I ended May with a trip out to Oregon for my Grandmother’s funeral. The positive side - I saw relatives that I probably haven’t seen in at least 20 years and some college marching band friends that I haven’t seen in 10-15 years.
June began with the end of my year in the CS Lewis Institute’s fellowship program. That year was a great blessing to me, and I am thrilled that our group intends to keep meeting once a month.
The cat got a microchip – stage 1 of The Master Plan to get her into Japan without having to spend time in quarantine.
My office moved from one end of our very large building to the other end. It is what it is, and since I go into language training in just over a month, I don’t really have strong feelings about it.
I went to see Wicked, which was totally awesome and probably one of the best musicals I’ve seen. If you haven’t seen it yet, go see it. Right now. Or at the very least, watch Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth sing “Defying Gravity” at the Tony Awards. But that’s really not sufficient… Just go see it. Not only are the music and the sets incredible, but the story – a completely different perspective on The Wizard of Oz, showing you that nothing was truly as it seemed – is really intriguing.
Something interesting from this month – watching commencement speeches. I watched the speeches given by Conan O’Brien at Dartmouth and Stephen Colbert at Northwestern. What I found particularly interesting was that both men didn’t do the traditional “follow your dreams” talk, but rather both basically said that it’s okay if your dreams change, and that “failing” at your current dream can actually be a really great opportunity. Personally, I find that to be both pretty accurate and an interesting reflection on how American society has changed in recent decades.
And finally… Tomorrow is my birthday, when I will turn 29 (for the 9th time). Being a summer birthday, I found it rather disconcerting the first time I realized that people work on my birthday. Isn’t it like a national holiday or something? No? Oh well. The older I get, the more it becomes like any other day – where the “specialness” of the day largely depends on what I make of it. But that’s good, because that means I can create all sorts of “days of fun” and justify them all in the name of my birthday (as long as they fall within an acceptable date range). This is a good opportunity to reflect on the blessings of the past year and embrace the coming year – a year when I will be fully occupied preparing to move to Tokyo. Can't wait to see what happens!
