Vintage Me

I'm happy to report that the borderline insanity I was exhibiting in the last post has passed successfully, and I've been back to my normal, semi-sane self for the last few days. And tonight, friends, is cause for celebration, as it is my big, bad, 29th birthday.

Chieko and I spent the last few hours gorging ourselves on fine red meet and beer, and are now currently enjoying several glasses of wine from 1978, the year I came into this crazy mixed up world. This was a cool gift from my lovely wife. The icing on my birthday cake is that in addition to the wine, I'm enjoying a nice birthday thunderstorm with some nice lightning and torrential rain. Werd.


This weekend my school is having their annual festival, so campus has been abustle with preparations this week. The excitement today was that I could observe the erection (haha!!) of a big tent outside my office. It took most of the day to set this thing up, so I snapped photos now and then to mark the fascinating progress.

Mini Mt. Fuji, no?

You'll notice in this picture that there is a house randomly burning down in the background. It was burning for about 30 minutes before I heard any sirens, and then I heard a lot of sirens. I initially figured it was just some folks burning in the rice paddies, hence the lack of anyone seeming to care.

The library at my school is surround by a moat type thing. The water was completely still this morning and was reflecting everything around it quite nicely. I've been into shooting things reflecting in water lately.

And finally, I think this was yesterday, some cool clouds at sunset.

That's the catchup for the last few days here since my near meltdown. As I mentioned we've got the school festival this weekend, which means I trade an hour of work on Sunday for no work on Monday or Tuesday, which translates to me having to have worked a full five day week just once in the past month. Very nice.

Not ones to ever consider an idle moment, Chieko and I will be dashing off to Tokyo for a one night only appearance on Sunday. We're having a mega-session of wedding planning on Monday, and then bombing it back here to salvage a bit of relaxation on Tuesday.

We'll be travelling by train, which takes about 4 ours total, to give you an idea of how narrow Japan is. Of that 4 hours, only about 1 is on a bullet train. The rest of the time we are plodding along in a pretty standard express train. Driving to Tokyo would be the preferred option, but when you factor in the exorbinant cost of gas, tolls, and parking, it's cheaper and less hassle to jus take the train.

OK, going to enjoy the rest of the evening, and the thunderstorm. Good night.