Being an account of a happy life of little to no importance

+I have an app for my iPod touch that makes figuring out what day to put in the title a matter of one touch.

-My grandfather is in the hospital with heart problems. I'm not ready for life without him. I hope this is just a little bump in his health.

+My job is steady and relatively secure.

-I hate my job more and more each day.

+Back at the start of the year, I began a blog to practice my Japanese everyday.

-I've posted four times in three months.

+My girlfriend spent two amazing days here. I took her to Herfey's Burgers, then Seahearst Park on Saturday. We watched Fern Gully and Ponyo (finally!), and played Settlers with my family.

+She and I had some good talks.

-I am far more unmotivated than anticipated, and that is saying something. I don't know how to light a fire under my ass, but I've got to do it soon.

-In eight-thousand, six-hundred twenty-four days of life, I feel I have done very little of meaning.

The Theory of the Conservation of Happiness: At any given time, there is only so much happiness in the world. Happiness cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. This means as one person in the world becomes happy, another person elsewhere loses their happiness to anger, sadness, ambivalence, etc.

On good days, this is a sobering theory. On the other hand, considering how my cheeriness changed into increasingly intense rage as I progressed through the workday, this theory would dictate that somewhere in the world, at least one person that really deserved it was having mind-blowing sex.

Don't feel obligated to leave a comment if you were that person.

My sister came home from college for the weekend. It was nice to have her around, shoot the breeze, and hang out with her in general. I had forgotten how well we get along, and the amount of time I get to speak on friendly terms with anyone but my mother is severely limited.

Because it is so unusual for the entire family to be home at once, we spent some time as a family Saturday night watching "Up" (Mom, Dad and I had never seen it), which was a delightful movie, and then playing our favorite board game, Settlers of Catan. Here's the weird part: I liked it when sixes were rolled. Sixes were when things really happened for me. I'm sure everybody often wills the dice or the cards or any game of random chance to bend to their will. Does anybody else actually get results? Because the day before yesterday, I did. I focused my thoughts on a six being rolled only four times. The first time, a six came up, and I felt lucky. The second time I felt odd. The third time I closed my eyes and specifically envisioned the yellow die being a one, and the red die being a five. The dice were cast, there was a yellow one and a red five, and I freaked out a little. Okay, a lot, for a boardgame anyway. And then the fourth time I jinxed it with a whisper, and I got an eight instead. Still, it was creepy. These rolls weren't in a row, and for the three times it worked it wasn't even my roll. It wasn't like I knew, either, I just willed it and it happened. It was beyond bizzare.

Maybe the government will come pretend to employ me for interpreting and instead turn me into River Tam. That'd be pretty kickass, even with the psychosis.

I get to see Juli in less than a week!

It started with getting an extremely late graduation gift from a very old friend of my grandmother. She sent me a new wallet, Italian leather, with a bunch of one dollar bills stuck in every pocket of it. At work today, I met my speed goal for the third day in a row, a personal best. And now, I'm going to get all ready for bed, go down to the Xbox, and download the Left 4 Dead 2 demo. It's just like the new tattoo that my co-worker got this past Saturday says: "Today, life is good."

Bad news: These new shirts I got for super-cheap at Target are a great fit except for the sleeves. My arms are just a tad too long to fit properly into the size of clothing in which the rest of my body looks best. About an inch or two of my wrist shows, so these shirts will have to be worn with the sleeves shoved up to my elbow. I thought this was just a problem in Japan, that it was yet another example of their weird sizing, but no, it's not you Japan, it's me.

Good news: I might actually have a decent Halloween costume this year. Swapped out the Chesire cat for the white rabbit. It was simpler to piece together from what was available, and this way I won't have to figure out how to drink without swallowing half of my face paint. All I need to do is find my glow-in-the-dark makeup and I'm ready to go.

Seven weeks since last update?! Well, I suppose that's no great surprise. Most of those on my friends list have moved on to grown-up, sophisticated, serious blogs. Blogs that are amazing and a joy to read, just not the kind of blog I would start writing, simply becuase I don't write often enough. As evidenced by a lack of updates.

But what is there to say? Work rolls on, neither jeopardized nor especially rewarding. My lady and I are managing a long-distance relationship as best as can be expected. That one stupid chord transition in "Stairway" keeps getting easier.

I suppose another flare-up of insecurity constitutes "news", but nobody wants to hear me whine. What's that? Whine away? Fine, I shall. My whole idea of a career is based on being able to speak two languages fluently enough to be able to interpret between the two of them for other people. Leaving aside the fact that I'm nowhere near that level of proficiency in either language, I would still feel inadequate. I just stumbled upon an artist who can speak four languages, in addition to her excellent artistic abilities. Several of the friends I made during my study abroad in Japan are the same way. So today feels like a day to seek contentment in being the semi-literate, quasi-comprehensible buffoon, grinning dreamily and plunking away on his little six-strings while the talented, hardworking people smile condescendingly and go make piles of money doing what they love. I might be up to that.

