Sunday Productivity and a Hat for Me

The past few Sundays have been lazy. I haven’t felt too guilty about it, but some weekends it’s nice to get something accomplished. Yesterday I managed to get things done around the apartment, but we never ventured out, which is kind of silly considering it was nice yesterday and today was super cold. But sometimes things just work out that way.

A smallish chunk of time was spent at work today making up hours ahead of time for volunteer meetings I have this week. One would think working on your day off would be rough, but not so much because I find my job fun most days. Which doesn’t mean Monday will be easy, because it never is, but at least I can relax this week when it comes to making up time.

I called my brother to wish him a happy birthday. I’ve officially had a little brother for 32 years. Time flies.

I went to Stitch n’ Bitch tonight. I took a bit of a hiatus for a few months because I wasn’t knitting at all, but I’m getting my groove back. Our location rotates, so tonight we were at Hastings Hardback Cafe which is kind of my go-to location for everything because I like their coffee and I’m comfortable there. And wouldn’t you know it…I finished a project.

I’d originally set out to knit this one for my nephew, but honestly? I think I really like it for myself. I don’t wear hats well, but I think this one looks kind of cute and it’s comfy on my head. So he’ll get the next one I do, which I went ahead and cast on for this evening. I’d better prepare myself…8 1/2 inches of 2 by 2 ribbing is coming.

I’m finishing off the night with some blogging and movies, including The Dark Crystal and Zoolander, though I probably won’t finish Zoolander because I’m getting sleepy. But I’ve seen it about 22 times, so no biggie.

You might be wondering why I’m blogging all of a sudden after going for months with nothing. I have no answer. I go with what I’m feeling and for some reason, I was in the mood to blog tonight. I even have a few scheduled for the next couple days…so yay again for Sunday productivity!

A.

Work, Homework, and Working Out

After blogging fairly regularly for the last several months, it definitely felt weird to go a week without putting down a post. At the same time, most nights I was too brain tired to formulate a complete sentence by the time I got to the bloggy part of the night. I was using my words for book reviews I guess. Which I enjoyed doing, but I figured it was time to do an actual update.

Sadly, I’m a little hazy on singular events that happened over the past week. The weekend was fun. Jon went out of town, so I did some self pampering: walking, gym, art opening with wine, ears pierced, manicure, and quality time with friends. I introduced one crew to the movie Secretary and hung out with Forsh and Baby Forsh for some Bubble Guppy/social time.

Manicures are one of my favorite things that I don’t get often enough.

I missed Jon, but I definitely needed the pampering, and though I’d planned to do some work over the weekend to get caught up, I ended up giving my brain the rest it deserved.

Work has been pretty whoa. Remember when I mentioned I was transitioning to a new position? Well, the transition has happened, but the position itself has changed a bit, at least temporarily. I’m doing several different things, including coordinating some projects and diving into some marketing type stuff.

It’s a little overwhelming.

I’m hanging on and trying to focus and manage my time, and I think I’m doing okay for the most part. There are a few things I’m trying to get a handle on, but I think I just have to roll with it at this point. Some of it is fun. I never thought I’d enjoy doing html updates, nor did I think I’d be attempting to head up a social media campaign. But I’m doing both, along with a bunch of other things, and I’m pretty excited.

Outside of work, I’ve been finishing up a Coursera course and trying to maintain a regular schedule with finishing the lectures, quizzes, and assignments. Writing has taken a backseat to everything, as has editing, though I think I’ll be able to work on those things a little this week.

I’ve managed to hold on to an exercise routine, though I haven’t fully met my gym goals, nor have I taken the steps I initially wanted in training for a 5k. Still, I’m not going to beat myself up over it. As long as I’m staying active, I’m on the right track. Tonight we walked from our house to Subway and back. It was a pretty decent walk. There was a hill that kicked my butt, but I made it without too much trauma. As far as goals go, I’m keeping my current ones in my head, but in March, Jon and I are going to try to get back to doing some strength training.

I’m a little sore tonight, so I’m going to shower and lay down with a book for awhile. The plan for tomorrow is to be wide eyed enough to tackle some of the projects on my to-do list and put out some more fires. Fingers crossed.

