good morning and good night, i wake up at twilight

I had quite the eventful weekend, and so I'm entering the week feeling quite content and not at all rested.

Yesterday, Mom and I went up to Des Moines for Sammie's baby shower. It was a bit of a struggle to get up... which I'm assuming was true for everyone, since everyone in the family had stayed up until midnight on Friday watching the Iowa State game. But I successfully roused myself, made coffee, cleaned up the kitchen, showered, wrapped my gift, etc. And then Mom and I drove up early so that we could meet Aunt Kathy and Aunt Becky for lunch. Becky came in just for the shower, and so the four of us met up at Palmer's and had a delightful lunch while catching up over sandwiches and salads.

Then we went to the shower, which was held at the community center of a retirement home that several of Sammie's family members live in. The shower itself was really nice, and Sammie's friends put a lot of effort into the decorations and food. We had fun hanging out and playing games and celebrating the mom-to-be, and I think we're all excited to see another Wampler join the family. 

Then Mom and I drove home, with a stop in Indianola for me to wash my car, which was long overdue. Once we got back, I spent the evening tidying up the house, eating leftovers, and watching some of last night's basketball games. None of them were as exciting as the Iowa State game, and I also felt a little bit torn because I didn't really want to root for Iowa and yet was still sad that they lost. But Arizona won, which made me happy since I'm hoping that the Big 12 somehow redeems themselves.

I woke up this morning and spent quite a bit of time finishing my preparation for today and also taking care of all of my various plants. Not only do I have a lot of indoor plants, thanks to the various things that I've acquired over the past year, but the seeds that I started the other night were germinating at a rapid clip. I had spent some time on Saturday night after getting home from Des Moines setting up a grow light for the tomatoes, which had already germinated after only four days. This morning, my eggplant were also ready to go, and so I swapped things out from the heat mat to the grow light, watered everything, and generally tried to praise my little seedlings so that they would continue to grow in my absence.

"My absence" is burying in the lede - I ended up driving to Chicago today so that I could treat myself to a solo work/writing/vacation retreat. I can't take the whole week off because I have way too much to do, but I really want to try to take off Thursday and Friday. I decided that the most efficient use of my time was to drive to Chicago today, work from here Monday, Tuesday, and possibly Wednesday, and then spend Thursday, Friday, and Saturday writing / going to museums / refilling my creative well. Oh, and probably shopping and also eating in a lot of great food, which is what I always want from my vacations.

So I spent the rest of the morning packing, cleaning up my kitchen, etc. I also got outside and helped [censored] pick up sticks, which I felt pretty responsible for, given that it is my yard. Since [censored] usually takes care of the lawn care, though, he often gets suckered into picking up sticks, especially because I usually try to schedule trips during these springtime weekends. But we got my yard pretty picked up, which is great, since the fact that it's already been over 80° several times this month and looks to continue that trend means that the grass is growing at a rapid clip.

I left my house around 1:00, which was a couple of hours later than I planned, but since I drove pretty much straight through, I made it to Chicago by seven. I spent the drive drinking coffee, eating snacks, and listening to a variety of podcasts, which did a lot of good for my mental state. When I got to Chicago, I checked into the hotel, got fully unpacked, and grabbed dinner at the hotel bar, which was a delight. And now I should go to bed so that I can get as much done tomorrow as I intend to - goodnight! 

rollies that don't tick tock

I've had an absolutely insane few days of work and now I'm about to go to bed later than I would like, especially since I have more plans tomorrow. Wednesday was not as much of a slog as it usually is, but that's mostly because I took Mom to Chariton to go to the eye doctor. I did get up and do a bunch of work before taking her, and I managed to eat something before we left - which was a good thing, since her appointment took a lot longer than expected. It was scheduled for 12:10, but they had to do various measurements and dilate her eyes, and she didn't actually get seen by the doctor until like 1:30. Other than the lateness of the appointment, though, everything went smoothly. And when I got home, I spent the rest of the day catching up on work, doing more work from my balcony, and eating random things that I found in the freezer. And then [censored] got home after a more traumatic day than I had, so we caught up on life before it was bedtime.

Thursday was another slog. I spent a ton of time working, which is beginning to be a bit annoying, but I suppose that's what they pay me for. But I slacked off around 6:00, and then Mom and I went into town to the museum's annual meeting / fundraising dinner. I've never been, but I want to spend more time at the museum this year, and I thought the speaker sounded relatively interesting. We bought tickets and ate a very tasty meal of ham balls and cheesy potatoes, which was served by a new Seymour restaurant that is open for breakfast and lunch. Luckily, when we got to the museum, there were two seats empty next to Margaret and Shelda, and so we had quite an entertaining time talking to them. All in all, there were about 60 people there, which was a pretty good turnout. I have to say that our county's historical society must be one of the best run and supported historical societies for a community of our size. And they have grand plans to get the mastodon exhibit finished this year, which will be pretty exciting to see.

