National Hot Dog Day!

Mood:

Yay, for hot dogs!One of my faves are beef Polish hot dogs. The ones at Costco are awesome, although HUGE. (And, they're kosher!) Plus, Hebrew National does pretty good regular hot dogs as well. Great during summer. Recently had a large Hebrew National one, and some 3-bean salad on the side for a dinner. Very filling and good.I usually like relish, ketchup or BBQ sauce, and mustard on mine. Sometimes, sauerkraut. 

Went to my first non-Jewish and same sex wedding on Sunday. I'm so happy for them!They're our neighbors, that live not too far from us. Incredibly nice people. One of them always asks me how I'm doing when she catches me while I'm walking. (She's usually in her car.) They run a pet nanny business. I think we used them once, as well. It's cool that they have a giant pride flag displayed at their house outside. They had been together for 30 years already. Felt like they were already married, but weren't recognized by the state. And, now that they can be, they finally got their chance to have a wedding.

Anyways, they held their wedding at their church. Apparently, the church is very progressive and welcoming. Not sure if it was my first time at a church service...Felt a little weird at times.That church has held 6 weddings this year, all same sex couples. Really cool. Despite me feeling a bit uncomfortable, the people were nice to me. I just wanted to celebrate with the couple. It seemed like a good wedding. A lot of passages about love. 

After the service, we all headed to the banquet hall(?) and had lunch. There wasn't very many places to sit for a while. But, we found a nice sunny place. There were a lot of things that I couldn't eat, and quite a lot that Dad couldn't eat.I had the fruit salad, a hybrid of some sort of egg salad and potato salad, tuna salad croissant sandwich (with some grapes mixed in that surprised me), and some Caesar salad. They had punch or water. Wasn't sure if the punch had grapefruit in it, so I had to stay away from it.(Can't have grapefruit with the meds I'm on.) 

Then, they did a bunch of toasts to the couple. Couldn't have champagne (alcohol's not good for me either, messes with my meds), so I acted like I was doing the cheers without anything in my hands.Later, I grabbed a couple of cupcakes before they managed to make it over to the tiny cake and cut it. We were both getting tired and wanted to leave. I thought I couldn't leave without taking at least a cupcake.The carrot cake one's icing was not very good. Tasted too cream cheesy. The cake part of that was ok, but not the best. The other one was chocolate, and was pretty good. 

Started Dangan Ronpa a couple of weeks ago. It lit. means 'Bullet Rebuttal'. It's adapted from a murder-mystery visual novel. The video game was released soon after. The game itself produced 2 manga adaptations. Its become pretty popular, apparently. So, doesn't surprise me that they'd make an anime adaptation. It takes place at an elite high school called Hope's Peak Academy, which accepts talented 'Super High School Level' students from the highest caliber in various fields each year, along with one average 'Lucky Student' selected by raffle. Makoto Naegi is chosen as the 'Lucky Student'. As soon as he arrives at the gates, he passes out and wakes up inside the school. Where he meets 14 other newly picked Super High School students who are in the same situation as him. A sadistic, remote-controlled, monochrome bear named Monokuma appears, and tells them he's the principal and that they are imprisoned in the academy for the rest of their lives. He offers only one way for students to graduate: murder another student and get away with it. After a murder occurs, they hold a class trial, where they must determine amongst themselves who the killer is. If they can successfully determine who the real killer is, that person is put to a gruesome and ironic execution for disrupting school order. However, if the wrong accusation is made, then the true killer will be allowed to leave the academy, while everyone else will be executed. It's very interesting, and kind of funky. I love the murder-mystery genre, so this might be good. They've already killed off 2 people so far. One was killed by Monokuma for disrupting school order. She was yelling at him, and tried to stomp him to death. So he had spikes come out around her, and skewered her. The other one wasn't done by him. But, I think she killed herself. She was looking intently at a sword that was given to Makoto. She told him that she was too scared to stay in her room, and asked to switch rooms for the night. He left the weapons there. Now, everyone thinks he did it. The characters are rather off-beat, so it makes it even more interesting.

