Oh, …Rats!!

It’s been a long time since I posted anything.  My computer died + took all its secrets with it before I could.

There was no real warning, …just a faint buzzing sound before it locked up and went black

I borrowed my girlfriend’s computer semi-frequently until I could get myself a replacement off of e-bay.

I don’t know why I was forced to pay for express international shipping, when the guy didn’t even put it in the box for 2 whole weeks.

This upset my girlfriend too.  I used to use my computer for everything/ as a: CD player/ radio/stereo/ TV/  DVD player/ book/ comic book / newspaper/ + substitute for a great many other things too…  She just just seems to like e-mailing and online shopping, which she couldn’t do whenever I was using her computer – as there are no stores anywhere nearby, and just as many worthwhile stores for hours in any direction from here.

It did arrive eventually, I am glad.  But I couldn’t plug it in the 1st day, because the plug has 3 prongs and all the outlets in my house only have 2 holes.  I left for work earlier the next day and found a store that sold an adaptor, and did manage to plug it in the next evening,  but the password screen came up, and I had to reborrow my girlfriend’s computer to ask the original owner for the password, which again took several days longer than you would want it too.

Anyway, + at last, it’s shiny and red, bigger and faster, and the keyboard still has all the keys, so I’m pleased.

I would have liked to have gotten all the information off of the old one first to be honest, but what I remember writing about before:

• There was a near total eclipse of the sun – Such as we wouldn’t see for more than a 100 years to follow, …but we didn’t see it through all the clouds that appeared the night before.  People came to our nowhere town from other far off  parts of Japan to see our grey clouds and go home.

It was precision bad-luck timing, being that: It hadn’t rained more than once for the entire 2 months previous, which dried up everything I tried to plant in my garden more than once too.

• We had to drive up to the city on the opposite side of Kyushu so I could get a stamped paper from the American consulate that says that as far as they know I’m not already married.

It’s nice to go into a US government building and not have to see Bush or his goon squad smirking down at you.

They had an all vegetarian burger joint in that city that claimed to be an all vegan burger joint, …which it wasn’t, …unless you ordered the right thing, …which I did do when we went back the next day.  My girlfriend has an aunt there who we stayed with for the 2nd night (or we’d have gone for veggie burgers for dinner too).  The 1st night she slept in the car, and I didn’t sleep – in the car.   Her uncle really likes art, showed me lots of art books and I showed him only 2 pictures I’d painted – because he’s still running internet explorer 5 or 6, and nothing else could load in the 20 minutes we spent on his computer.  Really nice guy though – had lots of suggestions for places to paint, and the futon on his floor was far and away much more comfortable than the inside of my girlfriend’s car.

We stopped in another city on the way back so she could try on wedding dresses.  They had a couch there for me to wait on, but all the magazines were wedding themed – as would be expected I suppose, …but a fish tank or something would have been nice.  They had me try on a couple Tuxedos.  I asked for a green jacket, black shirt, blue-green pants, and gold shoes, but they didn’t have any of that.  The jacket they decided I should try on – I couldn’t move my arms in.  “Don’t move your arms then” was the response from the shop professional.

We met up with a college friend of hers that night who took us to a vegetarian Italian restaurant.  I wanted to know what the soy cheese there would be like;  It turns out that it’s almost indistinguishable from tofu.  We stopped at a volcano the next afternoon + climbed up.  They decided that the fumes from the crater were approaching dangerous levels just as we were heading back down, …so it’s good we didn’t stop for lunch until dinner time.

• One night at home we saw something that looked like a mouse scurry down the hallway into the kitchen and back.  I got up and chased it into the shower + closed the door until I found a nice box I could trap it in.  When I opened the door it was gone, apparently down the open drain in the floor.

Neither of us took a shower for an extra day after that, as I was worried we’d wind up with a bloated drowned mouse stuck in/ blocking our pipes.

• That was a funny story until we started hearing several more mice up in the ceiling running back and forth, hopping?, and gnawing on the insides of the walls.
• We had a lice infestation not long after, which sounds bad, + it is bad (!!) – I assure you, but lice don’t hop all the time like fleas do, + they prefer to bite girls + babies.  My girlfriend took to wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and tucking her pants into her socks for a while.

