blodeuedd

Because it seems kind of pointless to pretend to myself that I'll be in bed at a reasonable hour...

I saw the last Harry Potter movie on Friday, and may I just say... Meh. It wasn't just me, either. I went with Kimberly, who's a big fan of the books and the movies, and she was just as underwhelmed as I was. Where was the emotion? Granted, I had pretty much cried myself out for the week, but I expected to at least feel marginally moved. I wasn't in the least.

(@Eda: Except for the pole-dancing scenes, of course, which were pure poetry in leather pants! XDDD)



Last night, Eda and I met up at Zepp Tokyo to see The Show That Was Cancelled Twice: ( U-KISS )



We finished rehearsal early tonight! Well, by early I mean, we finished rehearsal on time! Mostly I think because Inui-sensei wanted to bike home before it started raining again. Too bad, because he was really hitting his stride. "Smile! SU-MA-I-RU!" "I looks like you're sniffing your armpit!" "Waki! Wakiwakiwakiwaki. YOWAI!" "You're sniffing your armpit again!!!"

I've developed the ability to gauge the temperature in the studio before I even look at the display on the little A/C. At least, I can feel the difference between 29, 30 and 31 degrees. 29 is almost comfortable, 30 is hot, and 31 means my hair is so sweaty it looks like I just got caught in the rain.

Speaking of which, when I left home to catch the bus this morning I got completely soaked in the minute it takes me to walk to the bus stop. Not only was the rain coming down in sheets, the wind was such that the rain was coming at me nearly horizontally. By the time I reached the bus stop, my right side (as well as most of my left) was wet to the bone, so I just stood with my right side against the rain to at least try to keep my bag sort of dry. After a few minutes, my right foot was ankle-deep in water -- INSIDE MY RAINBOOT. Since I didn't want to spend the bus ride in a footbath, I wriggled out of the boot and emptied it, to the great amusement of the two other women waiting for the bus.

Luckily, because it's summer school and the pool is out, I had a change of clothes at work: a bikini, an old t-shirt and board shorts, which I quickly changed into because even my underwear was wet.

DISCLAIMER:

I'm tired from the week, and rather tipsy. You've been warned.

I'm getting to love Sayaka-sensei's classes more and more. Tonight I did pretty well, considering I'm pretty wiped out on Fridays, and my jumps felt effortless. *so happy* I had to prod myself to make it to the lesson, but as usual, once I was in the middle of it, it just felt so right and god, I love ballet. Even if I'm not very good at it, I don't care. It makes me feel beautiful and graceful for a little while, especially when I can ALMOST DO GLISSADES! AND ASSEMBLÉS!!! AFJKGJLFKDJ afjkl;fn!!! Victory was mine. *tears of accomplishment*

And then Sayaka-sensei, showing another woman how far she should be jumping, sent her flying across the studio with a well-timed assist in the middle of the jump. Let me tell you, the sight of a beautiful woman throwing another one around like that was pretty hot. *____* *fans self* Maybe she'll throw me around next time? :D~~~

Speaking of hot, one woman, who I'd never noticed in particular before, wore tight shorts over tights to class a couple of weeks ago. Normally, she wears yoga pants, and that's why I'd never noticed that her ass is amazing. Seriously, I couln't stop admiring it that class. I still can't stop, though she's since gone back to her regular attire. Damn, I feel like a pervert. XD;;;;;; *hides in shame*

In other ballet news, I still can't do the splits, but at least my flexibility is improving somewhat! I really need to be doing daily stretches, though. And figure out what the hell my other goals are re: my body. The trouble with developping the muscles in my legs is that the muscles highlight the areas that aren't muscle, so the jiggle looks worse than it did when my whole thighs jiggled. Also I don't think I should wear plaid tights anymore (not for ballet class, I mean regular tights) because the muscles make the lines look wonky. Oh, the tragedy that is my life! XD;;; Does anybody want a few pairs of plaid tights?

My groceries tonight: a carton of milk and a bottle of vodka. I are a classy broad. It's not my fault white Russians take twice as much vodka as crème de cacao! *drinking a very strong one right now, which is why I'm kind of giddy*

My appetite has been weird all week. My period is due... now, actually, so I hope my body will calm down within the next couple of days. Hear that, body? I've been giving you plenty of iron in the form of red meat. I've even started the iron pills early, and have been drinking no tea, just so you can absorb that wonderful Fe so you don't feel lethargic and listless and tired. *hinting like mad* Seriously, it's getting annoying. This week's excuse is hayfever, which I hope will pass. I hate feeling this fatigued, and if it isn't seasonal allergies, I don't know what it is. Bloh. Like I want to try getting more sleep to see if that will ameliorate the situation! :P

Before I jump on the bandwagon and start that 10-day, 10-thing meme, here are some questions from tayles. ( Five que-que-que-questions! )

That's enough, I'd better get to sleep before I'm tempted to make myself another drink. I need to be up at a decent hour tomorrow, after all.

