Stephanie

Partly cloudy, 6C (0C)

Residence
I need to find an apartment. This is becoming stressful. Looks like I'll have to do the full-on Japanese style thing. God help me. I worry sometimes that not being able to settle in, yet, is going to start showing...

Work and Colleagues
Work is fine. Classes are fun. My confidence as a teacher is not misplaced. I'm getting a little burned out on meeting new ppl, though. I am technically an introvert, y'know. I have nothing in common with these other teachers at the company that I'm meeting (and I'm meeting so many! Plus all my new students... it's crazy and I'm not even as focused on my lessons as I am on keeping an even emotional keel to them). They've all (my colleagues) been in-country for 10+ years and are in marriages or serious relationships with nationals. Jack's sense of isolation makes itself present--ironically. Also, however, I kindof don't care anymore how well I do or don't gel with other foreigners. I have nothing to communicate to/with these ppl about : itsu ma-ma doori! Also, they brag about the craziest things. I try not to show it when I think they're being crazy, though, or challenge whatever they're bragging about--I figure in any culture (including a pidgin one but excepting Judaism) concealing one's horror at another's insanity is the least one can do, extra points for a pleasant expression in it's place.

Family
My father (the infamous non-father one) requested to friend me again on facebook. I turned it down (again) and sent him a message which said as politely and simply as possible that he should consider me dead as he is dead to me and to stop requesting to be added to my facebook (again). To which my "home-wrecking" (her word choice, not mine) step mother replied in a separate message with much drama about how she is saddened and how my father hasn't wished for anything by my happiness for all of the past 18 years, how for the past 20 years he's never done anything to hurt us daughters. and how he was always so heartbroken when we'd move without telling him where we were going. Yeah, I can imagine it. I have not replied [yet???]. If he's really so upset and really so sorry and really feels the way she claims, maybe he could start by speaking for himself. I don't want to hear his mistress's excuses for him two decades late. (Does that sound to you like I'm saying he should grovel? Because that isn't what I mean because I really don't want to hear it, though it's basically the only thing he could possibly have to say to me--of course he wouldn't though as he apparently doesn't remember trying to kill me, or at least doesn't think that's something he should be deeply remorseful about.) Actually, I'm kindof relieved he doesn't--I don't want to deal with his born-again Christian memories of the childhood he fucked ten ways from Sunday and no amount of remorse is going to change this ; that much I can gladly appreciate. These ppl are clearly more insane than I am and I have bigger fish to fry : see note on apartment-searching. God help me. P.S. seriously, why do I bother? But as long as they persist in their insanity, I can persist in imagining they do not exist in my world. So, in the end, we're all happy and I've been told that this is what matters.

Anime and amusements
This winter, I plan to continue watching Bakuman and Fairy Tail and to start Kimi ni Todoke S2, I'll try out Yumekui Merry but otherwise there's nothing good out. What is up with that? Plenty of violent and panty-shot anime, where's my sparkely reverse-harem crack!?!?!!

Life in the big city
Also, I went to a coin laundry tonight. It was ridiculously expensive. And by ridiculously, I mean 1,500 yen to clean and dry a week's worth of clothes (three pants, pijamas, a week's changes of underwear and socks, two towels, a scarf, a sweater and a blouse) split into a super and a regular load. I haven't used a dryer in a long time (um... over three years...)... I was nervous something might melt. This nervousness proved to be unfounded.

The company lets me plug in my computer to their Internet, but I'm trying not to be too much of a... mooch? Anyway, now that Tokyo police have run in their little brigade with sirens roaring declaring something unintelligible through the streets of Minato-ku, it's past my bedtime for a 5:45AM wake-up. In other words : that's all she wrote.

Xuu!

Rainy, 12C (12C)

First, picture :



Next, it seems I've given every indication of taking that position in Tokyo (it was officially offered about three hours after I left their office). They want me there sooner, though. To do that, I need help with moving expenses (they don't even have to give me money forever, just a loan that would be repaid well before the end of my first contract). If they want to do that to get me there on their schedule, this would have to be worked out so that I can give notice at my current position, um... tomorrowtoday.

