A Cool And Windy Morning

It's a cool morning with a brisk wind from the south here in this part of California. It's the sort of wind that seems to be promising rain but according to the weather app on my iPhone there isn't any expected until tonight.  Wouldn't be the first time that a weather forecast was wrong though.

As I've been healing from the incostal sprain that I wrote about earlier I hit a milestone last night.  It was the first night that I was able to sleep on my side.  I am naturally a side sleeper so it was nice. I feel like I've gotten my first good night sleep in three weeks.  There was some discomfort but nothing major and certainly not enough to prevent me from dropping off into dreamland pretty smoothly.

It's a full work week ahead of me, a five day week.  I have mentioned before that we work a 9/80 schedule with every other Friday off.  Last Friday was my day off so I am just wrapping up a three day weekend.  It was a good weekend, very slow, very easy and very relaxing.

I went out and saw "Keeping Up With The Joneses" down at AMC 14 in Saratoga Sunday afternoon.  It was light and entertaining, with a great little cast.  I wouldn't run out at see it, but if you're looking for a pleasant bit of time at an enjoyable movie then it is worth it.

I'm not really ready to take up the work mantle yet, but that is partly why I am sitting here drinking a cup of coffee and trying to ease deliberately into the day. 

I haven't watched the Walking Dead yet, though I may watch it soon enough.  Sadly, I think the series jumped the shark last year and I just couldn't work any enthusiasm up for it's return. They drug out the appearance of Negan so long and then they didn't deliver in the last episode - and that was enough to lose me.  I was a fairly loyal fan, but they stretched that out.  It will be curious to see how this season goes over all.

My nephew, whom I live with, watched it last night and spent part of the morning telling me what happened.  It was okay and not a spoiler because, like I mentioned above, the series kind of lost me last year.

A Semblance of Something Ordinary

I think if I have an overall feeling right now it would be - mostly tired.  Mainly tired from the aftermath of the food poisoning.  Though I am much better, I feel like I am catching up on my sleep.  I am generally trying to push nine or ten hours of sleep a night.  I deliberately kept this weekend as low key as I could in order to get the maximum amount of rest and relaxation out of it.

On Saturday I saw the new Dwayne Johnson movie over at Cupertino Square and followed it with dinner at TGIF.

On Sunday, it was breakfast with the guys and then we spent most of the day getting Tony's large things moved out of his apartment and up into the new shared apartment in Fremont that he is moving into.  It went fairly well for a move, all in all.  There was me, Tony, Bob and Pierre and his new roommate Dan and his wife.  There was enough hands to spread the work around, though Tony still has a lot of stuff to move, the bulk stuff is over to the new place.

From there, I came home, tried to take a nap that kept getting interrupted, then watched the latest episode of The Walking Dead (excellent as usual).  There is a new show coming on the History Channel that starts tonight that I am going to watch - "The Vikings".  It looks like it might be pretty interesting. Then, an early bed and a good night sleep, probably with a call to my step-dad mixed in there somewhere.

 My plan is to keep things very low key this week and do my best to catch up on my rest and my sleep and get my life hammered back around into a semblance of something ordinary.

Sunday's Chronicle

I made today an easy day. I slept until about seven a.m., then woke to the sound of heavy rain.  I laid there in bed for a while savoring the sound, that quiet rush of water cascading off the roof of the apartment building, the steady hiss of the rain on the street outside, the occasional loud pop of a large drop against the bedroom window. I rolled out of bed, splashed through the shower, had a cup of coffee then sat and thought and meditated and otherwise enjoyed the rain.

Breakfast at the Hickory Pit with Tony followed.  The restaurant itself was only half full, due to the heavy rain, and it was dark and gloomy outside.  After breakfast I swung over to Target to pick up some odds and ends, then a stop at Michael's and Ross for the same reason. I took a leisurely walk around the mall and people watched for a while, before heading home to a quiet afternoon.

I spent the afternoon split between family calls, true crime stories on the History Channel, and setting my Christmas tree and decorations up.  The only thing I haven't done yet is hand the lights.  I am going to have to wait until the rain stops before I do that, since on the outer string I have to use duct tape to hold the lights in place. My Christmas tree looks great though, I will have to take a picture of it and share that picture with you all.

