Needed Update

Hey all.

Sorry for the lack of updates. As I've told a few of you reading, my grandmother passed away on the 25th. I haven't really felt like saying anything until now. I'm sad, but I've been expecting it for a while, she was 93.

So since then, I have a lot of news, which, frankly, I'm going to paraphrase. We went ahead with our planned trip to Brighton. Mizuki and Emma and Housei and I all drove down to Brighton for a fantastic day, where we ate Italian food, and played sliding coin games, as well as giggling on the very rocky beach. We had a wonderful time, made only more wonderful by Emma constantly calling me out every time I crept over 90mph.



It's a shame Becky couldn't come as well, but she had babysitting. We also had a group trip to Ikea, with Becky and Kiana. Becky spent a ton of money on bedclothes and lights and the like, and I got some non-alcoholic Pear Cider as well as a small posable mannequin, which I thought would be useful for my new lectures.

I have started University. I'm taking subjects like XML and 3D Animation, with lots of Database stuff thrown in. I'm also teaching this semester as well. I'm teaching the 1st years how to take apart computers and put the back together. I love that job. It's good to get back into the routine of playing pool between lectures and having sandwiches with friends. I can do that now that my loan has come in. Due to the amazing ingenuity of Roehampton University, a simple MS Access interface managed to baffle the best staff the University had to offer, and they neglected to press the "Submit Registration to Student Loan Company" button, delaying both my and Emma's loan.

Housei's friend Hiro left a few days ago, but they took us to a restaurant in Earl's Court, which was very tasty, but since they were paying, I felt reluctant to eat the food, which was in the manner of ordering several dishes and sampling each. I feel more like Emma all the time. The lights in the restaurant kept going off and on again every few minutes. Eventually, the bulb on the wall near our table popped, fell out of the light shade and smashed on the table below, sending shards our way. Although they were not clearly visible, the shards posed enough of a risk for them to quickly take away the food, not charge us for it, and offer us many desserts. We said goodbye, and took photos of us with the sign. He also gave Housei a really cool stool he'd designed, which was made of white metal, but is hard to describe in shape. I should just say it didn't look strong, but due to its design, it was very strong. He and I discussed the use of aesthetics in design, and it was very interesting to hear a designer viewpoint on it. I didn't need to take him to the airport, he, and his brother, made their own way.

Housei left this morning, and we said out goodbyes last night, as well as taking loads of photos. It was very sad to see him go, we had a lot of really good times together, but I feel bad for Emma now, who won't see him for months and months. He may come over again in February, but it's still a long time. She's going to miss him, and I can tell.

I went to Heathrow with Laura today, to pick up one of her friends. After that we went to a long needed Tesco shop, and with my newly given loan, I finally bought some long overdue treats, such as Naan pizza, and chocolate digestives.

I also got a call from Sarah today, and we chatted for ages about all sorts of problems we both had. I chatted with her brother too, who I hadn't spoken to in a while.

There have been some other family developments that I'm not comfortable discussing here, and in honesty, right now things are kind of depressing for myself and my family, but my sister is there for me a lot, and I'm there for her, and we're sharing a lot of grief. I don't really feel like sharing my feelings too much right now because of it, so my updates will be a bit more sparse for a bit.

This isn't like Dan's blog, which began with the immortal words "This time, I'm not going to update 17 times in the first week, and then twice in the year after that.". With his update frequency, twice a year is optimistic (he made an initial post and one post with a quote from my blog).

Also, Justin Caldwell, of Des Moines Area Community College, is a homophobe.