That reminds me! I need to ask if transportation is reimbursed... it'd be a real bitch if it weren't.

Osaka interview also went well, but their work is really irregular and they wouldn't have any until June--so using it as a savings account to move is not particularly plausible right now.

Oh, yeah! And my period is 5.5 days late (ahh, that's actually a little less than I was thinking--for some reason I was thinking it was eight or ten days already! maybe 5.5 is still okay but I still eagerly await the godawful cramping and inconvenience right now) and it's freaking me out! Could be the diet (sudden changes in eating/sleeping often throw my cycle), but also with the diet there's no point using a DIY test because the diet is based on a hormone released during p-condition (which shall not be so much as named until I'm bleeding again!) so the test should come out positive even if nothing is there and my body also doesn't think there's really anything there.

It could also be that hickey-incident because the wimmen-folk in my family are notoriously fertile and shit happens every day even though we used common sense--I just hopehopehope it's not that shit these days. That shit can't happen until I'm Jewish and have had a Jewish wedding to a nice Jewish man, and not an instant sooner! So even if it's not that shit and there's nothing there, there's still the chance that my body will *think* there's something there and react appropriately (I know it wants something there and I've been denying it all these years...) and I just can't deal with that strain as well.

I won't go as far as saying I'm never having sex again (see above about the Jewish man), but I'm officially abstinent [on purpose, not accident!] until such conditions are met! I'm not really sure when I should really start worrying, though--I'm guessing right about the time I'm moving if Tokyo is going to work out. Great way to meet a doctor. No, I won't keep any such thing (see above about that shit not happening right now). Just FYI.

Anyway, I went to see Robin Hood tonight to escape reality. Several portions were quite fun. Some were beyond ridiculous--like the make-out session in the middle of the landing battle between the French and the English. Come, now, ppl, get a sense of the situation!

Ugh, I should call my mom--and mention that second thing and that fourth thing but definitely not that third thing. Then I should go to bed. But I also feel/hope that getting up at 09h00 will be easier than getting up at 06h00, like I have been for the past three days....

Oh! And Katanagatari : whoa.

Cloudy, 18C (16C)

I'll try to keep this somewhat orderly. Have some headings!

Sleeping
I may allow myself to sleep an average of 8hours a night for a little while, although I maintain that 7.5hours ought to be more than enough, even when depressed. Since my cold, my body wants 8. I'll yield for now.

Movies and technology
I saw Biohazard 4 (which is the name in Japan for Resident Evil 4). Suspending logic is vitally important to enjoying such films, but since I am incapable of fully suspending my own logical capacity, I simply redirected it.

3D technology has come a long way, but still needs some work--especially when it comes to panning shots and short-frames.

I think the costumers did a great job choosing materials and styles. The characters' images easily lent themselves to the video-game style expectations.

Damn, those cthulu-mouths were surprising and creepy! And I haven't even read that book (and don't intend to, as an aside). The crazy dogs reminded me of worms.

I would have liked some more background or explanation on the giant with the huge meat-tenderizer, but we're treading dangerously near a comment on character development, here, so I simply won't.

I think commenting on anything else would spoil my good memories of it. Decent zombie fare (though I don't think anything could top Shawn of the Dead, in all honesty, and I'm probably ruined for zombie movies forever, now, because of it's magnificence...). A novel experience (thank you 3D!).

Holidays and work
I think I've failed to mention it here, thusfar, but at this school the teachers wear halloween costumes all week for the special cultural lessons--which will be held from the 19th to the 23rd this month. Ten years ago I would have been all over this because then and for a long time Halloween was my absolute favorite holiday. Now it's really not and while I'm not troubled by not caring about it either way, now, I am a little troubled by having to actively participate. I have no idea what I can dress up as that's not going to (a) take effort, really, (b) freak out the kids, (c) cost as little as possible, (d) not be totally lame/still pass as a costume.

