home again

I'm not even at Poultry Days yet and it's already been a crazy week. Going home is always busy. It was made even more hectic by the thunderstorms which came through and shut down the power in my mom's apartment for a good six hours. I had to read by candlelight! But at least I did get to read - a lovely relaxing thing I hadn't gotten to lately. The Golden Compass series is very, very good.

pajama party

It's finals week and there are now more people on campus in their pajamas than not in their pajamas. Flannel kittens and basketballs abound.

cat got his tongue

Banjo the cat loves to get in fights, as I believe I've mentioned before. Last week he came home injured in a way that a vet of 35 years had never seen before - his tongue was sliced in half across the middle and a chunk of it was hanging off, slowly dying. Banjo had to have surgery to remove a part of his tongue and now the vet says there is a little triangle of space missing from it. We can't get him to open his mouth wide enough to see it yet, but if we ever do, there will be a picture!

shake, rattle, and roll

When I was seven years old, I remember being on the school bus and listening to a few people talk about the earthquake they'd felt the day before. Earthquake? I thought those only happened in California. I hadn't felt anything. I was so disappointed.

When I moved to Japan, I was so excited that I might experience an earthquake. Every time a little tremor happened, I'd be so happy. The one time my dishes rattled off of my shelf I was ecstatic.

Last night, at 5:40am I was woken up by my door rattling and the house shaking. Earthquake! In Indiana! Yay! I stayed awake for a little bit, hoping NPR would tell me about it, and they did: the 5.4 quake itself was in Illinois, a couple hundred miles away, but we Hoosiers felt it and the aftershock too. Fun!

My housemate thought it was the cat jiggling the bed like he does when he starts licking himself too enthusiastically. Not quite.

run, run, run!

It is the season - the running season.

In only four days, my awesome friend Anna will be running the Boston Marathon for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. If you haven't donated to this great cause, you should! Do it now!

In only nine days, I will be running the Derby Mini Marathon in Louisville, Kentucky. It's not nearly as impressive as a marathon, and I'm just running it for myself, but I'm excited to see if I can improve my time. My goal is 1 hr 50 minutes. More realistically (since I kinda tweaked something playing Ultimate this week), I plan to finish under 2 hours. In addition, I want to finish within 5 minutes of Sam, who hates running, but whose body seems to take to it quite well.

Last time I ran a half marathon was in Kyoto in 2003 with Anna, soon to be four time finisher of the Boston Marathon. We trained during our lunch breaks while studying abroad and ran the race in 1 hr 55 min 56 sec. Afterwards we were invited to be on a tv show as representatives of foreigners who finished the race. Those were crazy, wonderful times.

high five

This weekend is Little Five Weekend. That means this week is Little Five Week. That means every other house I have passed on my ride home from school the last two days has had a party in their front yard, complete with beer pong and/or cornhole, loud music, and empty alchohol containers strewn about.

This afternoon I came up behind a group of four guys meandering down the middle of the street.

Dude: "Whaddya think?"
Guy: "I think I feel sober."
Dude: "I think I feel better than when I was wasted earlier."
Guy: "I wonder if Dan's house has any more beer."

This evening when I went for a run I high fived a guy standing in the middle of the street drinking beer from a beer bong. Yeah, Little Five!

word on the street

I was sitting on a bench by the School of Law when three high school guys showed up and started skateboarding down the steps. After hitting the loose brick and crashing a few times, they took a break. Some college students came by and handed them info on how to register to vote. When they left, the guys started talking about the candidates.

Tall guy: "I don't want to vote for Clinton. I'll vote for that other guy. What's his name? Oh, yeah. Obama. I hear that when he gets elected, he's gonna legalize marijuana."
Short guy: "No way. Really?"
Tall guy: "Yeah, Seven-Eleven's gonna be selling J's."
Guy with sprained ankle: "Sweet. I'm gonna vote for him."

use it up!

Deb and I went to the School of Fine Arts Senior Projects show last night because I had a friend exhibiting her textiles made with human hair. There's nothing like Chinese poetry embroidered on moldy quilts with human hair. It was pretty interesting.

Of the other projects, this one caught my attention. It was a website, video, and free buttons which urged the public not to "reduce, reuse, recycle," but to hurry up and use up all of the natural resources so we can get on with finding other options.

