Friday Randomness

This week’s randomness is going to be illustrated by a bunch of ridiculous memes. I’m sorry, or you’re welcome, depending on how you feel about them.

Helpful Hint #1
I don’t remember where I read this, but it was really helpful. Sometimes I am merrily writing a comment on someone’s blog (usually a WordPress blog) and my comment just disappears! SO FRUSTRATING, right? Well, someone commented on one of your blogs that she found the ‘undo’ command, which on my iPad is cmd+Z. Hit that a couple of times, and your comment comes back. WHAT A WONDERFUL THING TO HAVE FOUND, and I am thankful to whomever left that comment, thank you!

Helpful Hint #2
Ever since I cleaned out my email inbox (almost 1,000 unread, who knows how many read) my life feels cleaner. The method that works best for me is to open my email on a desktop browser so I can sort by sender. Then I can quickly delete groups of spam and marketing (almost said soliciting but that sounds dirty) emails, and sort others into folders. My inbox was EMPTY for a couple of minutes, and I’m working to keep it as close to that as I can. I also went in and deleted the last 2 months of Wordle posts from my Facebook feed. I post my Wordle results there, and a small group (2 or 3) of people I know IRL post their results in my comments, and it’s fun. All are welcome, none required. But I don’t want those posts popping up in my memories, so I try to clean them out regularly. So now of course, the issue is maintenance. I need to unsubscribe from mailing lists, and keep my FB under control.

Christmas Cheer
Nicole mentioned recently her dislike of the song ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ (and according to this story on NPR, she is not alone), which reminded me of a time way back in 2007 when Ted was writing a lot on a music site, PopDose, and one of his buddies there also hates the song. So they asked Ted if he would put together an extra long ‘Hell Version’ with different versions, etc. Ted publishes under the name ‘PyKorry’, so that is who they are referencing in this post, and if you want to torture yourself, give it a listen here (the link in the article is dead). It’s pretty funny.

More Holiday Cheer
Ted’s family is local, but my family is in Portland, OR and Juneau, AK, so I have to plan in time to get things in the mail. Portland is generally not a problem, but Juneau can be tricky. Last year’s gifts got there a few weeks late, even though I mailed them pretty early. So I’m trying to get everything in the mail today or tomorrow. I have most gifts already, just a few little things still to buy. I wanted to have all of my cards in the mail today as well, but between a busy week at work and a stupid head cold, that didn’t happen. Hopefully tomorrow will be the day, or even Sunday or Monday. I keep forgetting I can schedule pickup with the Post Office, or I can drop things off in their self-service kiosk. Once I get all of that done, I can focus on local things.

The three of us celebrate low key Hanukkah, which means gifts and latkes the first night, and we light the menorah all 8 nights. So I need to buy some candles. For Christmas, there are a couple of charities I buy for, one for homeless adults, one for foster youth, so I need to get on that. I haven’t bought much for Ted and Maya yet, but since I don’t have to mail anything, that doesn’t feel like a lot of pressure.

When Maya was younger, there were so many holiday events, through school and clubs and Girl Scouts, that kind of thing. Now life is much more calm, and I’m thankful for that. The holiday party for Ted’s company is tonight. We generally stay for a bit and then go out for dinner after. We have a get together with some friends next weekend, and beyond that, no plans. I like the slower pace at this phase of life, though I did enjoy the time when we had a lot of local friends and family and were busy every weekend as well.

Water Water Everywhere
OK, here are some actual pictures that I took. It looks like the beautiful oak tree that borders our complex burst a water pipe to the sprinkler system. I hope this doesn’t mean the end of the tree. I think it takes a lot to legally cut down a mature oak in our county, probably they will just need to cut back the roots some. That’s a lot of water though. Not sure how long it was going, this picture was taken at about 7am, and it had been going for over an hour at that point. Our car parks just to the left of the red one there, but Ted had already moved it when I passed by. The red car had moved by the time I got back from my walk, and the water was turned off at least.

Slippery Slope? Or Self-Care?
We’ve all been sick with head colds that turned into coughs, but not horrible. A little misery, but not an excess. Thankfully we’re on the mend, but in the meantime, I’ve slacked off on my strength training. OK J, cool your jets. How many days have you missed? 5 days. 2 of those days would have been rest days anyway, so really, 3 days. But I was thinking about how quickly women post-menopause lose muscle mass, and wondered if 5 consecutive days could be enough to be a problem. I hate my brain sometimes. It’s just the whole slippery slope thing, worrying that 5 days will turn into 10 days, which will turn into 5 years. Really though, I suspect I did myself a favor by not over exerting myself during the worst of my cold. However, I’m back at it today. Regarding the meme above, LOL, so not me. I’m team 8:50 bedtime, maybe 9:45 on a weekend. I do get up between 5:00 – 5:15 most days, though. I don’t use an alarm, I wake up often enough during the night that I can peek at the clock and see if it’s time to get up. (I did use an alarm when I worked in an office, and when I had to get Maya up in the mornings. Life is calmer now.) I love a weekend morning when my body decides to cooperate and let me sleep in until 7 or even 8, though those days are rare.

How about you? Do you use an alarm to wake up in the morning? Do you stay up too late reading or looking at your phone? (Ted and I keep our cell phones downstairs, which I suspect is pretty good ‘sleep hygiene’, though it means we still have a landline in our bedroom for emergencies.) How are your holiday plans coming? Are you stressed? If so, can you find a way to slow down and take some of the pressure off?