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I can't remember half of the Christmases from the last twelve years, but I can remember nearly all of my birthdays.  There's been some pretty interesting stories mixed in there and today should hopefully stick in my memory as well. I went to work this morning amid all sorts of typhoon warnings and canceled boats. At 9:30am, even though there was no wind to speak of, they told me to go home.  It took until tonight for the real typhoon to get here and it hasn't been that bad for me (compared to my friends Cliff and Vaughn, who were both under the eye of the storm and are both currently without power).  I'm a little bit west of the lower portion of Okinawa in this graphic:

It's becoming a habit of mine to list some facts in my birthday posts, so here goes:

Birthday height, 2010: 181cm
Birthday weight, 2010: 83kg (183lbs)
Net worth, 2010: loaded
Taxes paid to any government in 2010: 0
Years until I can retire: I'm just working because I like it

I've just wrapped up my third year and will be entering my fourth school year tomorrow.  The magic of arriving at a new place and exploring the location, the language, and the culture wore off awhile ago.  I'm still enamored with a couple of those, but the novelty is gone.  It's my life to send and receive Japanese emails with locals and to eat my lunch with chopsticks every day.  I like the sashimi and the festivities, but I have no interest in miso soup or community meetings.

In the last year my accomplishments are less a list, more abstract.  Yes, I caught my two marlin, and a few other smaller fish from a kayak.  I ran a PR at Tokyo (and disciplined myself into a two-month injury in the process).  But I also had a relationship with a girl, which added an 'adult' element to my life that I haven't had in awhile.  I also deepened my friendships with a couple of people in my Okinawa English teacher group.  I love the transient life that I had before Japan, but relationships and stronger friendships are a nice benefit of staying in one place for awhile.

My Japanese speaking ability is as terrible as ever, but this year I decided to give up on actively pursuing it.  It's a dark cloud that hangs over my head and studying only brings me further down.  So I've decided to invest that study/worry time into something more productive for my future: learning software.  I've done some tutorials for Adobe Illustrator and Dreamweaver (and made a website!).   Photoshop is next en route to getting a stronger grasp on my photography post-processing.  Hopefully by next year the pictures I post to the blog will have gone from 'straight-out-of-the-camera' to 'wow!'