Like a 5-year-old

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We’re watching (and enjoying) Stranger Things on Netflix, but last night I startled awake out of a really freaky show-fueled nightmare.  The show is eerie, mostly not scary, and while I’m watching it, I’m okay, but apparently one part of it got in my head.  In my dream, that part of the show was standing over my side of the bed, and – yeah, okay, I’m not writing about it anymore.  It’s creeping me out again, and it’s daylight outside.

John would like to know when I’m planning to stop having nightmares like a little kid.  The shot of adrenaline he got when I practically screamed my way awake kept him up for another half-hour in the middle of the night.  He can just deal.  At least he wasn’t afraid of the dark the rest of the night.  I made him go with me when I got up to pee.  He guarded the door.  (Man, I am acting like a little kid.)

I’m okay now.  I survived.  Of course, that was only last night, and it hasn’t gotten dark again since then…

Oh, he lives here too?

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I barely saw John today.  I got up at 5am this morning so I could be awake for a conversation with my boss at 5:30 (8:30 for him – it was the only time we were both free today), and then work was non-stop meetings all day, so even though John was just down the hall, we barely exchanged words.  I forgot to eat lunch, and John left for the gym before I was done working.  He’s flying tonight with a pilot friend, so he needed to get moving.  I quit at 3:30 (my time), and when I headed to the gym, I met him at the bottom of our block just coming back.  We pulled our bikes over and caught up for a few minutes.  Honestly, it was like running into someone you don’t see every day.  “Hey!  How was the gym?  Oh yeah, tell me that thing you were going to tell me about work.”  He still had a schedule to keep, and I was still heading to the gym, so we headed in our separate directions.  I got back from the gym minutes before he headed off to the airport, and I guess I’ll see him when he gets home later.

Weird day.

I don’t have to

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I should work out, but I’m not going to.

I should do some laundry, but I’m not going to.

I should write about seeing Weird Al two Fridays ago, but I’m not going to.

I should write about meeting new people in Portland two Sundays ago, but I’m not going to.

I should plan something healthy for dinner tonight, but I’m not going to.

I’ll do all those things soon.

Instead, I’m going to read my book.

I’m going to fold the clothes I’ve already washed and do the rest tomorrow.

I’m going to think about what I’ll write about Weird Al and Portland peeps and be better prepared for it when I get there.

I’m going eat pasta and garlic bread and not feel guilty about it, even though I had Indian food last night and should never eat again.

I’m going to be still and quiet and go to bed early and get a normal night’s sleep that will end with my alarm at 5am tomorrow.

If I do it right, 5am won’t hurt that much, and when I get to the end of the workday, I’ll have the energy to work out and do laundry and make dinner and write bloggy things with pictures.

Watch out – I’m about to become an expert in a bunch of sports I know nothing about.

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NBC Olympic coverage is annoying.  I mean, of course there are a ton of commercials, I can understand that, but stop with the stories.  I don’t want the stories, I want the events.  SHOW MORE EVENTS.  Tomorrow, I’ll see how they handle it on the website.

I watched some swimming today, and whatever the long cycling race was today.  I saw the accident the Dutchwoman in the lead had – it was AWFUL.  I thought she’d broken her back, and there was NO coverage of it while the race was still going on.  Luckily, there’s Google (and it had happened a couple of hours before – turns out I wasn’t watching it live), so I found out she had a concussion and some minor fractures, but was NOT dead or lying on the side of the road with a broken neck.  It was really upsetting to watch.

Anyway, now we’re watching gymnastics and lots of uplifting stories about teenagers.  And that one 41-year-old.

Whiteaker Block Party

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Whiteaker is the funky, artsy, be-weird-it’s-encouraged neighborhood in downtown Eugene, and there’s a huge block party there every year.   It was today, and the band John is in (yes, he’s still in the band I keep promising to talk about) played on one of the many stages this afternoon (they were great).  We wandered around for a bit afterwards, taking in the sights.  Like this guy:

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He’s riding a motorized wheelchair, no shirt, with a carousel horse attached in front to lead the way and a trailer full of what appears to be Ninkasi beer (the brewery is on the other side of the street from him).  If I ever need a motorized wheelchair, I want it to be pulled by carousel horses, too.

Also, someone has stenciled these cute little birds on the sidewalk around the neighborhood.

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I don’t want to fight, but I’m not going to give in

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Guys, I can’t deal with work.  I feel like all I’ve done for the last two weeks is work and sleep (and complain about work).  That’s not entirely true (I didn’t work last weekend), but it’s mostly true, and I am worn out.  AND I’m still working.  I’ve spent the last two hours arguing with someone who wants to skip a safeguard before a software update, and I’m not going to let him.  We’re arguing over email which makes it even more frustrating.  He is clearly very angry with me now and has just petulantly thrown in the towel (I think).

I’m so very very tired of this.  These last two weeks have been awful, and that was without any fighting.  This, arguing with someone over something so stupid and yet so important, at the very end of a long day, is not what I need.

People suck.  Not you.  Everyone else.

