Author: scrivener

People frequently joke about Friday being an unproductive day at work, but it’s often my most productive day, especially in those few final hours on the clock. I really try to get as much of my list ticked as I can before the weekend. The more unproductive Monday through Thursday are, the more I’m likely to get serious stuff done Friday.

Friday didn’t want to make it easy for me, though. Started with a 9:00 Zoom I didn’t handle very well, followed by a 10:00 Zoom directly about my work, which seemed a little awkward for everyone but me. I was a bit oblivious to subcontexts, so they flew over my head while I think others stepped gingerly around something about which I’m still not fully aware.

It took a little bit of recovery time. I coordinate the office fantasy football league, so I spent a little bit of time communicating with the other participants. Then I drove to Natsunoya for some takeout, and although it wasn’t great, it was good, and it powered me the rest of the way. I first-drafted the story about the ex-UH Manoa football player I interviewed on the phone, then worked a little on some acknowledgement letters for one of the units.

The lunch was a surf and turf special, steak and garlic shrimp. Pretty good but overpriced. I appreciated the potato-mac salad, which is made with spaghetti noodles instead of elbow macaroni. I love that. They also threw in a jin dui and a nice piece of eggplant. It was a nice bounce-back from breakfast, which was Korean instant ramen with a couple of eggs and some Vienna sausage. The cholesterol special. I had to hurry it up because of that 9:00 meeting (why I agree to them I do not know). Wolfed down some very pleasurable bites, then had to leave it until a forced five-minute gap before the second meeting.

It was two hours sitting on the table before I got to enjoy the second half, by which it was cold and soggy. Still not bad, to be honest.

Dinner was some angel hair. I made the same sauce but added some Portuguese sausage I have to use up. I enjoyed it while watching the second half of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. The movie slogs in a few spots, and it’s too long by fifteen minutes. Still, it’s dumber than the original and quite a bit funnier. There’s a cute takeoff on The Seventh Seal, which I still have not seen. In that film, a character plays chess with Death. In this one, the characters play Battleship instead. I laughed aloud several times.

Stayed up a bit later than planned — like past two, approaching three. But I needed this weekend, and was eager to indulge after a week of going to bed early.

I got a text from a coworker who wanted to know where some templates are. Crush Girl and I exchanged a few messages about my lunch and our upcoming long weekend. Jennifer sent me an article about making kvass, which is a drink you make with sourdough starter and some dark bread, and I’m totally game to try it. I’m not a big fan of rye but I might bring home a loaf of pumpernickel and give it a shot.

Still have to awaken my sourdough starter, though. It’s one of the last remaining items in my old fridge.

I feel good about the week, especially the quick turnaround on that one story and hitting the beach three times. I also made some good progress on the Beast, which I am blocking off some time for this weekend as well. I much prefer Friday holidays, but the nice thing about Monday holidays is that I have more time to do Monday evening stuff. It’s one of my busier personal evenings of the week.

Hope you’re holding on too, wherever and whoever you are. These sucky days won’t be with us forever, but they are going to be with us a while. So reach out if you need some connection. I’m here for it.

I’m journaling before my day is over, something I haven’t done very many times in the lockdown. If something meaningful happens between the time I post this and the time I retire, I’ll add it sometime Friday.

After the laundry, I got to the Kewalo parking lot just before five. There were still several parking stalls left, but the lot filled quickly after that. Surf was definitely not up, although the forecast says it may get up to three feet on the south shore over the weekend. I think this morning’s dawn patrollers were hopeful, but I overheard some of them saying later that it was terrible, “even worse than yesterday.”

I walked to Starbucks for a latte, then right back to Kewalo, where I watched the sun come up. It was nice.

Got into the water, and that was nice too. I took it kind of easy — didn’t go very far, but it was still a little strenuous. The other night while I was decluttering, I found a partially exposed waterproof Fun Saver, and with the full moon high in the sky just before dawn, I thought today would be a good day to take it into the water and see what I could do.

It’s a lot more difficult shooting with a point-and-shoot while treading water than I would have guessed. Not only is it nearly impossible to hold the camera steady, but you’re holding the camera with two hands, so you have to tread water with just your legs, including your sore knee. Plus there’s the whole viewfinder-is-not-where-the-lens-is situation on fixed-focus cameras like this.

