Oof. Stupid never-ending summer. Why won't you end already?

*shakes fist at brightly sunny sky, then collapses in pool of sweat from the exertion*

It's not all bad, I guess. It is very hard to get away with ice cream as dinner in winter, for example. Also the continuing heat has meant that the salon decided to extend their pedicure sale for another month, so I might find myself in dire need of a pedicure in exactly three weeks. Can't show up in Seoul with an old pedicure, you know.

Glasses shopping turned out to be rather thrilling, as the store we went to offers an incredibly good deal on getting lenses and frames for about 15000-18000 total. A bit extra for fancy things like anti-scratch coatings and whatnot, but only a little. In other words, I can get a snazzy new pair of glasses for around 20 000 yen, which is cheaper than what I was expecting the lenses alone to be. I may get two pairs! I'll wait and see what they have in Korea, though, on the premise that surely Seoul must have larger stores with more of a selection.

I'm trying to branch out from the usual style I get, but it is proving difficult due to the combination of my thick lenses and my ridiculously tiny head. The fashion right now is for rectangular frames, but they stick out too far on me. I did find one pair that fit nicely...in the kid's section.

Ah. One month (minus a day) to my birthday (please send elephants and ice cream makers) and three and a half weeks until I am basking in the air-conditioning at my brother's place exploring the South Korean capital, and best of all, less than a week until payday. Oooh, payday. I love you so. Especially when the last one was six weeks ago.

Glasses shopping on the 20th didn't happen due to an iPhone malfunction. We have tentatively re-scheduled for tomorrow, provided Stuart can watch the boys, as the thought of letting those two loose in a store full of shiny breakable things does not scream "yes, great idea!" Paul thinks I can get classes in Seoul for much cheaper, though, so we shall see how it goes. ("I went to Seoul and got these stylish new glasses! Nice, eh? What did I get for you? Chocolate covered seaweed, of course.")

Liam has discovered Transformers. I don't recall the ones that my brother had 20-odd years ago requiring an actual degree in robotics to operate, but maybe kids are smarter these days? Poor Liam can only transform them from vehicle to robot but not back again, so he has to wander around asking various older kids to give it a try. Yesterday he decided to skip the middleman entirely and dubbed himself Megatron, fierce samurai/robot fighter. This mostly resulted in me getting killed to death by a deftly wielded rolled up paper sword (twice, actually, once by Megatron and once by Megatron's baby brother, who was not going to be left out of the fun.) The best bit is how Megatron has a low gravelly voice, so you can tell at once if you are talking to Liam, four year old nutcase, or evil fighting robot, and respond accordingly.

It is test week for our younger students and as always, it is depressing how many of them respond to "How's the weather?" with a confident "It's Monday!" Most of them realize their mistake when I raise my eyebrows at them meaningfully, so at least there's that.

You remember how when you were a kid, and there were always dire warnings about don't swallow a watermelon seed or a watermelon will grow in your belly, dun dun duuuuuuun?

It turns out that is not so far fetched. Yikes.

So it turns out that the good thing about a high of 38 is that it makes anything less feel positively refreshing. Today it only went up to 34 and I laughed. From a stationary position, of course, it's still too hot and humid for moving.

All I want out of life right now is for the night time temperature to drop to 30. Below 30 is something I dare not imagine, a sort of igloo-festooned dream that is more torture than fantasy.

Remind me of this in six months when I am bitching about how it is 5 degrees indoors and I can't feel my fingers.

I finally managed to get access to my phone's settings (there is a password, and I had one, and when I got the new phone the lady didn't say anything about it, but then it turned out that my old password did not carry over to the new phone and it was just a whole big thing) and re-set the spam filter levels, but I am still getting enough that it is annoying. Time for a new email address, I think, one that has numbers and possibly punctuation marks as well. I keep putting it off because I cannot think of anything good (and also do not relish having to go through my phone book and update everyone on my new address), so I am opening up the field to suggestions. Go nuts!

Video games may be destroying our children but at least they are also teaching them new and interesting vocabulary. Words and phrases like "humanoid", "telepathy", "I want to destroy the galaxy", and in the OH NO YOU DIDN'T category, "go to hell!" (That last one delivered very cheerfully and immediately receiving a horrified lecture in two languages about why you DO NOT SAY THAT SHIT. See also: the time my adorable 12 year old girls asked about the meaning of giving someone the finger and the muddled "no, no, if you want to say something is bad you can give a thumbs down, because that gesture means something is bad but is not actually bad itself, but please don't ever use the middle finger as a sign that you disapprove of something, at least not until you are in your later teens and are badasses, or something, MASAMI GET IN HERE AND HELP ME WITH THIS!" explanation.)

