I thought I was teaching at 10 this morning, and got up too early for that really, at seven thirty, so when I realised I wasn't teaching until eleven (way too late to go back to bed) it was very annoying! I read at home for awhile, and still ended up in Shibuya early so I just walked around in Loft for awhile, before meeting my other new student. I think that Shibuya wasn't empty when I was down there on Thursday because of the New Year, it just doesn't seem to get up that early - it was oddly empty again before the lesson, and properly full afterwards...

My new student is a dispatcher at an airport taxi and limousine service, so he wanted to have phone call role plays where I pretended to be the customer who was angry because my taxi hadn't arrived, or called to make reservations, etc. He also asked me to look over an email for him, etc. so it ended up seeming like a fairly quick hour which was good. I biked home, and got back around 12:45ish.

I had a chance to call the Lunny's (Hi!) and had a nice, if quick, chat with Jaana, and will hopefully be catching up with Julia soon, before making some lunch, and then Peter and I finally took down the Santa (photos to come). He deflated very quickly as soon as we unplugged him, and his fabricy-ness went billowing down, and then blowing around in the wind. Luckily the screws were much easier to take out than put in, and so we got him out and away pretty quickly. That window is such a custom fit - not a good thing to try after a two week vacation including cruise!

We also gave poor Vennuppi puppy a shower today, she looks and feels like a stuffed animal, and smells like a florist attacked her, but she's very cute and very CLEAN! She was pretty good for the whole thing, just very resigned! It was entertaining because once she was let out of the bathroom she did wind sprints up and down the hall for a few minutes, and then jumped up on Peter's bed and chased her tail vigorously for a while. Pretty funny!
(resigned to the shower, but not thrilled about it!)
(Awww Hitomi, can't you let me out of the tub now?)
(maybe I'll just let myself out then!)

(I'm freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!)

I made pasta for dinner, and Peter and Hitomi started sorting through things in the hall closet and upstairs, and somewhere Peter unearthed an envelope of videos which Tanya Murdoch had asked him to give to Mom and me way back in 1997. The envelope also oddly included a bunch of photos from riding circa 1996/Maple Stirrup - Mom on Yuri and me on Hasu mostly. Very weird!

We decided to watch the videos over dinner, how embarrassing and time capsuleish!! There was the whole needle room video which was weird, especially the part where I'm dressed up in a suit of needles and hung upside down from a tree. The most bizarre part about that (yes, it's hard to chose just one!), is that I don't remember that part of the filming! I think I must have blocked it out or something! There's also some of me doing gymnastics on another bit of grass (shockingly terrible form!), playing with Ryan in the backyard of the Myrtle house, generally embarrassing myself, etc.

There's also quite a lot of video from our first trip to Japan, where I had almost no hair, and even less fashion sense! The gun dressing up movie is in there (Tanya was a videographer making art films, so there was kind of a reason for these weird sounding projects!), which I remember not enjoying shooting since I'd shot my Mom in the leg with one of the BB guns at point blank range the day before and left a huge bruised welt on her thigh (oops!).

We also have a tour of the apartment, some FMA stuff (Tom producing Jeff from Vancouver doing voice tracks, and cutting the ribbon to move from system to system), me and April playing with fireworks in the street outside the apartment, Mom and Tanya getting their hair cut on stage at some bizarre art installation piece thing in a grungy looking club/artspace, us in Kyoto, the crazy crossing in Shibuya, Peter, me, Mom, April, Tanya, and April's then bf doing Karaoke (the only good decision we made that night was to get a private room!), a few minutes of Tanya and Peter in New Orleans, etc.

There's also us in Hiroshima on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bomb (Aug. 6, 95) which is one of the days I remember most about that trip, and some of me getting taught how to spin my windup top by a bunch of friendly people at this lake we stayed at (I remember that top, and also stepping on something huge, nasty, and crunchy with bare feet in the sand of that lake!)

It was pretty interesting, and embarrassing! I was a bossy, micro manager back in the day! I hope I've loosened up at least a little bit! I was also slightly less than completely cooperative about filming all the diabetes and gun stuff from the looks of it, sorry guys!

So yea, that last list of things will mean very little to most people, but Mom, geesh we had some bad fashion decisions and a serious lack of hair back in the day! I'm just glad there was no tape of my 'A Whole New World' singing to go with the tape of me gun slinging two BB guns in a frilly bathing suit. (um yea, you read that last bit right, unfortunately)

Tomorrow I 'come of age', copious pictures to follow, I'm sure!

D