working and fun with gooseberries

hehe.. i realize that these are turning into monthly updates instead of my weekly/bi-weekly ones. kind of funny.. now that i'm home, it's like everything's normal again. i don't take a lot of pictures and there doesn't seem to be much to report. like back in japan, everything was new and many things were weird. like oh! there's a snake by the bus stop! or oh, today's the holiday where they throw beans at people, or is this lobster brains i'm eating? i guess that's why i don't update much anymore. how can you compete with lobster brains?
so just working at coast guard still.. my contracts supposed to be up next week friday (already!) but i'm hoping i can get it extended for a bit more while i look for a permanent job. job hunting sucks! i really wish i could've just been an apprentice. you know, like train under a master, and then you become the master, and there, you have your lifelong job. and doing a craft for a living sounds pretty cool to me. better than programming definitely! and more healthy too.. yeah, i gotta get out more!
anyway, thus the infrequent updates. today was good though. the highlight of my day was going to my grandma's for dinner, and there were these gooseberries in the fruit salad. gooseberries are these orange round berrids, about the size of grapes. they're not exceptionally tasty in my opinion, but my grandma said when they were kids, they'd pick all the inside out of the berry and then blow it up like a balloon. like a toy. so everyone kind of laughed and thought that was kind of a boring toy, until they tried it, and then there they are: my grandma, aunty, mom, brother totally engrossed in picking the inside out of the berries with toothpicks. i think they must have been at it for about an hour... so i guess it was pretty entertaining. i think it's more the challenge of it that's fun, because you can't break the skin, but still you gotta get everything out. how? you have to go through the "piko" with the toothpick... and then you roll the berry between your palms to loosen the pulp inside. and then you can try to suck it out too, but jason said that wasn't working. i dunno.. looked a little gross. but i guess i shouldn't say till i try it. everyone was having so much fun with it, my grandma told my aunty "you should just get the girls (my cousins) gooseberries to play with instead of playboys." and everyone kind of stared at my grandma in shock, and then she goes, "wait, that's not right.. gameboys!!" haha.. ok, maybe you had to be there. anyway, yes, gooseberries are fun. they are the playboys, i mean, gameboys of the 1940's.