My body must hate me by now (Pt. I)

Before I get started here, one tidbit of WTF?!??!!!??? news: the days of Doug sleeping in the buff (or anything close to it) are over, or at least out of season. There is no way to sleep out here without anything less than 2 layers of clothing top and bottom, one being something with full sleeves and legs. The other day I went out in the kitchen to whip up some sweet grilled cheeses with the authentic Kraft cheedar cheese slices I found (quite happy about that), and I could see my breath!!!

Oh, and if you look to your left you'll see a little gem I ran across - "non-alcohole"! Reminds of the story I heard of that guy that died of alcohol poisoning when he found out that the large intestine absorbs liquor faster than most any part of the anatomy through direct contact....... ok, you get it? Because I'm soooo not explaining it any further.

Yeah... so this past week or so I've been pretty harsh to my body, but not without good reason of course. The other day, my neighbor Joe made a rather astute observation in that despite the fact that I say that I normally only drink a bunch when there's a special reason, lately there's been an inordinate amount of special reasons. ;P After thinking about it, I think it's because I'm still not totally satisfied with where I am socially around here and am really just trying to drown my dissatisfactions and frustrations. I think this part of the equation is slowly getting better though, as I've met some cool people along the course of the week and am having more of a social life. Another piece of advice I heard from a few people actually was to go out and do stuff as much as possible over the winter so you don't wind up holed up in your room glued to the kotatsu... mmm.... warm, toasty kotatsu...

So anyway, here's the last week or so in a nutshell. Friday, Matt was in town, so I go in town with my friend Kevin to show him a good time, which I definitely believe we were sucessful in doing. We first went to a gyutan restaurant, which is the most famous specialty of Sendai. So we get to this place and sit down, check out the menu and order. I yelled out our order as the waitress was walking towards us with plate in hand, which she promptly placed on the table almost before I could finish speaking! Apparently from what she said, since that's what the place is known for they knew what we were going to order as soon as we walked in the door. I found out later that there's another place that's known for the softer style (which is my preference) so I'll check that one out next time. Anyway, from there we head out to a great bar on the other side of the station, where a middle-aged guy was hitting on Matt (ie: he was highly and overly interested in the tall foreigner guy, who he insisted looks like Legolas from LOTR) and we met 3 girls with the same name that met each other online, which was rather surreal but very entertaining. After some time, we allegedly went to another bar and talked to more people, but I'm just taking Matt's word for all that.

Skip forward to the next morning, when I wake up in Matt's hotel with both of us still spinning from the night before after a couple hours sleep. He was there for work, so we go check out his exhibit thingy (experimental alternative fuel cells - hydrogen powered cars) and then I scuttle off to work attempting to drag myself through the day. Oh, and did I mention it was snowing? Here's the view from my balcony when I got back to change before work.

So after work I was beat, but I had already arranged for this Japanese guy Senyu to meet us so I dragged myself out for another night of festivities. I'm glad I did though as we had a blast - I saved my liver some trouble by driving to Sendai and playing designated driver. More craziness ensued. The next day was all about recuperation, and I needed it. All in all, a crazy weekend.

Oh, and the following message is for anyone named Matt, aka Legolas:
NEED PICTURES!!!

To be continued...