here is a bit of editoral comment from my esteemed friend and predecessor in all things cool Matt Healy
a nice start on the blog. keep it up, bub. a small editorial bit, the
disposable chopsticks are called "waribashi," "wari" being the verb
stem of "waru" (plain form, nonpast) or "warimasu" (formal, non-past) which is
the intransitive of "to separate." "Bashi" is "hashi"--chopsticks--except
that the ha becomes ba when preceded by certain sound combinations, not in
any systematic way of course.
Apparently the real chopsticks are called ohashi. As i mentioned, i don't really know japanese. Luckily, i'm paid only to speak english.

Anyway, i'm making pizza today. Jennifer and i just got a M-oaster oven. That would be a microave oven with real oven capabilities, as a toaster oven does. The thing is almost too big for the small-ass space in which we live, but i plan on utilizing it regularly. With luck there may be some hiking in order today, but that is not certain since the sun sets pretty early now.

It seems like every weekend we've been able to get out of town a little bit. This is awesome, because the surrounding countryside is fabulous. Maybe people who come from mountainous country would be less impressed, but on tuesday i spent about an hour and a half cycling up a mountain pass that took me about 15 minutes to go down. There is something pretty scary about accelerating from 0 to around 50mph in 1 switchback. Thanks only to my superb bicycle handling skills and nerves of steel i didn't crash and die on the treacherous roads. Also, i stopped several times to avoid melting my brakes. I'm sure that it wasn't really that freaky, but chist, i'm from IOWA.
I assure you that sooner or later i'll be posting some pictures. also, i've had a suggestion from doug to put in a comments box, that would be cool, but i don't know how yet.