I was thinking pirate, but that takes too much effort, even for a simple rendition. A vampire would definitely be too scary for the kiddos. So then I was thinking I could just get a sparkly crown hair decoration and wear my regular work clothes but say I'm a princess or a queen. Maybe I could buy a sheet, cut eyeholes, tie it to my head and say I'm a ghost? Ideas, please!!

If I were a man, this would be so much easier.... As a woman, I am expected to wear something pretty or cute, and crossdressing isn't really allowed for women the way it is for men. You men have it so easy!! I hate you all.

Speaking of work...
This week I'll only have to teach three lessons--it's an intensive period for the kids, but I've decided to follow an alternate method for dealing with their attendance and will take the intensive periods as planning opportunities rather than trying to shove make-up lessons down their throats. I hope it'll be productive! I'll have to be very creative to apply what I've been studying/learning about teaching, language acquisition, and neuropsychological development and bring my lessons to the next level....

Still, though, I'd like to stay up to all hours watching anime and not go in until the last possible moment tomorrow. Maybe I'll do just that.

Kismet
So, I'm watching Sengoku Basara 2--which is just as rawly entertaining as the first but much more involved with politics and 'the lay of the land' than the first season. This is to nothing but benefit. So I looked up one of my favorite characters so far, Katakura Kagenaga, and discovered that his grandson and namesake (Katakura Kagenaga, II) was born on my birthday in 1630. How interesting!

[I looked up the character because I was thinking maybe I could dress as one of the samurai from the show for Halloween, even though that would involve renting a costume, which I'm willing to do--although it does fly in the face of the 'cheap' motive--but would also involve (a) finding a costume rental store, which may not actually be as difficult as it sounds, but even more importantly (b) finding a costume that will fit my fat ass, which is almost certainly impossible....]

Also, I thought I'd check up on an old article I wrote for Wikipedia from a bit of translating I did a while ago on a man from a place that struck me once, and reading through it, I noticed something I hadn't before but that I think explains why I was so very fascinated by and curious about this man and his life. He's possibly a cousin (based on my instinct alone, I would like to make that a 'probably' but there's so much uncertainty about the 9th century!)!! I knew there was something there ; it's called blood.

Oh, and while we're on the topic of me and my ancestors, it occurred to me some time ago that among the 7,000+ or so ancestors whose names I know, I am the only 'Stephanie'. There are Stevens and Stephens, but no other Stephanies. I am the only one. In the whole known family, for it's whole known history.

Partly sunny, 31C (33C)
T -12 days

So, I decided to do some work pruning ye olde family tree--checking that things check out, etc, and thought of this rant about the trouble in deciding what language to use for names (OMG, Beatrices, Biancas and Isabelles!) and what practice to adopt for those who were emperors or saints (often defined by their geographical region rather than a 'surname') or didn't have last names because of whatever, what to do with regnal names ; deciding what standard to use for the names of places--the historical or modern ('Akko, Palestine' or 'Acre, Israel' ??), in English or the language of the time, the language the ancestor would have used or the language which is predominantly spoken there, now ; deciding what system to use for dates, the order of months, days and years and the notation of questionable dates ; the problems of deciding just how hard to force congruency across the entire tree or how much to allow leeway and change over time, etc. And I found something maybe kindof fun that I wanted to share.

So I'm working "top down"--which is paternally-preferentially checking back to last known persons and reviewing that birth and death years aren't too wild and that, whenever possible, documentation is attached. Let me show you the twig I was on (I've included years for some sense of realism for the skeptics ; I SWEAR I am not trying to brag about my "lineage" but I'm pretty consistently amazed by how involved my "family" has been in the history of the world so forgive me if it seems like I've lapsed from time to time...) :

Notes for reading :
All noted years are birth years, except in the format xxxx-xxxx in which the first is the birthyear and the latter is the deathyear or where preceded by "d.".
I've added some place information so you can see when the line made notable geographic shifts.
(P) = Paternal ascent, (M) = Maternal ascent. Each line is one generation, seqentially.

