Month: March 2021

“Why are you so tense?” asked the nurse, filling a syringe from a nearly-fresh vial.

I looked her in the eye over my Oakland Athletics mask. “I am not going to complain to a hospital nurse about what a long year it’s been,” I said. “You’ve had a longer year than I have. But yeah. It’s been a long year for us all.”

She patted my arm and said she understood. Counted to three. Jabbed me on three and it was done. She told me to stay put for fifteen minutes and then check out.

My phone was in my pocket, and others waiting for their fifteen minutes to be up were all absorbed by their own phones.

I closed my eyes and said a short prayer of thanksgiving for this thing in my arm. And immediately thought of these past twelve months. First about my own isolation from friends, family, and coworkers, but then about half a million Americans dead, including the parents of at least three friends.

I thought about the ridiculous, utterly inept leadership by our federal government and the governments of certain other states.

Yeah. I’ve watched the national news religiously since this thing began, added to my already copious amounts of online news, and I’ve seen the weeping widowers and the speechless adult children, crying over lost parents.

And I just cried. Sat in my (astonishingly wide) stacking chair and let the tears flow into my mask. Another nurse came over to ask if anything was wrong. I said I was just emotional. She’s had a longer year than I have, but it’s been a long year for us all. She nodded quietly and moved on.

Then, of course, I got on my phone and wrote this down for Twitter.

I was still crying when I got to my car. Still crying as the rain came down in 55-gallon drums over Pali Highway.

I thought I might pick up dinner on my way home, perhaps stopping somewhere in Kaneohe (ooooh…KJ’s?) but I simply wasn’t in the mood. Got to my neighborhood, though, and kept driving, kind of angrily. My car loves to be driven angrily. It takes turns so well, and since it’s a stick it makes all kinds of noise as I downshift and accelerate into the many S-turns in my ‘hood or whip it around a corner.

Baskin-Robbins was in order. I thought of more gourmet options, of which many have sprung up in this town, but I was already back in Kalihi, and something normal seemed much more appropriate. Scoop of Jamoca; scoop of cookies and cream. In a cup.

When the going gets tough, the emotionally crippled get ice cream.

I wish it didn’t help, but it helped. So I picked up Korean food from Peppa’s in the same strip mall and went home.

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I was running on not enough sleep Monday morning and I don’t remember what I did for work in the first half of the day. Proposal stuff, most likely. I picked up a turkey sandwich on wheat from Subway for a late breakfast. Took a short nap for lunch.

Most of my department (marketing and communications) had a meeting with our planned giving office, working on some new ideas and discussing philosophies with that department’s new leader. It was a good meeting, and I like that my own ideas of storytelling click perfectly with the new leader’s. We’re going to get along well.

And then it was time to drive to Kailua for my shot. Except for the crying, it went well. Everything happened exactly as described in the email I received, and people were friendly and helpful.

I have an appointment for the second shot in three weeks. Christe eléison.

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I’d been listening to Extreme all day, the day I’m writing this, but was in the mood for something a little noisier and less familiar for writing this evening. I’m spinning So It Goes by Demoniac, a Chilean progressive thrash band I never heard of until moments before sitting down to write this. It’s been great for keeping the fingers typing and the words flowing. There’s too much good music out there I’ve never heard of. It’s a bit discouraging and saddening.

Everything is saddening these days. I’m so emo I don’t know what to do with myself lately. Music is helping, though. A certain joy I get very few other places flows through me when I put on a new band I’ve never heard and it turns out pretty dang good. Before I switched to Extreme, I had this Danish band Iotunn on repeat, beginning sometime Saturday. The Encyclopaedia Metallum calls them progressive power metal, but I hear a lot more black metal in their sound. Difficult to nail down since they veer from style to style. Pretty enjoyable, though, and soothing driving music.

I have other things to vent or wax poetic about, but I really want to write my review of On the Horizon this evening because not having it reviewed is keeping me from reading my next book, and it’s 1:25 in the morning. So I’m going to shift mindsets and do that, probably with Demoniac still playing. I usually don’t care for jazzy bass-playing, but it totally works in this band.

Oh I forgot to talk about texts. Crush Girl and I texted a few times. She responded to my Critics Choice Awards text from Sunday evening, and I texted her from my car right after my shot to tell her — actually anyone who might sympathize — how I was feeling.

There was more royals talk in the Suzanne-Julie-Cindy group text. I again kept out of it. Jennifer sent me a link to another orphaned baby otter photo. Adorable.

