Craig and I did some TV watching this week. First, I got him to watch Leverage: Redemption. We loved the original show, and while I miss Timothy Hutton (Craig doesn't, he wasn't a Nate Ford fan), and it took a couple eps to find its feet, we enjoyed it as nice, escapist fun. However, there are only 8 episodes available right now, so we needed something else to watch after we were done.
Enter The West Wing.
The West Wing aired here in the US from 99-06. We lived in the UK for the first five seasons (and it premiered after we were already there), so we never saw it during its original run. It's one of those shows I always meant to come back and watch but just never did. Well, now we have. And it's exactly what I was hoping for. Craig is a sucker for smart dialogue, and since this is Aaron Sorkin, I knew he'd get it. But he's been sucked in hard and gets annoyed that I won't just sit on the couch for hours on end to watch it. Still, we've done seven episodes already in the past couple days. It would be nice for it to last a couple months since it's seven seasons long, lol. I'm still trying to figure out why Josh/Donna is the most popular ship on AO3, though. And I'd had no idea Moira Kelly was on it at all. I'm guessing she doesn't last long. And baby Elisabeth Moss! God, she's so young in this. As soon as she came on, though, I turned to Craig and made him promise to at least watch an episode of Mad Men when we're done with West Wing. It's another I think he'd really enjoy, but he's always dragged his feet on.
Apparently, I'm still trying to catch up from our weekend away. I slept for four hours this afternoon after getting nine hours last night, and I see another good 8-9 hours tonight. If I wasn't vaccinated, I might be more worried since I know fatigue is a covid symptom. But I'm not running a fever, I can still smell and taste everything, and it makes sense that I could just be tired (especially because I'm anemic so it's harder for me to bounce back when I'm sleep-deprived).
And how sad is it that covid has had us second-guessing absolutely everything about our health now? I might've brushed this off as the onset of a cold two years ago. I have to think everything through multiple times now.
We got back yesterday from a four-day weekend in SoCal. It's the first time we've visited our friends after they moved, and it was just a real treat. The best part? I have ZERO allergies when I'm outside a twenty-mile radius where I live. I had an entire weekend of feeling completely normal. Then, we got home yesterday afternoon and I promptly felt like crap again. Sleeping sucks because my nose blocks up and wakes me. And the general ashiness in my head is back. I will definitely be pushing to relocate once everybody's done with college.
In other news...today was my last day at the library. It was bittersweet, because while I'm excited about going back to school and won't miss my manager, I do love everybody else there. I usually stick around for a bit chatting, but today, I just needed to leave. I was a tad teary and didn't want to lose it in front of everybody. They were all so sweet and nice, though. I got gourmet cookies for lunch, too, which was good because I hadn't gone grocery shopping when we got back yesterday and we didn't have anything for me to take in to eat, lol.
And on to the new adventure in my life. School starts in two weeks. This week, I have to get my application done for the CSU submitted in hopes I can start in January. I should have that done by Friday. I'm still playing catch-up from being gone, and we are going into SF on Thursday to see Hamilton so I lose half that day, too. As long as I get it done soon, I'll be fine.
I haven't posted this since March(!?!), so I won't make this insanely long by listing everything that's happened in my book world since then. I'll just go off the last week.
It was a godawful day at the library. We share space with the high school, and a group of freshmen boot camp kids had lunch on the lawn outside our doors. Not a big deal except that some of them apparently decided our bookdrops were trash cans. Water bottles, chip bags, wadded up tin foil...it was a mess. I am not going to miss messy high school students.
Add in a particularly horrendous load of work - Tuesdays are always our heaviest days because we're closed Sundays and Mondays, but today was almost double what our usual load is - and I was exhausted when I got home. Got nothing done except dinner.
We did finish Westworld after we ate, though. ( Collapse )
Well, my county has its mask mandate back. Not a surprise. It's also not a surprise how stupid people are being about it. I'm so done with all of them.
I got on the scale for the first time since...our trip to Napa for our anniversary in May. Sigh. I had lost 15 pounds at that point. Seven of them are back. I was all bound and determined to start off today on the right foot and did well until...lunchtime when we realized how many unhealthy leftovers were in the house. Some of my favorite leftovers. Like fried chicken. And then Alicia and her boyfriend wanted ice cream after supper and well, let's say, my day did not turn out the way I had originally planned. Sigh. Oh well, I will try to make tomorrow better. I want to try and be good for the next few days because on Friday, we drive down to Irvine to spend the weekend with the friends we were in Napa with a couple weeks ago. There will be wine. And food. And more wine and food.
I ran short on sleep this weekend and it caught up with me today. I came upstairs after lunch to get some work done and discovered I couldn't keep my eyes open. I ended up taking a two and a half hour nap, during which I dreamt I had covid. It was so realistic that the first thing I did when I woke up was take my temperature.
Craig and I are almost down with season 3 of Westworld. Season 1 is still my favorite. At this point, I have no idea who I'm supposed to be rooting for. Everybody on this show is awful. With the exception of one or maybe two people. I know there's supposed to be a fourth season. I just hope it pulls itself together to be as brilliant as it was the first season.
Only five more shifts at the library, woo hoo! Granted they're spread out over the next two weeks, but hey, the countdown is real.
Today was supposed to be productive, but in reality, not so much. My arthritis has been particularly bad since we got back from Napa, and the pain makes it hard to concentrate. I'm not sure what's causing this flare-up. The fact that my eating has been crap lately certainly isn't helping. I tried to get back on track with a gorgeous salad for dinner tonight, but then Alicia and her boyfriend came home a couple hours later when I was starting to get peckish. I should've been strong when they said they were going to McDonalds. I wasn't. A McFlurry and fries later...
