new mu

I've been trying to keep up to some degree with this season's anime.

This has mainly revolved around me making sure to watch the newly released episodes on crunchyroll each week that they come out.  I've been doing well, though there are a couple of shows I haven't looked at.

I therefore thought I'd do some mini-reviews as it's about a third of the way through the season.  Plus I couldn't think of anything else to blog about.

Hoozuki no Reitetsu
I'll start with one I found quite disappointing.  This is a very "talky" show - it's about a middle-manager in hell.  I don't mean a middle manager who has been sent to hell, but a demon who is a middle manager in hell.  I dunno, there are quite a lot of jokes revolving around cultural elements (both in terms of mythology and management culture) that I basically didn't get, and since that's all it is I basically dropped it.

Tonari no Seki-kun
There are quite a few short shows this season.  I don't know if that's normal or if crunchyroll usually picks quite a few up, the three I've watched have all been okay.  All three are basically gag shows and this is probably the one I like the most - the idea is it's about a boy who takes time-wasting in class to epic levels and the girl who sits next to him who we see things through the eyes of and usually gets in trouble for reacting to his antics.  It's possibly a bit too long per-episode, but it makes me chuckle.

Onee-chan ga Kita
This is one of the other short shows.  It's probably the closest to being one of those shows you could see as being a full-length show that actually they've made as a series of short episodes.  I mean, each show is self-contained, but could easily be expanded up into a full-episode, or several combined together to make a full episode.  However, the shorter length does seem to mean an improved budget, as the show looks good (not true of the other two short ones, where short probably reflects cheapness).  The subject matter is a bit odd - big sister (but via marriage, rather than genetically) who is in love with the main character.  However, for me it stays just the right side of freaky in most places.

Strange+
This is the last of the short shows, and is by far the weirdest.  It's basically a spoof of detective gang shows (I think) - it's very short and tbh is really more like a series of gags strung together.  One of the things I'm not keen on is that each episode seems to basically start at the end/middle and sometimes it's too confusing, especially given within just a few minutes the episode ends.

Saki: Zenkoku-hen
I quite enjoyed the original Saki.  There's been a sort of off-shoot show, which I haven't actually watched, but this is the proper continuation.  And it really is a continuation: it actually confused me to start with as it almost picks up as it it's a next episode and it's been several years since the end of the last series.  It also seemed to decide to go on a splurge of introducing new characters, which made me feel a bit lost, as well as constantly throwing them into hot springs type baths.  Now I've nothing against that, but Saki is really all about the OTT Mah-jong and so I got a bit bored while it messed around with this.  It's back to Mah-jong now, so I'm enjoying it more.

More mini-reviews in future blog posts when I can't think of anything to post about!

sick

I don't feel very well.

I felt a lot worse yesterday and actually feel better today.  However, today isn't help by the fact I woke up at 2:30AM and couldn't get back to sleep.

Quite what's wrong with me I'm not 100% sure.  It had some of the symptoms of a cold, but not all.

So my throat felt like I'd been gargling with razor blades, but I didn't actually get a cough.  And my head felt muggy, but I didn't have a running nose.  I also had hot and cold flushes, but they were very slow motion, rather than the quick changes you usually get when you're not well.

I'll probably be okay tomorrow, but it's all a bit annoying: I wasn't ill enough to stay home, but not really well enough to be at work.

not for the chop

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm not getting the boot at work.

I think if I'd not been here so long and therefore not built up quite the history and track record then I would have been in a lot more trouble.  It was seen more as a moment of madness (and this is pretty much the case).

But then the flip-side to that whole point is that I wouldn't have found myself in a position for what happened to happen if I hadn't been here so long and gotten sick of it all.

Which doesn't mean I wasn't in trouble.  I will be getting an official written warning, which goes on my file, and I have to write a formal letter of apology.  And I am sorry - well, sorry for lying to one of the bosses.  That was a ridiculous and stupid thing to do.

I'm not sorry for the original event, even though that was what I then lied about.  That may seem odd - if I wasn't ashamed of it, why lie to "cover up"?  Well, the reason is that I was trying to cover up the underlying motivation for the decision I made, not the event itself.

This is what I mean about if I'd not been here so long it wouldn't have been an issue anyway.  If I hadn't known it would have been a gigantic pain in the arse doing something differently in relation to the original issue then I wouldn't have had any of the subsequent problems.

It's all a bit difficult to explain without giving proper detail, but I guess the point is I'm not suddenly going to be plunged onto the scrapheap.

It was also indicated in the meetings that there's a hope a new senior guy who's meant to be coming to the company will "turn things around".

I'm still continuing to look for a new job, though - I don't really care if this new guy really is the second coming or not, tbh.  History here suggests that even if he was, he'd achieve nothing anyway.

no change

There was no change to my weight when I weighed in on Sunday morning.

While this is disappointing on one level, it actually kinda represents me dodging a bullet.  Diet-wise, last week was very bad on the whole, but the increased exercise regime has, it seems, counteracted this.  I therefore still weigh 20 stone 9 pounds.

I'm always left wondering with weeks like last week, where one aspect goes well but the other not, what would have happened if I had done okay with that aspect rather than badly.

So why did it go badly?

Well, there were a couple of smaller things.  On Wednesday someone came in to the office and bought in a load of pastries - more than were needed for us to have 1 each.  I therefore had two.  However, also on Wednesday I do my washing and that usually means I buy some shop-bought sarnies to have for dinner, so Wednesday is not a totally good day in the first place.

On the up-side, when I do my washing I go for a short walk and on this particular Wednesday I'd already done a few reasonable walks so I was way over 10,000 steps for the day.

However, Friday was the real problem.

I'll talk about it tomorrow, but that's when I had the review meeting and it turned out I wasn't going to get fired.  As such, I kinda let things slip a little at lunch, buying some cookies.

However, I then also bought some cream cakes when I went shopping in the evening.  And I mean some cream cakes - these were full-on naughty and they were on offer, so I ended up with four of the things.  Each must have been at least 600 calories each (I didn't dare look!) and of course that was on top of the cookies.

I always buy some pain au chocolate to have on Saturday as a mini-treat, and I didn't compensate in any way for the naughty stuff, so I had these too.  Overall, then, it was a pretty bad weekend diet-wise.   I mean, I did have salad for my actual meals and of course did full walking at the weekend, so even though I consumed at least 4,000 extra calories (the best part of 2 pounds in weight-terms) my weight was unchanged.

Things should hopefully go a lot better this week.  It's odd actually, but when I first started my dieting I had some similar patterns - a really good week, followed by a non-week, so I'm not too worried I've slipped already!