it happens tonight

Our building's first of two scheduled power outages will occur tonight, running from about midnight to about 7 a.m. If it's like last year, the outages will end earlier than expected. I'm not sure what to do with myself; I'm thinking of taking a long nighttime walk so as to be out of the apartment when the electricity shuts down and everything starts heating up. I had toyed with the idea of walking out to Hanam City after midnight, but I probably won't do a long walk like that until after the first week of September when, in theory, nighttime temperatures might finally start to drop and become more autumnal.

My #3 Ajumma wants to see me for my birthday, which is actually on Monday the 31st, but she's aware that I have to work that day, so she and I will be meeting on Sunday. Turning 51 isn't quite the milestone that turning 50 is, so I'm not looking forward to any fanfare. I did, however, receive a nice gift today: my coworker's wife, the professional chef, made a very delicious dakdoritang for us all, and just for me, she also crafted a red-velvet cake, which was easily as delicious as the chicken stew.

I'm back in the office tomorrow, alas: I have many cartoons to draw for the textbooks we continue to make, and I'd like to get half of them done tomorrow. In other news: I now have dates for my hike to Busan: September 26 to October 26. We'll be pulling the wool over the HR department's eyes again: I'll be submitting a vacation-request form that shows only two weeks' worth of vacation on it, but as you can see, the actual vacation will be a full month. I'll be taking advantage of two national holidays occurring somewhere between the end of September and the first ten days of October: there's Chuseok, and then there's Hangeul Day (which celebrates the creation of the Korean alphabet). Those holidays, plus the two weeks' paid vacation, will fill up about three weeks of my month off. The remaining days will be covered by my comp hours, of which I have over 50, now. I'm not sure how I feel about leaving for my walk earlier than I did last year; readers of my Kevin's Walk 3 blog will recall how much I bellyached about how warm the walk was, especially during the first half. It'll be even warmer this year, given my earlier start. But this can't be helped: if I start later in October—say, around October 15—I'll lose the advantage of using those national holidays for my vacation. It is what it is, I guess.

More on walk prep later.