the return

Yes, I am back in the US of A.  And, it’s completely strange, but not altogether horrible.  I don’t think it’s quite hit me though that I’ll not be returning to Russia; that’ll come later, I suspect.  Right now, I’m visiting some dear friends, so the excitement is a distraction from my having to contemplate such things.  When I get back to home home I’ll probably feel more of the culture shock that people mention after having traveled/lived abroad for an extended period of time.  It will be interesting, for sure.

studying abroad–her name is Russia

For the time being I’ll be updating on my other blog, wherein I describe my experiences and suchlike in Russia.

a summer affair ends with sweeping

It’s August now.  I’m not sure what I was doing those few weeks of July, but I woke up this morning and saw I have lots of piles of junk I don’t really want sitting around my room.  It probably had been a part of my plan to get rid of these piles, yet now it seems they’ll sit around for some indeterminable amount of time.  I have rearranged my bookshelves.  They look tremendous.  I also uncluttered my corkboard while keeping that haphazard, cool look that hip teen catalogues promote.

Well, it seems I’ve already exhausted myself having written an entire paragraph.  Until we meet again, keep a keen eye to the eastern horizon.

when I feel smart I do smart things

This past week I’ve really taken to practicing Japanese, something I’ve neglected since being home for the summer.  And what-ho to my surprise and joy, I still think it’s fun!  I was pretty convinced I’d still like it, seeing as how I’ve decided to study it particularly at school, but since my mood can be as predictable as the weather forecast I couldn’t be entirely sure.  Rosetta Stone is truly a great language learning tool, and even though version 2 isn’t nearly as streamlined and pretty as its successor there’s a lot of great information packed into it.  If I keep at it I just may be able to speak Nipponese one of these days.  ばんざい！

clean-o-rama

This’n is gonna be a quickie, just to break myself from the cleaning semi-spree I finally started this morning. It’s helping a bit with the bogged down feeling I’ve had coming on for a while, so I’m hoping results will be even more outstanding after more tidying. Vacuum, ho!

sometimes i want to be an outstanding person

I’ve resolved to be a more focused thinker.  It’s hard living with myself when I’m not positive with what goes on in my mind, if anything goes at all.  My mind is always terrifically absent of thoughts, moreso now than previously.  I guess it’s nice when I’d rather not worry about anything, but it definitely has been crippling as far as my academic ventures are concerned.  Does it stem from disinterest, or maybe laziness?  Or a fine combination of both.  That seems the most accurate.

But, truthfully, I feel like my mind is jumbled with something.  Maybe I can dredge it out with writing–let the muck ooze out my ears and nostrils.  Actually, I’ve felt clogged up for a while.  Fasting might be good.  Ahh, if only I had some beet juice, I’d really be in business.

Yeah, I have no clarity in my thoughts, nor any obvious stream of consciousness.  And it feels like I’m always trying too hard to sound intelligent, but everything ends up being trite and ridiculous.  Is this maybe a funk?  I hope it passes.

Cool things

So just now, I had this massive piece of glass extracted from my foot. Yesterday I was walking into my room and was sort of shuffling my feet when my right one caught something, and since we have hardwood floors I assumed it was just a regular wooden splinter that lodged itself into the ball of my foot. Whatevs. This morning I get up and ask my mother to have a look because I can’t really walk comfortably and I’m planning on flying to China in a few days, so having a limp-free gait would be grand. She gets out the needle and starts digging around and discovers, ‘Wait, this isn’t wood, it’s glass.’ Then she finds some tweezers and in one swift movement pulls out this tremendous shard of broken glass from a bottle that had been broken a few days ago in the kitchen. It was awesome. 

Daylight-Sucks-Time

Seriously, this business of changing the time a month early is ridiculous.  I’m not a big fan of losing an hour to my day anyway, but having it happen in what I still consider late Winter is even more absurd.  Sunlight’s great and all with its life-enabling properties to most biological creatures and I personally enjoy going out when the weather permits.  I guess what bothers me most about all this is the reasoning that somehow more energy will be conserved as a result.  Maybe in a country where excess isn’t the fashion DST beginning a month early makes perfect sense, but that place en’t here.  Having lights on in the middle of the day is pretty typical for my parents; couple that with constant TV and computer use and I’d say that pretty well obliterates any thought of expending less energy on a day-to-day basis.  And driving around in the car isn’t made any less popular by extended hours of daylight.  But whatever, I’ve used up my extra hour of sun and now it’s time to turn on all the lights in the house.

Into the future…?!

Apparently I’ve discovered how to transmit information into the future. Awesome.

My cleverest title yet

Today I would like to say I have some personal anecdote to share, but that would be a lie. I gauge the productivity of my day by whether I’ve taken a shower or not which doesn’t provide much anecdotal material. The plus to living this kind of lifestyle is that when I actually do things it’s twice as exciting than if I do stuff all the time.

For instance, I’ve had the same shag carpet in my bedroom for several years and not once had cleaned it until about a week ago. Completely disgusting, oh yes, but never had vacuuming filled me with such excitement.

Unfortunately the vacuum really only works on a superficial level, and as I see it the only way to get all that mucky muck out is to steam clean it. Basically this means that my life is about to get four or five times more exciting.