Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

So back at the beginning January, I got a terrible, terrible cold that basically took me out for 3 weeks. I was mostly better by the last week of the month but still easily tired out, coughing, and terribly behind at work.

The last weekend of January was fabulous! We drove up to NH for my birthday dinner at the Best Mexican Restaurant Ever (Hermanos in Concord, NH). My brother, Kirsten and the fabulous Juli joined us and riotous time was had with pitchers of white sangria. Birka happened to be the same weekend, so my birthday trip included shopping and medieval fun. Saturday night we went back to Hermanos with another bunch of people, though not the full bunch we expected due to Birka deciding to that Ian should spend the rest of the weekend in a weakened and miserable state. He recovered admirably, but missed out on the best Mexican food ever. The intrepid cat wrangler, Violet, took over the felines for the weekend. It was a fabulous weekend!

Why, yes, we do go to New England for Mexican food.

February brought work and snow. Lots of snow. There are still itty bitty little snowbanks around as evidence. I had a great time shoveling, feeding the wee little electric snow blower and generally frolicking when I had time. Clearing the driveway was fun. Without a good place to put large piles of snow, I ended up packing the snow into some serious fortification walls between the driveway and the sidewalk. Unfortunately, the aforementioned January sick put me behind for work and having to spend serious time moving snow during the week took away from my time even more… which turned out to be okay because the developer is behind too (mostly due to our requests, I’ll admit) and while I could have used another week to get documentation done, it was done in time for training.

Yeah, that was pretty much February – snow and work.

Training was this past week. Monday night I was at Staples at 9 pm making copies. I was delighted to learn that particularly awesome photocopiers have the option to 3-hole punch your copies automatically for you. This saved some serious time! Tuesday we flew off to the Sales meeting in Florida, which was not as warm as anyone expected. Down right chilly! And populated with people 2-3 times my age. I delivered some training for the Sales team, and while, I would have preferred a little more focus, everyone has seen the material now, has a really detailed User’s Guide and can probably pick things up quickly once we start using the system.

Also, I could very easily get accustomed to working in a villa with a view of the ocean. The photo here I took from my iPhone from the balcony of our room. (There are more, from a better camera, but this one was handy.) I saw a dolphin one day while I was prepping for training. I love watching seabirds nose-dive into the water for fish too. Certainly beats the view of the church.

Airport security is indeed still a joke. An old, annoying, stupid joke told by someone who has drunk the kool-ade.

I have almost finished my first pair of socks for adults. (I’ve made wee baby socks before, but not adult-sized socks.) They’re far easier than I expected, despite having messed up the heel. I’m smart though! I messed up the first heel and realized it, and then messed up the heel the same way on the second sock. Perhaps I’m feeling overly clever about that but go me!

Somewhere along the snowy way, my sleep schedule has been reset. Probably the exhaustion from all the snow removal. I am now going to bed before midnight again and getting up around 8. Without an alarm. This is unheard of for me! Of course, it could be a sign of the apocalypse. I wonder if that means I’m one of the four horseman… which one of them wakes up at 8 am without an alarm?

concord, hermanos, knitting, nh, sca, sleep, travel, vero beach, weather, work

I am desperately trying to adjust my sleep schedule to complement my desired work schedule. Unsurprisingly, the past 6 months have been very lenient on my need to get to sleep at what my mother would call, “a reasonable hour.” My current contract isn’t exactly demanding early morning hours from me… but I do like to get work over with as quickly as possible and no matter how late I stay up that means I’d still rather be done work by noon or 2 p.m. I’ve made some progress in the past 2 weeks and I’m falling asleep about an hour earlier now. Of course, I want to sleep about 2 hours longer now too which is messing up my morning mojo.

It’s not even that I’m most productive in the morning. As a night person, I’m most productive and creative between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. Okay, that might be due to training in college as well. I perfected writing the 10 page literary analysis in those 5 hours the night before it was due. (I’m older and wiser now and actually write rough drafts, I swear.) But work is work and I want it to be done. I like to get a jump on things before other folks are at their desks and I like to be done first. FIRST, I say! Too often I’ve ended up working from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. because “things come up” throughout the day preventing me from leaving. This is somewhat worse at home where it’s not so much a matter of leaving as it is a matter of finding time to get out of my pajamas, eat and maybe even stop work before dinner.

This is all coming back to me now, somewhat acutely, because in my current contract I’m working from my personal desktop computer. In the past I’ve had a “work machine” that I could pretend I would turn off at 5 p.m. Right now I’ve set up my work e-mail in Mail along side my .Mac e-mail. I have a couple of heavily-tabbed Firefox windows open for work purposes as well. (On top of this, my computer is not the most spry of creatures and I abuse Firefox horribly with the 6 million tabs I usually leave open.) So far I’m doing a good job of not falling into the too-man-hours trap on this contract but I am feeling the omnipresence of work stuff in my world.

Ultimately, the problem is that my desire to get a jump on work and be done first gets me up in the morning while my desires to hang out, read, play games and … um… ramble on foolishly in a blog keep me up too late at night. I will break this cycle! I swear!

Right after I finish editing an article I’m writing that’s rather late…

My wise words for the day are: If you get the funny feeling you should back up your files: DO IT. Either the Universe is warning you of impending doom or your subconscious is telling you your documents have become too important to lose.

backups, sleep, work

So, not feeling well this afternoon, I went back to bed around 2:30 complete with pajamas. I read for a bit, because I’m incredibly hooked on my current book. Then I read for a while longer, despite not being able to actually keep my eyes focused for very long. Finally I put the book down and slept until 7:30 or so. I can’t say it felt like great sleep but it was good enough sleep. I got up and had popcorn for dinner. Now I’m contemplating going back to bed soon. Maybe I’ll watch an episode of something on my computer just to give the useless Tylenol a chance to kick in. I want to finish my book! There are 2 more in the series! I just have to be careful the next couple nights not to stay up too late reading it.

