excuses, excuses, excuses

Ok, so, it might have seemed like I just fell of the face of the earth for this last month-and-a-half. (I didn't but I came pretty close to it!) Here are some excus--I mean, I'm exciting things that have happened in my life over the summer:

• Finished two summer courses on Aug. 1: psychology and a web design class that focused on HTML and CSS. Combined total of: 17 quizzes, 6 exams, 1 paper and 7 or so web design projects.
• Averaging 35 hours at work per week. That's a lot of lifeguarding, but also a lot of dollars.
  
• Participated in the annual Lifeguard Olympics. Yeah, it's about as cool as it sounds.
  
• Found a new puppy after a few weeks of searching. He's a pure Beagle named Copper who we rescued from Love-A-Stray. He's sitting in the chair across from me at the kitchen table right now. We're still teaching him about people furniture and dog furniture.
• Was planning on going to Windsor for a weekend with friends, but that fell through, so I went to Chicago with my dad. It was my first time there. Although the Bean and Sears Tower are cool, the magnificent Chicago Tribune building still sticks out in my mind the most.
• Writing some more stuff for MyGamer.
• Preparing for my 6-month trip to Japan.
  
• Trying to cram some last-minute Japanese and kanji into my head. This sometime takes the form of playing through the Japanese version of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I can understand some of PW: AA without help, and that's a pretty good feeling.
  
• Went to an Indians game in the most fanciful of all the suites, which we later discovered had an average cost of $8,000-$10,000. Thanks, Travis!
• Hmmm... what other things have I been doing/working on? I know there has been more... ah, well, this list will do.

So, if you are one of my sources and were thinking I simply absconded with hundreds of minutes of interviews, the answer is I haven't. I plan to finish this all up this month, so hopefully you'll be hearing from me soon.