Overall, pretty good.
Bad:
[ul]
[li]Dad got esophagus cancer. He had to go in and have close to a foot of tube cut out. That makes him the 6th relative (all 4 grandparents + mom) who got cancer. He’ll probably die from it eventually, but not yet. I’m hoping at least somebody in my family dies from something other than cancer. My grandmother had colon cancer, but had it cut out, and eventually died from being just plain damn old instead. That makes her the only relative I knew personally who didn’t die of cancer.[/li][li]Gained a little weight, lost some levels of fitness from not being able to exercise much. Too much stuff to do, too little time. (See next point.)[/li][li]Planning our wedding was . . . interesting. If you ever have to plan a wedding, especially if you’re doing it from overseas, I highly recommend getting a wedding planner. “Time sink” and “pain in the ass” do not even begin to describe it, and we had a nice, small, intimate one. I don’t even want to think about what it would have been like if we’d gone for the 150+ people kind of thing.[/li][li]Found out that my calligraphy got kind of sucky from disuse. Addressing the invitations was a bitch at first. Turned out okay in the end (see Good points below).[/li][li]Stagnating at work and really need to find a way to get out of the nice, comfortable, yet not personally or professionally enriching position here. Grim outlook for alternative employment unless I move back to the US, and even then I don’t have any industry-specific skills. I’m reasonably smart and a Jack of All Trades, but that’s really hard to market, especially when you’ve spent the last 6 years doing stuff you don’t want to do in the future.[/li][li]Considering going back to school to correct this, but still have unpaid student debt and am wary of incurring more. I would have it paid off if I’d stayed in the US. The higher cost of living, currency conversions, and international banking fees siphon money away like you wouldn’t believe.[/li][li]Very low personal savings. Makes me feel very insecure when I’m now the head of a household. (My wife works only part-time as a Flamenco dance instructor.)[/ul] [/li]
Good:
[ul]
[li]Dad’s not dead yet, recovered well from the surgery (doc said that he hadn’t seen anybody his age recover anywhere near that fast) and hopefully will tolerate the chemo pretty well. Very Good Thing: he made it to my wedding despite having his guts rearranged only 2 1/2 weeks prior.[/li][li]Got married. Goes without saying that my wife is a great woman, or I wouldn’t have proposed to her. (She’s hot too.) I’m a lucky, lucky guy.[/li][li]The wedding went well. According to locals the weather was the best it had been in weeks, the pictures turned out great, and all of her friends and family said it looked like something out of a movie or TV drama. My family got a kick out of the Japanese-American fusion ceremony and decorations we did, and out of meeting a bunch of people from Japan. Most of our guests were able to make it, and one of my best friends performed the ceremony.[/li][li]The invitations I designed, laid out, printed, and cut myself got lots of compliments. When I told a few people that I’d done those and the program, they didn’t believe me at first; they thought they were professionally done. I’m a guy and I suck at art. Apparently, I’m good at design though. It helped that Japanese paper (washi) is friggin’ cool all by itself.[/li][li]Went on a very nice honeymoon to Jamaica that we didn’t have to pay for ourselves at a place that will probably be out of our price range for quite a few years, if not for the foreseeable future. I have mixed feelings about resorts, but it was nice to see what it feels like to be pampered semi-upper class.[/li][li]Have a car for the first time in over a year since I ruined the nicest car I’d had to date in my first and only single-car accident, the only accident I’ve had since a fender-bender in the parking lot at age seventeen. Sure it’s a littler crappier version of my diesel with only 30,000 km on it, but at least I have transportation again, courtesy of my new mother in law. That’s going to be very nice when winter really hits.[/ul][/li]
Good and Bad:
[ul]
Recently realized that wife’s decreased libido coincides with the forced switch to a new birth control pill almost a year ago when her clinic stopped carrying the formula she first used. Might get back my little minx who could break a bed and got hot from breathing on her neck if she changes to a different pill. We’ve still had sex (at about half the frequency we used to, argh!) but it hasn’t been hot wet wild nasty sex for a long time. I miss that. I miss her former responsiveness. I especially missed those things during the honeymoon. Damn clinic.[/ul]
