Thursday 13: Hot, Fun, and Productive

1.    I just want to start off by saying thank you to everyone for your awesome comments on my post about growing up as a JW and leaving the cult.  I appreciate all of your kind words, and you’ve made me feel good about having written it.

2.    I finished with a fairly large project at work.  The deadline got moved up it, so I ended up working late a couple of days, but it’s finished now, and it went well.  The coworker I worked with was very kind and very adamant about making sure my name went on the finished product.  They said I’d worked really hard and deserved credit.  It’s always nice to get good feedback at work.

3.    My sister, Gabby, and her girlfriend, Amy, came to visit.  They arrived Saturday just before lunch and stayed until late Sunday afternoon.

4.    Amy got some good pictures of the cats while they were here.  Here’s one she took of Frankie.

5.    We had a great time.  Gabby and Nick get along well, and Nick and I both get along well with Amy.  Gabby recently referred to me as the founder and CEO of the We Love Amy Club.  She’s not wrong.

6.    We went to an awesome local restaurant for lunch on Saturday.  Gabby had been before and loves it, but this was Amy’s first time eating there.  She says it’s one of her favorites now.  We grilled out for dinner Saturday night and stayed up late talking and playing trivia games.

7.    Gabby and Amy both went out to give the chickens snacks with me.  They didn’t realize that some of the chickens are free-range and thought there had been a chicken escape when they pulled up in the driveway and were greeted by chickens.   Fortunately, no free-range chickens were captured, and Gabby and Amy enjoyed feeding all of the chickens their snacks.

8.    It seems like sometimes, with a long weekend, we end up feeling like we’ve wasted it by not doing anything productive, or we vastly overestimate how much we can do with the extra day, and it feels like the weekend wasn’t at all fun or restful.  This time, though, we actually hit a good balance.  We had a lot of fun visiting with Gabby and Amy on Saturday and Sunday.  We spent Sunday evening reading instead of our usual, getting ready for the week.  On Monday, we went to the gym in the afternoon and spent more time than we usually do, went out for an early dinner, went to the grocery store, and spent some time getting ahead on things for the week.  It was a nice balance. 

9.    Mortimer spent most of the weekend chilling out.  Amy took this picture of him.  He was completely zonked out in this position.  It doesn’t look very comfortable to me, but he was happy.

10. It has been HOT this week.  We’re back in the high 80s and low 90s, with high humidity. 

11. The air conditioning was out at work on Tuesday.  By 10:30, it was 85 degrees in the building, and efforts to fix the air conditioning thus far hadn’t worked.  Since we hadn’t even hit our high temperature yet (and it was hotter in the building than it was outside), my boss sent us all home to work from home for the rest of the day. 

12. It’s supposed to cool down to the mid-70s over the weekend, which everyone is very much looking forward to.

13. The immortal tomatoes (also known as cherry tomatoes) are back.  It has been years since we’ve planted any of these, and we never planted them where they’re currently growing.  Yet, every year, they come back, so I’ve taken to calling them the immortal tomatoes.  

So, how has your week been?