Tomorrow (and the next day) I have the days off of works because I’ll be moving things around the house for the furnace replacement. Usually I stay up until close to midnight on school nights, but I may have to go to bed early tonight. Is it the weather? Is it the workouts at the gym? I dunno.

I did win another race at the gym. It was me against a trainer two decades younger than me, pulling tires down the driveway and back. I suppose it was kind of an uneven race: I was at the end of my workout and tired. But a fourth of the way into the race the eyelet pulled out of the tire I was using and the harness I was using to pull the tire detached. My opponent kept going but the “judges” decided the race had to be re-run because of equipment failure. I won because my opponent blew the turn-around and stopped too early. The trick with the tire drag is momentum. Once you stop it’s kind of hard to get started again. (Did I mention my opponent was Tiffany the 24YO nurse? At least I had a heavier tire than she did.)

Really, I’m lucky to have even finished the race. After the post-workout stretching I barely made it up off the floor to walk outside to drag the tire around.

My mom and friends from Japan are planning parts of our trip. One of the places we’re going is Sado Island in the Japan sea near Niigata. It’s a large island where people were exiled in the past. I was stuck there the last time I went because of a storm that suddenly came up and I almost missed my friend’s wedding! They were joking that I was exiled and luckily one of the proprietors of the inns found me waiting for my canceled ferry and I had a nice stay with a dinner of more fish than a normal person should eat. My mom has wanted to go there for years, so this should be fun.