12 May 2019 - Crossposted from Monthly Diary Day
Oh dear. Monthly Diary Day is such a nice responsible community I feel like I need some context to today’s sybaritic tone.
The structure of my job involves four major meetings per year. Three are awards panels, which review assessments and decide who has passed. One is the governance board which decides how the assessment programme is going overall. This year’s was on Thursday. It’s always a fairly big deal for me as manager of the programme, but in recent years it’s been more of a milestone than something that could throw things off track: I’ve had lots for them to approve, and as expected they have tweaked to show they care, and then approved. This year though there were several unexpected issues where I didn’t really know how the board would react, so I was quite stressed in the run-up, in that way you are when you’re not in control of events. The outcomes were fine (I really knew they would be as the group is very helpful, it was just that Not Knowing what they would opt for), but I was so tired after the meeting that I spent Thursday evening completely zoned out. I realised I’d been watching tv for about four hours and could barely tell you anything about it.
So, Friday night I was feeling better, and we remembered that there’s a bottle of not-champagne in the fridge with no particular purpose to it (fairly sure it came from my dad, someone probably brought it when they held Christmas, and my parents don’t like fizzy drinks). Why not open it to mark a successful milestone and destressing? So we did, and it was very nice. But I get home late on Fridays after yoga (I think it was 10pm when we opened the bottle), and neither of us felt really in the mood for a big drinking evening, so a glass apiece was plenty. Well, maybe just a splash more, but not the whole bottle.
Which is how I ended up with a half bottle of not-champagne going flat in the fridge last night. And the boyf isn’t around this weekend, so it was all mine. And I also had Campari and Vermut Lustau, so I decided to make negrone sbagliati with it. Now, I’m really a one-negroni person, maybe two for a lavish evening. But half a bottle of champagne makes three. Waste not, want not. Even over six hours and a large sensible dinner of chicken, potato and pea stew, it’s one more cocktail than I usually have. Which is how…
12 May is The Morning After the Night Before Day
0000 I am awake. I am watching the first ever episode of Game of Thrones, because I have access to the whole series for just this month, and I’ve finally caught up with all the seasons I have missed.
0045 I am in bed, listening to the radio, because Thrones is *not* conducive to sleep and although things are a little fuzzy, I know that. It’s an old episode of the Write Stuff literary quiz, and it’s fun.
0115 I put on my overnight audiobook (Mary Beard’s SQPR, read by Phyllida Nash), and sleep.
0900 my not-oversleeping-at-weekends alarm goes off. I silence it firmly.
1030 well okay, I’m awake now. Feeling perfectly okay in a sluggish way, but definitely in need of rehydration. I have a glass of water, make a cup of tea, and go back to bed. I do bring two slices of toast and peanut butter, which is brunch for today. (On a less sluggish Sunday I might have a small early lunch, but definitely not happening today. I do yoga later, and don’t want to be full). I finish my current book (Melissa Harrison, All Among the Barley - very good indeed, in a sinister rural 1930s way, with creeping fascist undertones. But she wrongfoots you nicely a few times, without cheap gotchas).
1145 I drag myself out of bed and do some minor packing. I’m going on holiday on Thursday and working right up till I go, so sorting out where the European plugs, travel washkit and tickets are, which handbag and books I’m taking, and stacking up undies, pjs, and a couple of changes of clothes is sensible. It’s not a long trip, and I travel plenty, but I don’t want to forget crucial stuff.
1200 Another cup of tea. Quick look at the papers, but the Sundays aren’t worth having, really. Another book. Vol 10 of Dana Stabenow’s Kate Shugak series, which I’ve been trying to order from my local library forever and has *finally* turned up. So good. Vol 9 ended on a huge change for the series, so I have been on tenterhooks.
1300 Another cup of tea and a glass of water. More reading.
1400 Peel myself out of bed, get dressed and go out. I usually get the bus into town, but I thought I should walk today, after such sloth. It’s a lovely day for walking when you’re feeling a touch fragile - bright and breezy with patchy cloud, so not too hot. The walk is only just over a mile and easy to do; I’d do it more if it wasn’t such a dull road. But after a week of being indoors during wet weather, this finally feels like early May, and there are lots of flowers and scents around to distract from the straight boring tarmac.
