busy bee

I have been a terrible blog poster lately.  I've been distracted.  But I have an excuse.  Several actually:

One of Jeff's good friends from Cornell who was just offered a tenure-track teaching position was in town so we got together with a few fellow Asian studies scholars for a night of celebration. 

Also, I've been reading the Collected Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  If you've had the pleasure, then you understand they're hard to put down.

I've taught a few English lessons this week, too. 

I also ran 10 miles this morning.

Ok, so none of those really warrant my extended absence. 

BUT what does make it all ok is that we've also been furiously planning my parents once-in-a-lifetime Japan experience, as they've both told me this will be the only one.  That's a lot of pressure to put on a girl's shoulders.  Even if she is an overachieving first-born.

Right now, the big decisions we're making are Kyoto vs. Iwate and trains (shinkansen) vs. rental car.  Feel free to weigh in. 

There's my sweet husband staying up late and calculating every permutation of the train/rental car and Kyoto/Iwate/Hakone/Takayama debates.  What a great son-in-law!

Tomorrow night we're going out of town for a few days, so I can't promise my posts will be any more frequent.  I can promise that we'll have some interesting things to talk about when we return.

Mata ne,
Melissa