Wednesday, October 16 2019

Dear Journal,

Good morning everyone! Hope your Wednesday is working out so far. It's been such a hectic week. Yesterday our surveyor finally put a line down next to our house. I stayed at home through the morning, and by then I was already at work. Marissa took plenty of pictures, and did a really nice job drawing in lines to show the difference between our version of the property line, my neighbor's version, and the actual property line. The verdict turned out to be pretty fair. It was nothing to rub anyone's nose in, but after checking our expectations and making sure we were trying to be objective, that wasn't what we were looking for. All in all, we're happy that it's done with and final. The surveyor spray-painted a thick red line that connected four large wooden sticks, making it pretty unmistakable.

It was also a pretty busy day at work yesterday, making it challenging to stay on track with everyone between working with the surveyor and keeping our project on track. Sometime last night while washing dishes, I paused to vent about the week to Marissa, who was pressing some paintings into wood at the dining room table. "When is the next regular day going to be for us?" I complained. It's not like I have a lot to complain about. After all, I have a day off Friday to enjoy some Hawks tickets that my wife surprised me with, who could complain about that? I guess I'm sensitive to weird weeks like this. Having a shorter work week most of the time doesn't mean less work in the week, it just means a more condensed work week, and I'm feeling the burn. Oh, and feeling the burn wasn't a veiled democratic debate reference. I didn't have time to watch any of it. If I have time later, I'll see how many highlights I can stomach, but from what I heard it was a bit of a circus.

Sip. Man I feel all over the place this morning. I didn't even have time to put my laundry away, which just feels wrong. I dug into my clean clothes just enough to fish out a pair of underwear, like how you used to do things in college.

Yesterday after work, Marissa and I agreed that we were pretty burnt out from dealing with the property line, so we did something easy for dinner. We went to the recycling center as a family. Rodney took in the sights and the sounds while I helped Marissa overhand wood and plastic into the appropriate dumpsters, then we went to Hy-Vee. We ate dinner in their little side restaurant, which has always been our go-to for dealing with stressful days. There's something about drinking a beer in a hidden corner of the grocery store, looking out over a forgotten corner of the parking lot. It feels like nobody is going to bother you, and you're free to just soak in the alone time for as long as you want before doing your shopping.

Marissa and Rodney split a plate of orange chicken and some fried rice. I had a little set of tempura shrimp sushi. It's dirt cheap, especially when the bartender decides to extend happy hour by a few minutes, only charging me two bucks for a tall, cold pint of Hoppalicious. As we ate, we chatted more about the experience of getting a surveyor.

Today will be a pretty action packed day. I'm trying to wrap up a project sometime today, I have just a few more peer reviews to write, and our we have a presentation to give to a visiting VP. After work, we have a company happy hour thing. The craziness of this week has me feeling a little shy, but Marissa is rightfully encouraging me to go and be social, and has graciously agreed to pinch hit for making dinner tonight. I think she said something about her buffalo chicken casserole. That actually sounds pretty good right now, especially given how many good hot sauces we have on the shelf right now.

To wrap up the night, we watched an hour of my movie pick, The Great Dictator. It's an old movie from the forties meant to lampoon Hitler. Neither of us had ever seen it before, but it really hit the spot last night. I felt like I identified with everyone's anger, and this day and age, Hitler is everyone's go-to evil comparison, but I forget that there was a time where people supported him and asking someone a question like "what do you think of Adolf Hitler?" may have been a hot button issue. I can only imagine the hearty, righteous laughter coming out of the theater where this movie was first played, watching everyone salute an Adenoid Hynkle who would only allow artists to paint him in ten second increments and who spent all day fatally testing war devices.

That's my time, I have to catch my bus. This felt good to write, and as always, thanks for reading.