This has been an easy, lazy week. It is summer holidays for the students and also it is Obon (an actual holiday, not a made-up one like so many of them here) so we have not had a lot of students. This means lots of game time. I bought Scrabble and Carcassonne and so we have been playing those and eating the candy I brought back. Starting next week all the kids who were absent this week will be doing makeup lessons so I will have to actually teach. Today, though, the kindergarten is closed and so I only have one class at 7 pm, with only one student attending. And yes, I made Masami call all three of the students who normally attend this class to find out if they are coming. I have no problem with showing up for work and actually doing my job, but I really do not want to show up for work and then have no one come.

I shall attempt to actually do something with my day before then, though. Swimming for now, I think, followed by a trip downtown. I want to talk to the travel agent people and maybe sit somewhere air conditioned with a cold beverage and a book for a while.

I managed to make it through the entire wedding without anyone asking me when it was my turn*, and I was so happy about that, and then Liz emailed me to ask me just exactly that. I'll let it slide, though. She's about to give birth to her first child any minute and that sort of thing tends to make people talk crazy.

The weather was nice and cool today but now the air is so thick I practically had to swim home. At least it's not hot, too, and I managed to get the bedroom tidied up after the unpacking aftermath.

Masami and I have a date to go glasses browsing on the 20th. I went to all four of the shops near my house yesterday and checked out their selection and inquired about prices. They all said that lenses would be around 10 000 yen, which prompted me to stare at them suspiciously until I figured out that that was the basic cost. When Masami is with me to translate I'll ask more probing questions about how much my lenses will actually cost, because I am getting all the bells and whistles.

I suppose I'd better claw my way through the air into the kitchen and throw something together for dinner. I'm thinking more broccoli.

*Although Mrs. E did lean over at one point and tell me that now I could stop worrying about my brother. I responded with polite befuddlement, because whatnow? There is a long list of things I worry about. My brother is not on it. Of the two of us, he is far and away the more competent, and if anything, he should be worried about me. I mean, I'm the one whose plans for old age involve living under a bridge.

I am a lot more cool with Kim's disappearance now that it has become clear that the heat was following her around. It got slowly overcast and the humidity level dropped a smidge to "yuck" from "KILL ME NOW" once she left, with a brief sky clearing for fireworks last night, and now I am lounging about without a fan on because the temperature indoors dropped all the way to 27. In the middle of the afternoon! It is amazing the difference that reasonable weather can make to your mood.

Well, Kim is on her way to the airport now. I tried convincing her this morning that she should stay here and I would use her ticket but she just laughed at me. I sort of saw that coming. Anyway, I can now add "jealous" and "lonely" to the list of how I'm doing, which currently includes "jet-lagged, hot, sticky, broke, and sad that my hair is no longer pretty and shiny". Basically I am one sad sack today.

Mope, mope.

I dug out the map of Taipei I picked up two weeks ago and marked the location of the massage place I want to go to on it. They don't open until 10, though, which is going to give me quite a few hours to kill in the airport before heading downtown. I brought The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as my travel reading, on the assumption that something that long would last forever, but I started in in Calgary yesterday and am already halfway done. Anika's husband helped me haul my suitcase up to Erika's apartment (after which we found the elevator, natch), and he recommended that I look into the kindle. I told him I'm holding out for an iPad. Christmas 2010, anyone?

I tried really hard to sleep as late as I could this morning, since it is my last chance to snooze in comfort until late September (this is me being optimistic), but I didn't make it much past nine, which is not that great as I went to bed just after midnight. At least I managed some good lounging-in-pjs time.

Currently hanging out by myself in Vancouver. It's sort of nice having some alone time before the flight and after spending five days sharing a hotel room, but it would be way more awesome if Erika were here. For one thing, I probably wouldn't have managed to pull the blinds completely off the window in an attempt to close them. Hi, my name is Alisa and I'm the worst houseguest ever!

I think today I'm just going to wander around downtown Vancouver. There is a bus nearby that will take me almost directly in front of a Fluevog store, how very convenient. Not that I have much room left in the suitcase, but you never know.

Well, they are married. I am stuffed and glad to not be wearing my shoes anymore. Details later. For now, I leave you with the reason that Laura will not be able to eat in nice restaurants anymore, aka my brother: