don't try to bleed me, 'cause i've been here before and i deserve a little more

I wonder if my body suddenly decided to grow up. My sleeping patterns have completely shifted, so that I'm waking up (somewhat) at six a.m., voluntarily, and desperate to crash by ten p.m. It's like my body said, "Hey, Sara, you're turning twenty-seven in two weeks, and maybe it's time you should start waking up early like a real adult!" -- and then promptly decided to force the issue, even though my conscious brain has certainly not signed off on that course of action.

So even though it's only 9:30, I'm about to go to bed. I have an eight a.m. meeting in the south bay tomorrow morning, and I don't want to drive; I drove today so that I would make it in for an 8:30 meeting, but there was an accident on the freeway and I ended up being late. The shuttle in general is much better than driving, since I arrive home more exhausted if I had to drive each way, but the critical issue is that I have to leave half an hour earlier because I have to walk to the shuttle stop, ride it while it stops again on its way out of the city, and then catch another connector shuttle from the west side of campus to the east side of campus when the shuttle arrives in the south bay. In general this is fine because I can be v. productive while on the shuttle itself--but the temptation to sleep an extra half hour in the morning is v. difficult to resist.

Today was good, if you think that 'good' can encompass a day in which one has meetings straight through from 8:30am to 4pm. After work, I got the last bit of stuff out of my temporary storage unit, then spent an hour working on the novel at a Starbucks. I was v. pleasantly interrupted when Vidya (aka the Chandlord) called me; while we've emailed and IM'd several times since she moved to ye olde east coast, this was the first time we'd caught up verbally, and it was v. nice. I'm going to switch my labelling rule slightly and give her a label anytime I actually talk to her on the phone, rather than sticking to my strict policy of using the 'vidya' label only for times when we hung out in person. This has absolutely no bearing on your life, but I thought I'd mention it.

So the book is going well; I'm enjoying the editing process now that I've decided to skip the first couple of chapters. I'm aiming to have a second draft that I can share with a few people for feedback purposes by the weekend after my birthday, and I got approval to take September 11 and 12 off. That means I'll have a four-day weekend, which is the perfect amount of time to get a facial and a pedicure, bum around in some of my favorite city cafes, and make a concerted push to get through the rest of the necessary edits. It also helps that I get a three-day weekend this week; I'm feeling that the goal of a second draft by my birthday weekend is doable, even if I'm (scarily) turning 27 two weeks from tomorrow. On that shocking, depressing note, it's time for bed!