To Market

I love the popping when you chew them.

One of the best things about California is the pockets where different cultures flourish. If I want to get the best soda, made with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, I go to a Mexican grocery store. If I want a tub of masago to make my favorite nigiri at home (or just eat with a spoon, which I totally do), there's always a Japanese market somewhere within driving distance.

Besides the ability to acquire foods that my walking-distance Ralph's doesn't seem to realize I need, these areas have another bouns: imported goodies!

On Saturday I went with some friends and trolled through Marukai Pacific Market in Redondo Beach, and Mitsuwa Market Place in Torrance, where I treated myself to saki ika, Gummy Chocos, a couple of Iwako erasers, a strawberry tote bag, and some nigiri. While some of these items may be difficult to find, they were entirely reasonably priced; the strawberry tote, for example, was less than half of what I usually see it priced as.

Now this is a Saturday.

Sunday started off innocent enough with a trip to the second annual Renegade Craft Fair, where I purchased the most awesome locket ever, entitled Octopus Tea Party, by Locket 2 You. (Side-story: My companion and I were back-to-back looking at these lockets, and both turned to show each other... the same locket! So we both bought it.) On the way out my all-things-cute buddy notified me that she had never been to Little Tokyo, which is obviously a crime, so we went. I will refrain from listing the many things I bought there, but just being inside the Little Tokyo Mall is happiness, and the bookstore across the street, Kinokuniya, is a great source for Japanese masking tape (I got three rolls of matryoshka, she got some polka dots).

But the real treasure of the weekend, the real thing that inspired this long-winded gushing about the joys of my shallow indulgences, is my new strawberry tea service for one.

The owl mug is from Target's Valentines' Day 2009 collection;
I like to chase my hot tea with cold water for maximum zen.

I've been looking for a tea service for awhile. I almost went with Decole's Strawberry Cake Mug, which of course only went on sale when they sold out of pink. Then I yearned for Sun Art's Matryoshka Tea for Two, but it is just plain too expensive. This glorious piece of tea-pouring art was very reasonably priced, especially seeing that this one is ten dollars more (after converting Euros to USD). I have spend the last two days guzzling tea, my favorite guilt-free treat.

Moral of this story: Don't be afraid to shun the American shopping malls and big corporate chain stores in favor of these magical little pockets where English isn't a priority.

Also... I couldn't help myself:

Go Time?

Poncho spent the weekend in Las Vegas with the rest of his wolf pack, and I couldn't help but picture the above scene the entire time he was gone.

In any case, he's been too excited about Sausage Fest '09 to do anything useful for two weeks, and, we'll he's "back," but he's not really going to be back back until at least a few more hours of sleep.

I've been patient while he squee'd like a girl (only on the inside, of course) over his guy trip, but tomorrow I strike.

Kikkoman inspires me. Don't judge.

This Week's To-Do List:

1. Firstly (that's why it's number one on the list, duh), I need to buy my plane ticket to visit my lifelong friend L in time for The Birth of Peanut. I was going to do that today, but apparently Poncho aspires to go on tour with some Pop Princess (who I don't think I'm at liberty to name) at the same time as Peanut Time, so now I have to wait. No point rushing home to see him if he's touring some... other place.
2. We also need todecide where to live next this week. We have a lot of options. Most of the ones we're looking at currently kind of suck.
3. We are going to get passports. I demand it. How can we even consider leaving the country if we do not have passports? It's just silly. Poncho's "thing" lately is that he refuses to make any solid plans just in case he gets a job. Hopefully if I can get him to get a passport he'll be a little more enthusiastic about play time.
   
4. Enter tentative travel dates onto the calendar. This includes camping, San Francisco, and Plum & Poncho's Excellent Adventure. None of these are optional.

I think those are reasonable to-dos. Notice laundry is not on that list. Screw laundry.

To GTFO or to Not GTFO

I talked to Poncho about our options as far as "hey we have nothing we have to be doing right now so let's do something interesting dammit" and decided to go over the longest shot first: moving super far away. We eliminated a lot of options and then listed the remaining options in order of preference:

I guess that's not too terribly far off.

I really really really really really really really really really want to go to Japan. At first it was at the bottom of Poncho's list until I showed him all of the stuff on teaching in Japan. I know it's expensive to live in the cities but we're frugal to begin with so that shouldn't be a huge deal.

Needless to say, the very thought sends the otaku in me into a frenzy. I would do this in a heartbeat.

But there are a few pretty big cons: 1) I have yet to find any way to contract a teaching job for less than a year. Poncho is not willing to go for a whole year; 2) The companies I've looked at insist that married couples be responsible for separate apartments, and only say they'll try to put them near each other. Excuse me?! That's epically lame.

Dream dead? Maybe.

New Zealand is looking more and more promising. Everyone I knew who lived there moved to the States, but I do still have a cousin once removed there, so we wouldn't be entirely on our own. And we've had friends move there temporarily before. It's still on the maybe list.

Alaska is also still a maybe. It's cold! As a rule, I hate being cold. But it's also... neat. We visited once. And Poncho recently watched a documentary on gang activity in Anchorage, which for some reason made him even more interested. Should I worry?

We worry too much about the exchange rate in Europe, and have no clue where to even begin trying to get jobs. I guess that makes it a no.

To review:
Japan - oh please please please
New Zealand - maybe
Alaska - maybe
Europe - non, nine, nie

The suspense is kind of killing me.

When you came in the air went out

I'm losing my mind.Well, kind of. More than a little. Why am I looking at Gaston fanart?! I don't even like Gaston. He was a jerk, you know?

I can't decide if I need a job or not. I had a job. I taught math. Poncho (my husband) had a job too--he made... the Internet. Something like that. Computer stuff, very complicated. Both of those are gone. Have been for awhile.

Now we don't do anything. No, we do a lot of things. We look for jobs. All the jobs that seem to be available are the ones we already did... when we were in community college.

Not that we don't do other stuff. I need my play time.

So, taking inventory that's: unemployed, married, no kids. My initial feelings about item one (and three?) weren't so great. Dread, apprehension, and general fretting. Now, not so much.

That's supposed to be Opportunity knocking. Get it? I feel like I can do anything. Not like fly or be President, but cool stuff. Like I discovered I like baking cakes and sewing, as you can see on my deviantART page. It's also time to travel.

So I'm thinking here are our options:

1. Travel to Europe and/or Japan.
2. Move to Europe, Japan, Alaska or New Zealand for a few months.
   
3. Shut up and get back to work.

Yes, our choices for places to travel to are very limited. We have our priorities, and places that are not those do not currently make the list. As for the third option, I'm not the biggest fan. I did the whole finish high school, finish college, get married, start career thing and kind of got hosed. Trying something new now.

Gotta go over these options with Poncho, hopefully tomorrow. Our current lease is up at the end of September so I'd say we need a pretty solid plan by the end of the month. We at least narrowed it down to a few countries (and a state).

I can't decide if it's all these options before me that are causing my insanity, or the wanderlust. I'm sure it's both.