As a preface, my problems are a lot less than  what I’ve been watching on TV. In fact, I’ve been glued to my computer watching NHK news from Tokyo most of the weekend.

So first off, a minor nit, I spend too much time on Facebook and I’m thinking of quitting since they think I AM IN NEED OF HELP DATING SENIOR CITIZENS. Come on. I have 3+ years before I get my AARP card and 23+ years before I have to start taking money out of my (very tiny) IRA.

I did decide to get away from the computer to clean out some more crap from the garage. My dad had sticks and twigs saved for firewood and while kindling is nice to start fires, there was way too much of it. I don’t burn much wood anyway, since we’re in a highly populated area and it just soots up the neighborhood. I can tell when someone else has a fire and I’m never very happy about it, so I don’t want to star a fire myself. I still have my friend’s wood chipper so I fired it up while it wasn’t raining and moved all the kindling outside. About the time we hit a torrential downpour, something metal got stuck in the chipper and I had to stop. Of course I didn’t notice the torrential downpour until I was standing around trying to fish bits of metal out of a wood chipper. I decided to wait until it cleared up a bit before I tried again, and that means tomorrow.

So I went back to watching more Japanese TV and I’m still thinking of moving back. In all the devastation and empty food shelves, I don’t see any rioting or looting. In fact, I saw an interview with a guy waiting hours for gas. The TV reporter told the guy that the station he was waiting on was probably out of gas and there weren’t any attendants outside. He replied, “What?! Well, I suppose I should wait. What else am I going to do? What about the station across the street?” Here I’d expect him to say, “BLEEP BLEEP THE BLEEPING BLEEP GAS STATION! EAT HOT BLEEPING LEAD!” Fewer earthquakes here, though.