Good night, everyone! ^_^

[Clearly I shouldn't be allowed to try to organise stuff when I'm super tired, because then I get the dates wrong. So! Here's the corrected version of the general invitation for dessert porn.]

It's that time again... the time when I get a hankering for delicious desserts. Well, actually, that time is pretty much all of the time, but this time I'm going to do something about it! So in two weeks, Hannah, Eda and I are going to indulge in hard core dessert porn at Miravile Impakt (take a gander here, though the menu might have changed by the time we get there). This is the place we went to that time and that time.

Who wants to join us on Sunday the 30th? Most likely we'll meet a bit before 6 at Yurakucho Station (it's just a block or two from there).

I'm going to go have the six course dessert menu. Third time and counting! I wish they had a stamp card, I would so be earning some free noms. :D If you think the prices seem a little steep, they are, compared to your average dessert place, but I assure you, for the quality, it's damn cheap. These are really, REALLY good.



I other news, tonight I went to my first ballet class since before the holidays. I'm seeing sore muscles in my near future! There were only thirteen of us there tonight, which surprised me, because it's usually closer to twenty, but it was nice having more space.

When I came in, Inui-sensei gave a little " うおッ！久しぶり！" but he was soon back to the usual: poking at my abs, trying to rearrange my rib cage, telling my to tighten my inner thighs and to relax my shoulders and arms. "リラックス。　リラックス！ RELAX!" all the while holding my head up to where he thought it should be while I tried to do the exercise. I missed you too, Inui-sensei. XDDD

My legs were a bit shaky by the end of class, and I was very sad that I didn't get the height I usually can during one exercise, which included some of my very favourite jumps: a cabriole followed by a jeté croisé and then an entrelacé into an assemblé tour and two faillis-assemblés. I hope we do that one again next week and that I can do it better!

Hotpot has got to be one of the best foods in existence. For one thing, it's delicious. But even better than that, it lasts and lasts! Here I am having my sixth meal from the batch Eda and I had on Saturday -- though technically, it was two hotpots, since we had Sichuan and satay, so there was plenty of leftover broth, but I haven't yet had to add any water. Best of all, though, is that it's so easy. Get home, turn on the gas, wait for the pot to heat up, and add whatever I want to eat. So far I've had in it, at various times and in various combinations: tofu, mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, beef balls, fish balls, shrimp balls, pork, lamb, noodles, pea shoots, broccoli, Chinese broccoli, komatsu, and some other Chinese greens.

God, tofu is amazing. Whoever invented it deserves a medal.

I've determined that before the end of the year, I'll have "visited" more than 100 cities, according to Travelpod. At the moment, I'm at 94, but once I finish writing about B1's visit to Japan, that'll have added another three, and my trip to Provence will mean another five. Still only 16 countries, though! Technically, I've been in 24 different countries. However, Finland really doesn't count (two-hour layover), Belgium doesn't really either (I took a train through it, though I walked from one train station to another, which took half an hour, so at least I touched the ground?), and I was in the U.K. (London) for under 24 hours. Of the other countries, Switzerland will be included in not too long, I hope, and the others are from over seven years ago, so I may never get around to posting about them there. Although, I guess I could make another travelogue and just group them there. I can copy-paste from lj for my first trip to Europe and my trip to Vietnam, after all. *ponders*

Last night's ballet class was good but as usual, mostly getting the small jumps (which I normally suck at) meant that I totally failed at something I usually do okay on, in this case the bigger jumps. I'm sore today, but in a good way, like I can feel all my muscles. It's kind of disturbing that my reaction to this is, "Yes! Develop more muscles!" But I don't want to see them, I just want them to be there and allow me to do cool moves!

I put up my little Christmas tree last week, as well as Christmas lights in my window, and it makes me feel all warm and cozy. These days, I'm spending lots of time fantasizing about my trip back home, mostly about all the food I'm going to eat, and the snow. Snow... And cheese. I just had a brilliant idea, which is to take my family out to Meule et caquelon. They serve Swiss-style raclette, which is basically just heating up a huge block of cheese and drowning bread, potatoes, and whatever else you want in it. It's incredible. They also have regular cheese fondue, and other fondues, but who cares about those? It's all about the cheese.

