How to tell シ and ツapart, laboriously.

Ten years in, there are katakana I still can't sight read: シ and ツ. I have a little mnemonic plus muscle memory workaround. It also involves ンand ソ because when I started I couldn't tell those apart either, until I noticed that ソ looks like its hiragana counterpart, そ.  (In handwriting it is more apparent). So the mnemonic is "sheets and sew," (shi, tsu, n, so) and I spell this with my thumb: シツンソ, starting with an up stroke and alternating. Then I compare  how vertical they are to what I am trying to read.

Faced with the prospect of having to do this in a grocery store, I have come up with a new  trick. シ kind of looks like an s, and ツdoesn't. Not that there aren't kana which look way more like an S.

Hakone

 

Hakone is under 60 miles from where I was staying in Tokyo, so I tried to take the subway there. This was maddening and everything went wrong and it took all day, but the last leg of the trip was via the tiny red mountain train, and that made everything better. Everything was fresh air and fall colors and waterfalls. The train used little switchbacks, when we would roll up onto a dead end, and back out. It was tiny and charming and slow and cold. 

I'd learned to pay for the cheapest ticket and settle the difference at the add fare machine instead of trying to figure it out in advance, since I kept getting off early or switching over to another train provider early or late. At the Hakone staton, Chukoku no mori, this slightly backfired as there was no add fare machine and it was open access. It was alarming, feeling too stupid for the honor system.

 I walked around a little bit, being charmed, before I went to the museum that brought me to Hakone.

 The hakone outdoor museum was stellar. Usually I like to find unusual angles for photos but this setting was so balanced and lovely that anywhere you pointed the camera would be lovely.

For example, this irrigation.

 This was the jewel of everything, 6 or so stories of a double spiral staircase (one staircase for up, one for down) inside a stained glass window. I took hundreds of photos in here; it was an incredible space.

 Here I am at the top.

 The Hakone Open Air Museum had a long foot bath next to the cafe. It wasn't very hot, but I was charmed by the regularly spaced shoehorns. Honestly I should get one so I can step into my shoes instead of jamming my feet in and then unfolding the squashed down back.

 This was for washcloths to go with the foot bath. As far as I know, I used the honor system just fine in this instance.

 This was my favorite part of my trip. It was so restorative. There are all sorts of things I would still like to see, like the lake and the glass forest.

No Box Letterbox

I like experimenting with getting the smallest possible letterbox. Can I get a log and stamp into a locket? Sort of. A pill box? yes! The key to this box is that it is indoors in a dry area, so it doesn't need an external container. The other key is magnets. I noticed that the metal that lockers are folded from has a little vertical space on both sides that is totally invisible. A letterbox for this space could be any length, and 3/4" wide. I designed a plesiosaur stamp with those dimensions in mind. I know there are lockers at the National Museum of Nature and Science, which has the (a?) futabasaurus reconstruction on display. I hope the lockers have this same gap. It should be pretty discreet to pull this out while appearing to arrange your things in the locker.

It's not really proper to post spoilers of letterboxes online, but I am pleased with how this one turned out and there are only 13 letterboxes in Japan so I doubt anyone at all will find this one.

Calling Bullshit on that Cute Starbucks Video

I want this little video to be true. I want there to be reasons for things!

Starting with letters from my grandparents addressed to "Kaitlyn" I have been desensitized to misspellings of my name. I spell it for people once or twice and then I let it go, including when it is pretty important.

Work, insurance, contracts... if someone else has to input my name, especially over the phone, but including when they have it in front of them on paper, it is likely to be messed up. 

I emailed my boss about this once and then washed my hands of it. 

 Whoops! That's my misspelled state issued ID. I've been in to remedy this one several times. The last time I went in the DMV person said that it was corrected in their system and my next card would have the correct spelling. But then I went to their website to handle something and it had me listed as Caitlin. I just bring my (correctly spelled) passport when accuracy is important.

Recently someone made a big deal out of getting the spelling right (which is normal) and then actually spelled it right (which is not) and I was so touched. My laptop broke and I had to phone Lenovo to get them to handle it. It was a bad connection so we used the NATO alphabet and yet the case ended up under C. Sandery. Two weeks later the laptop was mailed back and I had to retrieve it from FedEx. They checked my ID and I'd rehearsed what I would say about the name discrepancy but the person was completely indifferent. Fair enough. Even if it's more an annoyance than an obstacle, it just seems sloppy to have all of these misspellings around that I have to try to remember, so I resolved to be more proactive and less indifferent.

And then I went to the doctor and 100% forgot to take a look at my prescription before I left. 

Fall Projects

I am so glad there are seasons and glad that it is fall. The weather change is so energizing.

I've arranged my schedule opposite public school hours so I can take substitute teaching shifts. This means that until everything gets okayed by the CTC my weekdays are gloriously open. My planner pages for august looks like a hypergraphic fever dream so this lull is so welcome. I'm spending my days making prints, learning to use my tablet for everything (efficient! The laptop is in the shop and i am planning to leave it at home for my upcoming vacation), and cooking vegetarian meals to freeze.

Gym Bag Issues

I do a lot of activities at my gym/workplace. Lots of it uses overlapping gear, but some of that gear has to come home to get washed. I want a really lightweight bag since I bike to work in good weather and I can't just tote everything around. Right now my system is to panic before every shift, pull out the contents of the canvas tote I use as a gym bag, search for whatever part is missing to do my job, and try to put as much of the rest of the gear on as possible so I won't have to bring street clothes as well.

I have some first steps in mind. I think I will heavily use my assigned locker to store things that don't need to be washed that often, like my guard sweatshirt. I am going to streamline my toiletries- right now I use a glass hand cream jar that is rusting to store my shampoo, and the same jar but newer and not rusting to store my lotion.

OPD Physical Ability Test

I am seriously looking into working for the Oakland Police Department, just because I think they are a really good one. They have you take a couple of exams before the interview. One of the tests is to check whether you are likely to be able to complete the Academy physical training. It's not meant to be difficult, but for me it was.

In it, you have to wear a weighted vest and do a timed obstacle course with a fence, serpentine cones, and a dummy drag (165 lb sandbag man that you have to drag 50 feet). I did complete the practice course, but at 8 seconds over the cutoff time. (35 seconds under the cutoff time is considered a very good score for a woman.) The officer who told me I didn't pass told me that if I ran for a half hour every day until the actual exam, I could probably get my time down. I had never run a half hour, but I gave it a shot once, and a couple of days and massages later I could walk around upright again.

On the morning of my exam I felt pretty confident for no reason. I had really started off slow during the practice, conserving everything for the dummy drag, and since I had managed that I thought maybe if I ran faster the rest of the time, I would do better. The entire morning was spent shivering under an overpass waiting in line after line. As I got to the head of the final line, I reviewed my strategy and found it nonexistent, so I just tried my best.

I was too spent when I finished to understand whether 2 minutes and 31 seconds was more or less than the qualifying time of 2 minutes and 35 seconds, but the attendants helped me figure it out by saying "Congratulations" and giving me a paper that said the same thing.

So I am presently just barely in baseline shape for OPD purposes, but the interviews are two months out and luckily I am guarding at a gym, so I have access to a track and weights, not just a pool.