Me, Myself and i

Life is good right now. I got my new PC in the mail yesterday and I am officially worshipping at the church of Dell. Does it get any easier than using a Dell? It took all of fifteen minutes to set it up, and most of that time was spent throwing my old G@teway out the window.

But that's not all. My new Dell means that I can finally use MY NEW iPOD! I think I've finally found a relationship I can commit to. I've been uploading music for about ten hours now, and I think I can safely say: I'm in love. I'm also in love with iTunes. For those of you even less in the know than me, (if that is possible), you can buy almost any song in the world and they're all 99-cents. I love being able to purchase a few songs by Dean Martin and a few songs by Jay-Z without having to buy entire CDs that I won't listen to.

This weekend is kind of the last reprieve I'll have for about 3 weeks or more. I am going TAD (military-speak for working someplace else -- temporary assigned duty) for the next few weeks, and possibly few months. It will just be around Japan (from the southern tip to the northern tip!) but I always get a little anxious when I have work-related travel coming up. There's a lot of pressure to perform and be "on" which gets old fast. Next week I'll be in Okinawa, which has tropical weather, so I will enjoy the sunshine and hope for low humidity.

Anyway, the new PC also meant that I was able to load the software for my new digital camera (I know that's a lot of "new" -- they were presents from me to me for Christmas, but I haven't been able to use anything until now) so I'm going to experiment with putting some pictures up on the blog before I go. No more tiny cell phone pictures.

On Monday before I leave I have to take two make-up quizzes and then my Japanese final exam. Yikes! I have been really excited lately to be focusing on language studies again. I have to admit that I am SO GLAD that I'm not teaching right now, and I don't know when I'll do it again. I just received an e-mail from the Asst. Dean asking me to come back as soon as I can, and I can't really see that happening soon. When I was teaching, especially doing the traditional (in the classroom vs. online) class, I was surprised to find that I immediately loved it more than I've ever enjoyed banking. However, doing both at the same time -- doing them well -- is almost impossible for me. Plus, and I don't think this is going to come out right, but I found teaching to be the most high-cost, low-pay off thing I've ever done. To the extreme. Right now in banking I feel that I work like a dog and get a fair salary. While teaching, I worked like a dog and got almost nothing. It's not all about the cash for sure, I did intense volunteer work for 14 years straight before leaving Portland, but in banking, when the work gets really shitty, it's nice to fall back on, "I'm just going to do the work, take their money, and not let this place get to me." I could never do that with teaching. It probably has something to do with my students and the college I worked for -- Marines aren't the most rewarding to teach, and the institution itself has issues. All of that to say, I'm happy to have the time to focus on Japanese, and I hope to keep taking classes, even with my TAD's. Next quarter I'll be in Japanese II! That's a sentence I never thought I'd say!