2020: Week 27

June 29, 2020 – July 5, 2020

Bucket List Items Accomplished

• Go on a double decker bus tour. My mom suggested doing this. It was a beautiful day for it and so much fun being a tourist in my own hometown.
• Tip 100%
• Make ice cream
• Make honey buns
• Read a book from a free little library. I picked up an old copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from a free little library a few weeks ago and spent some lovely time on a bench in Market Square and later on Mt. Tolmie with my feet up in the car reading it. I finished it in a couple of hours.
• Make ratatouille

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Things I Enjoyed this Week

• My new personal challenge is to do 30 random acts of kindness over the next month. They don’t have to be everyday. My total count is now up to 11.
  1. Start proofreading book pages as a volunteer for Project Gutenberg through Distributed Proofreaders. I heard about this from New Day, New Thing’s Day 160 – Proofreading post. It felt good to help improve public access to knowledge in a small way. It went pretty smoothly once I finished reading their guidelines.
  2. Wash my roommate’s dishes while he was away camping.
  3. Tip 100%
  4. Treat my mom to breakfast
  5. Pick up groceries for my dad. I’ve been doing this for him since the start of the stay at home advice here.
  6. Give a bandaid to a family for a kid that scraped his knee. I just happened to be sitting nearby reading.
  7. Give directions to a couple that I overhead looking for a pub
  8. Return a spare grocery cart that was sitting in the middle of the parking lot

• My weekly step count is below
  • Monday: 10,146 steps
  • Tuesday: 13,147 steps
  • Wednesday: 12,727 steps
  • Thursday: 13,417 steps
  • Friday: 7,692 steps
  • Saturday: 16,826 steps
  • Sunday: 10,356 steps
  • Daily Average: 12,044 steps a day
  • Weekly Total: 84,311 steps

• I learnt a new word everyday in June and a bit beyond. The words of this week were grabbed from Wordsmith.org or Merriam Webster’s Word of the Day or in the wild from books or podcasts.
  1. Loth – reluctant, less common spelling of “loath”
  2. Insouciance – nonchalance, casual lack of concern, indifference
  3. Contretemps – an embarassing or inopportune situation or a dispute
  4. Louche – not decent or reputable, dubious, shady
  5. Rort – trick, fraudulent scheme, or a rowdy party
  6. Stentorian – extremely loud and powerful (of a voice)
  7. Erudition – scholarship, extensive knowledge gained from studying, research, and books

• My ongoing gratitude and photo project continues below.

• I watched no Oscar Best Picture Winners.

• I taught myself a few more constellations. Skymaps is a wonderful resource for monthly star charts. They list interesting celestial phenomena that will happen throughout the month, and which stars and constellations are visible. Wikipedia has good breakdowns of the features and mythology of each constellation. I want to learn more constellations as part of my bucket list. I also want to learn more about Greek mythology. It is a perfect match. Maybe one day I’ll know all 48 of Ptolemy’s traditional Greek/Western constellations, or maybe even all 88 of the currently recognized constellations.
  • Libra – the zodiac sign of the weighing scales. It is associated with justice and fairness. It was seen as the claws of the Scorpius constellation by the ancient Greeks.
  • Hercules – the famous hero of Roman myth. Hercules is depicted as kneeling while praying to his father, Zeus, for aid. This constellation is closely associated with the nearby Draco, which I described last week.
  • Delphinus – a small constellation representing a dolphin. Delphinus managed to stumble across Amphitrite, the nereid or sea nymph that Poseidon was attempting to woo, and convinced her to accept the God’s advances. Another tale saw the dolphin rescue the wealthy poet, Arion, that had been betrayed by the crew of his ship.

Meal Prep and New Recipes Tried

I continued with my Japanese recipe streak this week.

• I made Crispy Baked Chicken to use in Chicken Katsu Onigirazu. Both recipes are from JustOneCookbook. I also made homemade Tonkatsu Sauce, from Pickled Plum, to use in the onigirazu.
• I used the last of the chicken from the recipe above to make Chicken Katsu Don, also from JustOneCookbook.
• I made Matcha Coconut Ice Cream from Lauren Kelly Nutrition. It was a no churn recipe, but definitely needs to be softened before scooping. It’s hard as a rock when frozen.
• I made Honey Buns / Chinese Coconut Buns / Chinese Cocktail Buns. I used a recipe from Betcha Can’t Eat Just One which referenced this recipe from Junblog. This recipe called to me because it referenced the buns from Victoria BBQ House & Bakery, which is in Chinatown in my home city. I subbed Silk coconut milk for the milk. They turned out quite well, but the filling leaked out a bit from a couple of them and they weren’t quite as fluffy as I like. This recipe actually used honey in the filling, where most recipes I found did not. The honey flavour was actually quite strong, so they tasted different from the ones I have had from Chinese bakeries. I also looked at this Coconut Buns recipe from Woks of Life as reference for the stripes of topping and the filling technique.
• I made Ratatouille styled to look like the iconic dish from the Pixar movie. I halved the recipe from Tasty. I was given a lovely zucchini straight from my boyfriend’s mom’s garden.

