Nuggets of Gold!

YOU'LL KNOW IT'S FROM ME BECAUSE OF THE EGGNOG SPLATTERS

And to think I believed in the goodness of people.

I was just browsing Christmas cards online -- because I absolutely refuse to go anywhere near a shopping mall or store of any kind this weekend -- and found myself, perhaps inevitably, on Hallmark.com.

Did you know, for an extra fee per card ($1.25 or so), some sucker at Hallmark "will handwrite your personal closing"? Are you friggin' kidding me? I can pay someone to write "Hi Aunt Rosie, thanks again for the fruitcake, again" on a card? It seems so. I can also, according to Hallmark, "choose to have that closing handwritten in black, red or green ink." Hot damn!

I kind of feel bereft here. Now, when I get a card from someone with a handwritten message inside, I'll have to wonder whether they wrote it, or whether that monumental task was outsourced to some elf at Hallmark.

I'm also left wondering whether perhaps I chose the wrong career. Because, dang, if I can whip out, say, 60 cards an hour -- one a minute, pretty reasonable -- then that's, what, a $75-per-hour gig? Sign me up! I'll use black, red, green OR BLUE ink. And I'll correct your bad spelling for free. So there.

LIKE A 'COPS' MARATHON, BUT BETTER

One perk of my new job is I get to sit near the police scanner. To some people, this is a responsibility. An annoyance, even. To me, however, it is a form of entertainment.

Amid the dozens of calls each night for heart attacks, loud music at parties and fire alarms going off at Office Depot come some gems. Little nuggets of gold, they are. Nuggets of gold.

One last week was a call from a man (presumably no-good) who was asking for police assistance as his woman was confronting him. Sounds wussy, maybe, but you'd call 911 too if the suspect had "a knife in one hand and a hammer in the other." You go, girl.

Then there's the assorted shirtless/pantless guys showing up drunk at various places and refusing to leave. Please. Who hasn't done that?

My favorite, though, is probably the call from a rickshaw driver downtown (yeah, rickshaws in Raleigh. I know.) who got egged. Apparently a driver in a black SUV rolled down his window and threw eggs at the poor guy, thus reinforcing my long-held theory that 99 percent of people who drive black  SUVs are assholes. Awesome cousin Dani being in the awesome 1 percent, of course.  Along with anyone else I know who might a black SUV. As long as you're not an asshole.

Stay tuned for future scanner updates. I'm sure there's bound to be some amusing trouble at "The Foxy Lady" soon. There always is.

I AIN'T SAYIN' HE'S A MOVE STEALER ...

OK, listen. I can't really stand by and take this anymore.

Kanye West totally stole my dance moves.

Oh yes! It's true. Have you seen Kanye dance? Have you seen me dance? Oh. Probably only like two people on the planet can say yes to both. I'm sad for you other folks, who don't know how sick my dance moves are. But just watch Kanye and you get a pretty good idea.

Except it's even better when I do it, because I invented those moves.

It's cool, Kanye. We ain't beefin'. But if you ever want to share some bling, just as thanks for the killer moves, I won't say no.

SPONTANEITY

Sometimes you wake up in the morning, and you feel like going to the beach.

And sometimes, that's just what you do.

It also happens to be our fourth anniversary. We knew we wanted to do something outside, and we knew that we have no money. So we were going to go to a state park, maybe look at a lake that's normally pretty but now is dried up and icky thanks to "exceptional" drought in these here parts. So Geoffrey had the bright idea, around noon, of "hey, let's go to the beach." And we laughed. And then we realized the beach is only a couple hours away by car, so what the hey. You'll recall this is also how we happened to move to Japan. Joke + thinking it over = it happens.

It was a great day. We headed to Wrightsville Beach, found a public beach right away, walked in the surf and got my new car all sandy. Then we headed to a seafood restaurant right on the beach (thanks to the recommendation of HickoryWind.org Larry, our friend, neighbor and life coach) and gorged ourselves. Then we drove home and now we're parked in front of the TV.

Ah, romance.

GETTING SETTLED, KIND OF

We're still alive, we're still in Raleigh.

Here's the setting for this post: We're sitting in the living room of our insanely spacious, 90-year-old apartment, for now mostly unfurnished. Specifically, we're sitting on two $15 floor chairs we bought at Target last week. We are surrounded by newspapers and random free magazines we've picked up, and we're drinking wine out of red plastic party cups, because that's all we have until the movers come in two to three months. It is night.