It's not even nine and I feel like going to bed already. Bloh. *lame*

無事に終わりました!

Normal life may now resume.

The show went really well! Okay, so the back screen didn't go up when it should have for our number, and I messed up a couple of things, but my fouetté turns were ON! I think I was even in synch with the others! More importantly, I was spotting, and I mostly stayed in place, which is a victory, so who cares if I stumbled a bit on the landing. And I have no extension, and

Hah, I will, once I see the DVD. XD;;;

Thank you so much to those who came to see me (and those who wanted to but couldn't), and those who sent encouraging words. It really meant a lot to me. Somehow, ballet has always been something personal to me, because I never did it with friends (except for A-L, at first), so it's never been something I really share with people. I'm very touched that people came to see what I'd been working so hard for. And I even got flowers! <3

Quickly, before I turn in for the night, here are my daily memes.

( What they don't have back home... )

( What makes me feel better )

Tonight, I feel like the brave little tailor. Except instead of "Seven with one blow!" I've been chanting "Three doubles in a row!" to myself ever since I left ballet.

[flailing goes here]

As discouraged as I was the other day, today was much better. Thank you for the comments, they meant a lot to me. <3

I don't know if it was the iron pills I've started taking, or the large cup of coffee I had before ballet class, but I was on fire tonight. THREE PERFECT DOUBLE PIROUETTES IN A ROW!!! And then... THREE MORE (almost perfect ones) GOING LEFT! And then... THREE MORE NEARLY PERFECT ONES GOING RIGHT AGAIN! It was amazing. I was high up on demi-pointe, my back was straight, my arms were perfectly level, I was whipping my head around like nobody's business, and if I'd given myself a bit more momentum, I could probably have managed triple turns. I want to crush this feeling to chest and hold on to it forever and ever. *_______*

Class had already been going really well, because my arabesque got an "いいでしょう" from Inui-sensei (before he told me to stretch my leg out even more XD), and then he stayed by me during the rond de jambe exercise, poked at me a bit and adjusted my positions and told me I was doing well. *happy tears* And also rehearsal went well -- I thought he'd have more to say to me when he started correcting all of our turns, one at a time, but his main problem with mine was that I wasn't looking where I was supposed to. "How do you expect to go diagonally if you're looking in front?!" Of course, he was right, and it was much easier once I shifted my line of sight.

So if it was the large latte I had with dessert that is to be thanked for my non-suckitude tonight... Imagine if I'd had espresso! XDDD

My meme answers will be short and sweet tonight, because I need to get to bed. Rehearsal starts at 8:40 tomorrow night, so who knows at what time we'll finish?!

Wow, in a week, the show will be over. O_O

( Turning Japanese )

( My first kiss )

My ballet recital is on a national holiday, the 23rd of November. Tickets are Y1,000. It's at 6:00 (doors open at 5:30) in Kichijouji, though closer to Mitaka Station. Would you like to come? It's Carmina Burana! And there will be cardboard boxes! And imaginary flying takoyaki! (don't ask XDDD).

I have three unclaimed advance tickets at the moment. For extras, I have to wait until the 3rd for general sale, and the email I got said there might a lottery, I guess if there's too much demand (not quite sure about this, will have to check the website when they update!)

Anyway, let me know! First three replies will get my remaining tickets, and I'll try to get extras for anyone else, though I won't know for sure how many I can get until the 3rd. (Eda, yours is already put aside, so ignore this! ^_^)



Today I did NOTHING!

Sort of. Not Really. It was one of those days that turned out to be both more and less productive than I'd hoped.

Did: laundry, dishes, vacuumed, wrote a Travelpod entry, posted pictures to lj, studied Chinese, sewed a futon cover, put away summer clothes, took out more winter clothes, helped Kimberly with something for her online class, ate lots of Halloween candy, cuddled Tabitha.

That sounds like a lot, but I feel like I spent most of the day sitting around like a bump on a log.

Did Not Do: cook anything for my lunches this week, get my bike's brakes tightened, reschedule my doctor's appointment, schedule a laser appointment, schedule a hair appointment, take care of my nails, or finish the pair of socks I was knitting in Kagoshima.

Well, the socks only need their ends woven in, so I can take care of that right now. That'll be another sticker! :D And I really do need to trim my nails.

