Got up around eight. I felt pretty rested even though I didn’t have great sleep. Probably carryover from my couple of days of vacation. I had a 9:00 meeting to prep for, but it turned out that my coworker scheduled something else for 9:00 (weird, since she’s the one who suggested 9:00, but then this meeting was not at all urgent).
So I went through emails and finishing up the tasks they suggested. It’s part of the job I pretty much don’t mind, and a good way to ease into the workday. Can I send you a copy of what? Sure! Typety typety click *send*. You need me to add who to the proposal? Okie dokie! Clickity clickety tap *send*. It’s at the same time kind of robotic and not absent a decent amount of brainwork to get all the gears and levers in my cranium warmed up.
Then it got terrible. I mean not tragically terrible, but terrible enough because of a spelling error I made on someone’s name. A donor was very displeased. This was actually last week, but when I corrected the misspelled name, I corrected it incorrectly and the donor was livid. That was today. Oops.
The day ended with my supervisor on the phone figuring out where to go from there. Rough day.
My goal was to be asleep by eight, so when my workday ended at six, I got started on my pre-laundry day tasks. I don’t disinfect my water jugs every time I refill them; I’ve found it unnecessary, as far as I can tell, but I do it every three weeks or so. This time it was four. This takes some time, as I’m working with one-gallon jugs (five-gallon bottles were impossible to find on this island when the lockdown began in March). I’m up to ten jugs now, and there’s bleach involved, so it takes a while to get everything taken care of.
Ate lunch, did the dishes, and took care of the getting-ready-for-bed stuff. Conscious sleep preparation the way I’m supposed to do it. Got to sleep sometime after nine. Dang it.
I had a steak to cook (a cheaper cut than last time) before it got bad. I was going to prepare it, along with a large stir fry, and have it for breakfast and lunch. But two morning phone calls threw off my timing, and when I had a moment to have a bite, I only had the steak ready. I didn’t mean to have the entire steak — and only the steak — for my breakfast meal, but oops (again).
It was pretty good except for a little bit of stringiness on the outer edges. I think I’m learning a way to prepare steak that works for me, even with inexpensive cuts.
I stir-fried the veggies (oyster mushrooms, tofu, bean sprouts, and baby bok choi) and ate half of them for a late lunch. They were pretty great. I’m less likely to miss rice when cubes of firm tofu are involved, and I mean enough tofu that I’m not pacing myself so I don’t run out before I’m through with the meal. It’s a problem I’ve had with tofu-involved dishes when I dine out.
The mushrooms also add some nice substance. I don’t think they’re especially nutritious, but they make me happy, especially when they’re on sale.
I had a slice of pie for a snack before bed.
Dinner is the quarter-pounder combo from McD’s I’m enjoying right now at the laundry.
Not a banner day, but maybe all that rest prepared me for it, because I was unstressed all day long, and even kind of looked forward to doing the laundry, something I haven’t felt in a few weeks. I didn’t still feel that way when the alarm went off, but oh well. I’m here now and it’s fine.
I sent a little text to Julie telling her I’m working through the back episodes of Judge John Hodgman, the podcast she turned me on to a few years ago. The archives go back to November 8, 2010. I’m up to October 26, 2011. A ways to go. This podcast’s earliest episodes have been good listening while I do household chores, especially those weekly attacks on the Monster and the Beast.
I got one text from Crush Girl responding to some little, unimportant thing I asked the night before. Then the Julie-Cindy-Suzanne group text lit up just before bed with a meme I didn’t recognize.
Not a lot going on there, but the day was busy anyway, so it was okay. If you want in on all this exciting conversation (well not all of it; or not any of it, really, but we can start our own), just leave a comment and I’ll send my contact info. Weird days continue, and you don’t need to go through them separated from human interaction.