white knuckles and sweaty palms from hanging on too tight

Today was better than yesterday....not a ton better at the office, but I had some downtime that allowed me to get a few things done so it was better than nothing. The new office space makes me v. happy - the food in our new cafe is excellent, and it's nice having a barista area to work in (it makes me feel, momentarily, that I'm #funemployed instead of working for the man).

But I was also happy because I left at 4:30 to drive into Denver - I had a dinner that I got invited to by someone on LinkedIn, and it appeared that the group was mostly comprised of other fairly senior female leaders in tech, finance, science, etc. I didn't know anyone there (the person who invited me was the founder of the group, but she's based in NYC), but it was good to step outside of my comfort zone and the Boulder bubble and meet some new people.

The dinner was at Beatrice and Woodsley, which was a v. hip, SF-style restaurant near 1st and Broadway (which is also a far hipper environment than Boulder...I stayed near there in an airbnb when I was exploring moving here, and I probably would have moved to that area if I wasn't working in Boulder). There were about 35 women there in total, with a wide variety of experiences and interests, and I mostly really enjoyed it (even though it was a lot of small talk). I met some cool people, had some great food, and exchanged numbers at the end with a woman who seemed fun, so it was worth the drive.

But now it's 11:30 and I'm desperate for sleep - goodnight!

falling out of love with molly

I feel like I should just draw a veil over today and try again tomorrow. But I at least got a bit of work done, and took a walk, and bought groceries, and set up my new phone (I'm back to Android after a sojourn in iPhone-land - thanks to my desire for the new Pixel and my more practical desire to switch to Google Fi, which will make for cheap/easy data worldwide + the ability to get better service at my parents' house). I also binged some of last season's Top Chef, which was not strictly necessary but was better than aimlessly browsing through twitter.

But tomorrow's another day, and I intend to seize it - goodnight!

the bombs bursting in air

Today was a lovely mix of work, fun, and olympics - if only all days could be this gorgeous. I woke up around 7:30, messed around the apartment and did some cleaning, and then made it to Philz by nine, where I worked for a couple of hours. I didn't write anything, but I started reading a fascinating book called 'Green Retreats', about women's relationships to gardens and gardening in eighteenth century Britain. I only made it through the introduction, and I'm looking forward to reading the other sections (each section is about a different gardener - mostly rich women who also had time to write journals/correspondence, so obviously a lot of women have been erased from the historical record entirely). It's much more of a sociological study than it is about gardens themselves so far, but it's giving me a lot of ideas about Lucy's character and what might have mattered to her.

So that was great, and I didn't really want to leave - I probably could have gotten another coffee, and then had lunch at some comfy place nearby, and been quite content to read all day. But I had to meet up with Bill and Ritu, who have arrived to prepare for their nuptials (which they claim are still happening). They got to my place and dragged all their luggage up here, and then we walked down to Arlequin and had lunch and wine in the sun (the wine shouldn't be a surprise, since that's what we do together). Then they went to City Hall to get their marriage license, and I came home and took care of some tings.

When they were done with that, we dragged all their stuff back downstairs and took it to the airbnb where Ritu and her family are staying this week. It's a lovely house, and hopefully everything is smooth this week. We also tasted some riesling for the wedding (which I've apparently had for days - it was shipped to me by the venue so that they could taste it today and make a decision).

Then, Bill and I came back to my place (he's staying here for one night only before picking up his family tomorrow and checking in to a hotel), and I set up my new gadget - I realized yesterday that my livestream of the Olympics was skipping really badly on the Chromecast, but wasn't skipping much at all on my laptop, so decided that maybe the issue was the Chromecast (which is several years old at this point). So I ordered a Roku Stick ($50) on Amazon, and somehow got free one-day shipping, so it was here this afternoon.

It turns out to be a great decision - my livestream hasn't skipped at all tonight, and the quality is way better than the Chromecast was (close to HD). It also has its own remote and on-screen interface, so after I was done setting it up, I don't need to use my laptop or phone to stream. It still needs a cable subscription for most of the apps to work properly, but it's slick enough that I'm happy with it as-is and probably won't bother hooking up real tv at this point.

So needless to say, as soon as I was on my couch and ready to watch Olympics, I didn't leave it. I had tried to watch men's gymnastics before Ritu and Bill arrived, but when I tried to finish watching it this afternoon (while Ritu and Bill were at the courthouse), the results were spoiled by the app, so I gave up. After Bill left, I ate supper (leftover pasta, yum) and took a nap, and then I watched the full evening coverage (still ongoing) while answering a bunch of emails, taking care of my face via mud masks, etc. My favorite moment, of course, was Michael Phelps' death stare, but it was all fun - and I'm going to have to pack in as many livestreams as possible over the next two weeks now that my devices are all working properly.