1. Me (1982)
2. (P) Thomas J CORWIN (1958)
3. (P) Roger D CORWIN (1932)
4. (P) Wieland W CORWIN (1897)
5. (P) William H CORWIN (1862)

6. (M) Lydia WHEELER (1840)
7. (P) Richard C WHEELER (1812)
8. (M) Lydia CHILCOTT (1780) b. in Baltimore, Maryland ; d. in Iowa, USA
9. (P) Richard CHILCOTT (1746) b. Somerset, England ; d. Union Township, Pennsylvania, USA
10. (P) John CHILCOTT (1706-1780) b. Somerset, England ; d. Western Run, Maryland, USA

11. (P) Humphrey CHILLCOAT (1666-1708) b. St. James, Anne Arundel, Maryland d. Anne Arundel, Maryland
[I'm not really sure what was up with ol' Humphrey ; he must've knocked up some girl in England on a trip back to the mother-country, but at any rate both his son and grandson followed him after he died...]
12. (P) John CHILCOTE (1639) b. & d. Somerset
[It's not clear to me how his son was born in the Americas while he was born and died in England...]
13. (P) John CHILCOT (1608) b. Somerset
14. (M) Frances ARSCOTT (1573) b. Somerset
15. (M) Mary MONCK (1544) b. Dunsland, Devon, England

16. (M) Frances PLANTAGENET (1513) b. England
17. (P) Arthur PLANTAGENET (1461ish) b. England
18. (P) Edward PLANTAGENET (1442) --this would be Edward-IV-King-of-England Edward, b. Rouen, France
19. (P) Richard PLANTAGENET (1411) b. Yorkshire [the younger]
20. (P) Richard PLANTAGENET (1376) b. Yorkshire [the elder]

21. (M) Isabel PEREZ (1355) b. Spain ; d. England
22. (P) Pedro I ALFONSEZ (1334) b. & d. Spain

And this is where I noticed something interesting :

			Pedro I ALFONSEZ (1334)
		Maria AFFONSES (1313-1357)			Alfonso FERNANDEZ (1311-1350)
	Beatriz de CASTILE (1293-1359)		Alfonso O OSADO (1291-1357)	Constanca DINISEZ (1290-1313)		Fernando de CASTILE (1285-1312)
Sancho IV of CASTILE (1257-1295)	María de MOLINA (1265-1321)	Isabel of ARAGON (1271-1336) b. Spain, d. Portugal	Dinis of PORTUGAL (1261-1325)	Isabel of ARAGON (1271-1336) b. Spain, d. Portugal	Dinis of PORTUGAL (1261-1325)	Sancho IV of CASTILE (1257-1295)	María de MOLINA (1265-1321)

Only 7 5 4 great-grandparents 'cuz two sets of siblings married and became grandparents to the same individual (Pete, for Pete's sake!)! Alfonso O OSADO and Constanca DINISEZ are siblings! So I thought, 'come now, I must've just imported some messed up data on one of my wild genealogy flings...' so I checked Wikipedia and indeed, Lizzy and Dinis had two children, a son Alfonso and a daughter Constanca. Alright, fine. [Backfilling, I've founds that Beatriz and Fernando are siblings, also...]

(By the way, she's also a saint ; but, seriously, I've lost count of how many saints there are on the tree. I think anyone who took more than three breaths was sainted, there, for a while... I find it ironic that part of what drove me to pick this up again with such a fervor was a search for Jews in the history and all I find are these damned saints... Although I did find some very special Jews through my mother's father around 200-400 CE ; but I still need to check all those links before I write more about them, and it's going back twice as far as this, so it'll take at least twice as long...)

Not only that, but Wikipedia has lots and lots and lots more genealogical information for me to add to my tree! Which is great! But time consuming... But in that, I found the really interesting part, and the thing I wanted to share with y'all :

25. (M) Isabel of ARAGON (1271) --Queen of Portugal
26. (M) Constantia of HOHENSTAUFEN (1249)
27. (M) Beatrice of SAVOY (d. 1258)
28. (P) Amadeus IV of SAVOY (1197)
29. Marguerite of GENEVA (d. 1252) and Thomas I of SAVOY (1178-1233)

...and their charming love story of kidnap!!

