Stinkiness Revisited

So remember how I posted last week sometime about how I was eating kippered snacks? Well, I’m usually pretty careful about throwing away the packaging in such a way as to prevent rank smells from permeating the apartment. So I put the container inside a zip lock bag, sealing it tightly and throw it into the rubbish can. Then I promptly take out the trash. Well this go around I spilled the tiniest amount of stinky fish goo on the counter and rather than use a paper towel, which is what a should have done, I used a dish rag to clean it up. Then I threw the dish rag into the dirty clothes bin and there it sat for several days while dirty clothes accumulated on top of it. Well, today at the office I changed into my workout clothes and took my sweat-towel and hit the gym. When I began sweating, I wiped my brow with my little towel and discovered that once the towel got damp, it stunk to high heaven of fish-stank. I also noticed that as my shirt and pants became moistened with my perspiration, they too smelled fishy. Then as I was showering I was dismayed to learn that my big towel had a decidedly fishy smell to it as well. I tried to drip dry as best I could. Luckily the clothes I wore to work today were not washed with the kippered snack towel. So tonight I’m going to have to go home and put all those freshly washed clothes back into the washing machine with lots of extra detergent and hope for the best. Good thing I hadn’t put them away yet so it’ll be easy to gather all of the nasally offensive articles together. I hate stinky things. No more kippered snacks for me.

Floamies

I've been meaning to post pictures of these for a while now. Every year for Christmas my mom gets me a toy. Even at 30. I think it's cute of her - maybe she's making sure I have something to keep me young at heart at least one day out of the year. (Because we all know that I'm so mature the rest of the days of the year. Ha!) Anyway, since Mr X is my other half, my mom also gives him a toy now too. Sometimes I have no clue where on earth she finds these toys because usually they are like nothing I've ever seen before.

Allow me to introduce you 2008's toy find - The Floamie:

You have to assemble the Floamie's body and then you get to put the goopy colors all over the body shell. (I don't know how else to describe it, I'm sorry.) Mr X's Floamie was some sort of rocket-warrior-man.
Mine was some sort of pink girly martian or something. And yes, I had some extra "floam" so I gave her a set of double d's. They proved to be too large and they ended up slowly oozing down the front of her until they actually hit the floor. So I ultimately ended up performing a mastectomy on her. She's happier these days as a result.

Anyway, thanks mom! It was a fun little activity.

More Japan tidbits...

Here are some of the sign Mr X has to decipher whenever he goes anywhere. I like how the kids in the signs in Japan have enormous heads.

This is a Japanese vending machine. It looks very exciting. I don't know if Mr X actually bought anything from it or not. Hopefully he did because how can you pass that up?

This probably would make any American feel like home...until you walked inside of it. I guess it's packed full of gourmet Japanese food and it's not 'fast' junkie food either....

Mr X bought this from the 7-11. He's had these in the states before (I have too) and he thought they were just decent here. But this one that he got at the Japan 7-11, he says, tops them all. He thought it was delicious. I forget what they are actually called...pork dumplings? I have no idea.

Views of Japan

This past weekend Mr X ventured out and about in Japan to enjoy the countryside....I mean city. I guess there isn't much in the way of countryside where he went. Unfortunately he didn't quite make it to the Sumo match but he's hoping to try for that again this weekend. So here are some of his pictures of Japan so far:

Mr X says that the crosswalks are like nothing he's seen before - they are massive and throngs of people are always storming across them when they are on "go."

Ah yes, the karaoke bar -this one is huge! And no, Mr X didn't sing any karaoke, in case you were wondering.

Here's a an area that looks a little more cozy and less 'modern'...I like these pictures best.

Mr X's Japanese Ride

This is Mr X's first car in Japan. It's a Nissan March. It came equipped with a nice GPS...which was basically useless to Mr X since he can neither understand nor read Japanese. See how the driver's wheel is on the 'wrong' side of the car? Mr X reports that took some getting used to. He was also running around Japan accidentally turning his windshield wipers on every time he meant to turn on the blinkers. Luckily the gas and brake pedals are in the same order as they are here so he wasn't stepping on the gas when he meant to hit the brakes. That could have been a problem. But all in all, Mr X says he's getting used to driving on the other side of the road with everything opposite.



He had to turn this car in yesterday for a new one. Now he's the proud renter of a Honda hybrid car of some sorts.

In other news - rumor has it that Mr X is headed to watch a real live Sumo Wrestling match Saturday. (Since Saturday for him is pretty much Friday for us...I guess he's going today.) I'm excited to hear about that experience. Hopefully he'll take some pictures.

What's in a name?

Yesterday as I passed two coworkers in the hallway (neither of whom I know), one of them cheerfully blurted out “Hi Char!”

Two things:

1) I’ve never spoken to this coworker before in my life (at least I don’t think I have) so how does he know who I am?
2) Who does he think he is, calling me ‘Char’?

Lately I’ve also been receiving emails from coworkers that have been starting out with “Hi Char…”

I guess I don’t mind quite so much in the instances where I know and work with those coworkers every day. I suppose I can tolerate that. Barely. Usually the only people that are allowed to call me ‘Char’ are my family members and friends. Close friends. You know who you are. (Even Mr X sticks to my full name.) But really not even many of the close friends I’ve made post-college have attempted to address me that way….so it’s strange to suddenly hear my coworkers using it after all these years of being addressed simply as ‘Charlotte.’

But strangers or near-strangers? They better stick with 'Charlotte' or else....or else nothing really - I'd curse their names behind their backs but I don't know what their names are. Maybe I'll just have to shake my fist at them....menacingly.

Some like it hot!

It's been nearly a week of disturbingly warm weather here. I don't mean to complain about it because I love the warm weather, it's just that it somehow seems wrong for it to be 80 degrees all week in the middle of January. It was 78 degrees on Saturday, 82 on Sunday, Monday was 86, yesterday was 80 and today it's at least 75. In fact, the next seven days are supposed to be in the mid-to-high 70's. Doesn't that seem strange? I know I've been gone for a while but I thought typical winter weather in SD was supposed to be in the 60's. Well I should probably take advantage of the beautiful weather and go sunbathe on the beach or something. Except I don't sunbathe...at least not without some good sunblock on. Pasty is the new tan, in case you haven't heard...at least that's what I keep telling myself.

How's the weather where you live?

(I realize my life must be boring if all I have to blog about is the weather. Bear with me, I'm waiting for fantastic pictures of Mr X's adventures abroad so we can all live vicariously through him.)