river deep, mountain high

Behold the oven hell of Beppu! Well, not the hell, itself, but the fabulously tacky sculpture near it.



Man, that trip feels like ages ago, even though it was just about a week and a half ago. Beyond getting up and going to work and leaving work, time's been pretty fuzzy lately. I go to bed when I'm sleepy and I wake up when the body's ready which is, usually, around about when the alarm would go off anyhow. Days feel a bit better without the alarm waking me up, though, and I feel a little better getting to sleep earlier.

Tonight, though, I might be up for a bit. I've been pretty beat all day - not sure why since I slept a full 8 hours without waking up in the middle - but I said I'm always available and I don't intend to turn off my phone when someone needs me to have it on.

It took me a long time to figure out the whole "listening" thing. It took me even longer to figure out that it wasn't my job to fix people. I listen, I answer questions directed at me - not questions directed at the Universe - and I stay honest when asked for my opinion. But I do remember, because that's part of listening, I think. When someone is sharing their pain with you, they're offering you a very special kind of trust, a piece of their life history that few, if anyone else, will ever hear about.

Yeah, it's kind of awkward, listening to someone in a way that feels like eavesdropping on a conversation with a personal diety, but I'm always amazed that people have that kind of trust in them, enough trust to let someone else be present for such a conversation.

I'm sleepy, so I think I'm rambling, but that's about the gist of what's cycling through my brain as I fumble toward sleep.

A glass of water, then to bed....

rainy cloudy fine today

 

This is where we first encountered the Beppu Hillbillies. Defying the "Do not touch, the water is 90 degrees!" sign, the idiots proceeded to test the water temperature. This is our species at its finest, folks.



I spent time with someone I don't normally spend time with today. The situation was very...not good, and I'm not quite sure how I should be reacting. I'm not necessarily a good people person, even though I always seem to be go-to girl during moments of personal crisis.

My solution was to cook him dinner - meat and vegetable stir fry - and watch anime. He'd never really watched anime before and told me to put something on. I wanted to show him Bebop, but my tape decided to not work, and he saw Rayearth while I was futzing with the VCR, so Rayearth it was. I'm not sure what he thought of it, but it seemed good and mindless and he got some things off his chest while he watched, so hopefully I was helpful overall this evening.

We'll see, I suppose.

Tuesday's almost over. It seems like, somehow, that's a giant hurdle, as if everything is downhill now that I've made it this far in the week. How strange.

no man an island

As I'm dealing with an issue, I'm struck by how my primary instinct is to network through it.

Person A has a problem and needs company. I immediately call Person A's closest friend to verify the situation and to see if any assitance can be given. Then I make plans to directly assist, contacting one of my closest friends for DVD and such to use as entertainment/distractions. Then I speak to someone at work who went through a similar problem to make sure I'm not approaching the situation incorrectly and inadvertantly doing more harm than good.

All this chatting and checking was automatic. Kind of strange, how we rely on people without even thinking about it, how our methods of opperation assume a community functionality.

Just a thought for the day.

Still in love with 土屋礼央

Behold the Glory of Beppu's ocean hell, so named because of the pretty blue water.

Today wasn't too shabby...considering it's only 3:30 or thereabouts.

I got up at 5 and got to work at 6:30, which let me leave half an hour early. Woohoo!

Mostly, I just did data entry all day. Hour after hour of data entry. So much data entry.

Still, there are worse jobs in the world. Or I could be unemployed and starving. I also didn't have to talk to anyone today so that, in and of itself, rates the day pretty high up the tolerance meter. It was a long one, though, and I'm glad it's over.

And, as the title says, I still love RAG FAIR and 土屋礼央 (Tsuchiya Reo, lead tenor of said band) with all my heart.

Just needed to mention that.

Billy's Bootcamp is the Devil

Somehow the evil of work continues to follow me. Not only did Kujirai post about the bootcamp, but BB was on Cartoon KAT-TUN and Wasshi from *pnish* posted about it, too.

I will never escape. Never.

And to make things brighter, I get to go into the office tomorrow and deal with the evil that is GT Media's chargeback accounts. Over a thousand cases were on my desk when I got sick; I don't want to know how many came in in the meantime. Of course, Billy is my second problem with maybe a quarter of my caseload.

Still......

