Tidbits

I might really be done with the writing project now. Today I actually worked on something else for an hour and a half. I have a feeling I'm going to be working on the leftover grunt work for awhile, but I'm not sure I care. My sense of fulfillment and reward has been so ground down that I'd do pretty much anything if it wasn't writing that document.

I was sick yesterday--I'm not sure with what--but the upshot seems to be that my neck and back are all messed up again. My next visit with Sunshine may come sooner rather than later.

We went in on Saturday and put a down payment on the new kitchen countertops. New sink, new faucet, Tom's planning to tile the wall for the backsplash. He started working on running the gas line for the new stove. We also decided to get a new dishwasher "while we're at it" (they have to drill holes for it in the countertop), but we haven't picked that out yet. Pretty exciting. But we have to clean out the kitchen before they do it, and cover everything or put plastic over it because of the dust. Sounds like a big mess. Also an opportunity to toss stuff that is in the cupboards that we never use, but I know we won't do it. You never know when you might want that.

On a lighter note

Since I was grumpy in the last post, I'll try to be more upbeat. (That was Thursday night, the end of my week; today is the first day of a three-day weekend!)

Several nice things have happened lately. Last week I took my car in to have the interior "detailed." Now it is all clean and shiny inside. No more dog nose prints on the windows. The seats and carpets are clean. There is no dust, no schmutz, no ground cereal in every crevice. Even the scratches on the dash from Tucker's toenails seem much less noticeable. It's like having a new car! Which is nice for a little Corolla that just rolled over 100,000 miles (in less than five years!).

The other thing was that my daughters and son-in-law gave me a gift certificate for my birthday for massages at a local spa. I went in for the first one on Sunday afternoon. The gift was well-timed because my back had really been hurting lately. I've only ever had a few massages, and they were all the Swedish style. I've never had any Shiatsu, except perhaps for a 10-minute chair massage. This place does "fusion" massage, which means they combine the two styles. I'm no massage expert, but I believe Shiatsu is the sort of massage where they find the little balls of muscle tension and work them slowly toward a bone, where they press on them while you ponder just how long you can tolerate whatever level of pain this is called. My masseuse's name was Sunshine. She was quiet, a little shy, but she has arms and fingers of steel. The room was toasty warm and dark, and they had a CD of ocean waves playing. The massage was great, especially after it was over. Sunshine says I should not be feeling "discomfort" during the massage, so I guess next time I'll have to have her back off a bit, but I thought this was one of those no-pain-no-gain instances. Want to get my money's worth and all that. I could go for another one right about now.

Update: I wrote the first part of this post yesterday at the beauty salon while getting a perm. Then I published it hastily last night before bed, tired and with an aching head. Thus I forgot to mention the outcome of the massage. My neck, shoulders, and back, which had been a mat of knots and taut muscles, was all relaxed and supple again. For the next couple days I was afraid to make any quick movements, or sit funny, or sleep for fear I would screw it all back up again. It still feels pretty good, but I'm going to be looking forward to my next one in a few weeks.

Cold and Mostly Gloomy

You're not supposed to talk about the weather, I know, but I can't help it. I really like to talk about the weather. We lived in California for three years, and it was very difficult for me because there is really no weather to talk about. Which doesn't mean I didn't try, because talking about the weather is what I do. Understanding Midwestern transplants humored me, which was nice. (Our church had co-pastors, a couple, and she told me she'd lived there for 10 years and so far, every year, the weather had been atypical. Whatever the weather was doing, it was not normal. We were there during a dry patch. Tom's older brother was there earlier, during a wet patch.)

Anyway, I just did a little online research, to help bolster my grumblings about our recent weather. On September 24th our high temperature was 80. It was 72 on September 27 (that *was* 19 days ago). Since then, we've hit 60 twice (we're supposed to be nearly 60 on Sunday--I can't wait!--but you can't get your hopes up, they announce these expected highs just to mess with you). It was 41 at 1am this morning, and I can't report on yesterday because I can't find it on the internet, but except for 1am this morning and maybe yesterday we haven't been over 40 since last Thursday.

I've put away my shorts and gotten out my turtlenecks, sweaters, leather coat, and scarves. Our leaves never turned colors, except for a few drought-stressed trees. (It may not have been a good color year anyway, since we had long stretches of cool, or dry, or rain all summer.) The ash trees dumped thick piles of green leaves on the ground just in time to get snowed on, and the other trees are still wearing their leaves. I don't think I've ever seen a winter where the leaves are still on the trees. It will be interesting to see how that plays out--if we wind up with a mix of leaves and snow on the ground, or if there is no snow and we just wind up outside raking in 38-degree November weather. (There's something to look forward to.)

So, between the rain, gloom, cold weather, and shortening days, and the fact that I am still winding up the dreaded writing project at work, it is really feeling like winter. We really might be almost done with the document though. I have certainly given up all caring. I wrote one more new section today and gave it to my boss to "improve," and honestly I don't care what he does to it. Not in the slightest. As long as I can point our last batch of unassigned requirements to it and call it a day, I'm happy. I'm going to make one last pass making sure that "hidden paragraphs" wound up hidden or not hidden appropriately, and I'm good. I cannot be persuaded to care about anything else.

