On the way back from a quiet laid-back Thanksgiving in Roseville, we took advantage of the CD player in Marith's new car to listen to Angie's Flash Girls CDs. They were, for me, terribly nostalgic at some points, simply beautiful in others, and at one or two places not much of anything. I used to love their music so much, but that was a long time ago, and although some songs I still connect with, others leave me -- well, not cold, even though that's the appropriate ending to the idiomatic expression, but they don't move me. It's always a little odd to realise that something which used to hit my emotions dead on now is just pleasant sounds. I still like "Amaryllis", though, and "Banshee", and I love, absolutely love, "November Song". It makes me want to write some sort of story.

My Japanese final yesterday went really well; although I complained about it at the time, doing one more chapter of work before taking the final meant everything I'd learned was right where I could get at it. I was surprised at how easy things were -- the questions were straightforward and although I had to look up a few words (kyodai and heya both stumped me), on the whole it all seemed very simple. The process of learning things is always so subtle and insidious, and I'm forever surprised when it hits me that I actually know something that I didn't know before. My gut feeling is that the reason the final was so easy is that sensei didn't ask anything /real/, and if he'd asked me a /real/ question I wouldn't have been able to answer it. Well, okay, that's half of my gut feeling. The other half is a sort of amazement that I found it so easy to talk (and write) about what I did last weekend and how many siblings I have and what hours I work. Shouldn't it be much more difficult than this?

A brief pause and then I return, with yet another piece of stress out of the way! I called the travel agent for Jim's company to book my holiday travel, and he turned out to be amazing. We now have tickets that will take us to both Oklahoma and Chicago, all at reasonable times and within our price range. It took him about ten minutes to find them. I am definitely going to be calling this guy the next time I need to go somewhere major. And oh, it feels so good to have this figured out! I shall call my parents and tell them now.

Parents not home. I left them a very silly message on the answering machine. I'm listening to Clannad, browsing a website on Gundam Wing yaoi doujinshi (Trowa as uke just makes my brain hurt, and I suspect 9/10 of you don't actually want to know what I'm talking about, so I'll just leave it mysterious), reading the Aestheticism mailing list, catching up on Ceej's journal (which you, gentle reader, may once again blame for getting me writing in my own)... lots of flicking going on here. I shan't feel bad, though, as there really isn't any work to be done -- which is a bit frustrating in a way, since Ceej's journal has many long passages about all the work she's doing, and it makes me a bit jealous. I enjoy the flicking, but I also enjoy accomplishing things, and that's difficult when things are in transition.

Clannad appears to be making my brain mushy. Or maybe it's just the lag, which is causing me to typo endlessly and have to backup a lot and fix things.

I wish I sat on the other side of the building. They get all the gorgeous mellow late-afternoon autumn light, while we're stuck with fluoresence. At least from our windows we get our share of the changing trees, yellow and brown and red and shades in-between. Amazing, to have fall colours in California; does this happen every year and somehow I've just missed it? Maybe it's that this building is in a place with the right sort of trees. And right outside the gate to our backyard is what I think is a Japanese maple, a beautiful tree, with all the leaves that hang over our yard turning rich deep red, and the rest of them still green. I noticed it this morning walking to my car and had an urge to pull off some leaves, but they wouldn't last. What I should instead do is take the incredible digital camera Jim got me for my birthday outside and take lots of pictures.