Random Things

gordsellar2 Comments
  • Over the last eighteen months or so, I’ve become pretty good friends with my co-worker Gwen and her husband Mike. Well, they’ve just had their first baby, a little boy! (I’ve yet to visit, for various reasons including a niggling cold I wouldn’t want to pass on — though don’t babies have a strong immune system? Er, I dunno. I’ll call and ask Gwen.) Anyway, congratulations to them! And suddenly, the balance of weight has shifted back to me being the one who looks more pregnant.
  • This afternoon I’ll be heading across campus to sign my contract for my current promotion. I’ll comment more on that when the ink is dry.
  • I’ve been watching what I eat, hitting the gym pretty regularly. I occasionally miss a day or two, especially when the effects of the previous day’s workout linger, but on a day like today, when I just have sniffles and a general feeling of ick — as well as the vaguest of inclinations to throw up, I don’t know why — I make sure not to miss my workout. To get into the gym, one must retrieve the key from the security guard, and I suspect he was quite surprised to see me show up on the evening of Seollal to work out.
  • Lime made ddeok mandu guk (rice-cake & dumpling soup) for Seollal for the first time. And it was good.
  • I’ve all but finished my work on the story “Ten Spikes and a Hammer” — I’m just waiting for some Japanese translations of a few phrases to get back to me from the friend of Gwen’s, who specializes in literary translation of Japanese fiction from the era the story is set it. Nothing like verisimiltude, huh? I’m already (slowly, and haltingly) at work on another story, surreal expat-horror set in Japan, tentatively titled “Moe” (mo-ay). The word is Japanese, and I encountered it in the essay “Otaku Sexuality” by Saitō Tamaki, translated by Christopher Bolton (and collected in  and literally means “budding”, but it’s used by Japanese otaku to somewhat self-deprecatingly describe their fascination with a specific manga or anime character. (“I’m Asuka moe,” means, “I have a thing for Asuka,” as is explained in the essay.)
  • More news coming in a few days, including a story publication, so check back soon!

Comments

  1. William "Disco Inferno" George says:
    January 29, 2009

    1)
    “I’ve been watching what I eat, hitting the gym pretty regularly”

    I’ve found that being broke for a few months has done more to trim me down than all of the money I dumped into the gyms back in Korea.

    Poverty, I have decided, is the key to fitness. It’ll be a shame to go back to having tonnes of dispoisable income again.

    2)
    Maybe it’s the public computer I’m on, but your side menu is expanding and collapsing on it’s own. You may want to make sure the code is 100% just in case it’snot on this end.

    Reply
    1. gordsellar says:
      January 29, 2009

      William,

      (By the way — Disco Inferno? When did that become your nickname? I like it!)

      Yeah, when I was in India and living in this house way up north, where I had only bread and peanut butter and whiskey in the house, and walked a half an hour into town and a half and hour back out everyday for dinner, I lost a lot of weight. (Though swimming, that was what really trimmed me down.) The thing I find in the gym is that I can feel my muscles developing, which is good for me in other ways, and will, supposedly, cause me to burn of more calories in other activities. But while I’m not going to sink into poverty, simulating it in a dietary way sure helps.

      And no, it’s not just you — the sidebars are rotating on their own. I’m fiddling with the sidebar and I didn’t get around to shutting that off. Thanks for reminding me!

      Reply

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