A Picture's Worth

With the small cluster of Americans we have on here, I have to ask: Anyone got friends or family affected by the tornadoes in the south last week? I would've asked earlier, but work was nuts and then I lost a couple of days coming back home and now I'm back at school.

I've got a couple of friends in Auburn (remember my formal photo? my date and her sister). They're okay, thank god, but their car got wrecked. And apparently they're going over to help out their rival school with the relief effort. I don't follow college football or anything but it's nice seeing rivals put aside their differences for stuff like this.

I have no idea how or if one affects the other, but I hope nothing similar happens with hurricanes this season.

Does anyone Stateside or willing to pay shipping want a 32" [81cm] light up Christmas tree? My flatmates and I just realised that while the main decorator is happy to take all the decorations home, no one want to take home the tree.

Working Christmas was actually pretty good; it seemed like everyone was in a better mood than usual. And I had an opening shift, so I got off early enough to go have a nice dinner in Canada with some of my friends. It wasn't what I'm used to at Christmas, but it was nice.

Some of my friends impressed me by giving Pukamon presents. I'll let him tell you about them:
This is Pukamon! We have the best flatmates EVER: They all chipped in to get me a huge keyboard that I can actually use with my flippers instead of smacking keys with a pencil! I'm getting almost as fast as Ash! And Ash's friend got an iPhone, but his iPod Touch was still working so he gave it to me! And he even got me a headset that fits my head because earbuds don't work for me! They're way cooler than those plain white earbuds, too! That's not even all of them, just the best ones.

I'm closing on New Year's Eve. I'm told it can actually be kind of fun because there's special fireworks at midnight, but I'm also told it's very, very busy. Hopefully I'll be sent to France for firework time so I can actually see the special ones instead of just Illuminations as usual. And hopefully they won't be broken like they were on Christmas.

Everyone else have a good Christmas time? Or at least a good start of winter break, proper Buddhist-san?

(OOC: Bracketed bit is used in the Japanese translation instead of inches.)

Who: Ash, Pukamon, Maria, and Leormon; briefly NPCing Ash's buddy
When: Sunday August 15th, evening (the most epic backdate evar)
Where: Central Park and beyond, New York City
What: On a road trip up the Eastern Coast, Ash and Pukamon get shown around the Big Apple by a local and meet some Chosen for the first time in America.

( tl;dr )

After trying to spend every second I'm not working attached to the hip to my friends who are leaving soon (and there's why I haven't been blogging), I managed to BS my way into a five day weekend to see a few of my friends off as they go home and visit my other best friend who's already home. (Don't tell my managers, though: I told them I'm going to Ohio for an interview at Muskingum College to transfer there after my program's over. I wonder how long I can keep this up.)

Anywhere on the East Coast I should visit? So far my definite stops include Atlanta, Roswell (Georgia, not the one with the aliens; both on Friday), DC (Saturday), and DuBois. Leaving Friday morning, flying back from Pittsburgh Tuesday evening.

Also, anyone been on a roadtrip or just a really long trip with your partner? How'd it go? Particularly when other people got involved. Bonus points if it was in the US. It's been quite a few months since Pukamon and I did any long haul travel together, and this time we'll be cooped up in a much smaller space, though at least we'll be with people who know about him, not like most of my family roadtrips over the years.

Please let the Brazilian tour groups go home soon: I'm pretty sure I spent Chip and Dale's entire rotation with that one tour group because they just kept on coming. Think of the other kids. This one little girl almost cried when they went on break.

In other news, I'm six months into my program today and I think I'm starting to lose it: Last week on my Friday I saw this...giant...snail...thing around the Chatham pool, but I was kind of trashed at the time, and when I looked again it was gone so I believed Willa when she said I was tripping. But then coming home from working EMH at Epcot tonight, totally sober if kinda tired, there was a huge freakin' caterpillar-thing on a tree by the bus stop. I almost thought it was a snake! When I tried to get a closer look the big guy scarpered. Monday night, EMH at Magic Kingdom? Weird black cat, looked a bit like Tailmon (it ran off when it saw me looking) by the utilidoors at three in the morning.

Pretty sure I'm not the only one going a little nuts after six months here; Sky keeps coming home saying he did something stupid. But damn, I had to be seeing things.

At least our move's finally sorted! All staying together so no need to worry about new flatmates being Mickeyholes about Pukamon, and to a nicer housing complex than the one we're at. (Which also means I'm hopefully going to have less of those awkward mornings when I wake up and my roomie's had his girlfriend over, since we're technically not allowed to sleepover at other complexes. Not that that's stopped me before.)

(OOC: He saw a Karatsuki Numemon, a Dokunemon, and a Black Tailmon. Ash's lack of experience with Digimon is a little painful. And for those who know Ash a bit better, Sky is one of his five roommates, though not the one with the girlfriend nor the bad cook.)