Café blog

I'm sitting in my semi-regular Doutor café at 淵野辺, with the traditional mocha ("eru size" today) and the leptop open, going through e-mails in the dave-is-uncontactable calm of the coffee-shop environment, killing time before the next bus to work. I know it's only a mile in, but I've been travelling since before seven o'clock, so I like this little pause in the day before work really gets going.

I slept yesterday. A lot! The cat and I slept in til 2 pm after watching a marathon of Six Feet Under til the not-so-early hours of Sunday morning. Then I went back to the bedroom about 6pm to read my Murakami book, and ended up drifting off again. Cue me waking up at 11pm when I hear Himself putting on American Beauty (same script-writer and score-writer as SFU, I learn). Which we then mostly watched, before he went for a bath (he doesn't get up til 4 hours after me most days) and I went back to bed. I drifted off again to the strains of Ambient 2 coming from the living room, and woke when he hopped into bed at a somewhat-incredible 4 am. Thanks to forgetting my earplugs at the office during the last move, I couldn't quite shut out the snoring (I'm sure I do much worse, but I luckily sleep with someone who seems impervious to noise). So at 05:02, I went toilet (in the toilet, obvi), and at 05:52 gave up on getting back to sleep.

Summer is already here, though -- at least, by British standards -- so the morning was sufficiently light that I could get up and start making myself ready for the day. Project Jawline-Up Beard seems to have withstood its second brush with the razor (note the absence, in attached, of neckular hair). And I have to say that lastnight I felt positively blissed out by the amount of sleep I got since Sat night. Feel much calmer today, too. Shows the power of refusing to go out and about on Sunday just because you feel you ought to on your day off, ね?


A beard, earlier today. From the office (too embarrassed to do it at the café).

First day sans jacket

Not quite the scorcher yet that it was shaping up to be earlier, but warm in Tokyo Proper none the less.

Journey's given me enough time to listen to Maximo Park's new album, and the My Architects one that I fell asleep to lastnight. Two beautiful albums that I've fallen in love with.

Golden balls to Golden Week

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So, here I am at the dead of twenty-past-nine, on a train platform just beyond the vast Tokyo border feeling more than slightly hacked off that Golden Week has been ruined by:
a) having to work on two more national holidays because of the duty rota,
b) having to come in the rest of Golden Week because the boss mis-scheduled her trip, despite having lived here herself,
c) working last Saturday AND this one,
d) people asking inflammatory questions about why I don't have an apartment yet. (Hint: you lot dropped us in it with unready software and no training, then keep overloading us, with stuff that isn't that important, every time we almost get our free time back... etc.)

I'm coping by listening to My Top Rated on the iPhod (lots of Nineties - Hi, I'm old.), contemplating the long-term prospects of the relationship I'm in, and planning what kind of apartment I want, wondering where & when I should go on holiday ("whether" is long sealed, by the way) and trying to figure out how to claim my life, sanity, and communication with my friends back.

Light-hearted stuff like that...

Wonder how the Cat is today after his spat with the Rubbish Boss yesterday (and subsequent mentor chat with the drag queen)...?

Massage from the single-mould unit

It's a bit ridicularse, I know, to be paying what I am at the Wochenlig to avoid the commute...

But as I'm doing so many CO weeks to make up for March away, and then the Incoming keeps arriving every time there's a windy of opportunity, the sensible alternative of actually finding a place of my own in McHida has never yet been possible. Maybe next week, eh...?

Eerie quiet in Machida

I woke up this morning — the last day in this particular stint at the Wochenlig Mansion — to find no noise outside. Nothing. There's the gentle rumble of distant traffic on the main road (presumably between 横浜 and 八王子), but nothing else. It's weird. I don't remember the New Year being like this, but then I didn't wake up here...

It's been too long since this blog was last active. And much indeed has happened. I've been home for a month (well, back in the UK for a month — wasn't a proper holiday!). And at the moment, the bosslady is here. But I'll try and drop in the occasional entry each week, which was the point of this thing when I started it... er... four years ago(?)

I'm doing considerably more e-mail-type admin than I used to, getting less sleep (partly because I'm travelling in each day from the Cat's place when I'm not in Machida). But I'm living a broader life than I used to in many respects. And I'm listening to a lot more music (both from the Cat's enormous collection, and from my own purchases in Book Off and iTunes). I watch Mino Monta in the mornings, I got my first grey hair (to be posted) the day after my 30th in March. And I'm finding my voice at work (sometimes a bit too loud, probably). Which is not to say work is going brilliantly, but it is at least hopeful. I'm not massively up-beat this morning, because I've got to go to work (bosslady presence plus need to work with her on my first mission project). But the Cat also is working, so no plans would've survived anyway.

I do need to get back to the gym, though, as my health isn't the finest at the moment, and I think a dose of regular (proper) exercise would help enormously to destress.

Listening to Snow Patrol's Warmer Climate right now, and it reminds me — local-radio style — that the weather is indeed getting warmer right now. Looking at mid-twenties for the rest of Golden Week (today is Constitution Day, I bereave, followed by Boys Day tomorrow).

CO week is now Fri-to-Fri, too, so there'll be sod-all fun tomorrow. Have to enjoy what I've got! :oD

Lotsaluvv,
Me

I got in touch with one of my first new acquaintances