Leave a comment if you need someone to connect with. We’re getting shots in the arms by the millions, but we’re not safe yet. Don’t be alone if you don’t want to be.

Sunday’s a bit easier to remember since it was just yesterday. I got about five and a half hours of sleep, two of them good, the rest bad. Then got up for a little and went back to bed for another couple of hours of good sleep. This is not a good way to live.

Worked a few puzzles as I thought about the rest of my day.

Boring puzzle minutiae follows. You’re warned.

Across and down

I subscribe to the New York Times crossword puzzle. You can subscribe just to the puzzle without subscribing to the magazine, as tends of thousands of people do. It’s a silly, mostly meaningless hobby for most of us* but a genuine revenue stream for the Grey Lady, and for this reason it also puts a lot of resources toward making it worthwhile. I just renewed my subscription for my fourth year and deeply wish I’d subscribed years earlier.

The puzzles are online, with a pretty good web interface. Although nothing beats solving on paper with a Pilot V5 extra-fine steel-tipped pen, solving online is quicker and much, much better for the solver who’s still learning to solve. The interface includes a timer, cumulative statistics for this week’s times (broken down by days of the week), and my personal best times for each day.

As you know, the puzzle starts easy Monday and gets progressively harder through Saturday. Sunday is the big puzzle, so it’s difficult that way, but the solving difficulty is usually the same as Thursday.

Until I started solving digitally, I was solving Mondays in twelve to fifteen minutes. I confidently solved most Tuesdays in fifteen to twenty minutes. I was about 50-50 on completing Wednesdays. I very seldom completed a Thursday, and considered myself lucky if I could get two good sections for Friday and Saturday.

Now, completing a puzzle is expected, no matter what day of the week it is, although I’m still learning. February was my first month ever completing puzzles for an entire calendar month. This is what my stats page looks like now.

T stands for this week. B stands for best. A stands for average. Ignore the B time for Friday; that was a glitch and I’m super annoyed about it. My real Friday B is nine minutes and change.

There are a couple of cheats. When you employ them, you break your solving streak. The puzzle tells you, when you’ve filled the squares, whether or not you’ve solved it. If you haven’t, you can keep working, and if you find and correct your error, the streak is still alive. This is why I sometimes differentiate between my “successful” solves and my “clean” solves. Clean solves are correct when I type that last letter. If I have to find and correct my errors, it’s merely successful.

For cheats, you can “check puzzle” which turns red any bad letters you’ve typed. You can also just “check square” and “check word.” If you’re at a total loss, you can “reveal square,” “reveal word,” and “reveal puzzle.” I hate when I have to reveal square! I really dislike having to check puzzle, but I accept I’m still learning and this is going to happen sometimes.

I’m just suuuuuuuper happy to know I don’t check puzzle as much as I used to. It’s usually two or three puzzles a month, usually a Saturday or Sunday.

My subscription lets me look back at all the puzzles I’ve done, including the ones I left unfinished. In my first year, that was most Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. I can complete these puzzles whenever, which I’ll often do on rainy bored days.

I also have access to the entire archive of puzzles. I don’t know how far back the archives go, because until recently I seldom went backward. The daily puzzle and the occasional rewind to finish unfinished puzzles was enough for me, especially with the Spelling Bee added to my daily routine.

But I’m solving the puzzles more quickly now, so for the past few weeks, I have gone back to work on old puzzles. This is March, so when I’m itching to do a puzzle, I look back to March 2020. I didn’t leave any puzzles unfinished. I actually don’t have to look; I did all the puzzles in 2020 and most of the puzzles in 2019. So now I’m back to March 2018.

This is what my archive looks like for March 2019.

Yellow squares are successful solves. Blue squares used cheats.

This is my archive for March 2020.

And this is what my archive looks like for March 2018, the archived month I’m working on this month.

I floated my pointer over Saturday the 17th so you can see that subscribers have options to download the puzzles for solving in crossword apps, or saving as PDF so the puzzles can be printed and solved on paper, with a Pilot Precise V5 extra-fine steel-tipped pen. Which I never do.

Thoughtful readers like anyone reading this probably ask why I don’t just solve the NYT crosswords in the local paper, especially since I subscribe to the local paper. It’s because the local paper’s puzzle doesn’t have a web interface. You have to save the puzzle as a JPG, print it, and solve it that way and the resolution of the JPG is crap.