She fumigated the house several times, ironed the tatami mats in the floors every night, and washed all of her clothes in poison.  (add some poison to your laundry + see how much color it bleeds out!)

• The last time she fumigated we waited out the recommended 3 hours at a friend’s house, then 5 minutes after we came back home she was bit again.  She didn’t find that as funny as I did.

I was still very glad they weren’t fleas, which hop and itch and hurt, and like boys as well as girls and babies.

• We came back from my boss’ house late one night, turned the lights on in our house, and a mouse didn’t run right through my girlfriend’s legs,

…. it was a giant rat that ran through her legs, right back the way we had came.  She went into the bedroom to hide while I looked for it in the other half of the house.   I searched that part of the house for about 10 minutes, until I heard her scream again, so I went back there grudgingly thinking there would be a spider, or a little beetle , but she said she’d seen another one – another one meaning another rat, which I found hard to believe, but sure enough I saw it lurking against the wall behind a cabinet right next to our futon.  I put an empty shoe box in front of it, and pulled the cabinet out from behind, hoping it would run and hide in there, but it went right for my girlfriend, like its friend had.  She screamed a few times + tried to stun it, by whacking it with her kitty-cat slippers, but it ran into the room where our ancient mountaineer toilet is.  I saw it hiding behind the toilet, so I put the box down again + poked around behind the toilet with a stick hoping to scare it into the box.  This time it climbed up the back of the toilet, and lept at me.

I thought I was going to have to try to smack a flying rat away from my face, but it landed just short of me – in the bowl, and slid down into the pit beneath the toilet.

-   Sometimes, …+ this is months later,  I hear noises coming from under the floor where the toilet is,  and I worry that a rat is gonna’  scurry up and bite me in the ass.

That was my favorite story for a while, until in the same day:

• A jellyfish stung my lips, and some bastard kid bit me.

The jellyfish are small and translucent, and they tend to float near the surface of the water – where you wouldn’t see them if you were looking around for all the other fish.  They get your feet on the way in or out of the water, sting your hands while your paddling, they float up or down your shorts and sting your ass too.

That kid was throwing crap at another kid and climbing on top of a spinning rolling/wheeled chair he has fallen off of before, + I got bit while pulling him down.  It left a big welt on my arm which stang less than the jellyfish stings, but it looks a lot worse, bled more, throbs, and I had to wonder if you need a tetanus/ rabies shot for little bastard kid bites.

I have to put up with crap like that from time to time, I don’t get paid much at all…, but it’s usually pretty relaxed, I live on the beach, my boss is nice…

I tell him how the Rats in the walls and ceiling keeping me awake at night, and he laughs…

He lent me his wetsuit while he’s away for the summer.  I wasn’t at all inclined to use it until a few days ago, when jellyfish stung: my nipples, armpit, ear, my whole right side, and gave me an extra jab in the back.    The water in the bay is as warm as a hot cup of tea you’ve left behind to answer the door – not knowing it was the Jehova’s witness a’ knocking, + you’d never get back to drink it anytime soon; I mean it feels nice on your skin, and it takes a lot of stings before you have to admit to yourself that it’s time to put a hot rubber suit on to go in the water.

I actually put his wetsuit on just the once.  It was thick, hot, and it hurt behind my knees.  40 minutes later I took it off with a mild lingering discomfort, + 2 days after that the back of my knees started bleeding whenever I straightened my legs.   Taka + the other drunk guy I asked about it say my legs are too fat + implied that I should go on a leg diet.

He also invited me to a vegetable barbeque just after I lost my deluxe junior woodchuck underwater exploration kit and digital camera.  The vegetable barbeque consisted of 2 small slices of pumpkin that my girlfriend hadn’t already eaten while I was walking up and down the beach looking for any of the components of my deluxe underwater exploration kit, and a handful of green pepper slices that were covered with meat.

I got the deluxe underwater exploration kit for my birthday from my girlfriend who also helped me bake a vegan chocolate peanut butter cake, and left for a 3 day trip with her friends that same morning.

