October at last

Well, it's October. I really don't know where the last month went. I've had visitors and lent out my computer, partly explaining my prolonged absence, but the rest of the time can't really be explained away. The best I can do is just say that when I actually had a chance to write something, I had absolutely no desire to do it. If you thought I was dead, I'm sorry. There are a lot of people who have been wondering about that, but I just wasn't around my computer nearly as much lately. So here I am more than a month later trying to figure out exactly how much stuff has happened that I need to tell you about.

Our school had their annual sports meeting last week. Once again, I was not invited to participate in any events. I guess I don't look like I could qualify for the 100 meter dash, long jump, shotput, or jump rope competitions. I do happen to know students competing in all of those, though. I arrived late Friday morning for the festivities, so some students were already waiting at the gate for me so that they could entice me to go into the press box and yell a cheer in Chinese for the foreign language department. They actually asked Angelyn and Jessica to do it, but the job was passed on to me because I'm the only foreigner crazy enough to yell Chinese over a loudspeaker without too much embarrassment.

The first week of October was a holiday. We got the entire week off, but I opted not to travel this year. After traveling to Xinjiang, I'm low on money and just don't feel up to the challenge yet. I spent most of that week relaxing and doing not much of anything since just about everyone else I know was gone. I spent one day watching movies with Angelyn and introducing her to the Lethal Weapon movies. Last year I introduced her to Die Hard and I had to show her that there are movies that guys like that are better quality than Die Hard. Another day during the holiday I rode bikes up toward Sai Wudang again, like I did back in June. We got started about 3 hours later than we expected due to last minute bike repairs, so we rode to Peach Blossom Lake, which is about halfway to the top of the mountain. The weather was great that week, just right for a long bike ride. The weather has gone from just right, to cold, back to just right, to rainy, to cold and rainy, and now back to sunny and almost warm. I'm not sure what to expect in the mornings anymore. Supposedly this summer was mild so they're expecting a colder winter this year, so I'm dreading when the weather turns cold and stays cold.

Yesterday I used my laptop in class and today it won't start. I keep getting a message saying that Windows has encountered an error and needs to shutdown. I can't even start it in Safe Mode! You know it's serious when safe mode doesn't work. Anyhoo, because of that I can't get any of the new pictures off my computer to put on here. Hopefully today or tomorrow I'll be able to figure out what's wrong with it. For now I'm having to use Angelyn's computer. It's a fine time for me to not have my computer, when I'm finally blogging again, but I'll hopefully be able to keep this thing updated with or without my own computer. Until I do get it fixed, I won't be able to receive Skype calls (which I've been getting a lot of lately, but always when I'm not at home). You'll have to start calling my house phone again, folks. I'll let you know when I'm back on Skype, though.