Let it never be said that Friday the 13th cannot be a good day - we got our super-duper new living room sofa. It's, uhm... large. A corner unit, with what's effectively a fainting couch stuck to one end and a recliner (hand-levered! we shuddered when we were offered the electrically-driven version) on the other. And, unlike our venerable, faithful 2-seater/3 seater set, the seats are rather higher than before - translation: a more ergonomically friendly position to reach when sitting down, or to stand back up from.

Given our location, anything that resembles a sizable delivery is going to arrive before 8 a.m. Apart from a minor bit of attention-mongering from the Evil Shopkeeper next door (he'd left his delivery wagon way too long in front of the store; but moved it when one of "the lads" on the moving crew asked him to), the delivery of new sofa went perfectly. And they were very happy to help us move the old couch set to its new location in the house. (Uhm,... yeah. Up until now, we've had what was pretty much a living room-size space devoid of any furniture at all. Lots of books, though. Lots and lots of books....)

• It was the first week of classes; more or less survivable, if I count failing at most of them as surviving. However, Japanese grammar seems to have become a bit of a bright spot in my schedule - I actually had gotten a 12/20, which is passing and then a bit. And this year I've enrolled in the brush calligraphy class, and looking forward to it immensely. I even have started out trying to do the requisite practice each day.
• My new year's resolutions, such as they are, seem to have found me a bit late... this week I tried something a bit different with my refreshments supply - not pouring from my tea thermos every chance, but waiting (during a 2-hour class) for the break half-way through. Also, I'm including a small bottle of juice that I thin with water - not because I'm dieting and don't want the calories, but because fruit juice full strength is too sweet, and at the end of the day, the aftertaste of old-sugar is just awful. And the bottle is small because I'm getting tired of carrying too much weight. The sugars are a bit necessary, though - they're better for managing my blood sugar, if I start to crash during a class (really wrecks my concentration, even if I don't get to the "shaky and funny-tummy" stage), and a lot less disruptive than unwrapping a grain bar.
• We made a trip to China a small town close to the Dutch border, where there was very nice exhibition of terracotta warriors, buried with the first emperor of the Qin dynasty in China (call it 200 years before the common era, and you're there...). They allowed photography, much to my delight. And also Mr Sweetie's - he was admiring some of the tricks I was managing to pull with the many-featured but still a bit too compact digital camera: stuff like low light/no flash allowed photography.
• The day after that journey, I was in for several surprises: I wasn't even out of the house for the first one - a semi-truck arrived, delivering a pallet of books for Mr Sweetie's small press. Uhm, ooops. Mr Sweetie is at work! Pallet on the sidewalk, fortunately not too many boxes of books (eighteen, to be exact), hustled safely indoors by yours truly. That done, I popped out the door to visit Brussels, as mentioned in "Oooh, the wild life!".
• It wasn't quite a good week for aikido - I missed one training due to a bad headache robbing me of a night's sleep, and then, back on the mat and READY for training, I managed to pull a hamstring muscle. At least it didn't hurt to walk around normally, but all of the rolling, falling, and stepping about on the mat? I was too distracted by the twinging pain deep in the back of one thigh, and that made me an unsafe partner. At least it was not badly pulled; the sensei (someone else, not our usual) made a point of reminding me that if it didn't get better, or got worse, to let him know for the sake of the insurance - however, as I figured, stopping immediately meant I didn't do yet more damage, and it recovered just fine.