I bought the bag

I know, I know, I said it was a goal bag, I did, and that was my intention. But the, on my way home from work the strap on my bag began to unravel, and that moved up the urgency rating from 'hmm, this is getting a little beat up, I should probably get a new one', to 'crap! this could break any day and leave me at the side of the road juggling all the piece of stuff I have to haul 20 minutes to home!'. So into the virtual shopping bag it went.

I know this sounds like an excuse, but there we go.

I wish I were ordering it because I had magically woken up this morning at 102, but sadly that's not the case. It will probably take a couple of weeks to arrive though, so maybe I could be by the time it gets here? Who knows, but I'll give it a shot.

For anyone who was admiring the bag, I got it from Etsy, there is a great bag designer called Janine King Designs. My last laptop bag (this one) was from her too, and I can't tell you how I've abused it the last couple of years. I carry it, overstuffed, to and from school every day. I've used it for hand luggage, I've used it for grocery haulage, this bag has paid it's dues and held up well. She has some awesome patterns and I highly recommend her. It's a little pricey, but definitely worth it in my humble opinion.

Tomorrow I'm off to Nagoya, I'm having lunch at Hard Rock Cafe and can't find their nutritional info anywhere. I'm beginning to think I'm better of just going and enjoying myself, rather than worrying about it. It would be, well, not niceper se, but informative at least, but I don;t think ti will hold any good news for me. Does anyone know where I can find the info for future reference? The usual calorie places don't seem to be turning it up.

Day off

I took the day of work today. I had no classes (and won't have any until after the exam finishes in a couple of weeks) and wanted more sleep this morning, so I texted my supervisor to tell her I was taking a vacation day and went back to bed. It was nice.

I failed in my initiative to only go to the supermarket once this week. I ran out of oatmeal and broccoli so I nipped to the store and grabbed a few things. I only spent 1300 yen though, so that was good at least. I also called my friend and canceled our plan to hit up Osaka so we could go to Ikea. I had gotten the impression she wasn't as keen to go as I was anyway, and after updating my bankbook (we don't get statements here, you have a book you update at the ATM that lists your transactions) and realised that with the bills still to come out I didn't have the money to fit it in without causing myself trouble. After thinking about it for a while I realised if it was going to cause me that amount of worry it wasn't worth it. We're going to try and squeeze it in on the 24th because my friend is visiting home for the summer and will leave on the 30th, and we also get paid on the 21st, so it would work out much better. I'm feeling much less stressed about things now, so I think it was the right decision.

My dad got a new kitten! Obviously I haven't seen it in person yet, but my sister got a few pictures of it so I can share:

The kitten, apparently, thinks it's a parrot and likes to sit on dad's shoulder:

And so a new month cometh. I updated my sidebar and exercised today, I seem to be getting into the swing of it again. I'm not so into it at the moment that I feel I can take a day off without losing it again, but it's not bad. I'm hoping that it will start making a difference to the scale soon, but I know from past experience that when I start biking again my weight usually sticks for a week or so before moving. I am saying now that July will be better than the June before it. My annual school medical is at the end if the month so I have something to look towards.

I feel pretty

I'm wearing a new dress to work today because it arrived last weekend and it was hot when I woke up (but is now just warm and the wind tells me it will rain, d'oh! Typical).

For those not in the know, my school work clothes have consisted of black trousers and a top (or jeans and a top if it's extra cold/I'm feeling lazy/I haven't done the laundry) basically since I got here two years ago. So, to show up in a dress, even a dress with leggings under it, is apparently a big deal. The JTE I worked with today has said repeatedly how gorgeous I look (her words, sometimes usage of certain words don't quite translate so she says 'that necklace adds a gorgeousness to your outfit, but it gets the point across), and apparently it's a topic of conversation among the staff as a Japanese teacher who doesn't speak English said to my JTE that everyone thinks I look good. One one hand it's awesome to get so many compliments, on the other it's mildly creepy that they've been discussing me.

The dress is a really nice blue that would go very well with a certain orange bag. I'm just saying.

Sadly my quest for the bag is going backwards because it turns out the 103.8 was just a dip caused by the end of my monthly visit, so it looks like it's the bike for me when I get home. I'm thinking some Doctor Who while I work, now that the DVD player is up and running again.

I covet thee

I really want to buy this bag, but I've been watching my money and with me buying a new DVD player after mine broke a couple of weeks ago, I really don't have any 'fun' money going spare right now. I've nearly convinced myself to buy it a dozen times in the last few days because my laptop bag is wearing out and I need a replacement, but the truth is that I can get a much cheaper bag to serve my purposes if my old one breaks so it was really just an excuse. So, I've decided that I'm going to save it until I see a new number on the scale, than buy it as a reward.

I celebrated the arrival of my new DVD player yesterday by getting on my bike for the first time in a good 11 days. With the old player acting up for a week or so before it's final demise I couldn't really use it, so I got bored very easily and stopped exercising. A flimsy excuse at best but it was enough. I continued my exercise today, and my food have been going very well. I'm hoping to keep the biking up, even if it's only for short jaunts.

