the past few weeks i've been helping my mom build her web site. when she first told me that she wanted her own domain name, i knew there'd be hell. as it is i already provide tech support for her but with this project, i knew i be doing a lot of tech support. so far it's been the usual madness. i explain something 5 times, she says she understands, and then she immediately asks a question which reveals she didn't understand. this is why i should live in LA again. i decided a long time ago never to live in the same place for 10 years and in 2004 my time will be up here. though i don't want to return to LA because i'd like to live someplace i've never lived before, i figure if i live on the other side of the county, the side i've never lived in, then it will be alright. (especially if i don't live there for too long, just a couple years.)

my mom's site is 99% japanese. living in this non-japanese area, my japanese skills are severely truncated. my reading level has always been about that of a 2nd grader so the effort to read something requires a lot of time, a lot of dictionary searching. in high school i didn't mind looking up some things when i would read a magazine article. but i don't bother at all when i read web pages, i just tend to skip over the characters i can't read, which are many! today i was reading her site and learned something. i had always wondered when my parents had met, what year? i always knew how, i just didn't know when. which brings me to another reason why i'm comfortable with the idea of returning to my home county to live: learning family history. i realize i don't know much about my family and let's not kid ourselves, people age and could die any time. when i live in LA, i want to devote a lot of my weekends to learning about my family, scanning photos, etc. i want to create some sort of record and if i can, create cd-roms to give to family members.