The goal, of course, was not only to make us think of our energy usage, but also how we promote dealing with the issue. What works and what doesn't to motivate people? I took a button, which I fully intend to put on my backpack. Because if you think it's a stupid idea to "use it up," you had better come up with another solution people will actually respond to.

lucky day

There were three or four people standing in front of the dairy section at Kroger exchanging puzzled glances. I walked up to grab some milk and suddenly understood why - all the half gallons were marked with big orange stickers that said "25 cents." What was wrong with the milk that they would sell it so cheaply?

We lingered around proposing theories until a Kroger employee came over and cleared it up. "We had too many and they expire in four days, that's all."

So I bought four.

jumping off of cliffs sounds exhilarating

On Saturday evening, I decided that my life has been too boring. I have not experienced

mountain biking
rock climbing
skydiving
base jumping
kayaking

or any of the other incredible outdoors activities featured in the Banff Mountain Film Festival (World Tour version). The people in these films were absolutely amazing. I envied their sense of adventure, the way they pushed their bodies to the limit, and their attitudes toward life. I wanted upper body strength like the rock climbers, coordination like the mountain skiiers, balance like the off-trail unicyclers, and mental fortitude like base jumpers.

The movies were so engaging that my body was reacting to the situations of the athletes on the screen. My palms started sweating as the one rock climber tried over and over again reach that one handhold on the arch. My legs tensed as the mountain biker balanced precariously on slender trees. My heart jumped as the the woman leapt from the top of a very high cliff and sped through the air. Just thinking about it all now gets me excited.

Will I ever manage to do these activities? I hope so, but I doubt it. They cost too much money. But you can be certain I will do my best to live through these athletes and their wonderful adventures again at next year's show.

almost

"Almost" stories are not that great. In fact, they are usually boring. But since I have nothing else to say, here are my two for the day.

I was riding my bicycle down the lovely forest path in the middle of campus, when I moved over to pass a pedestrian. As I looked up again from edge of the path I was attempting to remain on, I almost ran into three small trees which had been blown over in the wind and were slanting precariously across the path. As I swerved last minute underneath instead of through them, I wondered if my momentum would have carried me into all three, or if the blow to the head from the first one would have sent me tumbling.

Again, I was riding my bicycle home from school. I am always careful about areas with parked cars along the street because no one looks before opening their car doors. And I had judged correctly, because some guy three cars up was carelessly shoving his car door open into the bike lane. I would have moved over, but the car on my left was doing his best not to give me any room, and suddenly I was in the "oh, shit" time period. I slammed on my brakes just as the guy getting out of the car realized I was going to take out his door. He quickly pulled it back in with a second to spare as I screeched to a halt around his from bumper. "Sorry," he said.

Okay, one more. I'm on my bike going through a green light when a guy walks out into the middle of the street. I slow down to let him cross ahead of me, but he just stands there. And he stands there some more as a car passes him on the left, and I pass him on the right. As I go by he says, "Sorry, I'm not good at walking."

i will hate you until you know better

I'm sure I've written here concerning how I feel about eating and drinking in the library. Summary: If you do it responsibly, I'm less inclined to hate you.

Right now, I am sitting in a cubical at the library in front of a computer. On the other side of the cubical wall is someone else at the library in front of a computer. He or she is eating potato chips. I can hear them crunching. They are sour cream and onion. I can smell them. I can also hear the greasy, potato chip covered fingers typing away on the keyboard and clicking the mouse. Oh, there was a pause...and a clink. Yep. Open can of soda right there.

I don't know who that person is, but I hate them. I hate that they make me seriously consider bringing wet wipes to school with me and wiping off any computer I sit down in front of before I touch anything.

maybe a little too friendly

Satoshi and I were walking around campus the other day when we saw a squirrel a few yards away. Satoshi got out his camera to take a picture (squirrels are rare in Japan). As soon as he pulled it out of his pocket, the squirrel looked up. We stepped a little closer. So did the squirrel. We stopped. It kept coming. It came all the way up to a mere inches from Satoshi's shoe. I thought it was gonna climb up his leg or something.

Then I guess it realized we weren't going to feed it and it ran away. But I have never had a squirrel, even one most likely raised on handouts from students, come so close of its own volition. Crazy rodent.

satoshi comes to america

My friend Satoshi visited me from Japan this weekend. I hadn't seem him in close to three years, so we spent a lot of time talking. In Japanese. It was great.

