Is there a "stop" button on this thing?

I'm having a frustrating evening. I left the junior high where I am teaching this week a little early (ha! it was 4:00 - that's not really early) to go to my usual high school to talk to a few of the teachers about lesson plans for next week. When I got there, it turned out they were all in a staff meeting till at least 5:00. I thought staff meetings were usually the first Monday of the month. Apparently not. So I left.

I bicycled over to the grocery store at the nearby mall, which is farther away from home than my usual grocery store but tends to have a better selection, because I wanted to get some sushi or (preferably) chirashi for dinner. They didn't have any nice trays. I ended up picking up some fried chicken and rice.

On my way home, I took some side streets to explore, and I discovered a small grocery store that is about two blocks from my house, rather than the one about 10-15 minutes away, where I usually go. Didn't go in, so I can't swear to its quality, but I saw a nice selection of fruits and veggies through the front door. I'll never be able to find it again - Japan is like that. I bet they sell sushi there too.

Got home and tried to upload the blog entry I wrote at school today (what can I say? JHS is not very busy; I'm only there for one week so it's not like I can plan ahead). Blogger goes through all the motions of letting me add pictures, then ultimately fails to upload them. I spent almost an hour fighting with Blogger over this. Shelve my blog entry for another day.

Remembered that the other reason I'd decided to go to the mall was to buy some pins to stick in my world-map that I have up on the wall (I'm marking all the places I've been, and I ran out of pins - that either means I've been lots of places or I don't own enough pins; not sure which). Maybe tomorrow I'll go back to the mall.

The fried chicken and rice was mediocre and forgettable. I can get better (and healthier) food at the convenience store next door.

I'm doing some research for a lawyer back in Canada, and I'm sort of on a deadline (she never actually gives me a date, but I assume she wants this soon), and I can't find anything useful. She told me to spend an hour to see what information I could find on the topic (IP-related stuff); I have spent almost two so far, not wishing to declare defeat. It is not a tricky topic; the world is obviously just against me today.

I tried calling Randal a few times in order to complain about the state of my life over here (lucky him), but there's no answer at his place.*

To console myself, I made a bowl of microwave popcorn but less than half the bag ended up popping even though I set it for five minutes. (My microwave here takes twice as long to do anything as it would do at home.) I remain, unsatisfied. I may have to make another bag (they're much smaller than the ones at home), and then I will have to bicycle back to the mall tomorrow to get more.

Tried Blogger again. No luck.

Stared at my world map for a while, trying to figure out how France (where my good friend Mark now lives) could possibly be only 7 hours behind Japan while Toronto is 13. Isn't it later in China right now than it is in Japan, and thus later in Afghanistan than in China, and so on through the Middle East to the Mediterranean and Greece and so on? Which makes France ahead of Japan by logical (to me) extension, but then Canada would also be ahead - it's like horrid Grade 13 math conundrums all over again. I just can't wrap my head around it.

I should have quit while I was ahead.**

* In his defence, he has to get all his marks in for his class by tomorrow, and he apparently got two hours' sleep last night as a result of sitting up late trying to finish the marking, so he's probably asleep ...

** Sometime around 7:10 this morning, right before I got out of bed.