A.

Two Days of Christmas

I hope everyone had a great Christmas Day. Mine was really mellow, as planned. To be honest, my Day After Christmas was more eventful. Either way, it was nice having two days off to just relax and do what we wanted to do without thinking about work (yeah, I know that’s what weekends are for, but an extra weekend never hurts).

After staying up until about 2am on Christmas Eve, I had a hard time waking up on Christmas morning. I finally got up and showered, and after packing up our things, we rolled on out. Our first mission was to find some breakfast. IHOP was open, but they were packed, so we went to Denny’s instead. Our breakfast experience started a little shaky. Our greeter followed her less-than- sincere “Merry Christmas” by telling us that she wasn’t happy because she had to work. but not to tell her boss. While I’m assuming she was trying to be funny…and I understand not wanting to work on Christmas Day…that’s not great customer service.

Our waitress was better and the food was pretty good. As a Christmas gift, we tipped the waitress fifty percent. Our service on the way out was much better, as the guy who rang us up was very friendly and a lot more sincere in his well wishes.

We had a little bit of time to kill, so we tried to find a geocache on campus, but the snow made it impossible. We finally ended up going to the movies, where I made some family calls before we went inside. The weather was nice, so I didn’t mind sitting in the car. Eventually we made it into the theater and saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. I liked it, especially the parts with Smaug. That dragon is pretty awesome. I mean, sure, he’s the bad guy…but he’s classy about it. And he’s a dragon, so it’s to be expected, right?

After the movie, we made it to the gym. There were only a couple other people there, so I walked laps and did a zombie mission with the chases, which meant getting over my fear of running around other people. That part didn’t end up being so bad. Doing laps around a circular track was tedious though, even with the zombie mission. I’ve come to the conclusion…and this will surprise anyone who knew me when I was younger…that I much prefer to be outdoors.

The evening was spent finishing out my Christmas calls, watching some Cowboy Bebop (I’ve never seen it before but have heard good things), playing on the internet, and reading.

This morning I slept in, then started the day with some reading, a shower, and then some revision on my book. I also earned some Influenster badges and played Candy Crush. Once Jon got up and got dressed, we headed to town. We had to make a bank deposit, and then we went to Olive Garden for lunch. Our original plan had been to do the unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks, but the Tastes of Italy menu lured us in.

These were like Italian tapas. We got an order of chicken meatballs and a dish that I can’t remember the name of, but was cheese filled bow ties with a parmesan sauce and bacon. They were both delicious, as was everything else. Also, our waiter was awesome! Very friendly and very attentive without being too invasive. To continue our Christmas trend, we tipped him well. We can’t afford to do that every time we go out, but it felt good to do it when it was deserved.

To help with that post-lunch full feeling, we walked over to Best Buy where we picked up a Chromecast as our Christmas present for this year.  We walked back to the car, then went first to the farm supply store to browse jeans, then to Goodwill to see if I could find any newish walking shoes. We were going to go to the movies, but opted instead to go to the library and then home. I’m currently on a Meg Cabot kick, specifically her Boy trilogy, and I needed to get the second  book.

Though we were going to go walk the track, we didn’t make it. When we got home, I was feeling sore and sick, so we just came in and chilled for the evening. Jon played with the Chromecast, and I read (and actually finished) the book I checked out. Since we were kind of tired of chicken nuggets and hadn’t gone to the grocery store, we ordered Gambino’s. The one in Wamego has never messed up my order…until tonight. They sent my pasta with white sauce instead of red sauce, and I hate white sauce in general, but I especially hate the Gambino’s white sauce. To me, it has no flavor and the richness of it nauseates me.

I can be a brat, especially when it comes to disappointing food experiences. Instead of having them bring me a correctly made dish, I just got bratty and sulked for two hours. They added a credit to our account for next time, but that did me no good tonight. Jon now has lunch for tomorrow though. I did finally break down and had Jon make me some chicken nuggets because I was getting sick from not having food, but I’m still a little bit sulky about it. I probably shouldn’t have blogged about it…now I’m just mad again.

