Sho mo nai!

I guess I am pretty happy when I'm busy.

Or rather, I'm happy when I am busy enough that I am forced to get up early, but I still like to have those gaps of empyt time. This weekend was a great example. Friday at school is usually a pretty slow day for me. But I was slated to speak at church on Sunday, and had made little progress on my message. Or rather, I had written a message, and then decided it was no good and was freaking out over what I was to talk on. So Friday was spend at my desk digging through the bible, talking to Phil in BC, and a phone call with Colin who was going to lead the service. And lots of silent prayer; mostly, "Dear Jesus, please help me!" In the end I resolved to go back and work out what was wrong with the original message, which was the application. So after school I spent three or so hours typing it up and working out the bugs. Funny how it's like a design project that way. You get to a point where you could run with it and it would be fine, but you know that if you just spend those extra two hours it will be that much smoother. And the difference is the confidence. Some of the stuff in my message involved talking about personal weaknesses, so the emotional freak-out about saying that to thirty people I had on Friday night alone in my apartment, twice or more. But having gone over the message several times, and tried different resolutions, it just had to be in there. And come Sunday I had peace about it.

And then I stayed up until 4 am playing around with the FontBook, AutomatedTasks, and GarageBand software that came with my computer, and which I had never used.

In turn, I was unable to get up before 11 the next morning as I had desired, pushing everything back. I woke up just before 12, I think, and after a shower and a bite, packed up gyoza imported from Miyazaki (on Kyushu, so in Japan but far away for fresh goods), and all the stuff I needed to take to the recycle station. Almost all of my garbage, like everything except compost, goes to the recycle station. Kamikatsu is pretty unique in Japan this way. There is some that gets burned, but it's not that much at all.

Then it was a drive down into Naruto with a couple errand stops en route. Unfortunately, due to the musical and various other things, we were unable to get a fourth person to play settlers with at Brian and Christine's place. And three people can only eat so many gyoza. We ate 36 between us, so I have 14 left over. Dinner tonight? You bet! Two games of Cities and Knights, gyoza, chicken fried rice, and salad. Sweet. And as an added bonus I got to use their high speed access update a ton of software on my laptop. Given that I have effectively only a dial-up connexion at school and no other access, my computer has been whimpering for these updates since the summer. There, there, little Fletchmobile. I lost both games. So it goes.

Then my reason to get up in the morning was 1. to get to the school so I could print out my message for that night, and 2. to make it to the musical performance in Matsushige town (an hour away) by two o'clock. This year they are doing Peter Pan, and let me tell you it is the best musical in the three years I have been here. I'm going to do my best to make it to the Wakimachi performance (which they do in a litte old Kabuki theater!) and to bring a camera or two with me when I go. That's in two weeks.

So after that it was back to Naruto (which is next to Matsushige), where I sat in my car and went over my message one last time, and then walked up to Brian and Xine's again for dinner. Yay! Then it was off to church for us. I was pretty pleased with myself. Usually I quite freak out when I have to stand up and speak formally before people. Yeah, I know, you'd think it would be no problem given how enamoured I am with my own voice. But speaking casually in a conversation that happens to have a lot of people and typing a long blog to unseen audience is very very different from speaking in front of a group of people who are full of expectations. But the old maxim "I you sweat in the prep, you won't bleed in the battle," was applicable here, I guess. A bunch of people told me afterwards that it was good, so I guess it was.

After church I had a fourth meal (!!!), joining Colin and Jim at "TokuToku Udon" which I suppose means "Get Get Udon." And on my return home, did I get that much needed sleep? Of course not! I bought a manga at the convenience store (Bleach #21), got home and read that, as well as nearly a hundred pages of a book by Floyd McClung.

So needless to say I slept in this morning...

posted by Fletcher @ 10:13 p.m.