Birfday

24 hour days were not designed for modern man, I'm thinking. Here's Day 2.0, or, if you prefer, the Metric Day; 30 hours. Right now, I'm 20 on, 10 off, or somewhere about, so if a 30-hour day were put into effect, I'd have it down pat!

I've had to remind myself I wasn't 22 until yesterday, and for a surprising stretch of time-- the first time I remembered I was still 21 was late February.

And that up there is as much as I've kept of my first drafts of this very post for over a week. I've gone through a few subjects-- more musing, more about career stuff, but I don't feel like writing that. I'm gonna try and stick to the reasons I made this blog; to inform you all of what's going on in my life. If it's self-centered, so be it, but my original intent was not to stroke my ego or anything.

Church-
Easter Sunday was the first time I'd been back to St Andrews since an early Wednesday in Lent. It's mostly out of laziness, but I think I know another reason that I've sort of been ignoring. Fr. Hawkins is good guy, but his version of announcements is not conducive to a smooth liturgy, and it kinda bothers me. I am not alone in this feeling. If Grandma and her friend Debby had "commented" any louder, I imagine they would have gotten a new reputation as hecklers.

Grandma did say it the best, though. "It's a like a vestry meeting in the middle of a service." I agree. We have a bulletin with all of the pertinent information in it, we don't need to tack on another 15-20 minutes to a service. Easter was the largest example, and it actually changes my exaggeration into an estimate. It will be the last time, however, as Fr. Hawkins is leaving. Easter was his last day with St. Andrews. I wonder what'll happen next.

Japanese/school/future/relevant miscellanea-
Mark Kane and I went to the doughnut place for more Japanese study. He informally tested me on the half of the hiragana chart, and I did really well. The other half I didn't study as thoroughly, but I'm a good guesser, ehehehe... I learned today how to write my name in katakana, although we haven't ventured that far into that script. The eventual trick will be the kanji, the thousands of single characters that can mean whole words. That, thankfully, will be MUCH later.

A month! I start school in 35 days! I'm really aching to go. I still have a book to buy, but other than that, I'm ready!

I had to grin when I found out Chris was going back to school for anthropological linguistics (if I heard/remember that right). It's cool how things happen that way, eh?

I found this website called Lang-8, a place where aspiring language students can post "journal entries" in the language they're trying to learn, and have native speakers correct your grammar. Even as a supplemental tool, it sounds awesome. I've already signed up for a little profile, but until I learn Japanese WORDS, I'm afraid it'll be dormant.

Birthday-
I made some poor decisions, I admit. Two doughnuts were far too many to have before going to Outback, where they threw a free sundae at me. I felt slightly ill coming home. Nothing happened, but I felt pretty crappy, or like I was about to enter hibernation or something. I had asked that no one mention it was my birthday to anyone at the restaurant because I knew they'd give me more food, but my mom and my Grandma Hannan are about as subtle as Little Boy and Fat Man. After a while I (carefully) rolled myself back to the car, and made it home.

My mom got me a couple things. The first was a pair of really cool chopsticks, and then Battlestar Galactica on DVD. All of it, save the last half season, which I don't think is on DVD yet. I was pleasantly surprised, and not long after, I watched the miniseries. =) Grandma Haggard gave me a $35 gift card to Subway, which I will hopefully use today, and Grandma Hannan threw $50 at me. It's been a pretty good haul!


And that's that so far. I'll keep ya posted.

Sean