Lunch yesterday ended in far more calories than I hoped for, but I ended the day on track, so I'm calling it a success. I had to get some medical things while in town (contact lens fluid, eye-drops, allergy tablets) so I ended up spending more than I would like too, but then today I went for my big shop and managed plan my list so that I could get everything I needed with the money in my purse, rather than hitting up the ATM again. Given that originally I was going to spend less in town so I could spend more on groceries, I count that as them canceling each other out, so I'm doing fine.

Today I weighed in at 103.8kg. It's possible that that number is a little lower than it should be as it is my first day after my period has ended, we'll see. My lowest number so far as been 102.2kg, so getting to 102 or lower is my goal to get the bag.

Here we go.

Saturday WI

Wow, that was a busy week. I've still got a couple of things to do, like recording the listening test dialogues, but I'm definitely on the home stretch.

Food had gone really well this week, especially considering that in the middle of the spider hunting I spoke about in my last post I started my period, so things could have gone really wrong. This morning I was 104.4kg, so I'm going in the right direction at least. I'm not sure what I was last Saturday, but I know the highest I saw on the scale recently has been 106.6!

I need to do my big shop at some point (I'm trying to plan enough that I just end up going to the supermarket once a week. I managed it this week so I feel really good about that), but my friend has invited me out to lunch, so I'm waiting for her. I think we're hitting Coco's for lunch, which is good because it's a family style restaurant so it prints calories/fat grams on the menu. Hopefully it will help me out.

Ugh

So, at 3am this morning a big spider crawled extremely close to my head. It stopped at eye level (either to stare me down, or to say 'hey, check me out, you're not dreaming!'), then chose a small area to scurry around just to freak me out by how fast it could move. Being the sensible, self-sufficient, independent 26 year old I am, I screamed and ran into the other room with my blankets and pillows to barricade myself into the living room.

A few minutes later I ventured forth with a can a spider killer that did nothing! Except make the spider move around faster to scare me off, and change it's location to the curtain so I had nothing solid behind it with which to aid squishing. I am now convinced that all the cans of bug killer are actually compressed air to get whatever beastie you're having a show down with to move, rather than die. I'd greatly prefer the latter idea.

It ended with a stalemate. I didn't want to shake out the curtains lest the spider jump at me (something, I was extremely freaked out to witness, they can actually do here. No fair having spiders with super-speed and jumping powers Japan!), so it remained unkilled. I spent the remainder of the night on the couch, the bedroom curtains just brush my mattress so I wasn't going to risk a rude awakening. At this point it was around 4am and the adrenaline (Fight or Flight? FLIGHT! ALWAYS FLIGHT!) kept me from getting much more sleep. I have to go back home after school with the knowledge that it is lying in wait somewhere for me.

One piece of good news for the day though, a teacher has just told me that we're getting someone to fix the sound in the LL room, so we can actually use the headphones and other fancy tech stuff that has been useless since I arrived 2 years ago. The English JTEs have been waging a very quiet war against the principal because he wants to turn the LL room into a regular self study room. We have dozens of unused rooms he could do that to, but he says that we don't use the facilities so we should get rid of the only specialized language facilities we have. How's that for an argument? 'You don't use the (broken!) LL room tech, so therefore we shouldn't spend money fixing it/should get rid of it all together'! We politely remind him that were it fixed we could use it (I would love to have video clips in class, but without being able to hook up the sound my laptop speakers aren't up to it) and he says we don't use it so we shouldn't fix it. And so it continues.

We mounted a bit of a covert operation with one of the new school office workers who was on our side though, so he worked to get the budget approved by the Board of Education (they actually get the final say in this, it was just my principal wouldn't request it and they're very big on 'going through official procedure' here). The next war: Get AC installed in there, it's awful without it. But you have to pick your battles so I suppose that will be for the next budget maybe. Right now we're thinking of moving classroom for the worst summer months because it is so difficult to work in there, but we were being stubborn before because we didn't want to prove to the principal that we could make do with a regular classroom.

Ugh

It started out really wet this morning, with a crisp breeze blowing away the humidity and cooling off the day. However by the time lunch rolled around the rain had cleared away and the world was starting to heat up again.

I took my lunch to school so I had a decent meal then, but I after my walk home I just couldn't bear the thought of cooking, so I starting chucking things in a blender to see what I could come up with that would approximate a meal. I ended up with a portion of silken tofu, a spoonful of smooth peanut butter and a little honey, along with some milk. It was fine (better than expected) but would have been much nicer if I'd had a banana left in the house to toss in with it. If anyone out there wants an easy cool meal, then with the banana this would be close enough for me. I'm going to chop some veggies and have them with some salad dressing a little later (to balance up the nutrients), but I'm a little too full right now.

It would make a good breakfast I think as the tofu and peanut butter would keep you full. I think with the banana for sweetness you probably wouldn't need the honey, but that would depend on personal taste I suppose. The tofu gives the shake a nice rich, full texture that froths up a little and goes down smoothly.