another shot of whiskey, can't stop looking at the door

Today was great, although I got sucked into doing yet another presentation - it was another variant of the one I did yesterday, but someone else on the team was supposed to do it to spread the load. But he chickened out at the last minute and said I was better prepped than him, so asked me to do it instead. In his defense, he was on kid duty today and so it was probably better for me to do it since his kids kept interrupting him - but still, I was pretty sure this audience was going to be particularly tough and I had been looking forward to him getting murdered instead of me.

However, I survived and emerged mostly unscathed, so I guess it went well. I also had a bunch of other meetings, but I meditated and journaled outside this morning (lovely!), then ate lunch outside, and I also took a walk around the block while my dinner was cooking, and then I read outside. It was a pretty idyllic day outside, obviously, and my patio stays nice almost all the time anyway because it's pretty perfectly shaded most of the day.

My last meeting was with the guy who threw the presentation to me at the last minute, and we decided to have that meeting while also having an adult beverage, so my day ended with a cold moscow mule and hot gossip. Then I baked some lemon chicken, and I also took out all my trash/recycling/compost and did two loads of laundry and ran the dishwasher. I ended the evening by reading a few chapters of THE CHIFFON TRENCHES by André Leon Talley - Talley is in his seventies, and was an incredibly influential fashion columnist and tastemaker for decades. I weirdly like fashion and know a lot about designers despite the fact that I'm currently wearing ratty old gym shorts and a shirt with a hole in it, so I'm v. much enjoying the gossip he's spilling about Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent, and a ton of other fashion types. But because he was a columnist for so long, he's also an excellent writer - and interspersed with the fashion anecdotes (people did a lot of drugs in the seventies) are some really traumatic personal anecdotes, which makes for a really interesting and surprising read.

And now I need to sleep - goodnight!

jack and coke soaked in my bones

Today felt long, even though it wasn't bad...but I wasn't feeling particularly productive, which made my meetings all feel just slightly more annoying. When I was done at the end of the day, I spent more time than I wanted to making tings in the kitchen - I decided to make twice-baked potatoes, which I really enjoy and like to have in the freezer for future meals. While those were cooking, I also poached some chicken, cooked extra bacon, and boiled eggs for cobb salads. This was all a good idea and I'll be grateful for it later, but today it meant that I got multiple pans, knives, cutting boards, etc dirty and had to do more cleanup than I like to do, especially on work nights.

But cooking was good overall, and while I cooked I watched a speech given by a scifi author - he was speaking "at Stanford", but that really meant over Zoom. It was cosponsored by my major department (which is why I knew about it, since they sent a list to their alumni group) and the creative writing department, about the difference between science and magic in creative writing. The topic was v. interesting to me since that's a theme of my off-again/on-again young adult fantasy; I would say the talk wasn't quite what I expected, but it was interesting enough to think about while I cooked.

Then I ate dinner, messed around, played some Animal Crossing (turnip prices are lookin' good!) and now it's time for bed. Goodnight!