somebody's calling you out for somеthing you never said

I meant to go to bed an hour ago, but if I close my laptop as soon as I'm done typing, I can salvage my bedtime. Today was good, all in all - I got up in time to write before work, and I snacked my way through the day (the last of my leftover hash and eggs; a bologna sandwich for lunch; an apple and some peanut butter; a charcuterie plate with soppressata, cheese, and almonds). Some of my meetings were vaguely annoying, but I survived them. And then I wrote again after work, since I had a writing date set up with Veronica and Anne - we're all doing nanowrimo, so it's been great to reconnect (albeit completely virtually).

But by 6:45 I was done with working/writing. So I made my charcuterie plate, finished my glass of wine, and read the rest of NINTH HOUSE. It was excellent - it had started out slow, but it was really good and twisty since it was basically a magical murder mystery (and with Yale secret societies, which is my jam). Only bummer is that I thought it was a standalone and it is instead the beginning of a series, and the next book likely won't be out until 2022. But, it already got optioned by Amazon Studios for a tv show, so hopefully that means the next book will actually come out at some point because I have feelings about that ending.

And now I need to sleep - goodnight!

better nix my summer plans

Today was pretty good, although I was tired by the end of it - I didn't get enough sleep, and I intend to rectify that posthaste. But I dragged myself out of bed in time to write, so that was a delight. And then I showered, slogged all day, took a break to eat a poke bowl, and took another break to have class with Alyssa. When that was over, I made dinner while talking to [censored] - he was good, but my porkchop, polenta, and brussels sprouts were even better.

Then I was tired, so I doomscrolled and cleaned my kitchen. And then I had an 8:30pm meeting with someone in India and did another hour of work right after. But now I've gotten through what I need to get through, and I'm going to read a bit and go to bed - goodnight!

scroll and key

I have no updates of note, but that rarely stops me. I woke up in time to meditate and write before work; I am still behind on nanowrimo, but I got a thousand words this morning and I’ll take it. Then I showered and slogged; the slogging wasn’t the most effective, but it was better than nothing.

I stopped slightly early and took a walk, but it was colder than I thought and I wasn’t prepared for it, so I came home before I froze. Then I had a virtual happy hour with Caroline; we had dreamed of meeting outside in person, but it’s too cold for outside and cases are spiking too much to be inside, so we went virtual instead. I ate some fancy cheese and drank a glass of wine while talking to her, and it was great.

Then, I should have done many tings, but instead I did a bit of kitchen work, made a bologna sandwich, and read NINTH HOUSE for a couple of hours. I really just want to finish it, but I can’t stay up any later if I want to write tomorrow...so it’s time for bed!

somebody's ripping you off, trying to sell you good news

I'm super super tired, probably because I got up at 7:30 by accident (after going to bed at one, after getting not nearly enough sleep any night last week). So I'm blogging early and am going to crawl into bed and finish the book I started last night and absolutely not start any of the other books that are waiting to tempt me.

Today was good overall, though - I messed around, made some delicious hash (potatoes, onions, green pepper, bacon) and ate it with a couple of fried eggs, and then had a writing date with Veronica. The writing went well, although it took an unexpected turn; I wrote a little bit more tonight to see where it's headed, and so far I like it. We shall see, we shall see.

When I was done talking to V, I did some house stuff. I also raked my back patio, which took some effort; my big tree is lovely in summer, but it dumped all its leaves at once and my patio was a disaster. I got it mostly cleaned up, with some leaves left behind as mulch for my shrubbery, so that felt pretty good.

Then I talked to [censored] while eating a snack. And then I walked down to my favorite cheese shop to buy some chorizo; there's a chickpea and chorizo cassoulet that I last made approx fifteen years ago, and I'm thinking it might be time to resurrect it. When I got home, I did some chopping of vegetables, then called my parents. And then I finished prepping dinner - I made fish tacos, which were delicious, and now I have enough leftovers for tomorrow that I could potentially not cook if I don't want to, but we shall see.

Then I cleaned up my kitchen, came upstairs, wrote for a little bit, and now you're all caught up. It's time for me to read and go to bed - goodnight!

when the rain washes you clean you'll know

I had a good day, but I'm really tired and probably should have honored my body's post-time-change desires and gone to bed thirty minutes ago. I spent the day taking care of a variety of tings - I tidied my utensil drawers in my kitchen, rearranged some stuff in my laundry room, did three loads of laundry, started clearing some unnecessary things out of my guest room, etc. I also had a writing date with Veronica - I'm doing NaNoWriMo this month (which is how I started my first book oh so many years ago) and I wanted to kick off well. So far so good and I had some good ideas this morning, so hopefully I can maintain/increase momentum.