1440 To Tesco, as I’ve realised I didn’t bring any water. And I get some dill, for later purposes. I am trying not to spend significant money just now, due to the irregularity of one of my paychecks, which I now know I won’t get again till July. Having got my Euros yesterday, I don’t have a lot of leeway this week. So even if I’d felt brighter this wouldn’t have been a day to go shopping. Anyway, it’s fine. All I needed was water for my next stop.
1445 To yoga. Class starts at 1500 and I’m in good time, getting my preferred spot (it’s an irregularly shaped room and this one gives you just a little more space to stack props and stash glasses safely away). This is a vinyasa flow class, not the most dynamic I do but with plenty of welcome movement. It’s a very nice one today, full of mandala sequences, where you repeat movements while slowly turning a full circle on the mat, and reversing it to do the other side. Stretchy, meditative and good.
1630 To yoga. Yes, again. My first class was 75 mins, and I have a 15 minute break until this one, which is yin yoga. (This was why I needed the water, I am plenty sweaty after the first class and need to rehydrate again.) Yin is a slow stretching yoga, and today’s theme is earth/grounding, which couldn’t be more in tune with my needs today. I cool down and stretch out, and nearly go to sleep.
1800 Standing at a bus stop feeling cold and wishing I had caught the bus I just missed. Oh well. I wait for the next, and get home not too much later than I’d hoped.
1815 Run a bath, and start making dinner, ripping bread and cooked chicken, soaking raisins, chopping dill, spinach and rocket, making a dressing.
1825 Baaaaaath. So much needed. I don’t have time for a long soak, but this warms me to my toes.
1850 Dinner. It’s quick to make, just requiring the bread to be lightly fried for crusty croutons, leftover chicken warmed, and a big salad assembled. I’m glad I added the dill, it’s a tasty salad with a sherry-mustard dressing and lots of capers and pine nuts as well as raisins, but the extra herbs work well.
1900 Poirot on the TV. Dinner on lap. Checking online, in case my students have got in touch or anything else vital. Not a lot needs fixing, though I’ve a new student who sounds a little in need of reassurance. I start writing this up, realising that I no longer feel at all fragile. Tea, yoga, water and not trying to do too much was definitely the plan for today. Vow to stick at 2 negronis from now on, if I ever end up with spare not-champagne and mixers again…
1945 Washing up, and remembering there’s a leftover muffin from the batch I made for the board meeting. Blueberry, vanilla, lemon. It really did need using up, but it’s still very nice.
2000 Call my parents, or more accurately my dad, as mum is abroad. This is a Sunday night ritual that’s been current for 25 years. Dad is fine, but tells me mum left her luggage on a train while going to join her group tour (she has mild Parkinsons-related dementia, and this is not specially unusual), but has recovered it and met up with the group and all is well. On the one hand, I’d obviously rather this wasn’t happening to her. Otoh, she’s almost 80, still confident enough to travel with a group, and I’m glad she’s doing it. But we have agreed it’ll be minicabs to airports, or dad escorting her there, from now on. (I’m actually going to France next week as a stopgap break because I thought I’d have to take mum on holiday, or she wouldn’t travel at all this year, and it’s a massive part of her life she would miss out on. But she wanted to go with this tour, and a couple of others this year. So even this kind of accident-prone semi-independent travel is really welcome. She may forget stuff, but she can also still get herself out of trouble - and Thameslink, St Pancras, Brussels Midi and Rotterdam Centraal are strewn with helpful people who made sure she did find her suitcase and get together with her group, including Eurostar who gave her a free new ticket and the ticket seller at Brussels who told her every step of the journey to Delft from there, including platform numbers. Good people.)
2040 I’m writing up the rest of the day, starting my daily Thrones episodes and realising that it’s almost time for bed once that is done… Will I sleep if I try to go at normal time (around 2200)? I doubt it, after being awake less than twelve hours. But I’m also surprisingly sleepy. Maybe my slothfulness today is more about general tiredness than one extra cocktail? Maybe this was all very prudent and wise.
…I think I might go to bed quite soon, actually. Night, all.
