September 16th through 25th in 2015

Nothing of much note happened on the 15th. Nothing much to report, at any rate. I walked some, I cleaned some, I didn’t get a great deal accomplished, but it wasn’t a total waste. Wednesday the 16th began rather inauspiciously. I found that my new, very expensive, LG Bluetooth headphones were broken. That was . . . great. I also probably wrecked them even moreso trying to fix them. So, yeah, money down the terlet. That’s always something I love. It also means that if they are under warrantee, unlikely, I’ll be weeks without them. If they aren’t, then I’m up a creek. I hope mum figures it out. I feel annoyed and childish delegating stuff to her, but I frankly can’t do a lot of stuff in the states when I’m not there. Also, she and dad are the names on the account. Also, she can talk just about anybody into just about anything. Seriously. Makes no sense. Anyway, after that, Wednesday was nice enough. I got to teach three classes with Inori Sensei. I don’t know if I got better or if the classes did, but each one was better than the last. I gave away my first American flag fan that day because a girl had amazing pronunciation. I like that the teachers are letting me do pronunciation work. I think that they’re seeing/hearing results. Really, it’s the most useful thing for me to be doing at this point. I’ve impressed them by getting kids able to do th and l sounds pretty easily. At least, the ones who want to say them. Matsumoto Sensei was absent, which disappointed, obviously, but somehow or other there was still a lesson plan from her on my desk. She’s dedicated.
After that, I went home and changed my clothes. Inori Sensei wanted me to help a student after school, but my schedule was tight with the Eikaiwa at 6. I walked to a ramen place only to discover that it was closed, so I ended up going to a place that only sold fried food. It was a delicious mistake. I’m reminded more and more every morning that I’ve simply got to lose weight. Well, nothing to be done about it than to just do it. It’s back to sushi and salad for dinner. Hopefully that’ll do it. I should also probably cut down on my breakfast? But I don’t think it’s terribly unhealthy. 2 small mikan, a banana, yogurt, and cereal. Still, that’s a lot of sugar. Why is fruit tasty? Also, why is it impossible to get enough potassium? I mean, seriously. It can’t be done. Maybe I should figure out how to use my mini stove and make a lot of baked potatoes. Well, anyway, I got caught in the rain while out, it’s rainy again, of course, and I ended up getting soaked on the way to Eikaiwa. However, making up for it, a student had a cocktail shaker to give me as a present! Used, of course, but I’m sure that it’s sterile. Alcohol and all that. The class went well. I was informed, well, I asked really, that I have tennis tonight and tea ceremony on Saturday. So, that’s two nights of stuff. I kind of want to skip out on tennis because I do have things around the house to do, but I also need to get out more and do more things. I really would be an idiot to not go to tennis. So, I suppose I’ll go.
This morning I received notice that Simona got the letter I sent her. I’ve got one made up for Fraulein Russell, who apparently lives in Tennessee now, for whatever reason. I was hoping to send it today, but I ran out of time to seal the envelope. See, I work at Hirakawa elementary today, but I’m not entirely sure when. Or, rather, wasn’t until I’d gotten to the BOE, so I needed to get to the BOE early enough so that if I were needed at eight thirty, I could have obliged. Turns out I’m not needed until 11:25, and I could have sealed the letter. Well, let’s see if there’s enough time to drive from the BOE home, then off to the post office. I think maybe Lauren Andree gets one next? Seems appropriate. She’s been expecting one for the last five years or so.
The weather looks beautifulfrom out half of the windows and foul from the other half. I’m guessing we’re situated right on a front? I love the misty clouds in the mornings, but I’m ready for some decent weather. Mostly, I just don’t like that, once wet, everything pretty well stays wet. Still, this morning, I was amazed by something.
On my walk, I was heading towards Nafco, when I was struck. It looked like there was an ocean out in the distance! But it wasn’t like any ocean that could be. It looked just like one, but it was up from where I was. I felt, for a moment, like I was on some giant ringed spaceship, watching gravity hold something up relative to me. It was, of course, just the beautiful play between the clouds and mountains, but it was almost disorienting. It got me thinking about space colonies, as I do far too often, and Gundam.
I find myself pondering far too much about “What would I do if I could relive my life starting at X point”. It’s not healthy. I think that as a thought exercise it’s good, but I tend to put too much importance in it and I tend to get sucked in. I think that, as I’m older, I wish I had paid more attention to Amanda’s belief that we should regret nothing. Maybe I’m idealizing her, maybe I’m misinterpreting what she said, but it seems that a lot of her 19-20 year old philosophy is where I’d like to be. Not all of it. A lot of it was young and dumb, and a lot of the no regrets came from being rich and pretty without a sense of shame. Still, there’s something to be said for that.