Also, Netflix doesn’t seem to be working. Which I guess is okay. It’s nearing my bed time, and I can’t be up late tonight since I have to go back to work tomorrow. It’s Friday, which means I’m looking at another weekend, but it’s annoying to have to go in at all. Of course, if I wake up feeling worse than I do right now, I might not make it in anyway. I’m achy and a little stuffy. However, I just randomly get those symptoms once a week or so, and then I wake up feeling fine, and I’m sure this time will be no different.

On that note, I’m going to drag my tired and ornery butt to bed. Looking forward to this weekend and hoping the sun sticks around long enough to melt some snow so we can get out and enjoy some quality fresh air.

A.

Weekend in Review

Nothing crazy happened this weekend, other than that I wasn’t feeling well. Somehow, though, I still managed to accomplish what felt like a lot. I did not, however, accomplish any blog posts, so here’s the update on the weekend.

Friday: After work, I dropped Jon off at gaming, went to the gym for another treadmill session, then went to Forsh’s for some dinner, wine, and The Sound of Music. I love the original movie, so I was interested in seeing the remake with Carrie Underwood and Stephen Moyer. Before I saw it, I read mixed reviews. After I saw it, everything I read talked about how horrible it was. It wasn’t better than the original, for sure, but I actually liked it. Underwood is cute and Moyer was…well, it was fun comparing Captain Von Trapp to Bill Compton.  It was also fun to just goof on it with Forsh. I picked up Jon when it got late. He took second in the FNM draft, so it turned out to be a good night all around.

Saturday: I slept in on Saturday, which I thought would be good for some extra rest, but I was feeling rough when I woke up, both physically and emotionally. It wasn’t my normal depression. I wanted to go do something but I didn’t want to deal with the cold, so I stayed in and figured that was best to try to make myself feel physically better…that and a few cold pills. I started feeling restless a little later on, so I channeled my energy into finishing a few knitting projects I’d been working on and watching American Horror Story: Asylum, which finally came on Netflix. Later in the evening, I did venture out for a short walk with Jon to the corner store. It was chilly, but I found my headband and gloves, so it was bearable. The walk itself felt good. I hate  being cooped up all day. Before the day ended at around two in the morning, I watched all of Asylum.

Sunday: I woke up feeling better, so I thought I was out of the woods. Even though I got to bed late on Saturday, I set an early alarm so I could get up and finish an editing project. We ordered lunch, and I watched some Christmas shows to get the answers I needed for the mystery geocache series. Even though it was cold and snowy, I didn’t want to be cooped up again, and since we had to go out for gaming anyway, I suggested we brave the cold and snow and go pick up some geocaches. The roads weren’t horrible, though there were a few snags in our plan. First, some of our coordinates were wrong due to sticky keyboard fingers and typos, so our first two caches took us to private land and someone’s driveway…hence, we knew we’d done something wrong. We also ended up on a really horrible back road and almost dumped ourselves into a creek. My mad driving skills got us through it, but that was a pretty intense trip. We managed to grab four of the mystery caches before heading over for our Pathfinder game. It was around that time that I started feeling sick again, worse than Saturday. I couldn’t focus on anything, I had a weird headache, and I kept running hot and cold. I also thought I was going to fall asleep a few times because I felt so exhausted.

Once the game was over, I managed to perk up enough to do some grocery shopping, but I was sore and tired and really glad to get home. Jon made me some chicken noodle soup and I picked up some OJ at the store. I’ll be heading to bed shortly after this post to try to get some sleep, and hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow. I go through this every other month or so, so I’m going to rely on my immune system to kick into high gear and not let me get super sick before Christmas.

Here’s to some cold meds and rest and a good upcoming work week.

A.

Hangin’ Out with Mom

It was another longish drive back to Kansas on Sunday. We left early but still made a few final stops to finish out the visit. We also stopped for food and a geocache.  Jon and I managed to keep ourselves from going geocache crazy, but we needed a few stops to stretch, so it gave us a good excuse to do so. We found one along the highway that hadn’t been found in over a year. I was glad it was still there.

