on the upside of a downward spiral

I'm not in my own bed; I'm at Heather (aka dear respected madam) and Salim's house, after a v. lovely, v. laidback evening of hanging out. I worked all day today, but I didn't write a single word for the Ellie and Nick Death March, which means I have to write four thousand words tomorrow. I woke up not feeling well at all, so I went back to bed and slept until ten. Then I got up, messed around on the internet, showered, packed up my stuff, ate some peanut butter, and drove down to the glorious south bay, since I intended to work at Stanford library until it was time for the sleepover.

First, though, I needed lunch, so I went to Mike's Cafe (in one of my old Palo Alto neighborhoods) and went through my to-do lists and my plans for June while eating a tasty breakfast casserole. Then I went to Philz down the street, since I needed to work on this stupid promo ting that has taken 20+ hours of my time this past week, and I needed internet to do it. I thought I needed to spend another hour on it today, but I ended up spending three hours on it - ugh. By the time I finished, it was almost five, so I spent half an hour answering email instead of trying to go the library to write. But I'm spending all day at the library tomorrow, so I plan to catch up on the words I should have written today.

After I answered a few emails, I packed up my stuff and drove to Heather and Salim's. It was supposed to be a bigger sleepover, including Durand, Lauren and Jenni, but they all bailed at various points in the past couple of weeks, so it ended up being just me and them. That was still wonderful, though; Heather and I spent some quality time talking about life, work, and romance novels, and Salim made us steak, corn, and zucchini (and asparagus, which I turned my nose up at). We had been hanging out inside, but I got distracted by the tv (Heather was watching "American History X", which I've never seen, but which looked super brutal), so we went outside and hung out in the backyard and enjoyed the weird, offkey crooning of their neighbor on the other side of the fence.

While we ate supper, though, we came back inside and ended up watching the last third of "The Two Towers", which only served to give me ample opportunity to embarrass myself by sharing trivia that proved how dorky I am. We also watched "The Ricky Gervais Show", which was awesome, and the end of "Beauty and the Beast", which is always welcome. Then I did some more work on the excerpt book while we flipped through the channels, and now I'm going to bed so that I can get up and have brunch with them tomorrow before heading off to the library. Goodnight!