I find myself idealizing her a little bit, and I’m trying to stop myself. I need to fill more time. I’ve decided that, right now, what I need is as little thinking as I can manage. More doing. Doing anything. Thinking is a bad idea until I’m in decent shape for it. Right now, I’m something of a mess, though not a terrible one. Let’s get things moving, let’s not muck anything up. There’s nothing I’m thinking about that’s particularly useful or helpful. It’s just an obsessive and macabre focus on what was and what could have been and what I feel, at the moment, ought to have been. It’s of no real value to me because it’s all a manifestation of my current dissatisfaction. It’s not me growing, it’s just me wallowing in nostalgia and regret. That’s no way to live.
Well, the superindenent even mentioned, this morning, that I’m pretty fat. Really need to get this under control. Gotta get serious. Gotta go to stupid tennis.

September 24th. Well, it’s been a week since I last updated this. Let’s see what happened.
Thursday I went to Hirakawa elementary. To make matters lovely, of course, my Ukulele broke. That was . . . exactly what I needed. I left it in the car when I went up to the BOE, and I’m guessing the glue just melted that held the string plate (whatever it’s called) onto the body. Well, I had nominal fun there. The classes were nice. I was drafted into the dance practice for the sports festival during the lunch/recess. The class was really fun. I wish, I really wish, that I’d had my ukulele. I did, in fact, go to Tennis. It was rather dull as we had to play indoors and only had one court and . . . nine players? So, things were slow and boring. Also, I was NOT feeling it. Still, the endorphins were nice, once they started flowing.
Friday, I had three classes with Matsumoto Sensei. They were really fun. We watched kids do skits, and we graded their English. I suppose that “skit” is a bit generous. They had a set dialogue in their books that they were allowed to modify slightly. Still, it was pretty fun. Reminded me of rising Stars. Well, maybe brain damaged Knapsack. I also probably went drinking on Friday. Wait, no, if memory serves I went out to go drinking at that bar where unwed-mother-chan works, but I decided not to as it looked kinda’ really sketchy. So, I contented myself with a long walk. Saturday was a waste. I don’t even remember what I did. Probably nothing. I accomplished almost nothing this weekend. Sunday I believe that I finally did go to that bar. There was one night, Friday or Saturday, when I went to my semi usual place. On Monday, I believe, Sam and I went to Kagoshima city. The only thing of not that happened was that I dropped my Uke off to get it fixed. It’s costing me as much to fix it as it cost me to buy it up front. However, seeing as the cheapest concert uke I saw was 3X the repair price . . . it seemed like the best bet.
Tuesday I did nothing. Seriously. Depressingly nothing.
Wednesday I did get about half of the cleaning done that I’d hoped to. I also bought some (yet to be assembled) shelving to help me to keep everything organized.
Oh, I forgot, I got into two new webcomics and read through the entirety of one and most of the other. I finished Goblins, and I’m into Empire on Darths and Droids. I should try to write more in here later, but I wanted to get the bare bones down. Now, I’ve got work to do.
Oh, I think that I forgot to mention: Sunday was sports festival at Shiraogawa, Tomarino, and Hirakawa. I went to all three briefly. At one, a little kid asked me if I were Japanese. I told him I wasn’t. Then he asked me if I was half. This amused me to no end.
I also killed a giant spider. Well, giant is relative. Anyway, it was big and would have gotten bigger. It forced me to tear my kitchen apart. That’s largely what inspired me to actually start cleaning on Wednesday. I’m terrified of spiders. If keeping my place clean is the only option, so help me, I suppose that I must.
It’s Friday morning, and so far all is well. I’ve barely slept in two nights for reasons unclear. I can’t get comfortable and my brain is too active. Not a good mix. However, I think that I’ve got a good two week plan back in order. Back when I lost all that weight the summer before last, I came up with a two week exercise plan, and I’d keep to it for two weeks, then add. Well, here’s the plan: 3 miles in the morning, fifteen minutes of yoga after, and 3 miles at night with fifteen or thirty minutes of yoga after. The goal is to get to the point where I can do those cool exercises that I have in the book. I think the reason that everything hurt before was that I was not limber enough. Also too fat. Well, here we go. We’ll do two weeks at 6 miles a day and 30 min of yoga, then we’ll go up from there. Also, that’s 6 miles of walking, not counting general movement during the day. Yesterday I was nearly ten due to the classes I taught.
I got out of work super late yesterday. Six instead of 4:30. I had to help grade papers. Well, really, I didn’t HAVE to. I also didn’t HAVE to help with that one girl’s pronunciation. But I want to be a man who knows giri.
For whatever reason, I find myself drawn to philosophy a bit lately. Maybe because I’m sick of history and literature is hard. Well, I’m enjoying the edition of Meditations that I’ve got. I’m learning that it’s generally worth it to pay money for the non public domain translations. At least, for initial readings when you’re not entirely sure what’s going on.
Beyond that, not a lot to say. Hope all is going well with Courtney. I could probably scrounge up more to write, but I’m tired.