We made a stop in Rose Hill to visit the in-laws and grabbed one last geocache on the final stretch home. Online, there was no other logged find, so we thought that maybe there was a chance we’d be the FTF, but no dice. The FTF just hadn’t logged it. Still, it was a good cemetery cache, and the area was beautiful. It was one of the first ones we’ve been to with crypts, which always strike me as such peaceful structures.

Dinner was easy roast beef sandwiches, and we watched a bunch of YouTube videos that Mom hadn’t yet seen.

Monday was our day out in Manhattan. We had to do laundry first thing in the morning, so we got that going while we went and ran other errands. Mom had a bunch of photos printed at Walgreens, so we picked those up, vacuumed the car, took it through the car wash to get the red clay off, and picked the laundry up. It probably wasn’t the most exciting start to the day, but it helped us kill time until things started opening.

We went to Goodwill first and poked around. For the first time in years, I actually found clothes there that fit me. I found a pair of pants, two shirts, and a pair of walking shoes since my other ones are already wearing down.  Down the sidewalk, we checked out Tuesday Morning. I’d heard about the place, mainly from stories of people finding great discontinued yarn there, and I knew Manhattan had one, but I’d never been there.  It turned out to be a really cool store. It was like a smaller Big Lots, offering discounted closeout items.

Once we got our first round of thrifting out of the way, we went to the Flint Hills Discovery Center and then picked Jon up for lunch at Cox Bros BBQ. Afterwards, we commenced with round two of thrifting by heading out to the Grand Ol’ Trunk to poke around. By this time, I was getting tired. It didn’t feel like a lot of walking, but my feet were telling me it had been.  Instead of looking for more shops, we went out to the scenic overlook so I could show Mom the view, which seemed fitting after she visited the FHDC.

We once again found ourselves with time to kill, so we went on a drive to look at more scenery. My original intention was to find Pillsbury Crossing, but I missed the turn. Still, the drive was nice and we stopped for a geocache, which my mom actually found. I don’t know if she’ll become a geocacher, but it was cool that she made the find on that one.

We stopped in at work to say hi, then tried to find a premium cache near the stadium with no luck. After we picked up Jon, we came home, made more sandwiches, and watched Frankie Go Boom and Cabin in the Woods.

This morning we got up, finished Cabin in the Woods (we were too tired to make it to the end last night), and took Jon to work. Our first stop was Menards, as we were on a mission to find Mom some overalls. They didn’t have any, but they did have a lot of Christmas decorations, including Risky Business Santa, which amused me more than it probably should have.

We completed our overalls-finding mission at the supply store across the street, then headed back to Wamego to give a more extended tour and visit the Oz Museum. It was my third time there, but I actually stopped to read more of the information on this visit. Mom liked it, and I learned more about the artifacts than I had on previous visits.

We headed toward KC a little earlier than planned, but we stopped off in Topeka and had Cracker Barrel for lunch. I love browsing their store, even though I don’t usually buy stuff (except a few snacks every now and then). They had some neat holiday things. They also had massive candy bars and Pez dispensers. I didn’t take many pics, but they had Peanut Butter Cups that were a pound each.

We arrived at the airport much earlier than we needed to, but Mom wanted to make sure her bags were under the weight limit and that she didn’t need to send anything back with me to mail. I drove around looking for parking but had no luck, so in the end, I pulled to the side and gave her hugs in the fire lane. I’m not going to lie….I’ve been sad and teary eyed since leaving the airport. I hate goodbyes, and I cry every time I have to go through them, but it’s especially hard saying bye to my Mom. I never feel like the time we get to spend together is enough. The time we did have was awesome, though.

Now I have to try to slide back into routine, which is going to take a couple days. I got a jump on that by putting away laundry, catching up on email, and getting this post done, as well as uploading the rest of the week’s photos. Tomorrow it’s back to work and back to working on several projects I need to finish before Monday. It’s going to be a very busy next few days.

A.

All About the Car…and Some Other Stuff

To anyone who follows closely, sorry for not posting last night.  Things with the car were stressful, and by the time I actually sat down, I was too tired to put together a coherent sentence.

