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（日本語は明日いれます）

After all, I could not leave home last Sunday to spend the night at the hotel in Boston. Probably because of my posture while writing pages of translation on the computer throughout the week, compounded by fatigue, I had a bad dumping syndrome and backache on Sunday evening. After packing everything for the overnight stay, I gave up at 8:00 pm and went to bed.

On Monday I woke up at 5:30 and left for the job, an apparel maker’s annual meeting for the sales associates. It had been over 10 months since I sat in the simultaneous interpretation booth last time! As was the case of every convention, speakers talked very fast and changed the texts at the very last moment or on the fly. Even when you were fully prepared, you could not rely on the written text much. It felt like I was in the midst of a hurricane, and it was very exhausting. I was very glad that it went fairly well this time.

One of the first experiences I had in this meeting was to watch the fashion show in the afternoon! Since this apparel brand is for middle-ages women, the models were not sickly skinny. But, how beautiful they were and how beautiful the dresses looked on their perfectly proportioned bodies; the catwalk really emphasized the fabric and design. It was so gorgeous that I felt almost embarrassed wearing the same brand of skirt; I felt I was doing an injustice to the design.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I worked for a technology company that provides cutting edge technology to a major Japanese telecommunications carrier. This was one of the companies that I had to cancel a commitment to because of the cancer last summer. I was apprehensive about the job because the field is filled with new technologies and acronyms all the time. To my surprise, however, I felt much better about this job than the work with the apparel company, probably because I had invested a lot of time to learn about the industry in the past.

Since Friday, Mark and I have been spending the weekend in Maine. It is nice to feel that you deserve the break after the hard week, and to experience nature in the frozen and cold winter.

The cove that we can look over from the big window of our house was almost frozen to the opposite side this morning. As the temperature has gone up from teens to near 30 during the day, the ice melted partially and the blue water started showing; it must freeze up tonight again. In spite of the freezing air, I saw a bright red cardinal and several chickadees on the tree, and heard them chirp. Our neighbor’s kid and his friends are practicing snow boarding tirelessly on the makeshift course they created on the descending hill, where our house stands, using a picnic table. Maybe because I grew up in the very warm weather, these scenes have a dreamlike, romantic quality in my mind.

We have come up here because Mark will not be able to come here till June sue to his trip to Japan from March to May, and because I had an excuse to buy a pair of comfortable walking shoes for the trip to Scotland and London, for which Mark and I leave on Wednesday (2/21.) Our Maine house is only 30 minutes away from the LL Bean main store and other factor outlet stores.

It is a little crazy to go to Scotland this time of the year, but we felt that it is important to visit our son while he is studying there. I have not seen him since the beginning of September, before the surgery.

This trip also serves as a celebration and punctuation in our life, the first major trip together after the cancer saga.