the eagl...er...the beaver has landed

We've all arrived safe and sound at our new home on and native land at an undisclosed location in Southern Ontario. And most of our twelve pieces of luggage arrived with us, except for that one bag that arrived a day late with external hard drive that holds the family photo archives missing along with a few other odds and ends that I presume fell out while the hard drive was being stolen. Thank Jebus the friendly, honest and not-at-all-corrupt-and-drunk-with-power people at the airline, TSA and Fatherland Security were able to X-ray and open that bag with no supervision or legal liability and just help themselves to whatever they wanted, otherwise I'd have all these hundreds of pictures of my kids as infants to share with my parents and friends, and who needs that hassle, right?

So, now that I'm no longer and expatriate journalist in Tokyo, what the heck am I? For the moment, I guess I'm just another unemployed Canuck appalled by my own government and worried about making  ends meet. I'm living off my savings and my parents for the moment and as painful and shameful and humbling as that is when you are twentysomething, try it in your mid forties if you really want to plumb the depths. As Cthulu is my witness, this will be temporary, even if it involves me wearing a paper hat and saying "would like fries with that?" to get out of this situation sooner rather than later.

Just like a real blogger, I'm actually writing this post in my pyjamas from my parents' basement, where we will be living while I obsessively seek employment in a stagnant job market. Suffice to say my parents and I do not see eye to eye politically. My mother, who should know better, has already chided me for criticizing Stephen Harper, who she thinks is "doing a pretty good job." When we went to check into how to get health care coverage, my father was making noises about all the "losers with the arse out of their pants who have three cell phones" downtown and how if we were from "Jamaica or Pakistan we'd be able to get health care right away" instead of having to wait three months. Blogging will be light for the foreseeable future, frustration, tongue-biting and teeth-grinding will not.
Protestations of light blogging notwithstanding, I will blog at length sometime this week to describe the agony and the ecstasy of my final days in Tokyo, but that is for another day. Right now I have citizenship papers to file for the kids and jobs to apply for and more pressing stuff to do.

I guess breeding really will tell

We are presently in the throes of packing to return to the Great White North after 13 years in Tokyo, so blogging will be intermittent with a healthy chance of freaking out.
Thus far in the packing process the slowest part has been the kids sorting of their books into keep vs. get-rid-of piles since each candidate for the get-rid-of pile -- which will go to the local day-care or to the library -- must first be reread, fondled, sniffed and otherwise examined. I guess they really do have more than just my nose  and eyebrows in the genetics department.