Wrapping up the year...

I awoke to the sound of glass cascading down from somewhere above. As it collided with the tile in my kitchen I squinted at the clock to see it was 5:12am and thought “God damn it cats I have 18 minutes before my alarm goes off!” Standing barefoot amongst the shattered remains of an ancient mixing bowl I glanced at my calendar and saw the word Japan written in neat bubbly black letters not 9 days from now and I smiled. Vacation. A chance to explore and exist in another world, one completely removed from the one I wake up to every day, was approaching and all I had to do was get there.

The second course of my graduate curriculum concluded last night and I can honestly say that I am relatively certain I will receive an A in the course. Which is certainly not something I could have confidently said about any of my undergraduate studies. I find grad school suitably challenging and it most certainly monopolizes my time however the drawing of real world applications into the curriculum has aided in my learning in a most profound way. I am however extremely relieved to be on a hiatus, albeit a short one, from my studies for three weeks. I think that the brain takes on a different way of learning when you leave school and when you try to revert to the scholastic habits of the past you can almost overload it. I feel as though I have blown a circuit somewhere and I need some time to repair the damages.

With school finally out of the way I can focus on my vacation in the East. One of the outstanding aspects of this vacation is that I have had no involvement in the planning of it. Everything has been diligently placed on the itinerary by the person I am traveling with. Given my relative ignorance of things to do in Japan I am thrilled with the prospect of new discovers and certainly surprises and I will fully submit myself to whatever is on the agenda. As a manager during my day job I have found it becomes increasingly tiresome to always know where things are headed and always being in charge. I am very much looking forward to the idea of relinquishing the reins to someone else for a while so that I can just enjoy myself.

I know I have been hard to get in touch with lately and its about to get harder. This will probably be my last post of 2006. I hope that everyone has an amazing holiday and a rockin’ New Years. Until next year…