Pre-Departure, Tragedy, Good Luck Charms

I leave today, in the sense that it is now after midnight. Bag is packed. Books to take, selected. Charge cables, wrapped into loops. Standard issue stuff, all of it. I... tend to pack kind of heavy - I took like two dozen books to Japan when I went in High School (I went to Japan in High school) and ended up buying far too much manga, and other things, and ended up donating them all to my Japanese HS library, whose only english books were Jean M Auel novels. Funny I even remembered her name, come to think of it. I never did read any of her anything. Anyway, I tend to pack heavy but I didn't take much with me this time.

I read my to favorite novels ever when I was away from home and needed something to read not so much to entertain me, but to... run away to is maybe the wrong way to put it. I needed a distractions from all the distractions. I read the Brothers Karamazov in Japan, and Les Miserables at summer camp one year. I'm bringing Moby Dick, another classic, hoping it will fulfill the same role. Also, it is a very small book (my copy, I mean) so there's that.

I'll be spending the night in the airport, because I arrive at 9PM, and won't be able to get to campus and sign in in time. I'll either pay to stay at a 24 hour internet cafe thing, or splurge on a real hotel room. We'll see, it'll depend on how tired I am.

Also, tragedy struck. I can't find any of my pictures from my HS trip to Japan - I was going to post some of them here. My parents got a new computer, and claim everything was transferred, but I couldn't find them on there for the life of me - it's still possible they're hidden, but I have a video I took with that camera when I was in Japan, of my host sister's appearance on local television (she appeared on local television) and I couldn't find any files with a similar filename... I was pretty upset about it. My computer has had hard drive failures too... I went through all our old CDs, trying to find a backup I faintly remember making. I had backups on my iPod at one point too, because I liked to carry all my photos of that trip around with me, even though I never really looked at them. I could take that old ipod, which no longer works, to a data specialist, if I ever have any money, I suppose. They were kind of painful to look at, in a way, I haven't gone through them in years... but I'm really bummed they're gone.

I did find, though, while I was looking, little relics from that trip: postcards I bought at the art museum, a one yen coin (how did it end up in the CD box?) and a card my older host sister wrote me when I was leaving, a little tiny round card... I'll be taking it with me as a good luck charm. It's very, very sweet.