Diploma Problems

I’m wearing white socks to work today because I forgot to do laundry during the week.

This has been a crazy week for me because I have had trouble sleeping so I’m tired all the time. In addition I got crazy news from the University of Hawaii. Before leaving for Japan I had to fill out a form to the effect of what name I should have on my diploma. So I filled it out how my name appears on every other diploma. Hawaii’s response is that they only put “real names” on diplomas. They won’t budge on this even though I showed them my passport and drivers license. Talk about bullshit. So now I’m going to have one diploma that will have a different name, and I’ll have to explain that to everyone when they look and ask why I have someone else’s diploma.

I don’t like to bash the schools I’ve gone to because it makes me look bad but fuck University of Hawaii, fuck them in the ear.

Gremlins in my room

I think I have a Gremlin hiding in my room somewhere, I hope it is the Brain and not Mohawk because it’ll give me something to talk to. My air conditioner has been broken for the past few days, It only blows out really hot air, and if I turn it on “supercool” it blows out really hot air. This is fine because it has been real good weather here and I can open the window. As a result I haven’t told the management about it yet. So last night I was on my computer when I noticed it was freezing, so I closed the window. It didn’t help, and then I noticed the air conditioner running at full power completely silent. It works fine now.

Well in the morning I’m getting ready. Part of the morning ritual for me is uploading my podcasts onto my iPod. So I hook up the iPod and it erases everything, which is strange because my playlists have not changed. My computer crashes and I try it again, thistime resetting the iPod. It doesn’t work, iTunes crashes violently on my computer, and it restored all my Podcasts to my iPod but lists none of them as being played. I finally say “screw it” and head off to a pleasant sardine packed train ride to work.

The largest problem with the gremlin is if it pilfers food at normal time here it is after midnight in Chicago (or Las Vegas, or Honolulu) and they never say what happens to a gremlin that was fed after midnight…

In other news I sent an e-mail to Howard Dean today telling him that democrats need to stop responding to things the Republicans say (or ignoring them) and get the Republicans to respond to them. Basically that is what it said, without anything about Gremlins and much more polite.

Why Japan should not have a "real" military

There have been a couple of American editorials discussing the lack of need for the Japanese to come to terms with their past. This is not surprising because China is once again starting to be perceived as an enemy (how dare they wish to improve themselves, and how dare they disagree with the United States), and relations with South Korea keep on declining. Japan now is seen as Eastern Asia’s greatest ally for the United States. Koizumi, one of the greatest leaders in Japanese history, just stepped down and his appointed successor Abe (not pronounced like Abe Lincoln) will be the next prime minister. Abe wants to get rid of article nine which states that Japan will not have a military. Japan already has a powerful “self-defense force” which caused George Will to proclaim that the removal of article nine as something that really doesn’t matter.

All of this does matter, a note to all of you Americans the education system here teaches that Pearl Harbor was a defensive act. I guess the US forgot, I’m sure it has something to do with that awful Ben Affleck movie. China has not forgotten the massacres, Unit 731, using the Chinese, Americans, and Koreans for surgical medical experiments, and the other concentration camps. Many Japanese don’t even know about it. The Koreans have not forgotten how they were abused and humiliated while they were a colony. The Japanese don’t know much about that either. They are not taught these things. This is a region where people have long memories.

I had a conversation with some of the younger Japanese people that I have met about this because the conversation turned towards this. On of them got on the defensive and asked me, “What about the Germans? It isn’t like they teach their people about the atrocities that they committed.” Well, they do. He was more than a little shocked.

This reaction by the Japanese the last 61 years has been typical Japanese, but that in itself makes it very alien. A Japanese army would not be the same as the Imperial Japanese army, it would be one that would participate more in United Nations actions and would not imperialist. The problem of having an official army is that it would increase tensions in the area though and could pave the way for nuclear proliferation; there could very well be five regional nuclear powers. The best argument though is that Japan had found a better way to do things by becoming an economic power and they simply do not need an army.

A day and a half of no work

Another long weekend in Tokyo that consisted of the great activity of not working my internship has finished. I like my internship, but I don’t love my internship. I’m practicing new skills that I’ll need in the future, though I’m practicing them a little too much. This last week I had spent about 12 hours a day at the internship. I understand that this amount is needed occasionally, or more than occasionally, but I also need to write a very long report and presentation still and I need to send out resumes. My other complaint is that I’m learning new things, but not really learning how to do new things. I’ll need to work on that.