Ballet tonight didn't turn me into a blubbering mess of fail, go me! Though I kind of sucked during the class, rehearsal went well. Inui-sensei taped me up real good, so my wrist was okay. <3

There was more explanation about the cardboard boxes of fate:

"So then the dancers [people in the contemporary class, or one of the other ballet classes, I'm not sure] with the cardboard boxes are going to come up beside you and do their thing, and you have to walk around them and follow them, looking at them like, 'What the hell are you doing crashing my song with your cardboard box?' Then you take the box and go [insert choreography] and then walk in a line to this side of the stage, and sit down with your box, like, '私のダンボール,' "

My fail moment of the day (apart from the fact that I'd forgotten my ballet studio membership card at home, so came home after work to get it, then walked back into Kichijouji for my class, so I was really hot and sweaty by the time I got to the studio and my bright red face contrasting with my bright yellow hair had two different people asking me whether I'd gotten sunburned in China XD;;;) was this morning. After hitting snooze for over half an hour, I finally rolled off the futon and started my little morning routine. Do-do-doo, shower, do-do-doo, pat Tabitha, do-do-doo, get breakfast ready, hmm, check email -- wait, why are people wishing me happy -- OH RIGHT IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!

While it's true that I don't make a big deal about my birthday, it's never been this bad!

Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes, I felt warm and fuzzy and loved all day as they kept coming. *mushyraburabufeelings* I'll reply tomorrow, maybe in the morning if I wake up early enough.

The funniest message was from B1, who doesn't believe in exclamatory punctuation:

Happy birthday. May your day (and hopefully week) be filled with Capibara-san*.

I'm expecting many updates on Travelpod of your China trip. So far, it looks like it was muy bien.

(* When he visited me in 2008, he was struck by the number of game centre machines that had Capibara-sans as prizes. This has remained a joke between us, and I've given him at least a couple of Capibara-san souvenirs since then. XD)

B2 has so far not remembered my birthday, but I kind of expect that from him.

My mother sent me an e-card featuring a squirrel blowing stuff up. XDDD

It's gone 11:30 and I just got back from my first rehearsal for the dance recital, meaning I had a three-hour class instead of a two-hour one! *is dead tired*

Turns out there are five of us from the Tuesday class doing the dance, which is nice. (Smaller group = more teacher time for each of us!)

The music?

Carmina frickin' Burana!

:D :D :D

!!!

*is super super excited*

Off the top of my head, I can't imagine a more awesome piece to dance to.

On the other hand... there's going to be a lot of modern style dancing, which I've never done in my life. So far it's fun, I'm just afraid I'll look totally ridiculous, because my body has never been told to move that way before.

I don't want to be "the foreigner with no extension who sucks at modern"! DX

Inui-sensei's explanation of the theme involved cardboard boxes of fate (yeah, there will be boxes on stage) and punching through them and throwing them around and possibly wearing them? I'm not sure I fully understood that bit. XD

This is going to interesting...

It's becoming clearer and clearer that I fail at remembering anniversaries, so this one is nearly a week late: last Monday marked the date that I'd been living in this apartment for two years.

Two years! Incredible. You know how when you start something, or go through a change, and everything seems so new and fresh and the days ahead seem to stretch out forever? Then, suddenly, you've blinked and it's two years later and you can't imagine how you initially thought, "Well, I have two years here, then who knows?" because you're so comfortable and why on earth would you want to change anything now? You're just getting started!



Friday night, I was in bed by 11:30 and slept until 9, I was so exhausted. Sometime between yesterday morning's brief awakenings and further bouts of sleep, I dreamt that I had signed up for a ballet competition, but I couldn't find the venue. Once I found it, I couldn't find the dressing room and kept walking into the auditorium by mistake. When I finally found the dressing room, I realised I had no idea of when I was supposed to perform, and the weird way the order of the performances was listed on the wall wasn't helping. Oh, and also it turned out that I had signed up not for one dance, but two! Then I couldn't find my costumes. And I had no idea what music I was dancing to, and I'd forgotten all the steps.

Gee, you think I might have been stressed about something? XD

Actually, it's post-traumatic stress of sorts, after a crazy week at work. I tend to sublimate immediate stress so that I can function, and my body reacts by either developing a cold sore or storing it up and releasing it after the event, so that after Friday's ballet class, I was nothing but a little blob of spent muscles and liquified brains.



The reason work was so crazy was that we had Culture Day on Friday. The parents were invited, and each kid had to dress in the traditional outfit of the country of their (read: their mother's) choice, and bring some sort of food from that country. We had the kids sing a song in four languages (Tagalog, Spanish, French, and English), and presented a dance performance. We had a ballet troupe (I led that, of course, and had made their costumes), a hip hop crew and a hula group. OMG the kids were so adorable! Some of the mothers really put a lot of efforts into the costumes, and the food was great. We'd told the kids, who had brought their lunch as usual, that they had to try the special foods before their could open their lunch boxes. I was so proud that only one out of ten kids was even interested in her bento! It helped that the mothers had chosen to make things that kids would like, but it wasn't all desserts. The Swiss rösti was extremely popular, as were the Korean sweets and the French bread with cheese.



