These last couple of days

These days have been a mixture of holidays and work. We've been sleeping in every morning (oh the luxury), but aside from that I've been trying to work on several things I've got going, including keeping tabs on what's going on with the magazine and a publishing project with OMF. 

The local coffee shop I've been frequenting.

Yesterday the temperature got above 35˚C, and we turned the air con on mid morning which really helped my concentration as I worked at my computer. After lunch I walked to our local coffee shop and spent four hours on magazine business. Mostly revising the editorial I'd written. And then a few hours using online videos to learn how to use new-to-me designing software called inDesign. That felt very satisfying. 

This morning I spent time preparing for the big meeting I'm chairing tomorrow, the fourth annual planning meeting for Japan Harvest, the magazine I edit. (Actually we missed having a meeting last year, but I can still call it the annual meeting, can't I?) I don't know if they had planning meetings like this before I was involved, but somehow I doubt it, because it usually was just a couple of people working on it. 

This is a view we see often, as it's on our way to the station, the above coffee
shop, and to church. The red-roofed building in the centre of the
background is CAJ's gym.

So as I told my team this morning in an email, I'm feeling excited and nervous. 

Excited because it's great getting a good number of the team together and this time we really do have almost all the main team, which is pretty amazing because we don't all live in Japan and certainly not all in Tokyo. Several in Tokyo, two in Osaka, one on the island of Shikoku, one in Australia, and one in the US. So, six of us are managing to be in Tokyo tomorrow for this meeting and we're using Skype to connect two more in at various times. 

I'm nervous because I'm running the show and that always makes me nervous. It's much easier if you're just showing up!

This afternoon I spent a few hours sitting in a doctor's waiting room, waiting for a check on my intraocular pressure (pressure of the fluid inside my eye). I had a slightly raised pressure  when I had my eyes checked in Australia and the optometrist asked me to check it out this summer. Well it's done. But I can't say that I understood much of the Japanese flashing between the doctor, technician, or nurse, and my husband. However apparently it is all fine. The air conditioning was nice, but I would have preferred to be hanging out somewhere else.

Tonight we're eating honeyed chicken shoulders (wish it was legs, but these were what was available) prepared by one of the boys. He's done well with this meal. It's nice to see some growing confidence after a bad start a few weeks ago.

Hopefully it will be a little cooler tonight. Our bedroom was about 32˚C when we went to bed. At 1.30 it was down to 28˚C, but up above 30 before I got up this morning. Typical Tokyo August weather.