A sweet bit of serendipity this morning. Forgot something in the house on my way down the drive, came back, and found this little dude on the door handle. He barely held still long enough for a picture, contrary to mantis’ general rep as very relaxed and nearly immobile. He really dug my TZ3, and kept trying to get atop it, which, since the camera can’t take pictures of itself, made photographing him a challenge.
I left him on a tomato plant, with an admonishment to earn his keep.
After that, off to E’s school for “Parent’s Fun Day.” For me, though I enjoyed being with E, it was more like “Parent’s listen to a dozen kids screaming at the top of their lungs” day. To boot, it was the first day of pool use, and as usual, E has forgotten all about going underwater, is afraid of anything over her navel, etc. So swimming, which is usually a blast, was not fun. I survived. L survived. E survived. That’s about the best we could ask for today.
Got to work at lunch time, to be greeted with news that our office renovations are finished. Which left my office looking like this:
Rugged, dirt-hiding, nicely-shaded but above all clean carpet? Check. (The previous carpet was rarely even vacuumed, let alone cleaned.) Gently-colored walls? Check. Old nail and fastener holes covered? Check. New furniture? Check. (Well, new to me, anyway.) Old monster hutch gone? Check. Blinds back? Not yet. But okay.
So it looks nice. But all my stuff remained to be moved back. Three hours later, it looked more like this:
Directly to the left, hidden from view, is a cabinet with all my tools, gear and files in it. I only had three boxes of stuff. Half a box of that went home with me, and another half a box I'm parceling out to Goodwill. Most of the rest of my gear is in clear plastic shoeboxes. Six months ago, fed up with all the crap in my office, I spent two days cleaning, reducing and reorganizing. It paid off...my coworkers are all barely even started on their move-back. I'm done and working. Kind of nice, really. I've pared my office down to a minimum. Having the new test/bench room really helps.
On the home front, dog-sitter (thanks, Pop) and house/cat-sitters lined up. Major construction projects are mostly tied up and buttoned down. Lawn’s cut. My gear and clothes are together. Mom arrives tomorrow after noon (I should be off work early). We’ll deliver J to his temporary residence, hit the sack early, and head out to the airport Friday AM.
Which is cool. But. I’ve now been preparing for travel, traveling, recuperating from travel (work-wise), moving, reorganizing, thrown out of my office, moved back into my office, etc. for nearly three weeks. It drives me bonkers. My routine is totally disconnected, I’m unanchored from the waypoints I use to mark my days, and I feel completely discombobulated. This will only be compounded by spending the week in a way where the day of the week is largely irrelevant, where I spend most of the day in windowless conference room, and where my only contact with home is iChat. I love travel, but hate traveling. A paradox, I understand, but there it is. Still, one more week, then summer settles in.
Just remember to pack the GPS for caching and navigation, so I'm off.
