5 Ps

Long rant ahead, heads up.

For those of you who haven't heard already, I'm flying out to Beijing next Saturday, returning the Friday after. Grandpa (mom's side) is in the hospital, though his condition has stabilized enough in these two weeks that they're thinking of releasing him next week, which would be interesting since he is not going to recover fully, so mom's currently in charge of setting up an "Invalid's Room". They haven't found a good nurse yet (he needs to be fed through a tube every two hours, turned every two hours, etc.) so right now my mom & aunts & uncles are doing rotation (though my oldest aunt's already had a breakdown from exhaustion and that's going to push everyone else closer to their breaking point, as a result). Mom's reported that grandpa's seems more lucid now, though, to the point where he's asking after me. (It's kind of weird that I'm still that much of a favorite, because I keep thinking that I should be standing in my cousin's shadow since he's the one to carry on the family name and he's there.)

I have my visa now (thanks to Lucy, muchas gracias), I am done with moving (courtesy of Glen and Kate, whose vacation I sort of ruined, lo siento), and my stuff packed with enough cash in both USD and YMB that I should be able to navigate the entire thing on my own, if necessary. My dad (house keeping & managing finances &c at this end from Bay Area) just emailed me yesterday asking if I can find the time to stop by and see my grandparents (dad's side) while I'm in Beijing, since my other grandpa's health apparently has been failing too (why do people not tell me these things?) and he wants me to leave them "a happy memory". Also, he hasn't cc'ed, called, or in anyway notified mom of this plan. Not that anyone from mom's side will have the time to deal with either him or point me to the right bus stops (since they've changed all the bus lines prior to the Olymptics and I have no idea in hell which buses to take, since the buses I used to take don't exist anymore). I'm thinking maybe taxi, as seen by the cash withdraw mentioned earlier.

I've had the dubious pleasure of running over my credit limit for the first time today. Admittedly it's mostly because I'm still using the card that I got when I left for Davis and the credit limit on that is 1/8 of the cards I got later and I ordered the plane tickets with them, which is 1.5K right there. But well, interesting. (I paid for groceries with debit today.)

I'm going to try to pay my bills, pick out my classes &c this weekend, because the deadline's two weekends from now and the second weekend...I don't think I'll be good for much the second weekend. I've already brought one of those mocha-mixes to aid with the 15 hour jet-lag, which I have two days to get through. I'm going to try to shift my lab schedule a little so I do cryostat that Monday. It shouldn't require too much concentration and the room is too cold for me to fall asleep (I'll be sitting in front of -20C station with its door open for hours).

In other news: we threw a baby shower for Aiju (postdoc in my lab) yesterday. I made jello and got her flowers. People got her baby clothes and things too, and a cake. It was all very cute.

Been feeling tired all week. I think things will be better in September. I hope.
Knock on wood.