Heh, it’s been a while. I can’t really remember what I’ve done over the past week; I just remember last week feeling really long, which is a bit unusual.
The biggest thing, though, was that I turned in my recontracting papers on Thursday, while sitting at my desk in the community office, when my boss called me into the board of education office to dig into some awesome Mr. Donuts-brand donuts that a friend of the Kacho had brought by for us. She was visibly relieved and pleased to see that I was staying–I did tell her that it was a difficult decision for me, which she seemed to understand.
I also talked to my landlord–there’ll be a bigger apartment opening up in my building in April (one of the elementary school teachers I work with currently lives there–interesting), and I’ll probably end up switching into there. To be honest, though, having a smaller apartment does have its advantages…it’s easier to keep it warm during winter, for one thing. My apartment was also in better condition than Lindsay’s and Hannah’s when I moved in. And the apartments on that side had roaches and other bugs when the weather was warmer, when I had pretty much nothing except what accidentally made it in when I left my back screen door open. But…the prospect of having room for a desk with a chair, and a lot more storage space, and a window in my kitchen, as well as place for a kitchen table there–I think those are good enough factors to want to switch.
Hmm, what else…musical practice on Saturday. It was a much longer day than I realized–I caught an 8:30 AM train and carpooled in with some friends for a 6-hour meet-up. Afterwards, I was planning on going home and vegging out, but there wasn’t a train that got me back in time to make it to a supermarket before it closed, so I hung out with people, and we ordered in pizza and watched Bridget Jones’s Diary, which I’d never seen before and really enjoyed. But back to the musical…I’m really glad I’m involved, because it’s going to be a lot of fun.
We have three weekends of shows in March, and two rehearsals before the dress rehearsal. The first weekend’s shows are pretty close together. The second, though…ugh. The first show (Saturday) is in Hiwasa, almost as far southeast in the prefecture as you can go, and the second (the following day) is in Mikamo, just 3-4 train stops from me, here in the northwest corner of the prefecture. There are no train lines or expressways that cut diagonally across the prefecture…the only feasible way is to go north and then west, and it’s at least 3 hours by car. It’s going to be crazy.
In other news…I rented the first volume of the original Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon anime tonight, just as a refresher. And it’s surprisingly charming and refreshing, maybe in part because of how absolutely crappy animation on Japanese TV is right now. It’s still popularly referenced on TV and elsewhere, and I’ve realized more and more how much anime today is influenced/inspired by Sailormoon. I was a big BSSM obsessee in high school (my favorites were Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto, if anyone was interested), then a big anti-BSSM person in college, and now I’m kind of settling on a grudgingly fond-memory-laden middle ground. Lucky for me, my video store has all of season 1, and a smattering of seasons 2 and 3.
(I also rented American Beauty, which I’ve never seen–I realized recently, though, that I usually end up liking films that have scores written by composers I’m a fan of. I’ve heard wonderful things about this film, and it’s scored by Thomas Newman, who’s a favorite of mine. Our video store has an interesting selection–it still catches me off-guard to realize that there isn’t really a separate p.orn section and that quite a few adult films are mixed in with the rest–but it’s big enough that I’m hoping to catch up on a lot of movies I just never really got around to watching while at home.
Crap, it’s 1 AM–how do I keep staying up so late?