Not you too, August!
I guess my LiveJournaling has permanently devolved into nothing but end-of-the-month check-ins. August sure went fast. These were the major events:
• I broke my nose playing basketball. I suppose it's more accurate to say some other jackhole broke my nose. I certainly wasn't the one ramming my nose into the back of his head. That's not how you play defense. Facebook tells me that I "didn't break any bones" — despite what the doctors and x-ray told me — so that's a relief!
When you look at my nose now, you can barely notice any difference, but I definitely can feel the crookedness, and I spend a lot of time each day doing so. I never noticed my nose before, but I'm certainly aware of it now. I debated for a week about whether or not I should get surgery to repair it, and ended up doing nothing, partly out of inertia and partly out of a suspicion that the post-surgery recovery stage ("No breathing out of your nose for 10 days!" "Wear a face brace to work!") would be much more damaging to my self-esteem than another 40(?) years with a nose that is a smidge offline. Probably the right decision.
• My friend Stephen (from Toledo/Flagel University/Saigon/UC San Diego/Singapore) came to visit for 10 days and stayed with me. He was looking for a post-MA job in Vietnam but didn't have much luck. Now I hear he will be working in Cambodia. At least he'll still be in the region.
• I finally finished the Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Mark Twain. That's basically everything he ever published, and a lot of things he didn't. (The final hurdle was reading the Complete Letters of Mark Twain, a "book" that was probably longer than any of the others.) I don't remember exactly when I started this project — when I read that first page of The Innocents Abroad — but I believe it took me right around one full year to finish. It was pretty intense. At the moment I probably know more about Mark Twain and his works than anyone you know, so if you've got questions, feel free to ask them before all that knowledge leaks out.
• I traveled to Hanoi last week to help with the quarterly Board of Directors meeting. They're now meeting once a year in Vietnam — last year was Saigon, this year was Hanoi. My main role was creating some historical displays, covering our firm's 120-year history and especially that last four years of expansion in Vietnam. I thought I was missing Hanoi a little, but when I got there I discovered I was wrong. I was still pretty unhappy; not about anything in particular, but that's just the impact Hanoi has on me. It lowers my spirits.
Not a whole lot else is going on. I got excitingly close to first place in our fantasy baseball league, but it turned out to be a mirage, and now I'm fighting to hold on to third. I finally got some pants shortened by a guy whose business was literally a sewing machine set up on the sidewalk. I still haven't gone to the dentist, even though I have a chipped filling that is annoying to eat with. I loaned a friend 35 million VND. I haven't bought a car or much of anything else. I'm not playing tennis. Check back in this space in one month, maybe I'll have more to write about!
• I broke my nose playing basketball. I suppose it's more accurate to say some other jackhole broke my nose. I certainly wasn't the one ramming my nose into the back of his head. That's not how you play defense. Facebook tells me that I "didn't break any bones" — despite what the doctors and x-ray told me — so that's a relief!
When you look at my nose now, you can barely notice any difference, but I definitely can feel the crookedness, and I spend a lot of time each day doing so. I never noticed my nose before, but I'm certainly aware of it now. I debated for a week about whether or not I should get surgery to repair it, and ended up doing nothing, partly out of inertia and partly out of a suspicion that the post-surgery recovery stage ("No breathing out of your nose for 10 days!" "Wear a face brace to work!") would be much more damaging to my self-esteem than another 40(?) years with a nose that is a smidge offline. Probably the right decision.
• My friend Stephen (from Toledo/Flagel University/Saigon/UC San Diego/Singapore) came to visit for 10 days and stayed with me. He was looking for a post-MA job in Vietnam but didn't have much luck. Now I hear he will be working in Cambodia. At least he'll still be in the region.
• I finally finished the Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Mark Twain. That's basically everything he ever published, and a lot of things he didn't. (The final hurdle was reading the Complete Letters of Mark Twain, a "book" that was probably longer than any of the others.) I don't remember exactly when I started this project — when I read that first page of The Innocents Abroad — but I believe it took me right around one full year to finish. It was pretty intense. At the moment I probably know more about Mark Twain and his works than anyone you know, so if you've got questions, feel free to ask them before all that knowledge leaks out.
• I traveled to Hanoi last week to help with the quarterly Board of Directors meeting. They're now meeting once a year in Vietnam — last year was Saigon, this year was Hanoi. My main role was creating some historical displays, covering our firm's 120-year history and especially that last four years of expansion in Vietnam. I thought I was missing Hanoi a little, but when I got there I discovered I was wrong. I was still pretty unhappy; not about anything in particular, but that's just the impact Hanoi has on me. It lowers my spirits.
Not a whole lot else is going on. I got excitingly close to first place in our fantasy baseball league, but it turned out to be a mirage, and now I'm fighting to hold on to third. I finally got some pants shortened by a guy whose business was literally a sewing machine set up on the sidewalk. I still haven't gone to the dentist, even though I have a chipped filling that is annoying to eat with. I loaned a friend 35 million VND. I haven't bought a car or much of anything else. I'm not playing tennis. Check back in this space in one month, maybe I'll have more to write about!