It was mostly shooting in the dark, taking several exposures of each intended shot, and just hoping something interesting or at least keepable would show up.

Still, it was pretty fun, despite all the seawater I drank.

I’ve been in the water three times in a week: Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. I’m wondering if every other day is sustainable, or something approximating it.

I had a pretty good phone interview with a donor, then worked with two other donors to set up interviews. Worked on some teaser copy, then played around with the story I’m writing about the donor I spoke to, a UH Manoa football player from the 1970s.

After the news, I worked on the Beast. Since I’m basically doing this one storage tub at a time, and the contents of these things is unpredictable, sometimes the nightly task takes a couple of hours, while sometimes it’s pretty quick. This evening I dealt with one small container and one large one, and they were both nearly full of stuff to throw out. This pleased me, because it didn’t take my whole evening and because the stuff I did save fit into the saver tub I’ve been working on these past few days. I’ve effectively reduced four tubs’ woth of stuff into half a small tub, which means I’m opening up more space for doing this work.

I picked up breakfast at Pancakes and Waffles, a roast pork loco moco, and pretty much burned right through it. I snacked on the rest of those carnitas Lay’s, then got takeout from Teishoku. Sashimi and tonkatsu. The sashimi was pretty good, but the tonkatsu was terrible. I’ve had the same dish in the restaurant, in days when we could dine in, and it was pretty good. This was miserable. I’m very sorry to say it, but if you want good Japanese takeout, you have to get it at a Japanese-run establishment. Which of course means overpaying. But at least you get good food.

I haven’t had dinner yet, but I’m hungry so I’ll have something before bedtime, which should be pretty soon (it’s 9:12). There’s a very good chance it’ll be a cold can of pork and beans from the can, and maybe a can of Vienna sausage to go with it.

I got one text, Crush Girl’s response to my question last night. That was pretty much it.

Oh, the other night I found a couple of photos of Traci, George, and Ross I shot on film when we went to Hilo for a long weekend about thirteen years ago. I snapped photos of both pictures with my phone, then sent them to George’s and Ross’s wives via FB messenger. It led to a little bit of conversation, spaced out over a few days. That was Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and I forgot to mention it.

I’m very tired but I’m going to try and have a nice dinner and maybe watch the first half of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. I have a 9:00 Zoom meeting Friday (ugh) followed by a 10:00 Zoom meeting (ugh). There may be as many as two phone interviews as well (stressful but fun). Still, I feel like I should cram one more thing into my Thursday.

And hey, if you need someone to connect with, I’m good for some texting or IMs. Or FB messenger. Just leave a comment and we’ll work it out.

Long weekend coming up. Let’s finish the week strong and charge into the weekend like it’s our last holiday until Veterans Day. Man, what a long stretch that is. I’ve already requested a few Mondays off for September.

I slept roughly. I guess I got enough, hours-wise, but it took ten hours or so to get there. I guess I’ve been rested enough lately that it didn’t really have an impact, and I didn’t feel the need for a mid-day nap. Still, I was more than ready for bed by the time I retired at 8:00 in the evening.

I had three meetings. One via phone and two via Zoom. A bit of a strain, but the meetings weren’t bad. Worked on a little more website copy. Set up a couple of phone interviews. Prepared for phone interviews. At least the work wasn’t taxing, with all those meetings to deal with.

It was an actual twelve-hour day, since I got out of bed at 8:00 and was back in bed at 8:00. Didn’t leave room for messing around. I did a few chores and prepped for laundry, and that was about it.

Breakfast was leftover angel hair. Delicious. I had a very late lunch of a couple of burritos because I was worried about the freshness of the filling. Used it all up and will make some more Thursday evening, I think. Dinner, which I am consuming now at the laundry, is a Big Mac combo.

When I got here, someone was in my spot. This is the first time it’s happened in these five months, although there is a woman who comes in after me sometimes who I can tell wants my spot. I was forced to work at the other end of the room, and it’s actually better. I’m not near the machine that reloads your card (this is one of those laundries where you put money on a card, then use the card to pay for services), so people don’t have to walk behind me. I’m on a smaller counter spact, but it’s large enough and it’s kind of private. There’s also an electrical outlet right at counter level, so I may bring my charger next time and see if it works.