I spent weeks looking for a set that would fit me, be totally waterproof, + not cost me more than I would make in 4 hours teaching crazy bastard kids.  I took very very good care of it, used it every day- if not multiple times every day – as I really don’t have all that much work to do, and it fell off the back of Taka’s jet ski, along with my camera (in a floating waterproof case).  A pair of scuba instructors that were visiting asked me to hold their fins and masks as I was getting on the jet ski, so I didn’t have the chance to secure my own belongings before Taka suddenly sped off.

He’s a nice guy who constantly surprises us by showing up at our window drunk, or with drinking apparatus at all hours of the night – with and without friends and anyone who happens to be staying at the inn his family owns.

He took me to some rock islands/ reefs you seem to need a boat to reach + we saw lots of giant, + very colorful fish. I had thought that he only knew how to say the more colorful words in English, but he tapped me on the shoulder then to say “Oh!! very ….dangerous fish!!!”   I asked if he was referring to the 5 fugu/ blowfish below us, but he was  talking about the huge – fins all extended red lion/ scorpion fish that was swimming quickly and straight at us.  That was scary!  I only got a very blurry photo – They’re apparently very painfully poisonous! #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }

He took me, my girlfriend, the diving instructors, and another pair of heavy drinking guys there on a very jellyfishy day when I lost my mask, snorkel, and camera.

I had to borrow a mask from one of the diving instructors, + swam back 35 minutes to where I got on the jet ski hoping to find any of the missing components, but no luck, and Bad Luck! – with all the Jellyfish.

There’s a small corner of the beach that has a jellyfish net stretched through the water, but the lifeguards there don’t want you to do anything, so I tend to stay away from there.

One day, before the lifeguards started showing up for summer duty, I was wearing my birthday deluxe snorkel set – following one of the super bright blue fish, and I saw an octopus arm pop out and try to grab it.  It wasn’t grabbing it all too well, so I got to see an octopus follow its arm out (to better its chances of snagging the fish) before I had to go back up for air.  A friend of mine wasn’t too far away, so I shouted for him to come and see the octopus, but when we went back down to the bottom together, the octopus was gone, and a gigantic manta ray was resting right next to the rock it had come out from under.

I told people that I saw an octopus for about 2 weeks, until I got tired of hearing them ask how it tasted.  Bastards!!! Did you know they have 8 arms and 3 hearts?

I spent about 3 weeks searching intermittently for my mask, snorkel or camera. Sometimes it was very wavy, sometimes rainy, sometimes I went out to where I couldn’t even see the ocean floor; And I saw Jaws as a child and I’m still only slightly less afraid of open water (wet places larger than a bath tub).  I have since found only the mask I lost, 2 other masks, an old fishing pole, a snorkel nowhere near as nice as the one I lost, a piece of roofing almost the exact same size as the hole in my roof, and assorted other things I left lie on the ocean floor.

I spent about a week chasing a school of squid down the length of the beach.  They’re very fast, and hard to follow;  They change to a dark color when they squirt ink out, so you have trouble telling when they turn away.

You can’t paint pictures underwater, and the water is so nice I haven’t painted more than a couple scenes to use on our wedding invitations from as far back as June. I painted a few in June that I still haven’t uploaded to any of my websites, because I didn’t have a computer for the longest time, and didn’t have a camera for the second longest.

Taka comes by drunk from time to time and talks about all the preparations he’s made to come to our wedding.  He came by one night with Jack and a pair of girls and we all went out to look for seaturtles – which only come ashore once a year to lay their eggs in the sand.  The one we found was the size of a washing machine!

I went out by myself a bunch of other times + never came across another one.  Whenever I told anyone from around here that I saw a giant seaturtle, they all made a point to tell me that their eggs taste very nice with Ramen.     The Bastards!!

Taka and another of the drinking guys, both restauranteurs, decided while drinking that they would have a contest of skill – to see which of them could cook the best 2 course vegan dinner for me, but Taka forgot that it was his grandfather’s 88th birthday that evening, so I only had one 2 course vegan dinner, …but still very nice mind you.

The other guy doesn’t show up at our house unannounced like Taka does – except for when he does it with Taka, or on the one occasion when he came by rubbing his crotch and asked me to wake up my girlfriend so he could ask her pharmaceutical opinion on something he contracted from a girl he’d met.

I wouldn’t want to go to a hospital in a very small town with that sort of problem either.