life, in boxes.

Hi Team! Michelle here, livin the hobo’s life – sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the floor, living out of boxes. Eating expired food.

What?

It turns out that a lot of our food is expired. Nearly everything that jon brought to the relationship, actually.
See, when we moved in to the house in Seattle together, he had a pantry full of things. Things, I am finding out this week, that expired two (sometimes three) years ago.

oh-seven? really jon? does that box really say “best before oh seven?!”. Jon, as nonchalant as ever just shrugs it off. “It’s a guideline, you see. I’m sure it’s still fine.“.

And THAT friends, is why we have stomachs of steel and can eat whatever we want in Japan. I’ve been in training since jon started going to the supermarket in college.

Meanwhile, I’ve got 7 short days left until I join jon in j-town. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to plan social-fun-things on 4 of those night. There are still people I want to see once more before we head out! There’s not enough time in the day! (Enter in Michelle’s addiction to Coffee and her opinion that we would certainly have saved the world by now if more people were as caffeinated as she is.)

Well kids, the Windex calls.

an entire… year?

At this time last year, I was in the full throes of crazy-bride-to-be, frantically asking questions like “should I wear the pink pearls or the white pearls?”. Because you know, those are definitely the questions that make or break a wedding.

It’s hard to believe that an entire year has passed since then. We’ve been to four [foreign] countries and four [US] states since then. I’ve lost both my engagement ring and my wedding ring, both in different countries. We’ve gone to the symphony quite a bit, and we’ve drank countless bottles of Oregon Pinot Noir. We haven’t had a single fight.

Overall, I’d say it’s been a really good year.

We’re celebrating the anniversary with theater tickets and dinner. I bought a new fancy dress, and I absolutely can’t wait to wear it. It might be my “youthful-optimism” speaking up here, but I think it’s completely refreshing to know that you’re going to wake up next to the same person for the rest of your life. On a more selfish note, I’m looking forward to a reason to go out to dinner.

Oh! and our camera is fixed again! I like to think that I haven’t been posting much because I have the memory of a goldfish without photos.
Here’s to expecting more, in the future.

vehicle accidents.

A funny thing happened on the way home yesterday.

I was hit by a semi. In the car. The car…. was hit by a semi.
Everyone’s okay. It was just a fender-bender, but what the heck?

AND I found out jon’s plane was hit by lightening on his flight home from Japan. Why didn’t that come up before, jon?! He says it was no big deal and stuff like that happens frequently. *I’ve* never been on a plane that’s been hit by lightening. And furthermore, how did it take nearly a week to tell me? Wouldn’t you mention something like that when we have the standard “hi honey, how was your flight?” conversation. Sigh. Boys.

I suppose I am uncommunicative in other ways.

So back to the semi. We’re both sitting at a red light in south-downtown (1st and spokane), waiting to turn right, when the semi starts backing up. Now, I’ve never known cars to randomly back up at a stop light. I’ve never seen this. I didn’t know it was a possibility. On a hill, with a standard transmission, sure – there may be some rollback. But at flat red light, to physically put your car in reverse? No, I just didn’t know that was a possibility.

So the car doesn’t have any majour damage, though it will definitely need a new grill and perhaps a new front bumper. It’s unfortunate that a few deep scratches could cause an entire bumper to be replaced, but i suppose that’s the drawback to driving around in plastic cars.

In other news, we’ve been home for exactly one week now and life is officially back to normal. We’ve (just about) finished unpacking, jon’s going out to see Star Trek tonight with Kyle and Will, and I’m cooking dinner for some friends.

Actually, I’m looking forward to cooking dinner. It’s great to look through my recipes, find something with ingredients that I KNOW i can just go to the store and buy (you’d be surprised how hard it was to find things like cilantro in japan. it was there… sometimes. but let me tell you – it wasn’t called cilantro.) and cook in a kitchen with nice pans and sharp knives.

Working in the Future

Glad you asked. teamEggers is… working.

Mrs. teamEggers is rather grumpy about said arrangements, but I think she’s handling it rather gracefully. After all, actually working 6pm-7am, 7 days a week, sucks significantly more for Mr. teamEggers.
But you don’t see him complaining about it.

You may be wondering what *I’m* doing in my now jon-less time. I haven’t been terribly inspired to conquer new territories alone, so I spend my nights quietly. Having exhausted my supply of Murakami books, I’ve taken to reading trashy novels and drinking wine at the Spanish bar we recently found.

I’m also working on a coffee table book with the photos from our trip. I expect it to be around 100 pages long – 11×13.

Rereading all of our blog posts from the past four months has been really interesting. I look back at the posts from January and can honestly say I’ve learned some things about this crazy country. I no longer leave the house in well-disguised-terror and I can accurately tell the difference between a shrine and a temple.

My goal is to finish the book before May and send it off to print a week before we leave. I would really love it if we had it right away to show everyone when we got back.

In 1999 we were still developing film and showing off our photo albums. In 2009 we’re actually publishing books with the help of software like iPhoto, WordbPress, and Blurb. I love the future.

(the picture up top are of the snail-statues outside our apartment)

boring girl stuff

Buyer beware. Boring girl stuff past this point.

My hair is longer than it’s been in years. Which is nice because it’s kind of different than usual, but I’d like something a little spunkier, you know? You think I can rock this shorty-style? Or would I look just absurd?

/end girly rant.