Also: the NYT puzzle in syndication is six weeks behind the puzzle in the NYT. Yep. For years, this was fine with me, but since I’ve actively pursued improvement in solving these idiotic grids, it’s not great. Whenever I had questions about a puzzle, I’d have to look six weeks back in the crossword puzzle blogs (yes; that’s a thing) and I’d have missed the conversation (also a thing). Solving in real time is critical for participation in what I will very loosely call a community.

I pay a lot of money in total for content, but there is a very real chance that, if forced to pick only one, the last subscription standing would be the NYT crossword. Although I might cheat and subscribe to the NYT if it includes the puzzle. Because news junkie.

I know you, gentle reader, are thinking I must be done with this completely unnecessary detailing of my puzzle solving habit. But wait: there’s more.

The Washington Post puts an online copy of the Los Angeles Times puzzle on the games page of its website. In real time. The LAT isn’t quiiiiite as good as the NYT in puzzle quality, but it’s way, way up there. I mean, you’re pretty much looking at puzzles by the same contructors, only maybe these are the ones not quite making the cut at NYT. I honestly don’t know what professional constructors do when they spread their submissions out, but since the NYT is the standard, I’m guessing most of them submit there first.

It’s a great puzzle too, the the WaPo’s web interface isn’t as good. It also has a timer and the same cheats, but it doesn’t keep track of your stats. There’s one other tiny difference I won’t name because I’m trying to get over it.

No; I’m not quite done. The WaPo also runs its own Sunday-only puzzle, and I think it’s also free on its website. This one’s always by the same constructor, and he’s one of the best. Creative. Clever. Challenging but accessible. He has very high standards for keeping crosswordese out of his puzzles. The WaPo only keeps the most recent six Sunday puzzles online, though, which is a pain.

Lately I’ve been a little hyperfocused on the NYT, so I haven’t done the LAT or WaPo puzzles this year. I kind of wander away sometimes, as I’ve done recently, and then wander back.

Okay I’m done for now.

Street food cred

Since I did the Sunday puzzle Saturday evening, I worked a Saturday puzzle from archive. It was most satisfying.

Packed up and went to the office, stopping at the same Korean street food joint I got dinner from last Sunday. It wasn’t as good, and I knew it wasn’t going to be. I was just kind of determined to try something different, and I prefer my wings unsauced, which is what I got last week.

Still good though. And yes, I got the gimmai again. And learned how to say gimmai, thanks to the proprietor.

I sent another draft of the athletics proposal to the development officer, updated some software, and did a little bit of housekeeping. It was good time alone in the office. Oh, I also printed up the material I needed for my shot Monday and filled out the forms while listening to my Sunday podcasts (Meet the Press and This Week with George Stephanopolous). I hate filling out forms.

Came home, did some writing, ate some leftovers, watched the last two episodes of Ted Lasso, and zoned out. Turned in around 3:30. Argh!

I wanna text you up

There was some texting in the Suzanne-Cindy-Julie group text about the Oprah interview but I only participated passively. I had zero interest.

Texted Crush Girl to see if she’d seen the Critics Choice Award winners. I knew she wouldn’t respond Sunday, and she didn’t, and it was fine.

Hit me up in the comments if you need someone to connect with in these (hopefully) waning weeks of this pandemic. Don’t pandemic untethered.

* HOWEVER:
“Why do we love puzzles?”
“It’s a way to control the chaos.”
(Kelly Macdonald and Irrfan Khan in Puzzle (2018))

I slept quite well Friday night into Saturday. Yeah, I went to bed close to 4:30, but I got six and a half hours with one interruption midway. Then later in the day a good one-hour nap. I’ll take it.

I think breakfast was clementines and dried apricots, plus the last of the leftover chicken from Chicken & Brisket.

I can’t remember exactly when I watched the first four episodes of Ted Lasso again; was it Friday night or Saturday day? Details are a haze of emotions. I know I was feeling terrible, about that stuff I wrote the other night, the I-spent-a-year-locked-in-my-house-and-this-is-what-I-have-to-show-for-it feeling. Fifteen minutes into the first episode and I was feeling a lot better.

Whenever it was, it continued Saturday late afternoon.

I had a bunch of empty bottles and cans, so I drove to the strip mall for boba (pineapple black tea with mini boba, 50% sweetness) and drank in my car as I watched a couple more episodes. And since I was down there anyway, I got some takeout from McD’s. It was meant just to be a snack, but it turns out a couple bacon McDoubles is pretty darn filling. In my car. With Ted Lasso.

