National Oatmeal Day!

Mood:


Oatmeal can be an amazing breakfast.I like to put syrup, a little sweetener, and some raisins in. Used to only eat this for breakfast for a few years. Even though I added a little something different each time back then, I got tired of it.It's still a nice treat every so often. Oatmeal cookies with raisins, chocolate chips, and/or dried cranberries are good too. Today is also National Cat Day. I should celebrate with Rosie and Tasha! 

Fuben na Benriya (Inconvenient Handyman) has been really funny and interesting. The entire town is rather eccentric. Watched the 2nd to the last episode yesterday. The episode seemed especially good this time. The town has been trying to figure out how to revitalize itself for a while. It's an old coal mining town in Hokkaido. Jun, who everyone thought at first was Batsu's long lost son, came up with an idea. (There are hints that he still might be Batsu's son.) He thought they should break some sort of record to bring some recognition for the town, and looked into the Guinness World Records to get ideas. One of the competitions was to have a town make as many 'Western' snowmen as possible in an hour. Apparently, the Japanese version has only 2 parts to its body (bottom and head), while the Western one has 3 (bottom, middle, and head). Another more well-known town in Hokkaido had won recently. Jun decided to try that one. With the help of others, he organized it. The interesting thing is this was real. They did the competition with the actors and the locals from the town they were filming in. They won, too. They had a lot more snowmen than the previous winner. I find that really cool.It also promotes that actual town. People looked like they had a lot of fun. Apparently, it took the Guinness World Records officials 4 hours to check and count them all. And, they were the real ones, too. At the end of the episode, Jun was about to leave the town when his mother suddenly arrives at the place he's been staying at. I really do think Batsu's his father, but his mother kept quiet about it. She told him when he was little that he died. And, why would she go out of her way to visit that town now?

Midori no Ou or Verdant Lord, has been getting creepier as the story progresses. There are children who are 'in tune' with the plant life that's been springing up during the Plant Burst. Supposedly those plants are from another dimension, and they've somehow crashed through to our own. (Apparently, a few animals have, too. But, they haven't explored that deeper in the story.) Some of the plants can move around and seem to be able to think on their own. Those creatures are called Arethusas. They've also taken over humans who have been dubbed 'Plant Men'. They've taken over several other creatures, too. Apparently, you have to be on the verge of dying (or dead) in order for the plants to start taking over your body. They've already invaded morgues. The ones who were alive when the plants started taking over their body, will slowly lose their humanity to them and turn into similar things like the Arethusa. (The more they use the plant's abilities, the faster they'll turn, though.) The plants have developed weapons, too. They've destroyed nuclear facilities, so humans feel even more helpless. They've also sent things into space. Anyways, the kids that have some sort of connection with them can communicate with them. And, for some reason the Arethusa are trying to collect them all. At the end of this chapter, they showed a bunch of kids singing a creepy song as they played in a meadow-like area. There seemed to be an abandoned building in the background, and the Arethusa were playing with them. They seemed a little too happy. One of the Plant Men who happened upon the scene, hated the kids singing around him, and threatened to kill them all if they didn't stop. The Arethusa immediately went over to him, stared at him for a while, and then started to eat him. Meanwhile, the kids were singing that same song and playing around like nothing was happening.Shin, who's the main character and a Plant Man, doesn't have much time left until he's totally taken over. He was the first Plant Man, that we know of anyways. His brother (who's a scientist that's been studying the plants and the children since the beginning) infected him with the plant stuff, just as an experiment. He also thought it might save his life, so it wasn't totally heartless. He also just infected himself with it, too. His assistant did the same thing. As soon as she was shot in the head (it's a really graphic manga. Not as much as Variante was, but close), she became unconscious and the plant stuff seemed to take total control of her. We don't know yet if she survived a building that blew up around her. She was going out of control, and the military and Shin's brother thought it'd be a way to wake her up. She was tough even when she was alive. 

I colored in the drawing for my cover art with colored pencils. (Again, the cover art is for my nightmare anthology.) I think I might like it more than the one I colored in with Photoshop. Now I just have to put the drawing onto the background, tweak it a bit, then add the title.

Played my clarinet. I've been slowly adding minutes to the practice time lately. Hopefully, I can get it up to an hour. This time I did 40 minutes. I improve a lot more the longer I play each time. Trying to do it more often, too. A long time ago, I used to play an hour each time. Was better than I expected this time. I did some klezmer tunes, Mozart pieces, and some from one of my clarinet solo books. 

日本語

Studied the kanji: 功, 好. If 功 is pronounced as いさお (isao): distinguished service, meritorious service. As こう (kou): merit, success, meritorious deed; achievement, accumulated experience. It's rare, but it's sometimes pronounced as く (ku) in compounds. If 好 is pronounced as こう (kou): (pref) good. As 好む or この.む (kono.mu): to like, prefer. As 好く or す.く (su.ku): to like, love, be fond of. As 好い or よ.い (yo.i): (sometimes pronounced as い.い (i.i), and has the same meaning as 良い) (usually written out in kana instead of kanji) good, excellent, fine, nice, pleasant, agreeable; sufficient (can be used to turn down an offer), ready, prepared; profitable (e.g. deal, business offer, etc.), beneficial; ok. I'll study 好's most common compounds next time. 

