The chaos was threefold this week: in the world, the country, and on the homefront. In the latter it was not even on the same scale as the other two, in terms of importance, but it was especially relevant to me because it was mine, and I'm heavily biased toward things that affect me. I'm (not at all) weird that way.
S went away for work -- just a mini-trip, a few days -- but it happens to be on a weekend in which a bunch of things are coming together at once. It also doesn't help that work is quite busy right now. I've been putting in long hours since I got back from vacation. Today, the moment I woke up, at 7:09, I started doing shit -- getting the kids ready and off to school as work items piled up. By 11:00 I was sufficiently agitated, so I stopped, closed my computer,* threw on some workout clothes, and hit the exercise bike for an hour. It was a great stress relief. What I really wanted to do was run on the treadmill. I started doing that again, once in while, and I love it. I go for an hour and crank out six miles -- not a super fast pace, but running for an hour is still running for an hour. It's the best cardio workout around, as far as I'm concerned. But, alas, the only treadmill available to me is in my sister-in-law's apartment building, and although, it's only about a mile away, I didn't have time to go there (or anywhere), so the basement stationary bike it was.
*Actually, I opened a blank PowerPoint presentation and put it into full-screen mode. If I close my computer, or it goes into sleep mode, it disconnects me from the VPN, which can be bad, depending on what I'm doing. So, I've gotten in the habit of not letting it go into sleep mode, which it will do automatically after 15 minutes of inactivity, and I can't change it, because I don't have administrative permissions for the privacy/security settings. I used to to jiggle the mouse every 14 minutes and 55 seconds, like a chump, and then one of my colleagues told me that if you're in a full-screen PowerPoint presentation, your machine will never go to sleep. Totally changed my work life.
After that, I was able to refocus and get a bunch of work done before I had to pick up Lil' S1 from swim practice on the other side of the city. That actually went okay, but I was annoyed because he usually doesn't have practice on Friday, and then last night I got an email saying that he did have it for some reason. So, I had to get him, and I got some pizzas for dinner also, which you think would be easy, but getting takeout is an ordeal with my kids. They never want the same thing -- Lil' S1 wants Chipotle, Lil' S2 wants Chick-fil-A; Lil' S1 doesn't want Domino's, Lil' S2 only wants Domino's; Lil' S1 doesn't like Thai food, Lil' S2 loves Thai food -- and it drives me crazy. I'm like you're getting takeout! Stop complaining! Then they get mad at me because I won't order from two different places. That's totally on S. She'll get them each their own thing, and now they have this bratty sense of entitlement because of it.
Oh, and after I picked up Lil' S1, I had to take him to the comic book store (in rush-hour traffic) to buy a gift for his friend's birthday party tomorrow. To be fair, he did offer to take the Metro home from swim practice and walk to the comic book store and then walk home, but it would've been a 45-minute train ride, and then over a mile walk in the rain, in the dark, with all his school stuff and swim gear and whatever he bought for his friend, at 6:30 at night. I wasn't going to do that to him or to me -- I would be feeling guilty and worrying the entire time.
Anyway... I'm home and chilling now, decompressing, watching a terrible football game (Indiana absolutely running roughshod over Oregon). This is when I wished I drank. I mean, I do drink but only socially, not by myself. We have plenty of alcohol in the house, but I know that if I actually had a drink, I would be regretting it later. I mean, I just ingested about 25 ounces of pizza. I'm probably already pounding the Pepto tonight, anyway. I'll just crack open a seltzer and pretend it's a beer. That's actually more effective than you might think. Just the ritual of opening a can of something and taking swigs off of it can be very relaxing.
In other news, S and I finished Stranger Things, and I absolutely loved the last few episodes. I stand by everything I said in my previous entry. The show's flaws are myriad, and if anything, it got worse toward the end of the season. Instead of everything everybody says being complicated plot explanations or mediocre one-liners, they introduced a new type of trite dialog: The lengthy, cloying relationship-defining talk or heartfelt soliloquy, always delivered in the most dire of circumstances, when there is not time to spare, except for the perfectly timed five-minute lull in the action.
But I'll be damned if it didn't all come together in the end. The story mostly made sense, and was pretty clever, provided you ignore some pretty major plot holes (spoiler alert*). Those kids in Hawkins pulled it off. They saved the world and it was a joy to watch.
*At the end, right before the upside down gets destroyed or collapses or what have you, when all our heroes are in custody of the military, what happened to them after that? How did they get free? Did Dr. Kay and her vengeful minions just let them go after all they did? I mean, Hopper killed, what, 50 soldiers by himself. Once Eleven was out of the picture, the military was like So, you destroyed a bunch of our equipment, stole our vehicles, and annihilated dozens of our colleagues, but, hey, no harm, no foul?
Alright, that's all for now. Until next time...
