unbearable lightness of being
Today I turned over the page on my calendar to February. Whereas this morning I woke up groggy and hung over from writing ten pages of a field work research paper the day before, now I feel like dancing and singing, everything is going so well!

I spent the whole day today (except the hour I spent teaching English and the odd 5 hours I spent procrastinating) working on said research paper and my fiction story. The research paper is all but done... I've set it aside to proof it later. And after weeks of writer's block, with the research paper out of the way a story topic fell into my lap and the thing's practically written itself. I have a beginning and an end, so now all I need is a middle! (Strange, you say, but that's sometimes how these things work.)

In any case, I made incredible progress and now, suddenly, the rest of the week seems easy! I even managed to complete ALL the reservations for my March trip to the Kansai region. Looks like Alex and I are spending 7 nights in Tokyo at two different ryokan, two nights in Kyoto, two nights in Nara, one night at a Shukubo (temple lodging) in Koya-san, a major pilgrimage site about 2 hours south of Osaka, one night in Osaka and then three more nights in Kyoto. Boo. Yah. Now all I need to FINISH my travel plans completely is to pay for the rest of the Okinawa package and reserve tickets for the Studio Ghibli museum in Mitaka. YAY! I'm awesome! Say I'm awesome!

I'm also psyched because

1) I finally got the install discs for Panther in the mail
2) My host mom gave me my "refund" money for travel during February and it's more than I anticipated
3) I like chocolate

...

4) Tomorrow, host mom and I are going to (do X very special secret thing) for (X very special time) when (we'll have the awesomest thing EVAR done) so that (X) will have a nice surprise. Isn't that cool? I'd love to rant and rave all about it but, you see, it's a secret.

and

5) YAAAAAAYYYY! JUSTIN'S COMING TO VISIT ME ON FRIDAY!!!

I'm like a kid in a candy store. Except I'm not really a kid any more. And, well, this is Tokyo. But there's a Lawson's right across the street from my house, so it might as well be a candy store.

So, you see, I really ought to go eat some Pinot right now... because I just got out of the ofuro and nothing compliments a nice, hot bath better than some cold, vanilla-chocolatey goodness.