I took a short nap about three in the afternoon, but actually just kind of laid there, not quite napping, not quite awake, simply admiring the colors of the tree outside the bedroom window, since the afternoon sun had broken out.  About four p.m. I went over to meet Tony for an early dinner at El Burro in the Pruneyard.  I had enchilda suiza, chicken, with rice, beans and cheese.  It was heavy and filling meal, but because I had skipped lunch, it did not weigh me down.

From there, I took a walk through Barnes and Noble (and managed to not buy anything, but I did take pictures of the covers of a couple of books so I will remember to look them up the next time I go through there), then drove home to watch the season finale of "The Walking Dead".  Outstanding bit of television, all in all, and a great mid-season finale.

The rest of the evening is going to be "Once Upon A Time" and then reading.  I am anticipating a full week at work with two main problems that I would like to solve in the early days of the week. One of them is about eight hours of just grinding through details, so I am going to try and clear my calendar so I can deal with that.  I am holding out the hope that, hour wise, it will be a regular week.  And not the regular 12 hour week, but a regular week.

A Simple Weekend, More or Less

It was a nice weekend, though work felt like the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.  My calendar is mostly clear tomorrow, so I should be able to pull a productive day out of it.  I worked for a couple of hours today, but I couldn't really say that I accomplished anything significant. It was more of a shuffling of data in different directions.

Sunday was a mellow day.  Had breakfast with Bob and Tony, then stopped to pick up a couple of new pairs of blue jeans, then up to Edgie's to play a few hours of pool (I won, 4 out of 7 games), then Patxi's for a pizza, a leisurely after pizza walk - then home to Mythbusters and the Walking Dead and a quiet evening reading The Cloud Atlas.

In short, it was a very ordinary Sunday, which is just what the doctor ordered.  I hope I have a productive week at work and I hope everyone else has a productive week, because we have a lot of ground to try and cover in way too few days and hours.  I am going to try and not psych myself out over the whole thing - going to try and stay focused and stay productive, but that is never easy, especially not in the environment that we currently find ourselves in.

I am enjoying sitting in the quiet of the living room, reading, this evening, since I've turn the television off. I think I am going to slip into bed early today, just so I can read and ease into sleep, to prepare for the week to come.

A Fragmentary Day

Monday, Monday, Monday.

I am in the shadow between lunch and my next meeting, having spent the lion's share of the day in meetings already - with two more to go - this is my chance to stop long enough to take a deep breath and contemplate the day. I have fragments of thoughts running through my mind today, without a coherent theme. So, I thought I would just record some of those fragments.

Fragment 1: I dreamed of zombies last night, so all credit and praise to the folks behind AMC's "The Walking Dead". Truly awesome television. The cast is truly outstanding - not a weak link in the chain, and the creative team is pulling together an epic little tale.

Fragment 2: Ahhh, the desktop support organization is the principle source of my frustration here at work. A pox upon their house! What vexes me the most is if they run into a problem with the slightest bit of complexity, they switch from "fix" to "dodge" as their mental state. If they expended the amount of energy on trouble-shooting and fixing the deep problems as they do on dodging them - they could probably fix them and have time to run to Starbucks.

Fragment 3: How can you possibly serve watermelon that isn't ripe and not notice it isn't ripe when you cut it and mix the salad? Hint - watermelon should not be solid!

Fragment 4: Midget porn stars and abnormal genitals. (Hahaha - that was a fragment of conversation with T.R. last night that I have been secretly laughing about all day.)

Fragment 5: I've had so many meetings on so many subjects today that I've given up on any possibility of having a deep thought today. Five meetings this morning and two more to go in the afternoon.

Fragment 6: Shortly after writing Fragment 5, I got completely sidelined by a great article on http://www.the99percent.com entitled "What Happened To Downtime? The Extinction of Deep Thinking & Sacred Space." that had been tweeted by the talented actress Meredith Salenger, who has an enjoyable little twitter stream.

And the point is?

The point is - it has been a fragmentary day.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Wayfarers at Rest

It was productive day today - breakfast with friends, repaired the updater and bios on a friends computer, helped another friend move the contents of his apartment from storage to his new studio apartment, had a late lunch at El Burro, circled home, then circled back out to pick up and deliver a mattress, then home for a hot bath and now relaxing into the evening watching the season premiere of "The Walking Dead". The day flew by quickly without a lot of time for introspection and that was pretty nice. My shoulder is mostly healed, though I was very careful not to strain it while helping with the move today. Today's picture is of my Wayfarers sitting on the bench outside of El Burro in Campbell.