Friday night was a night out in Roppongi again, this was not my choice though. I originally met some people there and we had a drink at the famous Wychwood brewers’ own Hobgoblin bar. I got to drink Hobgoblin from the tap (not directly from the tap) and try Dark Witch which is one of their beers that I have not quenched my thirst with before. We ended up going back to Ginza to meet some other people (I had come from Gina to meet them) and thus the low point of the evening. We spent an hour and a half trying to get people together and to get in contact with some other people… you all know the drill. Kris and I got a little ticked off and decided to go back to Roppongi. So back in Roppongi we met up with Harmony who had with her two Hawaiian musicians that she ran into. So we finally went into a place to get some food, this was a relief because I had not eaten all day.

Last night I met up with John, Wictor, and the new edition to our group Gabe. Gabe is studying train systems in Japan and is one of those people who love trains. I am not one of those people that love trains, but I spent some time talking about the Japan railway system. He is working on making the system more handicapped accessible which is a noble goal and I applaud him for it. We ended up at a Korean restaurant where we at many different dishes while consuming sake and Japanese Beer. Some of the things that I at had raw egg in them, and though I have eaten a great variety of things before I had never had a raw egg soup. I can say that it wasn’t that bad. There is a lot of egg in Japanese dishes and many of them are much better than the some of the egg dishes in other places. Though, the place I’m staying at has hard boiled eggs for breakfast which is something that I just can not take anymore.

I also got a package from Cassie’s father (Sir) earlier in the week. It had several books for met to read, and some smoked salmon and caviar which are wonderful things too. If I could find bagels I would be set, and I’m sure that there are bagels here. I had some chili the same night that Kris made, and I got to carry a ziplock bag full of it around Tokyo. This is a good thing because now I can start a story with “I was carrying a ziplock bag full of chili around Tokyo when…” Personally I plan on using that line a lot.

In other cool news I went into the Sony building for a bit today and there is a stairway that made different tones depending on where you stepped. It was really cool and sounded like industrial music played on a toy piano, which is better than most music today.

This upcoming week is going to be like last week, with a lot of work. Though today I worked on a little bit and think that I can get a lot of it done without the excessive amounts of overtime so I can send out a few more resumes. I did that today too.

Outside the Fishbowl

Today I had lunch with this guy Tei whom I met here in Japan. Tei is trying to start his own company, is American, and has lived in Tokyo for 10 years. Like some Americans who have been away for a long time they eventually ask questions about what things are like back ‘home’. We eventually gotten around to that subject before I asked him is he was going to vote; to which he laughed. What followed was a conversation that was longer than we had for lunch, and something that was touched on in the current issue of Foreign Policy (sorry can’t find the link). You see inside the US things have changed, but out here (and the Middle East) things have not changed much.

Looking from the outside the fishbowl to the inside things look a little crazy. Of course not everyone talks politics all the time; but I look at elections like the Superbowl, so I talk about it with people. So what do people outside the fish bowl see? Well for one there was just this long debate between the president and the legislative branch to determine what if torture should be allowed with prisoners. The Bush II (Cheney in Command) has admitted to secret CIA prisons; which is a charge that he has denied before. There was a Canadian citizen that was sent to Syria to be tortured even though the Canadians wanted him back. Then there is Iran which the administration sounds like WMD in Iraq II (Iran Strikes Back). Then people hear things about how the United States wants to bring freedom and peace to people around the world, but we support dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Azerbaijan.

Some people will read that and point at how unpatriotic I am. Those are just facts and I’m not passing judgment with them. People can come to their own conclusions about those things and it says nothing about my patriotism.

So before passing judgment about how people outside the “fishbowl” hate the United States think about this. Things out here have not changed much. People are not paranoid about terrorism beyond the usual. People have not overreacted to events outside the fishbowl because they live here. Some out here ‘hate’ the US (no so much in Japan) but it isn’t usually the US that they hate but the hypocrisy, empire building, shortsightedness, bullying, and general ass hole attitude that they hate. It does not matter if America are these things or not, but people have that perception; and that is someone’s individual reality.