Started Uchouten Kazoku or the Eccentric Family on Saturday. (The lit. translation is actually 'Ecstatic Family', but the Eccentric Family is the official English title.) In Kyoto, there are 3 kinds of residents: humans, tanuki, and tengu. Shimogamo Yasaburou is the 3rd son of the tanuki family. His father, Souichirou, had been the head of the Kyoto tanuki community until he was eaten by the human members of 'Friday Club'. While taking care of an old tengu, fighting with other tanuki, and playing with a psychic human girl, Yasaburou approaches the truth of his father's death. He also likes to transform himself into the appearance of a human girl. Tanuki are raccoon-dogs, and tengu are associated with birds like crows or ravens, in Japanese mythology. The tengu, in some stories, will 'spirit away' people. Tanuki are usually tricksters, shapeshifters, jolly, mischievous, gullible, and absentminded. There are real tanukis in Japan, but they're obviously not like their folklore version. (Interesting how there seems to be more info on tanuki out there than tengu.) So far it's a very interesting story, and the tanuki in it live up to what I've read of the folklore stuff. The animation is a little...'different'. The characters' ears are drawn really oddly, and some of it seems surreal. Actually, some of the animation reminds me of Tsuritama. The flow of the art is nice, though. Liking it overall. Hopefully, it'll end up being one of the great ones this season...

Started watching Akuryo Byoutou or Demon Ward today. This was one of the shows I really wanted to watch this season, and I'm glad it's finally out! It's set within a hospital in the outskirts of town. Mysterious phenomena occur around a nurse named Runa Okami. According to a synopsis, the staff suspect her as the cause for some horrible cases and finds herself in danger. They haven't gotten to that point in the story yet, though. She did move from town to town growing up after she had a premonition of a classmate's death. In the 'vision' the classmate appeared all bloody and disturbed while moaning. She's been able to see 'visions' and ghosts ever since her mother died. People looked down on her for a while. But, I don't think the other nurses know about that sort of stuff yet. She has a friend who's a reporter, and wants to do a story on the abandoned ward of the hospital. The hospital hasn't gotten rid of it yet, because they haven't raised enough funds to bulldoze it. Runa is asked to go there to get something. Apparently it's kind of used as a storage for the time being. After finding what she was looking for, she got curious about the rest of the ward and went exploring. One of the last scenes of this episode was door locking on its own. So, now she's locked inside a creepy old hospital ward, where people have been spreading rumors about it being haunted.The main part of the hospital, that's still operational, is starting to have its share of rumors as well. They showed one of the nurses getting spooked by one of the 'ghosts'. This is looking even better than I thought it would. The trailer's pretty scary too. The atmosphere the show gives off is downright creepy. I love scary/mystery shows. 

Hitman Reborn just keeps getting more interesting. Got to know more about the arcobaleno. They won't reveal too much, still. In Aka Aka, Yue is getting a bit suspicious of what a 'meal' might actually entail. He has to choose one of the 2 humans he finds interesting, as his meal. There are dark entities that are eating people and calling them meals. He thinks he'll have to do something like that, but Kurogitsune told him that his 'meal' will be different. 

Managed to play my clarinet. I want to get to playing it on a regular schedule again. Maybe I will this time!Did some tunes from my advanced solo book. Started brainstorming my next short story in my nightmare anthology. Mapped out a bit more of my next drawing. The one where I'll have all my characters interacting with each other. Showing their heights, personalities, and clothes. Sounds great, but it'll take some planning and time. Still worth it. 

日本語

Today I studied the compounds for the kanji: 身. The general meaning for it is: body, one's station in life, person, somebody, corpse. 身体 or しんたい (shintai): body; torso, trunk; build, physique, constitution; health; corpse, dead body. 身長 or しんちょう (shinchou): height (of body), stature. 身辺 or しんぺん (shinpen): one's person, around one's person, affairs. 身代 or しんだい (shindai): fortune, property. 身軽 or みがる (migaru): agile, nimble, light (of foot); casual (clothing), light (e.g. luggage); carefree, with limited responsibility. 身形 or みなり (minari): dress, attire, clothing, getup, outfit, personal appearance. 身近 or みじか (mijika): near oneself, close to one, familiar, imminent. 身元 or みもと (mimoto): person's identity, ID, past, background. Next time I'll do more compounds of this one.

This week I'm doing 45 sit-ups twice a day. So far, so good. It feels really tight in my abdomen after I do it each time. Starting to sweat a bit with it, too.I've been taking my 2-mile walks too. Usually at night. The bugs seem to always like me.Someone once told me I must have sweet blood, because the mosquitoes always find me first. I also get attacked by gnats while walking through a short trail at some point during my walk. They've made thick clouds around me before. So, I decided to put bug spray on for tonight's walk. They didn't bother me this time! We also got sunscreen a while ago. Haven't really used it yet. Even though its been really sunny out and I easily burn...Hope to get into jump rope and Pilates soon, too.