I was not tired at all last night and only slept restlessly. I got up at two thirty this morning figuring that it would be far better to actually get to work and get things done rather than laying in bed awake thinking about all of the things that I could be doing if I was actually awake. I am on the early shift anyway this morning so I was only getting up three and a half hours earlier than I should have been. Knowing that I had to be up early was probably what made me unable to sleep anyway.
It was a very, very productive morning. I really appreciate these mornings when I get up super-early and just hit the work first thing. I started by culling my email down to the bare essentials. That always makes me feel better. I feel buried if the email backs up and then I can never get on top of things. I got a ton of media stuff moved around and my DVD conversion process was kept flowing which can take a lot of manual work at times. I got SGL posted and Twittered a bit. A couple cups of coffee and paid some bills. A lot of really good work done and out of the way.
It turned out to be a really good thing that I got up so early and went straight to work. Today turned out to be a really, really busy day. By being up so early I was able to turn a really busy day that would have buried me in work into an opportunity to get caught up and really be productive.
Our newspaper arrived today! Oh wait. No it didn’t. Actually they delivered the Monday paper but still did not deliver the weekend paper. We do not subscribe to the Monday paper, of course, so I have no idea what that was about. Still no contact from the newspapers customer service or any other department. No idea if we will ever get a newspaper from them.
Today’s big news is that Liesl, all by herself when we were not looking, pulled herself up onto a box in the living room so that she could stand there! Already pulling herself up, it is crazy. She is getting so big and strong. She is very much into standing now.
My new Tamrac photo backpack arrived today. It is much better designed than the Tamrac camera case that I have from fifteen years ago. This one is much easier to carry and while being only marginally bigger than the old one can hold almost twice as much camera gear. Far more useful for me. I was really hoping that I would be able to take the new bag to Texas with me so that I could take pictures this coming weekend of the drive and of Austin since I will be so many places that I have never been before. The flights to Austin and back to New York make it quite impractical to have any additional luggage with me so that is not going to happen. I am going to be traveling very, very light.
I wrote most of today’s update and then, when I clicked to post it my session timed out and the day’s update was lost. So here I am writing everything again. I am not too happy about that. It is hard enough keeping up with the blog as it is and remembering what I said the first time and not forgetting things because I think that I already said it is not easy.
After working for sixteen hours for the office I was exhausted. Dominica needed to do some quick shopping for Liesl supplies at Walmart so we decided to just go out and make an evening of it.
We went to Applebee’s for dinner remembering them having really good salmon and several items that we liked. There is an Applebee’s in the Walmart plaza so that was easy. We got there and to our chagrin we realized that they have worked to remove just about everything remotely vegetarian friendly from the menu. There still is a little bit of fish but very little and nothing that we were too excited about. If you are a vegetarian who does not eat fish there is not a single entree to be had on their menu. So much for eating there in the future. We made do this evening only because we were already seated and already had drinks before we looked at the reduced size menus and before we asked if they even had veggie burgers and were told that they did not. When I worked for Wegmans in 2005 I ate at Applebee’s a few times and they had several good menu items for me back then. Apparently they have decided that serving potential vegetarian customers just does not make sense for them. 🙁
After eating we went to Walmart and did our shopping. That only took about ten or fifteen minutes. Very quick trip. Dessert was, of course, from Cold Stone Creamery which is also in the same plaza as Walmart and Applebee’s making it very convenient. Liesl was getting fussy before we even got our ice cream, though, so we ate in a rush and got her back home as quickly as we could as it was time for her to be getting off to bed.
I worked for about an hour to wrap things up for the day then went to bed around ten thirty or maybe a little earlier. I was pretty tired by that point. I am very glad that I am not working the early shift tomorrow. I am working it again on Thursday which we hope fits into our weekend plans. We do not have our plans together yet for this coming weekend. We may be leaving Peekskill to go to Ithaca and/or Frankfort as early as Thursday or, potentially, just meeting Francesca on the road on Saturday. All of our weekend travel plans changed this week suddenly and some of the are still in the air so we have no idea what is going to happen.