Before we hit the gym last night, we stopped at the HyVee gas station to get some water and a pre-gym snack since I was starving and hadn’t eaten a lot during the day. Coming out of the parking lot, the car did this weird thing where it rumbled, like it was going over a rumble strip. I thought maybe the terrain was weird, and the car didn’t shake in a scary way, so I continued on. After the gym, we decided to grab Chinese for dinner, and coming out of the parking lot, it did it again. By then I was a little freaked and unsure what to do.

We ended up going back to my friend’s house to eat and Google some possibilities.  I tried to relax, figuring I’d take it to the shop the following (this) morning, but of course, I just sat there and worried and shared my worry on FB.  I got a recommendation, some words of encouragement, and some ideas of what it could be. Erica chimed in and mentioned that Terry knew stuff about cars, which I think she’d told me before, but I’d forgotten. So he offered to take a look at the car for me last night so I wouldn’t have to wait until morning.

After taking it for a test drive and trying to recreate the shaking, he couldn’t pinpoint anything. We did some tire maintenance and kind of figured my other FB friend was correct in saying that it could be the traction sensor going off. To be honest, I’ve had the traction thing go off before during the winter, and it felt just like that. We decided to monitor it, but we didn’t want to put our plans on hold, so we decided we’d go ahead and take our trip to Wichita. I realize that sounds a little irresponsible, but I’m not a fan of sitting around and doing nothing because something bad might happen. That might bite me in the butt someday.

We went back to the house and finished the movie we’d started. The friend we were pet sitting for gave us a free On Demand code, so we rented Pain & Gain. I really enjoyed it, but the initial goofiness took a pretty dark turn halfway through.

A big thanks to everyone who helped and gave feedback. I sometimes get disillusioned with FB, but then people are awesome, and I remember why I’m still hanging in there.

After a double check this morning, we confirmed that nothing was showing as wrong, so we’d be heading to Wichita. I got out of work early, picked Jon up, took our ward to the pet resort for the weekend, and headed to the in-laws. We decided to geocache on the way. I broke down and bought a premium membership so we could use the function that finds caches based on a travel route. We’re still not entirely sure how to get it to work flawlessly, but Jon saved a few for us to find. We ended up finding four, including two cemeteries. They were pretty quick, and we made it to Rose Hill in decent time. I would even say that the drive seemed quicker than it usually does.

We chilled at the house for a little bit before going out to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. We took my dad-in-law’s truck, and my history with that truck has been shaky, considering it’s a big truck with a big step to get into.  Tonight, though, I owned it. Got in and out with no problems. Yay, fitness.

At BWWs,   I played some trivia and had the chicken chopped salad, which was delicious. So delicious, in fact, that Jon traded me a couple of his parmesan wings for half of it. Which was fine with me, though the parm wings were spicy. I also did not do well at trivia, but it was just for fun, so no big.

When we got back to the house, the guys (Jon and my brother-in-law, Andrew) and I went geocaching. Rose Hill is full of them, and we managed to snag four more before it got too dark. Three of them were nanos. I spotted the first one, and Jon spotted the second two. Drew found a micro key case. We searched for a fifth one, but had no luck in finding it. The area was torn apart, so I’m not even sure if it was still there.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a full walk in, but I feel like we were active with the geocaching, so I’m not going to feel guilty about it. Now we’re just relaxing and I’m taking care of some things on the internet. We’re probably going to have an early morning and possibly a late night tomorrow.  Jon’s reunion is during the day, and I have no idea what we’re doing in the evening. I’m hoping to hit some more geocaches around here, but we’ll just have to see what happens.

I was feeling overwhelmed this morning with everything we had to do and with a little worry about the drive, but we had no car problems and I’m now feeling much better. Ready to tackle the weekend and enjoy whatever comes, no matter what it is.

A.

 

Goals, Cemeteries, and Zombies

Today was a good day.

We slept in a little bit but were out of the house by 10, which was later than we wanted to be out, but it was still early enough to accomplish something. Our first stop was the Wamego rec field to walk our second day of C25K.  When we’d originally planned to do this, we thought we’d be up before it got too hot. It didn’t work out that way, so this walk was tougher than it might have been had we gone back to the mall.  As hard as it was, we still finished, though the urge to just go home after that was pretty strong.  Right now, we’re just picking up the walking pace. It’s going to be killer if we ever graduate to running.