She said I could

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My physical therapist finally said I could start running again!  But not, like, actual running, not yet.  I have to start slow, and I’m only supposed to run on a treadmill (soft, level surface), and I can only go for 30 minutes.  And only twice a week!  So many limitations.

This week, I walked 5 minutes, ran 1 minute, walked 5 minutes, ran 1 minute, and so on for half an hour.  Twice.  The first time I went for 36 minutes because I was focusing so much on 5 then 1 then 5 then 1 then 5 then 1 then 5 then 1…that I lost track of how many cycles I’d done.  No pain, though (yay!), and it feels really good to be running, even if it’s only for 6 minutes.  Lindsay said I’m allowed to move to the next level if I can do the first level twice with no pain, and I did, so next time I try it, I’ll walk 4 minutes, run 2.  PROGRESS is happening, and that’s a relief.

Yeah, yeah, I know

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Remember when I said work would be better this week?  Because it was so bad last week that this week just had to be better?  I was wrong.  Still bad, still too many hours at it.  Things just keep going wrong, and it’s my job to keep trying to fix them.  It’s exhausting and stressful, and I don’t want to do it anymore, but it’s taking up more and more of my day (my night, too – I’ll be testing an upgrade after 10pm tonight).

I’m going to read.  I don’t want to think about it anymore.

Masseuse is a funny word. Masseur is funnier.

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I have posts I want to write, but they require pictures (they don’t require pictures, but I have pictures, so I should include pictures), and my phone isn’t right here right now and I’m too lazy to go get it and download them.  So I’m sorry, but you can’t have those posts.

Instead, you can read my new fairy tale: Zannah and The Three Massage Therapists.

I have had three massages in the last month or so because I am finally using the Massage Envy benefits that have been building up since we left Virginia.  The first one was pretty good.  Middle pressure, listened when I asked for a change in pressure, made a couple of pressure changes based on how I moved in response (she was paying attention!).  The second one was also very good except for the feet – way too much pressure on the tops of my feet, and every time she slid off my left big toe, the knuckle cracked.  (Yes, I should have said something.  No, I didn’t.)  The third one (today) was lighter on pressure (as requested by me) except when she was trying to get the knots out of my shoulders.  That was downright painful, and yes, DUH, I should have said something, but I toughed it out because I kept hoping it would work.  Nobody else can work those knots out – maybe serious pressure and non-stop digging in right on top of them and from every direction around would do it.

It didn’t.  Appointment number 4 will be with Massage Therapist #1.  And I will speak up.  Because I’m not a masochist.

The End.

I call it progress

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Look who skipped two whole days of blogging and doesn’t feel (too) guilty about it!  I’m growing.  I had an eventful weekend, in the literal sense, and I will tell you all about it, but not tonight.  Tonight, I am boiling eggs for tuna salad and enjoying leftover chicken corn chowder COLD with wheat thins.  It makes a damn good dip.  Then I’m going to bed early because I’m tired and I want to read before I collapse.

Working for the weekend is not how I want to live

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Work this week officially sucked.  Every day, all day.  It’ll be better next week.  I’ll believe that if I keep repeating it to myself.  It doesn’t help that it got hot again (mid to upper 90s).  Yeah, yeah, the rest of the country has had it worse than us, I know, but we don’t have air conditioning!  We’re going to an outdoor concert tonight (Weird Al!  Should be fun.), and our only criteria for dinner before the show is that the place has to have A/C.

Oh, and John has been sick all week.  Nonstop fun in our house!

Again, I learned the dog’s name, not the owner’s

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I looked out the window after doing the dishes tonight and saw a large dog sitting in our yard.  He was facing the street and was on a leash attached to a woman who was just standing there staring at her phone.  My first instinct was to be annoyed.  Her dog is in our yard.  At least he’s just sitting there, but still.  Who does that?  And she’s not paying attention at all.  She’s not taking his picture…maybe there’s a pokemon in our yard?  Nah.

So I went outside to say hello (and find out what was going on, which was not much). The dog’s name is Neko, and apparently he just really likes our yard.  She said every time they walk down the street, he goes up our first step, walks into the yard, and sits down, I guess to survey the neighborhood.  He was very polite about it.  Good thing, too, because he looks like a wolf.  He let me pet him a little, so they’re both forgiven.

Why am I not already asleep?

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I can feel my brain leaking out through my ears.  I am SO TIRED.  Yesterday, I worked 9 hours.  Then, because we were doing a software upgrade on a production environment, I got back online in the evening to test the upgrade.  It didn’t go well.  Five hours later (nearly 1am my time, nearly 4am eastern), we gave up for the night and went to bed.  I got up five hours after that and got back to work, and I got at least two more hours of sleep than the two guys who were working late with me.  I don’t know how they made it through the work day.  To make matters worse, we still haven’t fixed the issue.

Today was not fun.  Tomorrow is not likely to be, either.  This week is not a great work week.

I’m going to bed.

Not my kind of OM

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I am still in the market for a yoga class because last night’s class was not for me.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t terribly challenging, and this is coming from someone who hasn’t been to a yoga class in at LEAST a year and a half.  It wasn’t that relaxing, either.  They did actually say “om”, though.  That’s a first for me.

