This morning I was really tired and it took me a while to figure out why—it’s because I’ve been using my psychic powers at full-blast to try and make spring arrive ahead of schedule.

Well, perhaps not, but it’s a nice idea, isn’t it? I’m so sick of it still being dark when I wake up to hit the gym on Monday mornings, or perhaps to do some before-work running on Tuesdays or Thursdays. If it’s still dark out, it just drags me back into slumberland. At least we’re at the point now where it’s not pitch-black when I leave work so I can get the running in then, but still… not a fan. I don’t know how people live up near the Arctic Circle during the cold months; not even so much for the brutal temperatures but the lack of sunlight.

On the other hand, I’ve been having taking three virtual trips into Japan as of late to get through my desire of being somewhere else. As I think I’ve mentioned before, Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Wii is still intensely a funny, an adorable and low-key simulation game where my biggest worry is trying to eventually catch all 64 fish for the local museum’s aquariums. Also in the game realm, though, is Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Justice For All, which I finally started playing on the NintendoDS. It’s a fun cross between an adventure game and a novel, as you navigate the twists and turns of Phoenix Wright’s latest cases before coming to the inevitable conclusion. In many ways it’s like reading a mystery/investigation novel where you have to solve the crime before the author point-blank tells you. I enjoyed the first of these games, and it’s fun checking out the second one.

Last night I also started reading the 856-page comics autobiography A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. I’ve really enjoyed reading Tatsumi’s comic short story collections as they’re translated into English; they’re always slightly twisted and depressing little vignettes of life in Japan by slightly pathetic people, with something just off-beat enough to attract as a reader. What’s great about A Drifting Life so far (although to be fair I’m only on page 80!) is that Tatsumi is able to really plunge the reader into a different place and time without ever overtly doing so. There’s no huge info dumps or exposition, but it really gives me a strong feel for 1949 Japan.

In many ways, A Drifting Life is just the kind of autobiography that I really like, because it lets me “travel” to not only a different place but a different time as well; it’s a much less expensive way of visiting somewhere that would otherwise be inaccessable. Really good stuff, and once it’s officially released (next month?) I think it’s going to knock people’s socks off. I hope so, because I love the Tatsumi short story collections and want there to be many, many more down the line.

(And, with no exercise scheduled for tomorrow morning—my spinning class is in the evening—that means I can stay up a little later and read some more of the book. Yay!)