~RiftDoggy

Long story short, I made it.

Long story long?

1. Everything goes as I said it would, including Lou and Ma's Convenience Hut, the dead rodent (two of them, actually), etc., with the exception of finding the dessicated corpse of a deer/forest ranger/superfluous family member.

2. I hiked. There's not much to do in the mountains, but there is a great deal of trail. So I walked to the top of the mountain two or three times ("top" being defined as a high-elevation area with good phone reception).

3. My mom bought a laptop on the way there (long story), and it had...chess. Spent a few hours losing against the computer. Cheating bastard.

4. Old people.

5. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. *Swoons.*

6. I scaled some awesomely huge rocks; nearly lost a hand (exaggeration alert!) plunging back to the bottom.

7. I became one with nature, by which I mean I got covered in moss and mud and ended up bathing in a river.

So generally, not that bad. I'm still glad to be back, though.

So for the next few days, I'll be kicking back at this old, rotting cabin in the mountains of western (as opposed to West) Virginia. I've been there a few times before, so here's the highlights:

1. We arrive at the foot of some random mountain in the middle of nowhere. There is a small convenience store. Its official name is "Kwik-E-Mart" or "Lou and Ma's Convenience Hut," but I think of it as The Final Bastion of Civilization.

2. We drive up ten miles of rocky trail past five or six houses populated by a mixture of Inbred Hicks and Slightly Less Inbred Hicks. There is usually a dead squirrel/owl/deer/forest ranger lying on the side of the trail.

3. We get to the House. We spend about an hour transferring various supplies from our vehicles to their various allotted areas inside the house. There is inevitably a dead rodent somewhere.

4. I spend the trip alternating between Becoming One With Nature, and Wanting to Raze Nature to the Ground. There is no internet access, barely any indoor plumbing, and no internet access.

5. *Cries.*

More on Sunday night, if I manage to survive the next few days...

Oy, so I'm officially a high school graduate. Whoo!

I'm still learning Japanese, and have finally managed to retain enough information in my skull to read at the level of, oh, say, a below-average Japanese toddler. ;D.

Anyways, so my second Ceramics piece managed to survive the kiln, and sometime soon I'll drop by the school and pick it up. I'll upload a pic then. It's very...unique.

Still no writing done...I've got plenty of free time today (thus, the update), so I'll try to churn something out.

Hiya! Thought I'd update after months and months of low activity.

I'm graduating in a week. I'll spend a few months here, working to make a good bit of money to last me for a bit through the impending Time of Frugality. Around August, I'll stumble my way over to Norfolk, VA, where I'll be attending university (for some reason, I like that word more than I do "college") for at least a year, maybe two. I'm planning on transferring up to New York, but, considering that I'm not even done here yet, I should probably just chill out and make some friends, enjoy the ocean breeze and all that.

I'll be honest, I'm feeling a bit down, since most of my friends are either going off in their own direction, or aren't even graduating this year. Aside from a few that I talk to online, there's a good chance that I'll never see most of them again. Thus, feeling a bit down.

Still, I'm excited. I may not know what I want to do with my life, but I'm only eighteen years old, so it's cool. My life is about to be Completely Changed, and considering that I've already done a lot of changing in the last few months, I'm a bit scared to think of how different things will be next year.

So, there's that. ^_^.

Oh, and I posted a pic of my most-of-the-semester Ceramics project, bringing my total number of art pieces here up to...one! Whoo! Check it out if you like.

Double Oh: For some insane reason, I decided to learn Japanese a few months ago, but things got Busy, so I put it on the back burner. I've got some free time, and have actually started learning to read and write. I've been using KanaCards, but if anyone here is a speaker, native or otherwise, any tips would be nice!