Happy New Year! DJ and I spent the night at home and yes, we did actually make it to midnight…awake. We even got to ring in the New Year several times over. We celebrated at 11am for Rio and at 12pm for someplace else but, we finally cracked the champagne at 2pm on New Years day to celebrate the new year for those of you back on the east coast. I didn’t want to crack the Moet, but I obviously had to. For you. Not me. <cough, cough>

So, DJ is back to work (even though there isn’t much to get done since it’s still New Years day in the states) and I have been cleaning up. We had Shara and her friend stay here from Sunday night to Monday night so I had plenty of cleaning to do. Mostly just sweeping since the wood floors collect so much dust and cat hair, that I could easily sweep every day and still have to sweep a few more times to make it decent. But once my sweeping and washing dishes is finished, I like to stretch out on the living room floor with the kitties (today only Zorro felt up to it) in the sun and listen to my podcasts.

Listening to podcasts are one way I get to connect with news from the states, keep the house filled with voices (it can get a little lonely) and still feel like I’m learning something. They are extremely handy for my hour long trip to base when I take public transportation and on the car trip back, when I get to use my FM transmitter. The radio in the car is American, which doesn’t pick up Japanese frequencies (ours are too high and theirs are too low). I could listen to CD’s, which I do, or I can listen to the military AFN network play bad music. So, again, the podcasts save my life.

For example, when I was in Australia and DJ had left early in the morning to go back to the ship and my flight didn’t leave until late in the evening, my podcasts came to be of great comfort. He had gone to finish the deployment (another two months) and I was wandering around the city alone and facing the imminent return to an empty house. The only way I was able to get through that day was in listening to my podcasts (thank you Click and Clack).

So…today was sunny (up until a few minutes ago…it’s now clouding over) and beautiful. The temps. are still in the mid to lower 50′s and I’ve got the heat on downstairs (no central heat in Japan). And Zorro and I spent the better part of the morning hanging out on the floor. That is…until the birdies started a party in the backyard. Then I was no longer very interesting to him.