The gym offers a couple of different yoga classes, so I’ll try one of those soon.  Until then, I’ll ponder the mystery of the font color of my current book.  It’s BLUE.  Aside from kid’s books, I can’t remember ever seeing a printed book with text any color other than black.  It’s weird.

I felt pretty good, but then…

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My weekend good mood disappeared in a clap of thunder at about 9am this morning.  I went from pretty patient with work stuff (after my nice relaxing long weekend) to ZERO TOLERANCE FOR IDIOTS, INCOMPETENCE, AND IGNORANCE, with pretty broad definitions for all three.  It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t fun.

My work day is over.  I’m going to sit outside and read, and then I’m going to a zumba class, then a yoga class.

Portland!

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We had about three hours to kill in Portland before the Night Vale show Thursday night, so we did pretty much what you’d expect of us:

  1. We did a quick tour of the downtown library.
  2. We spent about 45 minutes in Powell’s.
  3. We had dinner.

The library is pretty impressive-looking from the outside, and the lobby is lovely.  It has a big sweeping staircase, and the steps to the second floor are (or at least look like) black marble etched with animals and lots of swirling patterns.  Very cool.

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I think these windows were in non-fiction room.  Huge, lots of light, trees outside – beautiful and peaceful.

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The children’s library is named after Beverly Cleary, who – fun fact I just learned – grew up in Portland.  That tree in there has figures from children’s stories carved into it.
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We didn’t spend too much time there because a) we couldn’t check anything out, and b) WE HAD TO GO TO POWELL’S.

Last time we were there, I mentioned being overwhelmed, but in a good way.  This time, that feeling was tinged with anxiety.  There are SO many books, and SO many books I want to read.  How will I ever find the time to read them all?  That idea, that abundance of books – it should feel wonderful, exciting, comforting maybe.  I’ll never run out of things to read (as if that were possible).  Thursday, though, it wasn’t a pleasant feeling.  Maybe I just need a vacation.  Yeah, no, I KNOW I need a vacation.

Anyway, we kept that visit pretty short because we were hungry and we had a show to get to.  Dinner was Japanese, shared, really good.  The theater was on the other side of a park from the restaurant, and as we crossed into the park, we saw this sign:

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Eugene has bike routes everywhere.  Portland has skate routes.  Because Portland.  I think the guy on the right is on rollerblades, but it’s hard to tell.  His other foot might be a giant circular saw.

I might even eat off the floor. Well, I COULD. I probably won’t.

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John and I took Friday off work because we knew we’d be out really late Thursday night.  We ended up getting home around midnight, but until the Night Vale show ended, we didn’t know if we’d be spending the night in Portland or driving home.  Either way, work at 6am Friday morning would have been difficult.

You’d think, with a day off like that, that we’d spend it relaxing or doing something fun, but you’d be wrong.  We did sleep in a bit, and then we went to gym, but THEN, oh then – we cleaned.  We cleaned like our parents were coming to visit.  We started upstairs and worked our way down, room by room, windows, surfaces, floors, with a break from cleaning to hang a few pictures (the goat, the sign with our name on it, the comic book posters), and then back to cleaning.  We finished at 5pm, just in time to shower, have dinner, and then send John off to rehearsal tonight (8pm to 11pm – I will be sound asleep when he comes home).

Fun day off!  Still, the house looks great. I always forget how much easier it is for us to relax when everything is clean. I don’t notice the tension of the dirty house until it’s gone.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

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We saw a Night Vale live show in Portland last night (Thursday night), and it was GREAT.  There were a ton of people (the show was sold out), some dressed up (I saw Carlos the Scientist a couple of times, at least four glow clouds, and a ton of Night Vale t-shirts), most not, almost all fans of the show.  John’s not crazy about it – he listened to a couple of episodes and didn’t like the narrator’s voice, which I think was also Corey’s problem with it – and the couple sitting next to it were walking in blind, too.  It seems like a strange show to go to cold, but whatever.  It was a lot of fun to see live.  I’d go again if the opportunity arose.

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The show always travels with a musician (or a band), and for our show, they had Erin McKeown, who I had only heard of because she performed the weather on the most recent episode of the show.  I really liked that song, and I really liked the others she played.  She went on first, played 6-8 songs, then the show started, and then she played the song from that last podcast episode as the weather for the show.  During the show, she played alone (electric guitar only), but the recording I’ve heard it has a full band, and it’s awesome.  You know what?  You can hear it for yourself.

New obsession

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Have you heard Frank Turner?  I very much like his music a lot. A lot a lot. John has liked him for a while, but the other day, John played THIS for me, and I can’t get enough.

And THEN he played this one:

So I downloaded a couple of albums and discovered THIS one, that I LOVE LOVE LOVE. Give the beginning a pass – trust me.

And one of John’s favorites (and the first one he ever played me, a couple of years ago):

These are just the best from the two albums I’ve been listening to (plus one song – that first one isn’t on those two albums).  I need the other albums.

So we found out he’s going to be playing Portland on July 31st, we got all excited, and then – THE #$&^% SHOW IS SOLD OUT.

Oh, well.