10/15/2020

Well, it was another well-paced, yet nondescript day in the office. I got everything done that I could, including as much for the exhibit that has to go out tomorrow, as I could. My coworker comes into the office on Friday while I work from home, so she'll have to use her magic on the pages I can't get to scan right, and then tell me how she did it. There's also at least one random mystery we have to solve as well, so that should be interesting.

I left the office around 1pm and got home around 2pm after a bit of a wait for the bus. It was a well-paced afternoon but not too bonkers. After logging out I walked on the treadmill, and then ran downstairs to get a package, which turned out to be my spice and tea order from Market Spice, and our ballots came in the mail!! I started filling it out but I'll need to research the rest of it. Hopefully I'll get it finished and in the drop box over the weekend.

We're going to go grocery shopping after work tomorrow and that'll give us more time to just be home on the weekend. It'll also give me the chance to do my blog foods on Saturday instead of Sunday. I'm pretty excited about this one. I'm currently doing the next step in the candied pears prep and I'll be making the candied oranges tomorrow.

Freezer food for dinner tonight. Ugly Betty, My So-Called Life, and ER Halloween episodes tonight. Good times!

10/14/2020

Today was a longer day at the office, but part of it was because my coworker needed to log into the transcripts desk for some time and I was unable to do my work for a while. I had stuff to do in the back, so I stayed busy, but I had to stay longer to finish the other stuff. And I was busy when I got home too. It was not a stressful day, but a well-paced day.

After logging off, I walked on the treadmill. I wanted to be really careful because I stepped in a hole on the way home today and have the tendency to wreck my foot/ankle/knee/leg when I do something like that. Fortunately I don't think I did any damage this time!

Leftovers for dinner tonight, and I did the next step of the candied pears. They're now soaking in the sugar syrup. More Halloween tv shows tonight. Not a terribly exciting day, but a pleasant one.

10/13/2020

Today was another easy day at the office, but it certainly picked up when I got home. I have a few things to work on in the morning when I get to the office tomorrow. I tried out the new ideas we came up with for my stamp and it's definitely way better. If I had to do it over again I would have tweaked the wording, based on how I'm whiting out some of it, but, it's too late now!

I left work around 1:30pm and there was pretty much a wind storm downtown as I walked to the bus. I swear I almost blew away in the wind!

Once I got home, I made a quick grilled cheese sandwich and used up some of my supplies. Work really picked up in the afternoon but I also had the opportunity to catch up with the dishes and prep my dinner, which was good. It was a new recipe and it turned out to be really delish! I have leftovers for tomorrow night too.

Tonight I began the prep for my candied pears. It's definitely unlike anything I've ever done before, which is a fun challenge! Each day I'll do another step until it's ready for me to use on Saturday for my baking project. Though we're grocery shopping this weekend, so it might be Sunday, like this last weekend. Either way, it'll be ready then.

Tonight we're watching the Halloween or spooky episodes of NCIS. Tomorrow I hope to have some time to do a bit of cleaning around the apartment so I can set up our Halloween tree. I will post pictures when it's all ready!

10/12/2020

Today was a pretty easy day at work. I stayed at the office till about 2pm. No major drama or problems popped up. I had a few questions for my coworkers, but nothing crucial. I got to test out my new stamp which is fun! I got some good feedback on it and tomorrow I'll redo the ones I did today and make it look even better. This will help me have to write less and will ultimately save time. It's boring and silly to write the same thing over and over on all the paperwork when a stamp will do it all for me!

When I came home to finish the day remotely, I put a couple jobs on the calendar, but that was it. Really simple day, overall. After I logged out, I walked on the treadmill and finished up a particularly ridiculous Batman storyline, which is saying something! I also worked in the den for a while, continuing to clean up and organize in there even more. I gathered and took the compost, garbage, and recycling out in two trips. And a nice, steamy hot shower was in order afterwards!

Leftovers from last night's Christmas dinner from Cameroon for dinner tonight. I'm thawing out chicken for tomorrow night's new recipe to test. I am hopeful that it'll be pretty delicious. I'm also going to start the prep work for this weekend's blog recipes. One of the recipes calls for candied oranges and candied pears. Candied pears are super expensive to buy online, so I decided to try my hand at making them from scratch! I'll be photographing the process and will write about it over the weekend.

