Monday, April 24, 2006

The Trouble with Blogging

The trouble with blogging, at least for me, is that I'm usually far from my computer when something happens or I remember something that seems blogworthy. And then a few hours (or days) later, when I find myself both within proximity of an available internet-connected computer and with enough time to write something, either I can't remember what I was going to write, or I decide (often rightfully so) that it really wasn't interesting enough to publish.

But now I have both motive and opportunity, so let's go.

I rented a car for the first time when I went home for spring break. That was fun. A toast to being older than 24! The car was expensive, not extortionate. Also, a toast to unlimited mileage: I drove that car from Poughkeepsie to Syracuse, to Niagara Falls, to Syracuse, to Delaware, to Syracuse, and back to Poughkeepsie. I was really nervous at first about driving on the right again, since the vast majority of my driving experience has been in Japan, but it wasn't as hard to become reacclimated to driving on the right as it was getting used to driving on the left in the first place. And not hard at all when I returned to Japan and had to drive on the left again, except for the couple of times I threw the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal.

I had three Sundays to split between two churches, and in retrospect I should've spent more time at the church where I knew more people. The only reason why I go to Poughkeepsie at all is to see Mom and Kreg and the cats, but I can't really see any of them while I'm at church. Mom and Kreg are busy working, running around; I can't have them to myself. And the cats, well, they just don't feel they're being fed at that church. ("We need milk and solid food," Bapes told me while I was there, "and those communion wafers aren't cutting it.") There are plenty of familiar faces at Faith, but for the most part, that's all they are: familiar faces. In contrast, I only spent one Sunday at Rez, and that wasn't enough time to catch up with anyone, really. It didn't help that I forgot to set my clock ahead and missed Sunday School. D'oh.

I met up with some of my students in Niagara Falls, Ontario. I knew that they'd be traveling to Canada during spring break, and I found out from James "The Canadian Guy in My Town" that they'd be eating lunch at the Planet Hollywood at 1:30pm the day after they arrived, so I drove out there with Uncle Jonathan (who was bored as a Thruway tollbooth attendant in Pembroke), and surprised them. Well, James knew I was coming, but the students didn't. That was cool. They all ordered nearly identical burgers, and then had to figure out how to fit them into their mouths; they've probably never seen a burger larger than a BigMac.
And since Toothpaste Maniac had written to me, expressing her jealousy of the book she'd lent me who was enjoying herself in America while TM had to work, I brought the book with me and took a photo (well, several, to get the shot right) in front of Horseshoe Falls.

Work's over at the BoE, and it's time to clean up. Since the Blogger interface on this computer is all in Japanese, I'm gonna hit one of the buttons below this field, and it's either going to save this post or publish it. Which one will it be?