Ah. Since my key motivator has clambered over the Great Firewall of China, I suppose I have no choice but to post.

I never completed documentation of our Colorado adventure. Here's a summary. We had a very successful family reunion with a good turn out and decent weather. Activities varied from doting on babies to vacuuming mouse nests out of the floor to shooting handguns at cups and cans.

Between then and now, I went to a creepy Mormon ward yard party with my parents. Last weekend, we had a successful house party with a few of my dad's coworkers and a couple of neighbors. It was delicious and fun. Living here has made me cherish rare human contact.

Yesterday, I successfully completed driver's education with a drive at seven in the morning. Today, I went to the driver's license division to take my road test. When the huge examiner got into the car, the seat was adjusted to fit my mom. Eventually I realized what he was looking to do and told him how to move the seat back. The air condition wasn't working (nor did I bother to turn it up) so the car was like a poor man's sauna on wheels. We were both sweating like stuck pigs. He warned me about a few things while we were driving (checking blind spots, for example, a lot of which his full-figure was obstructing) but I managed to pass and get my temporary operator license. The proper one will come in the mail at a later date. I'm not entirely sure when.

In celebration, Mom and I went to T.J. Maxx to buy me a bathrobe for college. She was looking at other clothes, so I headed towards what I always consider to be the most interesting section of T.J. Maxx: the book section. It was disastrous. There were cook books amongst planners and tributes to Diana, fallen books behind the stands, multiple copies of the same book placed very far from each other. The O.C. Disorder kicked in and I started pulling books off shelves, organizing and re-shelving them. Despite being pulled away from the task before tackling all the sub-sections, it looked much better than it had started off. Perhaps that was my way of redirecting stress from the driver's test.

Since I have my license, I'm tempted to go back tomorrow and sort the rest. Oh man. This is dangerous. Real plans for tomorrow: go see Superbad at 4:25. I love America. After getting used to paying 1,800 yen for theater admission in Tokyo, $5.00 seems like some sort of grotesque discount price.

I finished watching Arrested Development a third time through, this time, taking my parents along for the ride. It was well received. I have a feeling that if I watched it again, there would still be plenty of jokes that I missed.

One week countdown to leaving this godforsaken state. Better get cracka-packa-lackin'.