I also found lots more Crusaders than I had previously thought there were... bah to crusading crusaders. But, also, the more I find out about my family history and it's peculiarities, the more I find it little wonder that I have the interests I do and take the interest I do in world history and politics... it's just in the blood...

===ETA 23:25===
And now the whole day is gone... all of it... eek, I didn't really mean to spend it all like that...

I really want to take tomorrow off... I think I should be allowed to just go in whenever, since my first class isn't until 19h05... But, no, I have to be in by a-quarter-to-noon. Maybe I'll just pack some of that stuff... bah to packing [I didn't get any done, today...]

===ETA 02h34===
Well, shit! Code Geass turned out to be pretty much made completely of awesome from around ep 17 of the second season... I'm glad I didn't give up on it!

Rainy, 18C (23C)

So, I do believe they call this the other shoe dropping : my school is being closed--whether next week or next month, they're not sure. They're going to try to find somewhere to transfer me to, but failing that my last day with the company is the last day my school is open. To review : I've been laid off for the second time in as many months, but nobody knows any details.

Good thing I didn't make all the purchases I wanted to.

Time will tell, time will tell.... And now it's time to make dinner.

P.S. I will want escapist anime this weekend and am accepting suggestions/recommendations for consideration. You can suggest whatever or check my profile on Anime-Planet to see what I have and haven't seen/liked.

Mostly clear, 16C (17C)

I had a bad dream. It wasn't bad enough to be a nightmare, but it wasn't good enough to be indifferent so I'll say it was bad. I'll guess it's environmentally/stress induced. It was pretty incredible. I woke up, late, right in the middle of it, so it stayed with my groggy self for longer than dreams usually do. Maybe it would be a nightmare to some people, but it all seemed horrifically normal and predictable to me. This is mildly surprising. I'm glad it's over--at least the slumbering part.

As a kind of therapy I've entered a raffle. Last year I entered this same raffle and all kinds of issues were brought to the fore because of my involvement with it. I've thought about that and the underlying reasons a bit since then. Entering again is rather like a test. Now I shall put it out of my mind and see what happens. I hope only things that I can immediately recognize as good...

Some more details are emerging about what the future in my job might look like--but not really enough. For example ; I now know what the various ranks are paid and how they are defined, but I don't know what my rank in the company would be. Who the hell knows. I'm kindof tired and kindof fed up but also kindof out of ideas and a little too apathetic. Part of me insists it'll all be fine, the other part wonders how the hell that's going to happen.... you see the conflict, I suppose.

Speaking of work, I was magnificently unproductive today during my four-hour lull in teaching--I read wikipedia articles on figures of Sengoku-jidai. Fantastic stuff. I've been rather encouraged lately, as I'm getting more and more of the jokes and references in the anime I watch. This was one of the things I mentioned wanting to acquire in terms of cultural and linguistic literacy that I figured I wasn't going to get in Kawanoe. Freakishly enough, the source for this--anime and cetera were equally available to me in Kawanoe ; I just never accessed them there. But now that I'm in a city it seems wholly more appropriate and becoming to feed my curiosity in these matters. Either way, I'm happy in this one little sphere, at least.

I made reservations at the old samurai house this morning for Kanazawa in July. It was terribly exciting and I'm terribly excited about it all! Thank God for small miracles--like ppl painlessly prodding. Now I have something to look forward to, and I need that. For a healthy change in pace I'll be traveling with another human being (usu I'm solo) : Tsubasa.

I've been thinking a lot about martial arts and such... I think these thoughts are interesting and insightful syntheses. Experience, again, is the final arbiter of learning... I want to play a lot more go but I've been somewhat depressed and my sleep is all messed up... excuses, excuses, I know. I'll let them slide for just a bit longer. Probably the rest of this week.

Also, following a particularly incensing drunken conversation, which I'm sure I only half-understood, I've come to the conclusion that perhaps I have simply become one of those people who are alone for good and for ever. Somehow, this does not bother me so much. I'm reminded of a letter I once wrote in which I begged someone to find some light to dispel their darkness--now I wonder why ; my darkness, at least, is velvety-smooth : perhaps his was as well.