A little bit stcheemeah (steamy).

Made the mistake of biking around Princeton today. Ugh. I'm pretty ripe by now. I believe I'm offending the woman sitting next to me.



Not much to report today. I helped dad cut the lawn right after I "straightened up" some more stuff down stairs.



I didn't want to drive up to Vermont or Boston. I really wasn't in the mood to spend the time on the highways. It'd be nice to see Lee again before I take off. It's been nice to hang out with mom-folks for the past couple of days. I gotta change my jun-ken-po tactics though since dad's beaten me two nights running.



I'm supposed to be doing more research for ideas for my computer classes this semester. I have the syllabus from last year, but I've already begun to deviate from the lessons that Bruce and Hannah were doing - which is natural.

"Over There" somewhere...

Here I go... mouthing off about something I don't really know too much about. I've recently been seeing ads about a series on FX about the war in Iraq.



Not having seen one episode, my gripe is the principle of the show fictionalizes the war to an extent that appears to be evasive of the real suffering of the conflict. I'm talking about the suffering of the Americans who have lost loved ones and those that have made sacrifices to stand up for what the believe in and the innocent civilians who now live in a war zone. I'm not sure it's a good sign that Americans can turn to a fictional account of the war to have to understand the implications of the real one going on out there.



I'll watch and episode and see how I feel afterwards.

Bye Hyun-joo!

Hyun-joo left today for Kanazawa. We had some problems when we arrived at Northwest. They cancelled the flight because of "maintenance" and it took them a while to re-route her. Instead of flying from Newark to Detroit to Nagoya... she had to take a taxi to JFK Intl. Airport in NY to fly directly to Tokyo. From there she'll hopefully get the airlines to buy her a train ticket to Kanazawa. I spoke with her on the phone when she was waiting to board in JFK and she sounded well. I just hope she doesn't have any other surprises.



I packed a little... cleaned up some stuff in the basement... and thought about what else I'll need to do before I have to return to Kanazawa. I have to start replying to all the wonderful emails from folks congratulating Hyun-joo and I about our engagement.



I'm a little concerned about the wedding... I have no idea how we're going to work this with folks coming from Korea and all around the States. I would like to do it bilingually for her family. We haven't even set a date, so I guess there's no rushing around just yet. I think the only thing we've decided is that we're not going to get married in Korea or Japan. I suppose somewhere in the States makes sense. I dunno.

Engaged

On August 5th I asked Hyun-joo to marry me and she said, "Yes!"



I took her to the top of Mount Philo in Western Vermont and while looking out over Lake Champlain I proposed to her. Actually her first response was "Oh, My God!" and then she started crying. It was only about a few minutes later that I was able to get a real answer from her. We just told my parents last night and they were nicely surprised.



No plans yet on a wedding. That seems a little far away right now. I think we'll just focus first on getting back to Kanazawa and get settled into the new semester.

Back in Burlington

Hyun-joo and I are in Burlington again. The past few nights, we've been camping out at Little River State Park. Tonight we hope to stay at a friend's place and then the next couple of nights, we're out at North Beach park in Burlington. That'll give us the option to hang out around town and see friends, etc.



Hyun-joo was successful at getting her work visa from the New York consulate. We ended up going to NYC instead of Boston because we couldn't find a cheap hotel to stay at. In the end it was much easier to just hop on the train and make the trip into the city.



We've been camping, kayaking, hiking, shopping, catching up with old friends, and even catching a few movies. We hope to see "March of the Penguins" later today before we cruise over to Marc's for his movie night tonight.



Only one more big push planned!