NaBloPoMo

Haha... Had to submit this one fast to make it in before midnight!
I figure if I get SOMETHING in before midnight then it counts, right? Then I can always add a little bit of content just afterwards. :D

So here's the deal. It's called NaBloPoMo - National Blog Posting Month. The crazy idea is to encourage people to write more by mandating that participants post on their blogs every single day during the month of November! I see it kind of like going jogging with a group of friends to help motivate each other.

Since I've been slacking a lot on my blog for the past several months, I think this is exactly what I need to kickstart my writing and motivate me to post about all the things I've been meaning to get around to. I'm not sure whether this will make things more interesting for my readers (lots and lots of new content to read) or worse (overwhelming amount of new content flooding in at a pace that's way too fast to keep up with), but I figure a month is a reasonable duration to try doing something like this for. Maybe my blog will even start to become the kind of thing that people besides my immediate friends might be interested in. Or maybe my writing style will improve and I'll start to learn that prepositions are inappropriate to end sentences with.

As for today, I had kind of a rough day. I wasn't making much progress at work, programs I was trying to install were crashing, plans for the weekend were falling apart, and all the effort I had put into memorizing kanji for my Japanese homework seemed to be for naught. On top of that there was some sort of press photo shoot or something in my lab, and every 2-4 seconds there was a bright flash behind me, as if to mock any attempt I made at focusing on the code I was trying to write.

I decided it was time, then, to do something I've been meaning to do for weeks. Get a haircut. I went off to the usual place I've been going to over at the new shopping mall, and went through the usual small talk with every member of the staff as they got me ready and shampooed my hair in the Machine.

"What country are you from?"
"I'm from America."

"Where in America?"
"New York"

"Oh, that's so cool."
"Well, not really... I'm from the countryside"

"Heeeee, they have countryside in New York?"
"Yes"

"So where do you live now?"
"Kyoto"

"Oh, that's wonderful"
"Well, not really... I live in the countryside"

"Heeeee..."

And so on. Eventually we got to the part where they ask me what kind of haircut I want, uselessly proffering me a few Japanese fashion magazines sporting pictures of invariably straight-haired models. This is the part I always have a problem with, even with English-speaking barbers. I don't speak their language.

"Very short on the sides, and a little longer, but still somewhat short, on the top," was the best I could come up with.

"Ok, so short on the sides and long on the top"

"Well, no... still make the top shorter than it is now, but not as short as the sides. I'd like the sides shorter, so it looks a little more tall and a little less round."

"Ok, so all short."

"Umm... Kind of, but longer on the top than the sides"

"Ok, long on the top. I understand."

Yeah, right...

He proceeds to cut and cut and cut... Showing me his handiwork at the end reveals that he almost didn't cut the top at all.

So I asked him to cut the top "a little bit shorter"... and he proceeded to attack the sides, making it look round rather than tall, and then he hacked off all of the hair in the front, leaving a huge tuft in the middle. Afterwards he explained that his rationale with that was that "the front might curl."

So here's the wonderful result of my $30 haircut today:


So... on the positive side, at least it's, um... a little shorter. Not sure if I want to keep going back to this place though. My first two cuts there were pretty good, but ... ouch.

Anyway, every day for the next month yoroshiku!!