I really like Friday's ballet teacher. She's kind of like a female version of Inui-sensei, but I need to find a good nickname for her; it seems disrespectful to think of her as Perfect Ass-sensei, no? Anyway, she's not so much hands-on, but she's really precise in her corrections and pinpoints exactly what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it, so that it feels like a revelation. "Ooooooh! That's why my position looked off! :O" The only trouble I have is that she sometimes uses imagery in her explanations that I have trouble following. Friday, she resorted to English (her English is quite good) when I wasn't understanding why she was holding her hand out while saying something about my fingers. I do appreciate that she asked me if it was okay to use English, because I'd told her during my first lesson with her that I was fine with just Japanese.

The windows in the studio were open, and near the end of the class, a wasp flew in. At first it hovered around the lights, then started inspecting us. It landed in my hair, and I brushed it away, but it came back.

"Wasps like bright/light-coloured things, don't they?" someone said. The wasp, grown tired of my rebuffs, flew over to the only grey-haired woman in the room. Then, somebody had the idea to turn off all the lights and open the door to the hallway; the wasp flew right out.



It seems unfair that breasts as small as mine are should become this sore when my period is about to start. Or maybe because they're small, the swelling is proportionally more severe, thus more painful? Bloh.

My period has been doing its usual thing again, i.e. timing itself to come at the most inconvenient times. I'm pretty lucky in that I don't get severe cramps or anything, and I'm fairly regular, but it's nearly a given that whenever I travel, I'll have my period. Last year, it happened a whole three days early, right in the middle of my Hawaiian vacation; it started on the night Emily and I left for our Great Train Adventure; it started the day before I left for Europe this year; and guess what was happening over my weekend in Seoul?! Naturally, the timing for my trip to China is perfect, and I won't even need to be early or late for my period to coincide with my travels. Given that I haven't travelled for more than two weeks at a time in years, and my cycle is an even 28 to 29 days, this seems suspicious.



I was astonishingly productive yesterday, even though I didn't take a shower. I earned three stickers for my sewing page. THREE! :D I made myself privacy curtains -- I've always found that term funny, because hello, they're sheer! though I understand why they're called that -- for my bedroom window, and then another little curtain for my bedroom doorway using the same fabric, thus using up a whole sari. Do you know how long those things are? I think it was the very first sari I bought off Ebay, so that would have been back in... 2004, possibly 2003. Now the light coming into my room is pretty and green. <3

My third sticker was for finally finishing the curtains I started back in... before Christmas, I think. They just needed to be hemmed, but for some reason I'd thrown them aside in disgust (over my inability to measure stuff properly and cut in a straight line, most likely) and hadn't touched them since. They're woefully out of season now, though, because when I think summer in Tokyo, bare trees are not the first things that come to mind. But at least they're something! It turns out the way to get myself to make curtains is to wash the only ones I have, so that I'm forced to put up something before it gets dark and I want to change my clothes.

Tabitha did her usual thing. Because she wouldn't be a true cat if, faced with nearly 2m of fabric laid out on the floor, she didn't sit right in the middle of the six inches I was trying to cut off.



When the weather gets hot, my vacuum cleaner has this annoying habit of overheating and shutting off, then taking at least a quarter of an hour to cool down enough to start working again. Last weekend, this happened after I'd only vacuumed half a room, which is bad even by Ion-kun standards, so I was worried. I emptied it, left to cool down for over half an hour, then tried plugging it in again. Nothing, not even the green "I'm plugged in!" light. Uh oh. Hoping I wouldn't need to try to get it fixed, or buy a replacement, I did other stuff for another half hour, then tried again. Still no green light! Sighing in frustration, I looked up at my ironing board and noticed that though the vacuum didn't seem to have any power, the iron was plugged in and working fine. XD;;;

Yesterday, I managed to vacuum the whole apartment in only three "sessions", which is much better than I'd expected. Not that it did much good, because Tabitha made sure there was fur over everything again before the day was half done. But it was nice while it lasted!

* * *

Today I hope to be just as productive. I've already studied for an hour (sticker! yeah!) and written this long post; next, I've got a Travelpod post to finish (the last of Team Okinawa's adventure down south). Afterward, I need to shower (definitely!), then decide what I'll do with the rest of my day.

Have a good Sunday, people! *kisses*