He lives!!!!

Hey all (well anyone who happens to check this anymore),
So it's been nearly a year since my last posting. I guess I just kind of fell out of my blogging since I came back to the states. I still really miss Japan at times (in particular at work where I get plenty of time to think.), but I've been doing many things to keep me busy and not thinking about Japan all the time. Lets see since my last post I've run another marathon and several other races including one called the Ragnar Relay. The relay was tons of fun and I hope to do it again next summer. You run it in teams of either 6 or 12 (6 man teams are ultras and obviously each runner has to do about double what the regular team does). I ended up being the lead off leg on my 12 person team. Since it was a 24 hour race I started the run at 10am then had a break after my leg until 4:30pm then had a break until 1am when I did my last leg. It was crazy fun to be running in the middle of the night and to top it all off I ended up running mile 3-4 in a lightning storm! Obviously I must be nuts to enjoy that, but what can I say @.@; In the topic of running I will be completing my third marathon tomorrow (second Portland) and hope to run it in sub 3:15.
Besides my running antics this last Spring I interviewed and was accepted into the Masters in Teaching program at UW. It certainly took them long enough to recognize they wanted me! The truly funny bit of the whole thing is this year I didn't even officially apply again. Last year they just kept my application in the pool and carried it over to this years pool of applicants. So I'll be starting my master's next Spring and in the mean time I'm taking some classes to prepare for the program. This term I'm in an photography class and next term I hope to enroll in one or two linguistic classes (I'll be going for my ELL certification in conjunction with my masters on the off chance I get the opportunity to travel to Japan again to teach).
Other than that I've been working lots and moved into a new townhouse up in Shoreline (just north of Seattle). I hope all of you people in Japan and around the world are doing well. I'll try and remember to write on here again after the race and maybe even on a regular basis again!