I took four large plastic takeout bags full of bottles and cans to the bus stop. I tied them to the trash bin, saying a little prayer for whoever claimed them.

Came home, napped a little, vegged a little, and blanched two heads of broccoli (one large and one small). Delicious. Chased the broccoli with a reasonable portion of angelhair pasta, with olive oil, butter, lime juice, and capers. ‘Twas yummy.

I watched more Ted Lasso and finally crashed at around 6:00 Sunday morning. Yow.

It appears I didn’t do any texting Saturday. Weird. I didn’t even notice.

It’s nearly 10:00 in the evening Monday as I write this and I think I’m going to go write into my Sunday recap.

Leave a comment if you need someone to connect with. The end is in sight, but it’s still a ways off. You don’t want to go through it without someone.

Friday was quite a bit like Tuesday and Wednesday, except I got up earlier on even less sleep. I really abuse myself Fridays because I figure I’ll just recover on weekends. It’s not a good way to live.

Amazon has been great to me all year. So great that I gave my letter carrier a nice gift card near the end of summer to say thanks. But something I ordered kind of disappeared off the tracker last month, and when it was more than a week late I asked for a refund. Then of course it showed up a few days after that. I had to ship it back, via UPS.

The nearest UPS store is on Bishop Street downtown, and it opened at 7:30. I’m feeling good about the world being a bit safer these days, but not so much safer I’m eager to roam around downtown with its throngs. 7:30 it was, then. Parked at the post office, shipped the dang box, grabbed a doughnut at Mr. Donut, then a macadamia nut latte at Kai Coffee, and enjoyed both on the trunk of my car.

There are a lot of things to miss about working downtown, and the coffee selection is near the top of the list. They’ve temporarily closed the Starbucks a few doors down from the UPS store. I didn’t check on the other Starbucks a few doors down (one block, actually) on the same street, but I imagine that one’s still going. The one on Alakea is closed and moved out, but it looks like they opened one in the Central Pacific Bank where I hear they’ve also opened a bar.

I hit the Taco Bell drive-through on my way home because what kind of breakfast is a doughnut? You need beans, meat, and eggs in a tortilla and a large Diet Pepsi with extra ice to really make it a breakfast.

Work was mostly on that late proposal for the athletics department. I had to ask a coworker how to do this Photoshop thing everyone else I work with knows how to do but which I’ve never asked to learn, so I spent a little bit of time practicing that. Gave me a good chance to email my coworker on Kauai, with whom I get along very well.

Did the after-work crash, but this time when I woke up I didn’t do work. It was Friday! I phone-vegged a little, listened to podcasts, which I’d fallen behind on this week, and ate leftover fried chicken for dinner. Man, that’s good chicken.

The new Kings of Leon album dropped Friday, so I listened to it all day. There’s nothing especially grabby on the album, not like on their other albums, but it’s still a really good listen, especially as background when one is working or writing.

I know I did a little bit of writing Friday night, but I don’t remember anything else. Except that I didn’t get to bed until about 4:30 in the morning. I don’t even know where the time went. I was quite annoyed with myself.

I texted Jennifer for a little while about alcohol and vaccinations. Sharon and I texted a little during the day about work stuff, but it started with my asking her if she’d heard the new Kings of Leon album yet. When we first became friends at work and mutually followed each other on social media, I saw she had a photo at the Kings of Leon concert a few years earlier, which I also attended. It was when I worked at the engineering firm, making enough bank to go to as many shows as I wanted, pretty much.

I don’t think Crush Girl had a very good Friday. I tried to be pleasant texting company, but I don’t think I was very successful. It’s too bad. I’m writing this Sunday night and I pretty much left her alone all weekend; I had a feeling she needed some her-time and thought I’d be there if she needed me. She didn’t! She seldom reaches out during a weekend, which I totally get.

I was feeling super blah Friday night, surely a product of serious sleep deprivation, but also some of the stuff I wrote Saturday night when I journaled about Thursday. When I finally did lay me down to sleep, I dropped right off and slept the sleep of a thousand hibernating bears.

Resolutions, next post. Oh and also I plan to rant a little about the meaning and purpose of laws, and why I dislike them both.

Leave a comment if you need a someone. To reach out to when the pandemic gets disjointy. I’ll send you some contact info.

