I just found a slug in my shower.

Add that to the ever-growing list of creepy critters I regularly find in my apartment.  The list also includes: spiders, various species of centipede, mosquitoes, roly-polies, and something resembling a tick, which freaked me out.  In a fit of cyberchondria, I frantically Googled tick photos, trying to assure myself none in my apartment would give me Lyme disease or carry otherwise unwanted protozoa.  Damn bugs... I never realized I had so many roommates!  Hope you're chippin' in with the utilities bill, guys!

On the plus side, the rest of my week is looking to be very fun, and relatively nightcrawler-free:

• Tomorrow night: karaoke!  I've been favoring boy band songs lately, truth be told.  (Hey, I'm a tenor!)
• Thursday: dinner at the brand new restaurant that is half a block from our house, if that. Good food + proximity = recipe for success. 
• Friday: leave work early to judge a speech contest at a nearby middle school.
• Friday night: depart for three-day visit to metropolitan Japan!  It's a long weekend; we get Monday off for "Respect for the Elderly Day."  I know it sounds like a Hallmark-spawned crock--like Sweetest Day or Crossing Guard Appreciation Week--but it's a national Japanese holiday, so no school for me!  We're going to Kyoto, and planning to visit Osaka and Nara.  So pumped.

In other news, some Chinese soothsayer predicts Tokai to strike this Saturday.  Don't get me wrong, I love a good doomsday prophecy as much as the next guy, but seriously?  Just who is this guy, anyway?  Some no-name?  Unless you've studied under Nostradamus, faked a Jamaican accent, or were a member of Dionne Warwick's "network of friends," I don't want to hear your asinine augury or your half-baked hunches.  Start yourself a pay-per-call and work your way up, bro.  Get some street cred, G.