I'm on my way this morning. I am trying to keep focused on how much fun I am going to have, how many great adventures I wll have, what a great new apartment I will have, and how great the people will be over there. When I dwell too much on anything else, I begin to miss my family.
Mom and Dad have been great: they have done everything I want this weekend--sort of feels like a wierd birthday weekend or something. Kate and James and Finn are around, too, spending some time here before they move. Boy, this would not be so difficult if I knew Mom had some great kids and grandkids nearby.
And then, Meg and Mike. Mike calls first and talks to me for a bit. He is great. Then Meg gets on, and she is so encouraging and fun. When we started, I was all sniveling and sad, but by the time I got off the phone, we were laughing about the virtual cat I may get in South Korea--no problems with customs, only virtual fleas.
I'll post some pictures as soon as I get a cheep Korean digital camera.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
It is official.
I have my visa and my plane ticket.
My visa is sort of cool-looking: it is a stamp in my passport that has some English and lots of Korean. Can't read the Korean yet.
My plane leaves from Chicago at 1pm on Monday. Mom and Dad will drive me to Chicago with my two huge suitcases. From Chicago, I fly directly to Seoul, arriving at 5pm on Tuesday. I have a brief layover, and then the flight to Busan is an hour. I am not really looking forward to the flight to Seoul, but I plan to stay up most of the night on Sunday so that I can sleep as much as I can on the flight.
We will see if this really works.
Dad and I were out buying materials to screen in their back porch today. Mom and Dad plan to screen in the porch so that my kitties can be outside a little bit.
I love my parents. They are so great.
Surprisingly, all details seem to be in order. I am packed except for the last minute toiletries, and all the moving, the bills, the doctors' visits, the errands, and everything seems to be finished. Now, I'm just hanging out, trying to enjoy my last few days while trying to not let the blues get to me.
My visa is sort of cool-looking: it is a stamp in my passport that has some English and lots of Korean. Can't read the Korean yet.
My plane leaves from Chicago at 1pm on Monday. Mom and Dad will drive me to Chicago with my two huge suitcases. From Chicago, I fly directly to Seoul, arriving at 5pm on Tuesday. I have a brief layover, and then the flight to Busan is an hour. I am not really looking forward to the flight to Seoul, but I plan to stay up most of the night on Sunday so that I can sleep as much as I can on the flight.
We will see if this really works.
Dad and I were out buying materials to screen in their back porch today. Mom and Dad plan to screen in the porch so that my kitties can be outside a little bit.
I love my parents. They are so great.
Surprisingly, all details seem to be in order. I am packed except for the last minute toiletries, and all the moving, the bills, the doctors' visits, the errands, and everything seems to be finished. Now, I'm just hanging out, trying to enjoy my last few days while trying to not let the blues get to me.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
The craziest wedding this summer
Well, maybe I am exaggerating to call this the craziest wedding ever--so for now, it is the craziest wedding this summer.
I have started writing this post a couple of times now. I think I will overly censor myself: I do not flatter myself that anyone reads this except my closest friends and family, but you never know. This is the WWW, and you never know who may read something.
I choose to play on the subtle side.
Adam and Luke, my dear cousins, are here, and I am so grateful for them. I love them dearly and miss the times we spent together as children. Now, we are adults in our own ways, and Adam and Luke are fathers. Odd. We play the peanut gallery, keeping each other smiling and laughing, trying also to keep Aunt Barb and Mom de-stressified in the meantime. I am so lucky to have such great family.
Tonight and last night, we have ducked out a little early to spend some time together--Adam and Luke, Grandma Sue, Mom and Dad, cousin Leah, and Aunt Barb and Marv (of course, I am truncating this version, omitting the part about Dad and Grandma flying to Florida to attend another cousin's wedding, leaving out the parts about the stress and anxiety the family has felt in the last few days, deleting the part about me standing in as a bartender and Dad standing in as an usher, but then again, I am supposed to be censoring myself). I'm feeling a bit selfish: I will be leaving the country sometime next week (yes, plans are still a bit uncertain at this time), and I want to spend as much time as possible with the people I will miss the most: Mom and Dad.
Ariel and Zack are a beautiful, lovely couple. I am so grateful, like I know everyone else here is, to celebrate their wedding. They are so comfortable, relaxed, and happy. They did not care that the wedding started fifteen minutes late and the rehearsal was forty-five minutes late. They seem oblivious to the stresses and anxieties in the family around them. Ariel and Zack planned this wedding from overseas where they are stationed as Marines, and the wedding was very last minute with some minor details left to the last minute or possibly not addressed at all.
None of this bothered the happy couple.
Oh, to find such peace and joy in the midst of two chaotic families.
And now, I will take my shark for a drive down to the gulf. (Those of you who do not recogize my dry sense of humor, this is a picture Grandma Sue sent me of a bull shark killed in the gulf. This is neither my shark, nor did I harm any animals in the blogging of this site.)
I have started writing this post a couple of times now. I think I will overly censor myself: I do not flatter myself that anyone reads this except my closest friends and family, but you never know. This is the WWW, and you never know who may read something.
