National Herbs and Spices Day!

Mood:

Shouldn't everyday be herbs and spices day?I can't imagine not using them. Although, it's supposed to promote using those in place of salt. Which is a lot better for people. Salt is good for you, but in small amounts. You shouldn't take it completely out of your diet...It's also National Iced Tea Day. I love all forms of tea!I should make some iced tea later then! 

It was pretty warm for a while. Now, the temperature's gone down a bit. Feels slightly chilly, but not really cold out. I've been keeping up with my walks, and essentially only skipped my Sunday ones. Not too bad. I keep bumping into people while I'm out, it's kind of interesting.I'm doing 80 sit-ups 2 times a day this week. Kept up with it most of last week, except for Saturday and Sunday. I've got to keep it up the entire week this time! 

Met up with that social group again on Saturday. We started at the same cafe, and went to the same place that we went to for lunch last week. We got to the cafe part late, but we were able to chat a bit there. More people went to the same restaurant this time. We were such a big group, we couldn't fit at the really long table they had us at last time.They told us that we could go upstairs where there was more room, since a group had just cleared out. But, no one wanted to move, and stayed in a couple of booths in addition to the long table we were at before. Kind of wasn't as 'together' this way. But, there were plenty of people in each booth and at the table, so people were still able to be social. 

I got their grilled cheese sandwich. It had tomatoes, an herbed cream cheese sauce, cheddar, on some nice and hearty bread. Toasted just right, too. It originally came with mushrooms and onions in it as well. I hate those, and told them to leave them off. I ordered their house salad in place of fries. And got some bleu cheese dressing on the side. Made it feel slightly healthier. I ate the whole thing, because I didn't want it to sit in the warm car for a while, and I wouldn't eat much the rest of the day. It was pretty good.

After that, we went to Nordstrom Rack. I'm not used to that store, so it was interesting. I kind of need skirts and lighter/summery shirts, so I looked at those. There was one skirt that looked really nice on the hanger, so I decided to try it on. It was shaped very oddly. Incredibly long and clingy. It made me look like I had extra hips further down then where my hips would be. The design looked really bizarre with where it hit on my body. Sad.Oh well. I looked at sneakers, too. My current ones are really old, have holes in them, and the sole is wearing out. Basically don't have support for my feet anymore. None of their sneakers looked good. Most had things like hot pink shoelaces, or were purple, etc. Not my cup of tea.I'll find them at some point, I'm sure.

After that, we went to a local restaurant for dinner. I just wanted something somewhat light. So, I got their chicken quesadillas, which were listed as an appetizer. It came with BBQ sauce on the side. I wasn't used to the hard/crispness of it. But, it ended up pretty tasty too.Saved half of it for lunch the next day.

Also, I'm going to Scottsdale, AZ towards the beginning of July for 10 days. Dad's having her major surgeries. It's one of the few places in the world where people can have it done. The only place our insurance will cover it, too. I'm not entirely looking forward to 100 degree weather.Plus, it'll be their 'monsoon' season, so it'll probably be muggy on top of that. I'll probably mostly stay at the hotel and hospital. 

I might try to go to services at possibly 2 different synagogues in the area. One's a reform synagogue, and the other's called New Shul. The second one says that they aren't really affiliated with a certain movement within Judaism. They seem to be a bit conservative, and use a Hasidic prayer book. So, it seems like they're a bit more on the observant side. They're egalitarian, and allow women to participate as much as they want. With doing things like wearing a tallit, kippah, tefillin, being called up to the Torah, etc. They can sit with the men, too. Which is different than what the orthodox tend to do. (That might be changing, though.) So, it seems like a very appealing congregation to me.I guess I'll have to check it out. I might go look at Old Town, too. Most of the stuff in Scottsdale seems to be antique-y, art shops, museums, etc. Not really very interesting to me. Although, I do like certain museums, these ones in particular just don't scream fun to me.I guess I'll find out about that too. There's a shuttle from the hotel that can take you anywhere within 3 miles of it. That's pretty good. The restaurants look interesting, too. I'm going to try and drink as much water as I can while I'm there.Don't want to collapse there or something. 

Finished watching the first season of Switch Girl. I grew to like it, even if the acting was kind of exaggerated.I know it's based off of the manga, but some of it was over the top. Kind of cheesy in spots too. It had a good ending to this season. I'll start the second one soon. Hopefully it'll be just as good, if not better. It'd be interesting if her other friends (besides her best friend and Arata) found out about her 'other' side. It'll make her look more human, I think. She tries to look and act perfect while anywhere but at home or the supermarket. Arata didn't really have such an extreme 'switch'. All he did was put on glasses and mess up his hair while at school. Thinking girls would stay away from him, since he was trying to go for the 'otaku' look. (Otaku is like a geek.) But, as soon as his glasses come off, girls flock to him. It was a lot less believable than Nika's 'switch'. She really does change while at home. 

I'm almost finished with watching Watashi no Kirai na Tantei. I've liked it. From reading some of the comments about it, I know some people didn't like Akemi. Saying she was annoying. I kind of thought she was funny, and added a bit more camp-ness to it. She thought a bit too hard about things, and would go on wild tangents. She had a crazy imagination. Morio's been hilarious.Probably more so than her. They have this thing where Akemi apparently looks like a bird to him. He looks more bird-like to me. He knows how to get out of an embarrassing situation, avoid conflict, put the blame on someone else, etc. And, he's very smart, although he seems to mess with Akemi by not telling her everything about how he's solved a case. I like Ryuhei, too. They treat him like he's an idiot, yet he seems brighter than they are at times. He does basically all the hard work for them. Like finding a cat that originally Morio said he'd do because of the money, acting out a murder, making things for them, asking witnesses in the area about a murder, answering phone calls, etc. He deals with a lot of stuff that they pull. For some reason, after Morio goes through all the clues in his head, he imagines an older lady in a kimono. (Sometimes she's crying, sometimes she's smiling happily, or doing some sort of dance.) We still don't know who she is, and he even said 'who are you' out loud after he figured out the case during the episode I just finished. Maybe we'll find out in the finale. 

Wrote more of the 9th short story from my nightmare anthology. I might be nearing the end.Crazy! Played my clarinet. Did a lot of Irish tunes. Didn't sound too bad, especially considering I hadn't played in a while.

日本語

Studied the kanji: 予. If pronounced as よ (yo): (arch) formal or oratory first person pronoun, I, me. It seems to be pronounced this way mostly in compounds. Same with it being pronounced as しゃ (sha), only not as common. As 予め or あらかじ.め (arakaji.me): beforehand, in advance, previously. 予報 or よほう (yohou): forecast, prediction. 予約 or よやく (yoyaku): reservation, appointment, booking, advance order; contract, subscription, pledge. 予定 or よてい (yotei): plans, arrangement, schedule, program, expectation, estimate. 予感 or よかん (yokan): premonition, hunch; (usually 予感がする [yokan ga suru]) to have a premonition, have a hunch. 

Practiced kanji/vocab on JapaneseClass' site. Did pretty well. Made it to the top 10 ranking for the day!Only messed up on a few words. Not too bad. Most of those were newly introduced ones. 

Wrote out part of another section of that You Maga article that I'm translating. This section is about lice. Which creeps me out.But, it is something parents have to know about...The section before that was on febrile seizures. That's pretty scary, too. Read an article in Japanese on Asahi's website. It was about when to see the fireflies in a certain area of Tokyo. Cool.