Now it’s Saturday night and I’m writing about Thursday. If you read the Wednesday recap, you can probably skip this one because the two days were pretty close to identical.

Work Thursday was a lot like Wednesday, except focused more on a late proposal that had been in the works for a week or more before coming my way for formatting. I was told specifically it had been across several people’s desks and therefore didn’t need editing, but it needed editing.

I did the post-work crash, then got up and worked on the proposal. It had a weird little twist I wasn’t used to, and since I wasn’t in on the conversations while the proposal was developing, I had to guess about what I was being asked to produce. I found out Friday I guessed wrong. But I think the work I did was still pretty good. And it took a bit more time than anyone expected because I was guessing.

Yeah, I know. Not much to write home about going on here. Wake, work, crash, wake, work, crash. Meals crammed somewhere between.

Breakfast was a bowl of lomi salmon. Conclusion: 24 ounces of wild Atlantic salmon is too much for one person if lomi salmon is the idea. It was still good, though.

I really wanted to get a sandwich for lunch, but Thursday is meeting day, and the sandwich shop closes in the early afternoon. So I took a very late lunch, ordering fried chicken and a brisket bowl from this spot in Kalihi called Chicken & Brisket. The brisket bowl was the real meal; I bought the chicken to snack on over the next few days. It was good but I’m coming around to not really caring for brisket or short ribs.

The fried chicken was excellent. Super crispy and flavorful. It was pretty dry on the inside but it tasted really good.

I submitted the proposal at about 11:30 and thought it was time for dinner even though I wasn’t really hungry. Sooooooo I drove to the McD’s, ordered the spicy crispy chicken sandwich and some fries, and ate it on the hood of my car just because I wanted some fresh air and to get away from the house. It was psychic refreshment but certainly not good for my body.

You know how out of it I was Thursday? When I opened the Spelling Bee late Thursday night to get started on the Friday Spelling Bee, I clicked the “yesterday” button to see what words I missed on the Thursday puzzle and realized I never did the Thursday puzzle! That’s the first one I missed since like October! I was kind of furious with myself.

So if you’re keeping score at home, you’re probably coming up with some thoughts I’m keenly aware of myself. My mental health hasn’t been good these past couple of weeks, in some ways familiar (trouble with sleep) and some not (a little bit of anxiety). I’m restless to the point of pacing some days, stir-crazy enough to drive to McD’s and eat food I don’t really want. I’m experiencing some weirdness in my stomach that might be physical and might be mental. I haven’t been to the beach in nearly three weeks and I’m not doing any walking with my bad knee.

You know that Sunday night feeling, the one that’s kind of an urgency mixed with regret about the dying of the weekend and not enough stuff to show for it? I think I’m feeling that about the lockdown. I’m getting my first shot Monday, and soon after that I’ll probably return to the office, one day per week to start but maybe as many as three days before much longer.

March 19 marks one year since I was sent home to ride this thing out, and although I made some pretty good use of my time, I have a couple of unfinished projects I know I will never finish if I don’t work them into my life the way they were for the first half year of this thing. Actually eight months. NaNoWriMo threw me off my game.

When I get back to the office, I will not have completed my house decluttering, and this annoys me. It actually stresses me out, tying my guts into knots at times, and this is sending me into escapist behavior. I’m spending ridiculous amounts of time just zoning out in my bed or staring dumbly at my phone.

A couple of things are keeping me from actually teetering on the brink. I’m feeling good about my parents getting those shots in their arms, and my coworkers and friends and other people I love are getting them. I’ve spent so much less money this year that I’ve paid down a lot of debt. I’m still in the hole for a few things, but the hole is a reasonable depth, and with a few things I have coming my way soon, I’ll be in really good shape by the end of next month.

I’ve also boosted my contribution to my retirement. Not as much as I should, but nearly as much as I should. And it looks like I have a little bit of wiggle room for some monthly charitable giving, which I’ve been terrible with since leaving the engineering firm. I’d like to give it to the church, but right now my heart is tugging me toward the Hawaii Innocence Project. Anyway this is still early in the thinking stages, but it feels good to be thinking about it.

Thinking about where my living space was a year ago and where it is now is extremely heartening. I forget that as shameful as it is now, it was beyond caricature in the years leading up to the lockdown.

Chances are, on a worldly level, I’m going to come out of this better than I was, except for physically. I’ve put on weight like crazy, especially since November. Minus that, though, and I should feel good about not merely surviving but in some ways correcting.