Here is an awesome Foreign Policy article, but I think you need a subscription to read it. This is one of the best things I have read all year (though Bush worshippers may not like it).

election day

Today the ruling party of Japan (the LDP) will elect a new leader replacing Koizumi (also known as ‘The Man’). The LDP has ruled Japan from the war, with a short exception, and will rule again. That’s Japanese politics. Shinzo Abe is expected to take Koizumi’s place, which means he will take Koizumi’s place. Like the princess, no one at my job is talking about it.

Today I accidentally got on the woman only car of the subway. I noticed that there were only women on the train, and one old man. Then I realized that I was in the last car which is the woman’s only car. I quickly got off, just in time trapping the old man in the train full of woman. I find it surprising though that no one said anything to me.

Also in the Japan times has an article about physically challenged people wrestling that sums up everything that is strange and unusual about Japan.

Roppongi Ho!!

Damn, I let my camera’s battery run out so I don’t have pictures for this entry. This was a three day weekend here in Japan and it was really boring for me. Saturday night I spent my first night in Roppongi, unlike last time I planned on it. It was just bar hopping and making sure I didn’t drink too much. I was successful on both accounts. One of the bars we went to was a dart bar. The owner turned out to be a world dart champion. He gave me a bag of tips, which is good because I lost my earring. Walking around with a dart tip in my ear looks pretty dumb, so it didn’t turn out.

Roppongi after dark is filled with prostitutes. That may have been because there was also a huge amount of US Army guys that had leave before shipping out. The problem with them is that seemed to think that every woman was a prostitute. There were all these tall white guys with flattops hitting on every woman that walked by. Those guys were ass holes. Though to escape the prostitutes I pretended that I was gay. It then turned into Drew, Terry, and I saying we were gay. It worked though cause otherwise they follow you down the street.

Other than that I worked, sent out resumes, and played video games with Jon Jon. I also decided that Roppongi will be avoided in the future.

What is America's goal? (political blog entry)

I was reading this awesome (but long) article in the New Yorker and got a little scared about Americas “War on Terror”. On that horrible day years ago 9/11/2001 I was living in Russia and I saw the attacks and thought that it was a tasteless movie. When I realized what had happened I thought three things; “people are angry and we’re going to do the wrong thing,” “Bush is a horrible leader and will do the wrong thing,” and “I am more patriotic that I thought I was.” In the few months between 9/11 and when I left Russia I saw a pile of flowers outside the embassy so high you could barely see the wall, had Russians buy me drinks and toast America; and when I left there were people curing America and throwing eggs at the embassy. That was even before Iraq. I had also read a great article about 9/11 (still the best I have ever read) entitled “Be cool America.”

That article convinced me to write a letter to President Bush with a few insights about what was going to happen and how to go about it. I got an automated response. I am not naive enough to think that it would ever be read, I believe all e-mails go right to the deleted bin. I tried though.

So here is what I said. There are three things that are needed to win a war (or battle). These are not really printed anywhere but are really common sense things that people forget about. First, have objectives. Second, know your opponent’s objectives. Third, achieve your objectives while denying your opponents theirs. Yes, this sounds simple but we have not done that.

First, we have the goal of eliminating the group that attacked us, Al Qaeda. We started off good with the Afghanistan invasion etc. Then we started to stumble, we let the Bin Laden flee to Pakistan, we did not stabilize Afghanistan immediately, we did not immediately get to work on showing the people there that basic infrastructure is nice, democracy is nice, and free markets are nice. President Bush was too excited patting himself on the back and planning the most catastrophic move.

Second, Al Qaeda and Islamic Fundamentalism in general is a movement that uses terrorism as a tool. They also use poverty, disillusionment, and chaos as a tool to recruit members. Like all movements there is a single overwhelming fact about it, it is based on an idea that can not survive if there are no people that ascribe to that idea. After Afghanistan the group was broken. It had lost a lot of members (though we let the leadership go), it had been discredited to the world, and they allowed us to rebuild Afghanistan and show the Islamic world that we can heal as well as kill.

Third, we pretty much ignore Afghanistan and attack Iraq. Then we make the same mistakes by dismantling all the institutions and George Bush and his friends pat themselves on the back while the country is in chaos. There is widespread looting, destruction, and the US troops looked the other way when the people who had been oppressed for so long took their anger out on the former rulers. Most harmful of all, we forgot Al Qaeda, and the Taliban.

