I took 12/1-12/10 off, using up the last of my vacation to visit some family in Ohio and Oklahoma. Unfortunately I didn't get to visit any friends at all, partly due to schedule and distance, and partly due to my poor planning. Seems like most everyone I know is scattered far and wide—Columbus, Rochester, Neenah, Chicago, L.A., Houston, Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka, etc.—so visitation is problematic. The logistics of visiting family alone was tough enough.

Sachie went with me but returned to Japan three days prior. Her main "objectives" for the trip were accomplished: a first visit to the shooting range ('blasting' was one of my objectives as well), going to TJ Maxx, and buying a leather jacket. Simple enough to be easy to please. I didn't get a whole lot done other than sleeping and sorting through accumulated mail. Needed to sort out bank statements, stock statements, 401(k) statements, credit card statements, other important financial stuff, and the stacks of junk mail.

I'll enumerate some more of the happenings in a later entry, if only for my personal recollection. For now I just wanted to write something as I've been neglecting my blog while I was gone. Being unplugged every once in a while is nice.

When I got in to work on Monday, I had to get used to the idea of facing more problems than I can keep track of and working more hours in the day than sane people do (08:30-23:30; 09:00-22:00 today). There were over 100 non-spam messages awaiting my attention as well. It's so not good to be back.