Friday, September 20 2019

Dear Journal,

Good morning, everyone. Hope you're feeling good this Friday morning, and if you're still waking up, don't worry - you'll get there. It's been a long, tough week of outages at work, but I'm glad we've finally arrived at Friday, and there's a weekend, and more importantly, the Bears are playing on Monday.

Yesterday at work, there were no outages, so the mood leveled out a bit. Our work corner felt a little less like mission control in Apollo 13, and I finally felt like I had time to breathe, plan my day, and go for coffee refills without fear of something catastrophic happening while I was gone. For lunch, I heated up the rest of the cabbage soup. It was one of those soups that gets more flavorful over time, and that makes sense doesn't it? I could imagine the bacon continues to break down in the fridge and diffuse into the broth, making it taste meatier. After lunch I went for a long walk around the square. The terrace was closed, so I couldn't sit there and stare at the water like I usually do, but I found a nice balcony by the parking garage to do the same.

I could imagine that some people think that when I stand somewhere with a view and stare, I'm doing heavy thinking or working through something, but truth be told I'm usually not thinking about anything. I even don't focus my eyes on anything in front of me. Sometimes it just feels good to stare off into space and stop processing information, and you draw less suspicion if you do this somewhere with a nice view. I think I've done this for as long as I can remember. I used to sit and stare off into space during class in school when I finished my work early, and it used to drive me crazy when a student took it upon themselves to slowly wave their hand in front of my face, like it was their responsibility to bring me back down to earth. I'd usually smirk, politely letting them know "haha - you caught me spacing out, and now thanks to your vigilance I'm back here on earth," but I've always wondered why people felt the need to do that. Luckily, interruptions by the terrace are few, and I can stare all I want without people waving their hand in front of my face.

After work, I took the bus home and started putting together BLT sandwiches right when I walked through the door. On Thursdays when I help out at Kids Code, I only have about a half hour before I have to walk over to the library and set up. The sourdough bread I bought from Jenny Street is good, but it gets hard as a rock the next day, so we had some trouble eating the sandwiches. Out of frustration, I started jerking my neck around with the sandwich held in my teeth, like a dog, and that got a good laugh at the dinner table.

I headed over to the library around 5:40 to set up for Kids Code. Some people were already starting to trickle in. By the time club started, it was clear that we had more kids than spare laptops, and while that's a great problem in that it reflects on how popular we're getting, it gets a bit tricky making sure everyone has something to do. Some of our older, regular attendees graciously agreed to share their computers or forfeit them to work on some hardware stuff. Last night, Brad fashioned a hologram out of cut up CD cases and an old TV monitor. He had described it to me a week earlier at our planning meeting, but it was even cooler in person. He played a youtube video of a few lightning bolts rotating around in a circle, and the flat monitor on the table projected the image onto the splayed plastic, making it look like it was floating in the center. It was truly like something out of star wars.

After Kids Code, I collapsed on the couch and fell asleep while watching YouTube. Marissa wins wife of the week for picking up my slack on dishes. I woke up in a panic thinking yesterday's BLT prep was still festering in the sink, and a wave of comfort washed over me when I heard the dishwasher was already running.

We sat on the couch and first watched the Hot Ones Season 10 Premier, then we watched a little more of Hitch. Hitch update: things are going great for Hitch. He had a very wacky second date with Sara Meelas where he had a hilarious allergic reaction to some shell fish, but the date ended with a kiss. And you know she's thinking "was that my last first kiss?" I think it was, Hitch. Something tells me that after only twenty minutes of conflict, you're going to win her back by getting over your own trust issues and finally being real with her, and even more kisses will follow.

Hope you all have a wonderful day today. Happy Friday, readers. Go for a walk today, stop somewhere with a view, and stare off into space for a while, I think you'll like it.