I then took care of some outdoor stuff, including installing a camera in my garage - I'm not particularly worried about break-ins, but I am paranoid about whether I remembered to shut my garage door, so this seemed like a good idea. I then marinated some chicken, and while that was marinating, I called my parents. That took longer than usual, and I was starving by the end, so I almost ordered takeout....but I had already preheated the grill, so I persevered and made my chicken fajitas instead. They turned out great - the marinade for the chicken makes it possible to grill boneless skinless chicken breast without losing all the moisture, and grilling peppers/onions in a grill basket is stupidly easy. I paired it with some spanish rice (also a winner) and some canned refried beans (not fancy, but secretly my fave), and it was all good.

Then I doomscrolled a bit, folded a bunch of laundry, put the grill away, and painted my toenails. And now I really need to sleep - goodnight!

i can't hold back, i'm on the edge

Today was entertaining, productive, ridiculous, and many other things; it was also longer than usual, as evidenced by the fact that I'm still up at 11:40pm when I usually go to bed at ten. I feel less pressure to go to bed because I don't have to get up early; my first meeting is in the San Francisco office at eleven, which is infinitely better than the Mountain View office at seven.

But the more embarrassing reason why I'm still awake is because I got so caught up in "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" that I didn't get enough work done. For whatever reason, the string of fine programs that Adit and I watched tonight included "60 Minutes", "Paul Blart: Mall Cop", and "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans". How embarrassing is that? I had actually been proud of myself for not going to see any of the "Underworld" movies in the theatres, thinking that that was a bridge too far; but now, I've broken the seal, and I'm sad and disgraced by the fact that I really want to see the others. Sigh.

In other news, I did manage to drag myself out of the office around 5:30, and I went to Cafe Borrone to write for a little over an hour. I was incredibly productive, writing 1897 words (two hundred more than the amount required to stay ahead of the game), which made me feel good about my progress even when I spilled my diet coke all over the counter and down my front when I got my free refill.

Upon further reflection, today was just a richness of embarrassments, given that I spilled all over everything and watched that stupid movie. I shall persevere, though; I wouldn't be myself if I didn't embarrass myself on a regular basis, so I shall survive. Now, though, I shall go to bed so that I can rejuvenate for a weekend of writing. Goodnight!

promote synergies

The time change is really wreaking havoc with my sleep schedule -- or perhaps I'm just feeling slightly overworked and so am tiring more easily. I suppose it's understandable that I'm ready to go to bed, since I made it down to Mountain View for a 7:30am meeting and then was really busy all day. I had a nice break around 4:30 for coffee with a few members of my old old team (Tolu, Vickie, and Erin), which was great; they were the team that I was on before I went on leave (almost two years ago, hard to believe). Then, I managed to take an hour or so out tonight to have a cafe au lait and write at Cafe Borrone, hitting approximately six pages and nearly meeting my NaNoWriMo goal for the day. I'm really proud of that; rather than throwing in the towel and going home like I wanted to, I forced myself to be as productive as possible with the writing for a concentrated burst of time, and it really paid of. NaNoWriMo is really helping to get me back on track with Madeleine and Ferguson -- hopefully I'll have a first draft by the end of the month!

But, when I came home, I worked for a couple of hours; the big boss is in Singapore/Indonesia, so I get requests from her at odd times, and I had some stuff that I had to deal with tonight. I have another handful of things that I should have done tonight as well, but I'm going to try going to bed and getting up early. It's always a dangerous approach since I have a nasty habit of hitting snooze for as long as possible, but hopefully I will remember all these pressing things when I wake up in the morning. Now, though, it's time for bed!