But now, I need to get some sleep - I have to do some grooming/shopping activities for the wedding tomorrow, and I have dinner plans, and I need to keep reading about gardening and also watching Olympics (women's gymnastics!). Goodnight!

come on over baby

I'm going to actually try to go to bed before 12:30, which would be a new record for my time at home. Today was okay, all in all, although I got very little done, and what I tried to get done ended up breaking everything....

I spent most of the morning/afternoon hanging out on the patio. It was only seventy-ish degrees and cloudy all day, so it wasn't the most beautiful day on the patio ever, but it was probably way more comfortable than it will be tomorrow, when it should hit 95 degrees again. My mom joined me for quite a bit of this, which was lovely. We also took a break to help [censored] with [censored] before he [censored], although it's unclear whether [censored] survived the adventure (fingers crossed!). And I spent a little bit of time scribbling notes about Lucy's story in my notebook - I want to start writing this week, or at least have a better sense of where the story is headed.

Eventually, though, I came inside and ate the bounty of my dad's afternoon activity - he used his smoker to make ribs, along with an experiment in pork belly, and it was all so fucking good. I am fond of pork, while [censored] isn't, so it's a good thing he had to [censored]. But the ribs were delicious and the pork belly was fantastic (and would be even more fantastic if it were grilled or fried after being smoked), and my mom's potatoes and green beans were a delightful addition.

So we mostly didn't talk while eating all of that, since we were all in our own individual hog heavens (had to, #sorrynotsorry). Then I started messing around with my website again, and I tried a new wordpress theme that broke everything (including my old theme). I got it back to the point where it's a viable website again, but I need to decide whether to keep going down the wordpress route, or whether to finish the Squarespace site that I was playing around with (which looks very pretty, but has some limitations), or whether to do something else entirely. Decisions, decisions.

But now I really need to sleep - there's lots I want to get done tomorrow (mostly sitting in the sun drinking coffee, rather than sitting in the clouds drinking coffee) - goodnight!

i'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies

My day started off with some unofficial work as tech support for my dad - as mentioned, his phone died an unexpected death last night, so we went into town to get him a new one. It's a sign of the times that there are basically no viable retail businesses in town, but there is a fully-stocked cellphone store because cellphones are now required utilities. So we got him hooked up with a new phone, and it was all mostly seamless, so that was good.

Then we came home, and I spent an hour messing around with the registration options for the conference I'm going to in Hawaii in February (yes, my life is hard). After lunch, I did another three hours' worth of work, which felt really good (even if it wasn't what I intended to work on over break). I might even get some more writing done later this week, but tomorrow is unlikely since I need to finish Christmas shopping with [censored] and so may [censored].

Eventually, it was time for supper (leftovers, yum), and then I watched some fine CBS programming while finishing the setup for my dad's phone. And now, on all that incredibly boring stuff, I'm going to sleep and hope that I get nine hours before tomorrow's adventures - goodnight!

needle in the hay

First, I would like to state for the record that if you have noticed an unusual number of typos recently, it's because I have been writing my posts on my phone or ipad instead of on my laptop. I actually didn't have anything to drink on Friday and only a glass of wine on Saturday, but the autocorrect and other smartphone typing issues made me sound like I was ragingly drunk both nights. My apologies for the degraded quality of my entries - while I can't promise to do better in the future, please be assured that typos are almost certainly not an indication of the state of my blood alcohol level.

sssanyway, today was utterly lazy - I slept late, ate breakfast at my hotel, packed my stuff, and drove back to the evil city. Then I was going to write all afternoon, but instead I took a long nap, talked to my family for quite some time, and generally lazed about and indulged my headache and vague, exhausted malaise. I was supposed to have dinner with Tammy, but I bailed and rescheduled for tomorrow. Instead, I continued to laze about, although I did get my ipad set up with my new portable keyboard and a new method of syncing between Scrivener (my writing software), Dropbox, and a text app for the iPad so that I can work on Thorington all the time without having to lug around my laptop and destroy my shoulder in the process. This is, hopefully, a v. good thing, even if the keyboard (upon which I am typing now) is ridiculously small even for my ridiculously small, childlike hands. But if I have to alternate between sparing my back by carrying this around, then sparing my wrists by switching to the laptop, so be it.

But now I must sleep since I have this thing called the day job tomorrow, which requires some level of productivity and general availability. I know, life is hard. Goodnight!

maybe i'm going deaf, maybe i'm going blind

Bleh...no words. Work was fine, but I continue to be subjected to the whims of others (which I suppose is why it's work and not something else). So I left at five, checked my mail in Palo Alto, and had a dinner for one (replete with half a margarita) while working on Alex and Prudence. It was going pretty well until someone sat too close to me at the bar and I suddenly got uncomfortable typing about nipples and what Alex was or wasn't doing to them, so I came home. Then I talked to [censored], and then I was going to write, but instead I vegged out and read a v. long piece on Marissa Mayer's rise to power. Yes, useful.