However, when I loaded the dryer, I simply moved my clothes from the nearest washer to the nearest dryer, not noticing until after I got it going that it was one of the larger dryers and therefore more money to operate. My load looks kind of silly in that cavernous tumbler, but ah well. Next time I’ll pay better attention.

I texted the other Jennifer to mention that I’d forgotten Jane Weidlin and Clarence Clemons were in Bill and Ted 1. She watches the movie every few years and said she didn’t realize Clarence was even in it. Crush Girl texted me just before I went to bed with a photo of her dinner. We chatted a little about the spot where she went, and I asked her if she ever buys two plates, to save one for later, which is what I’ve been doing for the past three months or so. Didn’t hear back, but it was just as well because I would have been asleep if she’d responded.

The transformation from being a vampire hasn’t been as difficult as I expected. While I yearn for long walks at three in the morning and the quiet solitude of writing in the silent darkness, I’m up early enough most of the time to beat the sunrise by an hour or two. If the tradeoff is for three or four mornings a week in the ocean, I’ll take it without too much regret. Everything feels better when I have that time, and it carries over to the next day, so I only really need it every other day. I just wish I could count on parking — that’s the major stress, besides getting to bed early enough.

The Waterboys and the Avett Brothers put out new albums last week and I still haven’t gotten to them. I did check out new albums by John Petrucci (excellent), the Atomic Bitchwax (very good), and Pain of Salvation (excellent), so it’s still been a good week for music so far. And Fates Warning announced a new album for November 6, and there’s a new Stryper album Friday! I’ve already heard one song and it’s quite good. I’m really looking forward to that one — I may not listen to anything else all weekend if it’s good.

If you want someone to connect with in these dark, dismal, depressing days, you know what to do.

I didn’t get as much sleep Monday night as I tried. Kept waking up for the first half of my planned time. Finally got like two solid, uninterrupted hours before waking up at 3:00 Tuesday for some reason. I figured that was it, so I lounged for half an hour and got ready to go.

Got to the parking lot at Kewalo just past 4:00. Lots of parking. Darn it. Walked to Starbucks for a caramel macchiato (redeemed some stars) and a breakfast wrap. Wandered back to Kewalo and enjoyed both near the water as the sun came up. It was nice.

Jumped in the water shortly after sunrise. It was very nice. I swam longer and faster than I’ve gone in some time. I’m okay with taking it easy since it’s more about quality time than actual exercise, but now that I’m not walking I think a more concerted effort to push myself is called for. I wouldn’t win any races. Still, I remember where I started thirteenish years ago when I first made this part of my life again, and it makes me feel really, really good.

I drove to my mom’s house to drop off her birthday gift and to chat for a while. My parents live in a two-story house, but downstairs is just the garage, laundry, and entrance. All the actual living space is upstairs, so we chatted with me downstairs and them upstairs. The dog came down to say hi a couple of times.

My mom’s gift was thirty-five pounds of Japanese rice from Rice Factory. It’s pricey stuff, but my mom really likes it. I also took my mom and dad the remaining half of the lemon chess pie.

Got to work a little late and took vacation hours to cover it. The workday passed rather quickly. I did some website stuff, writing the copy for the “we’re hiring!” page, then made plans for those interviews I need.

I wrote myself a pass on the Beast for Tuesday night, opting instead for dinner and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, a rental from Amazon. I’m planning to review the new third movie for the staff newsletter, and wanted to review the first two films first. It’s been thirty years since I saw the original. It’s such a stupid movie.

I’d completely forgotten that Clarence Clemons and Jane Weidlin are in it. That was the highlight for me.

The movie ate up my free time, and the cleanup took me past my intended bedtime.

On the way back from my parents’ house, I was pretty ravenous, despite the coffee and breakfast wrap, so I hit the Wendy’s drive-through. I’ve been kind of fascinated by fast-food breakfasts I haven’t tried, ever since that first Taco Bell morning. I won’t say what I ordered because it’s embarrassing, but it was pretty good. Standard breakfast-sandwich stuff but with a fried chicken sandwich option most places don’t have.

I don’t understand why these joints don’t have a breakfast hamburger. I was hoping to see that at Wendy’s, since their hamburger is the best-tasting of the fast food joints around here. One huge advantage for Wendy’s is the seasoned breakfast potatoes, which are basically steak fries given the curly fries treatment. A huge improvement on curly fries, but I’d honestly rather have just regular steak fries.

