I was a little body-tired after the laundry Wednesday morning to go to the beach, but I didn’t decide until the very last second, when I would turn left down Pensacola to head for the ocean or right up Auwaiolimu to head home. I turned right.
Got home and had an early morning nap. It was nice. And possibly as good for me as a swim might have been.
Worked on stories. I was productive. Got okays from a donor on the final draft of a story. Communicated with a recipient about getting a photo from her for the same story. Got corrections on the other story (professor and former journalist) from my supervisor. Submitted a letter to someone else for an okay (I didn’t get it). It was a lot of loose-ends-tying and it felt good to tick through them.
I still felt sleep-deprived, so I planned not to hit the beach again Thursday. I kind of wish I’d at least pretended to myself that the beach was still the intention, because once my brain knew it didn’t need to be up early, it took this as liberty to stay up. Until 2:00. Great.
I don’t even know what i did. Yeah, I played Tsum Tsum. A lot. But not that many hours a lot.
Oh I forgot: someone I interviewed for a story last year won the Nobel Prize. Pretty awesome. Her father was my college advisor, and my American lit professor. A great advisor, a beloved professor, and someone I learned a lot of non-English things from. When I interviewed his daughter, I got to tell her this stuff, with specific stories about what a dear man he was to me and to the other English majors. I was bummed that she didn’t win it last year; in fact, we held publication of her story until we got the news that the prize went to someone else, because how cool would it have been to put “Nobel laureate” in the headline?
So that was a bit of good news among all the bad news of the week.
Crush Girl texted me to talk about the lunch she was having. That was fun. We talked about other things, including how stoked I was to have interviewed the winner of a Nobel prize. Ali texted me and I caught her up on some of the work stuff, including the news that someone has finally been assigned to be my parking buddy. Some of us lower-thans in the company have tandem parking, which means someone parks against the wall and someone parks in front. The company tried to schedule it so partners arrive and leave at around the same time, for convenience’s sake. My contention was (and is) that it’s equally peaceful to pick your own partner, someone you don’t mind getting up for.
That was Ali until she left. Now it’s Sylvia, who’s moving to our main office now that she’s switching positions next week. I think Ali was pleased to know her space is being inherited by Sylvia. A worthy heir.
Julie texted me to say she saw some lobster-flavored potato chips in Rhode Island and they made her think of me. That was nice. And Penny texted to ask advice about purchasing a laptop. She’s narrowed it down to a couple of good choices. One of them is a newer (but less muscular) version of the computer I’m typing this on now. Same memory, same processing speed, same screen size, and same storage, though.
For breakfast I had a Big Mac combo at the laundry. I made a fresh pot of hapa rice for lunch, but instead of heating something up from the fridge, I opened a can of Vienna sausage and just poured it over the steaming hot rice. Camp food. For a late dinner I had more hapa rice and canned chili.
Oh I also forgot to say that I stopped at the strip mall on my way home from the laundry, at just past five in the morning. The supermarket was still out of mochiko, but the drugstore had a few boxes. I grabbed two and some food coloring. Mochi is going to happen.
I got to bed late because I freaking spilled my chili on my kitchen counter and floor. Took quite a while to get it clean to my satisfaction, so I was up late again. Thought about just giving up on food since I wasn’t really that hungry, but I did have my heart set on canned chili, and there was still some rice. So I made it again and it was great.
Leave me a comment if you’d like someone to connect with in the miry days of pandemic. I’ll send you photos of my mochi and you can send me photos of whatever’s going into your mouth. I mean that in a nonsexual way, of course. No, really. I’ll send you my contact info and you can have someone to communicate with so you don’t have to go through any of this alone.