Now I must sleep, since I don't have her ability to get by on four hours of sleep. Goodnight!

she's walking on fire

I should have gone to bed two hours ago, but sleeping for an hour on the shuttle gave me a second wind, which I put to good use reformatting my first two books. Since my attempt last night ended in utter failure, I started from scratch and formatted both books myself so that I can make changes whenever my heart desires going forward - and it looks like this attempt was far more successful. I need to check them on my devices just to be sure, which I will do tomorrow, but i'm glad that task is done.

The rest of my day was not noteworthy. I made it to the 7:50 shuttle, got to the office by nine, grabbed breakfast, and slogged all day (with a break to have lunch with Amy Mac, one of my coworkers from ye olden days). Then, I had dinner with Terry at Fiesta del Mar, since she was down in MTV for some work stuff, and it was extremely tasty, as always. Rather than drive back with a full belly, I dropped my car off at work and took the shuttle home (and took the aforementioned nap), and then spent the last three hours staring intently at my computer and formatting my books. And now, I must sleep; I need to slog more tomorrow, and getting up is going to be brutal if I don't go to bed immediately. Goodnight!

css sucks

I am v. pleased to report that Nick and Ellie are officially, finally done. YAY. I finished inputting my post-proofreading edits this morning, then took a break, then talked to [censored], who had been gracious enough to [censored], which was super helpful. I also talked to my parents at some point, and I ran out to grab a burger with Terry (not quite the same as the lovely French restaurant we had discussed going to last night, but at least it was food, and at least I left the house).

But the majority of the afternoon/evening was spent finishing the formatting, which I think turned out really well - we'll see if I get any major complaints about usability issues. I reverse engineered another ebook to figure out why my ebook was having some weird inter-paragraph spacing issues on Nook; while I didn't figure out why it was only doing it on Nook and not on iBooks or Kindle, I did figure out how to fix it, so score one for that. It involved changing a bunch of css stylesheets and copious amounts of testing to make sure I hadn't broken something else, but it looks good on all of my devices and web reading apps, so I'm hoping there aren't any edge cases where it fails unexpectedly.

Anyway, I sent it to my agent around nine, then spent some quality time emailing people who had won copies of it in previous contests to let them know it's done. And then I said a brief farewell to Terry, who is leaving for NYC tomorrow (and is likely glad to have a break from me, since she said I reached a nadir sometime this afternoon - I was v., v. cranky from formatting, and apparently this crankiness leaked out more than I usually let it). It's sad that I reached a nadir, but that could have been the aftermath of this morning's champagne - we had book club at Lauren's, which was awesome and lovely, although I didn't even start to read the book because I had intended to take a break and do it this weekend and instead I spent the whole weekend reading css stylesheets and being hungover. Stupid. But it was good to see the book club people, even if I was woefully unprepared.

And now, I must sleep at once - I have this other job that I have to go to tomorrow, and I'm planning to get up at six a.m. so that I can make it into the office before traffic becomes atrocious. Goodnight!

hungry like the wolf

Day two was great, and much better than day one, if only because I spent almost all of it either getting to know my new team or plowing through my v. long orientation to-do list. I also took the shuttle, which was amazing. Granted, I got nothing done because I decided to try just sitting both ways to avoid getting carsick (success). But I think I'm at the point where I'll accept that the shuttle may take an extra ten or fifteen minutes due to walking + extra stops, in exchange for the fact that I showed up at work relaxed and not full of adrenaline from hating on other drivers for an hour. I'm going to try reading or doing email tomorrow and see where that gets me; hopefully for the sake of camaraderie it doesn't get me puking all over the person next to me.

Anyway, I cut out of work, came home, grabbed a burger at Roam since I have no groceries in the house, and then was theoretically going to write - but of course that didn't happen. Instead, I played with the new Nexus 7" tablet that someone on my team handed me today - this is how they wow you into giving up your soul. And I've gotta say, the tablet is pretty incredible - especially for the price, I don't know why anyone would buy the iPad over the Nexus 7" at this point, unless they truly need a much bigger tablet device.

Yes, I've drunk the koolaid. But I'd already drunk the koolaid, so this is more of a refresher than a new thing. And now, I'm going to go to sleep at this absurdly early hour so that I can catch an early-ish shuttle in the morning - this is all v. strange and surreal, but I want to see if this get-up-at-six thing can work for me. Blergh. Goodnight!