That was was second breakfast and lunch. It was a lot of food. Dinner was a modest-sized bowl of angel hair pasta. I used a canned sauce and added dried minced garlic, red pepper flakes, brown sugar, vodka, and gorgonzola. It came out great, especially when I added a drizzle of good olive oil.

I’ve got a lot of half-consumed bottles of alcohol in my cabinet, and I need some cabinet space, so I’m trying to use stuff up. This vodka usually goes into food anyway. Absolut is kind of gross. It tastes waxy to me, but it’s good in food. A restaurant I used to enjoy made a pink sauce with marinara and vodka, which is where I got the idea. Good stuff.

Got to bed at around 11:00 and was asleep before midnight.

I texted the writing partner and apologized for procrastinating on reviewing her work. Sent a former coworker, a victim of Bloody Wednesday, a job link in case he hadn’t already seen it (he had). Traded texts with Penny about helping me with my podcast, which now I’m having second thoughts about. I mean I’m having second thoughts about this modified format which isn’t what I had in mind, pre-pandemic.

Sent Ali a photo of Kewalo under the near-full moon. A nice photo. She said she misses this place.

Oh, and I FB messaged a former student. When I was decluttering Monday evening, I found something belonging to his mother, and was pretty sure she’d want it back. We’re not FB friends (I don’t initiate social media friendships with students; I let them decide how they want to relate to me post-graduation), so I wrote “Sorry to bug you, but I have to ask you a little question. Nothing scary, I promise.”

He responded, “Yo Mr. D. What’s up?”

Warmed my heart, the way this thirty-one-year-old still calls me Mr. D and didn’t have any problems communicating with me the way he once did when he was fourteen. The last words he messaged me were, “That would be great. Thanks Mr. D.”

The last four years or so of my career, the students got away from “Mr. D” and called me by my name. Which seemed natural and fine. But I do look fondly on those years when I was an initial.

The days peel away, each not very different from the one before. I knew this was going to happen, which is one reason I committed to journaling this stuff when lockdown began. It’s a way for me to keep track of things that are important, and to identify signs of falling into bad ruts. The messaging helps. Tuesday evening it helped a little more than usual.

If you need something like it, add me to your rotation of connections. Just drop a comment and we’ll work something out.

I can’t remember why I didn’t go to the beach Monday morning, but I don’t think I decided not to until Monday morning. I still picked up breakfast before getting to work. A loco moco from Kam Bowl Restaurant at the neighborhood stripmall. It’s right next to an L&L, but where L&L gives you mass quantities of a mediocre loco, Kam Bowl’s is an adequate serving but of much better quality. Also a few bucks more, but it’s worth it.

Work was pretty good. Did a little more background, edited an appeal letter, worked on some website content. Busy, but neither strenuous nor stressful.

After work I worked on the Beast. My clutter is a gigantic and complex thing, like that garbage patch floating in the Pacific. Broad and deep and perhaps home to a few microecosystems. My strategy is systematically to go through it in increments and in stages, the first stage simply to throw out what is obviously trash. In this way, going through one Rubbermaid tub at a time, I can cut the volume down by 50 percent, I’m guessing. The next stage will be some kind of order, plus another separation of wheat from chaff.

A lot of it is teaching material. Important to hang on to, once upon a time, but no longer. It makes me a bit wistful for days in the classroom.

However, I try not to take too much time for wistfulness. Out, damn journaling rubric that once wowed my colleagues! Out, vile yearbook tutorials on InDesign I so lovingly crafted! Begone, ye factoring exercises for math students needing extra practice!

Some of it made the first cut but may not survive the second pass. The cute in-class exercise for my grad school classmates on Bloom’s Taxonomy, on colored index cards with flower-shaped stickers, bound by a little binder ring. The small guides I created (comb-bound, but on quarter-sized paper — I snipped the plastic combs down to size) about dyslexia (“The Care and Feeding of Your Dyslexia”) and depression (“Sometimes You Can’t Snap Out of It”) for my substitute teachers to read. When am I ever going to need these again? I don’t know but they’re too neat to just toss. For now.