I also showed him the peaceful little town that Bloomington is during spring break, which he loved. We rode our bicycles all around campus, through neighborhoods, and up hills. He was particularly impressed with:

the IU library and its 10 floors of books
Mother Bear's pizza
the limestone buildings on campus

I also changed his view on two things, cats and beer.
Banjo slept with him every night and would come up to him and purr constantly, looking for affection. He couldn't believe that a cat would be so friendly.

I took Satoshi to Upland, where we had the beer sampler. He didn't like beer before because Japanese beer is all lager and not that great, but he loved the tasty Upland, particularly the Pale Ale and the Chocolate Stout. There's nothing like a great microbrew to change someone's mind.

Anyway, I had a great time showing him around and I'm pretty sure he had a good time too. I like it when friend's visit. It's always a good time.

interference on the field

We were playing ultimate on a field on campus today when all of a sudden a deer bounded down the sidelines. We watched as it crossed the entire field and disappeared into some trees at the other end. Just as we were commenting on how crazy that was, another one came by and did the same thing. Someone commented how lucky we were that they weren't being chased by a mountain lion. I just wonder what prompted their romp in the first place.

signposts for dummies

strolling through bloomington

Yesterday had such amazing weather that Deb, her houseguests, and I decided to spend it outside on the grounds of Bloomington's Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center, which is also the home of the Kumbum Chamtse Ling temple and the Dalai Lama's brother. The grounds were perfect for a stroll; bare vegetation was interspersed with stupas (chorten in Tibetan), yerts, and the temple, all framed in a perfect blue sky. We tried our hand at the singing bowls in the gift shop, but decided that the singing birds outside did a much better job.

on the bus

At the downtown terminal a woman got on the bus while the bus driver was giving someone directions. She didn't pay.

After the driver was finished, he yelled toward the back of the bus, "Do you have a pass?"
She didn't answer.
He came to the back of the bus. "Did you pay ma'am?"
"Go to hell or drive the bus!" she screamed.
"I won't do either," he answered.
"Then we'll sit here all day, won't we?"
Someone else gave the driver fifty cents. He told the lady she wouldn't be getting on his bus again.

A couple minutes later she announced to no one in particular, "I know who's gonna be the next basketball coach, and it isn't Dan Dakich!"

a prairie home in indiana

When I was little, cross country roadtrips almost certainly involved several tapes of Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" or "A Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra." We'd listen to his rolling baritone singing about Buttermilk Biscuits and Ketchup and narrating the stories of his "hometown," Lake Wobegon. When I grew up, I would still occasionally listen to his live performances every Saturday evening.

Last night, "A Prairie Home Companion" broadcast live from the IU Auditorium, and I was in the audience. The difference in being able to see the people attached to the voices as opposed to just imagining them was astounding. Garrison Keillor does a superb job of playing to both the audience and the performers and he wanders around the stage telling his stories. And in between everything is the constant counting of seconds, ushering in and out performers, and providing the scripts that the technicians on the show do.

Overall, the show was good. It involved several talented young performers from the IU Jacobs School of Music. However, while their songs were entertaining and inspiring, it seemed that they took up a surprising portion of the show. In fact, Garrison's signature "News from Lake Wobegon" portion was so short to have been almost not present. Perhaps we caught the tour at a bad time, when Garrison was on his way back from a week in California and many of the show's regulars were on vacation. I don't know the reason, but I would have liked a little more talking and a little less music.

Oh, and the most amusing part of the evening really came from the people sitting in the audience immediately surrounding us. Ten minutes into the show, the guy in front of us pulls out his cell phone which had just been vibrating in his pocket and starts talking to someone on the phone. About halfway through, someone in front of my mom turns around to tell her that it is incredibly rude to comment on the show to your neighbor in whispered tones during the applause. And at the end, when everyone was picking up their coats, the lady to Sam's right complimented him on his wonderful tact and considerateness for trying to cough only during the applause as to not disturb others.

death of (state) taxes

Why is it that the federal government is so generous in their return of my money, but the state of Indiana is so dang stingy? How can one entity give me back more money than they originally took, and the other tell me still I owe them? I do not understand taxes.

At least it seems I will end up on the plus side this year.