Subjective Success

Yesterday, I had one of the most successful trips to Target that I've had in ages.

No. I didn't find the perfect sale on the perfect items.

No. I didn't win the lottery while I was there.

I didn't even find everything I needed, when you come right down to it.

What I did do was - three weeks before Christmas - get in and out of Target on a Saturday morning in under 30 minutes.

And I even had a pleasant conversation with my cashier, who wished me a nice rest-of-the-weekend.

If that's not a successful Target run, I don't know what is.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

...honestly, I'm not sure what it's beginning to look like around here.

I'm having one of those years where I know that Christmas is only 3 weeks away, but I haven't really done any prep for it. I've done a little shopping, but no baking and no decorating. I haven't even dug out all of my Christmas CDs yet.

My work Christmas party is next week, and I haven't even signed up for what I'm going to take to the potluck. That's how far out of the holiday loop I'm feeling.

I think part of my problem is that the weather has been so weird. Kind of warm, kind of cold, kind of snowy, but not really. It's hard to get into the spirit of it when the weather feels more like November.

Overall, though, I'm just not really into it this year. I'm hoping to get there soon, but I guess this is going to have to be a wait-and-see year.

My Internal Calendar Is Out of W(h)ack

Lately, I seem to have more and more days when in my mind I think it's a different day of the week than it is.

On the way home from work tonight (the 1st of December), I was asking Christopher (who was riding with me - so this was a real conversation, not a hypothetical one) what he was up to tomorrow night. He said "Well, on Thursday, I'm . . . " (Yes, I could hear the italics.)

This has been happening a lot lately. And, unfortunately, it always seems to happen the wrong direction. I never think that it's Thursday when it's actually Friday. I always seem to be pushing myself forward through the week, only to find that I haven't gone as far as I'd thought.

Tonight I've decided to try treating it like jetlag. And we all know what to do about jetlag, right? You do your best to go to sleep at a "normal" time - and then get a solid night's sleep. Of course, since I'm trying to fight back 24 hours, instead of just one or two timezones, I'm taking this opportunity to go to bed an hour or so earlier than usual.

That should work, right?

(Oh - and that whole "W(h)ack" thing from the title? That's because depending on where you look on line the phrase is either "out of whack" or "out of wack" - so I'm hedging my bets.)

Happy mid-week. Whatever day it is.

This, Too, Shall Pass

Sadly, that's how I tend to feel about long weekends.

On the one hand, I'm thrilled that I had a long weekend and that I no longer work in retail. I was able to avoid almost every kind of shopping this weekend. The only thing I did do was go to the grocery store early on Saturday morning (about 9:30), when it was still almost completely empty. (Christopher can attest to the fact that I find wandering around a grocery store when I'm not in a hurry to be incredibly relaxing.)

I did a little bit of online shopping, and we went out to lunch at an out-of-the-way hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant for lunch. And that's all the spending I did.

But I unfortunately didn't get a lot else done.

Whenever someone tells me that he/she had an unproductive break from work I point out that, you know, it was supposed to be a break from work. So, logically, I get that.

Even so, I'm pretty sure that I'll get to work tomorrow and spend half my time thinking of all of the things I should have gotten done.

Thankfully, that, too, will pass.

A Day By Any Other Name...

With all due respect to Shakespeare (or whoever wrote the stuff attributed to him), for my blog, it seems like a day by any other name is almost always the day that I'm supposed to be writing on.

I try to post every second day, but since most of my life deals with days of the week - not dates in the month - I don't always know which day I last wrote.

Tonight, for instance, my blog was telling me that I last wrote "one day ago" - but also that I last posted on 11/22.

I didn't remember posting last night, though, so I checked the calendar and - you guessed it - found that today is actually 11/24. That means that my last post was two calendar days ago.

The blog, however, is very literal, and simply goes by 24-hour periods, not calendar days. So, since it has been less than 48 hours since my last post, it feels that I wrote just a day ago.

Usually, of course, this isn't a really big problem. Lately, however, I seem to be all sorts of off my game when it comes to knowing what day/date it is.

With that in mind, I apologize in advance for the number of erratic posts that might happen in the next few weeks during the chaos of the Holidays.

Though, who knows . . . maybe the busier schedule will actually keep me more on task. We'll just have to wait and see.

Rooting for the Home Team

In case I haven't mentioned it, lately, I live in Minneapolis - home of the Minnesota Vikings.

Whenever they're playing, the hoopla is everywhere. It's on the TV, obviously, and suddenly purple and gold show up everywhere around town. Banners outside otherwise sedate houses, newscasters wearing inexplicably bright purple ties, and - wow - my social media feeds go crazy.

I... well... I like football. I do. But I don't really get into the hometown hype of it all. I don't feel like I need to support a specific team just because of where they're based. Right now, while we're watching a multi-million dollar stadium go up, I figure I'd be more likely to support them if, well, if I felt they were supporting me.

Instead, when they're playing in town, I find myself dealing with a ton of traffic and most newcasts spending a third of their time recapping the play-by-play, which - if I were really interested in it - I'd have already watched live.

So, instead, I tend to root for the home team - you know, me, Christopher, and the pup - and hoping that we can get through the game day without too much hassle. To me, that just makes a lot more sense.

The Heat is On

I fully admit that when I typed the headline to this, I sang it in my head. (You know - it's a song from the mid-80s. If you still don't know it, I pasted a link down at the end of this post.)

Anyway...

The heat has been turned on at my office at work. In the summer, when it's 90 degrees outside and you want to wear shorts (because we can), it is frequently about 65 degrees in the office. There are two people who sit under air conditioning vents who actually sit at their desks with blankets around their shoulders all summer. It looks like they're working in Siberia or something.

Then the seasons change, and for about a month the office is both too cold and too hot. I'm not sure how they do that. But there are days where the (mostly wide open) office space has pockets of different temperatures, where the air is obviously not mixing. Want to cool off? Go into the small conference room. Want to warm up? Go into the men's room. (For the record, there was a time - 20 years ago or so - when heating things up in the men's room meant something very different to me.)

Now, of course, we're into the winter, so the heat is on at work. I do realize that this has been a strange year, and the heating and cooling systems have probably been under a lot of stress with the wildly fluctuating temperatures. Perhaps this is their way of either getting their revenge or simply sighing and saying "get on with it, already." Either way, now that I'd love to start wearing sweaters to work, the indoor temperature is more conducive to shorts.

I'm thinking of taking in a fan. Maybe I can get one that has dual modes and includes a heater - then I'll be able to use it next summer, too.