Lockdown: Playing chicken with chicken

That was an interesting evening.

But first, the day leading up to the evening. I did stop at the beach on my way home from the laundry. The water was noticeably warmer than it was a few months ago, and it was moving. Not the bothersome choppiness you get when it’s windy — if there was any wind I didn’t notice it. The surf way out in the break was really pumping, so when I got there half an hour before sunrise, parking wasn’t exactly tight but it was way fuller than usual.

I had a good swim. I told myself I was only there to enjoy the water, not to kill myself, but my body told me to go, so I had a semi-strenuous time. Strenuous enough to feel it in my lungs while I swam, but not enough for my arms and shoulders to ache all day after. It felt great.

I’m going to call the Big Mac combo at the laundry Tuesday’s dinner, since I stopped on my way home for a roast pork loco moco from Pancakes and Waffles. Yummy. I had that while reading the news, then went to bed.

Work was pretty good, but I had three meetings, one of them a Zoom meeting, and they ate into my day and my energy too. During the Zoom meeting, I put myself on mute so I could eat a couple of carrot cake Oreos, the only snacking I did Wednesday.

So I broke for a late lunch, thinking I’d get a few tasks done right after, then take a walk.

Lunch was a couple of French bread pizzas. They were okay. I’d really rather have English muffins. I goofed off a little and before I got back to work, I went to the bathroom. Then I went again right after. Aaaaaand again right after that. Okay, that was going to nix the evening walk — I did not want to be too far from the home porcelain in my condition.

And then my energy just fled my body, suddenly and dramatically. I put myself to bed, where I had no energy to do or think anything. It was incredible, the way I felt everything just kinda seep out of me, deflating me until I was a limp envelope of a body.

I managed to sleep after a while, getting up just before midnight after a few hours. And I felt fine. I felt great. I’d planned to cook some frozen char siu chicken thighs (from a well-known local brand) in the Instant Pot, then do a quick stir-fry for dinner. When I got the thighs out of the freezer, they weren’t exactly frozen. Uh oh.

My freezer hasn’t been operating at full ability lately, or at least what it once knew as full ability. It’s very, very old. I have a few other frozen meats in there that are definitely frozen, but the thighs were nearer the door opening, and I think they just didn’t get cold enough to freeze all the way through. The question was, have they been cold enough these three weeks since I impulsively brought them home from Long’s one very late night?

What the heck? I was already ailing, probably some kind of food poisoning. So why not? I cooked them, and they came out great, and tasted terrific, so I’m calling it a gamble well taken.

By then it was past three in the morning, and I knew I had at least two hours of work, plus this journal, so I put the thighs in the fridge and had a couple of hot dogs instead. I’ll have the stir fry either for lunch or dinner Thursday.

I got three tasks done, the two I had in mind and a new one which rolled in at 9:30 in the evening. The third took a bit long, and I needed a break around five. Finally got it all submitted about twenty minutes ago, and now it’s creeping up on 6:30 Thursday morning.

Sharon texted me while I was still in bed before I reported to my desk at noon, asking me about some work stuff — difficulty with a PDF. If there’s one huge hole in my professional desktop publishing and multimedia knowledge, it’s Adobe Acrobat. As a teacher, I never needed it, so I never had it. After teaching, I did need to generate PDFs, but I usually saved Word docs as PDFs. At the engineering firm, I had a team of publications people in Manila to make my PDFs for me. So I was unable to help Sharon.

Crush Girl texted me in the afternoon to talk about books. That was great. We talked about audio books and whether or not they count toward a reading goal, among other things. It wasn’t a lot, but I’m calling it the second highlight of my day, after the swim.

Thursday I want to finish two proposals and send them out, then complete at least a first draft of a story I’m working on. That will hopefully leave me Friday to complete a first draft of a second story, and to do the background on a third. Then I’ll have the weekend to not think about work. Lofty ambitions, but they’re doable, and they start right now with a decent four hours of sleep. I think I’ll clock in at 10:30 instead of my usual 9 or 9:30.

Reach out if you crave connection. I’m here for it.

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