As England had suffered two very bad winter storms in December, January is turning out to be, by contrast, almost balmy. It was up to 11 over the weekend and, despite the rain today, things look to be soggy and cool, much in the way you expect the beginning of March to be. It's a kind of false Spring, but after such a punishing December, I welcome it gladly.
I have been absent from real blogging for a while. It comes and goes, but today, re-reading some older blog entries, I felt the need to keep adding to my own history here. For posterity's sake, at least.
The weekend was nice enough. Tomorrow is Yoko's birthday and we are celebrating it by going to Wales for a night on Saturday, but, in the spirit of celebration, we headed to lunch at Cafe Rouge (Britain's faux French eatery) this weekend to use some 'points' we had acquired from shopping at the supermarket. The food was nice enough: we went for an early lunch and Mei fell asleep, but Naomi, for the first time, was able to colour a picture quietly while we waited for the food to come. It was nice, but made me eager for the real Parisian cafes and a stroll toward Le Arc de Triomphe, up from Le Louvre. I have moments of panic where I want desperately to be back in two places: Paris and Tokyo. Unfortunately, of my two life paths, one will likely cut into the regularity of the other, but this can't be helped.
We then had coffee at Starbucks and Yoko remarked that having this card (the cheap filter coffee card) had given us some normalcy again as we used to regularly have coffee in Japan (with no thought to the cost) and can now do the same thing here. We went twice last weekend and once this weekend. We also attended Japanese church on Sunday afternoon, which always brings Yoko a great amount of joy and, in turn, encourages me by seeing her so happy. I wore a bowtie which apparently drew a great deal of attention to me. Everyone commented that I was overdressed, but I was in jeans and cowboy boots. 'It's a normal thing,' Yoko said when someone asked why I was wearing it. Yes. Yes, it is.
Although I am now closer to the end of my PhD than I was the last time I did some good, quality navel gazing, I feel less of a sense of urgency about the future and more apathy, really. I think I have found that feeling that everyone else seems to have about my life that has evaded me: namely that everything will work out, most likely.
War and Peace, as you can tell from my last couple of posts, really has gotten to me. It's a fabulous story. Really, the sort of thing that makes you want to read and read to more fully submerge yourself in it. I think Les Miserables will be next up for me.
Finally, the schedule for my conference in Chicago has finally been posted. Although I was feeling less than excited about going, looking at some of the presentations, I am encouraged. In four weeks, I will be on a plane back to the motherland.I think I will get some good contacts for the bits of my literature review covering the metaphor and biblical texts, as well as hermeneutic activity.