march wind-down

robotskirts

My twin-kid-brother has started his own website. I admire it, I envy it, I check it more frequently than my own website�

[Note: the site does feature some robots, but is sorely lacking in skirts.]

moving

It�s been in the works for about two months now, but my plan to move to a super-cheap apartment�in which I will be under no pressure whatsoever to keep the place exactly as it was as when I first began living in it, as is the case with the apartment in which I am living now�in the nearby city is finally underway!

The past two days I�ve been a frequent buyer at the local home goods store and have scrubbed my heart out. My hands are cut and chemically dried, my clothes smell like cleaner and are speckled with paint, and my apartment. . .looks hardly any different than it did when I first set eyes on it.

I�m exhausted and I�m exasperated.

At these times, I like to write to my mom. We�re not �close� but we generally �get-along.� I think it�s a good relationship. Anyway, this is what I wrote today, �well, I got a lot done at the apartment today...but a good part of it was futile b/c I painted a whole wall before realizing that it was not the right green...and then I hung a ceiling light in the kitchen and with the aid of the wrong-green wall, realized that the kitchen wall tiles are not pale pale green after all, but a pale pale yellow. Which may not seem to make a world of difference to you...but it�s driving me crazy. Unfortunately, with the clouds, rain, and heater-less apartment, I was chilled to the bone and it was already 5pm when I figured [the colors] out.�

[Note: the original email had several spelling errors.]

shottogan

There are a lot of English words and phrases that have made it into the common Japanese vocabulary. Of course, most of them have been modified a bit. For example, the phrase sexual harassment becomes sekku hara. . .and there are English phrases that we don�t even use in English. Reberu appu is level up. Did you know about this verb? It�s amazing what words have been worked into the Japanese vocabulary, especially when you consider how few Japanese people can actually �speak English.�

Just the other day I learned that shotgun wedding is one English phrase that is quite well known over here. You see, a good friend of mine just got pregnant, and unfortunately can�t be a shottogan buraido at her own shottogan uedingu because Japan has a law against getting married within a certain number of months after having been divorced.

[Note: my friend�s new beau is way better than the lame-o she first married.]