i really need to get outta my office, but i thought i'd leave this little nugget of an update:

one new thing i have: a motorcycle. HUZZA!! it really is quite awesome. if you remember, it once belonged to cami, who left it in the care of some fairly careless people. so, i inherited it, spent way too much money and time on it, had to give it up for a while when i used it as an illustration for a talk on idolatry, but finally and recently got it going. a week ago tomorrow was the official reinstatement of "deathtrap", as the bike is (aptly) named. including all the licensing, registration, a years insurance, and all the repairs, i threw down about $450- which is not a lot for a bike like that, but is still kinda a lot in general.

i rode said motorcycle out to the boonies on monday for a nice little hike, since it was blazingly sunny, and it was my day off, after all. i think me and cami will have to have a conversation when we next see eachother-the challenge of hiking fast and hard can in fact add an element of enjoyment. we argued about that for like 3 years. and he was sorta right. as i was hiking, i was keeping a catalogue of all the wildlife i had seen- one butterfly, 2 sparrows, and 2 woodpeckers. which, if you've ever been hiking in japan alot, which i have, you will realize is both pathetic and a surprising amount of nature to see when out in nature in japan- usually you don't see any animals at all. then, in all seriousness, just as i was thinking about writing this blog entry, complete with sarcasm, something rather large made a rather large noise to the general front and left of me as it bolted.

a deer.

i was in total shock. it happened so fast that by the time my brain was able to match the shape and color of the animal to the word deer the bushes it had been standing in had stopped moving. don't get me wrong- i've seen deer before. in fact, in kyoto they have this park in the city that is overrun with deer, and they'll come up to you and eat from your hand. or they'll eat your hand, if you've misbehaved or offended them. but to see a wild deer in the not-usually-very-wild woods of japan was a complete shock. in the probably thousands of hikes i've done in this country in my life, we usually don't even see a bird. i thought that was cool. and i had to watch my time, since i hadn't brought a flashlight (or anything else useful, really), and i ended my 5 and a half hour hike exacly 1 minute and 30 seconds later than i had planned- i wanted to be back to the road by 6:00, and i was there at 6:01:30, which is also really random. it's not like hiking's an exact science or anything.

as to the possibility or my re-establishing contact with you, things are looking up. my computer was seriously retarded-it would take obscene amounts of time for it to do the simplest tasks. so, not really knowing what else to do, i took it all apart and put it back together- and now it works swimmingly. except any time i try and access either of my CD drives, i experience a rather complete and instantaneous system failure, followed by a rather pathetic attempt to pacify me by rebooting as though nothing has happened, much to my EXTREME frustration. but at least i can surf the internet and write stuff again.

off to bed with me. it was POURING earlier. i was not looking forward to driving my bike home in that, but now it's stopped, and now it's just rather damp.



ps- all satire and personification in this entry is courtesy of the insidious effects of reading terry prachett. thanks for the corruption, ro. and i still don't like him.