I choose to play on the subtle side.
Adam and Luke, my dear cousins, are here, and I am so grateful for them. I love them dearly and miss the times we spent together as children. Now, we are adults in our own ways, and Adam and Luke are fathers. Odd. We play the peanut gallery, keeping each other smiling and laughing, trying also to keep Aunt Barb and Mom de-stressified in the meantime. I am so lucky to have such great family.
Tonight and last night, we have ducked out a little early to spend some time together--Adam and Luke, Grandma Sue, Mom and Dad, cousin Leah, and Aunt Barb and Marv (of course, I am truncating this version, omitting the part about Dad and Grandma flying to Florida to attend another cousin's wedding, leaving out the parts about the stress and anxiety the family has felt in the last few days, deleting the part about me standing in as a bartender and Dad standing in as an usher, but then again, I am supposed to be censoring myself). I'm feeling a bit selfish: I will be leaving the country sometime next week (yes, plans are still a bit uncertain at this time), and I want to spend as much time as possible with the people I will miss the most: Mom and Dad.
Ariel and Zack are a beautiful, lovely couple. I am so grateful, like I know everyone else here is, to celebrate their wedding. They are so comfortable, relaxed, and happy. They did not care that the wedding started fifteen minutes late and the rehearsal was forty-five minutes late. They seem oblivious to the stresses and anxieties in the family around them. Ariel and Zack planned this wedding from overseas where they are stationed as Marines, and the wedding was very last minute with some minor details left to the last minute or possibly not addressed at all.
None of this bothered the happy couple.
Oh, to find such peace and joy in the midst of two chaotic families.
And now, I will take my shark for a drive down to the gulf. (Those of you who do not recogize my dry sense of humor, this is a picture Grandma Sue sent me of a bull shark killed in the gulf. This is neither my shark, nor did I harm any animals in the blogging of this site.)
Friday, August 17, 2007
The sign of the devil
My friend Alex and I went out for lunch yesterday. He is a dear friend. He is such an odd, wonderful combination of genius and compassion, grace and geekiness, and he always makes me smile.
We have worked for the last year and a half--really a bit more--at Indiana Life Sciences. He is an engineer who respects me and my intelligence, which I appreciate so much because mostly I feel like a moron around the electrical engineers. He treats me with respect and dignity.
So we went downtown to get his brother and another co-worker lockers for GenCon. Not kidding. I don't even know what "GenCon" stands for, but I know "GenCon" represents the largest concentration of geekdom in the known world. It is a convention for gamers and comic book fiends that brings out many different characters--dressed mostly in goth, but there is the occasional Vampire Hunter D, or other comic heroes. Great people watching phenomenon.
Oh, so the sign of the devil. I'm getting to that. On the way back from downtown, we were discussing the importance of numbers and numerology based on the locker numbers. Of course, in Hebrew numerology, seven represents perfection and infinity, three represents repetition or a journey, etc. At least, this is what I remember from my Bible as Literature course in undergrad (fascinating course, by the way. We studied the rhyme structures and rhetorical schemes in Psalms, the character development and patterns in the apostles, the "character development" of God in the Old and New Testaments, and the historical and linguistic developments of the Bible while keeping a secular, unbiased approach. This is necessary in a state university--but I find this detachment and analysis to enforce and deepen my beliefs in the Bible. Very interesting.)
So Alex brings up 6. Bad number he says.
666: the sign of the beast, he says.
666: the sign on the door on the apartment of the beast, he says.
At this point, I'm starting to laugh.
665: the sign on the door of the neighbor of the beast, he says.
I'm cracking up. I try to add something witty at this point in the conversation, but my wit is both too slow, and I am laughing too hard.
667: the sign on the door of the neighbor of the beast. On the other side.
566: the neighbor below the beast. He complains of noise.
565: the neighbor below the next door neighbor to the beast. He doesn't know the beast.
766: the neighbor upstairs from the beast. Bangs on the floor sometimes when the beast makes too much noise.
206: no one of importance, but lives in the same building.
I'm officially cracking up at this point.
585: not a neighbor of the beast but occasionally sees the beast checking his mail.
932: walks his dog with the beast.
This is about as far as Alex got. I thought this was pretty funny, so I'm sharing it.
Now, I'm at cousin Zack's wedding in Allentown, Pennsylvania. This is offering a whole new set of adventures, but I will write more about this later.
We have worked for the last year and a half--really a bit more--at Indiana Life Sciences. He is an engineer who respects me and my intelligence, which I appreciate so much because mostly I feel like a moron around the electrical engineers. He treats me with respect and dignity.
So we went downtown to get his brother and another co-worker lockers for GenCon. Not kidding. I don't even know what "GenCon" stands for, but I know "GenCon" represents the largest concentration of geekdom in the known world. It is a convention for gamers and comic book fiends that brings out many different characters--dressed mostly in goth, but there is the occasional Vampire Hunter D, or other comic heroes. Great people watching phenomenon.
