Got my act back together. Managed to escape dither mode. With a little help from my friends ChatGPT and Gemini, my trip is mostly planned.
And, I made a “Trip 2Do” list to keep me on task going forward. (I hate myself when I write something like “on task going forward”).
The Twilight Zone
Dithering seems to be a problem as I get older. Unlike some of the other age-related problems: Dithering can be minimized.
Went to yoga. Got a sandwich. Had a nice outside lunch. Did 2 mile walk. Bused the rest of the way home. About as good as it gets when one is an octogenarian.
It’s been a lost day. I accomplished NOTHING. I made my bed. I read the WSJ. I walked the absolute minimum. The things on my Monday 2do list aren’t hard. But. I didn’t do them.
I will start and finish something between now and dinner – 90 minutes. Anything.
Started out cloudy, but it was a nice early summer day.
Today’s project was dithering over the 5-day “hole” in my trip to Japan. My vague plan was to spend a few days at a “traditional” ryokan. But, I’d go batshit crazy after one bath and one meal. Fortunately, I had reservations before I made reservations for three days of soaking and eating.
I think I will spend those five days madly riding the train around. Getting full value from my train pass. Stop between 3 and 5 every afternoon. Stay at a cheap hotel near the station. Do a little walking around. Get dinner at a 7-11 or a ramen shop. And train off again the next morning. Then on Sunday, July 28, I can make my way to Tokyo from wherever I happen to be. I have a hotel room in Tokyo for July 28 – August 2.
Japan has a nice assortment of trains. Some run at 200+ miles per hour. And others poke along. The pokey ones are more suitable for my purposes. The train pass also works on some long-haul buses and a few ferries.
Garden Box – Pretty Boring.
Ray, The Rosemary is doing great. As is the culinary sage. The new plants are just “new”.
0545 on a Friday morning. Even the sky was orange for Wear Orange Day.
Some time was spent today messing with the deranged iMac. The trip to the Apple store was put off until next week.
But the main event of the day/week was our Rally Against Gun Violence. The CEO of the Asylum was publically challenged by one of the organizers to attend.
Nobody believed he would come.
But, he did. He wore the shirt he was given when he was challenged to attend.And he carried the banner.Old people writing Dear Asshole postcards to our Govenor. He vetoed all of the gun bills that the legislature passed recently.
The event ended with postcard writing. It’s the least we can do.
Major failure. Spend most of the day and some of the evening trying to get a friend’s not-too-old iMac working properly. I wasted 3 or 4 hours trying to avoid doing a factory reset. Did the reset. After another couple of hours,..
The patient looks good but the prognosis is bleak.
But, it’s backed up. It’s clean. It’s ready to be traded in on a new machine. Trip to the Apple store tomorrow.
Thought about why I sort of collapsed with fatigue late yesterday afternoon.
For all of my adult life I have enjoyed great good health. I was able to work and party as hard as I needed or wanted. A 16-hour workday was common. And it wasn’t unheard of to party until 4AM and still make it to work by 8AM. I believe we called that burning the candle at both ends. It worked for me.
And when I got into my 50s and Carlton was in his 60s, I became the “food police” as I tried to keep him alive and my weight fashionably low. Or at least lower than Carlton’s.
I have fallen off the “eat healthy” wagon. And I am no longer fashionably thin. I have called too many grilled bacon and cheese sandwiches with chips washed down with a beer, dinner. I think nothing of calling a cookie and coffee lunch.
Well, that has to stop.
I honestly believe that I have max 2 more years. So, I figure I can eat anything I want. But, I also think I might have more energy if I started eating like I should again. (I had cottage cheese and strawberries for lunch. That’s a start.)
It’s a bitch, when you know what you should do but you don’t want to do it.
The orchids are hanging in. And there is some interesting lens flare action.
