Footprints

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Footprints

I went a little nuts today and cleaned again. This morning, before I went to work, I was brushing my teeth and I just kinda grabbed the scrubber and went to town on the sink. The whole time I was thinking, "I'm doing this, but I know it's not the end of it."

After I got off work today, I went to the grocery store and spent about 10 minutes, perusing the cleaning aisle, and eventually purchased some ridiculous cleaning spray, a steel wool scrubber/sponge, a large scrubber-on-a-stick type thing, and a new laundry rack thing for my clothes, seeing as the old one is in complete disrepair, missing several clips, and the hanger has long since broken, forcing me to use to hangers to ingeniously suspend it from the bar or wherever. Oh, and a new light bulb for the light over the kitchen sink, which has been burnt out for the last, I dunno, three months or so.

So, I got home, changed the bulb, marvelled at the brightness that filled the cooking area, and started taking apart the toilet/bathroom to give it a thorough scrub down. I busted out some hard core scrubbing, and, to my satisfaction, it turned out ok. Some of what was there was, how should I say, something akin to a stelagmite, crystaline in nature and more or less molecularly fused with the seat itself, but I did the best I could.

I think what triggered it this time around was noticing the footprint in the bathroom. There should never be a footprint in the bathroom.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Soup Is Delicious

That's about all I have to say about that.

I mean, I could go on about how filling and warm and enjoyable it is, but, we all already know that, don't we? I hardly need to explain the satisfaction of a hot bowl of soup to you, the reader, or myself: it goes without saying.

So instead I leave you with this: if given the choice between a hot bowl of the soup of your choice, at a time and place of your choosing, or its equivalent monetary value, which would you choose?

Soup I say. Soup.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

I Need a Hobby

I just had one of those moments, certainly neither the first nor last, where I sat here at the helm and went back and forth between my usual sets of websites, looking for something new, where I knew there would be nothing. I click through MySpace, Facebook, Christy's journal, and The Superficial basically every time I sit down at the computer, and tonight, around 8pm I just got so thoroughly bored playing games that I just flipped through each of them over and over knowing full well there would be nothing new.

Damned internet's turning into the fridge, where I do the same thing, going into the kitchen, opening the fridge, opening my cupboard, looking around, and knowing the whole time there's nothing in there to eat, or that I feel like cooking.

What's with that? I need more to do.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Kyoto

I'm back from Kyoto. I'm pretty much exhausted. I haven't walked that much since Italy, I don't think. I stink. I feel bad for the guy who had to sit next to me on the bus ride home, if not because I had my shoes off then because I had to keep throwing my legs up in the air to stretch my knees out, which for the record hurt like all hell. But it's OK because he straight up farted in his sleep. Probably to get back at me.

I took 200 photos, used all three of my memory cards, and would have taken more had I had space. I visited 17 shrines/temples/famous sights, spoke a good deal of Japanese, met an olympic gold medalist (2002 women's skeleton) at my hostel, and got mobbedd by hordes of Japanese elementary school students, and overall had a pretty nice time.

It was drizzly the first day, cloudy the next, and sunny and gorgeous the last, so all in all it was decent weather. I'm glad it was how it was and not reversed. The weather couldn't have been better for all the hiking I did yesterday.

I saw almost everything I wanted to see, the notable exception being Saiho-ji, or Kokedera, the Moss Garden, which you need to have made a reservation for by mail in advance, which I blanked on and have only myself to blame for. Was it worth all the effort? Yes. Was it more or less expensive than I thought? About what I figured. Whole trip total cost me about 39,500 yen.

On my big list of things do in in life, I can now check off Kyoto as done. I still wanna see Kokedera, but, I'll live if I don't. The picture I took of Kyoto from the Shinkansen platform in 2003 has finally come full circle. I should have known then it was To-ji, but now I have pics standing in front of it, instead of admiring it from a distance. Go me.

Was I lonely? Not really.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Of Course It's Full

What's new? Hmm. Ok, so, I sent in my tax stuff, now that's taken care of. Woot.

I've been hungover for like a week now, due to a party at Christian's place, then Sammy showing back up in town for a night or two, going out with her and a group two nights in a row, then pulling an all nighter on Saturday night in Mito after Bryan, Richard and Nathan's show, then getting no real sleep and going on a date with Saki Sunday night.

