Here’s how it went down Thursday. I got a fair amount of decent sleep Wednesday night. Made a bowl of instant ramen for breakfast, with a mountain of bean sprouts and a couple of eggs. Yeah, a couple. Busted out the Shin Ramyun because my soul needed some medicating.
Worked on the UH Hilo story and some copy-editing on the new (not yet released) employee handbook. I’ve been bugging people above me on the org chart to let me copy edit the thing since my first week of work, four years ago. Now it’s in my hands and I’m getting to do it. I’m pleased, but I wish I had a longer turnaround than two weeks. Some sections of this thing are going to take some time. I think I’ll spend some time this long weekend working on it. Not because I feel like I have to, but because I really want to do a good job. And it’s 56 pages long.
We had a department Zoom meeting at 2:00. It was nice to see (almost) everyone.
In the after-work hours, I had a feeling I was going to do the laundry early Friday morning, although I wasn’t quite committed to it. I’d packed up my laundry Wednesday night and made a small grocery list for supermarket, thinking I’d stop at Safeway on my way home.
For a late lunch, I made a raw potato salad, something I’ve been wanting to try for a couple of months. I own two spiral slicers, both of them gifts (my sister and Penny) and I’ve never used either. And the raw potato salad at Angelo Pietro’s is delicious. It was a little bit of a struggle learning to use the one my sister gave me, so the results weren’t pretty, but the salad was pretty good. Not quite what I was going for — I really want long, super-thin strings of potato and daikon, and these weren’t quite that. But with the Pietro miso dressing it was good, and I’m pretty sure I’ll try again, perhaps when I find Penny’s slicer to see if it produces the thinner strings. I think the one from my sister is specifically with zucchini noodles in mind, which is a completely different concept.
Got to sleep around 10, later than I wanted, but I got kind of involved in some doomscrolling and dumb phone games.
I woke up about half an hour before my 2:45 alarm and decided this was it. I know I make a bigger deal out of all this than it really warrants, but driving to the laundry is one of two regular going-out things in my existence these past ten months. Laundry mid-week (now mid-week in alternating weeks) and the office most Sundays, although lately I’m trying to scale that back.
Plus it just feels good to turn a pile of dirty laundry into a pile of clean laundry.
I again left the laptop at home and brought only my book. Still reading The List of Things That Will Not Change and put a huge dent in it. I’ll almost surely be done Saturday, depending on how engrossing the football games are and whether or not I make it to the beach.
I didn’t need to stop at the grocery (still have a week’s worth of Diet Pepsi), but wanted to grab a few things for some kitchen adventuring this long weekend. I’m wearying of takeout and itching to try a few new things. Plus my IG is getting stale. Need new content.
I’m only half-kidding about IG. Look, when you’re locked in your house for ten months with no in-person interaction, you have to keep up some of the online friendships, even if the personal relationships are thriving with semi-regular texting. There are people I care about with whom I only interact on IG. So yeah.
Also stopped to refill my drinking water at Foodland and pick up a Big Mac combo from the neighboring McD’s.
It all went swimmingly.
Sharon texted me to talk about work stuff. It led to conversation about Cobra Kai, Morimot’s instant ramen, Tamlyn Tomita and The Karate Kid 2, and stimulus checks.
Crush Girl and I chatted a little about stimulus checks and tea. Oh, and raw potato salad, which she’d never heard of. She seemed quite skeptical.
I don’t think I snacked on anything. Didn’t even think about it.
Here’s your reminder not to suffer the ordeal of these days alone or disconnected. Leave a comment and I’ll send you some contact info. Pandemic days suck but they don’t have to be lonely.