Anyway, the speaker was a guy who lives in Iowa City but has met at a point to travel to all of Iowa's counties and write a poem and also run a mile in every town that he visits. He was kind of a kooky guy, which you might expect given his goals, but he gave a really interesting talk and seems to have built a following around this. So I'm glad I went, even though I'm sure that I got glutened by the meal and also came home and ended up doing some combination of unwinding/working until almost one a.m.

When I woke up this morning, I started working pretty much immediately...although I did have to tell somebody that I couldn't think about their question until I actually made some coffee and got some caffeine in my system. I spent the morning working, and then I snuck out around 2:00 to go to town and go to my garden club meeting. I usually skip garden club because it's on Friday afternoons, which is prime working time, but I happened to have the program this time - so I felt like I had to attend.

Garden Club was at Outlaw this time, and we had the back room, which was perfect for the ten or twelve of us who showed up. We had a good business meeting and talked about plans for the town gardens this summer, and then everyone ate dessert pizza while I gave a very brief program on how to use silica gel to preserve flowers. It seemed to be pretty well-received, and I think I was careful enough when pouring the silica gel that I didn't accidentally give anyone exposure to anything that might cause them lung disease in the future - but we shall see.

Then I picked up some groceries, came home, slogged relentlessly until after six (well, as relentlessly as I can claim to slog when I spent an hour of it talking to Adit), and then realized that if I didn't make some food, [censored] and I would starve. So I took a break to throw together this orzo chicken pasta bake that I've made before, which is extremely tasty and also pretty easy - although the fact that I modified the recipe to add sautéed onions and mushrooms makes it take a little bit more time. Then I wrapped up a little bit of work, did some laundry, and when the pasta was done, [censored] and I ate dinner while watching this week's episode of Scrubs, which continues to be a delight.

Unfortunately, what did not continue to be a delight was the Cyclones basketball season. We watched the game tonight, and it was pretty sad to watch them go down to Tennessee - it probably would have been different if Jefferson had been able to play, but as it stood, they didn't seem to have a lot of opportunity against a team that was so much bigger than them. However, they had an amazing season, and it was really fun to watch all of them this year - especially Tamin Lipsey, who I hope go on to do great things.

But the game didn't start until almost 10pm, and now it's 1am and I have to get up in the morning in time to go to Des Moines for Sammie's baby shower (+ lunch with my aunts beforehand). So I think on that note it's time for bed - goodnight!

but soon as all that money blows, all the pigeons take flight

Sadly, the fact that I worked this weekend didn't mean that I got to relax leading into the week itself. Instead, everything else that is typically part of my job caught up to me, as did another time-sensitive and labor-intensive project that I have to get done absolutely immediately.

I don't actually like working this hard, and I'd rather be spending my time right now figuring out how to use AI to do my job for me, but unfortunately my main skill in corporate America is to bring order to chaos... and since I work someplace where there is always chaos, there are always new and interesting ways for me to attempt to enforce order. But I would like to do it in a way that doesn't make my brain feel like melting quite as much as it has the past few days. 

sssanyway. I slogged yesterday until [censored] left, and then I took a long evening break to journal and otherwise unwind before doing a bunch of work from 10pm to 1am. This morning I woke up and had to start working almost as soon as I was out of bed, which was rough - and I worked from 9 to 7 pretty much without any break at all. I did manage to reheat my leftover ribeye from the other night and make some sweet potato fries while I was prepping for a meeting, so at least my lunch sustenance was better than it usually is.

And as soon as I closed my laptop at 7, I was done done. So done that I couldn't even think about what to eat. Instead, I rather manically started planting seeds in set of seed-starting cells so that I could try to get a jump start on my garden. I can always buy plants at the greenhouse if this seed experiment doesn't work out. But I really wanted to try more peppers than I seem to find around here, as well as some varieties of tomatoes that are less common.

I planted my seeds, and then I took a break to eat the last of my leftover fish tacos for dinner. I then spent quite a bit of time scrolling on Reddit, which I have no regrets about since my brain had already fully melted and I didn't really have much energy for anything else. And then I tidied up the house and unfortunately did about an hour of work just so that I could be caught up going into tomorrow morning and not feel quite so much pressure to get up and do stuff. And now it's time for bed - goodnight! 

it's a kangaroo court

There were many personal things I intended to do today - perhaps journal or write, or reflect on my parents' anniversary, or start some seeds, or repot some plants. Instead, I did day job stuff for many hours. This is extremely unusual, since I pretty much refuse to work weekends - but in this particular case, it couldn't be helped. This was especially true because this project required concentration that I simply could not muster during the usual work day, when I also have many meetings.

I did sleep in until almost nine, but then I made coffee, tidied up the kitchen a bit, and got to work. I worked until around 1:30, and then I took a quick shower before taking a break to watch the Iowa State / Kentucky game. Luckily the second half was much (much) better than the first, and so watching it was quite enjoyable.

Then I did a bit more work, prepped some accoutrements for dinner tonight (mostly making slaw and pickled onions and mixing up the marinade for some tilapia), and worked some more. I ended up spending almost four hours on call with Adit to work through the final sprint on various bugs, although I did take a break to cook the tilapia and eat fish tacos with [censored].

