How’s this for a trip? Start with a two-hour ride in a car (luckily a BMW 7-series, about the size of a Chevy Impala) with four other people, one of them being your wife and practically sitting in your lap (not a complaint by any stretch). Stop at the airport to drop off some family comparatively early, meet some other family on their way out for the next five hours. Spend too few tender moments with your new wife, watch as she and your new in-laws drive away. Then go back into the terminal and wait another hour to board, then wait 20 minutes on the airplane. Spend 12 hours on the airplane, catching only five hours of uneasy nap-time (but catch a couple movies while trying to fall asleep). Arrive in Tokyo, find your luggage waiting for you for a change, then scamper off to find your train to Tokyo station. Board train with only four minutes to spare. Get to Tokyo station, try to decipher your tickets enough to figure out which Shinkansen you need embark. Make the train with four minutes to spare. Ride the bullet train for three hours, get off to switch trains, get to the last one with four minutes to spare. At the four minute point, realize that you got there with eight minutes to spare, hold a short, private celebration. Disembark, and try with your extremely broken Japanese and the cab driver’s extremely broken English to explain to him where you live. Get home dog-tired and yet unable to sleep anyway, which is good, because while you were away for two weeks, the main circuit breaker for the apartment tripped, and everything in the refrigerator has spoiled. Spend an half-hour taking out the trash. Finally nod off at about 1 AM.
Then the alarm rings at 0630. Then your wife calls because she knows the alarm clock didn’t really wake you up and if she didn’t, you’d hit snooze for the next three hours. Turn on the shower, and after two minutes realize that the water’s still really cold because when the power went out, the electronic control for the water heater also went off. Put your robe on and go turn on the water heater. Praise Jesus and the inventor of the flash-heater, because if this had been another home in another land, there’d have been no hot water that day! Run to the base to get BK for breakfast.
It didn’t actually get problematic until the post-lunch coma, actually. Until then I was doing quite well. After that, no amount of coffee seemed to keep me alert.
The fact that this sort of thing is almost normal to me now is one of the things about my life that make me happy. Yes, you read correctly. I actually kind of enjoy my life!