So yeah, my level of fail at NaBlo 2009 is reaching epic proportions. I’ve come to accept it. November’s been busy, and it’s flying by. Ten pages of my journal paper, complete with footnotes, due in two days? Criminy.

Today was my third day in a row of taiko performances—two at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in the Woodlands, and one in College Station. Next weekend we’re on the road again to Alexandria, and it’s a 90-minute show, so we’ve got two practices (maybe three) this week to prepare for that.

But right now, if I can deny the existence of my paper deadline for a little longer, life is good. I just took a hot shower, and now I’m sitting on John’s balcony with a beer and my laptop, enjoying the November weather. What’s that? It’s snowing where you live? You can’t go outside with wet hair and bare feet? Suck it. This is our reward for making it through the summer.

Also, I just got to watch a guy throw up over the side of his balcony at an apartment across the street. So that’s nice.

For two weeks now, Houston’s been hotter than … well, a mild fever. Which is hot, as air goes. And despite the lack of rain, it’s still a wet, heavy heat. At least the drought is keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Biking to work has become a somewhat icky endeavor; I’ve learned to bring an extra shirt to change into when I get there.

*****

I saw a car today with three bumper stickers: a Mac apple, a Houston Astros sticker, and a sticker that looked like those oval country/vacation spot stickers with initials in them but actually stood for “Jesus Freak.” I don’t know why the combination struck me as odd, but I kind of want to meet this person.

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Today has been absolutely stunning, weather-wise. The temperature’s creeping up into the low seventies, and the air is crisp and clear thanks to the three days of miserably cold rain we’ve just slogged through. Samson is greatly relieved that he can now do his business in relative comfort instead of being dragged out into the torturous drizzle.

The other morning, between rainstorms, I was out walking Sam when an older lady passed us on the sidewalk. I flashed the quick smile I usually exchange with people I pass on walks, but she was clearly up for some chit-chat. “What are you doing out in this weather, girl?!” she half-shrieked. I didn’t know what to say because, um, this guy at the end of the leash? He needs to poop. And he can’t be trusted to keep himself out of trouble on the way. So that’s what I’m doing. But maybe she was making conversation, so I laughed politely.

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Okay, it’s time to do this. I need to get a few things out of my head and into this little box. Not important things, mind you, just day to day stuff that I’ve been meaning to blog about. This might be a long one.

Thing One: A couple weeks ago my taiko group played at a local community college’s Japan Festival. It was a teeny tiny thing, probably just the school’s Japanese Club and a few community groups they had connections with. The college didn’t advertise it at all—I couldn’t find it mentioned on the internet anywhere, and even the school’s event calendar listed nothing for that day—so our entire audience was pretty much made up of other festival participants, maybe 50 or 60 people.

We were in the “Commons,” a cafeteria-type room with a twenty-foot ceiling. The audience sat on the floor ten feet in front of us. Halfway through the first song, the audience all seemed to react to something at once. A second later, I heard a crash behind me and felt bits of something spray up against the backs of my legs. What? Did someone throw something at us? There wasn’t anything behind us except some chairs and a bunch of our equipment. I looked down and saw broken glass all around my feet.

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It is 11:00 PM on December 7th, and at this very moment it is 71 degrees outside. I shit you not.

It’s supposed to get about thirty-five degrees colder over the next two days, but right now I love Houston so much I can hardly stand it.

I have other things to talk about, really I do, but I also have finals to study for. Finals that count for, oh, one hundred percent of my grade. In every class. My last one is on the 19th.

I turned on the heat in my apartment today. Why? Because I’m sitting here in lots of fleece, hoping that the outside temperature will go UP to FIFTY DEGREES before it’s time to go to school.

Where’s that global warming when you need it?

When I woke up this morning, the combined effect of an overcast sky and the sun’s just barely having risen combined to make it dark enough in my apartment that I had to turn a light on to avoid tripping over my dog. I know that many of you who have real jobs and things have to get up in the dark every day, but I still find it totally depressing.

Winter? DO NOT WANT.

It’s here, huzzah!

My definition of sweater weather is different from most people’s, I suspect. The temperature has dropped out of the 90’s since Ike, so last week at Target I felt compelled to buy two new sweaters in preparation. Yesterday the high was 88, and I wore my first sweater of the season. Today it got up to 90—sweater with a skirt!

The thing is, you see, that even though a sweater might not be ideal at 90 degrees, most of the day it’s not that hot. In the mornings and evenings it gets down into the low 70’s, which I find pretty uncomfortable without long sleeves or pants or both. I HATE being cold, even a little bit. It’s an awful, miserable feeling. There would have to be some SERIOUSLY ENTICING extenuating circumstances to get me to live someplace that has real winters. We’re talking daily massages, cookies that don’t make me fat, and Tim Gunn as my personal shopper.

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Wednesday night’s lunar eclipse, that is. Wednesday was all thunderstormy here in Houston, and that evening the sky was still thickly overcast. I couldn’t even tell where the moon was supposed to be. Le sigh.

I haven’t seen a lunar eclipse that I can remember, but I did get to see a partial solar eclipse in elementary school. The teachers handed out dark paper glasses, but there weren’t enough, and I didn’t have anyone to share with. Instead I looked at the crescents on the ground where the sunlight shone through the trees. Still pretty nifty.

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Ah, sweet humidity. You don’t know how much you miss it until it’s gone, gone, gone, leaving you with nosebleeds, chapped lips, flat hair, and painfully congested sinuses. The last four nights of the trip John and I slept in a room without a humidifier, and my congestion got worse and worse. The very last night I started a pot of water boiling and set it next to the bed, in the hopes that my stuffy head would clear up enough to let me get some sleep.

I saw many women in Colorado with normal-looking hair, and I wish I knew their secret. From the day we arrived, my hair stuck to my head in flat, limp sheets. I could’ve sworn half of it had plum fallen out, it was so thin. I washed it, I really did! But to no avail. The night we got home it plumped back up to its normal thin-side-of-average texture with no effort on my part. TV tries to tell me that humidity is hair’s archnemesis, but mine seems to thrive in it.

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