I forgot how messy tonkatsu is to cook. My kitchen looks like a disaster area now.
I remember learning once, in a recipe, how to check if a pan is hot enough: Sprinkle water on it, and the drops should bounce around. Or something like that.
Word of advice: That doesn’t work if the pan has hot oil in it.
We’ll chalk this up as a learning experience.

I have run out of soap. I have been using Ivory soap, which comes in nice economy packs. It doesn’t imply anything other than getting you clean.
I decided to try something classier this time while I was shopping. My old brand was there, cheap as ever, but my skin has been dry lately. Let’s upgrade. So I grabbed a different brand of soap, more expensive, but with great potential promised.
At least I assumed it was soap. When I got home I noticed that it makes no promise to make anyone clean. Moisturized, yes. Cleanliness, no. The actual product described itself as a “Beauty Bar”.
Apparently what that means is that the soap stinks and will give your entire bathroom a sickly floral scent.

My skin is feeling much nicer though.

My diet isn’t going well. I ran a far distance yesterday morning, then had a good lunch. But for dinner I had a Dairy Queen blizzard. I had snacked on some Timbits, but on the whole, that wasn’t a proper meal.
Surprise surprise, I was lethargic most of today. It only got better when I spent time making myself a sizable dinner.

I’m still hungry.

Last Friday I had a barbecue. I had a box of fortune cookies wandering around and we had a few of them. I like the taste of these cookies, and generally would prefer if they came without a piece of paper in them.
However, these cookies, VH brand, were bad. They didn’t taste that good. Maybe it was because they were “Low Fat” but I’m not going to give them that credit. And maybe I don’t like the fortunes, but these were insultingly bad. They read more like advertisements for VH sauce. And they were worded so that you couldn’t add “in bed” to the end of them.
That’s just wrong.

And now comes the part where your legs realize what you did to them and take revenge.

I got up really early and ran a marathon today. I only did a minute and a half better than last year, but I felt a lot better at the end. I wasn’t dying, and my right leg didn’t cramp up. It did feel tight a few times, and I had to run up hills carefully, but it never cramped. It helped a lot to go slowly at the start. I could have gone slower, but I think that would have backfired on me; I would be out running for longer and getting worse.
My time was 3:43:20. I placed 48th out of 301 runners who finished. My goal was 3:30:00, but I’m okay with missing it. I had a pace calculator that indicated I should have gone faster, and I’m glad I ignored it. I wasn’t doing too badly at the halfway point, getting there in 1:47:50, but, well let’s face it, in the second half I was tired.
The weather-wise, it was hot. Thankfully, for the first half it was overcast. I think it drizzled a few times. In the second half, you really felt it when the sun was out.
Getting to the race was interesting. I got up before the crack of dawn and a friend, also running it, drove me down there. He had a GPS guidance system that was supposedly telling us how to get to the start line. First it told us to turn where there was no street. When we didn’t it offered an alternate route, turning right onto 55st. We did that and found it dead-ended after twenty meters, where it turned into a running path. Eventually we got there with only one more weird route. The theory is that because we hadn’t docked the unit, it didn’t realize it was in a car. It was trying to find routes for pedestrians. Apparently very fast moving ones.

Actually, I didn’t sleep that well.

And it feels really hot.

I have internet again. The problem was my cable modem had gotten out of date in the past five years. Shaw had changed their system so that it didn’t work with the old modem. They replaced it and now I have access again.
Yesterday was my half-birthday. Nominally I celebrated by having a barbecue. I made Baked Alaska again, but it didn’t turn out as well as the last time. We’ll chalk it up as a learning experience.
Tomorrow I have a marathon. I’m fairly calm on this. Hopefully this will let me sleep well. I don’t need stress preventing me from sleeping. Especially since I have to get up before the crack of dawn.
I think I know what to do to run a marathon. Chiefly is to run slowly. Do not try and go fast. Eat lots along the way to keep up energy.
There is nothing I can do about the weather. And it looks like it will be really hot tomorrow.

Growing up, teachers would love to point out the fallacies of Star Wars. A common favorite is that ships wouldn’t explode in the vacuum of space. But let’s think about that for a moment…
What would lead us to believe that space is a vacuum in that galaxy far, far away? When they are dogfighting, ships seem to steer gracefully, as if in an atmosphere. You can apparently park a ship in an asteroid field and then go out for a stroll with minimal protection. X-wing cockpits look flimsy enough that I almost expect the pilot to be able to open the window. The aforementioned explosions in space…
I think we have to face facts. There is no vacuum in space. There is air. I can grant you that there isn’t a lot of air, but there is something out there.
Could someone please point out to me where there is concrete evidence of a vacuum?

While driving to work today, I heard the following two songs in a row.
Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne
Don’t Cha by the Pussycat Dolls
Give them a listen and you will see that they have the same plot. The basic premise is that my current girlfriend isn’t good enough, and that I would be better off with the singer. (Yes, I’m using the personal pronoun there. This is my blog, I can project if I want.)
Is this a common theme in bubblegum pop? Is this also giving men (me?) false expectations?

My internet has died.
Until Shaw comes here, next Saturday, I am reduced to stealing from neighbors who haven’t figured out how to protect their wireless internet.

What would we do without stupid people?

I went to a swing dance class this evening. It was fun, but I didn’t really care for the instructor. He went fast and seemed to assume everyone had a photographic memory. Plus it was crowded. I’m an introvert, so I don’t like crowds. The instructor was apparently oblivious to this because he was teaching moves that took the dancers all around the floor.
Luckily, I only saw the first part. A friend then helped me cover the basic things I should know. I still haven’t gotten it perfectly, but I am learning.
I have found that when dancing in a crowded area, it is the people who know what they are doing who are the most annoying. They will happily go all over the floor and get in people’s way. And because they are putting on a great show, it isn’t their fault, because they own the floor. The newcomers will just stick to their small area of the floor, do the basic steps and try to stay out of the way.
It was a nice group. Very welcoming and it was easy to ask girls to dance.
And yes, I did dance with the hottest girl in the room.

I could have called into work, sick, claiming an iron deficiency. But, the right thing to do is to just take the afternoon off.
Did you think I wouldn’t see Iron Man on opening day?
Heck, my manager was right there with me.
Previously I had said that Transformers was the greatest film ever made. I was fully expecting that this would top that. However, I never really felt it. The problem though is that I have been waiting for this film for eleven years when the rumors had it that Nicolas Cage would play Stark. I have been reading the comics for a long time. There was no chance of surprises happening.
I’m going to hurt the logic people when I say this. Transformers is still the greatest film ever made, but Iron Man is better.
This movie did several things correct that most comic book movies ruin. For one, the hero keeps his mask on and isn’t constantly losing it or taking it off. (I’m looking at you, Spider-man 2.) And he certainly doesn’t do it to get the girl. In fact, the hero doesn’t even get the girl! Very minor romantic sub-plot is never finished. Woot!
Go see this movie.