As for the G4:

It is no more. what with the "nearly deported" story coming up, i forgot to finish the epic adventures of ryan's ibook. as you may recall, i typed up an entry for this very blog on said ibook from the comfort of the donut shop (or, as they say here, the "donutsu shop"). at some point later that morning, the CD drive ate one of said compact disks. you may not be aware, but one of the distincitive features of macintosh laptops is that they pretty much actually ingest the disk. there is no little tray that slides out, you just insert the disk into the side of the technology. had there been a little tray for the disk, there would have been a little hole somewhere that i could have poked a paperclip into and it would have manually ejected the tray. instead, i had to rip open the contraption and re-dissasemble it in order to give the drive the much-needed smack to the head. it was at some point in this smacking process that the motherboard (or "mainboard", which i am convinced they call it just to spite the rest of the computing world) somehow mysteriously suffered an electrical short that pretty much renders the entire machine unusable. so, the ibook will most likely end its miserable life as some kind of a youth group illustration involving a sledgehammer. and yes, i will enjoy it.

As with most of the rest of the northern hemisphere, winter has come to tokyo. it really seemed like fall hardly had a chance. either that, or this is fall, and when winter hits i'll wish i was dead. besides the cold, winters here are really great. it's sunny pretty much every day, which is a bigger deal than you realize when you have to dry all your laundry outside. and i thought washing clothes before was a pain! i totally checked out the weather forcast for today and washed a bunch of clothes last night so i could put them out early. i suppose that makes me all growed up.

The grillfiend and i went up to takayama for the thanksgiving holiday, but we didn't actually have the "dinner" that is so popular with most people. there weren't that many people up there for the break, which was unusual. in the past, thanksgivings up there were great--6 or 7 families, tons of kids of all ages, progressive dinner that takes 3 hours and 4 houses, ending with a fire on the beach. it was still a good time, just very chill. i convinced some of the guys that were there to go swimming with me, which was, as usual, colder than i thought possible. and it turns out it's really hard to dry your butt over a fire. nelle and i got a few good beach walks in, and took some good pictures of ourselves. aren't we cute?

Life here has hit the point where my schedule is finally pretty consistent. out of the 4 weekdays that i work, i have 5 meetings with 6 kids, which takes it out of me. relating deeply to 6 HS kids is pretty hard, actually. i recently had to buy a notebook that i write notes from each meeting in, just so i can keep track of what i talked about with whom. it feels kinda weird to know deep stuff about these kids and write it in a notebook, but my memory's not what it used to be.

I've got my travel plans for Christmas all figured out, so if you want/need to hang out with me over Christmas, here's your chance! i'll be in tacoma from monday the 18th till thursday the 28th, and i'll be in portland from the 5th until the 8th. and yes, during the missing week i will be in a place referred to only as "the south", and abbreviated with the letters G and A.