This entry was originally posted at https://bruttimabuoni.dreamwidth.org/932881.html. You can comment here or there as you please!
The structure of my job involves four major meetings per year. Three are awards panels, which review assessments and decide who has passed. One is the governance board which decides how the assessment programme is going overall. This year’s was on Thursday. It’s always a fairly big deal for me as manager of the programme, but in recent years it’s been more of a milestone than something that could throw things off track: I’ve had lots for them to approve, and as expected they have tweaked to show they care, and then approved. This year though there were several unexpected issues where I didn’t really know how the board would react, so I was quite stressed in the run-up, in that way you are when you’re not in control of events. The outcomes were fine (I really knew they would be as the group is very helpful, it was just that Not Knowing what they would opt for), but I was so tired after the meeting that I spent Thursday evening completely zoned out. I realised I’d been watching tv for about four hours and could barely tell you anything about it.
So, Friday night I was feeling better, and we remembered that there’s a bottle of not-champagne in the fridge with no particular purpose to it (fairly sure it came from my dad, someone probably brought it when they held Christmas, and my parents don’t like fizzy drinks). Why not open it to mark a successful milestone and destressing? So we did, and it was very nice. But I get home late on Fridays after yoga (I think it was 10pm when we opened the bottle), and neither of us felt really in the mood for a big drinking evening, so a glass apiece was plenty. Well, maybe just a splash more, but not the whole bottle.
Which is how I ended up with a half bottle of not-champagne going flat in the fridge last night. And the boyf isn’t around this weekend, so it was all mine. And I also had Campari and Vermut Lustau, so I decided to make negrone sbagliati with it. Now, I’m really a one-negroni person, maybe two for a lavish evening. But half a bottle of champagne makes three. Waste not, want not. Even over six hours and a large sensible dinner of chicken, potato and pea stew, it’s one more cocktail than I usually have. Which is how…
12 May is The Morning After the Night Before Day
0000 I am awake. I am watching the first ever episode of Game of Thrones, because I have access to the whole series for just this month, and I’ve finally caught up with all the seasons I have missed.
0045 I am in bed, listening to the radio, because Thrones is *not* conducive to sleep and although things are a little fuzzy, I know that. It’s an old episode of the Write Stuff literary quiz, and it’s fun.
0115 I put on my overnight audiobook (Mary Beard’s SQPR, read by Phyllida Nash), and sleep.
0900 my not-oversleeping-at-weekends alarm goes off. I silence it firmly.
1030 well okay, I’m awake now. Feeling perfectly okay in a sluggish way, but definitely in need of rehydration. I have a glass of water, make a cup of tea, and go back to bed. I do bring two slices of toast and peanut butter, which is brunch for today. (On a less sluggish Sunday I might have a small early lunch, but definitely not happening today. I do yoga later, and don’t want to be full). I finish my current book (Melissa Harrison, All Among the Barley - very good indeed, in a sinister rural 1930s way, with creeping fascist undertones. But she wrongfoots you nicely a few times, without cheap gotchas).
1145 I drag myself out of bed and do some minor packing. I’m going on holiday on Thursday and working right up till I go, so sorting out where the European plugs, travel washkit and tickets are, which handbag and books I’m taking, and stacking up undies, pjs, and a couple of changes of clothes is sensible. It’s not a long trip, and I travel plenty, but I don’t want to forget crucial stuff.
1200 Another cup of tea. Quick look at the papers, but the Sundays aren’t worth having, really. Another book. Vol 10 of Dana Stabenow’s Kate Shugak series, which I’ve been trying to order from my local library forever and has *finally* turned up. So good. Vol 9 ended on a huge change for the series, so I have been on tenterhooks.
1300 Another cup of tea and a glass of water. More reading.
1400 Peel myself out of bed, get dressed and go out. I usually get the bus into town, but I thought I should walk today, after such sloth. It’s a lovely day for walking when you’re feeling a touch fragile - bright and breezy with patchy cloud, so not too hot. The walk is only just over a mile and easy to do; I’d do it more if it wasn’t such a dull road. But after a week of being indoors during wet weather, this finally feels like early May, and there are lots of flowers and scents around to distract from the straight boring tarmac.