Oh, yea, I went on a date with Saki. We met up in Kashiwa and I took her to Bora Bora for dinner, but come to discover that there was a wedding party going on, just my luck, so we played pool instead, which I would have wanted to do anyway, and talked and enjoyed playing pool. I ended up giving her some pointers since she, like most girls, doesn't really play pool. Funny how even outside of work once you've established a teacher/student type of relationship how it kind of permeates whatever you end up doing together.
Anyway, after we played pool for a few hours we decided to go grab something to eat, so I took her to my favorite Korean restaurant which was, of course, completely full, so we wound up going to Wara Wara instead. Which was fine, really, we just wanted to do some drinking and eat something and talk some more. We had some good conversation, joked around a lot, and tried to work our way through the language barrier as best we could.
It's a lot easier to communicate with someone who's level 6 when you can just speak Japanese when you need to.
I didn't end up getting home until 1:30am or so from a 7pm date, so that much was a success, neither of us really wanted to go home any earlier than we had to. Except that when I got home I realized that I had to be at work in Kashiwa at 10:50 the next morning and I knew that was gonna suck.

It wasn't as bad as I thought though, work. I just had a throbbing headache most of the day. Mayumi, the ever sarcastic level 2 who I love so much, gave me her card and asked me if I wanted to take Japanese lessons from her, which I do. So, I'll give her a call and see what I can do about starting to study Japanese again finally, and hopefully get better.

K, off to work. Just wanted to say I went out on a date really, and hopefully there will be more of these entries to come. Cool.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Wewt

I just got an email from SinHae confirming that I can stay at her place while I'm in Seoul next month. Sweet. That totally saves me from having to find a hotel, or worry about I dunno, 75% of the things I would have to worry about while travelling overseas. Now I just have to worry about arranging my days off.

Actually, speaking of which I still need to arrange my days off for my trip to Kyoto this month, and I have to do it fast because my only days I can swap are my next weekend, so I have to arrange that pronto. I picked up my return bus ticket the other day too, so everything's all set for that trip. I just need to do some more research about where I wanna go, and perhaps start calling places to reserve spots to come. Many of the gardens in Kyoto you must first call to see if there will be open spots. Interesting.

I picked up three days of O.T. this month, since I don't have to do a ton of swaps, but I made sure to leave my Sundays open because, well, they're better than Mondays to have off, and it makes my O.T. much later in the day, as opposed to 10:50am which I hate doing. I signed up for it as soon as it came out, because I knew if I didn't do it then I would never sign up for it, but I knew when I did it that I would of course hate myself for it, and here I am, Monday morning, getting ready to go to work, and I'm hating myself.

It's not that I really would have done much with this day off, it just seems like I am forever going to work. And the money I'll make never seems like that much. I get paid, I pay my bills, and I try to conserve money as best I can for the rest of the month. At the end of the month, I rarely have anything left over regardless of if I worked O.T., so it feels like I'm no better off for having done it. But I know that's not true. I need every penny I can earn this year with all my travel, and when I am in Seoul I will appreciate having worked the extra hours, because the three days will pay me more twice as much as my plane ticket over there, perhaps even the entire trip, if I spend wisely and don't get robbed.

ACK! Hey look, another entry about finances. What were the odds? Ugh. Anyway, it's a halfway decent day out, overcast, neither warm nor cold. Hopefully today will go by quickly.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Spring Cleaning

I just cleaned the everliving shit out of the kitchen and dining room. I cleaned things I think have never been cleaned. It took me the better part of 2 hours, but it's not even noon now and I'm pretty much finished, so it feels good that I got something that significant done with so much left in the day. I might cruise out to Ueno to check out the cherry blossoms if I can be bothered getting dressed and heading out there, or if I don't get sucked in to cleaning more of the house.

Cleaning is infectious to me, once I start in on something, I can't just leave some parts undone. Cleaning one thing highlights all the rest of the stuff that's filthy, so I just kinda end up doing everything. Cleaning the kitchen made me look at my room, which was ransacked and sterilized not even a week ago and think how dirty it's getting, I suppose I'll be doing some straightening of that later too.

The weather today is fantastic, it's sunny and warm, and I can feel that spring is really here, summer and the oppressive heat isn't too far off if this kind of day keeps up. After all these cold nights, it's weird, I know my body is adjusted to it, even though in my mind I can't wait for it to be stupid hot all the time. Right now, this weather, exactly how it is, I think is the perfect weather. I can leave all the windows and doors open, I don't have to adjust my clothes at all, and there aren't 8,000,000,000 insects trying to make homes of every nook and cranny and square inch of open air.

Having the house to myself like this, I should be having company. It would be the perfect time to housebreak a girl, if on there were, ya know, a girl for me to housebreak. Saki's waiting for me to make a move, that much is clear, and now that she's moved back to Kashiwa, well, I think it's time for me to just man up and do something about it. That'll be fun.

K, I gotta call Jenn and finish cleaning.