Along the way, we found one of the geocaches we hadn’t been able to find previously, so that was pretty awesome. While I’m working up to doing the whole 30 minute set without breaking, I’m not quite there yet, so stopping to search was a nice break.

We decided to go ahead and hit some more geocaches in the area before heading into Manhattan. Today was a day for cemeteries, including one called the Vieux Family Cemetery.  The area was interesting and a little creepy, not because of the graveyard, but because of the hidden shelter through the trees.

Go ahead…go in. I dare you.

The graveyard was beautiful but sad.  The history there was amazing, but the graves were mostly for children who didn’t live much past the age of one, if that. There were also several that were marked “unknown.” Not sure if it was that fact or if the place just held a sad energy, but it made me cry, so we didn’t linger too long.

 

A little further up the road, we found another one. It was another one of the tiny ones, which crack me up at how cute they are.

We drove all over the place and got lost in some sketchy back roads, but we found five caches today. In the last cemetery, we even saw some wildlife: a snake and a ginormous rabbit, as well as some lizards running around on the road. The creepiest wildlife we saw, however, was the giant fuzzy caterpillars all over the road.

Later on, we took another video of a cache are we found a few weeks ago. Warning: spoilers.

We finally decided to head into Manhattan to grab a late lunch at Cox Bros BBQ. I was craving a BBQ Brisket sandwich.  While there, we signed up for their customer card and got a free jar of hot sauce and some free mac and cheese. We also got a picture of two raccoons paddling a canoe, which is pretty adorable and only slightly disturbing.

 

After that, we went to Game Hounds to put up another Tengaicon flyer. While there, Jon bought me Dead Island: Riptide. I’ve been talking about renting it, but since we gave up our GameFly account, I would have had to rent it and commit some time to finishing it. This way, we can actually play it at our leisure, and since we bought it used, it was way less than paying full price for a brand new copy.

Our last stop was the gym. This was a double workout day because we set dual fitness goals: the first was to train for a 5K by finishing the Couch to 5K program, and the second was to make it to the gym at least three times a week in order to evaluate if we were going to keep our memberships or not. We ended up taking a couple rest days this week (fyi, our week is from Tuesday to Monday to compensate for the “rest” we took the Monday back from Gen Con), so in order to fit all our goals in, we doubled up today. It wasn’t so bad. We managed to fit in another 20 minutes of cardio, and I started watching The Missing on Netflix.

Once we got home, I played some DI:R, then uploaded pictures and organized things out of my Dropbox. I have yet to shower, so I think that’s next on the list. Then it’ll be either more video games or maybe some reading and an early night to bed. Plans for tomorrow include going to buy new shoes (walking and possibly another pair for hiking), laundry, and the gym to get our third day in for the week.  Since we’ll be in Topeka, we’ll probably hit up some geocaches there.

Maybe bed is needed, because I think I’ve planned another full day for tomorrow.

A.

 

Downward Slide Into Madness

The title kind of describes my evening, though not as literally as one might think or hope.

My day was okay, but it was one of those days where tiny little annoyances started piling. There is a lack of professionalism in people who rank higher than me that I find disturbing.  Most days I just suck it up and deal with it, but today it was especially difficult.

After work, Jon and I decided to eat first, then go to the gym. Of course, after we ate, we decided to wait awhile to let the food settle, so we went to the library to read for an hour. But once we were done there, we ended up skipping the gym due to stomach issues. In hindsight, I guess we should have tried to go for a little bit, because that set my mood for the night.  I realize that a day off isn’t a huge deal, and I know that my weird fear that a day of rest will cause me to backslide is unfounded, especially since I’ve taken many rest days.  I also know that it’s really hard to work out with an upset stomach. Still, it just made me feel yucky and put me in a funk for the rest of the night.