At some point, I have to stop stalling and get back on it with tracking my food. And getting some exercise, even if it's just strength training. I keep making excuses, like the pain, or the time commitment, or the kids, but that has to stop at some point. Why is it I can be so disciplined about certain things, but when it comes to food and exercise, it all goes out the window?
Craig and I have been watching Westworld since the Napa trip and it was recommended to us. We didn't have HBO when it premiered, so it was one of those shows that slipped through the cracks. However, it's been a win for us so far. We're almost done with the second season. We probably would be done if I let Craig binge it the way he wants, but I just can't stay sitting on the couch for more than a couple episodes. I will say, though, that I don't think the second season is as good as the first was. It's a mind trip, that's for sure, and I appreciate a lot of what it seems to be trying to do, but some of the nonlinear storytelling just isn't done as coherently as it could be. I will say, however, that the show as a whole has sparked some long debates and conversations between me and Craig, more so than a show has done in a very long time. That's an excellent sign.
Maybe if I start posting on a Monday, I'll get back into the habit of posting here. I have no idea why this keeps sliding. It's not like my life is any crazier than normal.
So what's happened...my birthday was on the 14th. That was a good day. My celebration was over the weekend, though, when Craig and I went back to Napa with our best couple friends. Her birthday was the week after mine, so it seemed like a great way to celebrate. Tons of fun.
I'm also - FINALLY - officially a college student again. I'm all registered at the community college to get the one class I'm missing in order to qualify as a transfer student to the CSU I want to attend. It was pretty nightmarish there for a while. Their admissions department is absolutely useless. I applied at the same time there was a huge mail update, and I never received the email saying I was in and what to do next, along with my student ID number. In spite of numerous, varied attempts to get that information, nobody ever got back to me with it. I ended up getting it when someone from their registration outreach program called me to see if I had any questions or problems registering for my classes. She ended up sending me all the details I needed, thank goodness.
I ended up with the advanced composition class I need for the critical thinking credit (why my multiple comp or philosophy courses from the first time around don't count, I have no idea, since they seem to be exactly what they want me to take now). I opted to take four classes in total to help get back into the habit of being in school. The other three are a website development class (I already know HTML, but I really need to redesign my sites and this should give me some solid CSS knowledge, too), introduction to criminal justice (to see if it's something I want to pursue at the CSU), and introduction to archaeology (just for funzies). I wanted to take a photoshop class for funzies, but it already had a waitlist by the time I could actually register. Since I had a list of twenty potential classes to take, I decided not to bother with the waitlist and just go to the next one I wanted to do just for fun.
And now I wait. All of the classes are online and start on August 23. I was supposed to stop working at the library on July 30, but my manager asked if I could work a few days in the beginning of August because she took her vacation at the beginning of July and hasn't had the chance to do any interviewing yet. Ironically, I got a raise on July 1 that she's put into motion before I turned my notice in. I found out about that last week. It's so funny because it keeps seeming like the universe is throwing incentives at me to stay at the library. What does it know that I don't, lol?
In the meantime, with Covid on the rise again, I've decided not to audition for 12 Angry Jurors (an updated version of 12 Angry Men) that our community theatre is doing. There's nothing else this season I'd be able to audition for, but oh well. I'll have school to keep me busy.
I made an appointment to see my ENT about my allergy symptoms, just to rule out anything serious. He confirmed, it's just a godawful allergy season, and my deviated septum is exacerbating my symptoms. He gave me a prescription antihistamine to use when it's really bad, which has been helping. On the bright side, he also said that my throat has healed quite a bit from all the changes I've made to fight my reflux. So that's good at least.
And I think that's just about it. I'm making no promises about getting back onto a schedule with posting, but I sure as hell am going to try.
With all the stupid crap that's happening in my body right now - inflammation is up, seasonal allergies through the roof - I've decided to try going dairy-free to see if that helps at all. I know the link between dairy and mucus is a myth, but it does increase inflammation if you have a sensitivity to it (which I do but ignore because of how much I love dairy). It really can't hurt at this point to give it a go for a few weeks to see if it helps. So back to my herbal and green tea, and goodbye to ice-cream (which my scale will most definitely appreciate).
The past 10 days have been busy and productive. Turns out, I'm missing a single class to qualify as a transfer student at the CSU I want to attend, so I'll be taking that along with a few others at the local community college this fall. I'm going to apply to the CSU in August and ask for an exception to be made to allow me to start there in January. The advisor I spoke to suggested it, saying I was an excellent candidate for the exception. She was helpful all around, frankly, and really lit a fire under me even more than there was. I have to take all online classes at the community college, though, because they start on the 23rd and Craig and I already have our flights to DC for the 27th. I don't want to miss classes at the very beginning of my journey back, lol.
The class I'm missing is a critical thinking class, and I have two real options for that, one of which is a philosophy course. Not my favorite as I hated philosophy back in the day, but if that's what it takes, I'll do it. I'm also going to take a science to get that credit out of the way, a photoshop class for funzies, and then 1 or 2 other classes that I haven't decided on yet.
The countdown has begun on my time at the library, but bonus for me, my manager is on vacation until the 14th, so I get half the month without her, woo hoo! The library opened up hiring in the county for the two positions above me that I qualify for, but I held strong and didn't apply. School is coming first. If I still want to go back to the library when it's all over, I can apply then. But who knows, I might not even be in this part of the state when that happens. Anything can happen before then, so I'm just going to have an open mind about it all.