That is all… tired now.

health, sleep, reading

Technically, today was cooler than the past few days. Technically. I’m not actually sure I believe it, but maybe it’s the heat catching up with me. I am more than ready to be on vacation. Seriously. I have dealt with double my quota of stupid people today. Stupid people and heat make me cranky all by themselves… together, monster-cranky.

So here is a pretty flower from my garden. It makes me less cranky. Sleep, sleep will be nice for reducing the cranky too I think. I love sleep. Yay sleep. Good night!

flowers, heat, photographs, photography, roses, stupid people, weather

Another favorite quilt from the quilt show last month – this one is titled “Persephone” and was quilted by Peg Collins of Alamosa, Colorado. (Sometimes I did successfully get the info card in the photo!) I love that the edge of her gown is the edge of the quilt. The division between winter and summer is perhaps predictable but beautiful all the same. Persephone seemed an appropriate quilt to post for May Day.

More garden work is planned for today after work, which also seems appropriate. I want to get those beds prepped for planting before I go away next week. (I fly out Sunday, actually.)

No cat casualties yet today but Tennyson is definitely pushing it.

Coffee was applied early and will be applied often today. I didn’t sleep well and needed my brain to be awake for my 9 a.m. meeting. And my 9:30 meeting. Whee! All went well and productively so the coffee must have worked. But how long will it last?

chicago, coffee, gardening, international quilt show, may day, persephone, quilts, sleep

Vacation is over.

I am not awake though I’ve been up for almost 2 hours.

That is all.

sleep, vacation

I think I will blame my fuzzy brain on both the “Spring ahead” beginning of Daylight Savings time and the fact that I was up at 5:30 EDT this morning to run the Fop to the airport. At least it was quick. And cold – it’s still chilly and windy here today. My pajamas were still warm when I got home and put them on to go back to sleep. I then proceeded to sleep until almost 2 pm. The house was so beautifully peacefully this morning that apparently I couldn’t help myself.

I have successfully gone grocery shopping today and picked up some seeds to get started out on the sun porch. I need to make a list for transplanting so that I can get supplies for starting seeds and making the houseplants happy. I still need to find some hot pepper seeds too. I did find more seeds for cat grass so the cats will benefit from my planting glee as well. Monster Cat is a lawnmower. Tenny’s taste for greenery is one of the reasons the doors to the sun porch remain closed. Other reasons include the leaky windows and the intense heat when the sun is hitting those windows.

Yeah, I had such high hopes for today’s productivity levels but I have been thwarted.

However, all is not lost! I have been randomly wandering the web for my amusement and yours!

Today I have learned that coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in the American diet. So, while that cute little girl in the commercial puts her glasses of grape juice in front of her closet to protect her from monsters (“My antioxidants will protect me, Daddy.”), I’ll be brewing up a big french press full of coffee to keep the boogie man at bay. Well, if he’s nice maybe I’ll offer him some coffee too.

I also found a neat new idea for a flash diffuser on the cheap. I’ve been using a 3×5 card to bounce the flash up lately. The only thing I’m worried about with the film container idea linked above is heat. If taking a lot of photos in quick succession, it might get a little warm in there. But I like the effect shown in the examples – subjects are still brightly lit without the obvious glare of a compact flash. For my next trick I’ll find a white film container to try it out with.

Monster Hoodies… cute, toothy, googly-eyed sweatshirts.

A presidential candidate I could get behind… (and lots of cute Mac-head t-shirts are over there too…)

antioxidants, coffee, daylight savings time, flash diffuser, indoor gardening, photography, random, sleep, weather

The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee has new itty bitty kitties!!! This is the purest cuteness on the web.

Monster Cat has been participating in a lot of conference calls lately. If only we could get my cat and my boss’ dog on the payroll. They have broken the ice at critical times in meetings.

XKCD has my favorite Gary Gygax tribute.

King Arthur Flour has their own blog of fun baking stuff.

Friday night conversation… I’m taking The Fop to the airport Sunday morning for a 7:45 a.m. flight.
Me: You fucker.
The Fop: What did I do now?
Me: Guess what Saturday is.
The Fop: Uh… what?
Me: Spring ahead. You fucker.

Yes, that means that when we get up at 5:30 to leave at 6 our bodies will be thinking it’s really 4:30 a.m. It’s not his fault really, but it made me feel better. But the thought of delivering him to the airport in my pjs and getting back into bed when I get home sounds better and better.

comics, daylight savings time, links, random, silly, travel

You might have guessed by the very late posting of Monster Cat yesterday that I had a busy week. It was lovely to veg out in front of the tv and watch a couple movies last night though it took a bit to disengage my brain enough from other things to actually just watch the movies. Today I woke up feeling rather crappy, like I’m coming down with something. Walking around watering my plants winded me. Never a good sign. Coffee, toast and an Odwalla Strawberry C Monster consumed, I now feel slightly more alive though getting dressed took a lot out of me. Blah. Strawberry C Monster rocks though. I usually drink it when I’m traveling to help fight off the ick. I don’t usually like juice, but I love strawberries. Yum. So here’s hoping this doesn’t turn into a full-fledge cold or flu. March is not a month I can afford to be less than 100%. More sleep!

So yeah, I have no content but at least typing doesn’t make me tired.

busy week, health, sleep

Somehow it got to be after midnight.

I have an 8:30 meeting in the morning.

For which I need to do a half hour of prep.

And perhaps I should be caffeinated before the meeting too.

Worst part? I’m rather awake.

Bother.

Maybe being in bed will make me sleepy.

late, meetings, sleep