Tired this evening. My dinner out was canceled. That was not a problem. I came home, got out of my clothes, and put into my fluffy bathrobe. I made some coffee and a little dinner. I am hoping to stay awake until sunset. That will be 8:31 today. Another cuppa coffee may be required.
Paid for my plane tickets, and the price increased significantly. Glad that I paid $15 to reserve my ticket for 7 days. I appreciate that United allowed me to do so because I might not have bought the tickets otherwise. This trip to Japan is wild and crazy compared to last summer’s well-researched Northwest Passage adventure. It feels like spending big money on a real-life “escape room” experience.”
And we did have cake last night. It was . . . a layer of chocolate cake then a layer of chocolate ganache with fresh raspberries spread throughout and another layer of chocolate cake decorated with a raspberry glaze and fruit. . .
The Twilight Zone
Old people enjoy birthdays as much as any 5-year-old. Each birthday is a gift.
And today I did some serious trip planning. Well, rather some serious, hotel reservationing. I finally figured out the generic Japanese hotel reservation form. Needless to say the cheaper the hotel the crankier the reservation form. I have 5 more nights to take care of.
I don’t understand what happened to me. I could not decide where to go or where to stay. Think that a big part of it was information overload. I had to remind myself – “Woman, you are not buying the hotel you are just renting a room for a night”.
Sort of carried the sunrise theme over to breakfast.
My trip planning is stuck. I am still on Mt Asahidake. I don’t want to spend another night. But, I don’t know where I want to go.
I am overthinking things. I believe that as I get older, I spend more and more time overthinking. I think it’s because I know that my once mighty cognitive powers have slipped a notch or two, and I don’t want to screw up.
Gratitude
My Asylum family is celebrating a birthday tonight. That means cake, ice cream, snarky cards, and good cheer. And a lot of gratitude.
A dinner guest. Like most residents, the crow thinks the culinary offerings “need improvement”.
Got a room for a couple of nights at the Bearmonte Hotel. At the end of the Bus #60 route. 3000 or so feet up Mt Asahidake. They made it clear that dinner would be Hokkaido pork teppanyaki both nights and that there might be people with tattoos using the onsen.
I haven’t decided if I will go to one of the northern islands only accessible by ferry. You know how I feel about boats. The lodging on the islands will help you if you want to climb the island mountain.
They will happily send you on your way with 4 rice balls, ½ a liter of water, and a portable toilet. If I decide to go to the island, I am NOT climbing the mountain, even with a free portable toilet. The mountain is over 5,000 feet. And it’s also an active volcano.
The Twilight Zone
This week I realized that I am an octogenarian. How did that happen?
The Orange Lunatic at the Libertarian Convention – Jose Luis Magana/AP
As a sometimes photographer, this is my fave image of The Creature from the last week or so. Makes you sick to your stomach to be an American. “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Samuel Johnson 1775.
And no the guilty verdict doesn’t make me feel “better”. It just makes me feel less bad. For now.
Trying to find lodging and transit for me around Hokkaido. It’s like chess. You have to be planning a week ahead. Now, if I find a room in Sapporo where will I go after that? And after that. And how will I make the transit? I find that I am competing with busloads of “continental Asians” as the Japanese snarkily call Chinese, for lodging.
There are some truly bizarre hotel options. While browsing for a room, I encountered a pricing scheme that left me dazed.
The cheapest option? A room with just a toilet. Yep, you read that right. Apparently, basic ablutions were an optional add-on. You could upgrade to a room with a shower… or, for a slightly steeper price, a room with breakfast. But for some reason, the holy trinity of toilet, shower, and breakfast seemed to be an impossibility.
I’m all for a good travel challenge. So, I opted for 3 nights of the “toilet and breakfast” package, figuring a couple of strategically placed water bottles and some ingenuity would see me through any required in-room “showers.” Besides, this is Japan, the land of the amazing onsen (public hot springs/bath houses). Not to mention Toto toilets.
Lesson learned: Always double-check the amenities list when booking hotels in Japan!