Oh, so the sign of the devil. I'm getting to that. On the way back from downtown, we were discussing the importance of numbers and numerology based on the locker numbers. Of course, in Hebrew numerology, seven represents perfection and infinity, three represents repetition or a journey, etc. At least, this is what I remember from my Bible as Literature course in undergrad (fascinating course, by the way. We studied the rhyme structures and rhetorical schemes in Psalms, the character development and patterns in the apostles, the "character development" of God in the Old and New Testaments, and the historical and linguistic developments of the Bible while keeping a secular, unbiased approach. This is necessary in a state university--but I find this detachment and analysis to enforce and deepen my beliefs in the Bible. Very interesting.)
So Alex brings up 6. Bad number he says.
666: the sign of the beast, he says.
666: the sign on the door on the apartment of the beast, he says.
At this point, I'm starting to laugh.
665: the sign on the door of the neighbor of the beast, he says.
I'm cracking up. I try to add something witty at this point in the conversation, but my wit is both too slow, and I am laughing too hard.
667: the sign on the door of the neighbor of the beast. On the other side.
566: the neighbor below the beast. He complains of noise.
565: the neighbor below the next door neighbor to the beast. He doesn't know the beast.
766: the neighbor upstairs from the beast. Bangs on the floor sometimes when the beast makes too much noise.
206: no one of importance, but lives in the same building.
I'm officially cracking up at this point.
585: not a neighbor of the beast but occasionally sees the beast checking his mail.
932: walks his dog with the beast.
This is about as far as Alex got. I thought this was pretty funny, so I'm sharing it.
Now, I'm at cousin Zack's wedding in Allentown, Pennsylvania. This is offering a whole new set of adventures, but I will write more about this later.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
The avalanche is gaining strength
Just an update for now: I haven't been very good about posting, and I suspect I should get a few things down.
Garage sale and moved this past weekend. This all seemed to go quite well. I'm officially moved into Mom and Dad's house, and my kitties, Grace and Gabby, are settling in just fine. Unfortunately, I still need to clean and spiff up my apartment before I leave. I'm putting that off until next week.
Yesterday was my last day of work. This was very mixed. I am very glad to be finished with this job with all the headaches and anxieties, but a few people there will stay close to my heart. I find myself remembering Alex, Bryentt, Janell, John Vaughn, Marcus, and Henry so fondly. Good luck, you guys. Keep up the good work.
Last thing: I have been planning to go to Pennsylvania next week for Cousin Zack's wedding, but I have recently planned a trip worthy of the McGrail name. I need to stop into Chicago to process my visa, go to St. Paul to see Meg and Mike, and hopefully go to Duluth to see Karin Jansen's wedding, then meet Mom and Dad and the family in Des Moines for Zack and Ariel's wedding shower. This was going swimmingly, but my visa is still not here, so I may drive staight through Chicago and on to MN. If anyone needs to find me, try GPS.
When I get to Korea, I'm going to enjoy a few days of not going anywhere.
Garage sale and moved this past weekend. This all seemed to go quite well. I'm officially moved into Mom and Dad's house, and my kitties, Grace and Gabby, are settling in just fine. Unfortunately, I still need to clean and spiff up my apartment before I leave. I'm putting that off until next week.
Yesterday was my last day of work. This was very mixed. I am very glad to be finished with this job with all the headaches and anxieties, but a few people there will stay close to my heart. I find myself remembering Alex, Bryentt, Janell, John Vaughn, Marcus, and Henry so fondly. Good luck, you guys. Keep up the good work.
Last thing: I have been planning to go to Pennsylvania next week for Cousin Zack's wedding, but I have recently planned a trip worthy of the McGrail name. I need to stop into Chicago to process my visa, go to St. Paul to see Meg and Mike, and hopefully go to Duluth to see Karin Jansen's wedding, then meet Mom and Dad and the family in Des Moines for Zack and Ariel's wedding shower. This was going swimmingly, but my visa is still not here, so I may drive staight through Chicago and on to MN. If anyone needs to find me, try GPS.
When I get to Korea, I'm going to enjoy a few days of not going anywhere.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Crazy busy, but not much to say
Still no pictures. My fun pictures from NJ, from the NJ shore, from NYC, from Meg and Mike's visit, and, of course, many cute pictures of my photogenic nephew, Finn--they are all locked away in my cell phone. I haven't been able to transfer any pictures from my cell even though my buddy Bryentt from work took a look. He's an electronic gizmo genius, and he agrees: my phone is not very logical with the whole photo thing.
Will have to purchase cheep digital in Korea.
My lists are getting shorter. This is good.
My time in the US is getting shorter. This is strange.
My time with my family is getting shorter. This is bad.
The pile of boxes in my apartment is larger. I suppose this is good.
So, not much news. I am still taking everything one step at a time, one day at a time, forgetting to let things soak in too much. They will eventually, though, and this is good.
Will have to purchase cheep digital in Korea.
My lists are getting shorter. This is good.
My time in the US is getting shorter. This is strange.
My time with my family is getting shorter. This is bad.
The pile of boxes in my apartment is larger. I suppose this is good.
So, not much news. I am still taking everything one step at a time, one day at a time, forgetting to let things soak in too much. They will eventually, though, and this is good.
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