The result was poverty, disillusionment, hatred for the United States, and chaos. All which allowed more people join the Islamic Fundamentalists. America had a chance to prove in Afghanistan that our philosophy is better (not correct…) and rebuild a failed state. Create a shining beacon of democracy in the Islamic World. Yes, it does sound familiar; Bush said this about Iraq after there were no WMD found, after it was proved there were no Al Qaeda ties, and months after the chaos had destroyed Iraq. Of course Iraq is more fractured, larger, and more of a challenge than Afghanistan. Meanwhile in Afghanistan our half hearted institutions are failing (read Karzai’s interview in Time), there is no economy to help Afghans get on their feet (so they grow poppy), the institutions we built turned out to be corrupt (the Taliban was totalitarian but wasn’t corrupt), and now the Taliban is back.

So to sum up: we forgot our goal, energized our enemies, and are only helping them achieve their goals. Read the New Yorker article because we are doing exactly what they want us to do, and events are happening according to their timeline. We have not lost yet, because I don’t think that the Fundamentalists goals can be achieved and we can change our strategy though we have made it much more difficult for us to do this. Meanwhile Cheney says that he would not do anything different, though to be honest he can’t say anything else the problem is that I believe him. None of the people making mistakes are fired or even disciplined. Bush is still in power and according to his ABC interview he will remain on the attack. They need to sit back and look at their strategy, think about the three things to do to in a war. Achieving goals while denying your enemy is not easy, but it can not be done if the concept can not be understood.

Bush as a leader is a failure because he made bad decisions. I believed that he believed in those decisions, or someone in his administration did, and that he believes in them today. People support him because he “stays the course” which is not a bad idea if there is an objective but as it stands now there is no objective. It wasn’t to destroy Al Qaeda because we had the chance to do that, it wasn’t capturing Bin Laden because we had the chance to do that, it is not a creating a stable democracy in the Arab world because we could of tried to do that in Afghanistan instead of invading Iraq. Making America or the world a safer place is obviously not the goal because the administration had ignored that aspect… except around election time. It becomes simple, without a goal we simply can not have victory.

The rain in Tokyo...

It has been raining here the past few days here in Tokyo and it has made me realize that I hate carrying an umbrella around. My work gave me an umbrella but it is hug, I could fit a family of five under it. So now in the rain I sit and worry about poking someone’s eye out. Really though most of the time I carry it I don’t end up needing it, I’m in the sub way, walking under awnings, or by my work rail tracks. Today though, it was pouring so I decided to grab it. Woe is I, the wind carried the rain in an assault from all sides so it just didn’t matter.

Sometimes I feel like jousting with someone in the street, but I suppress that urge.

Kamakura is a train ride away

It was a busy weekend, and this will be a busy week. Saturday I went to Kamakura which at one time long ago was the capital of Japan. There was a Shogunate that was based here starting in 1185. Today it is a sleepy little town outside Tokyo that has many awesome shops which I did not go shopping in. There is also a Shinto Temple that is dedicated to the war god, this shrine is called Hachiman. It was built by that Shogun but had been destroyed several times. Like the last temple (Meiji Temple from last week) there was a wedding in process when we were there. At one point the shrine was a Buddhist and Shinto shrine, but the Buddhist elements were removed about 100 years ago when there was a general separation of Buddhism and Shinto. It was a rather large temple with a really big staircase. It was generally agreed among my group that we should have brought a slinky.

Once again we took another train deeper within the city where there is the big Buddha. If you have ever seen the Japanese version of Ghostbusters two you may have seen this. They cover it with slime and it gets up to defeat Vigo and as a symbol that everyone can rally around spreads very good cheer. Well this Buddha is not as large as the statue of liberty, but it defiantly is big. You can go inside, which was like a sauna in the hot sun. There even was a little concrete area that looked like a steam room, so maybe it is a sauna-like-structure. At these temples you can buy different charms, like the charm for traffic safety and the charm for wisdom. My favorite charm is the charm for a strong leg. I’m afraid to get that one because I don’t know if I need two or not.

Many people know that I love green tea ice cream. In fact I often get people ho see me on the street and say things like, “That guy likes green tea ice cream,” or “You are a mighty and handsome man let me buy you some green tea ice cream, and a pint of Guiness!” Well I found a place that has… Green Tea Soft Serve Ice Cream (GTSSIC). In the hot sun it was a challenge to get it all in my body before it melted all over my hands, feet, and limbs. Not to mention my shirt. I almost succeeded before our next stop, the Buddhist temple, the last few bits fell on the ground, lost and abandoned.

