I must have been channeling zeitgeist, because I was awake at 7 a.m., irrevocably dry-eyed awake a mere six hours after going to bed. To bed, note, not to sleep, because it takes me 45 minutes to fall asleep. So I did double the usual number of exercises and had breakfast at a normal hour. And the day's Event passed off without fuss. I'm not used ( Read more... )

My doctor, my accountant, and now my dentist have retired. Actually the last was no surprise, since she's been cutting back on her hours for a year or so now. But ah, these professionals who retire in their 50s... Mind, especially with doctors, after that gruelling training and those gruelling work hours they're entitled to a decade or two of ( Read more... )

Ordered dinner in Monday and groceries in Tuesday and then got my Visa bill for the last month. Opened it with trepidation, because I've done a lot of online shopping since November, but discovered that mid-session I topped my account up by several hundred dollars and so my credits more than covered my debits. But really should start keeping track ( Read more... )

Quiet Christmas day started out v. pleasantly with the discovery that someone (south NND, Phantom Snowblower, Kris Kringle?) had cleared my sidewalk, front walk and steps of last night's heavy snow. Thought 'Oh dear south NND keeps giving me presents and doing me favours I really must get her something in return' (Japan-induced Law of Equivalent ( Read more... )

Feeling meh. World situation finally getting me down. May go back to drinking gin.

Books finished?

Cartmel, Flip Back
-- more Vinyl Detective. Entertaining except for his girlfriend's wine snobbery. Wine snobs are bores.

Edith Shiffert, Kyoto Dwelling-- collection of seasonal haiku by an American who lived in Kyoto from 1963 until her death ( Read more... )

Transpires that misdelivered Amazon package wasn't a scam but an actual mixup. It was supposed to be a crossword book but the labels evidently got switched. Useful of- and, clearly, necessary for- the delivery types to take a photo because otherwise I wouldn't have put two and two together ( Read more... )

Ascription of a poem: 'the poetess Ono no Komachi.' This following a biographical note about 'Ono no Komachi' and followed by another poem* ascribed to 'Komachi', period. Yes, 1955, I know: but if you can do the last two you can just easily not do the first. Especially as no other woman in the collection is called a poetess ( Read more... )

To celebrate the moment, and because my new card came yesterday, I ordered in for dinner. So did everyone else, it seems, because in the ten minutes I stood on my ill-lit front porch, wearing white so I'd show up even if my house number didn't, two other Door Dash deliveries arrived for two separate houses across the street. My guy called me ( Read more... )

A very mild tum upset yesterday gets me to the weight I'd gloomily figured I might hit in four weeks, just before surgery. It won't last, but in celebration I ordered in Indian food: and ate a third of it. My cheekbones are shyly beginning to sharpen amid the squirrel face, so vanity is satisfied as well. And of course it would be nice to drop ( Read more... )

So have finished Miner's introduction to court poetry which is all well and good. A little irked at his sneering at the imagism of the Kyougoku poets ( Read more... )