Begin Week #5

If someone had told me two months ago that on September 8th of this year I would wake from sleeping on a full-sized bed at five o'clock in the morning in a two-bedroom apartment on a U.S. navy base in Japan, I would have said they had a wild imagination. That's not all. If that same someone had also said that on the same morning I woke up in Japan I slip a wallet with a Japanese drivers license into my pants pocket and then take an elevator eight floors down to step into a little right-hand-drive 1995 Nissan March and pull out of a parking lot and drive on the left side of the road to go pick up my wife at the base's elementary school, I would have said "What have you been smoking?"

Today... that is exactly what I did. I also had to go to the Yokosuka City Hall to get temporary plates for the car. It's just too bizarre. In this life, you just never know what the future holds. For this South Texas ranch kid that truism applies big time.

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On a funny note: I drove to the base gas station to pump five gallons of $4.08 a gallon gasoline into our car for the first time. Well, I pumped my gas, screwed the gas cap back on, paid the young lady attendant, walked back to my vehicle, opened the left-side door, and calmly plopped my behind onto the seat and shut the door. As soon as I did that I realized my mistake. There was no steering wheel between me and the dash. "Idiot!" I thought to myself, "You should be sitting on the right side, where the driver sits in this country." Worse still.... I had an audience. Damn! Find me a rock to crawl under.