Home... but not settled in yet...

I'm back in the US!

In the first few weeks we learned a few very important things;

1) No matter what they say, renting a truck is never going to be JUST $650... And being nice doesn't pay.

We flew to Denver to gather our things which had been stored (Kindly, I might add) by my friends in various locations. While in Denver, we went to a certain short one's High School graduation (The same short one whom visited us in Japan not more than three years ago and went to Nikko and Akihabara with us), and then we were going to rent a small truck and drive it (And our stuff, the short one went on to graduation parties and the like, so we left her in Denver... :) ) back here.

Of course, they had only one 10 foot truck. And myself and a small woman wanted that truck. The small woman was afraid of driving the 16 foot truck (Who could blame her?), so, being the chivalrous man I am, I said "No problem." to the fellow when he asked if I would be willing to take the upgrade (For no extra cost).

The truck drank gasoline like a huge 8-cylinder, non-aerodynamic truck with transmission issues... It cost us nearly $80 to fill and it only went about 250 miles on a tank... all in all we paid an extra $350 for our truck... with the added insurance ($100), our $650 truck ended up being over $1000...

That hurt.

But we got home, and we did enjoy our few days with our friends in Denver...

Now we begin our new life, back in the land of "Nothing gets done right, and you have to pay for our mistakes"...

We had to pay $300 for new brakes on our new car 45 miles after we bought it (That's right 45... we barely had it for a week). And now the door handle on the passenger side has broken and the wheel is rubbing against something when we drive over 60MPH... As of yet the car has 120 miles on it... and you know, it's all our problem.

I wasn't allowed to hand-carry my $500 Japanese-made bow onto the airplane with me (Because I might use a 7 foot bow as a terrorist weapon in a 6 foot cabin), but I had to sign a waiver saying that if they broke it tossing it around under the airplane, it wasn't their problem, it was mine.

All of our boxes... 8 of them... with all of our belongings and personal effects (Not to mention my suits and work clothes) have gone missing... they made it to Kawasaki port in Japan on April 15... and vanished. The US postal service has no idea where they went... (We will call the Kawasaki port tonight) So we may only have the things we brought back in our suitcases (Not a whole lot, because we are only allowed a small amount of baggage on an international flight).

As if that wasn't bad enough, my apartment in Japan has decided to charge me for $1000 worth of cigarette smoke damage to my apartment.... I find that to be insult to injury... but they garnished my last paycheck for it. I'm still fighting them (Luckily I took pictures of my apartment in 2006 which shows the smoke damage very clearly), but I think being accused of smoking is about as low as one can get...

So... that's why I haven't really posted to my blog of recent... I'm still in "Bitter Old Man" mode; mad at the world for all of the things that are going wrong...

So, here are the things that are going "Right":

I'm gainfully employed (I was from about two weeks before we left Japan). Both Maia and I work for my step-mom in a business that is not only a good business, but also something I believe in strongly. Like the medical field it is helping people, which is a very rewarding place to be in life. I'm working with children with learning disabilities. Currently I'm working on their database stuff, but later I'll be working with the kids as well.

I have a house! Our own, very large (well, in comparison to my apartment in Japan) house... It was dad's house before he got married and moved in with my step-mother, but he lived here for many years, and I'm very familiar with this house and that makes it one of the best things to return to.

I'm here with Maia. No matter what, I'm glad to be here with her. No matter how strange things get outside our small bubble, inside that bubble it's very normal :D

So, I guess things aren't so bad after all :D