It’s tedious and time-consuming, but at least it’s mostly not strenuous, like the Monster was, and neither is it disgusting, which the Monster also was. And the payoff is usually another plastic tub ready to be washed out and dried, then nested with the other empties for whenever I need them later.

I also finally finished emptying the old freezer. It was all I could take this week. Next week I’ll try to empty the fridge the rest of the way. I did most of the heavy lifting already; now it’s mostly just getting into the back corners and low shelves.

I didn’t get to bed until 9ish and didn’t fall asleep ’til nearly 10. Ugh.

I texted the writing partner to let her know I haven’t forgotten about her. Crush Girl and I talked about our weekends. Looks like we both had pretty good ones, ‘though we both did some work on our days off. I let Jenny know I asked my boss about doing the writing webinar.

Lunch was again a slice of lemon chess pie, and dinner was again some English muffin pizzas. This will be the last of them for a while, the pie and the Englih muffin pizzas. I’m done with the English muffins and I’m giving my parents the remaining half of the pie when I go over Tuesday.

If you need someone to connect with, leave a note in the comments. I’m here for it.

Sunday was good. I got up at about 3:30 and got to Kewalo right at 4:00, where ten cars were already lined up to get into the still-gated parking lot. A security truck drove in at around 4:15 and let us in.

Parking in this lot is a dollar an hour, so I put four hours on my card, thinking I might want to linger a while.

I wasn’t going to do a repeat of the 10,000 steps I did Tuesday morning, but I thought walking to Starbucks for a latte was reasonable. But I forgot this Starbucks opens half an hour later on Sundays, at 5:00, so I wandered around the parking lot for half an hour, and then for another twenty minutes because that’s how long it took the staff to realize they’d forgotten to unlock the door, despite one man standing right in front of the door nearly the whole time.

Frustrating, especially when my phone informed me at shortly after 5:00 that my latte was ready.

It wasn’t cold by the time I got it, but I didn’t have a lot of time to savor it. Annoying.

By the time I got back to my car, I’d taken close to 10,000 steps again.

The water took away most of the frustration my morning inconveniences brought on, and I swam a bit further than usual. It was a good, strenuous time, and the water was delicious. There were more swimmers than Tuesday, some of them coming ridiculously close to me. Even one standup paddleboarder came super super close to me as if practicing tight turns around a buoy. I gave a sarcastic, “Good morning” as I stopped in my own wake to let him go by.

I took a little longer in the beach shower than usual, since nobody was waiting behind me, and got out of the parking lot with forty-five minutes left on my ticket. Ah well. You can’t by partial hours, so whatever.

I got a very few groceries at Foodland Ala Moana, then breakfast at Makiki Zippy’s, and went to the office for a few hours. Updated sofware and did some housekeeping, basically emptying my snack drawer since it doesn’t look like we’re going back to the office regularly until after the new year. I even brought back the can of apple cider, the mini bottle of Patron tequila, and the shot glass I keep in my desk just in case.

Took a very short nap. Watched the news. Then attacked the beast. I got a decent amount done for a couple hours’ work. I’ll do a little more Monday before bed.

Breakfast (Zippy’s) was a surf pac (deluxe). It was too much food, but my body burned most of it as soon as it went in. Lunch was some English muffin pizzas. I had a slice of lemon chess pie somewhere in between. I didn’t have dinner, unless the pie was lunch and the pizzas were dinner.

Not much messaging. Ali and I traded some photos. Julia texted to say she wasn’t going to make the Hawaii Stories deadline.

I got to bed a little later than planned, but still before 11:00, I think.

Hit me up in the comments if you’d like my contact info for a little bit of SMS connectivity. I’ll do DMs and IMs too. Here’s to a sane week and beginning of (eek) September.

Saturday I just didn’t have it in me to head for the beach. I don’t know why. Not quite enough sleep for one thing, but I also got up a little late, like around 4:00, which I thought was too late to snag parking.

I gave myself a little more time in bed, which my body and brain were most grateful for. Took my time waking up, then got on the road at about 8:00. I was supposed to pick up my mom’s birthday gift at the Rice Factory (Japanese rice), but when I got there the store was locked. Checked my email verification, and it said pickup would be at the Kakaako Farmers Market.

I had actually considered going to the Kakaako Farmers Market after my errand, but I messaged Melissa Friday to ask her how crowded it was. I think I wrote about this yesterday. She talked me out of it, and I had my sights set on the Pearlridge Farmers Market instead.