1440 To Tesco, as I’ve realised I didn’t bring any water. And I get some dill, for later purposes. I am trying not to spend significant money just now, due to the irregularity of one of my paychecks, which I now know I won’t get again till July. Having got my Euros yesterday, I don’t have a lot of leeway this week. So even if I’d felt brighter this wouldn’t have been a day to go shopping. Anyway, it’s fine. All I needed was water for my next stop.
1445 To yoga. Class starts at 1500 and I’m in good time, getting my preferred spot (it’s an irregularly shaped room and this one gives you just a little more space to stack props and stash glasses safely away). This is a vinyasa flow class, not the most dynamic I do but with plenty of welcome movement. It’s a very nice one today, full of mandala sequences, where you repeat movements while slowly turning a full circle on the mat, and reversing it to do the other side. Stretchy, meditative and good.
1630 To yoga. Yes, again. My first class was 75 mins, and I have a 15 minute break until this one, which is yin yoga. (This was why I needed the water, I am plenty sweaty after the first class and need to rehydrate again.) Yin is a slow stretching yoga, and today’s theme is earth/grounding, which couldn’t be more in tune with my needs today. I cool down and stretch out, and nearly go to sleep.
1800 Standing at a bus stop feeling cold and wishing I had caught the bus I just missed. Oh well. I wait for the next, and get home not too much later than I’d hoped.
1815 Run a bath, and start making dinner, ripping bread and cooked chicken, soaking raisins, chopping dill, spinach and rocket, making a dressing.
1825 Baaaaaath. So much needed. I don’t have time for a long soak, but this warms me to my toes.
1850 Dinner. It’s quick to make, just requiring the bread to be lightly fried for crusty croutons, leftover chicken warmed, and a big salad assembled. I’m glad I added the dill, it’s a tasty salad with a sherry-mustard dressing and lots of capers and pine nuts as well as raisins, but the extra herbs work well.
1900 Poirot on the TV. Dinner on lap. Checking online, in case my students have got in touch or anything else vital. Not a lot needs fixing, though I’ve a new student who sounds a little in need of reassurance. I start writing this up, realising that I no longer feel at all fragile. Tea, yoga, water and not trying to do too much was definitely the plan for today. Vow to stick at 2 negronis from now on, if I ever end up with spare not-champagne and mixers again…
1945 Washing up, and remembering there’s a leftover muffin from the batch I made for the board meeting. Blueberry, vanilla, lemon. It really did need using up, but it’s still very nice.
2000 Call my parents, or more accurately my dad, as mum is abroad. This is a Sunday night ritual that’s been current for 25 years. Dad is fine, but tells me mum left her luggage on a train while going to join her group tour (she has mild Parkinsons-related dementia, and this is not specially unusual), but has recovered it and met up with the group and all is well. On the one hand, I’d obviously rather this wasn’t happening to her. Otoh, she’s almost 80, still confident enough to travel with a group, and I’m glad she’s doing it. But we have agreed it’ll be minicabs to airports, or dad escorting her there, from now on. (I’m actually going to France next week as a stopgap break because I thought I’d have to take mum on holiday, or she wouldn’t travel at all this year, and it’s a massive part of her life she would miss out on. But she wanted to go with this tour, and a couple of others this year. So even this kind of accident-prone semi-independent travel is really welcome. She may forget stuff, but she can also still get herself out of trouble - and Thameslink, St Pancras, Brussels Midi and Rotterdam Centraal are strewn with helpful people who made sure she did find her suitcase and get together with her group, including Eurostar who gave her a free new ticket and the ticket seller at Brussels who told her every step of the journey to Delft from there, including platform numbers. Good people.)
2040 I’m writing up the rest of the day, starting my daily Thrones episodes and realising that it’s almost time for bed once that is done… Will I sleep if I try to go at normal time (around 2200)? I doubt it, after being awake less than twelve hours. But I’m also surprisingly sleepy. Maybe my slothfulness today is more about general tiredness than one extra cocktail? Maybe this was all very prudent and wise.
…I think I might go to bed quite soon, actually. Night, all.
This entry was originally posted at https://bruttimabuoni.dreamwidth.org/932881.html. You can comment here or there as you please!