In other news, the museum was fun, though queueing for the Titanic exhibit for an hour wasn't that thrilling and the IMAX presentation was a bit lackluster. I miss the L.A. Museum's dome IMAX. It just isn't the same without the surround-view experience.

Time for a nice relaxing bath and sleep so I can face work in the morning.

Sunday.....

Today's photo begins our Hells of Beppu series here on ye ol' blog. See the pretty mud bubble and form rings! Witness my camera's movement capture setting in action!

Actually, my camera's batteries were dying so I didn't get too many pictures of the Hells. Leigh got some good ones, though, and hopefully a nice one of the Beppu Hillbillies.

At any rate, today didn't start off too badly, but it quickly got a bit nasty.

The resident in 223 below me, who swears to the apartment manager that she doesn't have a stereo, was blasting music again. No stereo my ass. I banged on her window and she stopped though, in hindsight, I should have just called Janet and let her hear it. Resident in 223 is really pissing me off.

Also, it's apparantly that three days of the month, which means I'm in pain and cranky, even if things are going well. At least my cold is almost gone.

Today, I'm due at Val's at 11 so a few of us can go down to the Titanic exhibit at the Denver Nat. Hist. Museum. It should be a pretty snazzy exhibit, or at least everyone's saying it's snazzy. I've never been to the DNHM , so I'm looking forward to it.

Here's hoping the day turns itself around a bit.

Still some Saturday left

Today's picture brought to you by the lovely region of Kyuushu. I think this is Dazaifu, but I'm shaky with names. Leigh would know because she knows all, which is handy sometimes, yeah? I was really jazzed to see turtles swimming around because I'd never seen turtles "in the wild" before. I certainly hadn't seen so many in one place, attacking a giant frog statue. Go turtles, go!

But on to business.

I woke up at 5am today after going to bed at 2:30pm yesterday.

Yay infirmity! ヽ(ﾟ◇ﾟ )ﾉ

I managed to get a lot done, though, including laundry and cleaning and trash taking out. I also went down to the Pancake House in Boulder with Val because I was craving quality breakfast, namely their pancakes of utter deliciousness. Thank you, Stacy, for introducing me to that place.

Now, after some sentai watching at Val's and meeting her new cat, Sen, I'm ready to relax at home with my jiggly feline and snort away the last of this illness.

September's issue of Potato came yesterday and it has way too much Juniors content in it for me to feel comfortable. Also, it had タッキー&翼　with not nearly enough 翼 to make me happy. But seriously, half the mag was on the Juniors, probably because of the Hey!Say!7 single that released a bit ago.

But anyhow, the day has been good and there's still no cat vomit in my house, so I'm calling today a success, even though it's only 3pm.

Sick Day

The picture above is from the lotus garden at Shittennouji temple in Osaka. Despite the killer bugs that bit me there, it was a really beautiful temple.


So I woke up feeling hideous, called in, and am now at home, feeling hideous. My plan is to drink tea, read comics, and rest so I can hopefully go in tomorrow and combat the paperwork again.

Last night, Val and I went to see the Little Mermaid musical, and it was fantastic. Everyone was on those rolly shoes to make it look like they were gliding through the water. And there was much wire-fu and fabulousness. I am looking forward to their more finished product at the end of the month.

I'm off for showering and napping now.

Quickly, before collapsing

Okay, I give. There is some sort of sicknes wending its way through my sinuses. Nothing horrible, but coupled with the jetlag that is still bugging me, it's made me useless.

。・ﾟﾟ･(≧д≦)･ﾟﾟ･｡

I left work at noon and headed home, drew up a bath, made a snack, and now I'm going to have a soak and a nap so I don't snort and snuffle through the musical tonight. I'm sure sleep will make everything better.

The picture above is okonomiyaki that Leigh and I had at a nice shop down the street from her apartment.

It was...soooooooo good. (☆｡☆)

I have such good memories of that meal.

Off to bath and bed!

Why Am I Not Asleep Yet?

It's nearly midnight and I can't sleep because my throat is sore sore sore.

But I'm on to you, microbes. I have a stash of Sucrets from my last illness and will buy some Emergen C at the store after work.

I will not get sick! ヾ(▼ﾍ▼；)

Tomorrow night is our first round of The Little Mermaid production. I look forward to it muchly and will not be ill and coughing and woozy for it. I refuse! Fight antibodies! Fight!

＼(゜□゜)／