I did not get a good night’s sleep overnight. According to my fitness tracker, I slept about four hours (between 10 pm and 2 am), a quarter of that being light sleep. Then I woke up and stayed awake for an hour, eventually falling back asleep shortly before 3 am and hitting snooze on my 5:30 a.m. alarm once.Preview post
First thing I did after stumbling downstairs was login to download two new releases I’d pre-ordered as ebooks: Crosstalk by Connie Willis and The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu. By then it was already five minutes to six o’clock. It takes ten minutes to make tea and about the same time to dress so I started boiling the water in the microwave (four minutes) and went to gather my work clothes. I put two teaspoons of Irish Blend loose leaf tea in my reusable steeper, dunked it in the almost boiling water and set a timer for five minutes. I dressed and packed my lunch and my electronics.
I put my tea in my Thermos travel mug, hoisted up my three satchels (laptop first, then lunch bag, followed by useless purse) and kissed my hubby goodbye. Once in the car, I turned on mobile data and location services on my smartphone and rewound the Bleakhouse audiobook five minutes, turning off the 20-minute sleep timer, and backed out of the driveway listening to Dickens.
At exactly 6:30 a.m., I was stopped by my first stop light of the day, about a block and a half from my house, at the intersection of Lansing Lane/4-H road and Main Street/US-73/K-7. Fortunately, I wasn’t stopped by another stoplight until I got off the highway in midtown at 20th and Broadway. At this point, I stopped listening to Bleakhouse because I kept losing track of the story lines (not difficult in this ‘epic’ tale) because I kept replaying scenes from the premiere of Westworld, which I had watched the evening before.
I reached work without incident and parked in one of my usual spots near the exit. When I reached my desk, the cubicle entrance had been decorated with crepe paper in honor of my birthday, which was two days ago. The department calendar wasn’t properly updated to reflect that I’d taken Monday the 3rd off. Still, several coworkers brought treats and stopped by to wish me a happy natal day belatedly.
I had a couple of hours to get organized and accomplish a few things before the rest of the day would be spent in and out of various meetings and conference calls. During my short lunch I read a couple of chapters of Space Drifters: The Emerald Enigma, a humerus (tongue-in-check type humor) space opera. After lunch, an afternoon of even more meetings. For dessert, I took two ibuprofen pills to fight off the persistent headache I’ve had all day thanks to lack of sleep. At least there’s a chocolate chip cookie in my near future.
I left work at the usual time. The drive home was mostly uneventful despite a thunderstorm rolling through the area. It didn’t seem to be doing much but spitting rain occasionally. When I pulled into the driveway I noticed dozens of acorns from my burr oak tree scattered about. Terry and I raked the front yard and swept the driveway yesterday, filling three yard waste bags full of acorns. If money grew on trees like acorns do on this one, I’d be set for life.
I parked the car and stopped listening to my audiobook. I turned off mobile data and location services on my smartphone before exiting the car. I checked the mail and discovered a couple of presents had arrived: T-shirt I had ordered and two more DVDs from my Netflix queue.
Due to the weather, I won’t be walking the dogs tonight. I should be doing my assigned readings for Bible study tomorrow night. That will all depend on what’s on the schedule tonight.
Terry and I had a simple supper of soup and grilled cheese (for him) and soup and pasta salad (for me). Terry hadn’t slept well either so started getting drowsy once his stomach had warm soup in it. He did let me know that the bass player and drummer were coming over to practice tonight. That was a bit unusual but not unheard of. Rehearsal nights are normally Wednesday evenings. Since it may be a bit noisier later, I might forego attempting to watch a movie or television show and instead catch-up on my reading for tomorrow night’s study.
I’ve scheduled this to auto-publish a few minutes after I would normally go to bed. I hope you all had a pleasant day and I wish you all a good night.