Hase-Dera is the Jodo-sect Buddhist temple that is near the Great Buddha. The garden around the temple was awesome, and I plan on having a garden just like it. The best part was the Sentai-Jizo where there are thousands of statues of Buddha lined up, small doll sized statues and smaller action figure sized statues. Some were dressed up much like the infamous American Geese that can be spotted in some yards. These were much cuter. My theory for the statues was that during Ragnarok the statues would rise up and fight the Terra-Cotta statues in China. I looked it up on the Internet tool (that is all the rage with those young people), and I was wrong. The statues are done for aborted fetuses, and parents dress them up and pray for Jizu to protect the babies in the afterlife. Jizu is the god that protects children. There is awesome a great view of the bay, showing all the beautiful rooftops of homes that actual Japanese people live in.

There is also a money-washing temple where you wash your money. We were hungry and tired which resulted in eating at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and going home. It was a long tiring day.

Come and get me Greenpeace!!

I’m waiting for the Sierra Club, or Greenpeace to come knocking down my door at any minute now. So I was with another guy who had a birthday this week and some others, including some Japanese. We were ordering all sorts of food. I love Japanese food, even the really strange things like the squid (ika). I love sushi, and the sushi here is just amazing. Well a plate of sushi came out that I had never seen before and one of our Japanese hosts explained, “That is whale.” Well I hesitated at first (PETA may send an assassination squad against me) but I grabbed a whale nigiri (a slice of raw whale and a small ball of rice) and popped it in my mouth.

It was absolutely disgusting, one of those disgusting where I couldn’t swallow but could not keep chewing, and I could not spit it out. Eventually I swallowed quickly then I washed the taste out with some small raw squids that we had, which were absolutely delicious by the way, and some beer. I tried it though. It is… fatty and doesn’t have much more of a taste; much like chewing some fat, water, and wasabi. No one else liked it either because everyone had a piece, and no one had another even though there was one left.

So now I await Greenpeace to arrive in their little boat to take me out.

The New prince of Japan can beat up Tom Cruise's Baby

Yes, Princes Kiko has had a baby boy here in Japan, he is the third in line for succession of the throne now. The government can escape talking about changing the succession to allow an Empress (there have been empresses of Japan before) for a little more. The only reason demand a male succession involves the Meiji reforms so that Japan would be more like Prussia (what would a female Kaiser be anyway a Kaiserette?).

So I’m watching CNN and they are showing parties in the streets and people celebrating in front of the imperial palace. They are interviewing people who are so happy that there was a baby boy. The BBC said “People across Japan are celebrating.”

Well, I haven’t seen anybody go crazy. I talked to about 50 different Japanese all of whom just didn’t care. I walk by a part of the imperial palace every day and there is nothing going on. I’m sure that people are happy here, and I’m sure that there are people that are going really crazy about it… but not everyone. As for my office, I seem to be more excited than anyone here where no one seemed to notice.

Ban CostCo

I’m sitting at work right now waiting for the day to end. I have a headache because I have stared at a compute screen the entire day. This week has been slow, I have had little to do. I got one large project at the beginning of the week that should last me for a week except that I’m almost done with it. I have even had several smaller finance projects that took me less than an hour today. So I have spent the day reading newspaper editorials that relate to the United States or Japan, oh I worked for about and hour on my project.

A decision was made by me and the rest of the class here and China to ban CostCo from our lives. I have never shopped at CostCo and now I never will. Three of my class got internships at CostCo here in Japan, all of them at offices in the marketing department. Well we get here and all three of them don’t end up working at the marketing department but instead get jobs mopping floors and stocking warehouses. The rest of us are writing marketing plans, doing financial analyses, accounting, and giving strategy presentations. We are MBA students and CostCo took three of us and decided to use them as free physical labor. It was made clear to all the companies that we are supposed to practice our skills but they decided to ignore this. I do not have anything against management working on the floor and learning every aspect of a company but these three were taken advantage of. We do have a presentation to give at the end of this about how we combined all of our skills, and what are they supposed to present. All three have left and moved on to other internships which was difficult for the program to find at the last minute. In even this they were hassled and CostCo even tried to lie to the program to what was really going on to get them to stay.

