Entries this day: soml-of-sorts

soml of sorts

12:26 Wednesday 03 June 2015 JST

State of my life address

1. I recently received two Dell laptops. One had Windows 7 on it, so I've left that. The other had no hard drive, so I bought a new 700GB drive and put Debian on it. It didn't have wifi, so I bought a USB nano wifi dongle. Still couldn't wifi, so I installed Debian again to see if it would pick up the wifi automatically. Nope, so I installed Linux Mint, but didn't like it, so I'm back to Debian, but this time trying to get the internal wifi card to work. No luck yet, but I'm still confident in my plan get it working.
2. Today I met new student TEM. It was a trial lesson, so we'll see if she joins.
3. Recently I've been entering sentences in to my new anki flashcard type. Basically sentences using the word in question, and then the word itself. then pronunciations and translations of each.
4. Recently my right elbow has been hurting. I'm sure it's due to too much mousing. I thought I had my mouse close enough to a neutral position, but apparently not.
5. We regularly let Jennie outside now. Lin has come to realize that Jennie will come back after not too long. Thus far I don't think she's spent the night outside, though she's been outside at night.
6. S has moved on from the toy store and seems to have gotten a manager position or something at a different branch. Great for her! M now chats with me when I go to the toy store. Recently we've been playing with tops, and yesterday we flew a styrofoam airplane.
7. Tariq and I are working in Unity3D to make our version of pong, which is sorta kinda ready for its version 1 release.
8. There are a few different design competitions that I've entered recently. Who knows what will come of those?
9. I've been attending Japanese classes at 80's Cafe in Akihabara 2 or 3 times per week. Along with my Thursday GG class, that puts me in Akiba 3 or 4 times per week! It's allllmost enough to warrant a teiki.

• - - -

It's the beginning of the month and I happen to have written to my old i-group:

Yesterday while walking through Ebisu, who should I see, but E; what a surprise! We had a nice chat and I thought it was high time for a group check-in.

Lin and I are married, living in Kawasaki. We have no kids, but we have a cat!

Lin's super busy with work, enjoying her job as a real estate agent. She's off today, and we just had a heart-to-heart discussion about the challenges of juggling career and relationship. At the end of the discussion we agreed it's a struggle and worth it to persevere.

I'm working a variety of jobs teaching English and programming websites and apps with the goal of making passive income.

About once per month, I've been attending ET Contact events... basically using meditation and consciousness to invite benevolent extra terrestrial intelligent beings to engage in mutually beneficial dialogue. We haven't really "met ET" yet, but have heard and seen some interesting anomalous sounds and lights.

In my free time, I must say I've been mostly attached to my computer, sometimes for too many hours at a time! Part of that goes to creating mazes for my website https://www.amazeaweek.net/, but a lot of it goes down the proverbial tubes, watching cat videos and porn (not at the same time).

Some of my time wasting is due to not taking care of myself when Lin is working long hours. I judge I need to learn to take care of myself a bit better.

Sometimes I miss having a partner with whom I can speak easily. Lin and I use English, but she's self taught, and has a few rough spots. I feel sadness/anger if I judge I'm not being heard, so when she can't understand me, it's a nice opportunity for me to be aware of those feelings.

On the golden side, I've started studying Japanese to help a bit with communication, though it's a challenging language (as you may know)!

Studying Japanese also helps me feel joy (what's the opposite of shame?); I feel/felt some shame each time I tell people how long I've been in Japan (12 years) and how terrible my Japanese language still is (but getting better step by step).