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Most of the time, I love sundaes!
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Rosie seems 100 times better than what she was a couple of weeks ago. She's pretty much back to her old self.
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She decided to sit on my lap for close to 2 hours on Friday. Half sleeping, and then just watching me and purring loudly. She's not normally a lap cat. I think the last time she was on my lap was 2 years ago on Halloween night. We weren't giving candy out to the kids, it was cold, and we were watching scary movies. Maybe she was cold and scared at the time? But, why wouldn't she be at other times? This time it was the day before my birthday, so maybe she somehow knew and that was her present? Or, maybe she knew we both had just gone through a lot...Either way, it was really nice.
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I had a really fun birthday on Saturday.
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Then, we went shopping. I wanted to go to Fuego, which is a cool kind of eclectic store at our local mall. I always seem to find interesting jewelry there. I got a pair of silver realistic looking octopus earrings, a pair of gold cobra earrings, and a seahorse necklace. After that, I noticed they were having a sale on slippers at Sears. My old ones were really ratty looking. I found some nice fluffy red ones. I'm not used to it being open in the back, but it might be easier to move in and out of. I think I can get used to it pretty quickly. After that, we went to a cafe at the mall and hung out for a bit. I got one of my fave drinks, chai.
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Saw the Martian in 3D after that. It was better than I expected, seemed more 'real', and I liked the attitude of the main character. Also, the 3D part of it made it really cool to see.
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Had a nice spaghetti dinner at home after that. Dad made the sauce from scratch, like she sometimes does. I had some of the nice Italian cookies we still had. They seem a lot better than the Belgian cookies we occasionally get from Costco. These were also from there, and were actually cheaper.
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I didn't have birthday cake that night, because it wasn't ready. We went to the local market to pick up a Black Forest cake Friday night, but they didn't have any. It's my fave cake. What's better than my fave fruit (cherries), chocolate, and whipped cream put together in cake form?
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On Sunday, when we went to pick it up, another person from the bakery pulled out a cake thinking it was for me. She said 'Happy birthday, Ashley!', but I told her that wasn't my name.
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I'm doing 25 sit-ups twice a day this week. I'm feeling it a bit more. It's a good feeling, though. I've gone back to really sticking to the way I want to eat again. The 1200-1600 calorie range, and that split into 5 meals. The closer to the 1200, the better. I don't ever want to go below 1200, unless it's for a medical thing. The only thing that's different this time is I'm trying to add more protein into the mix. If you limit your intake of things, you might have less nutrients, too. I already have problems with getting enough protein. Even the normal amount.
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I got that metabolites test back that I mentioned that I was waiting for last time. I'm a bit better with one of them, but still under what I should be. The other one doesn't look too good. I ended being about 4 times the amount I was last time they ran it. I was in mid-range back then. They say if it's higher than the range, there's a risk I might have liver damage. It's quite a bit out of range.
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I've come up with some more ideas for my cover art. Also, already in the process of putting my colored-in drawing onto the background. But, I might change the color of the background, and leave a tiny bit of what was the background color as in outline of the drawing. Kind of like it's glowing. Then, I'll see how I can make the candle 'glow'. Should be interesting to see what it will look like at the end.
Played my clarinet for the full 40 minutes again. If I do it often enough, I can increase the time to 45 minutes. Hopefully, I'll eventually make it to an hour-long practice time.
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日本語
I studied the common compounds for 好. 好き or す.き (su.ki): liking, fondness, love. (I didn't think this was a compound, but it was listed under it, same with this next one.) 好き or ず.き (zu.ki): (suf) -phile, enthusiast (for), love (of); being attractive (to), to tend to be liked (by). 好物 or こうぶつ (koubutsu): favorite dish, favorite food. 良好 or りょうこう (ryoukou): favorable, satisfactory. 愛好 or あいこう (aikou): love, adoration. 友好 or ゆうこう (yuukou): friendship. 嗜好品 or しこうひん (shikouhin): luxury grocery item, indulgence. 好感 or こうかん (koukan): good feeling, good will, favorable impression. Also, quizzed myself on JapaneseClass' site. Did pretty well. They threw a lot of new stuff at me this time.
Interestingly, there's been a surge of new users from Taiwan on there. Someone on facebook had mentioned it, and apparently all their friends joined. Then, some of the friends of those friends joined. Kind of set off a firestorm, but threw a lot of people off. That person must know a lot of people. The front page was full of little Taiwan flags. (The area where they list new users. Most users input where they're from when filling out their profiles. Always interesting to see how many people are from what country, or an unusual flag.) It was quite impressive to see.