My relationships have all suffered, but I imagine this is true for most of us who kept to ourselves for a whole year. Except for the thing with Ali, I think I’m still on pretty good terms with everyone. When the world is a safer place, I’m going to be a social fricking butterfly, I tell you. At least for a week!

Writing all this out actually helped. Everything on the table looks a lot more positive than negative, and I don’t think I’m rose-coloring much. I am not in the clear. Taking inventory, however, is a good step.

Speaking of Ali, she responded to my “hey” nearly two weeks after I sent it. She asked what was up. I said I was going to ask if we’re cool, but that I think I pretty much got my answer. She didn’t respond. Yeah.

Crush Girl and I texted a bunch throughout the day too. I think she’s stressed about work and I’m hoping I’m a little bit of a pleasant distraction.

Reid texted to see if I could talk on the phone. I said okay. We talked about one of his son’s assignments. Parents worry too much about their children’s homework. It’s another of many reasons I’m so anti-homework.

I’m probably not your best option for finding some human connection in these almost-a-year pandemic days, but I’m here. Smash the comment button if you need a little of this in your day.

Okay. Writing about Wednesday on Saturday night. I’m falling further behind.

Started with a lot of emailing. We recently had some strategic planning consulting, and now we’re on the actual planning phase. Out leadership split the planning into five categories, assigned themselves to the categories they were into, and asked people to volunteer for the categories they were into.

So I emailed two of the leaders saying I was interesting in helping out in whatever way I could. I posted one story to the website then prepped another.

Okay pay attention (or don’t since I’m going to write the same thing about Thursday and maybe Friday). I’ve settled into a bad pattern of behavior here. Right after work I conked out, got up around nine, fixed dinner, and got back to work. I’ve been working so much better late at night lately that when it gets to that time of evening, I’m automatically thinking about what I can get done before bed.

It’s not good for me, although I think the work has been better than usual. My focus late at night is especially good. But then when I finally call it a night, I’ve got the munchies like crazy no matter what (or how much) I had for dinner.

And of course I can’t just go to bed after I spend a few hours working, despite being horribly tired and bleary-eyed. I’ve been crashing later and later.

All this means I have nothing interesting to say about Wednesday, and I probably won’t have anything interesting to say about Thursday either. Because most of my waking hours are spent working or vegging.

Wednesday’s breakfast was more of the lomi salmon. Still quite good. I skipped lunch, but I took a dinner break to pick up a UPS delivery I missed. UPS doesn’t make you drive to Lagoon Drive anymore, something I was unaware of. There’s a neighborhood access point, a small mom-and-pops grocery on Liliha Street I’ve patronized before.

I stopped at my favorite boba spot, which moved to Liliha Street from Kapiolani Boulevard a few months before the lockdown, picked up my package, and since it was right there, ordered a chili plate from the original L&L, which is right next door.

I’m pretty sure my late-night snack was a couple of quesadillas but I wouldn’t swear to it.

Texted a few follow-ups for people who hadn’t yet told me what they’re reading. The writing partner texted me a photo of a sign with unnecessary quotation marks. Crush Girl and I texted through the work day about a lot of stuff. Vaccinations, books, boba, and places to get lunch. She was good company.

If you’re reading this you’re still alive. Thank God. Half a million Americans and 44,000 Hawaii residents haven’t made it this far because of this stupid virus. Hopefully you’re surviving emotionally too. And if you’re not, smash that comment button and let me know if you’d like to connect.

“I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend.”

Slept okay Monday night. Got like four hours uninterrupted then another hour. Got off to a slow start at work but found a groove in the late morning. Again took my lunch nap earlier than usual because of the jackhammerers. This delayed my working breakfast until like 1:30, when I had a rather large serving of lomi salmon. I’m pleased with it, but wish the recipe I followed didn’t call for a 24 ounce salmon filet. It was pricey, for one thing. And it’s way too much food for me.

After work I took a really hard nap. Woke up a little groggy but quite refreshed, so I kind of got back to work. Wanted to finish this thing someone asked for.

My late lunch was a couple of hot dogs with mustard, ketchup, and sauerkraut. My late dinner, eaten as I wrote my lockdown recap, was sort of a little of this and a little of that, separated by long breaks. My appetite was kind of crazy for some reason. Started with some cold somen with Pietro’s miso dressing. I made a couple of pork carnitas tacos. Ate some dried apricots. Zapped a couple of lazy quesadillas. Yeah, it was insane.