My sister is visiting home from college, cue excited sounds! It's really weird to have things reversed in that way. Today we will walk the dog and then go shopping for Halloween costumes. I'm going to try to make a radical Cheshire cat. We'll see how that turns out.

*plunkplunkplunk* Ain't no sunshine when she's gone *plunkplunkplunk*

After just over a month of working at the Office Max warehouse in the valley, I have had a minor breakthrough. We who pick from the "bulk" section of the stock using our special "stockpicking" forklifts have our productivity measured in cartons picked per hour. Tonight is the first time I have been able to meet my productivity goal. They don't expect me to do so consistently for at least another month, prizing safety over speed. Still, this is a small victory. Were the hour not so late and my eyelids so heavy, I would have a drink in celebration.

In other news, I am rediscovering just how much long distance relationships suck in almost every aspect.

There are times when I disagree with the general consensus on Rotten Tomatoes. In fact, this is a very often occurrence. Unfortunately, when I sat down to watch "The Spirit" yesterday, it was not one of those times.

I am not alone in thinking "The Spirit" was a terrible, terrible movie. The writing was absolutely horrific. I've never heard so much expository dialog in my life. The action was ordinary at best, whenever it got around to finally whipping up any semblance of motion. The plot was overly simple, to the point that a child could summarize every event in 30 seconds flat. But the worst part, the part that really pissed me off, was the characters.

Now, I know I've already said the writing is bad, but sometimes good characters are given bad lines. Sometimes a good, funny, or memorable character can redeem an otherwise floundering storyline. "The Spirit" didn't even have one. The worst of the worst was the way each and every woman character was written and acted. I'm not normally sensitive to that kind of thing, being a male who is usually content to watch other males kick ass. Don't get me wrong; it's way cooler to watch women kick ass, as it is a far rarer sight. I wish I could've said that about any one of the women in "The Spirit". One of the actresses made the laughable statement that all the women characters in this disgusting mess of a film are too strong and intelligent to need rescuing like you might expect. Oh sure, none of them are the typical "damsel in distress", but let me paint you a picture. This actress's character was a doctor, which requires intellect, oh yes. Then we see the Spirit has some nonsensical power plucked straight from every womanizer's dream: he "knows just what to say" to make any and every woman desperately love him. There's no plot-driven reason for the Spirit to posses such a power or skill or whatever. It doesn't even make sense within the context of the story. So this supposedly strong, intelligent doctor not only knows he "truly loves every woman", but actually sees him sucking the face off the secondary antagonist, and what does she do? Mutter "Bastard!" so he can hear, then give this little smirk like she's still crazy about him anyway. And that antagonist, Miss Sand Seraf? She's supposed to be "strong" just because she can wave a gun around and chase after everything shiny? I'm dead serious, that's her character motivation: she wants shiny things. Don't even get me started on Scarlet Johannson's character. *spoiler, though you really shouldn't care* I mean, I thought she'd show enough intelligence to steal the immortality formula and drink the blood herself, betraying the doctor and becoming the real villan that the Spirit would have to somehow bring himself to defeat. See what I did there? That's not even an unpredictable plot twist! But no, she's just this bubblegum-for-brains dupe following...what? Orders? Right to the so-predictable-it's-almost-unexpected end? */spoiler*

Frank Miller, you've done some cool things, but you wouldn't know a strong woman if one spent the rest the rest of your life kicking you in the balls (which I would highly encourage). Queen Gorgo was good, but I don't think she was even in the 300 comic, and you had absolutely dick to to do with the movie. Am I being ignorant here? Would any self-respecting, intelligent, strong woman really devote herself to a man she knows is unfaithful? Repeatedly, publicly, unapologetically unfaithful? Do strong women really become completely selfish, trecherous bitches just to obtain all things sparkly? Did anybody else see this atrocity of a movie and actually find something compelling in it?

Soon, I will be off to see G.I. Joe, a movie I hope will be awful in an awesome way, instead of just absolutely sickness-inducing.
 

Today I won Settlers of Catan for the first time. I didn't really enjoy winning, though, because I had to be a total dick to do it. Oh sure, I was abiding by the rules, and whenever I made a move it was motivated by strategy and not a mean spirit. Still, it felt mercenary, not fun. I've never been the competitive type, especially with board games. Video games lend themselves to a certain degree of fighting to win, especially the types of multiplayer games I usually play. Still, I've always had the most fun when I'm focused on having fun, not winning. This is an age-old, beaten-to-death-by-sitcoms lesson I've re-learned today, but there it is all the same.

Going to my little lady's house in two days! Job interview that may cripple my confidence forever in three. Gimme a shout if you Oregon folks wanna meet up this weekend.

As always, Japan, we are in your debt. If only there were enough alcohol in the world to watch this movie.

Gotta follow up on a resume today by phone call: scary!