Bring 'em Home

Today's song title is Bring 'Em Home (Edward Sharpe Vs. T.I. Vs. Lady Gaga Vs. Beyonce) by D.veloped. I am a big fan of these mash-ups, if you couldn't tell.  I strongly recommend this one.  Also, I'm going to put random puppy photos in this entry to break the text up, and to showcase that Beans has finally figured out that there's an "outside of the car." 

What is this tomfoolery.

 She isn't very amused by it, though.

Zzz

You know, the internet is really a wonderful thing.  You can learn almost anything if you google and search around.  Yes, the downside is that retentive memory skills don't do as well when you can look something up on your smartphone, but I think that the sheer potential of learning counterbalances that.  Or, more succinctly, the world before google.

The reason this is on my mind is because I've been spending the last few weeks researching.  Researching my new company, researching furnishing an apartment and buying a car, researching organizational tools, and researching light gardens.  And My Little Pony, but we won't be talking about that.  Anyway, it boggles my mind that with just a couple of books and the internet I now know so much more than I did before, and I'd like to pass that on to the lovely people stopping by my blog.

Tell me more!

First of all, here is the Aerogarden.

It's a hydroponic garden, so no dirt beyond those little plug things in the seed planter.  It runs on water, oxygen, and light, is completely automated, and you can grow anything in it.  Aerogarden has pre-made seed kits, but you can also make your own.  I'm enjoying it a lot, and it's super easy.  Right now I'm growing various types of lettuce and cherry tomatoes.  If you like gardening but you don't have the time or space to do anything more ambitious then the Aerogarden may be a good alternative.  It's a chunk of money to plunk down at first, but keep an eye out for the sales that run on the website fairly regularly.  Also, the lettuce at least can supposedly be harvested for 4-6 months, so think of the money you'll save on not buying supermarket salads anymore!

In the other corner we've got Mindbloom, a handy little site I found on LifeHacker.  Basically you've got your tree, and each leaf represents a part of your daily life, i.e. finance, creativity, health, relationships, etc.  Your tree needs water and light to grow, and you have to charge your sun and raincloud before you can tend to your tree.  You charge the sun by finding inspiration (either uploading your own or accessing Mindbloom's database) through pictures, quotes, and music.  You charge your raincloud, and this is the cool part, by setting up activities and completing them.  Mindbloom has a set of possible activities, such as "add a contact on LinkedIn" for the career section or "read for pleasure" in the creativity section, but the really useful part is you can add in your own activities!  Plus, you can schedule them ahead of time and have the reminder repeat daily, weekly, or whatever you like.  So, for example, I could have under my career heading "finish one chapter of Excel 2010 Step by Step" and have it repeat every day.  Then I get a handy little reminder every day, a reward when I complete it, and a visual log of all that work I'm doing for my career.

I think that visual aspect is the best part of Mindbloom.  You can look at how you're dividing your time through what you're accomplishing and adjust accordingly.  Maybe your health leaf is looking a little puny but your creative leaf is humongous.  Maybe you'll put of that reading for pleasure or listening to music activity and take a walk instead.  Maybe your career leaf is thriving nicely, but your spirituality leaf is looking a little sad.  You can take some time to meditate and alleviate stress before it kicks you in the behind.

If you join Mindbloom let me know, because you can help inspire and support your friends as well, and we all need a little helping hand sometimes to get us out of our four hour Project Runway marathon of anti-productivity.

How are ya?

This blog title is from a mashup by DJ Jewboy from his newest album Chrome Kippur.  I heartily recommend the whole album as well as his previous release Let My People Flow.

To answer DJ Jewboy's question, I am doing quite well, actually!  I got the job, and I am over the moon about it.  It's exactly the kind of company I've always wanted to work for; forward-thinking, intensive, and focused more on results than on procedure necessarily.  I cannot wait to get started!

However, I'm happy for another reason, too.  You see, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic's second season has just started, and this show makes my feminist heart happy in so many ways.  I wish this show had been on when I was growing up, but I probably wouldn't have appreciated it anyway.

I first heard about MLP:FiM in feminist discussion circles online.  It kept being brought up as the ideal positive cartoon for girls, and eventually I got curious enough to watch it myself.  I steeled myself for disappointment beforehand.  So many TV shows or movies are trotted out as perfect examples of a female-friendly medium and then turn out to be full of badly-written tokens, one-dimensional characters who serve mainly as a medium to direct attention back to the male characters, or at best a single well-written character in a sea of male characters.  It still doesn't give a girl many options toenjoy watching, look up to, or see herself in.  Take the Big Bang Theory, for example.   I love The Big Bang Theory; I think it's funny and well-written most of the time (its handling of Howard as Nice Guy(tm) who sexually harasses for fun and profit notwithstanding), but it fails the Bechdel Test horribly.

