Back to Work

iPod morning commute music: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Greatest Hits (1993)

I don't own much by Petty, and don't really know why. I owned two or three of the albums when they came out, but never replaced them with CDs when my record collection mysteriously disappeared (full disclosure: I guess I forgot who was storing them for me, because the person I thought had them said I never gave them to her, and I had no reason to doubt her). This single disc greatest hits pretty much covers everything important, and is a great listen.

Yesterday I took the day off from work and made another COSTCO run. It's amazing how the store looks just like the state-side stores, but the contents are probably about 50% Japanese goods. It's a microcosm of Japan, really, where the cities and people look western at first glance, but once you start looking closer, the differences become far more apparent.

Kaoru should know better than to let me loose in COSTCO. She wrote a list, which I followed but liberally added to. Stupid purchase of the day: a traditional Christmas pudding (read fruitcake) from England. I don't really like fruitcake, but the concept sounded good. The chocolate covered cherries were also something I could probably have lived without.

I did buy a nice, small rib eye roast, which I cooked for dinner. I'm trying to master roast beef, as I'd like to have one during the holidays (or a ham, but we can't get a cooked ham here easily). One problem is that cuts of meat are much smaller here; last night's roast was just under 2 lbs. Cooking times given in cookbooks are not accurate (allow 22 minutes per pound, but it actually took about 90 minutes to cook, not 44). This is not a problem as I use a meat thermometer, but I wish I could get a better feel for the timing.

Between COSTCO and dinner I managed to finish up my grades for the term, and got the marks in the computer this morning. I can now relax, though I still need to be here for handing back tests and meetings, while awaiting the official end of term on the 23rd.