Reborn As An Early Retiree, I Now Wander America’s Costliest City: Volume 3, Chapter 6

WHAT’S ON MY MIND

I created my own parlor game! Yesterday I played Maxi MINI Maxi with Artoria, and I’m thinking about taking a picture like this whenever I can so you can play along. There’s no better way to illustrate how ridiculously big cars are getting lately.

Friday’s participants were a Chevy Tahoe and… is that a Toyota Prius? Really? When did those get bigger than a third generation MINI Countryman?

WHAT I ATE

After Tuesday’s dinner I had a slice of chocolate cake. I had no idea at the time it would become a coping mechanism.

WHAT I CAN BUY OFF THE RACK

A new knee brace. The bulky one I ordered off Amazon years ago is now too big for me due to my weight loss, so I visited a drug store and purchased this slimmer one a clerk had to remove from a theft proof glass cabinet. If I wear it for an hour or two at a time, everything down there realigns itself and I feel fine for several hours afterward. Yay!

Sadly, there’s something else I cannot buy off the rack. I’ll have to write about that experience in my book! Moving on…

WHERE I’M GOING

It’s been a few weeks since I visited the bookstore. There’s new magazines to pick up, a coffee to sip and a wafer cookie to nosh on. I look forward to my upcoming visit.

WHAT I LISTENED TO

With everything that’s happened since Tuesday night, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I looped Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” song at one point. Let the bodies hit the floor, indeed.

WHAT SACRED TEXTS I READ

No manga this week. Ara ara!

In progress from J-Novel Club…

• The Royal Hostage Has Vanished: The Black Wolf Yearns For The Persecuted Princess, Volume 2
• The Hero And The Sage: Reincarnated And Engaged, Volume 3
• The Poison King: Now That I’ve Gained Ultimate Power, The Bewitching Beauties In My Harem Can’t Get Enough Of Me, Volume 3
• An Introvert’s Hookup Hiccups: This Gyaru Is Head Over Heels For Me!, Volume 9 
• Duchess In The Attic, Volume 2 

WHAT I’M WATCHING

Girls Band Cry, aka the funny anime neither Crunchyroll or HIDIVE acquired the rights to this summer, is now available to stream on CR. It will take about four hours to binge the entire series, and the Las Vegas Raiders have a bye week this weekend. Perfect timing!

I watched the first three episodes last night and agree this anime could go by another name: Middle Fingers Up!

WELCOME TO SLAPSVILLE…

Just about everyone on the road since Wednesday morning. People running red lights, cutting people off, driving well above the speed limit. You get the idea. I’ve never seen so many assholes behind the wheel in one place in my life, and I’m about to imitate Oprah giving away free Pontiac G-6 sedans to her audience.

And you get a slap! And you get a slap! And you get a slap! And…

A FIST BUMP GOES TO…

Three time Super Formula champion Naoki Yamamoto is retiring from the series as of this weekend’s season finale at Suzuka. He will continue to race in Super GT, but for how much longer?

If I get a male cat someday, odds are I’ll name him Naoki for him. That's how much respect I have for him.

WHAT’S UP WITH MY WRITING

I haven’t written anything since Tuesday afternoon, but I will resume writing sometime this weekend. I have no choice after Thursday night’s misadventure after I bought the knee brace. It involves a startled clerk and a tall woman that overheard him and then looked at me… weird. Yeah, I’ll run with that description.

WHAT’S UP WITH MY HEALTH

I was down to 259.4 on Friday morning, and that’s after I drank 12 ounces of water before the weigh in by mistake. In theory, I was in the high 258s but I’ll gleefully accept the documented 2.2 lb weight loss.

My knee cap sometimes slips out of alignment, but as I mentioned earlier it’s fine after I wear a knee brace for a couple of hours. I didn’t skip a single workout this week due to illness or injury, so that’s a plus.

I’m also fighting off… something. It’s that time of the year when the variances between the high and low temperatures can be as high as 40 degrees, and we have Santa Ana winds and low humidity to boot. My sinuses are not enjoying this at all.