This then meant that other little things continued to hammer the nail of crabbiness. Like when Jon pointed out that my favorite drinking cup had cracked and was no longer usable. Or when Netflix didn’t bring  our queue up right way (incidentally, the queue is now called “My List,” which I suppose means I’m supposed to make my own list, but I’m not going to. I’ve invested too much time in the current one).  By that point, I just felt like a lump, so I finished a movie that I didn’t even enjoy.

I ended the night watching Hobo with a Shotgun. There is a very small, very select group of people I would recommend this movie to, and it does not include anyone in my family (sorry, Mom. This one may be a little bit much for even you).  The idea of doing a modern movie in late 70s cinema style was interesting, and the premise was interesting, if not a tad dark. The gore level was through the roof, and while some gory movies can be fun when they’re over the top, this one was over the top, yet still disturbing. The term “torture porn” comes to mind.  I gave it more stars than the one I finished before it, but that’s mainly from the one liners that would actually be pretty fun to drop into every day conversation if I had the mad retention skills of my husband and could remember any of them (the only one I can remember involves the f-bomb, and I like to keep this blog fairly clean).

Now that the day feels wasted, I suppose I’ll shuffle off to bed. My shoulder is bothering me, so ibuprofen and biofreeze are in order.

One last note: Ben Affleck was apparently picked to play Batman in the 2015 movie. While the rest of the internet rages, I’m only hoping that his Batman voice won’t be worse than Christian Bale’s Batman voice. Because seriously…nails on a chalkboard.

Tomorrow’s Friday. That means it’ll be a good day, right?

A.

Return to the Cube

As far as first days back to work go, today wasn’t bad at all. My team did an awesome job in keeping things caught up and done through the week, so I didn’t have any emergencies or fires to put out right away.  They also decided to do some interior decoration on my cubicle while I was gone to welcome me back.

 

They made me another sign with my initials and a bunch of words that may or may not describe me. Not only are they sweet, but I think I may have them fooled into thinking I’m a nice person.  Either way, it was a pretty cool way to return to work.

We made it to the gym after work where I started watching a movie called Mutants. I’m not entirely sure if I like it. It’s slow and gory. I can handle the gory, but I need something to engage me during a workout. I’ll finish it, but I hope it picks up soon.

Today marks a rare day of actual grocery shopping instead of procrastinating. We’re now set for meals and snacks for the next several days. The next shopping trip will involve buying stuff for Juice Fast 2013.

At home, I finished scheduling Gen Con posts and watched an episode of Clean House with Jon. At blog time, I still haven’t put away laundry, and I still need a shower. Overall, a pretty uneventful day, but I’m okay with some down time for a week or so.

Now to finish the night with laundry, shower, a frozen yogurt, and some sleep.

A.

 

Friday Night Date With Me

It’s almost 10 and I’m exhausted. Jon is gaming tonight, and though my original plan was to hit the gym, I’m feeling worn down enough to consider this a rest day. For whatever reason, I couldn’t sleep last night, so I’ve been running on about 4  hours all day.

However, being that it was Friday, I stuck it out to have a night out by myself while Jon went to the game store. I hung out at the library for about an hour for some reading time, then headed over to grab dinner at Arby’s before going to see The Conjuring.

Going to the movies by myself on a Friday night was a pretty big step against my anxiety, but I did okay. The anxiety hasn’t really been bad in awhile, but it does like to rear its ugly head at inopportune times. It peeked a little tonight, but never really found footing.

Waiting in the lobby, I saw someone from work and her boyfriend, and then I got carded to see the R rated movie. That was fun.

The movie was great. Despite the people on the theater being fairly obnoxious, parts of the film really did manage to scare me. The people directly around me weren’t horrible. They chatted some, and the girl down the aisle from me kept screaming, but the conversation pre-movie indicated that she had been coerced into going and was genuinely scared.

The people in the back, however, laughed through the movie like it was a comedy. Sure, there were a few moments that were laugh appropriate, but on the whole, they were just being jackasses.

But the movie was good and I was able to tune them out mostly, so it was worth the trip.

Besides checking in at the game store and grabbing a water from the gas station, that was my excitement. No links or fun videos tonight because I’m posting from my phone and haven’t figured those things out yet.

A.