Misawa Survives

Sorry I didn't post sooner. I forget that not everyone gets the news about Japanese weather :) Typhoon Nabi ended up completely passing us by, thank god. All we got was some wind and rain, which isn't exactly out of the ordinary for Misawa, as Mom can well attest to.

In other news, Tim and I are both back in school as of this week. I'm pursuing my Masters in Strategic Intelligence. To be honest, the classes are very easy and I expect to earn my degree fairly quickly since the classes are only 8-16 weeks long (depending on which ones you take). This is a total cookie-cutter degree, and I don't expect to get a whole heck of a lot out of it except my little slip of paper saying I've attained the level of Master. I can't wait for people to start calling me Master. I mean, isn't that why people get Ph.D's? To be called Doctor? ;)
In all seriousness, I expect to be done with this degree in about a year (depending on where we end up PCSing to next). After that I'll be back in the States and able to pursue my true love, the law. What's that you say? You had no idea I wanted to go to law school? As a matter of fact, neither did I. But, if I want to pursue a career in politics, more and more it seems like I don't have any other choice. Hopefully, my distinguished academic record and my military service (very trendy right now, you know) will help me weasel my way into a fairly good school so my resumes will look good. Not that I ever plan on actually practicing law, but it will sound nice when the media lauds my many accomplishments on my inaguration day :)

In other, other news, Caitlyn started school last week. I can't believe I have a child in grade school. When did this happen?! She is really doing well, both academically and socially. (Note: proud parent boasting ahead) We went to the school's Open House on Tuesday night, and her teacher told us that Caitlyn is far more academically advanced than most of her classmates. She is reading books that they give to 3rd and 4th graders! Of course I, being the ever humble parent, calmly accepted the compliment by saying, well she should be, after all she has my genes! ;) Caitlyn is also doing well socially. In fact, she is having a small problem with being too social, which I'm pleased with only because she had so much trouble socially last year. I think she has really adjusted and seemed to have no trouble making new friends in class. Granted she has a few friends from Kindergarten in her new class, but I'm really proud of how well she's doing. Now we just have to work on scaling it back to socializing during appropriate times.

For your viewing pleasure, here's another really cute picture of Jocelyn. She is getting sooo chubby! She finally looks like a normal baby. You can't even tell how small she was when she was born, and I couldn't be happier.

Typhoon Nabi

Maybe I'm just a little jumpy after watching the devestation Katrina has caused for the last week, but we've got a Category 4 Typhoon headed towards us. It was a Category 5, downgraded to a 3 and now back up to a 4. The weather forecasters expect it swing back out west to sea and go back up to a 5 before it slams into northern Japan. The epicenter is expected to go right over Hokkaido. Goody! It's just barely hitting southern Japan right now and we already have had overcast weather for the last 5 days. Earthquakes, typhoons, Godzilla attacks...we've been through just about everything in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Turns out our president had some words of wisdom for Prime Minister Koizumi just in case Typhoon 14 (as they call it here in Japan) pulls a can of whoop ass on the mainland:
...Bush has instructed Koizumi to wait for five days before he begins any rescue work."Worked for me" said the chipper Bush, briefly pausing from his morning-afternoon exercise regime. "Oh, and then make sure you blame the victims after. That is really important. If you gots some black people there in Japan make sure you say that they are to blame for everything."