A certain afternoon

A little bit of a panic on Friday night as two staff member's telephone with illness and it is rare anyone cries sick so I hope they become well soon. Rina and I helped with waitress duties. Then we discovered that we had a leak from the freezer coils in the store room and so I had to transfer all the stock from there into the other one. My hands were like ice afterwards even though I wore thick gloves and a coat. The engineer will call tomorrow and we are happy not to lose stock.
Business was unusually slow for a Friday evening but still enough to keep Rina and I busy.
In the building across the road from us two shops moved their business to larger space areas and the rumor that whispers to us now is that somebody bought both empty places and intends to make the combined area into a small specialized restaurant there. We await to see a potential rival in competition to us if whispers are true.

Hitomi received the news that she has been successful for a part in the play she auditioned for last week and she has to attend dress rehearsals in two weeks time and go for a fitting next weekend. Tomorrow night we will have to celebrate her success with our friends.
Earlier this morning Hitomi was showing me how to pose like a model and she was pretending to be a photographer and I was standing and thinking I look more like a shop mannequin rather than a model Tee Hee!
I decided to wear blue for my appointment and slip on some new black flat heels that I picked up on Thursday because they looked really comfortable and were offered at a good price.
By the time I had driven over to the studio I knew it was a mistake, my shoes were hurting my toes like they were in a trap. Masato, my photographer said we'd take the outdoor shots in Central park, that's the one in Shinjuku and not New York City! We drove up, me barefoot by now and parked in the Regency Hotel car park and went across the street into the park. The park here is quite lovely but it is small and easy to catch the towers of the government buildings in the background. There are also a lot of homeless people here in what we call cardboard city.
I sat and did my makeup while he walked around looking everywhere and holding up his meter to check for light. I think that was for my benefit really so he 'looked the part' but he was very good really. I was standing so stiffly as if I was cardboard too and he kept telling me to relax and then coming over to imitate what he wanted from me so I could see.
I think I can understand now about when Hitomi models and the girls who model the clothes in JJ really do have to 'work it'. Of course I wasn't modeling clothes so I didn't have to show off what I was wearing, but I did seem to keep forgetting how to relax and funnily enough, it is a lot harder than you think when you are a little self conscious about how it will look in the camera eye because I really want these to look fine if not perfect so I can give some to my family.
"Look thoughtful, show me happiness, what was the last thing to make you laugh, tell me about it, look at the camera, now look past me, lean against the tree a little more, touch your cheek softly, honey I want passion, look sexy!" he kept calling to me as encouragement.
Yeah, I look sexy.
I'm going to send Dad a sexy photo right? ha ha.
I was watching where I was treading since I was barefoot and a lot of sharp twigs sticking up, yet I still banged my toe pretty hard against a tree. Whose idea is it to put trees in parks where innocent people can walk into them?
A little more than an hour and a few different backgrounds and me constantly brushing my hair because the wind kept blowing it, we called an end to our 'shoot' and he said he'll bring the proofs into work on Monday and bring them up to my office so I can choose which ones I want enlarged and framed. Nice! I hope for some good results and show Hitomi that her coaching wasn't wasted and I'm not a bad student.


I drove home without my shoes on. My feet are screaming at me. I have sprayed a leather stretch spray on the shoes and filled the toe area with newspaper to encourage them to stretch a little because they are so nice despite being so mean to me. I have some cure for my toes with toe separators for my foot with the tightest shoe. We call them 'Yoga toes' since they are good for alignment of bones and muscles and can even improve circulation as well as ease pain from my squashed toes. I put a foot support on the other to support the toe and the joint where I bash it.
Big ouch!
I am the victim of a terrible accident, no?
That Happy Feet penguin has happier feet than mine {cry!}
I soaked my feet in hot soapy water for an hour, to music!

Hitomi and I went out to celebrate at the Mars bar and tomorrow we'll hit the Lex with Aya and the girls. I wore my boots with plenty of room for my toes. We can call it an early winter fashion statement. Today has been a great day with good news all around except for my poor feet.

I added the new Blogger follower module into my sidebar so others can declare themselves as a reader and I have also placed a subscriber link for those who want to have my blogs in their various RSS readers. I believe that doing this will be a great help to my readers from China, when their service sometimes disallows Blogger.com. I already have several subscribers through that method. Thank you. Both items just above my archives for any interested parties.

The news says:

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology have announced that the leap second will be introduced on Jan. 1 next year.
Leap seconds are added to adjust the gap between the standard time and the time based on the revolution and daily rotation of the Earth. The extra second for 2009 will be added between 8:59.59 a.m. and 9:00.00 a.m. on Jan. 1.

How wonderful, I will have the extra second in bed sleeping. Now if they introduced that extra second in the evening I could have been doing something useful, like dancing or drinking or kissing someone special. Always make good use of any time you are given is my policy!

Ha-ha! She's blowing kisses at me as I write this so I guess the night isn't quite over yet and I had better go now. Goodnight everyone.
Be good!