OK. New template here after somehow completely fucking up my last one. I've lost my "Heavy Rhythm Rotation" and "Links" and "email" sections, and am too ignorant of html to change the sidebar...anybody want to help me out with any of these issues?!

Anyway, lots of stuff happening since my last post: Chie and I had a wonderful, high-intensity 2-week trip to Japan, full of family and friends and food and temples. you can check out some of the pictures on her blog (in Japanese) at:
(Just click on the folders to see different areas from our travels.)

Together we explored many neighborhoods of Tokyo including Asakusa, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Aoyama, Harujuku and others, Chiba (where we stayed with her Mom), Nikko (ancient capital in the North), Kyoto, Nara, and Hakone.

We stayed in a traditional Ryokan in Hakone with beautiful hot spring baths. and in this sensual setting I proposed to her. I am now engaged to marry for the first time in my life! The congratulations I receive are meaningful as interpreted towards my well known and too often suffered deep ambivalence (which i somehow managed to push through to make this difficult commitment).

I started classes the week I returned, and internship began this past week. I may begin seeing clients as early as next week, and am full of anxious expectation.

My other course is my last elective, and is in the Phenomenological Psych Program at SU. We're reading all the Existential bigwigs: Kierkegaard, Nietzche, Heidegger, Sartre etc., and applying their ideas to the face to face encounter of the therapeutic relationship. I am really enjoying this foil to agency protocol and diagnostic definitions. Fuck science and transcend yourself!