more 'Murica thoughts

a new friend appears

along with a possible second

Diet sodas in the States have proliferated explosively. Korea can never hope to catch up. While my BochaSweet sodas ended up being so bad that I poured them all down a sink and recycled the cans, I did find one new (to me) variant of zero-sugar Dr. Pepper that I liked: Strawberries & Cream. I like cream soda, which makes me nostalgic for an era I never lived through (namely, the 1950s), but I admit I was a bit trepidatious about diet cream soda. When I tried the Dr. Pepper variant, though, I thought it was pretty good, and the goodness didn't wear out after a few cans. I also enjoyed the American version of Cherry Coke Zero, which ended up being a lot better than the thin stuff they sell here (what a contrast! I'd never have guessed there'd be such a difference). And Mike got me to pay attention to Gosling's Goslings Diet Ginger Beer, a lighter alternative to Bundaberg.

While I stayed at Mike's house during my final nine or so days, I was using a relatively new bed in a bedroom that had belonged to one of the daughters. When I first encountered the bed, I saw that it had been made (made as in "make your bed") in a rather specific manner, so I took some time to learn what was folded into what, what was tucked into where, so as to be able to make the bed myself. In my studio here in Seoul, I rarely bother with making my bed: I have a mattress cover, no sheets, then two blankets to which I'd added a third last month when I stopped with the ondol. I align these covers and throw them onto the mattress; none of the covers droops over the bed's side—only over the bed's foot. So it's not bed-making, per se; what I do amounts to little more than tossing and quickly arranging covers.

The bed at Mike's house, though, had four pillows—two large (for slumber) and two small and decorative; there was a pair of sheets that went underneath the pillows, but done with a frilly fold-back that went horizontally across the bed. The cover was next, and this needed to be both neatly tucked under the pillows and draped over them, with the sheets and the blanket both being tucked at the foot of the bed. It was a lot to remember, and I didn't do a very good job of making my bed every morning (plus, I had to allot myself extra time to do this now-foreign ritual), but I may have gotten better at it as the days passed. On the day I left, though, I asked about whether the bed covers were to be washed, and Mike told me not to bother making the bed; he and the Missus would take care of everything. I shrugged and left a rumpled mess for my hosts.

It was a great bed to sleep in once I convinced myself to crawl under the sheets. I had a few cold nights from sleeping only under the outermost cover, but that was my fault, not anyone else's. After that, though, I slept comfortably.

Using an axe to cut wood in an abortive attempt to get a fire going in a fire pit (it rained that evening, so no fire) showed me how much I'd forgotten about wood-splitting. Playing fetch with the older dog, Penny (my brother David's dog is also named Penny), showed me how weak my throwing arm was; to get any sort of distance, I had to throw sideways. I hope that, as I improve with the heavy clubs, my throwing ability will increase. Club movements are, according to Mark Wildman, based on ancient throwing patterns and rotational movements, all strengthening the core. When I next meet Penny, I hope to be able to launch a ball into the stratosphere. Or at least across the yard before it bounces.

My dad had taught me one specific way to chop wood: with one foot in front of the other, and with the practice swings of the axe always falling short of the target because the actual swing would have enough momentum to carry the axehead into the wood. Mike's wood-chopping posture struck me as wrong (both feet equidistant from the target wood, with the axe carried over and behind the head/back to deliver the blow, executioner-style), and I was all ready to express disagreement, but I kept my silence; while I was in Atlanta between flights, I looked up "proper wood chopping posture" on YouTube and found this from one of my favorite wood-splitters, a painfully cute Canadian lesbian named Nicole with muscular arms and great form, who split wood in exactly the posture Michael was using. So he wasn't wrong, and neither was I. Score another one for pluralism!

At this point, I've done most of the paperwork I'd wanted to do this year. I now have a new US passport, a new US driver's license (with the REAL ID symbol on it), and a new PNC Bank debit card with a US billing address (so I can go back to purchasing movies on Amazon). All that remains to do—and I have to wait until July before I can do it—is to re-renew my F4 visa. You'll recall that I'd renewed it last year, but because I was still on my old US passport at the time, and because that passport had an expiration date of 2025, I was unable to renew the F4 visa beyond the passport's expiration date. Now that I have a new passport that's good for another ten years, I can renew my F4 properly, this time, for its full, three-year term. So that's the last housekeeping item on this particular agenda.

America is not done with me yet.