First Sight – Whether a person, a pet, an object, or a place, write about something or someone you connected with from the very first second.
This is an easy one! The person I connected with from the very first second is my wife, Mariko. We met in 1996 in Japan and within 2 months we were married and on our honeymoon. It really was love at first sight! After 17 years we are still going strong and I am looking forward to our future. There’s a lot more to the story, but I will save that for another time.
This post was prompted by The Daily Post from WordPress.
What a fantastic version of Yumi Arai’s “やさしさに包まれたなら” by Youtuber Kerokichinosuke. I’ve been on a Kiki’s Delivery Service kick for a few days now after listening to The Incomparable podcast’s Kiki episode. It is great.
On my work-at-home day this week I went on a lunchtime run around the neighborhood. Every time I start running I have to gauge the condition of my left knee to make sure I am not putting too much stress on it. It’s still not 100% (I’d say it’s around 80%) and I don’t want to have any setbacks. Wow, I sound like a baseball player coming off the DL! But seriously, being injured and not being able to run really sucked. Just not having the option to run is so depressing!
That leads me to something I learned while I was a member of Koko Fit Club. The audio coaches there had some great motivational quotes that they would pass on. One of them was,
“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
-John Wooden
I decided then that I didn’t want to let a lack of physical fitness be a barrier to enjoying life. It’s a little different concept from what John Wooden meant, but it’s something that I want to keep in mind.
Below is another photo I took at the start of my run. The weather was so nice that day that I had to walk for a little bit while I took photos. But that was the only time I walked! The past couple months, I’d have to walk, run, walk with Koa. I called it “Run-walking”. I was pretty amazed that this time I had so much energy and the knee was pain-free so I ran the whole route. I could tell that the knee wasn’t back to normal, so I had to keep the pace extra-smooth and cautious. Still it’s a great feeling to have that sense of freedom again!
I really like these Sushi Memo Pads. They look so cool! The problem is that I wouldn’t want to use them because the proportion of fish to rice would get messed up. I think I’d just keep them on my desk and stare at them all day! Speaking of my desk, I have way too many things cluttering it up. The main thing is bills and junk mail. I usually have a stack of papers about 3-5 inches tall that need to be filed away.
I usually sort them into stacks, then once in a blue moon will scan them all in as PDF’s to my computer, which then gets backed up. It’s a nice system, but I should scan them more often. The bottleneck is that it is a little bit of a bother to scan using my flatbed scanner. We do have a Dell 1235CN color copier/printer which has an auto feed tray and I think it can scan to PDF but, I need to figure it out again. I think I have scanned to PDF before, but I had to copy them to a USB stick, then put them on the computer. I think that is more process than using my Epson 4490 flatbed scanner.
So, as nice as these sushi memo pads are, I want to declutter the desk first before I make any additions. Maybe after decluttering, I won’t want to add anything to it and can save some money by not buying the sushi memo pads. Maybe I will just create a desktop background? I wonder if that will satisfy me!
This past weekend we hosted our 3rd Kaiju party at our house. The usual suspects arrived at about 7pm, and we immediately started in on the beer and wine. Mikey wore his Kaiju t-shirt and provided the movies and expert commentary. He also brought over toys which included Baragon (the monster from the first movie on the list) and a Maser Cannon, which makes its first appearance in the second movie we watched. The toys are always a nice touch! It’s really cool that Mikey gives us some history to each movie, and what to watch for and also some cool bits of trivia about the movie production, actors, etc. And the toys!
Photo info: SONY SLT-A77V, 24mm, f/3.5, 1/60 sec, ISO1600 Baragon vs. Maser Cannon
The movies we watched were “Frankenstein vs. Baragon” and “War of the Gargantuas”. Both of them were really wacky, silly, but cool too. There were lots of really stylish convertibles and also both movies starred Kumi Mizuno, who is gorgeous and always wearing some cool outfits. It was interesting that the second movie was sort of a sequel to the first one, but not really. Lots of the plot was carried over, and the main characters in both movies were a trio of scientists, one gaijin (white), a woman, and a third Japanese scientist. Only Mizuno starred in both movies, but all the characters’ names were different. It was weird, and didn’t make much sense, but just made it all the more interesting. The monsters in the second movie were related to Frankenstein from the first, and I am sure there are plenty of theories on how the monsters were connected. I preferred the first movie because Frankenstein was really funny-looking, and the other monster “Baragon” was really cool and had some nice jumping moves.
Photo info: SONY SLT-A77V, 16mm, f/3.5, 1/60 sec, ISO1600 Toy Maser Cannon fights the Gargantua
Hanging out with the Kaiju gang and watching more monster movies was so fun and I’m really looking forward to Kaiju 4! I’m pretty sure Mikey will bring over a Gamera movie or two, plus some neat toys. It’s bound to be another good time!
Just Another Day − Our days our organized around numerous small actions we repeat over and over. What’s your favorite daily ritual?
My favorite daily ritual is actually a nightly ritual: reading in bed. Usually this ritual of nightly reading lasts about five minutes because once I lie down with my head on the pillow I am pretty much history. Even if the book is an exciting thriller, or if I am close to the end, I just cannot keep my eyes open. If I read a paragraph, then don’t remember what I just read, that means I will be asleep in a few seconds. If I drop the book on my face, I’d give myself about 20 seconds. I’m lucky if I can “get it together” and place my bookmark in the book!
However, last night (this morning) I was up until 1:30am reading Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. It was fascinating and engrossing. I was truly amazed that I was not getting drowsy and by 1:00am I was nearing the end of the story. I was in the home-stretch! Then all of a sudden, my eyelids got heavy, and I had trouble remembering what I had just read. I quickly decided to not try to power through it; it would be better if I saved the ending of this wonderful book til another time when I could fully concentrate. I felt like I owed the author that much. So, I am really looking forward to tonight’s “nightly ritual” and finishing Sputnik Sweetheart.
This post was prompted by The Daily Post from WordPress.
Photo info: OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. E-PL1, 42mm, f/8, 1/100 sec, ISO1250 Action on the Ice
Koa and I went to see a Texas Stars hockey game the other night and had a wonderful time. I had gotten two free tickets from HEB for a playoff game and I was expecting our seats to be up high away from the action, but to our surprise, the seats were second-row!
Photo info: OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. E-PL1, 14mm, f/3.5, 1/50 sec, ISO1600 Koa’s Stoked with the Seats
Being so close to the action was really exciting and intense. You could hear all the checks into the boards and when fans banged on the glass, it was so loud! What made it extra-fun was that it was a playoff game and the Texas Stars hockey fans were so into it! The whole game was wildly entertaining, even the intermissions if you can believe that. There was a lot of dancing, t-shirt giveaways, and even a contest on the ice. In addition, there was a giant Mighty Fine Burgers Mylar blimp that puttered around the arena by remote control, dropping free burger coupons as it went by. Unfortunately we didn’t get one of them but it was still fun to see.
Photo info: OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. E-PL1, 14mm, f/8, 1/60 sec, ISO1600 Game Over
What made it a perfect night was that the Texas Stars won the game 4-2 (including an empty-netter), and took the opening series from the Oklahoma City Barons. I’d love to go back for another game sometime, but hopefully we can score some free tickets again!
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My camera & photos
I use a Fujifilm X-series camera for most of the photos on this site and my Instagram. Why not pick one up for yourself?
