January 23rd through 28th in 2016

Saturday the 23rd was a fairly dull day. The only thing that happened of note was my guitar lesson. And the blizzard.
I hadn’t been able to practice all week, due to feeling so ill, and was dreading my guitar lesson. It just seemed like a total waste, but, I went. Mostly because I wanted to tell my teacher that we needed to move our lessons to 2 PM on account of D&D. However, when I arrived, I was shocked at my playing. I felt good! It was suddenly like I was playing an instrument and not battling some hideous, monstrous, THING that refused to cooperate on some sort of hideous principles. He told me that it was a big moment for me. Kind of. It’s hard because we’re using broken Japanese, broken English, and a LOT of dictionaries and Google Translate. However, that was the general meaning, and it felt good. He’s a guitar teacher and a certified counselor. So, he kind of teaches guitar like I imagine a Jedi would. Can’t play something? Close your eyes and find the chords with your hands. Seriously. And it worked! Anyway, he’s awesome, and it was nice to improve.
Beyond that, Saturday was a dud until the blizzard started. According to Sam, according to one of his science teachers, we had a once-in-a-century blizzard in Satsuma. We had six to eight inches, I’d guess. Though I’m really REALLY bad at guessing that sort of thing. However, it was impressive. And beautiful! Sunday the roads were unusable. I don’t really remember if I did much of anything on Sunday besides taking something of a short walk and taking pictures. I couldn’t do a full walk on account of blizzard. I’d never lived in an area that had no means of snow removal before, at least, none where it had actually snowed. Anyway, I felt kind of crummy still, and I had no water proof clothing suitable for moving around in (namely no boots), so I didn’t build a snowman. I regret this. Oh well.
Monday was another waste of a day. No school. So, I called in a personal day because otherwise I’d be sitting at the BOE all day. I didn’t realize just how generous the JET days off program was, so I’m using more of them. I stayed within calorie limits, but I didn’t do much, and I accomplished even less. I hadn’t been able to shower because my hot water (though not cold) ceased to function during the storm. So, on Monday night, filthy and smelly, I boiled a bunch of water on my stove and in my electric tea maker, poured it into my bath tub, and filled various bottles with more hot water. I then flopped around in the tub like a dying fish, lathered up, shampooed, and dumped the now lukewarm bottles over myself. It was not my classiest of moments.
Tuesday I got up, went to Miyachu, and then came home. See, the pipes had frozen. The toilets didn’t work and they couldn’t hold class. So, I went home. It was another dull waste of a day. I should have cleaned everything, but I didn’t. I did, however, go on a real walk, and I listened to the first three chapters of Harry Potter as per a decade of Courtney nagging. I’m liking it more than I thought that I would, but I’m convinced that I’d have hated it as a kid unless I’d personally discovered it, or, unless it’d been given to me by somebody very dear. I was too Kylo Ren in my obsession with being SUPER SERIOUS YOU GUYS to appreciate something like it. Well, the first book is better than expected. I keep getting ideas for stuff I’d like to write which distracts me. It’d odd, I’m not writing, but more and more these days, I feel like writing, and that’s something that’s become odd in and of itself.
Wednesday I taught at Kukino. The entire school is three girls, which I believe I mention about once or twice a month. It was really fun. Three girls is too small of a class to really be effective, especially when it’s a mixed grade class. Still, it’s sad to see the school close. The kerosene heaters made everything smell so sweet.
At Kukino, I teach two classes to the girls, because . . . no idea. Other schools only have one class, and I teach it and leave, but for whatever reason at Kukino I teach two classes, which I rather like. It’s more fun, and we can reinforce more, and it doesn’t seem like a long commute for nothing. Which is really nice. Anyway, I digress. I came back to the BOE with tons of time to spare, and I, shockingly, used it productively! Courtney got me on Habitica, and I’ve been behind on everything, largely due to health, and the thing that was the biggest problem for Habitica (and, one supposes, for real life) were my Anki Cards. I use Anki Droid, a cell phone flashcard program designed as a study aid. After you demonstrate that you know words, they go on the back burner and you don’t review them for a while. This means that, provided you use every day, you never have a ton of work to do at any given time. However, miss a week, and all of your back cards come up. I had to go through nearly a thousand cards in order to clear the decks. Thankfully, I finished most of it in the two hours between coming back from Kukino and leaving the BOE.
After that, I came home and my hot water was working. Set about attempting to do laundry, which I mangled, badly, because I had so much to do that I overloaded my washer. That meant that I was late to Eikaiwa. Only two students showed up, and one had to leave early. There was, however, the new student there. She’s 29 and relatively cute. Sam suspects that she’s there as a plant. I told him that he can have dibs. If she and I were both 22, I’d say, sure, let’s go for it. 29 . . . that’s different.
As an aside, I’m not opposed, in theory, to dating a girl my age, or even a few years older. The difficulty comes from that ticking biological clock. By the time they’re my age, or older, they hear it. Loudly. I, who have no immediate (and few distant) plans for marriage am a VERY bad idea for anybody who’s looking to settle down, and, in Japan anyway, most single women who are 29 are either looking to settle down, or are looking for the last man in the area that they haven’t settled down with for the night. A light, casual, friendly, noncommittal but full of potential relationship would be my thing. One is not likely to find that in a country where most women aim to be married before 25 (even though it doesn’t happen). Anyway, not dating for a while is good for me. I got distracted from weight loss in ‘14 by Amber. And a lot of other things. But those things were also mostly Amber related.
Well, somehow or other, I did manage to get laundry done. I played guitar while I waited for it, getting that off of the checklist. Then I went for a walk and listened to MORE Harry Potter (made better time, too). Like both more last night than the night before. Did more studying, and got to bed a bit later than I should have. Still, not terribly late, and I did get everything on the daily checklist accomplished.
Today promises to be insane, and this may end up being my only entry this week. I have to rush home, make up the card to give my tea sensei, then go to kimono sensei’s house and get put into a kimono. Then I’ve got to go and do my first ever full formal tea ceremony (meal included). I’m not sure if I’ll be able to accomplish all of my dailies today. There just isn’t enough time. Tomorrow, I’ve got a nomikai after work. That’ll be fun. Saturday morning is D&D, then guitar, then proofreading Woody’s stuff for college. After that, I need to find time to clean and get caught up on other house work. It’ll be warm enough I can move back into my bedroom from the couch. And it’ll be healthier, too. I think. It’s supposed to pour all day, though. Sunday is going to be sunny, so I hope to clean out my car, finish cleaning, and to do very, VERY little. It’s going to have been a crazy week.
Today I’m supposed to be teaching with Matsumoto Sensei. Thus far, all I’ve done is to grade three baskets of student notebooks. I don’t know if she realizes that I’m with her today. I want to get some studying done, so, when she goes to second period, I plan on taking a nice hallway walk, and studying, and then in third period, I’ll ask her if she needs me. To be honest, the chances are very low that she’ll need me today. ALTs are better when you’re ahead of schedule, and we just missed two days. A full 6 KM walk is just about out of the question for tonight, meaning I’ve got to do all of my other dailies. Or else Habitica will be mad at me. I won’t be terribly disappointed in myself as long as I reach my step total rather than adding the full walk, this is a serious schedule pileup that was unavoidable. Still, it’s annoying.
Well, here’s to a crazy weekend.