Oh, that reminds me -- Natasha suggested today that perhaps I should come up with a new tagline; I usually close with 'it's time for bed' because blogging is the last thing I do before I go to sleep, bu perhaps I need something snappier like "here's looking at you" or "that's the way it was" or "yippee-ai-oh, mini sirloin burgers". Suggestions?

out here the bell don't ring

This is a four-minute post. Today was pretty uneventful at work; I was forty minutes late to my eight a.m. meeting due to traffic, which put me in a rather bad mood all morning. But, I was pretty productive during the day, and so was able to leave at 5:30 p.m. to go to Cafe Borrone and make progress on NaNoWriMo. I didn't hit the 1667 word goal, but I got to 1344, which is pretty good; with yesterday's surplus, I'm still ahead. I'm going to get up tomorrow morning and write from home for a couple of hours before going into the San Francisco office, so hopefully I'll stay on track. I have dinner plans tomorrow night that will hamper my ability to write in the evening (although dinner will be super fun, so that's fine), but I'm trying to be really diligent, and giving up on the third day would not be good.

After Cafe Borrone (where I had a delicious black bean and vegetable soup), I finally bought the groceries that I had tried and failed to buy all weekend, then drove back to the evil city. I should have worked tonight, but I couldn't bring myself to do it; instead, I'm going to go to bed so that I can keep slogging forward with the book. Goodnight!

a unique talkshow host

I meant to be in bed half an hour ago, but I've been messing around with my laptop and taking an inordinate amount of time to get ready for bed, so this post will be quick. I'm quite pleased with my day; while I didn't get up quite as early as I intended, I still managed to pump out ~3500 words (about fifteen pages) for the first day of National Novel Writing Month (heretofore referred to as NaNoWriMo). That's about twice as many words as the daily word count needed to stay on track to hit 50,000 words by the end of November, and I feel pretty good about what I wrote today, so I need to keep up the momentum! I blocked off time on my work calendar on either mornings or evenings all week to write for a couple of hours each day, which should be enough to hit the necessary word counts and set myself up well for another marathon writing session next weekend.

I probably could have written longer, since I only really wrote from eleven to three, but I decided to go in search of groceries before my required Sunday afternoon phone call with my parents. However, the parking lots at both Whole Foods and Safeway were full; while I could have circled and parked on the street, I knew that I would not want to venture into either store if there were no parking spaces, since that implies that there were hoards of scavenging disasters inside, and I was in no mood to stand in line. Perhaps I'll go to the grocery store tomorrow after I've hit my word count for the day, but we shall see. So I came home emptyhanded, spent a few minutes finally completing the unpacking job from last week's trip to Dallas, and then called my parents. We had a v. good conversation, talking for almost an hour and a half before parting ways. Then, I ate a bowl of frosted flakes (one of my comfort foods, oddly enough) and watched a bit of a Craig Ferguson episode from last week. But then I talked to Vidya, and we decided to get a snacky snack before the movie we were going to see, so the frosted flakes were ultimately a waste for reasons which will become abundantly clear in a moment.

Vidya wanted to try this dive/hole in the wall Vietnamese place next to the movie theatre, and I was highly amenable to that suggestion. The place really was a hole in the wall, and small enough that we were practically sitting on top of the cook, giving us perhaps too much insight into how greasy the food was and the crazy process that goes into cooking it. For instance, she was keeping the egg rolls (which were called imperial rolls, likely because they were the size of four egg roles smushed together) warm by occasionally tossing them back into the fryer. I ordered a combo so that I could try several things at once; Vidya ordered the garlicky tofu since she's a vegetarian and they seem to be heavier on the meat side of the menu.

The verdict? it was delicious, and a ton of food for only $10 each (including my diet coke). My combination was one imperial roll, some 'shish kebab' (really flattened skirt-type steak or something cooked on a griddle), some shredded cabbage, and a whole ton of rice covered in 'meat sauce' (which was some sort of strangely pasta-sauce-like tomato-based sauce with pork in it, which was okay but didn't really go well with the shish kebab). I also tried a bite of Vidya's dish, and it was quite delicious as well. But the end result was that because they were packed and we didn't want to rush our food once we finally got it, we missed the movie. Instead, we ate leisurely, enjoyed ourselves, and continued our conversation over Turkish coffees at the restaurant around the corner from Vidya's place. So we ended up hanging out for exactly the amount of time it would have taken to see the movie, but it was a much more social event (even if I still know nothing about black people's hair, which was the topic of the movie we were supposed to see). We'll try to see it again later in the week, but I wasn't too disappointed, since this was still the perfect cap to a great weekend.

Now, though, I really must go to bed; I have an eight a.m. meeting, and then I need to slog diligently throughout the day so that I can get out of there at five p.m. to write. Wish me luck!