride down to the beach. Right as I pulled into the parking lot it started dumping rain, which prohibited me from actually getting out of the car. That was OK though. I sat for a while and listened to music. The only bummer (aside from the rain itself) is that there's a giant dune between the parking lot and the beach, so I couldn't even see the ocean. So I basically drove for 20 minutes to sit in my car in a parking lot in the rain for 20 more minutes, then I went home. But I took a picture of some rain drops on the windshield, and it will make a very cool background for your screen if you save it.



And lastly, let's quickly discuss the Red Sox. I'm not an alarmist (if that's no an oxymoron being a Boston fan) who is going to draw too many conclusions from the less-than-stellar opening day performance of my home town team. I'm just dissappointed that I actually woke up at 5 a.m. yesterday morning to listen to the first game of season, and the Sox just sucked their way to a loss versus the vaunted Kanasas City Royals. Hopefully when I get up at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning to listen to them, it'll be more worth my while.
I've noticed that the google map at the bottom of the page doesn't seem to be working lately, so I'll check that out at some point. Not now, but sometime. At least the weather forecast is still working like a charm! Good night.