Smunch in my hair
Amazing it is. Another week end is almost over. But wait! It's a holiday weekend so I have Monday off too.
Where did this attitude come from? What's more amazing... the fact that the weekend was so fast, or the fact that I am lamenting it? I'm not sure when this feeling crept up on me, but I sure know I used to go to work on Saturday, and then feel restless Sunday until Monday rolled around. What causes motivation? Is it just some chemical in the brain as the science people would probably have you believe? If so, that chemical must react with some other chemical... and if so where does that come from? I know that smoking pot is supposed to repress these chemicals, or stop their production or something. If so, there must be some other drug that promotes their growth. I think if some bio-tech company could find that they could make a killing.
Today we went to Shibuya where there was a "Hokkaido Festival". Basically it was just a bunch of booths selling the same fish and crabs from Hokkaido that they sell in the supermarket or department store. It was an average of 50yen cheaper. Being as cheap as I am, you may think that this is heaven for me, but YOU'D BE WRONG!
I used to be cheap, focusing on price, now I have learned to focus on value. Of course to some degree I always used to, and would even try to explain to my mom how driving to 4 different stores each 20 minutes apart may not be worth the ten-cent-savings over buying everything at the closest store. But I have grown even more to see the value of value.
The minute I arrived at the "festival" I realized I wanted to leave. I can get the same experience riding the rush hour train, except that at least on the rush hour train no one spills Crab Soup on you. It was just packed with people drooling over saving 20 yen for something they would never have bought anyway. Granted the grilled crab legs were almost 100-200 yen cheaper than buying them at the store, and probably even 400 yen cheaper than getting them in a restaurant, but I am sure that paying 200 yen more and being able to eat them in a calm relaxing setting may be worth the extra 200 yen... unless you are one of the rare people who can recognize the charm of standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk eating out of a newspaper. I would even rather pay 400 yen extra to eat them in a restaurant where ther is a table.
I saw one woman with 8 bags of potato chips. I wonder when was the last time she bought eight bags of potato chips... If they were less than 50yen per bag I say go for it, but I doubt that was the case. It seems so easy to make people loose any logical sense (assuming they had some) just by putting up a sign that says "Today is a special occasion" I wonder why so many businesses fail? They must not know.
We did buy a big salmon for only 1000 yen, but I really wonder if it was really what it after I carried it all around Shibuya. Probably not, considering that and the 20 minutes or so that where shaved off the end of my life by the stress of being trampled by a crowd of old ladies looking for sea-urchin rice bowls.
On the way home we stopped by my favorite pet shop for some bird seed as Guri and Awii have not had food for a week. I gave them the healthy pellets, but they would rather star than eat them. At the pet store of course all the birds eat only that. Awii too, was once fond of them. That lasted until the minute I got her home from the pet store.
No matter how many times I tell the man at the pet store that my birds wont eat that crap, he insists if I put it out, they will. I asked how many months I should starve them before that happens, but according to him one week is too long. Oops. He recommended some other seeds that I can tell will never get eaten, except my me trying to demonstrate how delicious they are to the birds, but Tomoe was there also and she is a little more optimistic than me so I also had to carry home three bags of various birds seeds. As starving as they are, I gave them the two doubtful seeds first, and as starving as they are, they both picked it up and spit them out... but you already knew that right?
I had a great dream last night. Awii flew up behind me and, as her and Guri often do, stood near the small of my back on my belt. This time however Awii seems to have been feeling affectionate because she reached around with her big feathery wings and gave me a hug. I don't remember exactly how long it was, but when she finally flew away I called to a group of friends in the other room to come see, and this time she flew right up and wrapped her wings around my neck.
It was quite a change from the times I wake up to find her sitting on my face, and later find a pile of dark green bird smunch (that means poop) in my hair.