Kakizome

Kakizome, translated into English as “first writing”, is the Japanese tradition of creating the first calligraphy of the year.

According to the short article on the tradition at wikipedia:

“Traditionally, kakizome was performed using ink rubbed with the first water drawn from the well on New Year’s Day. Seated facing a favourable direction, people would write Chinese poetry containing auspicious words and phrases such as long life, spring, or perennial youth. These poems were then often burned.”

Today, kakizome is not as popular as it used to be in Japan, and is mainly only observed by Japanese school children as their homework assignments.

I observed kakizome today, even though I’m a gaijin who has never even been to Japan

I drew the Japanese kanji for Jennifer, according to a T-shirt from Cafe Press.

My kakizome was not traditional in any sense of the word. It was not drawn on special calligraphy paper, nor was it drawn with a calligraphy brush and ink. It was written on regular printer paper with nail polish. But it was still a lot of fun!

Here’s my kanji attempt, and the actual kanji from the T-shirt. I don’t think I did too bad for my first attempt at creating kanji.

If you want to see how kakizome is supposed to be observed, here’s a great YouTube video by ayakuma1026.

New Year’s Day

New Year’s Eve started out kind of badly.  First, my mom’s boyfriend got in an accident, then Melissa and Matt got in an accident while coming back home.  No one was seriously hurt.  Both my mom’s boyfriend and my sister Melissa had neck and shoulder pain, but nothing too serious.  No one else had any injuries.  My mom’s boyfriend’s car was totalled, but thankfully he had just purchased a new car which was in the shop for minor repairs.  It was his old car that was totalled.  My sister’s boyfriend’s jeep has tire damage, which is fixable, and other minor also fixable problems.

So, the mood of New Years’ at our house was not too light.  My mom celebrated with her boyfriend, and I celebrated at home with my sister and her boyfriend.  They were going to go to a party, but Melissa was in pain, so she didn’t feel like going.  So, Melissa had a little bit of pina colada and Chardonay, her boyfriend Matt had quite a bit of Crown Royal, and I had several glasses of pina colada and a Chardonay for drinking as the ball dropped.  Melissa and I ate some Wheat Thins, and I had a whole bag of Pringles Potato Chips! (they were really good!  But now I have to really focus on losing weight!) We watched Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years’ Eve to bring in the New Year.  It wouldn’t seem like New Years’ without it.  It was great to see that Dick Clark is still doing the countdown.  It’s sad to see him barely able to talk after his stroke, but he looks and sounds much better than he did last year

For New Years’ Day, we watched the California portion of Rockin’ New Years’ eve with Fergie until 2AM.  I finished my Chardonay, and then drank one more glass of Pina Colada before heading to bed.  All in all, even with the accidents, it wasn’t a bad New Years’ celebration.

Happy New Year’s Eve!

Christmas Goodies Packed on the Pounds!

I should have known Christmas treats would have been too much temptation to resist!  There was two kinds of fudge, countless kinds of cookies, and cupcakes.  Not to mention all the leftover lasagna and stuffed shells.  I’m afraid to even get on the scale.  I’m almost certain I put on at least another 10 pounds!

On the right track

Well, I started using the tools on SparkPeople again yesterday.  It was only 5 days into the month, so that’s not bad at all.  It turns out that I gained 10 pounds over Thanksgiving, so I’m going to try to lose at least half of those pounds before New Years’.

I’m going to try to keep a good schedule of exercise and activity-entering on SparkPeople like I did when I first joined SP back in July 2007.  I had a nice schedule going for a few months, but by the time fall 2007 rolled around, I started doing less and less.  I’m going to try to keep on the ball longer this time.  I do want to lose the weight.  I’ve lost 50 pounds so far, but I have a lot more to go.

New month, new challenges

I’m going to do the challenges this month for sure.  Two months went by, and I didn’t make them.  Although, I did slightly better in November than in October, since I did Thanksgiving dinner (which I always wanted to do), met the money goal (although I won’t get paid for mystery shopping until the middle of December, though since I did it in November, I’m counting it as November money), and read one book.  So, 2 out of 4 (with a 1 out of 10 accomplishment for the 4th goal), is a little better than 2 out of 4 (with nothing accomplished towards other goals) last month.

For December, I’m going to change things up a bit.  I think exercise and healthy eating is more important than weight lost, and I haven’t been too good at that, so I’m going to change the weight loss goal.

