Well, what was meant to be rather frequent updates turned out to be, uh — not so frequent. Being out in the woods as we are, the only internet connection we have is dial-up, and a slow dial-up connection at that. Then again, considering we can’t even get cell phone reception out here, I guess we should consider ourselves lucky.
It has been a fun trip overall. We had dinner with my extended family at my grandparent’s house, had some family over at my parent’s house on Christmas Eve, went to Jacksonville and bought a car load of stuff for the princess, went out to eat with my parents, my brother, and his wife in Greenville, and met up with a load of old friends (that I’m not even going to start naming out). Today is our last day here and we are strongly considering going out to buy new luggage to take home all the shit we have gathered. If not we will probably end up having to send it or leave it.
Quick tangent: on the plane trip here I read “feed” by M.T. Anderson. I thought it was a really cool book — like a modern, twisted “Brave New World.” It read like a dark, futuristic novel but it worked more as an allegory for modern times. Really cool. I got two Chuck Palahniuk books, “Fight Club” and “Invisible Monsters,” stocked for the trip home but with taking care of the princess, I’m not sure if I will get to both. They are on my list anyway.
So yeah, getting ready to get back to Japan and start catching up with the world. I have about a billion little projects setup for 2008 and I’m looking forward to getting to work on them. As for the 14+ hour plane trip home? Nah, not looking forward to that too much.
Yesterday, we left the princess for mom to look after while we did a little bit of Christmas shopping. After that and a short nap, we headed out to my brother’s house and met up with my friend Alec. We just kind of hung out and ate some pizza. We were up early again today, at about five o’clock because of our jet lag, so we took a short walk in the forest behind my parents’ house. My dad has been doing some work back there this year and has it cleaned up really nice. It’s nice to get out into some nature after being in the concrete jungle that is Tokyo for so long.
From there we went to town for lunch with my mom and her friend, did some shopping again, and we had planned to meet up with my cousin and his wife this evening but what was intended as a short nap turned into about seven hours of sleep. Now it’s the middle of the night and the princess is wide awake so it looks like it is going to be another long one.
We got into the states yesterday a little past noon. The princess was surprisingly good on the plane. She cried a little bit, like all babies do, but she would calm down when we walked her around the plane a bit and to be honest, she slept the majority of the time anyways. After getting in, we picked up our rent-a-car in Raleigh and made the three hour drive back home to my parents’. I had only managed to get about an hour of sleep before that so it was a pretty rough trip. Luckily I managed to get home without killing us all.
Both the wifey and I got to sleep around midnight yesterday but Anna ended up waking at about three in the morning and was up all night; she is still 100% on Japanese time. We are going to have to start flipping her schedule tomorrow I think.
Today, my brother and his wife brought their kids over to visit and we just played around in the yard together and went out for dinner in the evening. Their oldest was totally amazed with the baby. He kept wanting to play with her, feed her, etc. Their little girl (in the picture above) is their youngest and man is she cute! She is two years old now and all over the place.
Tomorrow, we plan to go out to do some Christmas shopping and if possible, meet up with my friend Alec who is in town. That and maybe, just maybe, manage to get a little sleep.
It appears as if Blogger isn’t accepting links anymore for blog comments from people without an account. Which leaves me (a WordPress user) in a rather uncomfortable situation: now, I run the risk of being confused with another Scott who lives in Japan with a four month old baby who writes incoherently. Either that, or I have to leave my web address in the comment box and feel like a dick-wad who is just trying to get hits to his site that nobody reads.
Ultimately, I just ended up throwing together a Blogger profile, which is rather retarded considering I don’t even use blogger. Of course then again, I get the feeling that’s exactly why the change was made.
Lord I hate marketing.
And I’m amazed that the word “dick-wad” comes up in my spell checker — and that I spelt it wrong.
Lorne and Maggie came over on Saturday to “write lyrics” which essentially means we got plastered and played Wii Sports until four o’clock in the morning. We did get some lyrics wrote though, at about 1:30 or so in the morning, and Lorne finished the rest while Taka was taking his guitar solo.
The recording, as a result, turned out pretty well. I was having a bit of an off day and the drum track just wasn’t sounding like I wanted it to, but ultimately, I just kind of said “fuck it,” stopped thinking about all the little technical aspects I wanted to get in, and just improvised through it. It actually sounded a hell of a lot better when I did so. It was far from perfect, but a lot closer to what I wanted.
We had a couple of minor issues, one being that the ending was coming out sounding terribly flat and boring when we put it down. It always sounded good to us live, but you know, that’s just how these things go. We decided to change up the drum part so I abandoned my cool little double bass thingy and just randomly beat the shit out of everything I could get my hands on.
That seemed to work.
Anyways, I have tons of pictures and video and whatever but I also have a backlog longer than my penis so it’s going to take me a decade to get around to it all. It will all surface in some form, somewhere, one of these days, probably, and I will make sure to keep everyone updated.
This shot was taken by my wife on or last flight to Osaka from the plane window. The pilot purposely flew low “because the weather was so nice” and he wanted to give everyone a good view. The Japanese love their Mt. Fuji.
I once climbed this volcanic monstrosity with my wife when we first started dating. I have heard a saying here (which is probably far from correct) that goes: Climb Mt. Fuji once and you are enlightened; climb it twice and you are a fool. After going up it once, I totally get it.
Just for reference, my wife has climbed it twice.
Wow, I have just been staying insanely busy these last few months. Work has been ridiculously busy, and it seems that I have something I need to get done, or something to do almost every second of the day.
The beginning of this week, the wifey and I took Anna to the American Embassy to get all her paperwork filed. I have been preparing it on and off for the last month or so now so I am glad to finally be done with it. Hopefully, in the next few weeks, every thing will pass and she will be an American citizen (she is already a Japanese citizen). We are just waiting on her passport, social security number, and a copy of her birth report to arrive.
As for band, I’m going in the studio for one final practice in preparation for yet another recording we are doing on Sunday. It’s a bit of a cram job to be honest. We have had this song for over a year now but we have completely reworked it over the last three weeks to the point that it is almost unrecognizable; better, of course, but totally new. I am really looking forward to taking it down though. It’s just a much harder song than we have done so far. It’s definitely going to be a tiring recording session. Anyway, hopefully today we clean up some of the questionable parts and get a few good run throughs with the metronome. We plan on trying to take the track down all at once this time because we are going for a much more raw, live sound than we had on the last track. It’s a loud mother fucker, and the last thing we want is for it to come out sounding too clean.
Oh, and I got some early Christmas presents: a Nintendo Wii and a DS Lite. I am loving both of them, even though I haven’t found very much time to play with them yet. The Wii gives you a hell of a work out. I played it for about an hour or so when some friends came over last weekend and my muscles were sore for two days after (laugh).