Also, quizzed myself again on JapaneseClass' site. Did pretty well, again. Went over some new vocab. I apparently don't have that many left on that list. Kanji on the other hand...I've got to go over those more!Someone suggested an interesting method that I might implement as well. They make a list of every one they get wrong, and write out why they might have missed it. Then, they study them until they get them right every time. The creator of the site said that it gave him an idea for a new feature. Maybe something with a list of common mistakes of the user, so they can focus on those a bit more. It'll be cool if they did that. There are only a few I get wrong more than once, but it'd be nice to see which those are either way. They do have a 'weak' list, but those are only the current ones that you may have messed up on. I'm also using the sentence examples/articles a bit more. The only problem I'm finding with those, is they don't have examples of the various verb forms of a verb. There are like 3 different types of verbs, and they all have a different ending to their 'stem'. (present, past, polite, conditional, etc.) So, if you only have the dictionary version of a verb as an example, it's like you only have one small part of it. I know other sites that can help with that, though. Also, read some articles in Japanese on RocketNews24's original site. Watched some news vids in Japanese, as well. 

On Tuesday, I managed to get this month's blood draw done. Apparently, they still had the lab tech in training, with the other person supervising her. For the last few months, they haven't had any difficulty finding a vein and keeping it from rolling. The one in training was having a lot of issues with it.She found one, and then told me my vein 'disappeared', so she'll have to find another one. I almost passed out, so they moved me to a bed to lay on. They also gave me a huge mug filled with lukewarm water, after I asked for some water. I didn't expect it to be lukewarm, and so much of it.The second time she tried it on my other arm, and I felt an immense stinging/burning pain. I almost screamed. She couldn't figure out why I was in pain, and looked closer at it. The needle had punctured right through to another one.She tried one more time back to the original arm, but couldn't find another vein. The tech who was supervising stepped in at that point. She had a slight difficulty finding one, too. But, she got it on her first try. Apparently, they needed to collect a lot. Once the needle was in and working, she said the hard part's over with. I thought that meant they were done with the whole thing. But, they told me to hold still for a while, and I heard a lot of tubes being passed around. The whole ordeal was a bit scary to me. At the very least, it was annoying. It's done, though. 

I've gotten a few of the test results back already. My ALT is better than last time. The ALT tests the liver to see if it's damaged in any way. Some of my meds, and maybe even my IBD can affect it. So, it's a pretty important test. Last time it was the highest its ever been, but within normal range. This time it was a lot more 'normal' for me. Got the general blood panel back, and everything with that looks normal. Also, got my sed rate test result. It's to test for inflammation, and is a good indicator to see if the disease is in remission. It was better than last time, but still high. The highest of the normal range is 20mm. My highest reading was 44mm. Last time it was 32mm, and this time it's 29mm. It seems to be getting better at an even slower rate now. I wonder if she'll want to change something to make it go a little faster, or just tell me to be patient.Hopefully, she ordered the metabolites test again, too. That's another indicator for remission, and to see how my immune system is doing.

Rosie was very sick that same day. She kept throwing up, and dry heaving. Also, seemed lethargic and depressed.I remember now that in the morning she wanted to jump into the bathtub when I was getting the water ready for my shower. She jumped onto the edge of the tub, realized there was water, freaked out, and almost landed in the water. I tried to help her off of it, and she ended up slamming her stomach area against the tub and landed on the bathroom floor. I felt bad, but didn't think much of it. I'm wondering if it affected her, or made what she was going through worse.Either way, she got so bad, we had to take her to the Emergency Vet Clinic. They took x-rays of her abdomen. Then, said they couldn't find an obstruction, but it seemed she was very constipated. They said she also has a very upset stomach, and diagnosed her with gastroenteritis. I've had that before. It's very painful. I'm glad it wasn't something even more serious, but I still feel bad that she's going through the pain. She put up a struggle when Dad tried to get her in the kennel. She really scratched up her hands/wrist, and let out some really stinky pee. She was very quiet, with only a couple of meows, on the way to the clinic. She was visibly scared. Shaking and breathing very heavily. 

They gave her fluids subcutaneously, and 2 things to help with the nausea and vomiting. She seemed a lot better when she got home. She couldn't have food for 24 hours, and water was encouraged. She seemed to stay away from the water most of the day yesterday. I haven't seen her eat yet. I did see a little something in the litter box yesterday, and a bit more this morning. But, it's not nearly enough. Halfway through the day yesterday and on, she's been kind of back to being lethargic and depressed. Not nearly as bad as before, but not back to her happy self. I hope she gets through this soon. 

Managed to find the invite to the friends of the family's wedding anniversary party. They said costumes are welcomed, but optional. It will be somewhere else besides their home. I looked at it online, and it looks like a pretty fancy place. It's called the Farm Kitchen. It's an actual farm, but it's been transformed into something like a resort. A barn was renovated into being a dining room/social hall/dance hall with a very large kitchen. They cater big events, and make a monthly breakfast on the first Saturday of each month that's open to the public. Many weddings are held there. They have a vineyard, pasture for horses, gardens, etc. It looks gorgeous from the pics and a vid I saw.Cool place to have an anniversary/Halloween party. It seems the Farm Kitchen will cater it, too. I wonder how many people are going? Sounds fun!