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Started writing out another section of that You Maga article. I'll get to translating each piece of it next time. Read on RocketNews24's original Japanese site about the Starbuck's cup issue. Funny how it's traveled even to Japan. Some are angry there because it doesn't have the Christmas mood or 'spirit'. Seems a bit odd to me.
Even odd with the weird people from here having a fit about it. Once you think about it, they're still in Christmas colors. The main part of the cup is red, the logo is green and has some white parts. There are also Christmas songs being played across the radio in many of them, there are advent calendars, a Christmas blend, etc. They aren't taking much away. For someone, like me, who doesn't celebrate that holiday it can be stifling and feels like I'm being slowly smothered to death.
It's everywhere. You can't escape it. (Unless you stay home during the whole thing. And, even then, you might hear a Santa saying 'ho ho ho' riding on a fire engine while the siren's going off, like our neighborhood does.
) And, they're angry that the cups are plain when they have so much Christmas stuff around them anyways. It doesn't make sense to me...
It gets kind of scary for me this time of year. Sometimes I can't stand to be in certain stores for too long because of the music. (If it's your holiday, all the more power to you. I just don't want it constantly around me for so long.) Anyways, the reporter didn't understand the outrage either, but tried to figure it out. I think they failed in that endeavor.
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Practiced some more sentences in Japanese. This time my topic was on my birthday. I tend to think about topics that are current to me to write about with them. Watched some Japanese news clips. Some pretty crazy stories. Some of them made me cringe just watching it. The more I watch, the more I understand it, though.
Looked at the top charts for Jpop, Kpop, and Cpop. Nothing really stood out for the current stuff for me. I sometimes look at it to see if I want to look at the bands' other songs, but none of them appealed to me. Interesting how most of the time Cpop is kind of sad, Kpop is more like party music, and Jpop has its own thing. This time, there was a lot of country sounding Jpop songs, which kind of surprised me. There were quite a few hard rock songs on that chart, too. I might look more into what's trending on the site I go to for it. A great placed to be introduced to more music.
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Read a bit more of Day of Atonement by Faye Kellerman. That's been getting interesting. Before, I thought that the missing kid was kidnapped. But, turns out that that might not be the case. He might be an apprentice to the killer.
Started watching IS today. IS stands for intersexual. The tagline reads: Otoko demo Onna demo Nai Sei. Essentially, Neither Man nor Woman. It's very interesting. There aren't many dramas or movies out there about intersex people. I've heard things about them, and I think I've met a couple. This was originally a manga. I'm kind of curious about that now, too.
It seems 'real', showing the troubles faced by Haru, who's intersex. But, there's also some good points in their life. It's not really depressing, just frustrating at times for Haru. Their parents are really cool and understanding. They just want to do what's best for them. When Haru was born the doctor said the parents needed to decide what gender the baby should be, and to have surgery to 'correct' them. The parents were extremely upset about it. In fact, the mom was so upset, while still in the hospital, she took Haru with her up to the hospital roof. She was going to jump taking Haru with her. The dad stopped her. And, eventually they said they want Haru to decide for themself which gender they want to be. The doctor found out that Haru had testes and they were lodged in their intestines. (At the time, Haru had both ovaries and testes.) So, of course, they agreed to take them out. But, they didn't want to do anything else to Haru. Thinking it would be cruel. They had to choose a gender for Haru's birth certificate, and decided on female. They thought that they can change it at some point if they wanted to. They started raising Haru as a girl, then noticed Haru had certain male tendencies and characteristics. So, they switched to raising Haru as a boy when they were about 3. Haru seems to identify most with being male, although half the time he doesn't feel like he's either. He wanted to enroll in a high school that had a good cooking program in order to become a pattissier. (His father is one.) But, when they had a private meeting about Haru being intersex, they said since Haru looks very feminine, he must present as a girl in order to attend. He said he'd do it, even though he's not happy about it. He feels he'll try to 'pretend' to be a girl for 3 years. He has a sister, too. She seems cool with it, as well. There's a strange girl he meets while going to his first day at the new school. She asks him: "Do you feel lucky you were born a girl?" He didn't know how to respond, and it seemed very wrong to him. He also didn't tell her about it. I have a strange feeling that the girl he met might be intersex, too.
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