Well, I'm awake, at least.
Coming home from work tonight, I immediately curled up on the couch with Evan and proceeded to fall asleep. I woke up a couple of hours later and fell asleep again about ten minutes thereafter. And then woke up at around 10:30. I tried to go to bed but ended up watching TV with Evan in there and decided I was wide awake. After puttering around the internet and finding nothing too absorbing, I settled onto the couch with my book. Evan went to bed, and after I finished it (12:30?) I decided to try sleeping myself. Couch + TV + fuzzy Kimiko blanket usually = instant-sleep mode. Not tonight, however, so I decided to try to sleep in the bedroom and listen to The Dark Tower II: Drawing of the Three (picked it up for seven bucks on sale at work on super-discount day) on my iPod. Of course, I got caught up in the story and was still awake by the time that I got to the end of the last track that I had imported. Still wide awake.
So I got up and came out here and started importing the next CD, which should be finishing shortly. I hope that by the time I would reach the end of listening to it, I will be well asleep. For now I have nothing else to do so I figured a short entry might be in order, at least maybe to get myself to stop mentally rambling long enough to get to sleep.
We're having some nasty weather tonight, but we shouldn't have to go out tomorrow for any reason, so it should be all right out there again by the time Evan heads to work on Monday. I'm off until Tuesday, which is yay, though not really; I'm only getting three days this coming week. With luck the budget will go up for the week after that, but I can't say that I'm not in the process of looking for something else. I can't really afford to stay there if it's going to continue like this until the second quarter--Evan's loans are coming in and I think mine are too. And we were already kind of just skittering by. Add the fact that he's really desperate to get out of where he's working right now (not that I blame him--it kind of sucks, and by kind of I mean a lot), and you get a bit of a sticky situation. With any luck we'll improve on all that as soon as possible.
I'm kind of hungry but I really don't want to grab anything to eat this late at night. Though the last of the leftovers I brought home from dinner with one of my co-workers is still incredibly tasty-smelling. Yay cheesefries from Outback--I think I probably brought half my plate's worth home with me, though Evan took care of most of it.
With any luck I'll manage to get an actual interesting entry up here soon; I signed up for an interesting little project on a website I frequent and I'm hoping to at least put on a good show, so to speak. It's not likely, I suppose, that too many folks would be interested in my ramblings, but a girl can dream, right?
So more bookwenchery from me in the next couple days, given that I've already devoured a whole new book since this morning. But not now; the Gunslinger calls.
It's nonfiction, and the author chronicles her journey through three nations as she recovers from divorce and an unsatisfying life.
The book really struck a lot of familiar chords with me, not because I'm unsatisfied with where I am, exactly, but just because I could understand where she was coming from. I admire the fact that as she chronicles her spiritual development, there's an acknowledgment that there is more than one path to God, and that "Thou art God" (Stranger in a Strange Land) isn't all so far from the truth, in the end. I remember identifying with that statement when I read it in Heinlein, and this only reinforced my feelings, that the divine is everywhere and you don't necessarily have to be on the Bible-thumping, revival-tent-inhabiting path to be doing it "right." Try to tell my family that. Ha.
Anyway. I've always been kind of afraid of stepping out there, as Liz does, and I really admired that, as well. She simply goes out into the world and does exactly what she wants to do. Perhaps that's a bit self-indulgent; in fact it quite likely is. But I think it's a chance that most of us would take if we had the opportunity. If someone said: pick three countries and spend a year visiting each of them equally, and here's the financial backing to do it--wouldn't you?
Of course, upon proposing that to myself, I have to wonder where I would go. I have a history at being incredibly terrible at languages, but then again they say that immersion is the best way to fix that problem. Liz picked Italy because she wanted to learn the language. For similar reasons, I would choose Japan. Perhaps I could even turn those three years of college Japanese into something resembling fluency! Also, silly as it might seem, I'd like to see what the effect of Japanese food would be on my body. I could certainly stand to lose a few and would probably feel quite awkward among all the smaller folk. Combine that with my picky tastes and I might actually be getting somewhere in that department.
My second "country" would be somewhere in Europe, because I know a couple of folks in the region who I would dearly love to visit. Ideally, I would divide my time between several countries, including Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, and Germany, so...yeah. Those four months would be hectic, but awesome. And more than likely I'd probably put back on all the potential weight lost in Japan, given the insane amounts of stuff I would want to try. Oh, well.
Finally, I think I'd mosey on up to the UK and spend a blissful four months in Scotland and Wales, with the occasional side trip to England (theater!) and Ireland (why not?). There I would visit all the lovely historical sites and absorb the accents. I could probably just sit around and listen to people talk for the whole time and go home completely happy.
So, yeah. Not exactly the great spiritual journey that Liz took, but I think I'd go home feeling satisfied, at least, that I got to go and live in the world, if only for a year.
Where would you go?
I'd planned on giving this thing some attention on the 16th, as that would have been three months (Oi.) since I actually wrote in here. Unfortunately the 16th came and went in a flurry of Wii playing, snow, and God knows what else. Work, probably. I put in some overtime (well, over my scheduled time--I came in at just under 40 hours for the week) at the end of the week because they needed some stuff done, and for whatever reason when I hit 40 hours a week the odds of me writing in here decrease dramatically, rather like they did in November. Probably has something to do with the fact that I'm sleeping until the last possible minute, hurrying off to work, then coming back and crashing as soon as I can so I can get the most rest possible to get ready for another full day of work. And weekends were really all about laundry, dishes, and just trying to deflect the craziness of the week past and the coming week as well.
So anyway. Yeah. I guess there really isn't any particular need to apologize, but of course I still feel apologetic.
Life has been more or less ordinary for me, but for whatever reason I missed all the snow-flying months, so perhaps that's a little to blame as well. There's still the occasional chance of flurries on the radar, but after the drenching rain we've been getting since last night just after I clocked out at work, I think we're moving more-or-less smoothly into springtime, which is definitely foryay. Sunshine and warmth will be most lovely to see again, I think.
It occurs to me that I probably can't even possibly log everything that I've read over the past three months, but of course I'll give it a try. Some things stood out, like P.D. James' Children of Men, and Christopher Moore's You Suck (for which I had to read Bloodsucking Fiends to keep up), as well as getting through Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books. One that I've been trying to get myself into lately is a book called The Dark Mirror, but I've had it out of work for a week and managed to only hack out about a hundred pages or so. I want to read it, but it just hasn't grabbed me yet.
Stephen King's Dark Tower books are getting a comic series to match, but it turns out that my bookstore won't be carrying them. Le sigh. I was actually kind of looking forward to a comic book that I was really interested in.
I interviewed for an administrative assistant position a couple of weeks ago. Apparently it didn't go so well, despite my interview which seemed rather promising. I suppose we can't always get what we want, but boy would I like to get out of the bookstore. It's not so much any one thing in particular that I'm tired of so much as I'm just tired. This time of year the schedule's awfully lean, and we really could use a bit more money (who couldn't?) but I'm really hesitant to go to, say, Evan's job, which he really doesn't like but makes decent money--enough money, in fact, that he ends up kind of stuck unless he wants to downgrade his income--something we can't afford right now. Meh.
The real impetus for this post was realizing that my totally anti-social best friend, J, is now maintaining a journal. It's a writing journal, and she doesn't have much of the kind of personal posting that I'm much more apt to be making, but there's no reason that I can't do this if she can. So I'm hoping to get this thing moving again, because I think it really is a part of my life that I want to continue. Just not when I work a lot. Or when it snows. Ahem.
Anyway. It's good to be back (I hope), and here's to keeping on keeping on.
