dr4b: (tran iidx)
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.
dr4b: (squid and crossbones)
Monday, I had choir. We had a "website demo" as part of rehearsal. It was sorta dumb, but at least now I know that our concerts are December 9th and 10th. Whee. Also, Part 3 isn't as much fun as Part 2, although you can really hurt your throat singing all of chorus 53.

Went to the gym afterwards as usual, and lifting was fun. I upped my weights for cable row and cable press. I also did running for a bit. I ran for 3.5 minutes straight in between walking; my former best was 2.5 minutes. Go me.

I also learned that Oren was right -- he lent me a TV antenna, and suddenly, I can see red people! That is, the Cardinals. I saw about 20 minutes of the Astros-Cards game before going to choir, which means that I missed the awesome 9th inning - but isn't that what baseball fans live for, those moments? One strike away from the World Series, and suddenly Eckstein bloops a single... Edmonds walks... and Pujols hits a home run to somewhere in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri? Sigh. It's too perfect. I did write my latest "The Postseason" humor piece, this time making fun of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, eliminated by Chicago on Sunday. I guess whoever wins the NLCS is next up for the ridicule.

I get really sad these days because people keep asking me about various Japanese players.. not because they care, but because they are trying to think of who else they can speculate on the MLB teams signing next and making a huge profit off of. People go on for hours and hours about whether Daisuke Matsuzaka will get posted, or whether Kenji Johjima will decide to sign with an MLB team, and when I go "So what did you all think of the PL Playoffs? Hell of a 5th game there... talk about clutch, did you see Satozaki's 2-run RBI in the 8th?" the response is "What? Who's that? Lotte? Never heard of them, do they have any players we might want to sign here?" I'm worried there won't be any decent baseball players left by the time I get back to a game in Japan. I know it's not really true, but... I'm working on an essay comparing it to the downfall of the Negro Leagues, though I might be stretching a bit far there.

Anyway, today I was braindead, which sucked. I came home from work and played Puzzle Pirates, since it was Squid Pillage Night, although this week I renamed it "Barr Trek: Brig Space Nine". I'm actually pretty psyched for the Key West Parrrty, given the new housing arrangements that might be happening. It sounds like it could be really really really bloody fun, and maybe I won't even have to feel so bad if I can't come up with anything for the banner contest. It's sad, because I'm a fairly creative person (well, or at least *I* think I am), but I'm really drawing a blank on something I can actually *make* for this.

Katy came over for a bit in the evening and we chatted and I gave her a ton of my moving boxes. It's good because I get to help a friend AND get rid of some of the boxes, since they were taking up space that I didn't really have for them.

I've just sort of been relaxing the night away, which is to say, vegging out. Kevin Shiue's supposed to visit town for the second half of the week, so that'll be fun -- or at least it'll be an excuse to go out for sushi, which I have done surprisingly infrequently as of late, and hopefully an excuse to play cards, which I also haven't done at all lately.

February 2019

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