I want to go to college next fall, so I’m going to get everything together I’ll need to apply.

So, this month’s challenges will be as follows:
Meet and don’t exceed my SparkPeople recommended daily caloric intake 5 out of 7 days a week
Exercise for 30 minutes for 5 out of 7 days a week.
Get everything together needed to apply to college.

Oh, and since I want to actually meet my reading goal, I’ll set it to one book a week (but not actually restrict it to weekly):
Read 7 books this month

I’m happy with those goals, now let’s see if I can meet them all this month.

More pictures added to my Travel Log!

Well, since I’m going to start telling my family and friends about this blog, I guess I should start mentioning when I change some of it’s pages that aren’t displayed on the front page.

I’ve been scanning in family pictures into Mom’s laptop, and I came across a few that fit into my travel log pages.  I’m sure I’ll add more later, but for now my Travel Log has been updated as follows:

I added pictures to the Chatham section of Massachussetts. I’m still keeping it as one long page for now, rather than seperating it by cities like my New York page. Once I get more pictures up there, I’ll separate it.

Talking about my New York page, I added a West Elmira page to it.  It’s childhood memories more than points of travel, but I like it.

Thanksgiving Dinner

I made the Thanksgiving dinner for the first time this year.   I’ve helped my mom with it before, like chopping up apples for the apple pie, peeling potatoes, and that kind of thing.  But this is the first time that I was in charge of making everything myself.

Everything turned out great, I’m so glad that the chicken was tender, and not over-crispy like the Hawaiian chicken I made.  The chicken was the first time that everyone in the house ate something I cooked, and it was a bit disappointing that it didn’t turn out too well.  This time, though everything was very tasty.

I put a generous coat of chicken seasoning and butter over the top of the turkey.  I stuffed it with boxed stuffing, which was softened by boiling water and a stick of butter.  My mom had told me that she liked adding celery and onions to the stuffing, so I cut those up too before I stuffed the bird.  There didn’t seem to be enough celery and onions in it though, so if I do this again next year I’ll have to remember to add more.  That didn’t stop the stuffing from tasting delicious though.

I really stuffed the apple pie.   My mom had gotten a dozen apples, and I cut up all but two for the pie.  The apples usually settle during baking, but I stuffed so many in there, it caused the top of the pie to rise off the crust a little bit.   I gave the top of the apple pie a little bit of an artistic edge by adding dough around it to create a rippled effect on the edge.  I’m glad my mom was there when I was making the pumpkin pie, as I had to change a few things before baking it.  First off, I put a top on the pie, like I did the apple pie. Whoops.  Then I had a momentary brain freeze as I was mixing it, as I didn’t add the spices to the mix even though the recipe called for it.  It didn’t taste too good, and I mentioned it tasted kind of tinny, then my mom mentioned the spices, and I had a duh! moment, and added it in.

The mashed potatoes were made the same way I made the mashed potatoes for the side dish with the sloppy joes.  Lots of peeled potatoes, lots of cheese, and lots of garlic.   This time though, I remembered to add butter, so the potatoes were even better this time.

I stayed up until 8AM so that I could make sure the turkey got in at the right time, so I wasn’t up when the preparation period came.  My mom handled that, and added a few dishes of her own.   She made up a chocolate cream pie with chocolate pudding and a store-bought graham cracker crust that Matt loves.  I must say, I have become quite attached to it myself.  And of course, no Thanksgiving meal would be complete without cranberry sauce.

We had green beans for veggies, but I thought about it afterwards and realized that we didn’t have a Thanksgiving staple this year: corn.  And I love corn!  It all was delicious though, so the feast definitely made up for the lack of corn goodness.

November Challenges Dos

I finished reading Mr. Monk Goes to Germany yesterday, and walked for a bit around the perimiter of the mall.  So, I’m doing pretty good with my challenges this month.  Certainly a lot better than last month.

November Challenges

I only did 2 out of 4 of my challenges last month, so I’m going to try the same challenges this month.  I’m already more in focus for my goal this time, as I walked on Saturday, and I plan on doing it again today.  I also started reading Mr. Monk Goes to Germany yesterday, and I’ll finish it today.  So, then I’ll have at least one out of 10 books read, which is better than last month’s total of zero.

So, my goals are:

Lose 10 pounds this month
Read 10 books this month
Do one thing I’ve always wanted to do
Earn $200 this month