I miss insulation.

It's cold here. Not real cold, just low 30's. Wisconsin has had at or below zero with windchills below -20. The difference is that the US knows what insulation is. Andrea asked her teachers one day, because we found out that in Hokkaido, where it has similar weather to Wisconsin, they use insulation because of how cold it gets, her teachers responded it was because "Our houses are built for summer." What?! insulation is only good for winter you say? Explain why people use a thermos to keep their gatorade cold then. Freaking crazy people here, let me tell you. No matter, it's 38 in our kitchen right now, it'll heat up once the sun hits it, just in time for me to make dinner.

I've managed to figure out how to make a good variety of dishes that I didn't know how to make in the US. Or at least not the way I have to make them here. Meatballs for subs/pasta with homemade tomato sauce, cheese/meat ravioli, homemade macaroni and cheese, even crepes. I can also make lots of other simpler dishes based on white sauce because they sell cans of it in the store. It can essentially replace "cream of" soups in any recipe. Gratin sauce in a can works too. I'll have to figure out how to cook without it inthe US when we finally move back.

Speaking of, price for this are just so bad, they haven't moved in the last 3-4 weeks except for going up a few dollars. I need to get back with STA travel, because they might give us $1000 off at least andrea's ticket. They had basically the same prices as eeryone else as well. We'll wait a few more weeks before we decide what to do. Hopefully that will save us some dough. Plus we need to get some real times out of Andrea's school for the 8th of August so that we know what time we can leave. We can catch the last flight out of Tokyo at 530 and get back to wichita at 9pm so we have a whole extra day to crash from the jet lag.

Back to the grind, chores are calling.