kodalai | Austin update

I'm still in Austin. I haven't left for Seattle yet. My parents are not yet sick of me enough to kick me out of the house. :)

What have I been doing in Austin? Well, not much, and at the same time a lot.

For a week after I got here

ayelle and

cypher_0_ were both here as well, as well as

aging_parents the Mrs. being on semester break, and there was a lot of family reunion and fun time. We went out to dinner, or made celebratory dinners at home, and went on walks and played with the dog and talked a lot. We also made arrangements to transfer the car from

cypher_0_'s ownership to mine. (It would be 'back' to mine, but technically, I never owned the car -- the parents did.) We watched Seirei no Moribito, which is an astoundingly good show and I abslutely recommend it to anyone.

ayelle flew home on saturday and

cypher_0_ flew home on monday. The dog pined a lot. I pined a little too. Mum went back to work too so it's been a little quiet. However, that has given me the chance to really get to work on my preparations for the trip. I bought a bike rack for my car! And took it through the wash and generally tried to get it ready for the trip. Got directions from google maps. Got everyone's cell phone number that I'll need.

Other than that it's been a pretty quiet break, which is what I needed, really. The last week before I left Japan was an adventure, but it took a lot out of me. And in a way I'm just relaxing from 2 years of being in Japan. I'm not sorry I went, and I won't say I wasn't happy there, but I'm glad to be home.

I've been reading a lot. When I got delayed for 7 hours in LAX, I went to one of the stores and bought one of R.A. Salvatore's new Angsty Angsty Drow books. It had been so long since I read those. I got nostalgic and when I got home of course I had to dig out my old copies of the trilogy and read them. Then I got the sequel to the new book and read that. God, those books were formative of my childhood years. And although I'll never argue that they were good, they were very enjoyable.

Interesting fact: Drizzt and Catti-brie finally got over their stupid mutual shuffling and hooked up in this last book! It was actually quite satisfying. Mostly. Drizzt apparently grew some balls and pounced on her after their latest reunion-after-one-of-them-was-presumed-dead. It's really about time, honestly. Everyone else in the series, including Catti-brie's father, has gotten the memo that they had the hots for each other books ago and was all for it, which was almost as hilarious as it was creepy.

But now apparently in the next book Drizzt is going to go off with his pretty "Let me show you what it means to be an elf" (read: sleep with me) widow elf girlfriend, and Catti-brie is going off with her old-and-only-occasionally-sexist human boyfriend, who is also recently a widower, and however much Wulfgar claims that he's all for Catti and Drizzt getting together and has no remaining romantic feelings for her (yeah right,) I can't help but think that this is a recipe for total disaster. What are you writing here, Salvatore? Epic fantasy adventure or interspecies soap opera romance? Sheesh.

Yesterday I saw WALL-E with my father. I don't really have anything terribly insightful to say about it. It was a good movie. Very cute, very Pixar.

I've also been playing some WoW, although I've been trying not to spend too much time doing that instead of actually socializing with my family. And I also joined facebook. I'm Sophie Hatter on facebook if you want to find me there. And although I'm aware of how intrusive it can be, I think it's what I need right now. I grew steadly more disconnected from my friends and family while I was in Japan. What I need to reconnect right now is exactly this kind of background, immersive, little-details way of socializing with people again.