Yay for sandwiches!
It's also Culture Day or Bunka no Hi (文化の日) in Japan. It's a day of promoting culture, the arts, and academics. Festivities typically include art exhibitions, parades, festivals, and award ceremonies for distinguished artists and scholars (some of which don't have to be Japanese citizens). Schools hold a culture festival, as well. Cool! Sounds like my kind of day.
I've seen 'culture festivals' being portrayed in Jdramas and anime shows. It sounds fun.
It's Vocaloid themed. Chibi versions of Meiko, Gakupo, Len, Rin, Luka, and Miku are celebrating Kaito's birthday. He looks a bit overwhelmed with stuff.
Cute though. This is the only good birthday themed wallpaper I liked this time. By the way, only 4 more days! I'll celebrate sooner, though.
My Japanese woodblock calendar isn't as impressive as in previous months. Just stormy looking. And still don't have a new Jewish calendar, so I'm using the tiny 4 month on one page thing at the end. Can't read it too well. But, I think Mom and I will have new ones soon. (Pretty soon we'll have to get the normal calendars, too.
)Here's the month-long holidays: Adopt a Senior Pet Month, Epilepsy Awareness Month, International Drum (Percussion) Month, National Adoption Month, Georgia Pecan Month, National Novel Writing Month, National Peanut Butter Lovers' Month, National Pomegranate Month, National Roasting Month, Vegan Month, Good Nutrition Month, National Pepper Month. Some are important causes, some are to make you think and appreciate things you may take for granted, and some are just for fun. I think there's less this time. I love peanut butter!
Drums/percussion's cool too! Pecans and pomegranates are awesome! Some areas around us are experiencing record lows. And, they were forecasting ice pellet showers last night. Wahoo!
It usually doesn't get like this until at least the end of the month. Went early to Poulsbohemian yesterday, because Mom was meeting someone. I grabbed my lunch from a crepe place near it. First time there. Ordered the Scandinavian, which has smoked salmon, capers, lemon juice, spinach, and some cream cheese. It was pretty good, and seemed really big to me. Just wasn't too sure about their whole-wheat crepe.
And, there was a huge glob of cream cheese in one area, an area with just spinach, and the fish wasn't mixed in either. I really wanted to try 'the Works', but I needed something more lunch-y, instead of dessert.
The Works had whipped cream, nutella, nuts, I think bananas, and other stuff. Plus, I think they use a different kind of crepe for desserts. Oh well. Maybe next time, we could grab some soup from Poulsbohemian, and then grab a dessert crepe.
I got a lot done at the cafe. Transposed an Irish tune, wrote out another big section of You Maga, read, drew, did a crossword puzzle, came up with more ideas for Alliance, and went through part of their dictionary. All within about 4 and a half hours. Also, got to talk a bit to the barista and her friends.
I needed some time to cool done after all that, so I played around a bit on Facebook. By the time I was done, it was getting pretty late. I made Japanese curry, so we had dinner a bit later than we'd like.
Added too much water, so it was too runny. I forget, if you're making half the package, you do half the ingredients and a little less water. I think I've done that before.
This time I used chicken, tiny potatoes, carrots, and broccoli. Good stuff, still. I might make mac and cheese tonight, since it's just Mom and I. Not sure...
I was the primary person to hand out candy this year. Mom was very sick, and Dad had something after work. Some of the little toddlers were so cute!
They had problems getting up the stairs. I wanted to help them, but they were determined to do it on their own. Rosie was surprisingly better than I thought she would be. She stayed on the ottoman watching patiently as the trick-or-treaters came to the door. (We had the wooden door open, so it wouldn't keep closing on me. So, there was just a glass door closed.) They saw her and kept telling me how adorable she was. When I was trying to eat dinner, the kids were starting out, so every time I'd take a bite, I heard our doorbell.
I hate when kids try to grab all the candy from the bowl before I get a chance to give it to them.
Only a couple of those though. At one point, there was a line all the way out into the street.
I think they liked our selection. With some of them saying, "OMG! They have Skittles!" or "I'm eating my Twix now!" Kind of a nice feeling.
We only had 12 pieces left in the bowl. Last year it was like half the bowl. So more kids this year. But, I saved some pieces for us before I gave the candy out. So, we had plenty for ourselves.
I wrote some more of Alliance. It's now 70 pages long!
I wrote a couple more pages for chapter 9. Also, played my clarinet. This time Mozart as a warm-up, and Irish tunes the rest of the time. Got to play one of my faves that I haven't played in such a long time! It's called the Gold Ring. Sounds awesome and is fun to play. The only thing is it's really long, which is tiring. I guess it's a good tiring if it's fun, right? 
) This morning my computer was really slow, which made it less time to do my morning stuff.
I thought it was updating in the background or something. Usually when that happens I get a little bubble saying it just downloaded its updates. That didn't happen this time. Maybe it was some other application? 
Makes me so happy! I also posted the next chapter to Alliance: 
Maybe next time I can disable it or something? But, then again it could also be used so the person can read it at another time, or its just something they liked and wanted a copy. 
This time it wasn't too bad. I guess I'm getting more like I was before. Played some Mozart and some Irish tunes. Yeah, I'm weird, Irish tunes for a clarinet isn't heard of too often. 
It's fun though, and a bit more challenging. 
Although, I'm pretty happy with as many penpals as I can get. 
I played a Minoto game called Morning Time. His games are always funny and cute! It was about a girl who wakes up with bed hair, and you have to exchange items to find her hair gel. They even had a monkey doing curling. So odd, yet fun! 
The contest is for best self- drawn original character. I put Gun in for it. The contest just started yesterday, and will go until the 17th. I doubt I'll win, but it should be fun and new. I'm not used to contests or competitions.