Our apartment, it's pretty sweet. Old, like I said, which is good and bad. Good because the building is gorgeous and the architecture is really cool. Bad because it's kind of a shithole. The wooden floors are kind of splintery, the kitchen sink drain is prone to exploding with the dirty dishwater from other apartments, and we lack certain amenities such as a dishwasher or central air. And we're on the first floor, about five feet away from a busy street, so that's taken some getting used to. But, my friends, location, location, location. We're one block from the state capitol building, four blocks from my office, and two blocks from the really important stuff: A hippie coffee shop, an Irish pub and a wine-and-chocolate bar. So certain hassles aside, we're pretty happy.

My new job is going well so far. The people are really nice (and I'm not just saying that in case they chance upon my blog), and I feel I'll have the chance to do the kind of work that gets me excited about journalism. I just wish I could skip that whole "new person" phase. You know, the phase where you don't yet understand how things work or who things are in the organization, and you also aren't sure how to find the vending machines or when is a good time to take a bathroom break. But that phase is a necessary evil, and it'll get easier with time, I know.

I just wish all the newness -- new apartment, new car (Mazda3, if you're curious), new job, new town -- didn't have me feeling like I've "Quantum Leap"ped into someone else's life. Or, if I must feel that way, I wish I at least had at my side a grizzled little invisible cigar-smoking buddy with a tricked-out Texas Instruments calculator telling me my odds and giving me hints as to what my higher purpose is on any given day. That might help.

HI Y'ALL

Just a quick post to say we've made it safe and sound to our new city. We're having a fun time exploring -- no idea where, say, the nearest hospital is, but by god we've already found the Krispy Kreme and a good bar, so all is well. We've applied to live in the coolest apartment ever, and we've picked out a car, so we're just waiting for little details to fall into place, like an address.

We're surviving the jet lag (barely) and the culture shock. We miss our pals in Japan terribly, but it helps to get to reconnect with some old friends here. And to get to eat Sonic. Ah, Sonic. Um, gotta go ...

DRESS UP

How's this for a send-off?

Some of our dear pals here in Tokyo invited us to a fireworks festival, and right before we set out from their house to see the lights, they presented us with our very own yukata -- summer kimono. We were overwhelmed, to say the least. Both with the incredible generosity and thoughtfulness of the gift, and with the daunting task of putting them on. Luckily, it became a group effort. Also luckily, I was wearing reasonably new undies. Our friends dressed us and off we all went.

It was a perfect evening, and it will be one of my most favorite memories from Japan.

SAYONARA TO JAPAN

Who wants some old news? You? You??

Here goes: We're moving back to the States! In the couple weeks we've known about this, things have been a mite crazy, as you might expect with a cross-planet move. So that's why the news is so late in getting here. Very bothersome, considering I toil in the world of new news. But I don't toil in the time-creation industry, so there it is.

We're very excited to get back home -- to Raleigh, N.C., specifically, which isn't actually "home" to either of us but it's goddamn close enough, OKAY??? We can read menus! Go to Target! Talk to strangers! But we'll miss the hell out of Japan. We'll miss having a vending machine within arm's reach at all times, the tiny dressed-up dogs, the high degree of cell-phone manners and, duh, all our wonderful pals here. And we'll miss the wackiness, big time. Not that the South doesn't have its share, as we well know.  But, well, it's hard to beat Eggplant vs. Radish, that's all I'm saying.

THANKS, DARUMA!

I (HEART) CESAR

Is anyone as in love with "The Dog Whisperer" TV show as I am?

To put a finer point on it, is anyone as in love with "The Dog Whisperer" as I am who, like me, doesn't even have a dog?

I think what I like about that show, besides Cesar's marvelous accent, is fantasizing about how I could use his techniques in my own, dog-free life. When the husband gets wound up it's fun to try the Cesar "cobra-strike" on him -- works, too! (Don't worry, folks, he does it to me, too.) And I wish I could put my bag of Doritos on the floor of the office and, when co-workers try to snatch it, step calmly between it and them and announce "This bag is not belong to you!" and watch them slink away. I also wish a viable solution to people who don't play well with others was to shove them in a pack and let the pack get them sorted out.

I like to think that all this "The Dog Whisperer" watching means that when I do have a dog one day, it will be supremely well-behaved. But unfortunately I know too well that when that day comes, I'll be the  dog owner who buys the dog frilly dresses (Can't be helped -- I live in Japan! It's the law!) and lets it eat food off my dinner plate and wonders why the dog is completely insane.