Random Notes

There was frost on the ground this morning. First morning my hands were chilly on the morning dog walk (and if I had put them in the pockets of my leather jacket, which I got out for the first time this morning, I would have found some gloves). Yet somehow this morning, unlike Monday and Tuesday, I decided to man up and *not* wear a turtleneck. I've just changed into my jammies and warm fuzzy robe and slippers, and I feel much better now. (A little warm actually, but that's 50 for you.)

I got to work this morning to discover that I will be mapping requirements and doing rework on the document for at least the next week. I can't say it came as much of a surprise.

I may or may not have already mentioned that I am turning 50 next week. Major birthdays are a lot more annoying than minor birthdays. As a general rule one must decide what one wants for one's birthday, where one wants to go out to eat, etc., but on a major birthday you can't just get an ordinary gift or go to an ordinary dinner. I keep trying to reframe this: gee, what would I love to get but would normally never think of buying; where would I love to go but normally wouldn't. I should be viewing this as an opportunity. But mostly I have other stuff I want to be spending my October weekends on. It know it would be better for everyone, including me, if I would quit grumbling and appreciate the moment.

I have moved the "crafting" chair over to the table the laptop is on. I haven't done any crafting in quite some time now, although theoretically Christmas is coming and I have big plans. I'm not sure the furniture rearrangement is a good omen.

Back

Sheesh--I've been gone so long Blogger made me sign in. I was so excited this morning when I went to work: today was the deadline for peer review comments on a document I have been helping to write for the last couple months. I have been writing, getting comments, rewriting, formatting, fighting with a new document tool (Open Office), and generally hating life since the beginning of May.

Twitterer @badbanana had a tweet one day that made me laugh out loud: "I had to hunker down and do some serious writing today. Which is why I made a working flute out of a carrot." That has described my days pretty accurately. I considered buying some handcuffs to chain myself to my desk with. (Sorry, with which to chain myself to my desk.)

A week ago I worked over the weekend (and into Monday, because that's how these things wind up) to finish the last section and try to fix as many cross-references as possible. Then it got packaged up and sent out for the formal review, which was scheduled to end today. (Fortunately, or unfortunately, most of the reviewers are also authors, which means that commenting is going to be somewhat superficial. Although a lot of my comments weren't altogether superficial.)

My boss says he's going to do all the rework, which I really don't believe, and my other boss says he's got someone else creating the huge table at the end mapping all the requirements to sections of the document, which I don't think is attainable for one person in our time frame, but at least for this moment I am technically done with this document. (Until May when we have to update it again for our next release.)

I am now free to resume my life as an engineer. I feel sort of like someone getting out of the hospital after a long illness. Except of course we have a ridiculous deadline coming up just before Christmas, so there is no time to waste "getting back into it." Instead of feeling like celebrating at the end of the day, I was sort of numb. (OK, I had just finished spending over a week reviewing 300 pages of tech-speak, so that is probably understandable.)

Anyway--coming home at night after wrangling words all day did not leave me in much of a mood to get on the computer and write blog entries. This morning I had that feeling you get in the spring when the birds come back and start singing again (even if fall and 50-degree high temperatures did descend on Minnesota this week, and the s-word appeared in the forecast for northern Minnesota for the first time). So here's hoping I'll be making more frequent appearances.

A Spouse in the House

I'm assuming that every married person occasionally daydreams about what it would be like to be not married, and have all your time "to yourself" so to speak. Somehow you imagine you'd spend lots more time doing various things you feel you're not doing enough of normally.

I've had a chance to try that out this week (my husband is on a business trip), and, unsurprisingly I guess, it turns out that left to my own devices, I spend a lot of time surfing the internet and staying up way, way too late playing Spider Solitaire on the computer and doing crossword puzzles. (I say unsurprising because I already spend too much time doing these things. Now I'm just free to spend more time without any of that peer-pressure sort of guilt that occurs naturally because there's another person in the house who knows what you're doing.)

Last week my head was filled with ideas of all the things I could do during this time when I would be on my own. I could do whatever I want! I could spend hours on my own pet projects without worrying that I was neglecting our relationship! I have a list, of course, of things I wrote down that I would like to do (or that I ought to do). Too bad Spider Solitaire is not on the list, or I'd have something I could check off.

He had to get up ridiculously early on Tuesday to make it to a 7:30am flight, so I got up early, and got to work before 8:30. The plan was to get up early, now that my internal clock was all realigned (I did wake up at 5:45 the next morning, but didn't get up for another half hour), come home earlier, and try to "get some things done" in the evenings. I'm always searching for that singular event that will shake up the inexorable slouch toward later and later every day, and was pleased to have found one. I made it to work before 9:00 the second day, but I started logging in from home to do a little work each evening (so I could leave the office earlier!), and pretty soon I was up until 11:30 each night like usual and getting up late since I'd worked the night before.

Last night, a mere 60 hours from that early Tuesday wakeup, I turned the light out at 2am.

So, repentant now, I'm resolving to do better next week. So far today has been a washout--I finally decided maybe I'd go out and try to wash bugs off the front of the camper and it started raining. I'm sure there are other things on my list that don't require going outside, but hey, that was what I was all geared up for. Now I think, being Saturday and all, that the dogs and I will live large and go get some fast food drive thru for dinner, and I can rack my brain to try and remember what movies I've always wanted to see that he doesn't want to watch.

Tweet of the Day

Well, yesterday, actually. And it was from @badbanana (who else):

Obama is going to address the nation's schoolchildren? One good fart joke and the Democrats control Congress for 60 years.