Lorem Ipsum

As I mentioned last week, I decided not to have a birthday party this year. And I'm not really particularly celebrating my birthday in any other substantial way. But my birthday week is going pretty well anyway.

Over the weekend, I attended Into the Woods in San Francisco (I particularly liked the cow in this production), hung out with Debbie, helped Kam move some boxes, played boardgames, watched a couple of DS9 episodes, and even got some long-overdue day-job work done. Also started catching up on comics-reading; I somehow stopped reading all of my regular comics about six months ago, so I've now bought a dozen bound paperback volumes to start catching up.

Monday I did at least half a dozen things (both at work and at home) that I would have liked to have gotten done days or weeks or months earlier, several of which I was anxious about doing. (Some of them I had legitimate reasons for not having done yet, others not so much.) There are still plenty more overdue things where those came from, but still, a relief.

One of those things was finally getting tickets to attend Speakeasy with Mary Anne when she visits in a couple weeks. I've heard very good things about the show, but as with Sleep No More, I feel like they don't do a very good job of giving first-time attendees useful information. In particular, I found Speakeasy's online order form confusing, and when I called their number I got an in-character recording. But I dropped a note to their help email address, and shortly thereafter got a phone call from a very friendly and helpful and informative person who answered my questions and gave me a better idea of what to expect.

Part of how I got stuff done on Monday was by carefully limiting my Facebook time. I'm trying to mostly stay off Facebook this week, though birthday week is not a good time to make that decision, given how much I enjoy FB birthday greetings. But I've been largely successful at diverting my frequent “Time to check Facebook!” impulses into (a) doing stuff on my to-do list, or (b) reading fiction.

Also a relief on Monday night: Apple finished repairing my computer and returned it to me. I was a little tense about not having it last week; my life is not yet sufficiently in the Cloud that I can proceed normally without access to my laptop.

And on my way home, I stopped by the grocery store, which was still open, and picked up various foodstuffs that I like, for consumption on Tuesday.

Tuesday was my birthday. It was pretty satisfactory, even though I didn't really do much to celebrate.

For one thing, the sun was out. I've been intermittently moody for the past couple months, but the sunshine in the past few days has improved my mood quite a bit.

So I was in a generally cheerful headspace, and various minor problems and setbacks didn't throw me. I biked to work, and got some things done, though not as much as I should have. I got phone calls from Kam and Sumana. All day, people sent me lovely birthday notes, on Facebook and elsewhere. And I emptied the dishwasher.

I also posted old family photos on Facebook; I usually do that on Thursdays, but my computer was in the shop last Thursday. I would have just skipped a week, but a big milestone is coming up in the photo sequence of my grandmother's life, and I got impatient. So I did last week's batch on Tuesday, with the expectation that I'll still do this week's batch on Thursday.

Tuesday night, I watched the movie To Sir, with Love, which I'm sorry to say I didn't like. But it didn't ruin my day or anything. I also watched the pilot of Parks and Recreation, which various friends have been enthusing about for ages; I liked that episode more than I'd expected to. (I generally don't like sitcoms.)

Have done some unnecessary-but-satisfying bookcase reorganizing in the past few days; no big changes, just putting some books into more pleasing and useful places. Still more to do on that in the next few days. Relatedly, pulled half a dozen books off the unread shelves that I realized I had no interest in reading, so those can go straight to the giveaway shelves. (There are still on the order of 900 books on my unread shelves, but I'm currently reading or skimming or deciding to skip about eight books a month, so at the current rate I should get through them all in only another ten years! :) )

For dinner last night, I cooked some frozen ravioli and coated it in yummy pesto, and had a piece of cranberry-walnut bread (I used to not like cranberries and to not like nuts in bread, but somehow am liking that combination now), and then for dessert I had a piece of apple pie and some vanilla ice cream. Which was nicely satisfying; it fit my very-low-key-celebratory mood.

Today, Wednesday, I met Karen for breakfast, and then stopped off for some more groceries and a haircut before heading to work. I came home to drop off the groceries, and got all ready to bike to work, and realized I wasn't feeling well. Headachey, mildly upset stomach, drippy nose. I blew my nose and took an Advil and got on my bike, and got down to the end of the block before deciding that I really ought to just stay home today.

So I decided to work from home, but continued to not feel well, so I took a break to read for a bit, and fell asleep on the couch. I've been doing that a lot lately; I really ought not to sit on the couch in the afternoon, because it too often happens that I fall asleep for a couple of hours. I probably need the sleep, but it takes a big bite out of my day.

This evening, I watched another Parks and Rec episode, which I unfortunately didn't enjoy much, and the latest episode of Supergirl, which had some great moments. And did some more reading and some more book-adjusting, and soon I will put this computer down and do a little bit of day-job work before going to sleep. I think today was retroactively a sick day rather than a work-from-home day, which is too bad because there's stuff I should get done before the end of the week.

Another of the things I did on Sunday or Monday was to finally order captive-bead earrings to replace the one that I misplaced a couple months ago. I ordered a few of them, of various colors and such; a couple of them arrived today, and it's kind of nice to once again have a tiny portable silent fidget toy always at hand. Also in today's mail: the Blu-ray of Moana, which was supposed to be released a couple weeks ago but has been unavailable until now.

Anyway, all of which is to say that I'm having a reasonably good (and reasonably productive) week despite various setbacks, and I very much appreciate all of the birthday greetings. Thanks, everyone!