But there I was at Kakaako, and Melissa was right: it’s a lot of people. I was really stressed. The sad thing is that everything I saw as I searched for the Rice Factory booth looked great. Fresh produce, locally made food and condiments, some crafts, even. I could also see this cloud of viruses hovering overhead, ready to swoop down on me like angry bees and carry me to heaven. No thank you.

I picked up my order and lugged the 35 pounds of very expensive rice to my car. Put a nice dent in my car pulling out of the stall, scraping the wall in the parking structure. Yay.

The car doesn’t bother me too much. As I’ve said, I’m planning on having some body work done anyway. But the stress of all those people took my Pearlridge resolve right of me. Instead I stopped at 7-Eleven to get a money order for the rent. I had time to kill before my pickup at Hawaiian Pie Company, so I had a convenience store sandwich. I’m such a sucker for those things for some reason. And a Diet Pepsi. That was breakfast.

I guess a slice of lemon chess pie was my lunch. For dinner I had some English muffin pizzas, with a new batch of sauce. It isn’t just that I really like these things; it’s that when a single guy buys half a dozen English muffins, it’s a race to get them consumed before they go bad. And I bought two half dozen. If I can get two more muffins eaten and leave just two for the mold, I’ll consider it a good deal — ten out of twelve is okay by me.

Along the way I watched the first four episodes of season two of Halt and Catch Fire. It’s not nearly as compelling, but it’s still pretty engaging. I was sixteen when the events depicted (and fictionalized) here took place. Sixteen, and two years into teaching myself BASIC. I’d already stumbled through sprite creation and motion, but the motion was programmed, not directed by a keyboard commands or a joystick. I’d learned one-dimensional arrays for single-voiced music, but three-dimensional arrays were too tricky to teach myself. I still don’t know how to do them.

It makes me wonder what might have happened if I’d gone a different way.

I did the Saturday NYT crossword in 14 minutes even. I was pleased.

Not many texts. I sent Crush Girl and Ali (separately) a photo of a funny t-shirt I think both could wear to work and get some laughs. Messaged Melissa to tell her I wasn’t going to make it to the Pearlridge Farmers Market (and why). F5 Girl and I traded some texts about Bob Uecker again. So odd.

The Chagall Guevara Kickstarter campaign hit its second stretch goal ($125K) with just over a day to go, so I’m in the hole for a ridiculous amount of money for three CDs and the same albums on LP. I’m also on the priority list for concert tickets in Nashville. Fly to Nashville just to see a concert? I’m not ruling it out.

I get to reserve two tickets (for purchase) and the only other person I know who’d appreciate it is R, who loves Steve Taylor almost as much as I do. I don’t think she was as fond of Chagall Guevara as I was, but she definitely appreciated it. Dammit.

This means I need to find a GF before then. Applications taken in the comments below.

Just kidding. But hit me up down there if you want someone to trade messages with. I promise not to bore you with much Chagall Guevara talk. Because I could talk about them all day and it would never be boring!

This is “Murder in the Big House,” live in 1991. Christians just didn’t sing about global warming in 1991. Except Bruce Cockburn. And here they are. Brilliant and wonderful and ignored.

I woke up early enough to hit the beach but I slept so terribly that I just went back to bed Friday morning. Got up an hour before work and goofed around a little.

Work was a little better, if slow. I did the background on three new stories and got them rolling, asking for email introductions to some peope I’m interviewing. Nobody got back to me, so I couldn’t set anything up, but it felt good to create the new folders and start my note-taking.

Someone initiated a new meeting to talk about my new way of doing proposals. I don’t know why it caught me off guard, but it did. I wasn’t expecting new meetings with my boss and my new tutor’s boss. It’s a lot more formal a consequence than I was hoping for. I am just not at my best in meetings; I feel like I’m at a huge disadvantage, like the blind person brought into a meeting heavy on PowerPoint slides. I can manage; I can even contribute. It’s just such a mental strain on me that it exhausts me.