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Updates

• I crossed sixteen things off of my bucket list in June. Running it back with a vengeance and my best month ever. July is shaping up well too, but we’ll see how far we get.
  1. Bake a sweet pie again
  2. Make a lattice pie crust
  3. Make pumpkin or kabocha things – pancakes, latte, chai latte, pie, bread, oatmeal
  4. Read 50 books in one year
  5. Make nikujaga
  6. Eat arepas
  7. Eat Dole whip
  8. Register to donate stem cells/ bone marrow.
  9. Make souffle pancakes
  10. Make nimono (simmered vegetables)
  11. Donate blood
  12. Visit a drive-in movie theatre
  13. Eat century egg
  14. Make mango sticky rice
  15. Send a stranger a postcard via Postcrossing
  16. Make kimchi buchimgae / kimchi jeon (pancakes)

• In the month of June I read and listened to eleven books. I listened to audiobooks for eight of them and read three. Here’s what I finished reading this month. My magic and fantasy kick continues. I highly recommend Six of Crows by Leah Bardugo and the sequel, Crooked Kingdom. I fell in love with the flawed and deeply human characters, their world, and distinct cultures. It follows a motley crew of six gang members and accomplices as they attempt an impossible heist.
  • The Queen of the Tearling
  • The Strange Library
  • The Invasion of the Tearling
  • Six of Crows
  • Crooked Kingdom
  • Wuthering Heights
  • The Psychopath Test
  • A Darker Shade of Magic
  • The Sun Also Rises
  • Men without Women
  • Me and White Supremacy

• I want to do the second quarterly update for my 20 for 2020 list to see how I’m progressing and check in. Some of these goals were updated back in March. Here’s my progress so far.
  1. Move to Japan
     • Planned for September
  2. Write the JLPT N4
     • This was cancelled due to COVID, but I will try for December.
  3. Write the JLPT N3
     • I will aim to write this and the N2 in 2021 instead
  4. Save $20000
     • I’m still on track for this, since I luckily kept my job through three months of work from home
  5. Embrace intuitive eating habits. Eat what you are hungry for when you are physically hungry
     • Still doing well and feeling good
  6. Donate blood
     • I did it!
  7. Read 50 Books (I started in December 2019)
     • I did it!
  8. Do the splits
     • I have let this slide. I want to get back on track with daily stretching.
  9. Do daily stretching for plantar fasciitis
     • I need to start doing this again.
  10. Make 30 new recipes. Updated to 60 recipes.
      • I did it! I’ll keep making new recipes for the rest of the year, but I don’t want to keep count.
  11. Cook more Japanese food. Cook 30 different recipes by the end of the year.
      • I have made 21 different Japanese recipes so far this year. I am on track.
  12. Go to the gym, do yoga, take extra cycling trips, or go on big walks a couple of times a week
      • I am trying to get at least 10k steps a day, will start cycling to work again, and want to do more extra cycling trips.
  13. Do the C25K program and run a 5 km race
      • I have put this on hold for now. I might try later in the year once I can get some running coaching from my partner in Japan.
  14. Meditate before bed
      • I have not been great about this recently since I have been reading before bed. I will start this up again.
  15. Get seven or more hours of sleep consistently
      • I can track this more accurately now that I have a Fitbit. I have a lot of days around 6 hours. I will try and improve my sleep hygiene going forward.
  16. Use up all pantry and freezer stuff
      • I have mostly worked through my couple weeks of COVID pantry items, but still have some to go.
  17. Sell or donate all your unneeded posessions
      • I have started going through all my things and getting organized for this.
  18. Complete twelve 30 day challenges
      • I have done the following nine challenges so far, and started my random acts of kindness challenge.
        • Uber Frugal Month with the Frugalwoods
        • 30 Days of Yoga with Adrienne
        • Seiza challenge (30 days, 30 minutes goal)
        • No added sugar
        • SNAP grocery challenge
        • Skincare
        • Gratitude
        • 10k steps
        • Learn a new word each day
  19. Post things online regularly. Update this website
      • I have completed a post for every week of this year.
  20. Cross 20 things off my bucket list. Updated to 30 activities and 30 food related quests for a total of 60 things done by the end of the year.
      • I have done 22 activities and 26 food related things so far, for a total of 48. I am on track to finish 60 this year for sure.

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