TWAS THE SEASON!!! (pictures coming soon...)

Well well long time now see right?! The answer is yes. The reason…let’s just say that it was my computer’s time…So I was computerless from December 25th to February 20th. In technology’s stead, I’ve become quite the bookworm as a trade off for keeping up with current events (i.e. we all knew that Brittany Spears wasn’t right before the head shaving/rehab thing…DUH!). Thanks to this new fangled contraption, I’m back in the loop. So much for literacy! Thank you all for the Christmas cards and gifts!!! Thank you momma and daddy for giving them folks at Best Buy the business for their slack customer service practices. There is so much to report since December so I’m going to update you all in list form for the next few posts to catch up. Enjoy!

Monday December 18
I was on the internet with Justin asking him to send me whatever Christmas music he had because my box with my cds had not arrived and guess what happened less than 10 minutes after I asked…The box came! Talk about uncanny! Inside were a number of smaller boxes with instructions written on them about when I was to open them. In the box labeled open now, my folks sent some candy cane striped converses and a super long santa hat that I wore to the elementary and junior high schools for my Christmas lessons. I made games…pin the hat on Santa…pin the nose on Rudolph…then they got to make their own respective Christmas art projects (1st grade = santa face with cotton ball hair and beard, 2nd grade = Christmas wreaths out of construction paper, 4th grade = A Christmas Wish Tree made of cutout of their traced hands) while listening to the reggae version of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”

Monday December 25
Well folks I managed to have on ok Christmastime despite my computer being on the blink and being at my desk at the Board of Education thinking about how I was supposed to be ripping gift boxes to shreds…not staring blankly into the same page of a book that I’d already read over and over. The tip of my plug melted inside the socket on my computer. Luckily, I was able to put all 10 gazillion of my pictures on my desk nearly burning off my fingers in the process while holding the melting plug in place. When I got home from work, I went to work on my Christmas box...Thank you so much to everyone who sent me gifts and cards! I really enjoyed everything. I can't thank you enough for thinking about lil ol' me way over here!!!

Friday December 29
Off to Tokyo to hang out with Justin for about a week and a half. We exchanged gifts when I got there. Believe it or not, 75% of the gifts we bought each other were nearly identical!!! After that we headed out to eat Chinese food and do Purikura (Print Club photo booth pictures)!

Saturday December 30
Grocery shopping for New Year’s dinner. I brought black eye peas and seasonings that my parents sent with me from home. We walked around the mall near his house a bit and I caught up on movies! YAY!

Sunday December 31
New Year’s Eve…we met up with some of Justin’s friends for dinner near Tokyo Tower. Near midnight we made our way to (the Temple near Tokyo Tower) for the countdown. At midnight everyone released clear balloons with wishes tied to them. It was so beautiful…but anticlimactic! Where was all the hooping and hollering that I’m used to on New Year’s?!?!?! Answer: in Roppongi as we soon thereafter found out. We went to a multi-story club called Vanilla and hung out on the techno floor.

Monday January 1, 2007
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
New Year’s Day Menu:
Black Eye Peas
Rice
Collard Greens
Neck Bones
All prepared by whom??? None other than yours truly! DE-LI-CIOUS!!! ( I surprised myself…I done did good for my first New Year’s meal!!!)

Tuesday January 2
Went to Odaiba to shop…futile! So we headed over to Asakusa, where I managed to get seriously lost when I was over here in 2003. It’s pretty much a flea marketish tourist trap where you can actually find some good souvenirs and stuff if you look well enough. After meandering around Asakusa we made our way to Akihabura, Tokyo’s premier electronics district. Although we didn’t buy any laser beam battering ray armbands or anything we did get some really good crepes from a mobile street stand! I had a choco/ banana/almond/whipped cream crepe Justin had a choco/ strawberry/whipped cream crepe. We wandered around stopping here and there to look at the occasional action figure...and Purikura!!!

Wednesday January 3
We stayed in because I woke up feeling terrible. It’s so nice to wake up when you wanna, make good homemade breakfast at noon, and watch South Park in pjs all day!

Thursday January 4
Went to Kawasaki in search of good buys…futile! It's not that I don't love Japanese clothes...it's just that the cool looking stuff is terrible quality and the quality stuff is terribly expensive...soooo...

Friday January 5
Went to Kamakura to see Daibutsu, The Great Buddha statue. We got a lot of great pictures and Justin had the famous purple sweet potato ice cream and I had a purple sweet potato croquette.

Saturday January 6
Michelle ( my roommate from Tokyo Orientation) had an overnight layover so we scooped her up and headed to Bamiyan for dinner. Bamiyan is a Chinese chain restaurant that I frequented back in 03 because it was right down the street from where I lived. Then it was off to find some...PURIKURA!!! Once home, we stayed up all night discussing conspiracy theories over South African Shiraz.

Sunday January 7
After getting Michelle to the station so that she could head home, we went on base to the NEX so that I could stock up on toothpaste, deodorant, hair color (in case I get bored…er got bored, and dyed my hair already!), soap, etc. Ms. Bridget sent me a really great Christmas box to Justin’s ship…THANK YOU! I wanted to buy a Nintendo DS but didn’t…then regretted it because coming back to a computerless home was killer! Not to mention having to sit in an office for 8 hours doing NADA!

Monday January 8
I woke up to the smells of breakfast…Wait what? BREAKFAST?! Justin cooked! I hadn’t been truly sad in a long time, but boarding the bus in Yokohama gave me a stomachache. I was not at all enthused to turn the key in my apartment door. For 11 days I had forgotten what it was like to be able to see your breath inside the house…not chilly…COLD! So I turned on my nearly empty kerosene heater and sat in front of it with a cup of tea…sigh.