For those who don't know, the Bechdel Test is a test popularized by Alison Bechdel, and it consists of three questions.  Now, the Bechdel Test is supposed to be used on films, but I think it works on TV as well.
1. Are there at least two women characters in the film?
2. Who talk to each other?
3. About something other than a man?

For the Big Bang Theory it passes some of the time.  There are four female reoccurring characters currently, so it passes number one.  They all talk to each other, except for Priya.  The problem lies in that they almost always end up talking about the guys, which isn't surprising as they're all past or current love interests of the four main guy characters.  And you know what?  I'm getting pretty sick of the TV and movie people continuing to push this thing where women are so boring that the only way to keep the audience's attention is to have the women talk about something more interesting (i.e. the men).  Don't even get me started on that horrible Whitney commercial that encourages women to punish the men in their lives by *gasp* talking to them.  Isn't she edgy.  Ha ha ha, women should be seen and not heard, hey 1950s America, when did you get here?

In any case, that's what I was expecting with MLP:FiM.  Boy was I pleasantly surprised!
A balanced, predominantly female cast that doesn't fall into stereotypes! Fluttershy, the shy quiet one, is not always shy and quiet, and she isn't portrayed as weak either!  Rarity is the fashionista, but instead of being a shallow valley girl she's a business women who owns her own boutique.  She's also pretty funny.  The show avoids the subtle absolutes that plague so many of the one-dimensional female characters around.  Interest in fashion does not equal shallow, shy and quiet does not equal weak, bouncy and fun does not equal stupid, and bookish and smart does not equal awkward social outcast.  Basically, instead of creating a bunch of templates and saying "we think this is who you are" it creates the same flexibility that male characters get and says "here are some characters that may or may not be you but are enjoyable to watch anyway."  Which is all I ever want, really.

Next episode: Robin Hobb and Aerogardens.  No, these things are not related.  Or are they?

This city

Hello all, it's been awhile, yes?

Things have changed quite a bit since May.  I'm back in the USA.  I have a puppy.  I am waiting to hear back from my dream job.  I would be sewing but the sewing machine I've ordered has mysteriously disappeared and Beans tries to eat my embroidery.  I'm starting up indoor gardening.  What, you want more detail?

It was very difficult to leave my island, and to leave Japan.  I miss my students, my coworkers, and my friends all the time.  Sometimes I dream that I'm at Matsue Station walking to SATY Department Store, or that I have a class and I can see every kid's face clearly.  It's usually very difficult to wake up and realize that that part of my life is over.  Because, you see, it is over.  As much as I miss my life in Japan I am so happy to be back here.  I'm able to move on with my life in a way I wasn't in Japan.

In Japan every major decision was something to put off, if you get my drift.  JET isn't a career, and for me teaching English in Japan isn't a career either.  I knew I was going to go back to the US and make a life there, and that put everything else into a kind of stasis.  Now that I'm back home (because the US is home for me) I can move forward again and take charge of my life without worrying about how to transfer it back home.  Case in point:

This is my little puppy, Beans.

It's so rewarding having her.  She's as sharp as a tack and an absolute joy to train.  I've managed to teach her sit, shake, and down, and she's doing pretty well at leash training and house training.  She's adorable and steals the hearts of everyone she meets.  Dachshunds, especially miniature dachshunds like Beans, have pretty nasty reputations for being barking, biting, obnoxious, and overprotective, but she's an absolute sweetheart who cuddles, begs for tummy rubs, and plays well with others.  Well, she barks sometimes, usually when she wants to play with my cat.  Cat's stone deaf though, so she doesn't mind.  In any case, Beans is one of the main reasons I'm happy to be home.

I won't say much about my dream job because I don't have it yet, but suffice it to say that it is wonderful.  One of those perfect companies that has all the right stuff personally and professionally.  I interviewed on location with them, and it was unbelievable how comfortable they made me feel.  The job itself is challenging in the way that inspires you to try harder.  In preparation I've been studying up on Microsoft Excel and business Japanese (let me just recommend this book for business kanji and vocab, and this one for vocab and some of the best set up phrase explanation I've ever seen in a textbook) and it's so rewarding.  I'm really enjoying using Excel now.  I had no idea how versatile and useful it was before this!

Finally, I'm delving deeper and deeper into feminist and social issues, which is making my blood pressure shoot up more than usual.  I'm still keeping an eye on Japan and Japanese news, of course, but feminist issues are hitting closer to home lately.  I'm planning on blogging about that in the near future, but I wanted to bring everyone up to speed after the brief hiatus.

(PS the kotatsu made it home in one piece with all its accoutrements and looks lovely.)