Lockdown: Are you ready for some crappy football?

I actually got nearly five good hours of sleep Saturday night. I wish I weren’t a slave to football, but you know. This is week 17, the last week of the regular season and although I knew the TV games were going to be crap (they were), they were going to be crap with playoff consequences.

More sleep would have been a better idea.

Around the beginning of the late-Sunday-morning games, I did a few chores and made breakfast-slash-lunch. My first home-cooked meal of the year: ahi in the grill pan, with blanched broccoli and bean sprouts. And a fresh pot of quinoa. It was quite good. I used the Mitchell Street seasoning and a lot of fresh lemon juice.

I did get a nap during the late game. Just an hour, but I needed it, and I think it did me some good. I spent the rest of the evening staring at the computer and thinking about resolutions, and thinking about a couple of easy tidying tasks that would really make my week a little less stressful.

I accomplished neither the setting of resolutions nor the easy tidying of certain high-traffic areas. I’m most annoyed with myself. I also had visions of grabbing takeout somewhere new, or (as with the bánh mì the other night), something new at a familiar place. It was getting close to eight and I had a lot of options, but I settled on Liliha Bakery again. Super close to the house and I heard the meatloaf calling my name.

I also added one hot cake, thinking I’d have leftover meatloaf for breakfast the next morning, perhaps with a fried egg or two. However, I kind of went to town on the hot cake first and then the meatloaf and although I didn’t finish the whole thing, I didn’t leave enough for breakfast.

I did a ridiculously time-consuming few chores, clean-up stuff that led to more clean-up stuff. You know how it is sometimes: you do A, thinking that’ll be it, but while you’re doing A you realize you could do B too, and that leads to C. Around F and G, I thought I’d relax a little, then get to F and G before bed.

A few hours later, I woke up and it was like 3:30 in the morning and I was sprawled uncomfortably on my bed with my face pressed into the pillow and my phone battery nearly on E. I flipped it on to see if I’d missed anything (as if anything happens late Sunday night).

Scrolling through IG, I saw Sonata Arctica’s mention of the death of Alexi Laiho, guitarist for Children of Bodom.

Ugh. No.

It was true. Reported on CNN and USA Today, although the obituary I shared was from Guitar World, where Alexi was an instructional columnist for a while. It was still fresh news, so no tributes from most of the bands I’d expect, except Floor Jansen (a fellow Finn), Stratovarius, and Annihilator. There will be more. He was an amazing talent, a great performer, and unique among metal musicians. And only 41. Frick.

I dragged myself up to attend to F and G and then to put myself properly to bed, but it’s now 5:42 Monday morning and I’m wondering if I should just stay up. I’m spinning all the Children of Bodom albums in reverse order today, and am on their second-most recent, I Worship Chaos (2015), one of my favorites from them and probably their least-favorably reviewed.

I still haven’t done F. I did G before I sat down to write this.

I was mostly successful in my goal not to think about work this whole four-day weekend. I’m kind of pleased with myself. Only checked my email once (nothing) and kiiiiinda thought about what I need to do this week, but once I realized what I was doing, I banished these thoughts, setting them aside for the first part of my day Monday.

It’s so interesting, this world I work in now. When you’re teaching, you can’t show up Monday and spend the first part of the day thinking about what you have to do this week. Even if you have first-period prep (the second-worst and second-best prep period), you can’t spend just one class period thinking about your week. It’s not enough time. You have to show up knowing what you’re doing.

I put my Kindle in the car Saturday afternoon when I drove to the beach, thinking I might hang around after my late swim and just read. I didn’t, and it’s still in the car, which means I didn’t read at all Sunday, when I hoped to have my book finished this weekend. Ah well. I made all my Tsum Tsum goals for the weekend and you can’t have everything.

My only texting was with Ali, who responded very early to some stuff I sent late Saturday. Time zone effect. We traded a few more later, when I claimed this month’s Amazon First Reads books (you get to claim two this month), to ask if she’d seen the offerings. They look pretty good.

DMed my uncle to say happy birthday.

It’s coming up on 6:30 and I’ve decided I can’t just stay up. I need to get at least a couple of hours of actual, formal sleep. So here we go.

Get in my comments if you need someone to connect with in these crappy pandemic days. I’m here for it.

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