Tuesday, March 15, 2016

but the monsters turned out to be just trees...when the sun came up, you were looking at me

I went back to my former place of employment today to have lunch with my old boss. Before I did that, I got up not-so-early and did a couple of hours of work (some admin, some decent writing) while drinking iced coffee and regretting having to get out of bed. Then I showered and drove down to Mountain View - the traffic was fine at that time of day, but it was a good reminder that I never want to have to commute again.

When I got to campus, Sriram suggested going to Pear Republic, which is a cafe that opened sometime after I left - it's kind of amusing how trendy things are on campus, and he told me that no one goes to Coffee Lab anymore (which makes me sad, since I loved writing there in the early mornings before anyone showed up...although I suspect he's exaggerating). So we drove over there and checked out the cafe, and really, it was like every other fucking cafe on campus. Yes, I'm still jaded and spoiled despite having been gone for ten months.

But we caught up v. well, and I had a salad and some ice cream and grabbed a latte after, none of which I would have had if left to my own devices today. Then we went back to our building, and I hung out in the couch area with some of the people who used to report to me (actually, all four women who are still left on the team; the only remaining survivor missing was Andrew, which was too bad). It sounds like things are good there, and while I'm not tempted to ask for my job back in any real sense, it certainly would have been easier to just hang out there all afternoon and answer some email in exchange for millions of dollars rather than going off to write for nothing....

....but that's all an exaggeration. After I left, I went to Belmont and met up with Anne for a writing date, which was mostly a gossip date - she was in a bad mood/tired because her car battery died (and it's an electric car, and it's less than a year old), and the tow truck situation was a disaster, which interfered with her unusual biphasic sleep schedule, so she only had five hours of sleep today instead of eight. So she talked about her car, and her writing, and how difficult all this 'write for an audience' stuff is when we both really just want to write weird and interesting things. And I talked about going back to visit my old job and how it's both delightful and weirdly stressful/unhappy-making, and it was probably good that I met up with her and got it off my chest rather than coming home to do my taxes and spiraling into a 'I miss free food and easy companionship' mess if I'd spent the night alone.

sssanyway. So we talked for quite awhile, and then we forced ourselves to write for an hour, and I got a decent amount done. Then I drove home, procrastinated for a couple of hours to unwind from my social time, and then spent the rest of the night dealing with my tax situation. I'm seeing my CPA on Wednesday, so I was trying to get organized tonight - and after four hours of work, I'm getting there, but I still have a bunch of receipts to sort through tomorrow and reconcile with my Quickbooks. But the end is in sight, and hopefully I won't owe too much or else the 'I miss free food' spiral may start again in April.

But that's a worry for another day (and I don't think I'll owe much anyway)...now I need to sleep so that I can write like crazy tomorrow and also receipt-reconcile like crazy. Goodnight!

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