I don’t really know where the day went, but that was about it. I guess working, napping, working, and eating everything in sight will pass the time.

Crush Girl and I texted all day about food, working from home, and more food. It was a food kind of day. Sharon texted to ask if I’ve heard of this Elisa Lam true crime thing and I hadn’t. I went through a couple of true crime phases, one in the early nineties when I read a lot of serial killer books as research for a novel I still plan to write. Again in the early 2000s when I got hooked on some Dateline things, plus Reid got me into the Paradise Lost documentaries.

I decided one night while trying to listen to the Serial podcast’s first season that I was done with the genre. I didn’t see any real meaning in it, and I think losing myself in that kind of negativity isn’t good for me. Which I shared with Sharon. Sylvia and I office-Skyped about getting vaccinated — we both have appointments now. Heard back from a few more people about what they’re reading.

Get thee to a nunnery. And hit the comments if you need someone to connect with. Pandemic sucks. Pandemic without any human connection sucks worse.

Hey, I’m writing about Monday and it’s only 11:44 p.m. Tuesday. Progress.

I stayed up much too late Sunday night, as I always do, getting to sleep around 3:00. This is getting suicidal.

This week’s meeting schedule is back to my usual two: just the one-on-one with my supervisor and the department Zoom. This is a welcome bit of info, since meetings really throw off my workflow.

I’m standing by for responses from a few people on whom I’m writing stories, so I sent a few follow-up emails, then asked the DO for advice. His response was something I never thought of, and it makes total sense: these stories probably mean a lot more to us than they do to the people I’m interviewing, so don’t freak out. They’ll respond when they’re ready.

Hm. That seems so obvious. And it freed me from locking in on stuff at the top of my list and I got into the stuff further down.

So I did background on a couple of things, sent and received a few work-related but not really work emails, and even reached out to a coworker, encouraging her to apply for one of our in-house positions.

The next-door neighbor is having some major work done on her house and all day Monday I had to deal with the sound of a jackhammer — yes, a jackhammer — pretty much right outside my bathroom window. The noise isn’t too bad at my desk, where I can just play music at a normal level through my Bluetooth speaker and be pretty unaware. I thought I’d have to resort to my noise-canceling headphones, but now.

In my bedroom, though, it’s insane. So I took my lunch nap a little earlier than usual, grabbing it when the jackhammerers took their lunch break.

After work, I took a long, hard nap, forcing myself up around 9:00 to deal with this slab of salmon I cured in my fridge for nearly two days. Lomi salmon, baby! My first try. I’m trying to up my potluck game, so I’ve been brainstorming things that transport well, don’t have to be prepared the night before, and are popular. Lomi salmon seemed like a less-labor-intensive and more popular item than the thing I have the most confidence in, my tabouli.

I was wrong about the labor intensivity. It’s about the same. However, you can make it a couple of nights ahead (I’m guessing) rather than exactly the night before.

I don’t know. I think it came out pretty good, admitting I didn’t really know what i was doing. Definitely worth repeating to see if I get better at it, but I also think I need to sample it at more places than the ones I frequent.

I watched the next half hour of Much Ado About Nothing. It’s a bit melodramatic, and so far not very feminist for Shakespeare. A lot depends on these last 20 minutes. Still, quite entertaining, if heavy-handed in its direction. Michael Keaton is hilarious.

Oops. Now it’s 2:06. I thought I finished this and hit the publish button, but it appears I got distracted.

Breakfast was Taco Bell! Yummy. Lunch was a couple of hot dogs with ketchup, mustard, and sauerkraut. I was biting into one when they said on the news that Love’s Bakery is closing. A Hawaii institution for nearly 170 years. I don’t buy grocery store bread anymore, except hot dog buns, and Love’s makes the best ones. They cost like three times more than the cheap ones but whatever. Dang.

Dinner was some of the lomi salmon, but several bites of the pork carnitas, cold and right out of the plastic container. I’m a savage. I also had a late snack of tortilla chips and fresh salsa. Remember in the early days of the lockdown when I was eating chips and salsa every freaking day? Now I remember why. Good food for the soul.

I texted a bunch of people to ask what they’re reading. Still waiting on some responses so I’ll share later. It led to some nice conversations. Crush Girl and I texted through the day, getting each other through our respective work days.

Boy am I tired.

Okie dokie. Just leave a comment if you want someone to connect with during these crappy crappy crappy crappy crappy crappy pandemic days. Don’t be untethered.