Plus, if you’re the blind person in these meetings, the dread you feel anticipating the meetings is also a strain. I don’t think it’s very understandable to people who thrive in meetings, but it’s real. Yes, I can do them, just as I do my administrative paperwork and just as I did all those report cards, once upon a time. But at least with paperwork and grading, I did it on my turf, generally on my terms, albeit on someone else’s timeline. These meetings are always someone else’s turf and someone else’s terms. It’s tough for a guy whose work is mostly staring at a computer screen.

I was determined to hit the beach Saturday morning, so I spent most of my after-work time doing some chores and getting ready for bed. It was an abbrevited day. I expect a lot of them will be this way as I try to get swimming back into my life the way it was before all this.

Okay, breakfast was some English muffin pizzas. Once I start enjoying these they are a difficult habit to break. Lunch was a couple of quick burritos. If the ground beef I still have in my fridge from last weekend is still good, I’m making some more filling this weekend. Dinner was Korean instant ramen with a mountain of bean sprouts and two eggs. I don’t think there was any snacking.

I FB messaged Melissa to ask some questions about the Kakaako Farmers Market. I told her crowds freak me out nowadays, so she steered me away, saying if I go later in the morning to the Pearlridge one, it’s a lot more sparsely attended. It’s her job to hype anything Pearlridge related, but she also never gives bad advice. I also FB messaged F5 girl, who lives in Wisconsin, to see if she’s okay. This led to some strange conversation about Bob Uecker.

Traded a few small texts with Crush Girl. That was it.

This weekend: more podcast prep. A little bit of work on the Beast. Halt and Catch Fire season two (the first four episodes). And a bunch of reading, I hope.

Reach out if you’d like someone to connect with. I’m here.

Thursday work was busy if not the kind of productive I’d have preferred. There was a bit of proofreading and editing for the staff newsletter. It’s kind of a big deal, and putting it together is one of my favorite parts of the job. Otherwise, it was a lot of finishing touches on stories I’ve psycically moved on from.

Strangely, I got started on laundry an hour later than usual. I usually set the alarm for 2:00 or 2:15 in the morning, then get to the laundry between 3:00 and 3:15, but for some reason I set the alarm for an hour later, throwing everything off and making a beach stop impossible. I didn’t finish my laundry until around 6:00, which is far too late to hope for parking at Kewalo.

So I stopped at Safeway for just a couple of things, including some tomato sauce and tomato paste. For pizza sauce. Didn’t stop anywhere for breakfast since I wasn’t getting any swimming, and just went to bed for an hour before work.

After work, I got ready for bed early after a few chores and then fell asleep without putting myself properly to bed. Argh. I was waiting for some ice to freeze so I could fill my thermos, and of course I lost it and just dropped off. I woke up around 1:00 in the morning and finished things up before getting back to bed. It took me pretty long to get back to sleep.

The nice thing about my work tasks Thursday: they enabled me to listen fairly attentively to some music. I went through twenty songs or so, looking for music for the podcast. I took notes, jotting down stuff that interested me about each song, and what each song might be used for. I was sort of pleased with the candidates in the “metal” genre on the service I’m looking at, but when I switched to “thrash metal,” the very first song made me say aloud, “That’s what I’m looking for.”

It was a productive project, but I left it hanging at that first thrash song. Now I had a great place to start sometime this weekend, for a second search.

Not many texts Thursday. Crush Girl sent me a photo of her dinner, asking me if I could guess where she got takeout from. I got it on the first guess. She was impressed. It’s a spot where Grace and Penny and I often stop to pick up food on our way to Reid’s house. Then I told her a little bit about my dinner.

Wow. That looks like it.

Breakfast may have been a slice of pie. Lunch was some English muffin pizzas with my own pizza sauce. Much better. I cut the tomato sauce in half for this, and it came out pretty great. For dinner, I had one more slab of meat in the fridge I had to cook before it turned. When I was at the supermarket last weekend, I splurged on a ribeye. I almost never spend that kind of money on steak, but my experience has been so good lately, I went for it.

Delicious. Seriously. Probably could have cut it with the edge of my fork. I ate it with the leftover veggies from Wednesday afternoon (oyster mushrooms, tofu, baby bok choi, bean sprouts). A great dinner and I hardly noticed the absence of rice or potatoes.

If you need someone to trade some conversation with, leave a comment and I’ll send you my contact info. Hawaii’s numbers keep going up and they’re going to get worse. It’s going to be a long time getting through this, so reach out if you need to connect.