Tonight, we're watching the Buffy Halloween episodes, but we'll probably have time for a half hour show afterwards. I'm hoping to get a good night's sleep tonight. I've been having problems with congestion waking me up and making it difficult to get back to sleep, but I moved my humidifier and my sister gave me some of her nose strips and I tried one last night and it seemed to help. I might have to start using them from now on. I do love this time of year when you can get all cozy in the heavier bedding and it's just the perfect temperature!

10/11/2020

Today was Halloween movies, a few chores, and my first food blog project meal! We watched the second Fantastic Beasts movie, then had a Halloween Town marathon. During that time I did two loads of laundry and made my blog meal which turned out to be really delicious! I already wrote it up in my food blog so I won't go into the details here.

I did something random today: I helped my sister put way the ac unit and switch out a shelf in her room with one of the shelves in the den and redid all the items on the shelf in a much more usable way, which is great. The den seems to be the room we're still transforming the most, but it's getting better and better all the time.

It was rainy and stormy all day long today. It got dark really early tonight. Super lowkey day today. Hopefully I'll be nice and ready for work tomorrow and the week ahead!

10/10/2020

Today was a nice day. We did our trip to the zoo, at long last! Started with Burger King for breakfast, and then a nice, chilly morning at the zoo. You have to kind of follow the path they set up and a lot of it is one way only, but somehow how we spent a lot of time with literally just my sister and me at parts of the zoo. It was pretty cool. We got to see the rhinos by ourselves and they looked right at us and when we moved to another vantage point, they turned and kept looking at us. I spoke calmly to them and one of them looked so intently at me, like he was listening. It was pretty special. And we got to see the baby gorilla and he was so cute! And the python is usually really sedentary or not in its enclosure but it was really active this morning. It was very cool! And we had to buy some stuff at the zoo store. I got a pen made out of a recycled bottle, and a Christmas ornament.

After we left the zoo, we attempted to go to Trader Joe's in Ballard but the line to get in was ridiculous so we just left and came home. We watched the first of the Fantastic Beasts movies and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow on Disney Plus before heading out to go to our parents' house. We tried to go to the Shoreline Trader Joe's first and it was the same thing with the line to get in, so we skipped that one too! We ended up at the Safeway out by my parents and picked up stuff there for dinner. Nothing exciting, but it got the job done.

Tonight we introduced my family to Randy Rainbow. Somehow they've managed to get by this long without ever seeing his stuff, so we had to educate them on him. It was fun! I also got some really amazing feedback for the first two chapters of my book that I sent out to my cousin for her input. People don't seem to get that you get more out of negative feedback than positive, so you really can't sugar coat and overlook stuff if you're editing somebody's work. And you really can't take it personally. the story is always, always better when you work out what doesn't work, rather than surround yourself with "yes" people.

Tomorrow will be chore day, first blog meal day, and movie day. I don't get Monday off, so it's just a regular weekend for me, though my sister gets Monday off. Lucky duck!! I might try to do my blog meal for lunch so I can write it up in the afternoon and get it posted. I'm excited to get this project under way!!

10/09/2020

Worked from home today and it ended up being super stressful. Drama and those horrid exhibits from yesterday came back to haunt me. And then connectivity issues pretty much ruined the afternoon. I'm going to try to stay calmer in the future, but it's tough when you are all alone with no sounding board to talk things through with. You tend to keep things bottled up more. At least that's how my experience has been.

I managed to watch three movies during the work day, though, so that was good. Bram Stoker's Dracula, off my Halloween list, Remember the Titans, off my autumn movies list, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which I haven't seen in forever but it seemed like a good day for it. It also feels autumnal to me too, in the look and scenery.

After logging out, I walked to the teriyaki shop down the street and ordered potstickers and chicken yakisoba for dinner. I walked around while the food cooked and checked out a nearby dentist I am considering going to once I research it properly. The food was delish. We watched Rudy while I ate.

It was windy and really air pressurey today and my head hurt pretty much all day. I took a hot, steamy shower after the movie ended and I'm feeling better now. We're watching the Halloween episodes of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air now and I'm charging my camera batteries for tomorrow.

So excited to be going to the zoo tomorrow, at long last! We were going to go last month but smokepocalypse rolled through town and we couldn't leave the apartment, and then they closed the zoo anyway. I am so happy to go again!