Oh, What a ...

It was indeed a beautiful morning. I got up just about seven-ish, rolled myself out of bed and took a peek out the window, and got myself together for my practice run to the airport.

This is not as goofy as it sounds. When R went to college up in that area, I enjoyed nothing more than having to drive up there for some reason, just by myself in the car with some good music or an audiobook playing. It's an easy drive, and a lovely one, depending on the time of the year. (Winter is not so much fun.) Because most of the ride is through some sort of mountains, I was expecting it to be especially lovely today.

It was, but not in the way I expected. I anticipated glorious fall colors, but because it's been so oddly warm this fall, I only saw splashes of color here and there. Most of the mountainsides are still a pretty dense green, and almost nothing has fallen yet. What made the ride amazing was the mist, or fog. In some places, it was so thick that I could only see a few cars in front of me. In some places, all I saw was a wall of fog, and then I would round a bend and a magnificent mountainside appeared before me, clear as day. So I really did enjoy the ride.

And the airport? Duh. I had gotten Google directions, not at all considering that something as big as an airport -- even a cute little one like this -- would have all kinds of signs pointing to it. Which it did, of course, so it was stupid easy to find. I'd make it a 50 minute drive from the Other Chai's house, which is where we'll be leaving from, and I'll have to leave time to park, because even though this is kind of like a Wee Tykes Toy Airport, the parking lots and signs are the requisite confusing. I can't even say, Well, I'll see the fall colors when we go in two and a half weeks, because it will still be dark in the morning when we take the trip, but it'll be nice when we come home the following Sunday afternoon, assuming we're not too exhausted to look at the scenery.

Speaking of which, I have achieved totally packed status, excepting only those things that have to be packed that last day (phone charger, make-up, like that.) So that gives your average OCD wacko a nice feeling of satisfaction.

Both of my feet are still strapped, and it still felt wonderful walking around all day with no real pain. But now it's driving me crazy again, itching and sticking. Mostly only on my right foot, but it's all coming off tomorrow night anyway. I did manage to find ankle braces at the store, and I'm hoping that they'll be a decent substitute.

And now I would like to sleep. I can see that it's only 8.30, but I can't say I'm adapting all that well to the shortening of the day/lengthening of the dark. Each year, it's more and more disorienting, which is funny because you'd think I'd be really really used to it by now. We're changing the clocks in two weeks, I guess, instead of this week, or whenever we used to do it. I only know that it was done before Halloween and now it's being done in November. And I'll still need the Hubs to tell me what time to change the clocks to, because a couple of years ago I re-set them all the wrong way. Yes, yes, I know: spring ahead and fall back. But I have a little trouble with just what we mean by "back." Okay, yes. I have a few, as we say, profound learning differences. (This is education speak for she's never been tested so we can't call them actual learning disabilities.)

And that's the day today.

WATCHING AMERICAN IDOL REWIND :: ENTRY #1610

EIGHT! Or Not.

So, to start with ...

I'm preparing myself to copy over at least some of my archives. It seemed the logical thing to do to make sure that I had this diary set up the way I wanted it to be before I did that. One of my problems is that I always put in that little thing about what I'm watching on TV and what number entry this is (because I'm OCD like that), and the other is Labels. Tags, they're called in a lot of other places.

I like the idea of the labels. But the only place to put them here on blogspot is, reasonably enough, the Labels field, and I was using that for my TV/entry #. So I took about an hour and a half last night and tidied that all up and got it set the way I want it. I wish I could put a tag cloud at the bottom of my page, because those are cool, and maybe there's a widget that'll do it -- I'll have to search -- but for now, there's a list.

I figured out that I would have to copy over 20 entries from dland every day all summer to get them all done. Hmmm. Thinking, thinking.

---

So, eight! days to go. But not really. Today was simply a day of insanity, all of it having to do with this new library software. Altogether, I was at my desk in the high school for a little over an hour; all the other time was either at a meeting at the central office or it was my lunch period. We were on speaker phone with the representative of the software company, who kept saying things like "And then our next meeting, via Microsoft Live-Something or other, will be on Friday, from 1 to 4" and "We'll be conferencing with you on Monday, in two 90 minute sessions," and so on. And, it seems, on the first day of vacation. But I only have to be there for an hour or so in the morning, which I guess isn't a big deal, but come on! It's as if these people don't know we actually have other jobs here that we're doing. I was waiting for her to schedule a meeting for next Thursday evening -- they're on Central Time -- during graduation.

So in a sense, I'm back up to Nine!, but I'm still counting it as Eight! because I do have most of that last day off, and if I don't have to be there until 9.00, I can get a start on my summer sleep schedule. And the following week, we have two day-long training sessions with these people, live and in person, and they told us today that each one is a 7 hour session, plus an hour lunch. Long days, but we get paid extra for that, since it's a summer workshop for us. I wonder how much that is? Hey, I'll check my contract when I'm finished here; it'll tell me in there.

After the crazy day, I went mall shopping with the Sibs for girly stuff -- we got samples at Sephora, she got mary-jane Crocs -- and then dinner. And now, I just got back from a wake.

I have a good buddy at school who's actually been there longer than I have by a couple of years; I've gone on many class trips with him and so on, and his father passed away after a long, horrible illness. Not cancer. This lovely gentleman had a stroke years ago, before either of my parents died, and then broke a hip, and became a completely different person. He's become violent and hostile, among other things. And it's been years. So he's at peace, finally, and hopefully now his family will be too. And his son, my pal, is having surgery on Friday.

You know what Roseanne Roseannadanna said:



It's always something.


watching Friends :: entry #1493