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Yesterday evening Mark and I returned to St. Louis. We had a roughly 3 hour drive from Fresno to Sacramento, and then we flew back through Denver. We got home about 9:00 PM, so it ate up the entire day. The previous two days were spent in King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, doing lots of hiking and enjoying the view of sequoia trees (which have to be seen to be believed) and the Sierra mountains. Over those two days I hiked close to 20 miles, which is a lot more walking than I usually do, or at least so my right hip was telling me yesterday when it would hurt with every step. Another sign of age, I guess.

So, now that I am back home, I am able to settle into my standard routine, again. The day was filled with buying food, doing laundry, and cleaning the basement, all pretty normal stuff. There was one new thing, though; tonight was the first night of my Japanese conversation class. Yes, I am heading down that path again. I learned that the self-paced stuff I tried a few years ago wouldn't work for me, because I need an underlying reason to learn the stuff. Being in a class means that I know have the underlying reason of not looking like a fool, which is a very good reason, in my book. So we will have to see how that goes. I was very surprised at the number of people in the class (over half) were learning Japanese because their son had married a Japanese woman and they wanted to be able to talk to their in laws. It was always a son marrying a Japanese woman, and never the other way around. That seems odd to me, but there you go.