Every Day an Adventure

I woke up this morning with a horrible stabbing pain between my shoulders, and it's persisted all day -- something between my left arm and the middle of my back, really. Every time I move or twist my back, or even breathe deeply, etc, I get a stabbing pain. It sort of sucks. I can mostly manage by sitting very still and sitting up. I think I got this from a combination of volleyball and reading a book with my neck bent down, straining my back.

Anyway, I sat at home a while because I wasn't sure I could drive like that, but after a few Tylenol and some mineral ice decided to leave anyway. I drove to Southcenter, which didn't take very long, but actually getting AROUND the area took FOREVER. I went to ACME Bowl for an hour or so and played some IIDX, but there were these two teenage guys also playing, inbetween their ITG games -- one of the guys was playing 5-Key and acting like he was just THE SHIT because he could pass all these songs. (The other admitted he wasn't so good and played 2-stars on Light 7.) I went up and played, with what of course I consider my mediocre-to-poor skills, meaning that I passed two 5-stars and a 6-star on 7-key, got 100% on the 6-star so I got an extra stage, and the guys were just like "well, um, *okay*." I played like four games before I got bored of waiting around so much and wandered off. (The most amusing part was when I passed Ballad For You 7K on normal speed, no hi-speed, because I screwed up when trying to put it on HS3 and clicked too many times.) I wonder if I'm just getting too old, but I just never feel like talking to random strangers I see playing Bemani anymore.

I went to IKEA after that. I think I decided what I want to replace my broken dresser with -- a narrow tower of 5 drawers and a narrow wardrobe with shelves -- I don't think it'll look particularly right, but I think it'll function the way I want, since I currently just use the working drawers of my dresser to store socks and underwear, and I've been keeping t-shirts on two bookshelves (but I really need the shelf space back for actual books). Problem was, though, that despite the Tylenol lessening the pain, I still effectively had a dead left shoulder, so I couldn't actually LIFT the stuff. The other problem was that it looks like they only had one of the wardrobes in stock. Oren offered to go back with me tomorrow and help me lift stuff and also actually cart it home in his car, which is much larger than mine (which may also have been a problem), so hopefully we will do that and they won't be out of stock.

I drove to Oren's and we went to Mashiko for dinner! Wheeeeeeee Mashiko. This being my second time there, I ended up ordering the "Mashiko Bento", which says "shrimp and vegetable tempura, chef's choice of meat dishes, and sushi roll or sashimi". Well, in my idiocy and complete randomness I also ordered a Snowflake roll, which was a fried roll involving eel and avocado, rice and nori, and then fried in coconut flakes or something. It was really sweet and really tasty -- very different from what I'm used to in sushi rolls, but really good. The bento also ended up coming with tonkatsu, and some barbecue ribs, and some baked swordfish (I think), and tuna sashimi, salmon sashimi, octopus sashimi, and... a mussel. I really don't do shellfish so that just grossed me out. Oh, there was also some seafood salad that looked like salsa, which also tasted funny to me. Overall though, everything I had was absolutely delicious and wonderful, but it was just too much food and I ended up giving a bunch of it to Oren, who had wisely just gotten a sushi combo.

I think when Carl is in town, we have to go back to Mashiko and get the omakase -- I owe it to him for making me go to kaiseki at Chaya a few months back.

Afterwards we watched the final two episodes of 逮捕しちゃうぞ the live-action series, which really was pretty good. In the final episode, Tsujimoto and Kobayakawa are driving along and they see two guys having car trouble, and they stop to help them, but suddenly recognize them: "Oh my god, it's Motoki and Takahashi of the Giants!" And the funniest part is, it actually WAS Daisuke Motoki and Yoshinobu Takahashi... they fix their car for them and are all like "Okay, now you guys owe us tickets to opening day!" It was a totally random cameo and pretty funny.

Ok, I should sleep. In theory tomorrow will get new furniture. Hopefully won't wake up with dead left arm and back pain again.

Today, I went clothes shopping at Northgate. It did 120 hit points damage. Yes, that was after the savings throw. I did, however, get, um, three sweaters, three long-sleeve shirts, and two pairs of pants. Hopefully this will start to solve the problem of not really having winter stuff to wear to work. Oddly, I even got clothes that match. Whoa.

After that, I went to Oren's house and we watched the end of the Astros-Cards NLCS game, and the Chicago-Anaheim ALCS game, and a little South Park. The White Sox are, as I said a few months ago, going to the World Series this year. Yay! However, I'm beginning to wonder whether A. J. Pierzynski's real middle name isn't "Trouble", given that crazy calls follow him around.

I really like driving highway 99 late at night. It sort of feels like a driving videogame.

I've been blogging a lot, just not here. My life is boring, you know, but I get to pretend to be "Seattle's Bat-Girl" elsewhere. I don't have nearly enough sass or wit, though.

Monday I dragged Josh, Megan, and Ficus to the Mariners-Royals game so we could see Felix Hernandez kick butt. (As you can guess from the preceding post; I joked I'm writing a chapter after each of his starts.) Fun stuff. We hung out with some people from the local Mariners blogosphere at a bar beforehand. Jonah wore his Nippon Ham Fighters jersey. He's my hero. I was a little more outgoing this time. Whee.

Tuesday, Megan and I went to the gym to lift arm weights, and I walked home, and I did errands like food shopping, and I meant to go get a softball glove, but didn't make it in time. I wrote more story. Whee.

Wednesday, I meant to go shopping again, but didn't due to the 5 bus being like half an hour late, but I did go to the gym and played volleyball for two hours. I feel like I'm getting some of my old skills back... and I'll probly be pretty sore tomorrow :)

I've been logged into PP in the later evenings if anyone's been looking for me... though I think the apoth business will dry up again pretty soon. Arr.

I would have gotten up and gone running around the lake again today, except that when I left my place, it was raining, so instead I went to the gym and ran/walked on the treadmills there for a while. I figured out something fundamental, though:

Treadmills suck because you can pretty much get off the treadmill at any point and be right where you started, so there's nothing really compelling you to keep going other then augmenting the numbers.

Seriously -- if I start walking/jogging around the lake, I'm pretty much going 3 miles. That's all there is to it. But if I get on the treadmill I can just decide at any moment, "Eh, this sucks, I'm bored, I think I'll leave" and do so.

I spent the afternoon shopping with Megan and Heidi. Megan and I walked to a place near the lake called Title 9, which specializes in women's sportswear... which is all too expensive and too small for me. We had better luck at the mall with Heidi -- first I checked out some Eccos and other sandals at The Walking Company, and then we went around various other shops. In a moment of pique I bought a double-tank-top at Macy's (which I am assured looks cute on me, but which I have my doubts about), and then we ended up going down to REI, where we found a fitting room that all three of us could lounge around in and try stuff on, and I think I tried on like ninety pairs of pants. I found one pair I really liked, which has more pockets than I've ever seen in one pair of pants, and inadvertantly found a shirt, too, which I had just grabbed to try on with stuff, but which Megan said "That shirt! It's awesome! Buy it! Buy it NOW!"

Oh, I also found a stuffed animal, a duckling. I couldn't resist. You know how it is with me and ducks. The guy at the register quacked at me when ringing up the stuff I bought. He also helped me figure out that I'm apparently still in REI's member database, even though I hadn't been there in a really long time, so cool.

Came home. Went to Safeway. Got tortellini. Cooked tortellini. Called Nick. Goofed off on PP. I guess it's been a decent, semi-productive weekend.

Still not king.