We wrapped up and launched our ting around 10pm my time, which was an extreme relief since this project has been an albatross for months. And now I need to unwind so I can get some sleep - goodnight!

keep me young forever

I have had an absolutely brutal few days at work, which has made blogging fall down to the bottom of my priority list. Even when I do blog, I tend to forget things -- like the fact that on Tuesday night I said that my day was quite boring, but I completely forgot that I had spent an hour talking to Heather (aka dear respected madam), which was a real bright spot and worth documenting.

sssanyway. Thursday was brutal, and I was completely brain-dead by the end of it, which means that I spent the evening eating leftovers and then attempting to recover with limited results. I was so brain-dead that I even picked up a book in an effort to relax, which is very unusual for me these days. I started reading "A Cautious Traveler's Guide To the Wastelands," which is a pretty entertaining version of a journey on the Trans-Siberian Railroad set in an alternative world where Siberia has been completely walled off by China and Russia due to an unknown (to me, at this point in the book) contagion of monsters or something. Hopefully I'll pick it up and finish it sometime soon, but in the meantime I've had to return to slogging.

So yesterday was more of the same, and I worked an absolutely insane number of hours, especially for a Friday. I was also the only person in my family who couldn't watch the Iowa State basketball game because I was stuck in meetings, although I'm glad that I didn't have to see video of Joshua Jefferson injuring his ankle. At the end of the day, I forced [censored] to go to town with me to eat Mexican at the restaurant rather than picking up takeout, as we usually do. Unfortunately, it was the slowest service that we've ever had there -- and so while the food was good, I feel like [censored] somehow claimed the moral high ground in terms of whether we would have saved time by picking up versus eating there.

Today was unfortunately even more of the same, made slightly more apocalyptic because it literally reached 90 degrees, which it should not do in March. I woke up this morning and spent a couple of hours doing my own things, but then I had to sit down and keep working on a project for work that we're trying to launch this weekend. I did most of that work while sitting outside on my balcony, which at least means that I got some fresh air and sunshine, but it wasn't quite the same as being able to putter around the yard and do my own thing at will.

Finally, at 4 p.m., I took a shower, and then, as I was finishing getting ready, [censored] showed up and told me about the fire that was burning in the field east of Mom's house. I ended up going out there with him so that we could drive around in the gator and inspect the property. We couldn't really see much since the fire had burned towards the east and north of us, which means that we weren't able to see the damage beyond the ridgeline of the back of the property. And luckily, it appears that the fire department was able to put it out, which I'm sure was a relief for them since there were multiple grass fires around, given the high temperatures and even higher winds. It was probably also a relief for them because they probably accidentally started it, since they had burned the field at Becky's a couple days ago and it's possible that they didn't get it entirely put out. But it was a nice day for riding around in the gator, so I was happy that we took the opportunity to go back and check things out.

After that, I finished getting ready, and then [censored] and I picked up Mom and went to Seymour for dinner. Mom and Dad's anniversary is tomorrow, and we celebrated their anniversary last year in Seymour, which was the last time he went out to eat before his final decline. So it was a little bittersweet, but it also didn't feel at all the same - I seem to remember that last year was pretty cold, but this year was super hot, and because they had just turned on the mini splits for the first time this season, the AC above our table seemed to be blowing some black crud on the table at regular intervals throughout the meal. I might have been disgusted at another time, but for some reason tonight I just found it on brand and oddly charming. And my ribeye and fries were excellent, so no complaints there.

Then we came home, I spent some time relaxing and reading reddit and watching basketball, and then I sadly did another ninety minutes of work. And now I must sleep - goodnight!

we gonna party like it's the end of the world

I have very little to report. Work has gotten quite busy over the past couple of days and so I feel like all I've really done is slogged, much to my chagrin.

Yesterday was quite boring despite my busy situation, and I ended the day by making spaghetti for me and [censored]. Today was even more brutal in terms of the amount of work done, especially since I thought I would have all morning to work and instead woke up to an invite for a 9:30 meeting that I didn't know was happening. Of course "invite" implies something you can turn down, which is not actually true in corporate life, so I forced myself to get ready in time to attend. 

But I survived the day, and then I took a break in the evening to run to the grocery store so that I could make chicken chile verde in the instant pot for dinner. [Censored] liked it more than expected, perhaps because I pandered to him and used chicken breasts instead of thighs. But it was quite tasty, and we ate while watching Scrubs, which was fun. 

And now I need to sleep - goodnight!

it's gonna be a big night

I have done nothing of interest the post couple of days. Yesterday we had a but if a blizzard, and so I hunkered down, cleaned my office, and made tater tot casserole for dinner (which would have been better if my tater tots weren't suffering from freezer burn). Today, I unfortunately had to work - I did not feel in it to win it, but I accomplished just enough to not feel terrible, so I'll take it.

After work, I made a triple batch of Grandma Barb's spaghetti sauce - I do not have a Grandma Barb, but whoever did really was lucky to have that recipe. This resulted in six jars of sauce for future meals + sauce for dinner tomorrow night, which is great. And Ritu fortuitously called while I was cooking, so we talked for over an hour, which was fantastic and long overdue. 

And now I must sleep - goodnight!