Not having anything really scheduled this week gave me a chance to get caught up a bit, both at work and at home. The work week was relatively quiet, except for having to do the fifth rewrite of a background paper because the person who asked for more detail last time now wanted less detail. (And was also being the format police. making us redo bullets and margins and so forth, but that's just an irritant.) At least none of that involved serious deadline pressure. And I got a nice compliment from our former division chief, who was over to ask questions in the context of her new job.
Even if I'd wanted to do much of anything during the week, it was too bloody hot out to. The really miserable day was Thursday when I got stuck in a metro car without air conditioning on the way home. Okay, not stuck in a real sense, since I could have gotten out and gone to another car and just suffered from being squeezed in amongst way too many people generating body heat and associated smells to add to the misery. This way I had a seat in a less overcrowded car and could read to distract myself from my misery.
As for the weekend, I did get some errandy stuff done. My major accomplishment was getting the car serviced. Given the age of my car, it's pretty impressive that all I needed (besides the routine oil change, tire rotation, top up fluids stuff) was a new right rear brakelight and new windshield wipers. Somehow or other spending a little over 50 bucks on a car I've had for roughly 12 years isn't all that painful.
I also managed to deal with dry cleaning, grocery shopping, and a lot of household paperwork. I tend to put mail I don't need to deal with right away in a box in my living room that I refer to as the "box of shame" and I even made a serious dent in that. My biggest accomplishment, though, was actually getting some knitting done. I finished a Barbie doll sweater that had needed sleeves for umpty ump weeks. And I did the entire back half of a sweater for a baby gift. The latter really only got done because I made it to my knitting group. This was plain stockinette stitch which is boring to knit but perfect for socializing, with some nicely far-ranging conversation. The most amusing part of which came in a discussion of one woman's recent wedding, which she said was at the oldest chapel in Las Vegas. Except that two of the people thought she had said, "the Elvis chapel."
Unfortunately, the front of the sweater has a part that takes actual concentration, so it will require actually carving out some time to work on that and that alone. Then I might manage to finish the Barbie car coat (which just needs sewing together and sleeves knitted in) and try to find the pattern for the sweater I've been knitting for myself. And, oh, yeah, there are only about 643 other projects I've been meaning to get to.
Everybody else I know is trying to get out more. I'm trying to be more of a homebody.
Copyright 2006 Miriam H. Nadel