Stayed up a little too late Sunday night because I knew I didn’t have to get up early Monday. The monthly jellyfish influx is going down until Tuesday(ish) so I can’t get into the ocean until Wednesday.
Work was okay, but a bit slow. I focused on one large task that I just had all kinds of trouble putting dents in. I admit I’m a little stalled by a couple of recent failures, stuff that got sent back to me asking me (not in these words) not to overwrite this stuff. I get it; I totally do. However, I don’t think I’m being paid to write this stuff the way it’s always been written, so I’m a little indecisive about how to do this.
I’ll be all right; I’m just in a little bit of a jam here.
At the Pearl City police station, where I took my road test the first time at age 18, the examiner usually asks the driver’s license candidate to turn left to exit the parking lot. That’s a left turn on Waimano Home Road, which can be pretty tough. However, there is a dedicated lane right there so people entering the parking lot slightly uphill from the parking lot’s exit can turn in without slowing traffic.
The law says when you turn onto a street like this, you’re supposed to pull into the nearest lane and drive in it for 100 feet before you change lanes. If you follow this law, you pull into the dedicated left-turn lane and before you’ve driven 100 feet, you’re forced to turn left into the police station.
I actually knew this before I got behind the wheel, but when the examiner directed me to turn left, I took a looooong minute to think about the situation. Break the law, risk failing my road test, and do what I was clearly being asked? Or obey the law and turn immediately back into the lot, which would be stupid and not what the examiner wanted but still right somehow?
The examiner, seeing my way was clear, encouraged me to go. I didn’t go immediately. He sighed and aggressively circled something on his clipboard. I was already down on points. I still passed, of course, but what a terrible position to put new drivers in, forcing them to understand spirit of the law vs. letter of the law as the rules of the road before the driver’s ever soloing and learning this stuff for himself.
So that’s what I’m feeling like with this project. Give them what they always got and get the okay, even knowing it’s not as good as it could be? Or push back a little and possibly demonstrate that I’m not up to the task they’ve set me. Ugh.
Result: I didn’t finish anything Monday. Great.
Oh, I finished some leftovers. It was my leftovers: eat ’em or toss ’em day. So breakfast was a few pices of garlic chicken from Sugoi and a slice of pumpkin pie (not officially a leftover but I had to obey my hunger). Lunch and dinner were the rest of the shoyu chicken with hapa rice. I may also have had a second slice of pumpkin pie because I have no restricters on my impulses these days.
I guess I finished something else: I did a major decluttering task, on appearances not that major, especially based on how it did not fill my trash bin the night I rolled it to the curb. I tidied up my working desk, something I haven’t done thoroughly in ten years or more. I’m not kidding. It’s large enough that I’ve always been able to shove stuff to the back and just clean up the area I needed for my laptop, a glass of water, and my food.
But I swept everything into a small tub, toted it to the carport, and went through it all. The reason I’m guessing it’s been ten years is that’s around the dates of some of the old grocery and 7-Eleven receipts I tossed out. I even moved my Mac 3G tower, a hand-me-down from an old friend, to the storage area in my laundry room. I wiped the table and carefully rebuilt my work space. It looks great. It looks like a serious work space. I’m enormously pleased.
I got a text from my college friend Desi (also a fellow HBA grad but years after me), who told me our mutual friend in Hilo is back from Arizona (?) because her mother died. Great. I was grateful to be told, though. Of course. But jeez.
Sharon and I texted a bunch about the questionnaire we had to submit for work. It led to far too much talk about work for nine in the evening, so I made us stop talking about work and asked her to tell me something else, which turned out to be how she’s looking at YouTube videos demoing some of her favorite CD-ROM games from her “childhood.” Yeah. My friends are so young that when they were kids, they were playing CD-ROM games.
I got into a weird texting conversation with Crush Girl about the Honolulu Club closing for good. I always thought I might join that club someday. You know, when I got rich from being a writer for a nonprofit.
Okay. I’m going to bed early so I’m wrapping this up when I really kinda want to write about Van Halen some more. For a change, I got my teeth brushed and chores done before seven. Trying to put myself to bed mindfully.
If you want to connect via text or DM or whatever, leave me a comment. Don’t go through this pandemic insanity by yourself, because you don’t have to.