I just bought an espresso maker o Sunday. I'm pretty excited about it because I love my latte and would love to have latte in the morning. Add to this that my machine (electrolux... good or not I don't know yet) was 75% off! 75%! I was pretty sure that I would be using this thing on a regular basis. But have I? No. But I have an excuse (ha ha). Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night I arrived home after 9:00. Too tired to do anything but nuke something and way too tired to read direct...

So I'm back home for the summer holidays. I went back to Tokyo last August. It doesn't seem like I've been gone that long, probably because I was back in February for my Grandfather's funeral. The jet lag wasn't too bad. I tried an oxygen treatment at Vancouver International. I'm still not sure if it was worth the twenty dollars or if I just got rooked. The jet lag wasn't too bad. It's hard for me to tell. I'm generally a night owl, so getting into a time zone doesn't mean I'm on the...

In one of those stupid moments of procrastination, I decided to look up on the web how to stop procrastinating. Ironic. Like a sinking person thinking about using a rope and then not bothering to use one. Anyhow... I found this link about what people are doing to stop procrastinating Link Just browsed it quickly, but I think I will devote a little bit of blog time ove the next few days to this problem I have. Obviously it is an issue for me. I can get the "have to get it done" stuf...

Ok... I just finished doing 20 minutes of general tidying up so I feel a little bit better. I have issues with housework which are better suited to another blog. So what are the rules gonna be???? Best to keep it simple and just a week long. I should be able to manage 7 days, right? (sniggers derisively). I figure read one or two web articles about procrastination, do a reflection on them and then try out the rules... Hmmm... there should probably be a reading and writing time lim...

Not in order..... Still on my list are... *dacshunds running (have you ever seen the wiener dog races???? tooo hilarious. Popular breed here now. So jealous) *my chair in my study (I have a great little posture chair but I'm always in the slouchy comfy chair with laptop on lap) *view outside my study (recently there are butterflies living a life and death saga with all the birds) *hubby (he's just so cute when he's not pissing me off! ) new to list... *my photo *this cho...

In Tokyo, It feels like we get a noticeable earthquake here about once a month. I'm sure there are tremors going on all the time that I don't notice. Since July, there have been three earthquakes that shook enough to make me start to wonder if I had to think about taking cover. Luckily, they just shake stuff and no damage done. Enough shaking happened today that the trains probably stopped though. An interesting side effect of the earthquakes is the physiological effect it has one me....

Still working on the master list today and I got a lot of it sorted out. It's mainly made up of long-term projects which will take a lot of steps to get done. Yesterday was a pretty good day in that I got everything done that I planned. I just didn't plan a lot because I had major events going on. Today was a strange day. I spent most of my time working on the list but not getting a lot done. I had to do a lot of reading though. Good enough, I guess. Tomorrow I will read some ...

I have pretty wavy hair (pretty functioning as an understated adverb here) that goes crazy in the humidity. Even if I wore a ponytail, bits of it around my ears escaped and curled up around my ears like the ghosts of princess leia's scary buns-do. I also got a sore head from contstant pony tails. So I got a straight perm about six months ago. It was great! I had straight hair and it didn't go wavy again after two hours out in the humidity. It was STRAIGHT!!!! But now I have six mont...

I can finally feel myself getting fitter. Things have been wierd for me since the end of April when I had miscarriage (very early) and then a month later some complications that took a while to get fixed. Basically, I've been a lump for the last few months, especially before a recent surgery that cleared up my probs. It's hard to take public transport if you think you might have problems. Anyhow, I've started riding my bike to work. I used to do this no problem and the first time back ...

No reading today as I did three articles yesterday and I was starting to get annoyed with the feeling of too much reading and not enough doing. Today, a lot of doing. Got two hours sleep because it was so darn hot last night. Don't know what we did to the airconditioner. Two nights ago I was wrapping my blanket around my head and thinking about wearing a toque to bed and last night steaming hot eve though it was same setting. This is not the perfect preparation for a productive day. ...

I’ve got a summer cold from using the air-conditioner. Figures. Work cancelled today, fortunately. So now for today’s new website: http://www.lifetoolsforwomen.com/main-personal.htm Link In general, the procrastination tips were about as specific as yesterday’s. Ok. This web-site is a lot more faith oriented which provides a different slant. Since the procrastination tips weren’t so hot, I checked out the links. Lots of short articles about “Balance”, “Writing Memorable...

Start: 11:03 Here's a link to the first article I read Link Words in quotation marks are from the article. This guy has the same article in lots of different places on the web, Link so if you see a title about stopping procrastination in 7 steps, best to skip this guy, I think. He has a lot of ideas, but the are TOO general. My philosophy about helping people is that if you're gonna help someone, don't just talk in the big picture. Give them specific tools to use. For e...

I practiced riding my bike to work today.  It's about 10-11 km from my house to work.  Usually I take the train which mostly runs underground so I didn't want my first attempt to ride my bike there to be on a work day. And that turned out to be a good thing. One of the things about streets in Japan is that they seldom run on a grid system.  It's not uncommon to have an intersection with five streets or intersections at strange angles that make it just a little tough to fig...

Why do people feel they need to add a banana to things with caramel?  Things taste lovely without banana. A new bakery opened up near my house.  Last time I sent I got a caramel flavored chou-cream.  I think it's what we call a cream puff back home. Lovely!  Amazing!  And without caramel. I bought one today and it was pretty nice except for the banana slices inside it.  Ick.  I'm kinda bummed.

I was listening to a recorded lecture today.  The speaker, Carla Neggers, quoted from Elizabeth George's book on writing, "discipline, you're born with it or you aren't."  I may need to go back and have another listen to double check my accuracy with the wording. The topic of the lecture was about understanding your creative process and the discussion turned to discipline. I suppose I could go into more context, but the phrase exactly is what I'm hoping people will comment on. Ar...