Tonight I’m going out to meet some biotechnology entrepreneur here in Japan. He is doing something with Mangos I think.

RIP Steve Irwin

I loved his show. There were many college nights watching his show with friends that I almost laughed hard enough to throw up. Give him a moment of silence... he was a guy who was able to promote himself make some money and give it to what he believed in. He also entertained millions, including myself…

Beyonce Sucks

Well there are some things to do in Japan besides drinking, eating and shopping; but eating and drinking are fun. Friday night I went with some other students, and some locals, to a restaurant that was well overpriced and overpriced. That was a light day really because I was able to get off early after making a presentation.

Sunday was the day though. We went to the Meiji Shrine, which is huge, but also walked around the area. Despite some protests from myself and a few others there was a lunch at a burger place. Hamburgers here are over priced but some people just want to get back home for a little bit. I myself had a tuna sandwich. I love Asian food, and I love Japanese food more that I like hamburgers so it perplexes me why someone would want to get a hamburger when there is good food everywhere.

After that we ran into Beyonce… really. We were walking and there was a ton of people waiting outside this one store, and then she walked out with some towering bodyguards, waved at all of us, then jumped in a van and drove off. I tried in vain to remind everyone how much she sucks, but I was ignored.

Outside the Meiji temple is where all the goth and Japanese punks hang out on Sunday. It was awesome, I was wearing my Cubs jersey and I felt like a tool. There are some really damn cool shops which means I’ll have to come back and do a little shopping there. It is strange though because they just hang out there while tourists take pictures of them. At first I was pissed because people of any subculture are not in a zoo. It sort of pissed me off how a lot of the people I was with were like “they just do it for the attention so who cares?” That turned out to be more true that I thought though because all of them were openly posing with people (though I still think it would be better to ask first).

Then onto the Meiji temple. Emperor Meiji was the emperor who modernized Japan in the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s. He was Hirohito’s grandfather and set up a constitutional monarchy where the emperor had significant control. This was the second temple, the first was destroyed during allied bombing in the second world war. This temple was built in 1958. It is a large temple, spacious (minimalist) and was very serine. The temple was built in a park that was one his favorites. Outside the park there are barrels of Sake, and a concession stand where they serve soft serve ice cream.

The one thing that pissed me off is the attitude that some of the people here have, specifically Jon Jon. I always feel uncomfortable in religious places of a different religion. I feel that religion is a private matter and making some of these spots tourist spots degrades them a little (this is of course my belief). So in these temples I don’t take pictures or even really go into places that I feel are only for members of that religion if I’m not invited. Normally this is where people pray. So in Shinto shrines there is an area where people pray and they throw coins.

After the shrine we saw the “Tokyo Rockabilly Club” which were these old guys with Elvis hair dressed like bikers and dancing to the tunes of Grease. I guess they even have a store but we didn’t see that. It was funny but not something that I wanted to see for a while (there was also a Falafel cart nearby which was funny to me for some reason).

Today I worked on my birthday and am sitting at home watching CNN and writing this right now.

Hooray for birthdays

Today is my birthday and I decided it fitting to look up birthdays on Wikipedia (it is a slow day at work). I cam across this passage… “For special birthdays and for when the number of candles might be considered impractical or a fire hazard, special candles might be substituted for the many individual candles.” I find this humorous for some reason.

Beyonce’s birthday is today which is funny because my group ran into her while walking around Tokyo yesterday. Mike Piazza and Damon Wayans also have birthdays today. Otherwise this day is pretty boring.

As an extra special birthday present some JAG left his briefcase on the ground on the train right next to the door. So the train doors open at one of the busier stops and everyone rushes out, and trips over the briefcase. I was at the other side so I didn’t get affected, but it was funny to see.

Earthquake!!

I went through my first Earthquake. People said it was a fairly large one, but I thought it was a 4 second “ride”. I was working and the ground shook a little bit then the entire building felt like it was swaying. Then nothing, except for a small everyone stopped typing on their computer for a moment.

I would like to think that I’m busting my ass at this internship and my boss told me so today. I had a list of things to do before I had to go to a meeting today and I didn’t leave yesterday until I finished them. That meant staying late. This means that I’m looking forward to this weekend even though besides a get together tonight I have no plans. I have had problems sleeping as of late so I hope to catch up on that.